Wally began to think that for the rest of his life, perhaps, the Malloy girls would take those pictures with them wherever they went, and they would always, always be laughing behind his back.
Eleven
Act Two
Well,” said Eddie as her family went into the house after the game. “I guess I've got my zip back.”
“You have indeed!” said her father. “You played like your old self this afternoon. Between you and Jake, I'd say the coach has himself a pretty good team this year.”
Eddie, Jake; Eddie, Jake; Eddie, Jake; Eddie, Jake…, thought Caroline in the backseat. As glad as she was for Eddie, as much as she wanted the Buckman Badgers to win the championship, she was sick of hearing about it all the time.
She was tired of Eddie being the center of attention day after day, week after week. Yet, short of running across the baseball field in her underwear, she couldn't think of a single way to focus the attention on herself for a change. Just long enough to remind everyone that she was the girl who would someday —someday—have her name in lights on Broadway, and people would say, “Oh, yes! We knew her when she lived in Buckman, West Virginia.”
The only answer was to get right to work finishing act two of her play, so as soon as they got inside, Caroline went up to her room and shut the door. She came down only long enough to have lunch and dinner, and by evening she was ready to knock on Beth's door.
“I finished act two, Beth,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”
Beth was in the middle of her math homework. When Beth did math, she put her notebook and papers on the floor, then stretched across her bed, her head and arms hanging down one side, and wrote on the paper from above. The way to do math, she declared, was to let the blood rush to her head. Only then could she figure it out.
“Okay,” Beth said, wriggling her body back up on the bed. “I'm ready for a break.” She propped her pillows against the headboard and leaned back, closing her eyes. “Shoot,” she said.
Caroline perched on the edge of Beth's bed and held her tablet out in front of her.
Act two, scene one: Still morning in the cottage on the beach. Nancy sits at the table drinking a cup of coffee. The clock on the wall says ten o'clock.
NANCY: I think I must have dreamed it all. Jim has probably gone out for a walk. There isn't any slime here at all. And yet, the telephone still doesn't work. I know he'll be back any minute and then he'll explain the whole thing.
The lights fade out and come on again. The clock on the wall says two o'clock. Nancy is at the table having lunch.
NANCY: Well, if he's gone for a walk, it's a long one. Maybe I should go look for him.
The lights fade out and come on again. The clock on the wall says six o'clock. Nancy is at the table having dinner.
NANCY: Something's happened, I know it! As soon as I eat, I'll go look for him.
Act two, scene two: Daylight is beginning to fade and Nancy is walking along the beach. Suddenly she stops and a look of horror crosses her face.
“Like this, Beth,” Caroline said, raising her eyebrows as high as they would go, opening her eyes wide, and shaping her mouth in the form of an O.
NANCY: Here are the same tracks that Jim and I saw in the sand yesterday. They are hardly human, and yet they don't belong to any animal I know. It's as though a creature from outer space was dragging something. Oh, no! Could it have been dragging Jim?
She faints.
Caroline put her tablet down. “Well, how do you like it?” she asked.
“That's it? That's the end of act two?” asked Beth.
Caroline nodded.
“Well, I don't see how a woman whose husband is missing can eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” said Beth.
“She has to keep up her strength,” said Caroline.
“Whatever,” said Beth.
“You don't like it!” said Caroline.
“I didn't say I didn't like it. I just can't quite believe it.”
“Everything will be made clear in the end,” said Caroline. “Everything will come together in act three.”
“Good,” said Beth. “I can wait.”
On Sunday afternoon, Caroline tucked the play under her arm and went over to the Hatfords'. She knocked on the door, and when Peter answered, she said, “I'd like to see Wally, please.”
“Did you bring the pictures?” asked Peter.
“No,” said Caroline. “This is business.”
“Okay,” said Peter. He opened the door wider and Caroline stepped inside.
Wally came downstairs in his stocking feet. He still had on his Sunday clothes, but his shirttail was hanging out in back.
“What do you want?” asked Wally.
“Come out on the porch, Wally. We're going to talk business,” she said. And then, to Peter: “Go back inside, Peter. This is personal.”
“Okay,” said Peter, and shut the door after them.
“What is it?” asked Wally.
Caroline sat down on the steps. “I have a proposition to make. How much do you want those pictures back?”
“You're going to give them to us?” asked Wally, looking wary.
“I didn't say give,” said Caroline. “I asked how badly you wanted them back.”
“What do you think?” said Wally. “Badly. A lot.”
“Okay, here's the deal,” said Caroline. “I want something a lot too. You've heard the first act of my play. I want to read the rest to you, and you tell me how you like it. Then …then… you perform it with me in front of the class. If you do that, I'll give you the pictures back.”
“No way! I can't!” said Wally. “I'm not an actor.”
“Well, just read your part, that's all. You don't have to do anything.”
“But I don't even like it!”
“You don't understand it yet, Wally. Once you hear act three, you'll understand it, and if you understand it, you'll probably like it. And even if you don't, well… you don't want that picture of you in your bunny pajamas to go around school, do you?”
“No!” said Wally.
“Okay, then. I just want you to sit right here and listen to act two, and then tell me what you think,” said Caroline.
“If I listen to the play and read it with you in class— just read it—you'll give me the picture of me in my bunny pajamas?” Wally asked.
“Yes,” said Caroline.
“And you'll give me the rest of the pictures too?”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “But we can't tell any body. If Beth and Eddie find out I gave those pictures back, they'll kill me.”
“Why? What do they want to do with them?” asked Wally.
Caroline looked deep into Wally's eyes. “Blackmail,” she said.
“You mean they'd use them to make us do anything they want?”
“That's right.”
“That's exactly what you're doing to me!” said Wally. “You're making me read a play in front of the class.”
“Correct,” said Caroline.
“That's blackmail!” said Wally.
“Bingo,” said Caroline.
A half hour later, Caroline took her play home.
“Where have you been?” asked Beth.
“I just read act two to Wally Hatford and he listened,” said Caroline.
“So?” said Beth. “What else could he do? Did he like it?”
“I don't know,” said Caroline. “But guess what? He's going to read Jim's part in front of our class so that I can get an A-plus. If he didn't like it, do you think he'd do that?”
“How did you get him to say yes?” asked Eddie from across the room. “Wally Hatford wouldn't do that unless he was hanging upside down over the Grand Canyon by his heels.”
“Well, something like that,” said Caroline, and went on up to her room to write act three.
Twelve
Letter from Georgia
Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter!):
You've got to be kidding! Did the girls really find tho
se pictures? We are doomed, man! We are dead meat! We are roadkill!
I don't know how we could have forgotten to take them with us. Steve thought Tony had them and Tony thought Steve had them, and the rest of us didn't even know where they were.
You've got to get those pictures back, Wally! I don't care what you have to do to get them, just DO it! If anybody sees that picture of me blowing soap bubbles, with a rip in the seat of my pants, I'll never be able to show my face around Buckman again.
Just GET them, Wally! I'm begging you! Write and tell me you did!
Bill (and Danny and Steve and Tony and Doug)
Thirteen
More Visitors
When Wally's brothers went to baseball practice on the Monday before the third game, Wally walked home alone. He didn't feel like watching Jake practice. He was afraid that if he was around Jake and Josh for very long, he might let it slip—what he was going to do to get their pictures back. And the reason he didn't want it to slip was because he didn't entirely trust Caroline Malloy to keep her promise.
Not that she would deliberately lie to him, but she might not actually have the pictures. Eddie or Beth might have put them away for safekeeping, and no matter what Caroline told Wally about giving them back, she might not be able to do it. And he would have made a fool of himself in front of the class for nothing. No, if he was to suffer, he would suffer alone.
The second reason he didn't want his brothers to know was…well, maybe Wally would have to do a little blackmail of his own. The twins were always getting Wally to do things he didn't want to do. And if he had the pictures, he could say no and mean it. He could say that if they made him do whatever it was he didn't want to do, he would take their pictures to school. He could only do this once, of course, because they would pulverize him if he tried it twice and didn't give the pictures back, but maybe he should hang on to them for an emergency.
He opened the door with his key and went to the kitchen. Now that he was ten years old, he had his own key. His mother didn't call to see if the boys were all right because she thought they were all at the school watching Jake practice. So Wally prepared to enjoy having the house to himself.
First he got down the crackers and peanut butter. He got out the cheese. He found the corn chips and the pickles and the pitcher of cold tea, the applesauce and leftover macaroni. Then he sat down at the table.
It wasn't very often that Wally had the house to himself, and it was nice. It was great, in fact, without Peter's constant chatter and Jake's complaining and Josh's bragging about this or that.
Wally propped his feet up on the chair at the end of the table, smeared a cracker with peanut butter, placed a little square of cheese on top of the peanut butter and a piece of pickle on top of the cheese. He was just about to pop it all into his mouth when the doorbell rang.
Wally put down the cracker and walked to the front door. When he opened it, he saw two women with purses tucked under their arms. One had on a pink jacket and the other wore her hair in a braid over one shoulder.
“Hello,” said the woman in the pink jacket. “Are you one of the Hatford boys?”
“Yes,” said Wally.
“We understand that this is where the things for the Women's Auxiliary yard sale are being stored,” the woman said.
“Not till the last Saturday of the month,” Wally said. “Sorry.”
“Oh, but we've heard that some things were donated early,” said the woman with the braid. She was wearing sandals and had bright red polish on her toenails.
“Well, some things, but most of the stuff is coming the Friday before the sale,” Wally explained.
“We'd just like to come in and look at what you have so far,” said the woman with the red toenails.
“Oh, I can't let you do that,” said Wally.
“But we'll pay for anything we find now and take it off your hands,” said the woman in the pink jacket.
“Well …” Wally hesitated. He wondered if she'd buy everything that was piled in his room. He didn't know these women, but then he didn't know a lot of women in Buckman. “I'll have to go call Mom,” he said.
“Certainly,” said the red toenails.
Wally shut the door, but not quite all the way because he didn't want to seem rude, and went to the phone in the kitchen.
The owner of the hardware store answered. “Your mom's with a customer, Wally,” he said. “She'll be with you in just a minute.”
Mrs. Hatford must have been selling a customer nails, because Wally could hear the sound of nails being poured into one of the metal scoops on the scales. The hardware store had a metal scoop where you put the object being weighed. Then Mrs. Hatford would take little round weights and put them on the other side of the scales, one by one, until both sides of the scale dangled evenly in the air. There was no digital anything in the hardware store, and that, said the owner, was just the way he liked it.
Finally Mrs. Hatford got on the line. “Wally?” she said.
“Mom, I came home from practice early because I was tired of watching Jake, and there are two women out on the porch who want to look at what we've collected for the yard sale so far.”
“Who are they?” his mother asked.
“I don't know.”
“Well, it doesn't much matter, because we can't let anyone buy anything until the sale opens on the twenty-ninth. That's the rule. We have to be fair. Otherwise people would be sneaking over all the time and buying the best things before anyone else got a chance. Tell them I'm sorry, but they'll have to wait till the last Saturday in May. Goodness, I had no idea the sale would be so popular!”
Wally went back to the door and put his hand on the knob. “I'm sorry,” he said as he opened it. Then he stopped. The porch was empty. At that moment he heard the floor creak in the hallway and when he turned around, he saw the two women poking around in the walk-in closet.
“Oh, forgive us, but we're just so eager to see what you have for sale,” said the woman in the pink jacket.
“Mom says I can't let you buy anything before the twenty-ninth,” said Wally. “Sorry.”
The women looked disappointed. “Well, we won't even try to buy anything, then, but if you could just let us look the things over? Have a peek? Just show us where they are?”
Something told Wally that he didn't much like these women. He knew his mother's rule about strangers in the house. “No,” he said, and opened the front door wide. “I guess you'll have to go now.”
“Of course,” said the woman with the red toenails. “We're just too eager. We do love a good yard sale. Thank you anyway, young man.”
“You're welcome,” said Wally, and shut the door.
He went to the kitchen again and ate his crackers. Then he called his mother and told her what had happened.
“You mean they walked right into our house while you were on the phone with me?” she gasped. “Why, Wally, they could have been kidnappers! They could have whisked you away before you knew it!” There was a pause. “Did they take anything?”
Wally began to worry. “I don't know. I don't think so.”
“Go look in the dining room and see if the green vase is still on the buffet,” said Mrs. Hatford.
Wally went into the dining room and looked. “The vase is still there,” he told his mother.
“Did they go upstairs?”
“No.”
“Well, look in the living room and see if that little marble dish on the coffee table is still there.”
Wally went into the living room.
“It's there,” he told his mom.
“What about the little picture hanging beside the coatrack in the hall? Is that still there?”
“Just a minute,” said Wally. He checked the wall by the coatrack. “Yes,” he told his mother. “That's still there.”
“Well, I imagine they were just curious, as they said. We get some frenzied shoppers at these sales, let me tell you! But in the future, don't let anyone in unless it's a member of
the auxiliary, Wally, and you know who those women are.”
“Okay,” said Wally.
At school the next day, Miss Applebaum said, “Class, you have just one more week to turn in your book reports. I know that some of you may have been waiting for a certain book at the library that hasn't come in yet, and that baseball season is here and a lot of you have been watching the team practice. But there are eleven of you who have not turned in your reports, and you have only seven more days to finish the project.” She turned to Caroline. “Caroline, are you still determined to write a ten-page play, or will you do a book report?”
“I'm working on the play, Miss Applebaum,” Caroline said. “But I'll have it done in a week and I'll read it to the class.”
“I'm sure we're all looking forward to that,” the teacher said, and perhaps she didn't hear the low moans that went around the room. A precocious girl who knows she is precocious is not always the most popular girl in school. Especially if that girl is a year younger than everyone else, and especially if she is Caroline Lenore Malloy. From Ohio, as Caroline would say, meaning that much closer to New York City and Broadway.
After baseball practice that afternoon, the girls went on ahead and Wally walked behind with his brothers.
“Life would be great right now if only we had those pictures,” Jake said. “That's the only thing in the world keeping me from being really happy now that I've made the Buckman Badgers.”
“We have to get them back,” said Josh.
“Maybe we should just go to the sheriff and tell him the Malloys have something that belongs to us,” said Wally. “Maybe Dad, as sheriff's deputy, could go over to the Malloys’ in uniform and demand them back.”
Josh and Jake stared at him.
“Are you nuts?” asked Jake. “Do you think for one minute he'd do that?”
“If it was important enough, he would,” said Wally, beginning to waver.
“And what would you tell him was so important?” asked Jake. “A picture of you in your bunny pajamas? A picture of me with spaghetti hanging out of my nose? Get real.”