Boys in Control

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  For more than forty years,

  Yearling has been the leading name

  in classic and award-winning literature

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  OTHER YEARLING BOOKS BY PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR YOU WILL ENJOY

  THE BOYS START THE WAR

  THE GIRLS GET EVEN

  BOYS AGAINST GIRLS

  THE GIRLS’ REVENGE

  A TRAITOR AMONG THE BOYS

  A SPY AMONG THE GIRLS

  THE BOYS RETURN

  THE GIRLS TAKE OVER

  To two of my morning pool buddies,

  John Doyle and Reid Cherner,

  who taught me a little something about baseball

  CONTENTS

  One: Stuck

  Two: Dreaming

  Three: Thinking Things Through

  Four: Out!

  Five: Act One

  Six: Scavenger Hunt

  Seven: Missing

  Eight: The Visitor

  Nine: Letter to Georgia

  Ten: Game Two

  Eleven: Act Two

  Twelve: Letter from Georgia

  Thirteen: More Visitors

  Fourteen: Game Three

  Fifteen: Act Three

  Sixteen: Getting Ready

  Seventeen: “A Night to Forget”

  Eighteen: Mystery

  Nineteen: Amelia B.

  Twenty: Dear Bill …

  One

  Stuck

  Wally Hatford took two baseball cards from his dresser—Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez—and stuck them in a jacket pocket. Jake had given them to him a month before just because he had duplicates, but Wally was going to trade them at school for a magic trick—a box that took a quarter and turned it into a fifty-cent piece.

  When he got downstairs and hung his jacket over a chair, he found his mother moving about the kitchen and talking to herself in a state of great agitation.

  “I must have been clear out of my mind!” she said, lifting the teakettle off the stove and plunking it right back down again. “I don't know what in the world possessed me to say yes last year, when I had no idea what I'd be doing a year from then.”

  When Mrs. Hatford talked like this, Wally and his older brothers knew to lie low. Even their father knew that as long as breakfast was on the table, it was better to sit down and butter a biscuit than to ask what she was talking about.

  But Peter, who was in second grade, hadn't learned that yet. He licked the grape jelly off his fingers and asked, “What did you say yes to?”

  Everyone else at the table gave him a silent shake of the head. When Mrs. Hatford started talking, it was sometimes hard to get her to stop, and the boys would be lucky to make it to school on time. But it was too late.

  “The Women's Auxiliary of the Buckman Fire Department's Treats and Treasures yard sale,” she said, and immediately sank down in her chair at the end of the table and rested her chin in her hands.

  “Now, that's a mouthful,” Mr. Hatford said, hiding a smile behind his mug as he finished the last of his coffee. “Did you promise to clean out our attic and look for things to give to the sale?”

  “I promised to run the sale!” Mrs. Hatford moaned.

  “At the firehouse?”

  “Right here in our yard! Right out there on the driveway! Right up on our front porch!” Mrs. Hatford cried.

  Now all the Hatfords were staring.

  “Well, Ellen, that shouldn't be so hard,” said her husband. “I'm sure the boys will help, and I'll do what I can.”

  “No, you won't, because the sale happens to be the last Saturday in May, and you know what that is!”

  Wally tried to think, and then he remembered. That would be the day of the final game in the district elementary school baseball championships. And Jake, his brother, was on the Buckman Badgers.

  “If the Badgers make it that far, you know we'll all want to be there rooting for Jake!” Mrs. Hatford said in distress. “I'm certainly going to be taking half days off from work each Saturday in May that he's playing.”

  Now it was a family emergency! Wally saw Jake's eyes open wide. Even Josh, Jake's twin, looked startled that his mother might have to be anywhere else on that fateful day. Jake had wanted to play for the Buckman Badgers ever since he was six years old. This was the year, and May was the month, and the twenty-ninth was the day of the championship game.

  But it just so happened, Mrs. Hatford continued, that in the window of every store in town there was a poster about the Treats or Treasures yard sale, which would be held from noon till four on May twenty-ninth at the home of Tom and Ellen Hatford on College Avenue, rain or shine. So there was no getting out of it. On that particular day, she would need to take a whole day off from her job at the hardware store, but how could she be in two places at once?

  There was silence around the kitchen table as sausage gravy congealed on plates and biscuits grew cold.

  “Well, after all the practice I've put in pitching balls to Jake for the last five years, I've got to be at that game,” said Mr. Hatford. “If I have to take four vacation days off for baseball, that's okay with me. We hadn't planned on going anywhere this summer.”

  “He's my twin brother! I'm going to be there!” said Josh.

  “I've been watching Jake practice ever since I was born!” Peter declared. “I'm going to go sit in the very first row and I'll yell the loudest of all.”

  “Well, I'm Jake's mother!” Mrs. Hatford said. “How could I not be at the championship game when my very own son is one of the pitchers? At least, we hope the Badgers will be playing that game.”

  Jake scraped up some sausage gravy with his fork and put it in his mouth, looking very smug and important.

  Wally knew what was coming. He knew it before the first word was spoken. He had felt that something was up the moment he'd stepped into the kitchen that morning, in fact. He wondered if he'd sensed it even before he got out of bed. And now the whole family had turned their heads and were looking down the table at him.

  “No,” said Wally.

  “Now, Wally,” said his father. “There are times when every member of a family has to stand up and be counted.”

  “You can count me, but I don't want to do it,” said Wally.

  “There are times you have to make sacrifices for the good of the family,” said his mother. “And you have to admit that baseball isn't your favorite thing.”

  Wally didn't see that this made any difference. Maybe he did think baseball was sort of boring, and maybe he did like to lie back in the bleachers and study the clouds instead of watching the team practice. But did that mean he wanted to stand out on the driveway surrounded by old lamps and curtain rods and picnic hampers, arguing about prices and missing the game? The game that was going to decide the sixth-grade champion of the district?

  “No!” he said again. “I don't know what any of that stuff is worth—all that stuff you'll be selling.”

  “Everything will have a price tag on it, Wally,” his mother said.

  “I can't make change!” Wally bleated. “I'm awful in math!”

  “You can use my calculator,” said his dad. “If you can press a button, you can make change.”

  “I'm only one person!” Wally wailed. “How can I look after all that stuff at once?”

  “Mrs. Larson will be here to help you till the rest of us get back from the game,” Mrs. Hatford said.

 
“Old Mrs. Larson is deaf!” Wally cried. “And she won't wear a hearing aid.”

  “Wait a minute, Wally. The game starts at nine in the morning and could well be over by noon,” his mother told him. “The only people who will come by are folks who just want to look the merchandise over. It's against the rules to sell anything before the sale opens. The other women and I will be back by noon, and if we're not, we'll be there shortly after that.”

  “Besides,” said Josh, “if the Badgers lose any game between now and the end of May, they won't even be playing in the championship game.”

  “Now, that is something we're not even going to think about,” said Mr. Hatford. “We're all going to think positively in the weeks ahead. Jake is going to win for the Badgers, Wally is going to do his part by keeping watch over the yard sale till Mother gets back, and then we will all help out and, hopefully, will have something to celebrate that evening.”

  Wally tipped his head back and closed his eyes. Why did this always happen to him? Just because he was the middle child—Peter was in second grade and the twins were in sixth—did that mean he wasn't important? Peter was the youngest, Jake and Josh the oldest, but what did that make him? Chopped liver?

  “It's not fair,” he wailed.

  “No, it's not,” said his dad, getting up and putting on his postal worker's jacket. “That's life, Wally. You win some, you lose some, and it's not always fair. But you know yourself that you are probably less interested in baseball than anyone else in this family, and all we're asking is that you miss one game in order to help your mother out.”

  “The championship game,” said Wally.

  “Yes, but we'll be as proud of you taking care of things back here as we'll be of Jake out on the pitcher's mound,” said his dad.

  Wally didn't say yes, but it was useless to say no because he knew when he was licked. He went upstairs to brush his teeth before school.

  As he ran the brush back and forth, minty foam on his tongue, he was thinking that there was at least one other person in Buckman who felt the same way he did about baseball: Caroline Malloy. But he would have to be nailed to the wall with a gun at his head to ask Caroline to come over and help at the Treats and Treasures yard sale while his family was gone. In fact, he would have to be brain-dead to ask Caroline Malloy to come over at all.

  Because whenever the Hatford kids and the Malloy kids got together, there was trouble. When Caroline and her sisters put their heads together, there was mischief you wouldn't believe.

  It didn't help, of course, that Eddie Malloy was the alternate pitcher for the Buckman Badgers and that some people thought she was even better than Jake. It didn't help either that Beth would be in the bleachers cheering loudest of all for Eddie. And it especially didn't help that Caroline would undoubtedly discover Wally's absence from the championship game and would probably come looking for him, just to see what he was up to.

  “I feel sick,” said Wally to the mirror. Still, having Caroline there to help might be better than not having any other helper but Mrs. Larson.

  “Wally!” called his mother. “You're going to be late. Your brothers have already left for school, and the Malloy girls crossed the bridge five minutes ago.”

  Wally sighed and went downstairs. He pulled on his jacket and picked up his backpack. Then he went outside into the cool sunny air of a May morning, past the swinging footbridge that led across the river to the house where the Malloys were staying, and on up the street toward the school.

  It used to be that his friends, the Bensons, lived in that big house on Island Avenue, where the Buckman River flowed into town on one side of the island, ran under the road bridge to the business district, then circled back out again on the other side of Island Avenue. It used to be that he and his brothers and the Benson boys spent all their time together, thinking up new things to do.

  But now the Bensons had moved to Georgia for a year, the Malloys were renting their house, Jake was on the baseball team, and Wally was stuck. There was no getting around it.

  Head down, shoelaces flapping, Wally trudged on up the sidewalk, reaching Buckman Elementary just as the last bell rang.

  Two

  Dreaming

  Caroline Malloy pushed up her sleeves, settled back in her chair, and lifted her long dark ponytail to cool the back of her neck. Wally was going to be late if he didn't hurry. Miss Applebaum was already standing up with her roll book, looking over the class.

  It wasn't that Caroline was especially fond of Wally Hatford. He certainly wasn't very fond of her, but could she help it if she was precocious and had been moved up to fourth grade? Could she help it if she had strong ambitions to be an actress, and Wally was so laid-back he just seemed to slide from one day to the next?

  What she missed was being able to trace her name on the back of Wally's shirt with the edge of her ruler. Tickling him behind the ear with her pencil, and then watching his shoulders twitch and seeing first his neck, then his cheeks, then his ears turn red. Where was he?

  Riiiiiiing! went the last bell. A few seconds later there was the sound of running feet in the hallway and then Wally Hatford skidded into the room, stumbled down the row, and crumpled into the seat in front of Caroline.

  “Well, I heard you coming, Wally, so we'll say you made it,” said the teacher. “You might want to hang your jacket out there in the hall.”

  Wally got up, went back out the door, then came in again, a little more slowly this time.

  “Good morning, Wally!” said Caroline softly, leaning forward and blowing on the back of his neck.

  Wally didn't answer. He just moved sideways so that she couldn't poke him with her ruler and pretended he was listening to Miss Applebaum talk about book reports and when they were due.

  Caroline sighed and folded her arms across her chest. May was going to be the most boring month if she didn't think of some way to liven it up. All the attention was going to Eddie these days—Eddie and baseball. The middle Malloy daughter, Beth, didn't seem to care if anyone paid attention to her or not. As long as Beth had a good book, especially a scary one, she was happy.

  But Caroline needed attention. She loved being the main attraction, and why not? She was an actress, wasn't she, and all actresses liked an audience.

  “…a choice,” Miss Applebaum was saying. “You may read a book of at least a hundred pages and write a report, you may read two shorter books and compare them, or you may write a book of your own of at least ten typed pages.”

  Caroline's hand shot up into the air. “Could we write a play?” she asked.

  Miss Applebaum looked thoughtful.

  “A play is like a book. It's just mostly talking, telling what the characters are saying to each other,” Caroline went on, as though her teacher did not know what a play was.

  “Well, yes. I suppose it could be a play, Caroline, as long as it tells a complete story,” said Miss Applebaum.

  Caroline began to smile. “And will we get extra credit if we act it out for the class?”

  “Yes, certainly!” said the teacher. And then she asked the class to stand for the Pledge to the flag.

  “Wally,” Caroline whispered, moving a little closer to the boy in front of her.

  “No!” Wally whispered back. “I won't be in your play.”

  “You don't even know what I'm going to write about,” said Caroline.

  “Neither do you,” said Wally. “But you'll have to find someone else to do it, not me.”

  Caroline sighed again. It wasn't easy being a budding actress in a boring world. Still, a lot more happened here than had ever happened when she lived in Ohio. If only her family could stay here, and her dad didn't decide to move the family back again come fall.

  “… and to the Republic for which it stands,” the class was saying, “one nation…”

  I know! Caroline thought. I'll write a mystery play, and then even Beth will read it. And if she likes it, maybe I could perform it for the whole school!

  The more
Caroline thought, the more excited she became. How would you ever accomplish anything if you didn't dream? She was better at dreaming than almost anyone she knew.

  There would have to be a main character, of course, with a wonderful part, and this main character would naturally be her. Maybe it would be such a good play that the newspaper would send a reporter out to review it when she performed it onstage. It might be such a great play that a talent scout would read the review and invite Caroline to audition for a part on Broadway. It might be such a brilliant play that—

  “You may sit down now, Caroline,” Miss Apple-baum said, and there was laughter all around her. Caroline realized that the Pledge of Allegiance was long over and she was still standing. She sheepishly took her seat.

  Never mind, she told herself. Someday she would be standing onstage on Broadway and everyone would be clapping. The ushers would come down the aisles carrying bouquets of roses, and she would bow to the audience—left, right, and center—and the name Caroline Lenore Malloy would be on everyone's lips as they left the theater.

  When school was out for the day, most of the students went home. But those who were on the Buckman Badgers baseball team, and many of their brothers and sisters and friends, went right out to the ball field instead. The team would be practicing for the first big game of the season, coming up that Saturday. Many elementary schools had only a small field for baseball, and championship games had to be played at the local high school. But Buckman Elementary was one of the few that not only had an official ball diamond, it had bleachers as well, and on Sunday afternoons the field was open to men's amateur teams from the area.

  There were sixteen sixth-grade teams competing for the championship, which meant there would be eight baseball games going on at once in different parts of the district the first Saturday in May. The eight winners would play each other the following week, the four winners would play the week after that, and on the last Saturday in May, the twenty-ninth, the two winners would play each other to see who would win the sixth-grade championship for the school district. Losing teams, however, still met at local schools to play each other, just for fun, with parents doing the coaching, so it wasn't as though you had one chance to play baseball and that was it.