The Girls' Revenge (7 page)

“We're making cookies,” Eddie explained.

“Cookies?” Mrs. Hatford asked, surprised. “Is he behaving himself?”

“Oh, yes. He's a big help,” Eddie said.

“Well, send him home if he's any bother,” Peter's mother told them.

Eddie winked at Caroline. “Now we wait for twenty minutes, and then we call the guys,” she whispered.

When the first batch of cookies was out of the oven, Eddie called the Hatfords from the phone in the hallway.

“Hello?” said Jake.

“This is Eddie,” Eddie said. “Peter was over here a while ago, and I wondered if I could talk to him again.”

There was a pause.

“What time did he leave your place?” Jake asked.

“A long time ago.”

Another pause. “Well, he's not here. I'll tell him to call you.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said, and hung up. She went back to the kitchen and put another pan of cookies in the oven.

About fifteen minutes after that, Beth called the Hatfords.

“Is Peter there?” she asked softly, watching Peter through the doorway. He had a glass of milk in one hand and a cookie in the other.

“No, he hasn't come back yet.” It was Wally on the phone this time, and he sounded worried.

“Gee, he should have been there by now. What'd he do? Fall in the river?” Beth asked, teasing. Then she hung up. “Now we've got them hopping,” she whispered to Eddie.

When she went back into the kitchen she said, “Well, Peter, it looks as though it's about time for you to go home. You want to take a little bag of cookies with you?”

“Yeah! All chocolate!” he said.

Caroline helped him put on his coat, and he was no sooner outside than the girls heard Wally's voice saying, “Peter, where the heck have you been?”

“I didn't find your clothes, Wally, but I've got some cookies for you,” Peter said.

Caroline quickly closed the door, and she and her sisters leaned against the wall, laughing.

Why am I laughing ?
Caroline wondered after a minute.
I can keep teasing Wally Hatford the rest of my life, but I still haven't passed the December project!

There were car lights on the kitchen wall as Mrs. Malloy drove up from another Christmas shopping trip.

“Mmmm, I smell cookies,” she said as she came into the house with two shopping bags.

Caroline had begun to feel more and more lost. Christmas was coming, but it wouldn't seem like Christmas to her, because she was failing fourth grade! Miss Applebaum was probably so disgusted with her that if there was a spring play, Caroline most definitely would not get a part. In fact, Miss Applebaum was probably so disappointed in her that, if the Malloys decided to stay in Buckman, she would tell the fifth- and sixth-grade teachers that when Caroline got to their grades, they should not let her have a part in a play either. Or if they did, she would have to be a tree or a bush or something, certainly not the star.

She was shocked to find that tears were running down her cheeks, and even more dismayed to hear her mother say, “Caroline, what in the world is wrong?”

Instantly she was in her mother's arms, sobbing. But Mrs. Malloy, who had been through more dramas with Caroline than she could count, merely said, “Well, are you going to prison or dying of a fatal disease? Which one is it this time?”

“I'll never make it to college!” Caroline wept.

“Well, dear, then I'll have you around to help me in my old age,” her mother said as she let loose of Caroline and began sorting through the things she had bought for their father. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

As Beth and Eddie took the last batch of cookies from the oven, Caroline wiped her face on a tea towel and said, “I'll never make it to college, because I'll never get to high school.”

“She doesn't think she'll get to high school because she doesn't think she'll get out of elementary,” said Eddie.

“And she doesn't think she'll get out of elementary because she won't pass fourth grade,” said Beth.

“And I won't pass fourth grade because I've failed the December project!” Caroline said dramatically, flinging her arms wide and bursting into tears again.

“The December project?” asked Mrs. Malloy. “I thought you'd been spending the last two weeks on that report. What happened?”

“She went overboard,” said Eddie. “She dressed up in Wally Hatford's clothes.”

Mrs. Malloy sat down and listened as the story slowly came out.

“It sounds to me as though it wasn't Wally's clothes that did you in, my dear, but the way you described him to the class. It wasn't flattering, which of course it didn't have to be, but I doubt very much if it was fair.”

“But you should have heard what he said about me, Mother! I may be a lot of things, but I am
not
boring!”

“Was that fair?”

“No!”

“Then I guess you're even. Now the two of you have to straighten it out with Miss Applebaum.”

We are not even!
Caroline thought.
We are not even until I give Wally a present for Christmas that will absolutely knock him out. Then, maybe, we'll be even.

The next day Miss Applebaum did not say anything to Caroline or Wally about their reports, nor did either of them bring the matter up. It still seemed much too scary. Caroline and Wally didn't say anything to each other either, and after school, when the three girls were crossing the bridge, Eddie said, “Let's crawl up there and see what they've got in their clubhouse.”

“We're not supposed to,” said Beth. “Squatters' rights. Dad said they could use the loft.”

“They don't
own
it, though.
We're
the ones who are paying the rent on the Bensons' house, remember. I guess if anybody has a right to go up there, we have. We just want to see what the guys are doing.”

So they left their book bags on the steps and went
into the garage. Eddie went up the ladder first, then Caroline, then Beth, as Patches, the stray cat, watched sleepily from below.

“Ha!” came Eddie's voice. “
Members Only!
That's a laugh. I now pronounce you a member, Caroline. You too, Beth.”

When all three had reached the loft, they knelt in the center of the floor, and looked around.

There were empty soda cans and candy wrappers, a mitten, a newspaper… There was also an old tin milk box in one corner, from back in the days when milkmen delivered the milk. It was covered with dust, and Caroline crawled over to look inside.

“Aha!” she cried as she lifted the lid.

“What?” asked Eddie and Beth.

Caroline reached down into the milk box and lifted something out. “Binoculars,” she said.

Ten
Truce

H
e had his clothes back, but he'd still failed the December project.

Wally sat at the dinner table that night and confessed, while his father stared at him from one end, his mother from the other. Jake and Josh sat across from him, and Peter, who was sitting beside him, stared at his ear.

In the next room, the lights on the Christmas tree twinkled gaily, but it didn't feel like the Christmas season to Wally; it felt like the end of the world.

“How,” asked Mr. Hatford, spearing a forkful of lima beans, “can you possibly have written a report so terrible that you failed the whole project?”

Wally swallowed. “I don't know, Dad. I guess I just take stupid pills or something.”

“You aren't stupid, Wally. I
know
you knew how to do that assignment. An interview can't be that hard. Something must have made your teacher angry at the way you went about it,” his father said.

“She says Caroline and I probably hate each other,” Wally told him.

“Why, what a terrible thing to say!” exclaimed Mother. “What would make her think that?”

Jake and Josh rolled their eyes.

“ 'Cause they steal each other's clothes,” said Peter.

“
What?”
cried Mother and Father together.

“Forget it,” said Wally.

“What I want you to do, Wally, is go to school early tomorrow and talk to your teacher. Ask what you can do to earn extra credit and bring up your grade,” said his father.

“I'll just spend the rest of my life in fourth, I don't care,” said Wally.

“Over my dead body,” said his dad.

“He'll just stay in fourth grade long enough for Caroline Malloy to either move back to Ohio or graduate to junior high school; then he'll move on,” said Jake, trying not to smile.

“Since when is a son of mine so frightened of a girl that he can't even be in the same grade with her?” asked Mr. Hatford.

It never occurred to Wally that people might think he was
scared
of Caroline. It never entered his head that somebody might think he was chicken.

“I'm not scared of Caroline or anyone,” Wally mumbled. “I'll go to school tomorrow and talk to Miss Applebaum.”

When he woke the next morning, Wally climbed out of bed before he could change his mind and pulled on his jeans and his sweatshirt with the words I EAT NAILS on the front. Then, after gulping down a
glass of juice and half a doughnut, he pulled on his parka, stuffed his hands in his gloves, and tramped down the front steps and off to school. The snow of the day before scarcely measured an inch, and the ground was bare in places.

There were hardly any students on the playground yet. The janitor hadn't even unlocked the front door. Only the teachers' entrance was open.

Wally took a deep breath, walked in the teachers' entrance, and clomped down the hall in his Huskies boots. With his I EAT NAILS sweatshirt showing through the opening of his jacket, he banged through the door of Miss Applebaum's classroom.

There stood Caroline Malloy, talking to the teacher.

“Well, well,” said Miss Applebaum. “I seem to have a delegation here this morning. I wonder what's on
your
mind, Wally?”

“I'd like some work for extra credit to make up for the December project,” he told her.

“That's very interesting, because this is exactly what Caroline came to say. Since I have no idea why you chose Wally for a partner, Caroline, and then proceeded to stand up here and insult him, or why you, Wally, did your best to insult her, it seems to me that the two of you should decide what you can do to make up the credit. Go sit down at the back of the room and talk to each other while I finish up some work here at my desk.”

Wally followed Caroline to the chairs back by the encyclopedias. She sat down on one, and he sat down on another, with one empty chair between them.
Wally half turned toward Caroline, and Caroline half turned toward Wally.

Caroline was staring at her lap. She did not look like the same girl who had stood at the front of the room in Wally's underpants. She didn't look like the same girl who had pretended she had died and been buried in the river, either, or the girl whom Wally and his brothers had locked in the toolshed, the girl who, when they opened the door at last to let her out, had pretended that she had rabies.

This looked like a girl who was afraid she was going to spend the rest of her life in fourth grade and would do whatever it took to pass the December project.

“So what do you want to do?” Wally said at last.

Caroline shook her head. “I don't know. What do you want to do?”

They were quiet for a minute or two.

“I suppose we could ask each other questions all over again and write a better report,” said Wally.

“We could if you'll give me better answers,” said Caroline.

They agreed.

“So what do you
really
like to eat?” Caroline asked him.

“Pizza, like you said. Chicken McNuggets. Fries,” Wally told her.

“And what do you
really
like to do when you're not in school?”

Wally tried not to smile. “When we're not teasing you?” he asked.

Now Caroline was trying not to smile. “Yeah.”

Wally put one foot on the rung of the empty chair
between them and thought about it. “I don't know. I just like to… fool around, I guess. I mean, I like to float things down the river and see how long it takes them to circle around Island Avenue and reach the other side. I like to explore the old coal mine and camp out at Smuggler's Cove. Things like that. How about you?”