The Girls Get Even

  “Why, good morning, Wally!” came her father’s voice. “Or is it Jake or Josh or Peter? I’m never sure.”

  “I’m Wally,” came a second voice. “I just wanted to return Mrs. Malloy’s pie plate and tell her thank you very much. The pumpkin chiffon pie was delicious!”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her,” Father said. “Jean makes it every year. I like a big piece after a football game. Provided we win, of course.”

  Caroline carne down after she heard the door close.

  ‘‘Well, now maybe we’re all friends again,” Mother said to her. ‘One of the Hatford boys returned my pie plate and said the pie was delicious, so I guess they really enjoyed it. Let’s try and keep things this way, huh? Stay friends ?”

  “Why not?” said Caroline. At the moment Wally and his brothers were the last thing on her mind. It was the play that was important. Never mind that the fifth and sixth grades wouldn’t see it. The others would, along with all their teachers, and people would remember her, so that when they were looking for someone to play a starring role in fifth or sixth—

  “Good grief¡ Have some bread with your peanut butter!” Mother said, watching Caroline make her lunch. “You have enough peanut butter on that bread for three sandwiches, Caroline. Pay attention.”

  “Dost thou talk to thy queen in such a manner?” Caroline asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “I dost,” said Mother. “And don’t forget to pack some carrots and celery, m’lady.”

  •

  “Well, class, we’ve got one week to the Halloween play,” Miss Applebaum said, facing the fourth graders in her apple-red dress. “I still need three more boys, however, and if I don’t get any volunteers, I’m going to have to volunteer for you. Come on, now. It’ll be fun. Your audience is only little kids, after all. Don’t let it scare you. If you forget a line, so what? It’s not the end of the world.”

  Finally one hand went up, then another.

  ‘Okay, I’ve got everyone we need except a footman, and we need somebody strong. Wally Hatford, I choose you. Lunch-hour rehearsal. Don’t forget.”

  Wally Hatford¡ A footman¡ Right¡ thought Caroline.

  When she stood on the stage at lunchtime, Caroline remembered that the last time she was here, having sneaked in after lunch, Wally and some of the other fourth-grade boys had sneaked in, too, unknown to her, and were sitting in the dark in the back row, listening to her read a beautiful passage from The Wind in the Willows. But now she was supposed to be here, with the lights shining down on her, and Miss Applebaum smiling in the second row, and sometimes, when Miss Applebaum was showing someone else where to stand, or how to gesture when he talked, Caroline tipped back her head and studied all the ropes and pulleys and lights and switches and knew that this was where she belonged, that she was doing what she was born to do.

  There was only one line, at the very end of the play, where someone had a better part than Caroline. That was when the Fairy Godmother of All the Woods and Glades came to the Goblin Queen and said, “Isabelle, all these years your hair has been matted and your skin has been wrinkled and rough, and your toes and fingers crooked, because you have looked the way you have lived. But because of these fine deeds you have performed this Halloween, you have shown the village people that beneath your dirty hair and crooked smile, there is indeed a heart of gold.” Whereupon she touched the Goblin Queen with her magic wand, and flung off the ugly mask that Caroline would have been wearing, to reveal the true beauty beneath.

  For just that one moment Caroline would have liked to be the Fairy Godmother of All the Woods and Glades, but she couldn’t be both. And besides, right after that, her two footmen were supposed to help her sit down, and say, “Your throne, m’lady.” And when she said, “Call the other goblins, that we may celebrate a Halloween of Good Deeds, “ Wally would say, “I hear, my Queen, and obey.”

  When Wally came to those lines, however, his face turned red and he looked as though he had a mouth full of rocks. He looked as though he would rather choke than say them.

  “Who are you talking to, Wally, the floor? “ Miss Applebaum called from her seat in the second row. “Speak up—look at Caroline when you talk. Don’t mumble.”

  “I can’t remember the lines, I’m not any good at this,” Wally told her.

  “Pish-posh!” said their teacher. “You only have two lines to say in the whole play, Wally. Come on, now. I know you can do it. Besides, if you forget a line, just make one up. Actors and actresses have to do that all the time.”

  “I hear, my Queen, and obey,” Wally said finally, and started off the stage to call the other goblins.

  Does life ever get better than this? Caroline wondered happily.

  •

  Fall was perhaps the favorite season in the Malloy family. Father was happiest when football had really begun; Mother liked it when the long, hot days of summer were over at last; Eddie liked any season that was warm enough for her to stand outside and bounce a ball off the side of the garage; and Beth liked autumn especially because all the books that had been taken from the library for summer reading had been returned, and she had a much better selection to choose from, especially her favorite books, such as The Spider’s Sting, Mark of the Mummy, and Scorpion People. But the seasons of the year meant absolutely nothing to Caroline as long as she was onstage.

  She and Beth and Eddie had just come back from the homecoming parade on Saturday and were raking leaves when Mr. Hatford came up the sidewalk with their mail.

  ‘‘Hello, girls/’ he said. “Your dad must have been mighty pleased the way his team beat Wheeling last night. Nice to have a winning team for a change.” He grinned as he walked up the steps. “So how are you all doing?”

  “Fine,” they answered together.

  Caroline took a chance: “How are the guys coming with their Halloween costumes?”

  Mr. Hatford scratched his head. “Come to think of it, I haven’t heard a word out of them the past few days. All I get from Wally is griping about some danged play.”

  Caroline grinned, but Eddie put down her rake: “Aren’t they even going to be in the parade?”

  “I imagine so. Just don’t hear them talk much about it, that’s all.”

  Not much help from him, Caroline thought after he had gone. Was it possible the boys had just given up?

  Leaves fell down around them, and Caroline stretched her arms toward the sky and said, “Life’s wonderful¡ The Goblin Queen is in her glory¡ I never want to go back to Ohio again. I want to stay right here and become known in Buckman, and someday, in the concrete outside the school, they will put a marker for me with my name on it, saying, CAROLINE LENORE MALLOY FIRST APPEARED ONSTAGE IN THIS SCHOOL.” Her sisters groaned.

  The screen door slammed and Mother came down the steps: “Girls, look at this and tell me what you think. I just got a note from Mrs. Hatford, and this is what she said:

  ‘Dear Mrs. Malloy:

  If you hadn’t said you made that pie yourself, I would have sworn it came from Ethel’s Bakery. Thank you so much. It was delicious.

  Ellen Hatford’

  Is that an insult or a compliment? I can’t even tell.”

  “She thinks you bought the pie?” asked Eddie.

  “It certainly sounds that way to me.”

  “So isn’t that a compliment?” asked Caroline.

  “Not to me it’s not. Not when it was Great-Aunt Minna’s recipe. Maybe she’s just trying to take me down a peg—my bragging on about that recipe as I did. Oh, dear heaven¡ People were so much easier to get along with back in Ohio!”

  After Mother went back in the house, Beth whispered, “What do you think happened to the pie? You don’t think they threw it in the river, do you?

  “Well, something happened to it, or they wouldn’t have bought a store pie and tried to pass it off as homemade. I’m sure that’s exactly what happened too,” Eddie said.

  “Maybe it was just so good that once they took a taste, they kept eating an
d couldn’t stop,” Caroline suggested.

  “I doubt it,” said Eddie.

  •

  At school on Monday, Caroline leaned forward and whispered, “Wally. Mom wants her pie back.”

  Miss Applebaum was over in one corner helping a group with a geography assignment.

  Wally turned around. “What?”

  “She says that since you didn’t give it to your mother, she wants it back.”

  Wally stared.

  “Well?” said Caroline.

  “Well, nothing¡ We ate it!”

  “Your mother didn’t,”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Goblin Queen knows all.”

  “Drop dead,” said Wally.

  “If we win the costume contest, you’ll have to say, I hear, my Queen, and obey/ for a whole month. Did you ever think of that?”

  “And if we win … ?”

  Miss Applebaum turned around. “I hear people talking. Is that you, Caroline? Caroline and Wally? Suppose you share it with the class.”

  “Just practicing our lines, Miss Applebaum,” Caroline said sweetly.

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Ten

  •

  The Grand Finale

  The buffalo costumes were not working out. Even Josh, the artist in the family, could not make brown grocery sacks look like the shaggy heads of buffalo, no matter how much stuff he glued on them. Every time he changed them still again and showed them to Mother, she’d say, “Is that a goat? No, wait. I’ve got it—a sheepdog.”

  “Why don’t we just forget the girls and do something we think will win?” said Wally.

  But Jake had other ideas. “What we need is a costume the teachers will like and the principal will love, that can still destroy anything in its path. Then no matter what the Malloys come up with, we can devour it.”

  “Think, Wally!” said Josh. “Think of something that can sort of suck up everything in its path.”

  “A vacuum cleaner,” said Wally.

  “Naw. What else?”

  “A tidal wave.”

  “Yeah, what else?”

  “A tornado.”

  “Keep thinking.”

  “An amoeba,” said Wally.

  “C’mon, Wally, think!”

  Wally closed his eyes tight and thought so hard, his eyebrows hurt. “An alien spaceship,” he said at last.

  “That’s it!” cried Jake. “We’ll be aliens!”

  “They can do anything!” said Josh. “We could get one of those huge truck inner tubes, and all of us could stand inside the middle, holding it up around our waists, and we’d knock over everything we bumped into¡ I’ll design our helmets….” He reached for his sketch pad and began. All you had to do was give Josh an idea, and he was already drawing a picture of it in his head.

  “Wow,” said Peter softly, as he watched the alien spaceship appearing right at the end of Josh’s pencil.

  When they asked their dad if he could get a giant inner tube for them, Mr. Hatford answered, “Why, I think that could be arranged.”

  At last everything seemed to be working out. The Halloween parade was only four days off, but meanwhile Wally had another worry. The play. The Goblin Queen. Caroline Malloy, in particular.

  The trouble with Caroline was that she never stopped being queen. If she was eating lunch, she set her empty milk carton on top of her head like a crown and kept it there. If she had to go to the blackboard to explain a problem, she always picked up Miss Applebaum’s pointer and used it like a scepter, anointing a knight. And she would slowly, regally, make her way up and down staircases, back straight, head high, looking neither to the right nor left.

  To Wally there was nothing worse than being in a play with Caroline Malloy. Never mind that he would be doing something special for the younger students. He did not want to make primary children happy. The primary children were happy enough as it was. Wally wanted his recesses back. He wanted his lunch hour back. He did not want to spend them standing around a drafty stage waiting for Caroline Malloy to decide that playing good tricks at Halloween was better than playing bad ones. Whoever wrote that play was an idiot. It took thirty minutes for the Goblin Queen to get the point and the Fairy Godmother to make her beautiful, just so Wally could say, “Your throne, m’lady,” and then, “I hear, my Queen, and obey.”

  Each day of practice got longer and longer because Caroline kept ad-libbing her part. If her line was “What do you suppose, dear sisters, the villagers would do if we were to wash their windows for a change?” Caroline would say, “What do you suppose, my dear, dear goblin sisters, the villagers would do if, instead of causing them trouble and hardship, we did something kind instead, such as washing their windows ?”

  Wally would stand on one foot and then the other, and finally even Miss Applebaum grew tired: “Caroline, if we don’t hurry this play along, our primary students will all be asleep before we’re done.”

  And finally Caroline would say, “We must spread the word throughout the Goblin Kingdom, that there will be the kind of tricks on Halloween night that will make it a night to remember and fill all hearts with joy.” Then and only then could Wally escort her to her chair and say, “Your throne, m’lady.”

  •

  When Thursday came, Wally wasn’t sure whether he wanted to get up or not. It was the day of the play, which was a good reason to stay in bed. On the other hand, once it was over, he’d never have to do that part again, which was the only reason he could think of to get up at all.

  He turned over on his back and noticed a narrow shaft of sunlight coming through his window, illuminating the dust particles in the beam. It was as though the beam were full of dust and the rest of the room was clear. If air was always so dusty, he wondered, did you inhale a big wad of dust every time you breathed? Were your lungs like a dust mop? Was that why people sneezed, to shake out their lungs? Was that—?

  “Wally, are you up?” Mother called from below. “If you want pancakes, you’d better come now.”

  Wally, the footman, got out of bed, pulled on his jeans and socks, and gave a big sigh.

  At school the primary students filed into the auditorium about ten o’clock, and the students from Miss Applebaum’s class who were in the play gathered behind the velvet curtain onstage.

  “I can’t believe this is really happening,” Caroline said to Wally, both of them wearing their goblin cloaks and hoods. “I’m a real actress at last. Do you know where you’ll see my name someday?”

  “On a tombstone?” said Wally.

  Caroline flashed him a disgusted look. “In lights¡ On Broadway¡ Someday you and your brothers will go to the movies and see me up there on the screen.”

  “If we see you on the screen, we’ll ask for our money back,” Wally told her.

  Beyond the velvet curtain the audience had grown quiet, and Wally could hear Miss Applebaum telling them about the play. And then the music started, the lights went out, there was the sound of the curtain being pulled apart, and Caroline was walking onstage followed by five other goblins.

  “Halloween again!” Caroline was saying. “I wish we could do something different this year, don’t you? I’m getting tired of the same old thing.” And the play began.

  If it wasn’t for Caroline, Wally might have enjoyed the play—a little bit, anyway. It was sort of fun peeping out from behind the curtain to see the younger children watching, Peter with his eyes wide and his mouth open. To hear them laugh at all the funny lines, and giggle when one of the witches tripped over her broomstick on purpose and went sprawling.

  He and another boy had to pull the curtain between the first and second acts, too, and that was fun. It was also fun to watch the custodian sitting on a stool offstage, making the lights get brighter or more dim.

  But Caroline, as usual, had to ruin it all. She added lines that weren’t there. She added words to the lines that were. Even Miss Applebaum in the first row was trying to ge
t Caroline’s attention to hurry her along. Finally, when it came time for Wally to say his line, he felt he could not stand it any longer.

  “Your throne, m’lady,” he said, escorting her to the chair, and then, just as Caroline sat down, he pulled it backward and Caroline sat down on the floor with a plop.

  The primary children shrieked with laughter, and even Miss Applebaum, who looked horrified at first, seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh.

  Wally had thought that would be the end of it. He had thought that Caroline would be so embarrassed that she would want the play to be over quickly.

  But Caroline was not hurrying her lines. She was not even getting up. The children stopped laughing. Miss Applebaum leaned forward, looking concerned.

  And then, from the floor where she lay with her arms outstretched, Caroline said grandly, “Where are my good and faithful footmen? I am more exhausted than I knew. Please bear me thither, that I might lie among the flowers of the field, surrounded by my people.” And she folded her arms across her chest.

  Wally stared at Caroline and then at the other footman. They looked at Miss Applebaum, who was nodding to them.

  There was nothing else to be done. “I hear, my Queen, and obey,” Wally said.

  He picked Caroline up by the arms. The other footman picked her up by the feet. And as they carried her offstage, Caroline turned toward the audience and blew them a kiss. Everyone clapped. It made Wally sick to his stomach.

  •

  That evening the boys tried out their spaceship costume. Mr. Hatford had gone to a truck stop near Elkins and bought a bigger inner tube than the boys even knew existed. All four of them could easily fit in the center hole, one hand holding the inner tube up, the other carrying the space guns that Josh had designed out of aluminum foil. Each of them was facing a different direction, and with the strange helmets Josh had designed, also of foil, they looked like men from another planet. Josh had even made green paper ears that fit over their own.