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OTHER YEARLING BOOKS
BY PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR
YOU WILL ENJOY
THE BOYS START THE WAR
BOYS AGAINST GIRLS
THE GIRLS’ REVENGE
A TRAITOR AMONG THE BOYS
A SPY AMONG THE GIRLS
THE BOYS RETURN
THE GIRLS TAKE OVER
BOYS IN CONTROL
GIRLS RULE!
BOYS ROCK!
Contents
• • • • •
One: Making Plans
Two: Smuggler’s Cove
Three: The Bargain
Four: Spy
Five: A little Chat with Peter
Six: Birds of Prey
Seven: Change of Plans
Eight: Pumpkin Chiffon
Nine: Thank-you Note
Ten: The Grand finale
Eleven: Izzie
Twelve: letters
Thirteen: Clues
Fourteen: Party
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
One
•
Making Plans
“Wait till Halloween!”
That was the battle cry these days, except that neither Caroline nor her sisters were sure exactly how Halloween would change things. No matter what they thought of to get even, there were always tricks the boys might play on them that would be far worse.
Caroline could not get it out of her mind. Her fingers were still sore from peeling all those apples for Mrs. Hatford, because Mrs. Hatford thought that’s what Caroline had come over to do. And if Caroline had told her that the boys had locked her in their shed, she would have had to explain why she’d been over there spying on them in the first place.
And if she’d said she’d been trying to catch Wally Hatford doing something embarrassing so she could humiliate him the way he had humiliated her, she would have had to explain what had happened before that, and then before that, all the way back to when the Malloys had moved to Buckman in August and the Hatford boys had tried to drive them out. It was just too complicated, and neither her parents nor the boys’ parents would stand for such nonsense one moment if they knew.
What their parents didn’t understand was that Caroline and her sisters could no more go without getting even than they could go without breathing. In fact, half the fun of getting even was to see what the boys would think up next, just so Caroline, Beth, and Eddie could “get even” all over again. They’d never had so much excitement back in Ohio.
“You know,” Mother said at breakfast that Saturday, “I’m beginning to love living in a big old house like this. If we move back to Ohio, Ralph, I think we should build an addition onto that house.”
“We’ll see,” Coach Malloy murmured, munching his toast over NFL ratings in the paper.
Caroline exchanged helpless looks with her two older sisters. If we move back to Ohio … ? There was still the possibility that Dad would go back to his old coaching job there? As much as Caroline had hated the thought of moving to West Virginia in the first place, she now desperately wished to stay.
Where else would they find a group of ready-made rivals just their ages? Where else would they live on a road called Island Avenue? The large piece of land in the middle of Buckman was not really an island, because it was surrounded on only three sides by water, but people called their road “Island Avenue” anyway. If you were coming into town on Island Avenue, you kept going until you were out on the very tip, and then you crossed the bridge over into the business district. You might not even have noticed that the river on your right was the same river that was on your left; it simply looped about at the end of the island.
This little college town had everything that their home back in Ohio did not—even a swinging footbridge across the river connecting them to the college campus and the street that led to the school. Caroline, who was only eight but was in fourth grade because she was precocious, dreamed of being an actress someday. And when she saw the river, the footbridge, the large old house they would live in, and the old school with a real stage and velvet curtain, she knew that this was the place she would make her debut.
•
Caroline was standing in front of the mirror in her room, her long thick ponytail tucked up under one of her mother’s hats—the navy-blue hat with a veil that Mother reserved for funerals. She was pretending to be the wife of a captain who had been drowned at sea. She was practicing going from sad to grief-stricken to hysterical when she heard Eddie, the oldest, clattering up the stairs.
Caroline stopped being grief-stricken and ran to the door of her room.
‘‘News!” Eddie yelped, taking off the baseball cap she wore always and tossing it into the air. “Have I got news!”
Beth stepped out of the bathroom, toothbrush still in her mouth. A year younger than Eddie, ten-year-old Beth had the most beautiful teeth in the Malloy family because she brushed them longer than anyone else. And the reason she brushed them longer was because she always read while she brushed and got so absorbed in her book that she just stood there, going over and over the same teeth for three, four, or even five minutes at a time, her mind on The Zombie’s Revenge or something.
“Caroline, take off that stupid hat/’ Eddie said. “We’re going camping.”
The hat came off with a yank. “What?”
“I was in the hardware store buying a wrench for my bike when I heard Mrs. Hatford tell a customer that her boys were going camping tonight at Smuggler’s Cove”
“Ohhhh!” The very name was delicious. Smuggler’s Cove. Caroline could almost see people moving about in the moonlight, silent figures carrying sacks off boats and hiding them in caves. The wonderful thing about being an actress, or even wanting to be an actress, is that she saw everything as a story, and herself in the starring role.
“But we weren’t invited!” said Beth, the toothpaste still foamy around her mouth.
“Of course we weren’t invited. That’s why we’re going.” Eddie (who was really Edith Ann, but hated her name) picked up her cap from the floor and placed it on her head again, backwards.
“It’s a wonderful idea!” cried Caroline. “It’s been warm all day. A perfect day for camping!”
“We don’t even know where Smuggler’s Cove is,” Beth protested.
“We’re going to follow the boys,” Eddie said, “only they don’t know it. We’ve got to stay just far enough behind them that they don’t see us.”
“Then what?” Caroline asked excitedly, her dark eyes shining.
Eddie leaned forward, one arm around Caroline’s shoulders, the other around Beth’s. “Then,” she said, “we steal out in the night and take their clothes.”
Both Caroline and Beth shrieked delightedly. Beth was fair-haired and pale-skinned and tended to list to one side in a strong wind. There was no wind here in the upstairs hallway of the house the Malloys were renting, but excitement did the same thing to Beth, and it was only because Eddie had an arm around her that she didn’t collapse on the spot.
“They’ll have to come back home in their PJs!” Beth cried happily.
“What if they don’t wear pajamas?” Caroline asked.
“Then they’ll have to
come home in their underwear,” said Eddie.
“What if they don’t sleep in their underwear?” Caroline asked mischievously.
“Then they’ll have to walk home stark naked!” said Eddie, and the girls whooped.
•
“We’re going camping,” Eddie said as the three girls surrounded their mother in the kitchen. “Could we pack our dinner—something to eat cold without cooking?”
Mrs. Malloy looked up from the coupons she was sorting on the table. “Overnight? Where are you going?”
“Smuggler’s Cove,” Caroline said.
“What?”
“It’s a favorite camping spot,” Father called from the next room. “I’ve heard students talk about it on campus.”
“Well, I don’t know….” said Mother. “I’m not sure—”
“Oh, Jean, don’t baby them,” Coach Malloy said. “I think it’s fine that they want to go camping. Get out in the fresh air and sunshine. Let them go.
Mother sighed. “We don’t even have a tent.”
“We don’t need one¡ We’ll sleep under the stars,” Eddie told her. “It’s gorgeous out.”
So while Mother planned their dinner, the girls ran upstairs for their sleeping bags.
“I heard Mrs. Hatford telling this woman in the hardware store that the boys were going as soon as Jake and Josh finish their paper route this afternoon,” Eddie said. “What we’ve got to do is sit up here with the binoculars. As soon as they start out, we’ll follow, just far enough behind that we don’t lose them.”
Caroline could already see herself as the scout, the spy, Agent XOX, crawling over the desert sand on her stomach, braving the dangers of the night as she slipped one hand under the tent flap and made off with the boys’ clothes.
She should really be wearing a cape, she decided—a long black cape with a hood that partially covered her face. But there weren’t any capes in the Malloy household, so she settled for a large orange poncho that her father wore for college football games when it rained.
She put it on and it dragged the floor. She held it close beneath her chin and watched herself sideways in the mirror as she moved silently around the room.
“Caroline, cut the comedy!” Eddie scolded from the doorway. “The boys could be leaving any minute, and we’ve got to be ready.”
Caroline took off the poncho as Eddie turned on Beth next: “Why are you taking two books? There’s not going to be any time to read.”
“Just in case,” Beth told her. “What do you care, Eddie? I’m the one who’s carrying them.”
Eddie rolled her eyes and went downstairs to get their dinner.
When Caroline was packed, a sweater, poncho, and pajamas inside her bedroll, she crouched down at her window with Father’s binoculars and watched the house across the river with its little balcony on top—a “widow’s walk,” it was called—supposedly for the wives of sea captains so each could watch for her husband’s ship on the horizon. There wasn’t any sea near West Virginia, of course—just the shiny horseshoe of a river curving around the end of Island Avenue.
Caroline could make out the two younger boys, Wally and Peter, sitting on the steps, their camping gear behind them, waiting for Jake and Josh to get home. Wally was nine and in the same grade as Caroline. Peter was only seven, and if he hadn’t been a Hatford, Caroline thought, she might have liked him because he was sweet and innocent, going along with whatever his brothers thought up because he didn’t know any better.
It was Jake and Josh, the eleven-year-old twins, she suspected, who had made the plans about driving the Malloys from Buckman. Jake, especially, who seemed to be the ringleader. But in some ways Josh was worse, because he kept a sketchpad of drawings that made his brothers laugh, and Caroline knew that most of those drawings were cartoons of her and her sisters. When she saw the twins returning with their canvas carriers slung over their shoulders, she gave the signal to Beth, who gave the signal to Eddie, and in minutes the girls were crossing the swinging bridge single file.
They cut through the yard between the Hatfords’ place and a neighbor’s, careful to stay behind bushes all the way.
Finally they heard the back door slam, and the four Hatford boys came down the steps, went out the gate at the back of their property, and headed for the woods on the edge of town. Somewhere, in those woods or beyond, was Smuggler’s Cove.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Two
•
Smuggler’s Cove
It seemed to Wally, sitting on the steps beside Peter, that what he was looking at right now was life. He was studying an anthill built over a crack in the sidewalk. The way the ants were struggling and pushing, each trying to get to the top of the anthill first, reminded him of the way the Hatfords and Malloys had been quarreling since August. As though their quarrel was the most important thing in the world.
“You know what?” he said to Peter. “The ants don’t even know we’re here. Look.” He put his sneakered foot in the path of a large ant hurrying toward the anthill, and it just scurried on around the toé. Didn’t even look up to see what giant was blocking its path. Didn’t even know that the toe was attached to a foot, and the foot to a leg, and the leg to a body.
‘‘Maybe it’s nice to be an ant,” he added. ‘‘Someone could come along any minute and smash the anthill and they don’t even know it. They don’t even worry, because it never even crosses their minds.”
Peter got up and brought his foot down on the anthill.
Wally stared. “Why did you do that?”
“You said!”
“I didn’t tell you to step on it¡ You’ve killed them!”
Peter looked around. “There’s more,” he said defensively, and sat back down.
Wally sighed. He couldn’t help looking up at the sky just then, in case there was the slightest chance of a monstrous foot hanging over him and Peter. He wished that Jake and Josh would hurry and get home from their paper route. On a warm October Saturday like this the battle with the Malloy girls seemed about as important as which ant got to the anthill first. And he, for one, was going to enjoy camping with his brothers—just four guys out in the woods by themselves.
As much as he tried to forget them, however, his mind ran through the inventory of grievances against the girls: the way they had climbed onto the Hatfords’ roof one night when Mom and Dad were away and howled through the trapdoor; the way they had spied on the boys from the shed, tricked them into washing the Malloys’ windows, and thrown Mom’s chocolate chiffon cake in the river.
Wally was smiling in spite of himself. Watching Caroline’s face after she’d realized it was a cake was the most fun of all. Then he blinked. Fun? Did he think fun? Was it possible that despite all his grumbling, he liked having the girls around?
“What are you grinning about?” asked Peter.
“I was thinking of chocolate cake,” Wally told him.
•
“Ham sandwiches, potato salad, Oreo cookies, and apples,” said Mother, handing a large bag to Josh as the boys strapped on their gear in the kitchen. “Plus orange drink and doughnuts for breakfast.”
“I’ll carry the doughnuts,” Peter volunteered.
“No, you won’t,” Jake told him. “The last time you carried the food, you ate all around the edge of two doughnuts. Who’s got the water?”
“I have,” said Wally.
“Tent?”
“Check,” said Josh.
“Flashlight?”
“Check,” said Wally.
“I’ve got the corn chips!” Peter told them.
They were off. Not only did they not have to brush after eating, Wally thought as he went out the back gate with his brothers and headed down the alley, but they could stay up as late as they wanted, and miss Sunday school tomorrow as well.
The bedroll was snug and warm against his back, the leaves thick on the ground, and Wally decided he had never seen such a beautiful October as
this one. He could hear the marching band on the college campus, practicing for the homecoming parade the following weekend. Overhead a hawk soared lazily, its wings not even moving. This was a time for eating your supper on a log, lying on your back under the stars, and dreaming about what you were going to be on Halloween.
His left sneaker was sliding up and down on his heel, and Wally looked down to see his shoelace flopping about. He stopped and bent over to tie it, and then his eyes grew large. Staring backwards between his legs he saw, or thought he saw, three figures with packs on their backs who looked all too familiar.
As he stared, however, the three figures seemed to disappear into the trees on either side. Wally stood up and took a deep breath. And then, without even turning around, he caught up with Jake and Josh and Peter.
‘‘Don’t anybody look now—don’t stop or turn or anything—but we’re being followed/’ he said.
Peter’s eyes were like two fried eggs, and his back got as stiff as a broom. “Who is it?”
“Who’s the worst you can think of?” Wally said in answer.
“A gorilla?” Peter gulped.
“A motorcycle gang,” said Josh. “With chains wrapped around their fists.”
But Jake’s face registered horror. “Them?” he whispered.
“Them,” said Wally. “But don’t look. They don’t know that we know.”
“Who?” Peter demanded.
“Peter, don’t you turn around one second. Don’t even glance back there, or you’re dead meat. Understand?” Jake warned him.
“Who is it?” Peter cried. “Robbers?”
“A whomper, a weirdo, and a crazie,” Wally answered, reciting the nicknames they’d given Eddie, Beth, and Caroline—Eddie, for the way she could hit a ball; Beth, for the kind of books she read; and Caroline, for turning everything that ever happened to her into a movie.
“Oh, them!” said Peter, obviously relieved. “Are they coming with us?”
“No, they’re not coming with us!” croaked Jake.
The boys tramped on, not daring to look around. “Well, I don’t know, Jake. I think they’re coming whether we want them to or not,” Wally said. “They have packs on their backs.”