Boys in Control

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “These bloomers were made famous by Amelia Bloomer herself!” Mrs. Larson declared, showing them the embroidered label on the inside, and the story had to be told all over again.

  At the most dramatic moment, Wally triumphantly held up the picture he had taken of Caroline, sweaty and red-faced, one shoelace untied, with her dress hiked up to her waist and the long muslin bloomers below. Caroline tried to grab the picture away, but Wally held it just out of reach.

  “Caroline, you look ravishing!” Beth joked. Another woman arrived from the auxiliary with a basket of sandwiches for all the helpers, and while they ate, Jenny Bloomer talked some more about her cousins.

  “I wondered why they called me and were so anxious to know if I still had all of Mother's things. They asked if I had given away any old photographs, and I said I had—that I had already taken the sale items to the Hatfords—and I guess that's when the trouble began. If they had been honest with me and told me about the letter, I would have shared whatever was inside the picture frame. Instead, they must have come to Buckman, rented a room, and tried every way they could to get that picture without my knowing. I don't think they deserve those bloomers, do you?”

  “I think they belong to you, Jenny,” said Mrs. Hatford. “And you may do whatever you like with them.”

  “In that case, I would like to donate them to the museum here in Buckman,” said Jenny. “If my cousins show up, we will gladly refund their money, provided they return the photograph, of course. My guess is they will hightail it out of Buckman and the auxiliary will keep the twenty. We can certainly put it to good use at the fire department.”

  The Hatfords and the Malloys spent the afternoon helping out at the sale. Jake and Josh put customers’ purchases in bags for them, Eddie helped carry things out to cars, Beth and her mother made change, Mr. Hatford and Coach Malloy kept their eyes on the customers to see that nothing else was taken, and Wally and Caroline kept one eye out for the two cousins of Jenny Bloomer, but they did not come back. They were probably already on the road, far out of town.

  When the sale was over, the tables dismantled, and the leftover items taken away in a pickup truck, the four Hatford boys and the three Malloy girls sat down on the back steps of the Hatford house. Josh and Jake and Peter were still laughing at the photo Wally had taken of Caroline.

  “Please give it to me, Wally,” Caroline begged.

  “Yeah? You want to trade?” asked Jake. “Don't you have some pictures of us?”

  “Not on your life!” said Eddie. “You think we should turn over all those pictures of you for only one in return?”

  Wally looked quickly at Caroline. Was this the way it was going to be? He wouldn't get those pictures back after all?

  “So what else do you want?” asked Josh.

  Beth looked at Eddie and Eddie looked at Caroline.

  “Quit calling us the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie,” said Beth, and Eddie nodded. “But it's still not an even trade.”

  “Well, you'd better make up your mind, because we just might send Caroline's picture to the newspaper. They might like to print it along with the story of how Amelia Bloomer's bloomers got to be in the Buckman Museum,” Jake said.

  Wally grinned at Caroline, satisfied that for once the boys had the upper hand. But his face fell when Caroline suddenly brightened and said, “Oh, would you? Please? I'd love to have that picture in the paper. Maybe a talent scout will see it and he'll be looking for someone to play the part of an old-fashioned girl in the eighteen hundreds who has to work in a garment factory, and she steals the bloomers she's been sewing all week to buy food for her little sisters and—”

  “Forget it,” said Wally. Caroline wanted her picture shown around. Caroline liked to be seen in bloomers. Caroline was nuts. Caroline was Caroline. He gave up. “For you,” he said, and handed her the picture.

  The girls looked at him, then at each other.

  “You won't call us the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie anymore?” asked Eddie.

  “No,” said Josh.

  “Deal?”

  “Deal.” They all put their hands together, one on top of the other, and Eddie went home and returned with the photo album.

  “For you,” she said, and handed it to Jake.

  Jake leafed through the pages quickly to see if all the pictures were there.

  This was a little too easy! Wally thought. “How do we know you haven't shown them to people already?” he asked.

  “Well, we haven't,” said Eddie. “You'll just have to trust us.”

  “How do we know you haven't made copies and aren't still planning to blackmail us?” asked Josh.

  “We aren't,” said Beth.

  “How do we know you won't go around telling people about them?” asked Wally.

  “You don't,” said Caroline. “So I guess you'll just have to stay on your best behavior.”

  “Uh… not so fast,” said Jake. “Maybe you'll have to stay on your best behavior too!” With that, he pulled something out of his back pocket. “Unless you want these strung up the flagpole at school on Monday.”

  “What is it?” asked Caroline, staring as Jake unfolded it.

  “ More bloomers!” chortled Peter. “Eddie's under-pants!”

  The Malloy girls stared in horror. Eddie's cheeks turned from pale peach to rosy pink to tomato red.

  “Let's play ball!” yelped Josh, pointing to the lines of print going this way and that all over the fabric.

  “They're… full of holes!” gasped Beth. “Where did you get those?”

  “I guess Peter thought they were a dishcloth when you invited him to stay at your house for dinner,” said Wally.

  Eddie covered her face in humiliation. “I wish Mother wouldn't use our stuff !” she wailed.

  “Okay,” said Caroline. “What do we have to do to get them back?”

  Wally and his brothers exchanged satisfied smiles. Oh, life was sweet, Wally decided. Life, for a change, was wonderful.

  “Well,” said Josh, “I suppose you could scrub our toilets for a week, make our beds, and clean out our closets.”

  The girls could only stare.

  “Or maybe you could bow down when you see us coming and call us lord and master,” said Jake.

  “Never!” said Eddie.

  “Or bake us cookies!” said Peter hopefully.

  “How about this?” said Wally. “We give them back, but if you ever breathe one word about the pictures in that album, we'll tell everyone we know about Eddie's underpants with all the holes and the Let's play ball! messages on them.”

  “We promise we won't!” said the three Malloy girls together.

  “But if you go around telling about the underpants, we get to tell about the pictures,” said Beth. “Understood?”

  “Okay,” said Jake and Josh and Wally and Peter.

  With that, Jake whirled the underpants once again, but this time Eddie caught them. And as the girls headed home, Wally heard Eddie say, “Mom won't get any more of these for her rag bag, that's for sure!”

  “Hey! Good game, Eddie!” Jake called after her.

  “You didn't play so bad yourself,” said Eddie.

  Twenty

  Dear Bill …

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

  Well, we got the pictures back. I don't think the girls are going to tell anyone about them, because we have some blackmail material of our own if they do. (And wouldn't you just like to know what!) Sorry, we can't tell, but man, did we ever luck out!

  Not only that, but the Buckman Badgers won the championship. I could hear the cheering from way back here at the house. They say Eddie hit a scorching double in the eighth inning that brought home two runs and won the game. Then, with Jake pitching, Grafton didn't get a single hit in the ninth.

  I wasn't at the game, though, and you know why: the Women's Auxiliary yard sale. But we had plenty of excitement of our own. Two women walked off with a framed photograph even after I said th
e sale hadn't started yet. But I told Caroline to follow them and bring back whatever she could. Well, she did, and you will never guess what was sealed behind the paper on the back of the frame. A pair of underpants! Yep! In case you don't know who Amelia Bloomer was—and these underpants are called bloomers—go to the encyclopedia and look her up.

  We still don't know if the Malloys are going back to Ohio or not, but they'll be here for the next few months anyway. We might take them up Indian Knob, or show them the old coal mine.

  Right now things are going pretty good, but maybe it's time we found out who really belongs here in Buckman—the Hatfords or the Malloys. Just in case you guys come back, I mean, and the Malloys stay. Just in case they think they can boss us around. I don't mean we'd be enemies or anything. But Caroline always wants to be queen of something, and she just might decide she wants to be queen of us.

  Anyway, best wishes from Buckman's winning Badgers and Amelia Bloomer's bloomers.

  Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter)

  Read all about the Hatford boys and the Malloy girls.

  The Boys Start the War

  Just when the Hatford brothers are expecting three boys to move into the house across the river where their best friends used to live, the Malloy girls arrive instead. Wally and his brothers decide to make Caroline and her sisters so miserable that they'll want to go back to Ohio, but they haven't counted on the ingenuity of the girls. From dead fish to dead bodies, floating cakes to floating heads, the pranks continue—first by the boys, then by the girls— until someone is taken prisoner!

  The Girls Get Even

  Still smarting from the boys’ latest trick, the girls are determined to get even. Caroline is thrilled to play the part of Goblin Queen in the school play, especially since Wally Hatford has to be her footman. The boys, however, have a creepy plan for Halloween night. They're certain the girls will walk right into their trap. Little do the boys know what the Malloy sisters have in store.

  Boys Against Girls

  Abaguchie mania! Caroline Malloy shivers happily when her on-again, off-again enemy Wally Hatford tells her that the remains of a strange animal known as the abaguchie have been spotted in their area. Wally swears Caroline to secrecy and warns her not to search by herself. But Caroline will do anything to find the secret of the bones and finds out the hard way that she should have listened.

  The Girls’ Revenge

  Christmas is coming, but Caroline Malloy and Wally Hatford aren't singing carols around the tree. Instead, these sworn enemies must interview each other for the dreaded December class project. Caroline, as usual, has a trick up her sleeve that's sure to shock Wally. In the meantime, Wally and his brothers find a way to spy on the Malloy girls at home. The girls vow to get revenge on those sneaky Hatfords with a trap the boys won't soon forget.

  A Traitor Among the Boys

  The Hatford boys make a New Year's resolution to treat the Malloy girls like sisters. But who says you can't play tricks on sisters? The girls will need to stay one step ahead of the boys and are willing to pay big-time for advance information. Homemade cookies should be all it takes to make a traitor spill the beans. In the meantime, Caroline is delighted with her role in the town play. Don't ask how Beth, Josh, and Wally get roped into it—just wait until showtime, when Caroline pulls her wildest stunt yet!

  A Spy Among the Girls

  Valentine's Day is coming up, and love is in the air for Beth Malloy and Josh Hatford. When they're spotted holding hands, Josh tells his teasing brothers that he's simply spying on the girls to see what they're plotting next. At the same time, Caroline Malloy, the family actress, decides she must know what it's like to fall in love. Poor Wally Hatford is in for it when she chooses him as the object of her affection!

  The Boys Return

  It's spring break, and the only assignment Wally Hatford and Caroline Malloy have is to do something they've never done before. Wally's sure that will be a cinch, because the mighty Benson brothers are coming. It will be nonstop action all the way. For starters, the nine Benson and Hatford boys plan to scare the three Malloy sisters silly by convincing them that their house is haunted. Meanwhile, everyone in town has heard that there's a hungry cougar on the prowl. When the kids decide to take a break from their tricks and join forces to catch the cougar, guess who gets stuck with the scariest job?

  The Girls Take Over

  The Hatford boys and the Malloy girls are ready to outdo each other again. Eddie is the first girl ever to try out for the school baseball team. Now she and Jake are vying for the same position, while Caroline and Wally compete to become class spelling champ. As if that's not enough, the kids decide to race bottles down the rising Buckman River to see whose will travel farthest by the end of the month. Of course, neither team trusts the other, and when the girls go down to the river to capture the boys’ bottles, well … it looks as if those Malloy girls may be in over their heads this time!

  Boys in Control

  Wally Hatford always seems to get a raw deal. The rest of the family goes to the ball game, and he has to stay home to watch over a yard sale. Caroline Malloy writes a silly play for a school project, and he gets roped into costarring in it with her! Things are looking down, especially when the Malloy girls stumble across an embarrassing item from the boys’ past. But Wally finally gets his chance to turn the tables on the girls’ scheme and prove who's really in control. Boys rule!

  Girls Rule!

  The rivalry between the Malloy sisters and the Hatford boys is heating up! The kids have two weeks to earn money for a fund-raising contest. All those who collect twenty dollars or more for the new children's wing at the hospital can be in the annual Strawberry Festival Parade or get lots of strawberry treats. The only place Caroline wants to be is on the Strawberry Queen's float. How will she earn the money in time? Do the Hatfords have moneymaking secrets they're not telling the girls?

  Boys Rock!

  Wally, the best speller among the Hatford brothers, gets roped into helping them with a summer newspaper project that will earn the twins school credit. Mr. Oldaker trusts Wally to keep a secret that could turn into a scoop for their newspaper, but Wally worries that the secret may be too scary to keep to himself. What's worse, the Malloy girls have horned in on the newspaper. If there's one person Wally won't spill his secret to, it's nutty Caroline Malloy. No matter what it is!

  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Copyright © 2003 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

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  ISBN: 978-0-307-51482-0

  April 2005

  v3.0