Boys in Control

There was a knock at the door downstairs, and Caroline continued rolling till she was on her feet again and was the first one to reach the door. There stood Peter, smiling his sweetest smile.

  “Well, hello, Peter.” Caroline grinned at him, then turned around and grinned at her sisters on the stairs. “Want to come in?” she asked him.

  “Okay,” said Peter, and stepped into the hallway.

  “Who is it?” called Coach Malloy from the kitchen, where he was helping cut up vegetables for dinner.

  “Just Peter Hatford, over for a little visit,” Beth called back.

  Peter came in and sat in a chair in a corner of the living room.

  “How are you?” asked Eddie.

  “Fine,” said Peter.

  “How is everybody at your house?” asked Beth.

  “Fine,” said Peter.

  “How are things going at school?” asked Caroline.

  “Fine,” said Peter.

  The girls exchanged knowing looks. “Well, did you come over to see us about something?” asked Beth finally.

  Peter nodded.

  “About what?” asked Caroline.

  “Jake and Josh and Wally really, really, really want those pictures back,” said Peter.

  “What pictures?” asked Caroline innocently.

  “You know. The ones of us acting silly with the Bensons,” said Peter.

  “Oh. Those pictures!” said Eddie. “Well, I don't think we've finished looking at them yet, Peter. Some of them are so silly we just want to look at them a long, long time.”

  Peter grinned. “Did you see the one of me in a diaper?”

  “Yeah, that was silly, all right,” said Beth. “But the one of Josh in his Batman underpants was my favorite.”

  “That's the one Josh really, really, really wants back the most,” said Peter.

  “Well,” said Beth. “We're going to have to think about this, Peter. Of course we'll give them back eventually. They don't belong to us, after all. We just have to figure out what we want to do with them first.”

  Peter gave a long sigh. He leaned over and rested his elbow on the lamp table beside the chair, then put his chin in his hand. “Well, I guess I can't go home, then,” he said.

  “Why not?” asked Eddie.

  “Because Josh told me not to come home without the pictures.”

  The girls tried not to laugh. “Imagine that!” said Eddie.

  “I guess you'll just have to live here for a while, then, won't you?” said Caroline. “Of course you'll stay for dinner?”

  “What are you having to eat?” asked Peter.

  “Chop suey, I think. But I know for sure Mom made a fudge pie.”

  “Yeah!” said Peter brightly, straightening up again. “I'll stay!”

  “Are you girls ready for dinner?” Mrs. Malloy called.

  “Yes, and Peter's staying for dinner too, Mom,” called Beth.

  “Oh? Really? Well, I'll put on another plate, then,” said her mother.

  When the family gathered in the dining room, Peter took a chair. He didn't seem too sure about the chop suey, taking only a little bit of rice and a small helping of vegetables but his eyes drifted regularly to the kitchen and the chocolate fudge pie sitting on the counter in plain view.

  “So what's happening at your house these days, Peter?” asked Coach Malloy. “Everybody doing okay?”

  “The answer to whatever you want to know, Dad, is ‘fine,’ ” said Eddie. “I thought I'd save you the trouble of asking.”

  “I see,” said her father. “Well, I imagine your whole family will be going to the game in Clarksburg on Saturday, Peter. Right?”

  “Yes, we're all going,” said Peter. He frowned. “I may have to ride with you, though.”

  “Oh? I'm not sure we have room. Our car only holds five,” said Mrs. Malloy.

  “Uh…Mom…Peter may be staying over tonight. He can use one of our sleeping bags, can't he?” said Caroline.

  “What's this?” asked Coach Malloy. “You're not running away from home, are you, Peter?”

  “Just for a little while,” Peter told him.

  “Doesn't your mother know you're here?” asked Mrs. Malloy.

  “Just my brothers,” Peter answered.

  “Peter Hatford, you go to the phone right now and tell your mother where you are,” said Mrs. Malloy. “Tell her it's fine with me if you stay for dinner, but she's got to know where you are. She must be worried.”

  “O-kay,” said Peter reluctantly. He slid off his chair.

  “But Jake and Josh and Wally aren't going to like it.”

  Under his breath, Coach Malloy muttered, “Jake and Josh and Wally can go jump in the lake, as far as I'm concerned. We can't have kids appearing and disappearing whenever they get the notion.”

  “Excuse me,” said Caroline. “I just want to make sure he really talks to his mom and not just his brothers.”

  “Good idea,” said Mrs. Malloy.

  Caroline went out into the hallway and stood beside Peter as he called home.

  “Hi, Wally,” said Peter. “Can I talk to Mom?”

  Caroline bent down so she could listen.

  “Peter, where are you?” came Wally's voice. “What's taking so long?”

  “I'm eating dinner,” said Peter.

  There was an anguished wail at the other end of the line. “Dinner?”

  “I have to talk to Mom!” Peter insisted. “Mrs. Malloy said !”

  And the next thing Caroline knew, Mrs. Hatford's voice came on the line. “Peter? Is that you? Where are you?”

  “I'm having dinner at the Malloys’ and I'm going to sleep in a sleeping bag,” said Peter.

  “You most certainly are not!” cried his mother. “Peter, have you lost your mind? You can't just wander over to somebody's house and stay for dinner and sleep in a sleeping bag!”

  “I have to,” said Peter. “I can't come home.”

  “ Why can't you come home?” Mrs. Hatford demanded.

  “Because Jake and Josh and Wally said I couldn't come home without the pictures, and Eddie and Beth and Caroline want to look at them some more, so I'm going to live over here for a while.”

  “Peter Hatford, you pick up your feet and get yourself home this very minute!” Mrs. Hatford was practically screaming. “This house is a zoo, I tell you! A living, breathing zoo!”

  “Okay,” said Peter.

  “Peter!” his mother continued. “You go back to the table and thank Mrs. Malloy for whatever you ate so far. Then you wipe your mouth on your napkin and carry your dishes to the sink, and you go out the door and come home. Do you understand me?”

  “Okay,” said Peter. He hung up the phone and walked back into the dining room, Caroline at his heels.

  “Thanks for what I ate so far, but I have to go home. Mom said,” Peter told them.

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” said Mrs. Malloy. “Can't you even finish your dinner?”

  “Mom said to pick up my feet and come home,” Peter told her. He wiped his mouth on his napkin, picked up his plate, and carried it to the kitchen.

  “Now, what was that all about?” Coach Malloy asked.

  “Don't ask, George, don't ask,” said Mrs. Malloy.

  Caroline went into the kitchen with her own empty plate and got there just in time to see Peter hurriedly stuff something into his pocket. He grinned at her sheepishly and went back through the dining room.

  “Goodbye,” he said.

  “Well, it was nice to see you, Peter,” said Mrs. Malloy. “We'll invite you to dinner another time.”

  “Yes, we'll see you at the game Saturday,” said the coach. “Tell your dad hello for me.”

  Peter went out the front door and closed it as Beth took her plate to the kitchen.

  “Hey!” she yelled.

  “Now what?” asked Mrs. Malloy.

  Beth came back into the dining room carrying the chocolate fudge pie. There was a large hole in the middle of it, as though someone, with an insistent thumb, had car
ved out a bite for himself.

  Nine

  Letter to Georgia

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

  Boy, did you guys ever goof up! You know those pictures we took a year ago? A really stupid picture of each of us, so that if one of us ever betrayed the others, we'd have an embarrassing picture of him to show around school? Well, guess who has them now? Right. Caroline and her sisters.

  WHY did you leave them in your basement when you moved? WHY didn't you take them with you?

  The Whomper, The Weirdo, and the Crazie have probably been having laughing fits over them. Beth found them on top of a heating duct and the girls won't give them back. Beth says they want to look at them a little longer.

  I can't stand it. You know what I'm wearing in my picture? My old bunny pajamas—the ones with feet and floppy ears. They were way too small for me then, and now Peter wears them.

  Just remember that you guys have pictures in that album too. Remember how you're dressed up like a ballerina, Steve? With a ribbon in your hair? One false move by us and those pictures will probably make the rounds at school. We tried sending Peter over to sweet-talk the girls into giving them back, but no luck.

  The weird thing is, the only people who seem to be getting along right now are Jake and Eddie, probably because they're on the same baseball team. And somehow I have to stay home the day of the championship game because Mom's in charge of the yard sale of the Women's Auxiliary of the Buckman Fire Department, and someone has to guard the stuff that day till she gets back from the game. The sale, of course, happens to be on our driveway, in our front yard, up on our front porch the exact day of the game.

  You guys sure did a number on us by moving away, letting the Malloys rent your house, and leaving those pictures in the basement. What do you have to say for yourselves?

  Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter)

  P.S. I'd send this by e-mail but stuff for the yard sale is piled in my room blocking my computer. It'll have to go by snail mail, and no telling when you'll get it.

  Ten

  Game Two

  On the way to school the next morning, the only two people who were talking to each other were Jake and Eddie. They talked about the Clarksburg team—what they had heard about the pitcher and who was most likely to strike out.

  Behind them on the sidewalk, Caroline and Wally glared at each other, and Josh glared at Beth, while Peter strolled along at the rear, humming a little song and running his hand along a row of azalea bushes.

  Wally didn't think he could ever be friends with the Malloy girls again. If Caroline ever —ever—brought that picture of him in his bunny pajamas to school, with whiskers at the sides of his face, even, he would be laughed right out of fourth grade.

  He didn't know if he was angrier at the girls for not giving the pictures back or at the Bensons for leaving them behind in the first place. How could they have forgotten those? You don't just take the most humiliating pictures of each other you can possibly imagine and then go off and leave them on top of a heating duct in your basement! You especially don't go off and leave them when a family of girls is going to rent your home for a year, especially girls like the Malloy sisters, who had caused Wally more trouble in the ten months they had been living there than the Bensons had caused Wally his whole life!

  And yet… had he thought to remind the Bensons to take those pictures with them? Had he even remembered where the pictures were hidden? Had his brothers thought to remind them either?

  When he was in his seat, leaning forward so that Caroline couldn't tickle him with her ruler, he tried to concentrate on the next week's assignments, which Miss Applebaum was explaining to the class. But when her back was turned and she began writing the new spelling words on the board, Wally heard a soft voice behind him saying, “Hippity-hop, little bunny, hippityhop,” and he felt his ears beginning to turn red. He didn't know which he disliked more at that moment— Caroline Lenore Malloy or his ears.

  At recess, Eddie and Jake went over by the fence to practice pitching and catching. Wally stood glumly off to one side with Josh, but their minds were on other things. Finally Josh spoke:

  “There's only one thing left to do: get embarrassing pictures of the girls. Then we'll say that if they don't give those pictures back, we'll put their pictures in that glass case by the auditorium, and by the time the principal sees them, everyone in the whole school will have seen them first.”

  “Yeah? How are we going to get embarrassing pictures of the girls? Hide in their bathroom? We posed for those pictures, remember?” said Wally.

  “Yeah, that's the problem,” said Josh. “I can't think of a way to do it either.”

  It was the day of the second baseball game, and cars full of excited players and their parents and friends were on their way to Clarksburg. It seemed to Wally that in every other car they passed was someone they knew. Horns honked. People waved to each other, and by the time they got to Clarksburg High School, the bleachers were beginning to fill up. Mr. Hatford, who had taken the day off work from the post office, and Mrs. Hatford, who had taken a day off from the hardware store, gave Jake a final pat on the back and a squeeze of the shoulder.

  “Good luck, Jake. Just play your best,” his mother said.

  “Get out there and show 'em what you've got, son,” said his father.

  It seemed to Wally that Eddie was in better form than she'd been for the first game. She seemed excited but not too nervous. Buckman was to bat first, and Eddie was first in line. She swung the bat, the ball sailed right over the head of the center fielder, and Eddie made it home. Clarksburg was beginning to look nervous, and the Buckman fans, especially the Malloys, clapped and cheered.

  But Clarksburg didn't have anything to be ashamed of, because they had just as good a batter on their team. Wally didn't study the clouds this time. He didn't hang over the edge of the bleachers looking for ants or think about whether the ball diamond might have been a battlefield in the Civil War and whether there were ghosts of soldiers around. He kept his eyes on the ball, and once, when Jake threw a really fast pitch, he caught Caroline Malloy looking down the bleachers at him and smiling, and he started to smile back before he remembered they were enemies. He turned his eyes toward the pitcher's mound again. All Caroline saw when she looked at him, he was sure, was Wally in his two-sizes-too-small bunny pajamas with floppy ears and feet.

  Both teams played well, but the game wasn't especially exciting, Wally decided. After the one home run that Eddie made, there weren't any others. Not until the seventh inning did either team score again.

  By the final inning, Buckman was ahead by a run. Clarksburg, however, was at bat, and tension was rising.

  This time Eddie was pitching and Jake was at shortstop. There were players on first and second. A tall boy stepped up to bat, and the Clarksburg crowd began cheering. All he had to do was hit the ball between two of the outfielders, and his team might get not just one run, not just two, but three. Wally swallowed. So did Josh, beside him.

  The boy gripped his bat, his eyes on Eddie. Eddie stood still for a moment, seeming to think it over. Glancing quickly at both runners, she faced the batter again, lifted one foot off the ground, and threw. Strike one. Maybe there was hope yet, Wally thought.

  The umpire leaned forward. Eddie pitched again. The batter stood motionless. “Ball one,” the umpire said.

  This time Eddie took a longer pause, figuring what to do. Then her arm went back, and before anyone expected it, the ball was on its way. The batter swung, the bat connected, and just as he must have planned it, the tall boy hit a line drive between third base and shortstop.

  Jake was in control, however. One arm swooped down and he caught the ball with a soft plop in his glove.

  “Out!” yelled the umpire. But Jake wasn't through yet.

  Both base runners were going at top speed. They skidded around to head back. Jake tagged the boy from second on the shoulder.

  “Out!” the umpire ye
lled again.

  Jake wheeled around and fired the ball toward first base. The first baseman caught it and put one foot on the bag before the runner could get back.

  “Out!” came the umpire's voice again over the cheers from Buckman fans. All three Clarksburg batters were out.

  “A triple play!” Josh yelled.

  Out on the field, Eddie was jumping up and down. The second baseman had leaped onto Jake's back, and the rest of the team was swarming around him, throwing their gloves in the air and cheering. The Clarksburg team wasn't cheering, of course, but they too had played well and the score was close.

  “Jake, that was something else, let me tell you!” said the coach. “With Eddie's home run and your triple play, I don't think we've ever played better.”

  Jake beamed. All the Hatfords were out on the field now, slapping him on the back and talking excitedly. It felt pretty good to be a brother of one of the best sixth-grade ballplayers in the school district, Wally thought. Baseball wasn't so bad when he could sit up in the bleachers and watch his brother make a triple play. Maybe if there were triple plays more often, he wouldn't feel like watching the clouds, or the ants carrying crumbs, or a spider weaving a web. If baseball had a little more action, maybe there would be a little more to watch. should have a parade in Jake's honor, even though the triple play had happened so fast Peter hadn't even seen it and couldn't describe what it was if he tried.

  “Well, at least your team will make it to the third game,” said Mr. Hatford. “That much is sure.”

  “And I'll just bet they'll be one of those two teams playing the championship game,” said Mrs. Hatford. “I'm certainly glad that Wally is going to watch over the sale tables on the twenty-ninth, because I wouldn't miss that final game for the world. Not if Jake is playing.”

  The Women's Auxiliary yard sale! Wally had almost forgotten about it. Now that baseball had suddenly gotten so exciting, he wanted more than ever to be at the championship game instead of sitting with a bunch of lampshades.

  Still, that wasn't the worst thing that could ever happen to him. If that was all he had to worry about, it was only a little thing. Then he remembered: the pictures. The bunny pajamas. He had been feeling so good before, about being the brother of Jake Hatford, and now…