The Girls' Revenge (12 page)

It took us about an hour to get the paint out with turpentine, and we didn't dare tell Mom what happened because we weren't supposed to go back up there again. Boy, I'll say one thing for those Malloys: There isn't a dull moment with them around. Jake is really teed off at them, but if you want the truth, I think Josh sort of likes Beth a little.

If they decide to stay in Buckman after you guys come back, we sure could have a lot of fun teasing them. Can you imagine how turned around we could get them if we ever took them to the old coal tunnel in the hill? And what about that field that gets so muddy in the spring? Caroline's so short she'd probably sink in up to her armpits.

Right now, though, we've got snow. I'll bet you haven't seen any of that down in Georgia. Had a snowball fight the other morning with the girls, and Eddie went a little bonkers. You don't exactly want to mess with Eddie.

As usual, Buckman looks great at Christmas. There are wreaths up downtown and everything. Three of my uncles are coming for Christmas. They come every year, remember? We have to give up our bedrooms and sleep in sleeping bags in the living room, but that's okay.

Danny, you going to give your Georgia-peach teacher a present for Christmas? I'm not giving Miss Applebaum
anything.

Merry Christmas, you guys.

Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter)

Seventeen
Slave Labor

C
oach Malloy stood in the living room, facing his wife and three daughters, a new sport coat on his arm.

“Well,” he said, “the dry cleaner says it can't be cleaned. He can get some of the paint out but not all, and there's no way I can wear it to meetings again. So I've bought a new one, and here, girls, is the bill.” He walked over and handed it to Eddie.

Eddie gulped. Since she had done the actual painting and it had been her idea, it was she who would be most severely punished. Their father's decision was this: Since all three girls had knowingly participated in the prank, all three were responsible for earning the money it would cost to pay for a new sport jacket.

“Dad, I don't mind working to pay for it, but this is a lot of money! I could still be looking for jobs to do when it's time to try out for the softball team!” she said.

“That, I'm afraid, is your problem,” he told her.

“Lock me up with bread and water, but
please
don't keep me off the team!” Eddie pleaded.

“That's entirely up to you,” Father said. “You'll just have to work doubly hard between now and tryouts, won't you?”

Caroline swallowed. She knew that, ever since they had moved to West Virginia, her sister had dreamed about trying out for the Buckman Elementary softball team, sure that she could outhit and outpitch every boy in town. This past fall Beth and Caroline had helped her practice in a field behind the college, and Caroline imagined she could still hear the crack of the bat against a ball as Eddie hit a homer; she could see her sister's muscles tighten as she wound up for the pitch. And now…

Eddie passed the bill for the sport coat to Caroline and Beth.

“We could buy you a new car for this!” squeaked Caroline in dismay.

“Hardly,” said her father. And then he added, “Eddie, I want you to call the Hatford boys and apologize. Ask if any of their clothes were ruined, and if they were, you can add those to your bill.”

“Dad!” Eddie choked. “They weren't supposed to be up there in the first place.”

“That's between them and their parents, and that's not the point. You had no business doing any painting in the garage and you know it—a garage we don't even own.” Then he went upstairs to hang up his new jacket.

Caroline stared at her sisters. Calling the boys to apologize was the worst punishment of all.

“I'll do it,” Beth said grimly. “We're all in this together. I'll ask to speak to Josh. If anyone will understand, it's him.”

They waited until their father came downstairs; then they went up, took the phone from their parents' bedroom, and dragged it into Beth's.

Beth sat down on the floor, set the phone in her lap, and took a deep breath. She dialed the Hatfords' number. Eddie and Caroline sat on the floor across from her.

“Hello,” said Beth. “Is this Peter? Could I speak to Josh, please?”

There was a pause.

“No,” Beth said. “I'm not going to say something mean to him. Just put him on, will you?”

Caroline rested her head on her knees and closed her eyes.

“Josh? Hi, this is Beth. Listen, I just wanted to say that we're really sorry you guys got paint on your clothes. Wally and Jake, I mean. I guess the joke got a little out of hand.”

Eddie stared at her.
“Sorry?”
she mouthed.

Another pause.

“Well, Dad wanted me to call over and see if any of their clothes were ruined. He got paint on his jacket, and he's really mad, and he said if we ruined any of your stuff we have to pay for that too.”

This time Eddie put her face on
her
knees. Caroline was beginning to be worried. She hadn't thought Beth
would apologize quite that much. Why, the guys could say
all
their clothes were ruined, and make the Malloy sisters their slaves for the rest of their natural lives!

But then she heard Beth say, “Really? Are you sure? Well, I had to find out. Thanks a lot, Josh. I really appreciate it.” And Beth hung up.

“What's all this 'sorry' business?” Eddie demanded. “And why did you have to tell them about Dad's jacket?”

“Everything's okay,” said Beth. “They got the paint out themselves with turpentine, and we don't owe them anything.”

Now Caroline and Eddie stared.

“Really?” said Eddie. “Nothing?”

“Not a cent.”

“I don't believe it!” said Eddie.

“Well,
sometimes
it pays to be nice,” Beth told her.

“Whew!” said Caroline, leaning back against the wall. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to earn a hundred and seventy-five dollars to pay for Dad's jacket.”

“I can bake,” said Beth. “I could take orders every week for banana-bread muffins and bake them on Saturdays. Peanut butter cookies, too. Maybe I could offer to make Christmas cookies for people too busy to bake.”

Caroline tried to think what she could do. The thing she was best at, of course, was acting, but she doubted that anyone would want to pay her to come into their living rooms and do a dramatic reading.

“Maybe I could perform for little kids' birthday parties,” she said. “Read them stories and stuff.”

Eddie herself preferred the more physical jobs. She wanted to keep her body lean and limber. If it had been spring, she could have offered to wash windows or paint walls or clean up yards, but nobody had that in mind in December.

“I'll do housecleaning,” she decided. “There must be busy people who are getting ready for the holidays and would like someone else to do the scrubbing.”

It was probably their greatest humiliation that the Malloy girls had to go around two Saturdays before Christmas, putting signs on telephone poles, in shop windows, on trees—wherever they were allowed to post one—offering their services. They could see the Hatford boys watching them from a distance, hiding an amused grin behind their hands or disguising a chuckle with a cough. Even Josh seemed to think it was funny.

Eddie got a number of calls about housecleaning and was encouraged. With company coming, people told her, and all there was to do at Christmas, they were glad to pay to have their houses cleaned.

Beth also got a few orders for Christmas cookies, so she worked every afternoon when she got home, making chocolate Rice Krispies creations, fudge bars, almond rounds, and lemon squares. There was hardly time to do her own Christmas shopping and wrapping, and the lavender scarf she'd been knitting for Mother still sat in her yarn basket.

Caroline was the most disappointed.

“Doesn't anyone want to hire a budding young
actress to perform at birthday parties?” she asked her family in desperation. “Isn't anyone even
having
birthdays around Christmas?”

She got only one request to entertain three small children one afternoon while the mother did her Christmas wrapping, but the oldest had a cold and needed Caroline to blow his nose every five minutes, the second child cried the whole time, and the youngest fell into the toilet. Nobody wanted her to sing or recite a scene from
The Wind in the Willows,
and Caroline was even more glad than they were when their mother had finished her chore.

If Beth had any bad feelings left toward the Hatford boys, she didn't talk about them.

If Eddie wished she were back in Ohio, she never said.

Perhaps because Caroline had the least to do, it was she who resented the fact that she and her sisters had to work so hard to pay for Dad's jacket. She knew they were responsible, of course, but if the boys had stayed across the river where they belonged, nothing would have happened.

Never mind that she was the one who had seemed to like Buckman the most. Never mind that she loved thinking up new ways to annoy Jake and Josh and Wally, and sometimes even Peter. The fact was that everybody else was busy, and she was not.

And so, with the angel wrapping paper and the blue crinkle ribbon that Mother had bought at the hardware store, Caroline wrapped, in a small flat box, the grossest thing she could find to give to Wally Hatford, and set it by the pile of presents waiting to
be delivered there by the door. Inside was a little puddle of cat vomit that Patches, the stray cat, had deposited on the Malloys' back steps. There was a big fat hairball in the middle of the vomit and, if you looked closely, you could even find a piece or two of undigested mouse feet.

Eighteen
Mistake #1

T
he week before Christmas was always the busiest time in the Hatford household.

Mr. Hatford was late getting home every night. Each year, it seemed, people mailed their Christmas cards and packages later and later, and the boys' father might be out till six or seven o'clock trying to get everything delivered by Christmas Eve.

“Just don't do it, Tom!” Wally's mother would say. “If people don't think enough of their aunt Emma to buy her a present in time, then I don't see why you need to knock yourself out trying to deliver it by Christmas Eve.”

But then she would remember a present
she
had forgotten to buy for somebody, and so—each year was the same, with Mrs. Hatford and the boys doing the wrapping and decorating by themselves.

The boys didn't talk about the Malloys much. For one thing, they hardly even saw Eddie, Beth, and Caroline,
the girls were so busy trying to earn money to pay for the jacket. In the days that followed, however, with the girls' signs on trees and light poles all over Buckman, advertising their jobs, Josh said he was feeling a little bit sorry for them. And with Christmas only a few days off, Wally, perhaps, should have been thinking about forgiveness too. But he couldn't quite forgive them yet, because there was one little joke he had up his sleeve that was too good to pass up.

He had to admit he was a little bit mad—no, a
lot
mad—that he had got paint on the sleeves of his jacket. But he was also still mad at Caroline for wearing his clothes to school. He could forgive her for wearing his trousers, maybe, and his T-shirt, his socks and shoes, but his
underpants
? Was there any boy in Buckman who would like to have his underpants displayed in public by a girl who was
wearing
them?

Most boys, he figured, would have decontaminated them. Most boys, in fact, would probably have thrown them out. Wally himself was certainly never going to wear them again, especially underpants that had a happy face painted on the seat, but he had big plans for those underpants.

A few days before Christmas, he put them in a box and wrapped them in the angel-print paper that Mother had brought home from the hardware store. It was the blue-and-gold paper that the hardware store was selling at half price. He put the box aside to take to school on the last day before the Christmas holidays, to put in Caroline's book bag.