Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym)

  But I’d survived. And it had been a lot less awful than playing volleyball with a bunch of boys.

  I was onto a good thing, and I knew it.

  All it would take was nerve. Lots of nerve.

  Did I have enough nerve? I wasn’t sure. When Monday gym class rolled around, I still wasn’t sure. I changed into my gym outfit and wandered onto the court, still debating whether I should just try to play the dumb game or if I should get myself benched.

  The answer came to me in the form of Robbie Mara.

  “Hey, Mallory, how’s your face?” he asked as I tied on my pinny.

  “It’s all right.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore?”

  “No.”

  A big, goofy grin swept across his face. “That’s strange,” he said. “Because your face is killing me!”

  Two guys nearby laughed and looked at me for my reaction. “That’s very humorous, Robbie,” I said dryly. “I think I first heard that joke in kindergarten.”

  He hadn’t made me mad, just kind of disgusted. He was a moron. This game was for morons. And I wasn’t going to play it. I simply turned and walked toward the bleachers, untying my pinny on the way.

  “Pike!” Ms. Walden barked, following me across the gym. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m benching myself,” I told her.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Get back onto that court.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Walden,” I told her firmly. “I’m not playing.”

  Ms. Walden’s eyes narrowed, but her cheeks only colored to that pink level of anger. “If you’re not back on that court by the time Mr. De Young blows the whistle, you can count on detention.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  With that, Ms. Walden returned to the game. For a moment I almost caved in and ran onto the court. But the moment passed. Mr. De Young blew his whistle and still I sat on the bleacher.

  Detention.

  I’d never had it before. Naturally, I was old enough to know it wasn’t the end of the world. Some kids spent half their lives in detention. They didn’t seem to care after awhile.

  Still, it was a blemish on my perfect no-detention record. In my usual, over-imaginative way, I wondered if this was the beginning of my slide into a life of crime. I could see the movie of my life story opening with me sitting in detention. The next scene was me sitting in a police station. Really, though, once you stopped caring about getting into trouble, where did you draw the line?

  I’d have to worry about that later. Right now, this was working out very well for me. No volleyball was the best reward anyone could give me.

  It turned out that detention wasn’t bad, either. I did my homework while I was there. Being “bad” was a breeze.

  “Your parents will be receiving written notification of your detention,” said Mr. Zizmore, the detention monitor, just as we were about to leave.

  Written notification! Maybe detention wasn’t a total breeze.

  Suddenly I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My parents would be shocked. And upset. I wouldn’t be able to bear their worried, concerned faces. I didn’t want to hear their lecture, either. Especially since I couldn’t promise it would never happen again. I fully intended to avoid volleyball until the end of the unit. When something works, you stay with it.

  As I stepped out of the detention classroom, I was deep in thought, worrying about this. That’s why I almost ran right into Ben.

  “Hi. What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Waiting for you,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d be feeling bad. You know, like you might want to talk to someone or … you know. I heard what happened from a guy in my math class.”

  “It’s big news, huh,” I said sourly.

  “Not really. It’s just that he knows you and I are friends, so he mentioned it. Are you okay?”

  “I guess so,” I said as we walked down the hall. “But it has been a pretty rotten day. Now I have to worry about my parents finding out. The school is sending them a letter.”

  “Will they be angry?” he asked.

  “A little, but mostly they’ll be concerned. That’s almost worse.”

  “I know what you mean,” he agreed. “They’ll look all crushed and sad. It’s much worse. What started this, anyway?”

  I filled him in on how much I hated volleyball and how Ms. Walden was picking on me. I left out the part about how annoying the boys are. I didn’t feel right saying that to him since he is a boy.

  Talking to Ben is so easy. He listens and always tries to understand. He even told me he isn’t crazy about volleyball himself. “And playing with the girls is weird,” he said. “I’m always afraid I’m going to step on them or something.”

  “That doesn’t bother some boys,” I said bitterly.

  “Yeah, well, now that you’ve told me what happened to you, I’m going to play differently in gym class. I know girls aren’t delicate little flowers or anything like that. But most of them don’t play sports the same way boys do. They have a different style. It’s just as good, but different.”

  Ben is so great.

  It’s hard to believe he’s a boy.

  We walked to my door and then stood around talking for a while longer, until I suddenly realized what time it was. Detention had thrown me off schedule. I’d forgotten I was arriving home an hour later than usual. “Gosh!” I said. “I have to get ready for my Baby-sitters Club meeting. Thanks for waiting for me.”

  “No problem.”

  “Ben,” I said, “even though I’m glad you waited, you don’t have to wait each time it happens.”

  A look of confusion swept over Ben’s face. “It’s going to happen again?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said, sighing. “I’m not playing volleyball. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Don’t you think it would be simpler to play? I mean, just sort of grin and bear it. It won’t last forever.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” said Ben.

  “Maybe. But I’m still not playing volleyball.”

  Ben smiled sadly. “Then I’ll wait for you to get out of detention every day until volleyball is over.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s okay,” he said as he walked across the lawn. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you,” I said with a wave.

  Turning to go into the house, I thought of something. The mail. I wondered if anyone had picked it up yet.

  Before this, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the mail. But now I had a reason to. It occurred to me that if that notice from the school had been in the mailbox right now — as it would be in a few days — I could simply take it out of the mailbox and stuff it into my pocket.

  Then a pang of guilt hit me. I envisioned my face on a Most Wanted Poster in the post office. Mallory Pike: Wanted for Mail Fraud.

  I pushed the thought aside. I wasn’t going to descend into a life of crime. As Ben had said, it was only for a short while. This just had to be done.

  From now on, I would be checking the mail daily.

  Logan was right. The kids seemed to have turned into monsters. But he missed one detail that I noticed right away. All the kids who were being difficult were boys! (Logan probably missed this since he, himself, is a boy.)

  Nine-year-old Kerry, Logan’s sister, was as sweet as always. She hadn’t changed. But five-year-old Hunter was like a wild child when Logan sat for him on Tuesday evening. First he threw his eight million Legos all over the living room floor and refused to pick them up. (Kerry picked them up for him.) Later, Hunter demanded that Logan make him a hamburger for supper, even though Mrs. Bruno had left a tuna casserole for Logan to heat up. Logan was nice enough to make the hamburger, but when it was ready, Hunter said it was salty and refused to eat it. (Kerry ate it for him and said it was delicious.)

  While Kerry was angelically doing her homework in her room, Hunter was throwing a
fit because he didn’t want to brush his teeth before going to bed. Logan relented and said he didn’t have to brush, but just getting Hunter into bed was a major accomplishment. He got up five times, wanting everything from water to a different Teddy bear to sleep with, before he finally nodded off.

  Logan was exhausted by the time his parents returned home.

  He told us all this when he came by for a Wednesday BSC meeting. He and Mary Anne had been studying together again that afternoon. I guess as long as he was around, he figured he might as well come to the meeting.

  To tell the truth, I wasn’t particularly happy to see him. I was still down on boys. And, nice as he is, Logan is a boy. The meetings are different when he’s there, too. Everyone is quieter. We hardly ever giggle. It’s as if we’re trying to act more mature just because Logan is there.

  Also, I must admit that I was in a crabby mood that day anyway. Since it was Wednesday, I had once again had gym. And I had benched myself again. And I had gotten detention again. All through detention I was looking forward to the BSC meeting as the only bright spot in my dismal day, and I didn’t want a boy — not even Logan — interfering with that.

  Anyway, like it or not, Logan was there and he told us about how tough Hunter had been to take care of. Everyone agreed with him that the kids have been especially difficult lately.

  “The Rodowsky boys were wild yesterday,” Claudia complained. (And normally Claudia likes them.) “They’re always wild,” she continued, “but yesterday Jackie locked Bo in the toolshed because he wanted to paint the inside of Bo’s doghouse. Then he lost the key to the toolshed. Poor Bo was howling his head off. While I was fiddling in the lock with a bobby pin, he and Archie got into a fight. The next thing I knew, blue paint was flying everywhere. So Shea decided to play the big brother, saying he’d paint the doghouse. But he didn’t realize Jackie had wanted to paint the inside, and he began slapping the paint on the outside — which caused another fight. And then Shea only painted half of the doghouse, got bored, and went to a friend’s house.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” Stacey laughed sympathetically. “What finally happened?”

  “By the time Mrs. Rodowsky came back, I had cleaned up the boys, but Bo was still howling and the doghouse was still half blue.”

  “Was Mrs. Rodowsky mad?” asked Jessi.

  Claudia shrugged. “She didn’t look thrilled. Luckily she had an extra key for the toolshed.”

  “I know how you must have felt,” Dawn said. “I had a tough time with the Barretts the other day. Buddy gave me the most trouble. He wouldn’t stop picking on Suzi and Marnie.”

  “He was picking on Marnie?” exclaimed Mary Anne.

  “Yeah. I couldn’t believe it. Here was this big seven-year-old annoying this little toddler. And he wouldn’t stop. He kept taking away her toys, and he turned off her Sesame Street video so he could watch his own cartoons. He was worse with Suzi. Of course, being four, she fights back, but she’s no match for him. At one point I actually had to threaten to call his mother.”

  As I listened to all the stories, I wondered if I should point out the fact which was so blaringly obvious to me. The girls we sat for were behaving just fine. It was the boys who were horrible. Ordinarily I would have just come out and said it, but I hesitated because I didn’t want to offend Logan.

  Finally I decided to speak up, though. Logan would just have to face the facts.

  “Hasn’t anyone else noticed that we’re only having trouble with the boys?” I asked.

  “That’s not so,” said Mary Anne. “Is it?”

  “You know, Mal is right,” said Kristy. “I wonder why that’s happening.”

  “Could we be favoring the girls without meaning to?” Stacey ventured. “Maybe that’s making the boys act up so they can get attention.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Claudia. “There are no girls in the Rodowsky family.”

  “Still,” Kristy said pensively. “Maybe we should be extra nice to the boys and see what happens.”

  “I was nice to Buddy Barrett, and it didn’t make a bit of difference,” Dawn disagreed.

  “I don’t think I was favoring Becca over Squirt, either,” said Jessi. “She was just being good and he was a terror.”

  “Logan, you’re a boy. Do you have any ideas about this?” Stacey asked.

  Logan shook his head. “Not really. All I can think of is that boys are worse at some ages and girls are worse at other ages. Maybe we have a bunch of boys at bad ages.”

  “Or maybe it’s just a coincidence,” Jessi volunteered.

  “I know,” said Dawn, smiling. “The planets are in some strange alignment that affects boys only.”

  “That’s pretty doubtful,” said Logan. “I haven’t been acting strangely.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” teased Mary Anne.

  Logan responded in typical boy fashion by jabbing Mary Anne in the arm with his knuckles. Mary Anne pretended it hurt, but she was laughing.

  “I know what the problem is,” I spoke up. “The problem is that boys are pains and girls are not. We just never noticed it before.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Logan said, only half laughing.

  “I’m sorry, Logan. But that’s how it seems to me,” I replied.

  “What about Ben?” Dawn asked.

  “Ben is different,” I replied.

  “So is Logan, then, ” Mary Anne said, taking Logan’s hand.

  “Wait a minute,” Logan objected. “Ben and I aren’t the only two decent guys in the world. There are lots of nice guys.”

  “I agree,” said Stacey. “I don’t think your theory holds up, Mal.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “I’m just saying how it seems to me.”

  At that moment the phone rang. It was Dr. Johanssen. She needed someone to sit for Charlotte for a few hours the next day. “One girl, no brothers, the perfect client,” I said. “I’ll take the job, if no one else wants it.”

  Everyone else was busy, so I did wind up taking the job. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have volunteered for the job if Charlotte had been a boy. Boys were nothing but trouble!

  After a few more calls, the meeting ended. Jessi and I walked outside together. “Why are you so down on boys lately?” Jessi asked me.

  “I’m just making observations,” I told her. “What I see is that boys are a pain. Look at the evidence!”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Didn’t Ben wait for you after detention again today? That’s not being a pain. That’s pretty sweet, if you ask me.”

  “I said Ben was different, didn’t I? He’s the exception that proves the rule.”

  Jessi laughed lightly. “I think you’re just annoyed at boys because we have to play volleyball with them.”

  “But the boys love to play volleyball, so that proves it!” I cried. “Only people who are pains at heart could love such a dumb game.”

  “For a sensible person, you can be really illogical sometimes,” said Jessi. “Besides, I kind of like volleyball.”

  I clamped my hands over my ears. “I didn’t hear that,” I said.

  “But I do,” Jessi insisted.

  I took my hands from my ears and put them on Jessi’s shoulders. “No. You may think you like volleyball, but you’re mistaken. You’re stressed. Or perhaps you’ve been stepped on and smacked with the ball too many times. It’s affected your brain. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. You’ll come to your senses in the morning.”

  Finally, my luck seemed to be changing — at least in the baby-sitting department. Sitting for Charlotte Johanssen on Thursday was a breeze. She was good as gold. But, of course, she is a girl.

  Then, at the Friday BSC meeting, Mrs. Hobart called. I took the job she offered because Ben’s three brothers are such great kids. Still, I was nervous. What if they were suddenly transformed like all the other formerly good boys? I decided to risk it, though.

  As it turned out, the three of them were fine. Better than fi
ne. Angels! That fact is even more amazing since it was a cold, rainy day and they were cooped up inside the house.

  When six-year-old Mathew asked if we could make chocolate chip cookies, I drew in a deep breath. Cooking with kids can be a disaster if they decide not to cooperate. I didn’t want to end up like Jessi, cleaning the entire kitchen. I said no, but the kids wouldn’t give up.

  “Please, please, please,” begged four-year-old Johnny. “There’s nothing to do.”

  “Our mom won’t mind,” eight-year-old James pressed. “She’s been promising and promising to make them, but she never has the time. The chocolate chips are right in the cabinet. I can find them.” Before I could object, he was digging through the cabinet and soon produced the chips, as well as flour, sugar, and a bottle of vanilla extract.

  At the same time, Mathew was hunting through the refrigerator for eggs and milk. Obviously, the boys had baked cookies before. It was pretty hard to say no to them.

  So, even though it was against my better judgment, we began making chocolate chip cookies. And guess what. We had a great time!

  We baked some regular round cookies, and then we made some in different shapes. Each boy made one in the shape of his first initial. We even made a B cookie for Ben. He was at school that afternoon at a special meeting of the school paper.

  As I watched the boys molding their cookies, I wondered why they were so different from other boys. That’s when I came up with my second big theory.

  Ben and his brothers are from Australia! That’s why they were different. Maybe not all boys were pains, just American boys.

  Then I thought of Logan. I had to admit he wasn’t a pain, either. But he’s from Kentucky. And he hasn’t been in Stoneybrook all that long. At least not long enough to turn into a pain.

  So, here was my new theory: American boys from Stoneybrook were the biggest pains on earth.

  There must be something about Stoneybrook that made boys particularly obnoxious. Look at my brothers. They’ve lived here all their lives and they were the ultimate pains. Was it the water? The school system? The teams they played on?