The Girls Get Even

  “Well, if you don’t win first prize, you should get a prize for originality,” their father told them, as the boys practiced moving about the living room, two walking sideways, one walking backward, and Jake in front, leading the way. Naturally Jake. It was Wally’s idea, yet Jake was always the General. ‘

  When Mother came home from the hardware store at nine, the boys showed her their spaceship, and she said it was the best costume they’d ever made, absolutely.

  As she hung up her coat, however, Wally heard her say to his father, “Tom, are the Malloys raising chickens?”

  “Chickens? I’d think the coach would have enough to do without fooling with chickens. Why?”

  “Because the Malloy girls were in the hardware store the other day buying chicken wire, and I just wondered.”

  “What?” yelled Wally, and slipped out from under the giant inner tube.

  The other boys crawled out, too, and the inner tube landed with a loud whap on the floor.

  Mrs. Hatford turned around. “Wally, don’t yell. I simply asked if the Malloys were raising chickens.”

  Jake and Josh stared at her openmouthed.

  “What did I say?” Mrs. Hatford looked around her. “It’s not as though I announced the Second Coming¡ All I said was that the Malloy girls were in the store to—”

  “How much wire?” asked Jake.

  “Why, I don’t know … quite a lot, as I remember, but it isn’t our best grade at all. It was that bendable stuff that will sag if even a cat jumps on it.

  “Their costume,” cried Wally.

  “They aren’t going to be a tepee at all, I’ll bet!” said Josh. “Think, Mom¡ Did they buy anything else? Say anything? Do anything?”

  “What’s got into you boys? The youngest one stood there wrapping it around and around herself, while the older sisters were paying for it, but I figured she was just being a bit silly, and …”

  The boys huddled around the kitchen table.

  “What do you suppose it could be?” asked Josh.

  “Something awesome, I’ll bet,” said Wally.

  “There’s only one thing to do,” said Jake, when the others turned toward him. “Smash it.”

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Eleven

  •

  Izzie

  The “natural habitat” had simply not worked. Murphy’s Five and Dime didn’t carry the little birds and things the girls had wanted to tie to the branches. And when Caroline, Beth, and Eddie were all bound together to make the trunk, it was hard to walk. They finally decided on a lizard made out of chicken wire.

  “The principal has a terrarium in his office,” Eddie remembered, “with a lizard and stuff. I even know the name of the lizard—Izzie, he calls it. Why don’t we be a lizard and wear a collar that says IZZIE?”

  So they bought some chicken wire at the hardware store, fashioned it into a huge lizard in three sections, one for each of them, then spent the evening before the parade tacking green cloth over it, using buttons for eyes, and printing IZZIE on a collar to go around its huge neck.

  When Caroline awoke the next morning, she decided that life was more wonderful in Buckman than she had ever imagined. The day before, she had been a Goblin Queen, and today she was the hindquarters of a giant lizard. She made her parents laugh by waddling around in her part of the costume, sticking out one leg, then the other.

  Coach Malloy carefully tied the lizard forms to the roof of his car and drove them to school. As the girls carried them in on their heads, they saw the Hatford boys stop in their tracks and stare.

  “You guys still in the parade, or do you just want to give up now?” Eddie asked, as they arranged the sections in the proper order.

  “Why don’t you just promise to be our obedient slaves and get it over with?” said Beth.

  “Whatever you’ve thought of, I’ll bet it can’t top this,” said Caroline.

  And she saw Peter look up at Wally. “We can’t, can we?” he asked, and Caroline and her sisters smiled.

  Why didn’t the boys stop trying to drive them out of Buckman? Caroline wondered. That trick Wally had pulled on her during the play really backfired when he had to carry her out. Everyone had cheered for her. She was the Goblin Queen to end all Goblin Queens, and Wally had only created a scene that was even better.

  “The contest isn’t over yet,” said Jake.

  “It hasn’t even started,” Peter said.

  “Don’t count your chickens … uh, lizards … before they’re hatched,” said Wally.

  •

  It was hard to keep their minds on their studies that morning. Wally seemed nervous as a cat in a doghouse, Caroline thought, and it was strange to know that with a mother who worked in a hardware store, the Hatford boys couldn’t have thought up something original themselves.

  At noon the lunchroom was buzzing with chatter about the afternoon, and when the bell rang at one, all students who were going to enter the contest in groups were allowed to get ready.

  Caroline went to the rest room, her last chance before she became a lizard, then hurried out into the hallway. She stopped, for there, disappearing around a corner, was a huge giant inner tube, propelled by the Hatford brothers, all wearing strange alien helmets and carrying space guns. The boys even had green paper ears. It was a wonderful costume¡ They’d win for sure.

  No sooner had the aliens disappeared, however, than Eddie came racing down the hall, fire in her eyes.

  “Where are they?” Eddie was saying, Beth at her heels. “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “The Hatford goons, that’s who,” said Eddie. “Did you see what they did to Izzie?”

  Caroline ran down the hall and looked. Izzie the Lizard was flat as a slice of cheese.

  “Them?” cried Caroline.

  “Them!” said Beth.

  “Students who are entering the parade singly, please stay in your classrooms until your room is called,” came a voice over the loudspeaker. “Students who are part of a group costume, please line up in the hall.”

  “We’ll worry about the boys later,” said Beth. “Come on, Eddie, and help me bend this wire back into shape again. If we hurry we can fix up Izzie again before the parade starts.”

  “I’m going to fix them!” Eddie declared. “I don’t know when or where, but they’re not getting away with this. That’s fighting dirty. They’re so afraid we’ll win the contest they can’t stand it.”

  “We were ready to smash their pumpkins,” Beth reminded her, and nobody spoke for a while. With the three of them working, it didn’t take long to fix Izzie. Once they got their hands inside the chicken wire frame, they were able to shape the lizard the way it had been, and gradually the legs and head and body emerged, good as new.

  But Caroline felt a part coming on, as actresses sometimes do. The alien spaceship had become a loathsome dragon, and only she, the fair and lovely maiden, could destroy it. While everyone waited in the hall for the parade to begin, she slipped out of her section of the chicken wire costume and into her empty classroom.

  Opening her desk, she got out her new scissors, the best scissors she had ever had, scissors that had points as long and as sharp as an alligator’s tooth. And then, aware of nothing else but the role she was destined to play, she walked down the line of costumes in the hall—past the troop of clowns, past the flowers in a pot, the swarm of bees, the deck of cards, the acrobats, until she saw the alien spaceship up ahead.

  And then, the fair and lovely maiden faced the dragon, and, taking a deep breath, cast her eyes heavenward for courage. Holding the scissors in both hands over her head like a dagger, she ran forward and plunged the sharp points into the side of the giant inner tube, using all the strength she could muster.

  BANG¡

  It was an explosion. Somehow Caroline had thought that the air would slowly leak out. Somehow she had thought it might be more like a soft hiss.

  She fell backwar
d, as Jake, Josh, Wally, and Peter stared down at the strip of black rubber that lay around their feet.

  The next thing she knew, she was being led to the principal’s office, Beth on one side of her for support, Eddie on the other, while the four Hatford brothers, still in shock, brought up the rear.

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Twelve

  •

  Letters

  What happened was that neither the Hatfords nor the Malloys won the contest. Both groups were disqualified because the boys had smashed the lizard to begin with, and Caroline had destroyed the spaceship.

  Instead, five kids who were dressed up like instruments in a symphony orchestra won first place, and if they had been in on the bargain, both the Hatfords and Malloys would have been taking orders from a violin, a viola, a clarinet, a bassoon, and an oboe.

  The girls had seemed almost relieved at the verdict. At least they didn’t have to worry about being anyone’s slaves, Wally thought. And maybe in a way he and his brothers were glad it was over, too, because they didn’t want to be slaves, either, but they had had big plans for that inner tube on the river next summer. That’s what hurt.

  The boys stayed at school just long enough to drink some cider and eat some doughnuts at the Halloween party after the parade, but then they slipped away and headed home. It was the first Halloween they could remember that they had not been in the parade.

  “This is absolutely, totally, all-out war,” said Jake. “They ruined all the fun we could have had with that inner tube next summer, and for what? It didn’t take them long to put their costume back together. We smashed it, but we didn’t destroy it.”

  “We wanted to, though,” Wally reminded him, but Jake paid no attention whatsoever.

  “You know what I’d like to do to those girls? Trap them in the cemetery.”

  Wally looked quickly over at Jake as they slouched along the sidewalk toward home.

  ‘“Then what?” asked Wally.

  “I don’t know. That would probably be enough. They’d be scared out of their skin.”

  Would it never end? Wally wondered. When they were eighty-five-year-old men, would they still be trying to get even with three old women named Malloy? He could see it now: when Eddie, Beth, and Caroline each graduated from high school, the Hatford brothers would have to attend just so they could boo when a Malloy walked across the stage. When each of the Malloy girls married, the Hatford brothers would go just so they could tie junk on the backs of their cars. Wherever the Malloy girls went, the Hatfords would forever follow just to make them miserable.

  “Why don’t we just forget them!” Wally said. “Tomorrow night’s Halloween. Just forget them, and go trick-or-treating like we used to. If the Ben-sons were here, we’d be starting out about six o’clock, and we wouldn’t stop till close to ten. We were always the first ones out on the street and the last ones in. Man, we’d get so much loot, we’d have enough candy to last all year.”

  “No matter what we do, we’ll probably run into Beth or Caroline or Eddie,” Jake said disgustedly. “They’re everywhere!”

  “They’ll figure out some way to ruin Halloween for us,” said Josh. “I wish we could just lock them up on Halloween night and have the town to ourselves.”

  “Fat chance,” said Wally.

  There was a letter waiting for them when they got home. It was a letter to Wally from his friend Bill Benson:

  Dear Wally (and Josh and Jake and Peter):

  We were making plans for Halloween the other day and wondered what you guys are doing this year. Man, we used to have fun, didn’t we? Remember the time we soaped the windows of the prìncipal’s car? And the scavenger hunt in the cemetery? Remember the ghost-walk we had at our party when everyone was blindfolded and had to eat a spoonful of guts (spaghetti) and eyeballs (peeled grapes)?

  I don’t know whether we’ll be going out trick-or-treating or not, because there are at least two parties going on. Maybe we’ll go to both.

  Tony’s teacher (the “Georgia Peach” ) is going to come to school on Halloween dressed as a belly dancer. That’s what she said, anyway. If she does, all us guys are going to be sitting in the first row, I know that. She probably won ‘t, though.

  Mom really likes it down here. She’s got a part-time job in a bookstore, and I think she’d sort of like to stay. Dad doesn’t know yet whether he wants to stay or not. Same with us. We really miss you guys, but Georgia’s great too.

  Anything happening there since we left? The Malloys taking good care of our house? They better not mess up the walls in our bedrooms with girl stuff.

  Write when you can.

  Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug)

  Dear Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug):

  Tomorrow’s Halloween and you know how many parties we’ve been invited to? None. Zero. Today we were disqualified from the Halloween contest because we smashed the Malloys’ chicken-wire lizard and flattened it like a pancake. It didn’t make that much difference, because they got it back in shape by the time the parade began, but you know what Crazy Caroline did? Do you know how nuts she really is? Punctured our inner-tube spaceship with a pair of scissors. It exploded like a paper bag. Then they got disqualified. Jake’s up in his room trying to think of a way to get even. If you guys don’t come back pretty soon, we are going to spend all our time thinking up ways to get even, and they are going to think up ways to get even, and if this goes on for a whole year, we’ll go nuts.

  Don’t fall in love with your teacher, even if she does dress up like a belly dancer. Don’t fall in love with Georgia either. Tell your mom she can get a job in the bookstore here.

  I mean it, you guys¡

  Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter)

  “I’ve got it!”

  Jake came into Wally’s room, where he was just sealing his letter to Bill Benson. Josh and Peter followed him in, Peter still eating a peppermint patty he had found in his jeans pocket but had sat on, and it was as flat as a fifty-cent piece.

  “What?” Wally asked.

  “Something Bill said in his letter. About all the parties the guys were going to, and the scavenger hunt in the cemetery. Let’s invite the girls to a party.”

  “Are you nuts?” cried Wally.

  “No, let’s invite them to a party. Just not here.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Josh.

  “We’ll invite them to a party at some girl’s house, but they’ll have to go through the cemetery to get there.”

  Wally thought it over. “They’ll never go.”

  “Sure they will. They can’t resist.”

  “And then?” asked Josh.

  “We’ll think of something,” Jake told him.

  •

  The boys spent the evening on the invitation. Jake and Josh even went to the drugstore and bought a pack of party invitations, half price, just for the one they wanted to use. It had to look official.

  It was the kind girls would send, all right. There was a border all the way around of tiny pumpkins, and a perky little witch stirring a kettle of something. On the inside it said:

  Little witch has come to say,

  Ghosts and goblins like to play.

  Won’t you come and join the fun?

  There‘ll be treats for everyone.

  Time_______

  Place_______

  “Barf¡ Vomit!’’ said Jake, when he read it to Wally.

  Wally studied the invitation. “But what are you going to write at the bottom?’’

  “That’s what we have to figure out,” said Jake. “Who do the girls run around with besides each other?”

  “Caroline runs around with the girl who played the fairy godmother in the play,” said Wally.

  “Nope. Has to be in the same class as Eddie. If it’s any younger, Beth and Eddie won’t go. Think, Josh!” Jake said. “Who does Eddie hang around with?”

  “What about the girl who plays shortstop at re
cess?”

  “Mary Ruth?” said Jake.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where does she live?” asked Wally.

  Josh looked at Jake, and started to grin. ‘Over near the cemetery.’’

  “Perfect!” said Jake.

  The boys gathered around the dining-room table while Jake filled out the invitation with Mother’s pen.

  “What clues?” asked Peter.

  “We’ll have them posted all around the cemetery, right up to that bench by the stone wall in the Remembrance Garden,” Jake told them. “When they get that far, we’ll let them have it.”

  “Have what?” asked Peter.

  “Worms,” grinned Jake. “A bucket of worms. We’ll be watching from the top of the wall, and as soon as they sit down, we dump.”

  Wally stared. “Do you know how long it takes to dig up a whole bucket of worms?”

  “It will really be a bucket of spaghetti with a can of worms tossed in. There will be just enough worms wriggling about to make them think that it’s all worms. They’ll probably faint.”

  Peter sucked in his breath.

  They spent the entire evening in Wally’s room making a map of the cemetery and figuring out where to place the clues. Then, keeping the map for themselves, they put the invitation in its envelope and wrote, Eddie, Beth, and Caroline on the front. Just before going to bed Wally went across the swinging bridge beside Jake and Josh, and they silently dropped the envelope in the Malloys’ mailbox.

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Thirteen

  •

  Clue

  Girls,” Mother said on Saturday, coming through the door with the mail in her hand, “it looks as though you got a party invitation. It’s the right size, anyway.”

  Caroline, Beth, and Eddie were doing their Saturday chores. At the word party they all stopped their sweeping, dusting, and mopping and gathered around the small white envelope in Mother’s hand.

  “It didn’t have a stamp, so someone must have hand-delivered it,” Mother said, giving it to Eddie.