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OTHER YEARLING BOOKS BY PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR YOU WILL ENJOY
THE BOYS START THE WAR
THE GIRLS GET EVEN
BOYS AGAINST GIRLS
THE GIRLS’ REVENGE
A TRAITOR AMONG THE BOYS
THE BOYS RETURN
THE GIRLS TAKE OVER
BOYS IN CONTROL
GIRLS RULE!
BOYS ROCK!
Contents
One: Violins
Two: Three Little Words
Three Love
Four: Tracks
Five: The Plan
Six: Spy Time
Seven: A Visit Before Dinner
Eight: The Experiment
Nine: Big Trouble
Ten: New Rule
Eleven: Gift
Twelve: Like Two Hot Coals
Thirteen: The Confrontation
Fourteen: Party
Fifteen: Love Lost
Sixteen: Phone Call
Seventeen: More Trouble
Eighteen: Secret Meetings
Ninteen: Abaguchie
One
Violins
Beth was in love, and it was positively sickening, Caroline thought.
Beth drew little hearts on the corners of her notebook, with the initials B + J. She lingered at the end of the footbridge each morning on the way to school, hoping that the Hatford boys would be leaving about the same time and she could walk to school with Josh. Worst of all, Beth acted as though she'd rather be with Josh Hatford than with her own sisters.
Caroline, age nine, was the youngest of Coach Malloy's three daughters. Eddie, the oldest, couldn't be bothered. At eleven, all she wanted was, number one, to think up a really good experiment for the sixth-grade science fair, and number two, to make the Buckman Elementary baseball team when tryouts were held the following month. If Beth, a year younger, wanted to act like a lovesick idiot, that was her problem.
“But, Eddie, it ruins everything! We were having such a wonderful time annoying the guys! We weren't supposed to fall in love with them!” Caroline protested as they ate their cereal and watched the sun trying to rise in a gray February sky.
Fog cut the West Virginia hills around Buckman in half, hiding the tops completely. It covered sections of the valley as well. From the kitchen window, the girls could see the swinging footbridge over the Buckman River, but they couldn't see the Hatfords’ house on the other side.
“What do you mean, ‘we’? I haven't fallen in love with anyone,” Eddie told her, shaking the last of the Cheerios into her bowl.
“Good!” said their father, who had coached the college football team the previous fall and helped it make the playoffs. Now he was teaching chemistry. “Because I won't know till summer whether I'm leaving Buck-man or staying. And if we move back to Ohio, I don't want a bunch of weeping daughters crying over leaving their boyfriends.”
“Ha!” said Eddie. “Not on your life!”
Beth entered the kitchen at that moment. She had pulled her blond hair up on either side of her head, fashioned the top into curls, and fastened it using a large comb with daisies.
“Oh, brother!” Eddie said when she saw her. “Who are you supposed to be? Miss America?”
“Eddie, don't make fun of your sister,” Mrs. Malloy said sharply as she set a plate of toast on the table. “Beth spent a lot of time on her hair, and I think she looks lovely.”
“All for Josh,” Caroline remarked.
“Pardon me while I gag,” said Eddie.
“For your information, I just wanted a new look,” Beth said, avoiding their eyes and quickly reaching for the butter.
“Yeah, a new look in nail polish too,” Caroline said, grabbing one of Beth's hands to look at her nails, which Beth had painted purple to match her sweater. Each nail had a little J painted on it with sparkling silver.
“That's enough!” said Mrs. Malloy. “Everyone's entitled to a little privacy. Caroline, finish your toast, please.”
All because Beth and Josh were in that play together where they had to hold hands! Caroline thought later as she brushed her teeth. But she had to admit what was really bothering her. It wasn't that Beth liked Josh Hat-ford. Of the four Hatford brothers—Jake, Josh, Wally, and Peter—Josh was one of the nicest. It was the fact that by falling in love, Beth, not Caroline, was in the spotlight these days, and Caroline herself was used to being the center of attention.
If she were falling in love, she would make up a whole story to go with it. She would act out her own scenes, write her own love letters, and have secret meetings with her beloved down by the footbridge. Since she wanted to be a Broadway actress, she needed all the life experiences she could get, and falling in love was one of them. Beth's falling in love didn't count.
When it was time to leave for school, Caroline and Eddie left together because, these days, Beth always found excuses to lag behind. The Buckman River flowed into town on one side of Island Avenue, looped around the end, and came flowing back on the other side. A road bridge connected the end of Island Avenue to the business district, but a swinging footbridge on one side provided a shortcut for the girls to College Avenue and to Buckman Elementary.
This morning, as Caroline and Eddie were crossing the footbridge, looking down on the river's patches of ice heaped with snow like meringue on a pudding, they saw the Hatford boys already leaving their house, heading up the street toward school.
Eddie snickered. “Won't that put Beth in a snit,” she said. “She purposely dawdled just so she could walk to school with Josh, and Josh started off early without her.”
But Jake, Josh's twin, was first in line, plodding through the snow with seven-year-old Peter at his heels. Behind him came Wally, and Josh seemed to be hanging back. Every now and then he glanced over toward the Malloys’ house, then quickly faced forward again.
In the next instant Beth's footsteps came tripping over the boards of the footbridge behind Caroline.
“Excuse me,” Beth said, hurrying past, and caught up with Josh on the sidewalk, where he was pretending to tie his boot.
Caroline stopped walking and surveyed them from the bridge, hands on her hips.
“They aren't any good at all at falling in love,” she declared. “When you fall in love, violins are supposed to play and bells are supposed to ring. A girl is supposed to rush across a bridge and into the arms of her boyfriend. She's not supposed to pretend she just happened to meet up with him, and he's not supposed to pretend he stopped to tie his boot.”
“I wouldn't know,” said Eddie. “And the last thing I want making noise around me is violins.”
But following along behind Beth and Josh, seeing how the sleeves of their jackets hardly even touched, much less their hands, Caroline made a decision: if she was ever going to know what it felt like to fall in love, she'd have to do it herself—so if she was ever asked to play the part of a woman in love, she could do it from the heart.
She would simply have to choose a boy and fall in love with him, and since the only boy who sat close to her in school was Wally Hatford—who sat directly in front of her, in fact—Wally Hatford it would be.
Two
Three Little Words
Wally couldn't believe what was happening. If his eyes didn't deceive him, one of the Hatford boys was falling in love, and he wasn't the one. It wasn't Jake, either, a
nd it certainly wasn't Peter. All because Josh had held hands with Beth Malloy in a stupid play!
Things had not been the same since their best friends, the Bensons, had moved to Georgia and the Malloys had taken over their house. Things were not only different, they were weird. None of the Hatford boys had been in love before, and Wally hoped it would never happen to him. Josh never talked about Beth. He never even mentioned her name. But how many times could a guy stop to tie his boot on the way to school just so a girl could catch up with him? How many times could he forget his notebook so that he had to go back? Somehow Josh always managed to end up walking beside Beth Malloy.
Wally hung his coat outside the fourth-grade classroom and thought some more about love. He supposed he would fall in love someday whether he wanted to or not, because he was just an ordinary boy, and ordinary people usually fell in love at some time in their lives.
He was, in fact, the most ordinary person he knew. He wasn't fat, he wasn't thin; he wasn't short, he wasn't tall; he wasn't especially smart, but he wasn't stupid, either. And he wasn't a bit like Caroline Malloy, who should have been only in third grade but, because she was “precocious,” had to be in his classroom. In the seat directly behind him, in fact.
Wally hung around the hall as long as he could, talking to his buddies. He had learned several things since starting fourth grade with Caroline: (1) Stay out in the hall as long as possible before taking your seat; (2) Don't speak to Caroline unless you have to; (3) Never lean back in your seat until Miss Applebaum has started the lesson: once class began, Caroline usually behaved herself, but until then, Wally could expect a poke in the back with a ruler or pen—Caroline's way of saying “Good morning.”
He took his seat, leaning as far forward as possible, bracing himself for the sharp edge of a ruler or the prickly point of a pen. But nothing happened. He didn't even hear “Good morning, Wally!” There was no sound at all.
Miss Applebaum was talking about the month of February and how Americans celebrated two presidents’ birthdays in that month. She talked about how students wouldn't remember everything they learned in history, but she hoped they would learn enough so that when a famous person's name was mentioned, each student would remember at least something that person had done.
Still no poke in the back. Wally began to wonder if Caroline was there. Had he actually seen her when he sat down? Maybe she was absent. Maybe Miss Applebaum had switched seats around and Caroline was sitting somewhere else.
He slowly turned his head and glanced behind him. There was Caroline, all right, smiling the strangest smile he had ever seen, with all her teeth showing and her eyelids half closed. Wally jerked back around again, facing forward. Now, what kind of a smile was that ?
“Let's hear some other famous names and what you remember about them,” said Miss Applebaum.
“Alexander Graham Bell; the telephone,” said someone.
“Good, Bobby!” said the teacher.
“Orville and Wilbur Wright; the airplane,” said someone else.
The names came faster.
“Laura Ingalls Wilder; Little House on the Prairie.”
“Michael Jordan; basketball.”
“Babe Ruth; baseball.”
“Florence Nightingale; nursing.”
“Rosa Parks; desegregation.”
“Excellent!” said Miss Applebaum, looking pleased. “Caroline, did I see your hand?”
“Antony and Cleopatra,” said the voice behind Wally.
There was a pause. “Yes?” said the teacher.
“Love,” said Caroline.
And Wally wasn't sure why, but it felt as though a tray of ice cubes were sliding down his back.
Josh walked home with Beth again that afternoon, and he even stood at the end of the swinging bridge for five minutes talking to her.
Jake watched disgustedly from the porch, and when his twin brother came up the walk at last, Jake, Wally, and Peter followed him inside.
“What?” Josh asked, looking from one brother to the next as they stared at him accusingly.
“Why did you have to go and do that?” Jake barked.
“Do what ?” asked Josh, looking uncomfortable.
“Fall in love with Beth Malloy,” said Wally.
“Who said we're in love? We're just friends, that's all,” Josh argued.
“I'll bet!” said Wally. “You walk home with her every chance you get.”
“You talk to her all the time,” said Jake.
The phone rang and Wally answered. It was their mom, calling from the hardware store where she worked, wanting to make sure the boys had got home okay and that an ax murderer wasn't lurking there in the living room.
“Everyone's okay except Josh,” Wally told her. “He's in love.”
“Tell him to take two aspirin and talk to me in the morning,” Mrs. Hatford joked. And then, “There are a few pieces of pizza left in the fridge. You guys can have those, but don't eat anything else or you'll spoil your appetite for dinner.”
Wally hung up and turned again to face Josh, who had already found the pizza and was heating it in the microwave. “Mom said to take two aspirin.”
“What?” said Josh. “Why?”
“I don't know. That's what she said.”
Seven-year-old Peter was sitting at one end of the table, still wearing his coat, carefully unfolding a small piece of paper that seemed to have been folded a hundred times.
“What's that, Peter?” Jake asked.
Peter shrugged. “I don't know. Just something I found on the playground.” He went on unfolding it, and the piece of notebook paper grew larger and larger. The boys watched as they waited for the microwave to ding.
When the wrinkled paper was smoothed out in front of him, Peter studied it a moment, then read aloud, “ ‘Beth loves Josh.’ ”
Josh instantly colored.
“See? See? ” yelled Jake.
“That's not even her notebook paper. It's the wrong size,” Josh said quickly.
“You even know the size of her notebook paper?” Wally croaked.
“She's not my girlfriend!” Josh bellowed. “That paper's probably a joke. You guys don't know what you're talking about. I'm just hanging around Beth because… because…well, actually, I'm spying on them.”
Jake and Wally were surprised. Josh's face was still pink.
“I'm just trying to find out what the girls are up to,” Josh went on. “You should be thanking me, that's what.”
“Well, why didn't you tell us before?” asked Jake, looking doubtful.
“Yeah,” said Wally. “So what did you find out?” He was still worried. Those three little words, Beth loves Josh, were scary.
“Oh, nothing important yet, but if they're planning any kind of tricks on us, she'll tell me, you can bet.”
“Yeah, but how can you be sure Beth isn't in love with you ?” asked Jake.
“Don't be nuts,” said Josh.
Peter was still studying the wrinkled piece of paper. “What does X-X-X-X-X, O-O-O-O-O spell?” he asked.
Three
Love
Caroline lay in bed the next morning thinking about all the things she needed to experience to become a really great actress. Joy, anger, fear, and sorrow. Happiness and tragedy, she decided.
The problem was that her life had been mostly happy up to this point. The worst thing that had ever happened to her was being sick the night of the community play and not getting to say her lines, but she'd been so sick she could hardly remember it.
Anger? She'd been angry at the Hatford boys, but she enjoyed being angry, so that didn't much count.
Fear? Well, she'd been sort of afraid when the Hat-fords had locked her in the cellar of Oldakers’ Bookstore.
What she had not experienced was a great tragedy or a great love, and she wondered how to go about falling in love with Wally Hatford. More to the point, how to make Wally Hatford fall in love with her.
She would dress with care that morning be
cause, she decided, you can't expect someone to fall in love with you if you don't look your best. She put on black tights, a black skirt, and a red sweater with little black sheep all over it.
When she went down to breakfast, she asked, “Mother, how did you make Dad fall in love with you?”
Mrs. Malloy turned around from the stove, where she was making pancakes, and stared at her youngest daughter. “Sweetheart, you can't make anybody love you. It just has to come naturally.”
Coach Malloy looked up from his newspaper and took another sip of coffee. “It was witchcraft,” he said. “Seductive glances, a dulcet voice, shining hair, sparkling eyes…” He and Mrs. Malloy smiled at each other.
“Who are you trying to make fall in love with you?” Eddie asked, pouring the raspberry syrup. “If one more person in this family falls in love, we'll all go nuts. Beth's moping around is bad enough. Don't you start, Caroline.”
But Caroline rather liked the thought of it. She imagined a play on Broadway titled Caroline in Love. It would be romantic and funny at the same time, but it would end tragically. Caroline liked playing tragedy best of all. She was just about to ask her parents what great tragedy had ever happened to them when Coach Malloy suddenly gave a little whistle.
“What about this!” he said, staring at a newspaper story. “It says the abaguchie has been sighted again.”
“The what?” asked Caroline. And then she remembered the strange animal that had been glimpsed now and then around Buckman. Since no one knew what it was, someone had nicknamed it the abaguchie.
“The creature who stole the Thanksgiving turkey off the Hatfords’ back porch,” Eddie reminded her. “Where did they see it this time, Dad?”
“A man was out gathering firewood along the river last week, it says, and claims he saw just a glimpse of the animal from a distance,” Coach Malloy told them, scanning the page. “It was a tawny color, but certainly not a dog, he claims.”
“Something else to worry about!” said Mrs. Malloy.
Beth came into the kitchen just then and announced that she was reserving the kitchen the day before Valentine's Day because she was going to make a double-chocolate frosted heart for Josh.