The Girls Take Over (6 page)

Yes! An audience at last! And just in time, too, because her wet clothes felt like cement around her body, and her teeth were chattering.

Another swell of water caught her in the mouth and the current spun her around again. And there, up ahead, she saw a wall. A wall of people in purple parkas and blue ski jackets.

Five children and two men were standing waist deep
in the water, their hands locked together, as Caroline came bumping and bobbing along.

“Here she comes!” she heard Eddie yell. “Caroline, can't you stand up?”

And a man called, “Don't let her slip between you.”

“Goodbye, cruel world!” Caroline cried, tipping back again and closing her eyes to the sky.

The next thing she knew, she was turning facedown as she bumped against Jake Hatford's legs, and then she opened her eyes and saw a big burly man charging through the river toward her, water spraying out around him as he grabbed her jacket, then her arm, and hauled her through the water toward the bank. The other man herded the rest of the kids after them.

They all collapsed on the bank, their chests heaving. Caroline opened one eye just enough to see a rescue vehicle, its lights flashing, up on Island Avenue.

“You kids are darned lucky we were coming by just now,” the second man said, wringing water out of his pant legs. “Why didn't one of you go call 911?”

“There wasn't time! We hoped someone would see us and call the fire department,” Beth said. Caroline realized why Beth was going along with the act: to divert the boys' attention from what the girls had been doing down by the river with a butterfly net in the first place.

A siren sounded in the distance, but a man from the rescue vehicle was already running toward the little group on the bank.

The burly man who had pulled Caroline out turned to the others. “You kids better get on some dry clothes,” he said.

Never mind the others,
Caroline was thinking.
What about me, the almost-drowned?

As a fire engine stopped on the road above, Caroline rolled over on her back, her arms outstretched.

“What have you got?” a fireman yelled, running toward them.

“A girl was in the river, but we pulled her out,” the burly man said.

“What about the other kids?” asked the fireman.

“They helped rescue her. We're all okay, I think.” He looked at Caroline uncertainly.

Then another car door slammed, and Caroline heard Mr. Hatford's voice: “Don't
tell
me … !”

“Yep, Tom. Looks like it's your boys again. I don't know if they hunt for trouble or trouble hunts for them, but this time they were the rescuers, I hear,” the fireman said. “Got a girl who fell in the river, but they're all okay.”

“Who was it?” Mr. Hatford asked his sons, and they all three pointed to Caroline. Mr. Hatford groaned.

The rescue worker was kneeling beside Caroline. “You okay, sweetheart?” he asked.

Caroline didn't answer.

He reached for her wrist and felt her pulse. Caroline let her eyelids flutter. “Are you okay?” he asked again.

No answer.

“If she was in the river, she probably got bounced
around a little,” Mr. Hatford suggested. “Looks like she got a bump there on her forehead.”

“Can you tell me your name?” the rescue worker asked Caroline.

“Juliet,” she whispered.

Jake and Josh and Wally and Eddie and Beth all stared.

“Juliet what?” the rescue worker said.

“Shakespeare,” said Caroline breathily.

“Caroline!” yelled Eddie.

“Do you know what year it is?” one of the firemen asked as the men gathered around the limp wet figure on the ground.

Caroline tried to remember the year William Shakespeare was born. “Fifteen … uh … sixty-four,” she said.

“Car-o-line!” the Hatford boys all yelled together.

“Hit her on the head again, Mr. Hatford,” said Eddie. “I think you'll discover she's fine.”

“How did this happen?” Mr. Hatford asked.

“We saw Caroline fall in the river and couldn't reach her. She had hold of a limb, so we ran around to the other side of Island Avenue to catch her when she came by here. We flagged down these men on the road to help us,” said Wally.

“Good thinking,” one of the firemen said. “But next time have somebody call 911. You kids were lucky today, but you never know about a river. If we hadn't gotten a call from a woman on the bridge, or these men hadn't happened along, no telling how this day might
have ended. Where do you live?” he asked the girls. “We'll get you home.”

“No!” Eddie said quickly, not wanting her parents to see the ruckus they had caused. “We're in that white house right down there. We'll walk. Come on, Caroline.” She and Beth pulled their younger sister to her feet. Water oozed from their clothes.

“I'll follow along behind them,” Mr. Hatford told the firemen. He motioned to his boys to get into his car. Turning to the Malloy girls, he asked, “What were you doing so close to the water in the first place?”

“Yeah, Eddie, what were you guys doing down by the river with a butterfly net?” said Jake.

But Caroline interrupted. “Is this London?” she asked faintly. “Am I on Drury Lane?”

“Caroline, shut up,” said Beth, and without a word to the boys she and Eddie grabbed their sister by the arms and led her home.

Eight
Conversation with Caroline

“J
ust
forget
those girls!” Jake growled the next day, when baseball practice was scheduled for after school. “Every time we get mixed up with the Malloys, we get in trouble.”

“You can't exactly forget Eddie if she's playing on your team,” said Josh.

“Don't remind me,” said Jake. “All I'm going to think about from now till school's out is baseball.”

“I could be your ball boy!” said Peter hopefully. “Every time you miss a ball, I could pick it up for you!”

“That's the catcher's job, Peter,” said Jake.

“Well, I could be your water boy, then. Every time you come off the field, I could give you a drink of water.”

Jake gave him a little smile. “All I need is for you guys to be there on the bleachers cheering every time the Buckman Badgers make a run. You can even cheer for Eddie. What I
don't
want is to get in some kind of
trouble and get kicked off the team. That's why I'm not getting near the Malloys if I can help it.”

What Jake was talking about, of course, was the story that had appeared in the newspaper that morning about the dramatic rescue of Caroline Malloy. How the brave Hatford boys and the courageous Malloy sisters had linked arms and caught the youngest Malloy girl as she came down the river on the far side of Island Avenue. There was no photo, but all the kids had their names in the paper, as though they were heroes.

Their parents didn't quite see it that way, however.

“The darn most foolish harebrained stunt I ever saw!” Mr. Hatford had fumed to his sons. “How you kids manage to make a bottle race a major event is beyond me.”

The girls had been grounded for a week, with the exception of school and baseball practice. Coach Malloy had ruefully declared—jokingly, of course— that he was going to lock his daughters in the attic to keep them out of trouble.

Wally crawled up in the bleachers beside Josh and Peter while Jake joined the other team members on the field.

Sports weren't exactly Wally's thing. If Jake's team won a game, that was fine with Wally. If they lost, that was fine too. Sitting on cold bleachers watching baseball practice, not even a real game, was way, way down on the list of things Wally liked to do, but if he didn't come to practice, he wouldn't be part of the dinner-table discussion at night, for Mr. Hatford enjoyed
sports very much and liked to hear how practice had gone. If Wally wasn't part of the conversation at all, it was as though he weren't even there. And being the middle child in the family, he did not want to be ignored any more than he already was.

“Look who's here,” Josh said, elbowing Wally. There, way down at the end of the bleachers, sat Caroline and Beth, who had come to watch Eddie practice. The coach liked to have a cheering section during practice, he'd told his team. He said it got players used to the hooting and hollering that went on during a real game. In fact, the coach seemed to do enough hooting and hollering all on his own, Wally thought.

“Okay, players, look here!” Coach Malloy called out, holding up a glove. “When you catch a ball, catch it right here in the upper palm—not in the web of your glove.”

Wally leaned back until his head rested on the riser behind him. The clouds were swirling across the sky, but the air was mild, as though spring had finally made it over the mountains. He was trying to figure out how far apart one cloud was from another. He imagined himself a giant, stepping from cloud to cloud, looking down on the earth below.

Josh elbowed him again. “Come on, Wally, pay attention,” he said. “We're supposed to be cheering the team.”

Wally sighed and slowly pulled himself up to a sitting position again. Far down the bleachers he could
see that Caroline, too, had sprawled out on her back and was watching the clouds.
Who invented the ball, anyway?
Wally wondered. Football, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, kickball, dodge ball, tennis, golf, Ping-Pong … He always read what a great invention the wheel had been, but what about the ball? Who got the credit for that?

“Wally, are you watching or what?” Josh said.

“I'm watching! I'm watching!” Wally said with fake enthusiasm.

“
I'm
paying attention!” said Peter.

Wally snapped to and studied the field below. Now the coach was explaining how to field a ground ball. Wally yawned.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Caroline crawling along the bleachers toward him. She got halfway between the place where Beth was sitting and the place where the Hatford boys were sitting, then motioned Wally to come over.

Wally considered it. If he did, he would probably get into trouble. If he didn't, she'd probably crawl all the way over and drop things down the back of his shirt. Somehow, though, even talking with Caroline Malloy seemed more interesting than sitting here waiting to cheer for someone.

“I'm going over and sit with Caroline for a while,” Wally told his brothers.

“You're nuts!” said Josh. And then, “
No,
Peter! You stay here. We're supposed to be rooting for Jake.”

Peter stayed put.

Wally stepped behind Josh and Peter and walked over to the middle of the bleachers, where Caroline was still crawling on her hands and knees.

“What are you, a dog?” he said.

“I'm bored,” she told him.

“Me too,” said Wally.

“That's probably because we're not very good at sports,” Caroline said. “Dad says that people who are good in sports don't get bored with them. It's people like us who would rather be up on a stage who get bored during ball games.”

“This isn't even a game, it's practice, and I don't want to be up on a stage, either,” said Wally.

Caroline seemed to be thinking that over. “Then what
would
you rather be doing?” she asked.

Wally shrugged. “Nothing. I just like to think.”

“
Every
one thinks all the time, Wally! You don't have to sit and do nothing in order to think!”

“Well, I have my best thoughts when I do,” Wally answered.

Caroline leaned closer, until she was within a few inches of Wally's face. “What kind of thoughts do you have, Wally? I really want to know.”

She sounded as though she meant it. Out on the field the coach was yelling, “Keep your bat as still as possible till you're ready to swing. Don't wave it back and forth.”

Wally sighed. He was glad it wasn't him down there on the ball diamond getting yelled at over a stupid ball. “Well,” he said finally. “Things like … like how it
would feel to be a giant walking from cloud to cloud. Or … well, you know how, if you watch ants building an anthill and taking food inside and all that, they don't even know you're there. Right?”

“Right,” said Caroline.

“If you put a stick in their way, they'll crawl over it or around it, but they don't know how it got there. They don't know that your shoe has a foot in it. They don't know anything about people or bridges or rockets or anything. All they know is their own little anthill.” He looked at Caroline out of the corner of his eye to see if she was laughing at him.

But Caroline seemed absorbed in what he was saying, so Wally continued: “What if we're like ants to some huge creatures we can't even see? What if our world is like a small anthill and huge scientists are studying us under a microscope like germs or something?”

He looked directly at Caroline as he asked the question. He really wanted to know if anyone else ever had the same thoughts he did. Caroline seemed deep in concentration as she studied his face. “Did you know that your eyes have little brown specks in them?” she asked.

Wally let out his breath and tipped back his head. He should have known better than to tell anything like that to Caroline Malloy. But just when he'd decided she was hopeless, Caroline said, “I think about things like that too, sometimes.”