"It's a deal!" I said. "I'll have one whole evening of peace and quiet in my house. It's going to be great!" Chapter 12.
The Brother Switch was on! That Wednesday the schools were closed for a teacher's conference, so Tuesday night seemed the perfect night to try out the switch. (I didn't want to stick Mrs. Hobart with the job of getting my brothers off to school. That was asking too much!) At first my parents thought the idea was strange. "Why are you doing this?" my father asked that night at the dinner table when I brought up the idea.
"Ben and I thought it would be an interesting experiment," I said. It didn't seem wise to tell the whole truth - that I also wanted to get rid of my brothers for a night. My parents might not have appreciated it, and it was certain to make my brothers uncooperative.
As it was, they loved the idea. "Yipeee! Mrs. Hobart is a great cook!" Nicky cried happily.
(My mother shot him a Look, but he didn't notice.) "They have Game Boy, too," said Adam, who had been complaining lately that we didn't have enough Nintendo games.
"And no sisters to bug us for one whole night!" Jordan yelled jubilantly.
This time my sisters and I were the ones giving the Looks. "Bug you!" Vanessa cried. "You bug MS!" (I was glad she said it, so I didn't have to.) "We do not," Jordan objected. "You're always bugging us." He scrunched up his face and imitated a girl's high voice. "Stop it! Get out of here! You're making a mess! You're too loud! Ew, that's disgusting!" "You are messy and disgusting!" said Margo.
"You are!" Nicky replied.
"That's enough," my father interrupted. "So. I take it you guys want to go to the Ho-barts' tomorrow." The question was answered with resounding cries of enthusiasm. So, still looking a bit uncertain about the plan, my mother called Mrs. Hobart after supper. From what I could make of their conversation, Mrs. Hobart was equally baffled by this idea, but she said it was okay by her.
After school the next day, I walked over to the Hobarts' with Nicky and the triplets. Then I walked back to my house with James, Mat-hew, and Johnny, sure I was getting the best of the deal - dumping off four monsters and returning with three little gentlemen. It was too good to be true. I almost felt guilty. Almost.
"Here we are," I said, letting the boys in the front door. Margo, Vanessa, and Claire were bunched up on the stairs, staring and giggling at them.
"These are my sisters," I said. "You'll get used to them." Mom walked in from the kitchen and greeted the Hobarts. "Mal, take them upstairs and show them the boys' room." "Good idea," I said, heading for the stairs. My sisters scrambled up ahead of us, still giggling. I stood aside and let the boys pass.
"This was your idea. You're in charge," my mother warned as the boys ran upstairs.
"No problem," I assured her. "You're going to love these kids, Mom. They're like angels." Then I ran up the stairs after the boys.
"Bunk beds! Cooler than cool!" I heard James yell happily, when he reached the boys' room. When I reached the room, I was a little surprised to see the boys climbing over the beds as if they were a jungle gym.
"We've always wanted bunk beds/' Mat-hew explained.
"Pick whichever bed you like/' I told them.
That was a mistake. All three of them wanted the top bunk. Since there were only two tops, that presented a problem. Being the youngest, Johnny got stuck with the bottom. I felt bad for him, but figured it might be safer to leave him on the bottom. Still, this put Johnny in a pouty mood.
"Come on down to the rec room," I said to the boys.
Mathew's eyes lit up as if it were Christmas. "You have a room that you're allowed to wreck?" "No, not wreck like that," I said. "Rec as in short for recreation." I was talking to myself, though. The boys raced down the hall and down the stairs, eager to find this room they could wreck.
And they did.
They found it and they wrecked it.
My sisters helped a lot. They introduced the boys to the joys of bouncing on the furniture. Claire turned into a super clown - making faces, doing silly dances, pretending to be a dog and barking at everyone. The other kids became giddy and silly. Soon they were all barking and growling at one another.
I sat on the stairs and watched this in stunned silence. What was going on? My angelic sisters meet the angelic Hobarts, and chaos breaks loose! This wasn't what was supposed to happen. I realized I better step in.
"Hey," I said, "how about playing Operation?" I figured that game was something that would occupy them - quietly.
"Okay," Vanessa agreed, dragging the game out from under the couch.
"Oh, man! Operation!" James cried. "I've always wanted to play this." Bunk beds and Operation. So far James's visit to our house was turning out to be a dream come true - for him.
Soon the kids were happily playing Operation. I left them alone and went upstairs to the kitchen. "I'm going to run to the store and pick up a few things I need for supper," Mom said to me. "Do you think you can handle things for about an hour?" "Sure. They're playing a game downstairs," I told her. Mom left and I spread my school books out on the kitchen table. I wanted to finish my homework so I could enjoy my day off tomorrow. (I felt like writing the principal a letter thanking him for picking a perfect day to have a teachers' conference. Wednesday! It meant I wouldn't have gym again until next Monday. Good choice, Mr. Taylor.) Ill I began my English assignment and became pretty engrossed in it. After about forty-five minutes I decided I'd better check on the kids. I suddenly realized it was too quiet.
When I entered the rec room, I sucked in my breath. The kids were gone and the place was ... a wreck.
Chairs were stacked on top of the couch, the Ping-Pong table was on its side, the stools were upside down with the throw cover of a chair draped over them. It looked as if the kids had been trying to build some kind of furniture city. Games pieces were everywhere - Operation bones, Monopoly money and cards, pieces from the game Mousetrap.
Then I heard it.
The sound of water running.
I raced upstairs to the bathroom. The peels of hysterical laughter and high-pitched giggles that I heard while I was on the steps gave me a sinking feeling that something not-allowed was going on.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw the kids running back and forth between the bedrooms and the bathroom. They were soaking wet and covered with strings of pink soap foam. The hallway was covered with puddles.
You wouldn't believe what I found in the bathroom. The tub was almost overflowing and Claire stood in it with her clothes on, shooting whoever came in with the can of foam. She zapped me as I stepped into the room.
"I'm the foam-head silly-billy-goo-goo monster!" she cried gleefully as I turned off the water.
"Vanessa!" I screamed, lifting Claire out of the tub.
Sheepishly, Vanessa stuck her soaking wet, foam-flecked head into the bathroom. Yes?" "How old are you? Two?" I shouted angrily. "Somebody could have gotten hurt, especially Claire. And look at this place. It's a mess!" "We were going to clean it up," Vanessa replied huffily.
"How about starting with the rec room, then," I suggested as I peeled off Claire's shirt.
"The boys mostly did that," said Margo, sticking her head in beside Vanessa. "They thought we should play the Operation game in a pretend hospital." "I don't care what they thought," I snapped. "Go get dried off and clean everything up." Despite my big words, I wound up doing most of the work. If I'd left it to the kids it would never have been done before my mother got home.
Suppertime was all right, if you didn't mind a lot of giggling, poking, and under-the-table kicks. "Angels, huh?" my mother said skeptically as we cleared the table.
"I don't know what's with them tonight/' I replied honestly. "It must be Vanessa, Margo, and Claire. The girls are making them nutso." "It looks like the other way around to me/' said my father as he dried a frying pan.
Things did not improve as the night wore on. None of the kids wanted to go to bed. But finally, everyone was settled in. My parents were downstairs watching TV and
I was in my room reading.
Vanessa was on her bed reading, too. She got up to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later I heard the sounds of shouts and giggles coming from the boys' room. When I checked on them, I found a full-fledged pillow fight being waged, with kids standing on top of dressers, jumping off the bunks, and darting in and out of closets.
"Go to sleep!" I shouted at them.
"We're having a slumber party," James told me.
"No, you're not," I said. "Claire, Margo, Vanessa, back to bed!" I read for another fifteen minutes until I noticed that once again Vanessa had disappeared. That time I found her, and the rest of the kids, sitting in the dark. James held a flashlight under his face and was telling a scary story.
"Come on," I said. "Johnny and Claire will have nightmares. Besides, you're supposed to be sleeping." Margo made a face at me and stuck out her tongue.
I stuck out my tongue back at her.
Next thing I knew, all the kids were glaring and sticking their tongues out at me.
I never thought I'd say it, but I couldn't wait for the Hobart boys to go home! Chapter 13.
The longest night in human history finally ended.
At about eleven-thirty, after stern words from my mother, and a special intimidating appearance by my father, everyone finally went to sleep. Half an hour later, Claire was up crying. Just as I predicted, the stories had scared her and she was having nightmares. No sooner was she asleep again, than I heard Johnny roaming the hall, whimpering. When I got out of bed to see what was wrong, he told me Mathew kept rolling around in the bunk above him and he couldn't sleep. We went downstairs and drank warm milk together until he yawned and felt sleepy enough to go back to bed. By then it was almost twelve-thirty.
At around three in the morning, I sat bolt upright. I'd been awakened by a loud thud. I met my parents and my sisters in the hall.
They'd heard it, too. It had come from the boys' room. We rushed in and discovered James on the floor. "Oooowwwww!" he howled. He had rolled out of the top bunk and hurt his shoulder.
We trudged downstairs while Dad wrapped him up with an ace bandage. That took until three-thirty.
Before eight the next morning, there was a knock on my door. It was James. "I'd like to go home now," he told me as I gazed at him, bleary-eyed. "My shoulder hurts and I want my father to take me to the hospital." "Okay," I muttered, tromping down the hallway like a zombie. "Let me call and see if they're awake." The Hobarts' phone rang and rang, but no one answered. Great, I thought. My brothers have burned their house to the ground, or blown it up, or something worse. I envisioned the phone bleakly ringing in the pile of rubble which once was the Hobart home. "No one's answering," I told James. "Why don't you watch TV for awhile." Looking put out, James went down to the rec room. On my way back to bed, I met Mat-hew and Johnny. They'd awakened and discovered that James was missing. "Did James go to the hospital?" Mathew asked me, concerned.
I shook my head. "He's watching TV. Go back to bed." "We'll watch TV, too/' Johnny said, continuing down the stairs. I headed for my bedroom, then thought I'd better watch the boys. The way things were going, one of them was bound to get into some trouble.
I've never been so tired in my life. I was nodding off in the chair when the Hobarts decided they wanted cereal. So I dragged myself to the kitchen and poured them each a bowl of cereal. Honestly, at one point I put my head down on the kitchen table and fell asleep. Johnny, tugging at my pajama sleeve woke me up. "Cereal," he reminded me.
"Right. Cereal," I said as I poured milk into the bowls.
The cereal was greeted with groans of disgust. My mother buys low-fat milk. Apparently Mrs. Hobart uses only whole milk. The bowls of soggy cereal were left uneaten.
Meanwhile, my own family was sound asleep. Usually my household is up and chugging by eight-thirty on a non-school day. Not today. Everyone was exhausted.
At ten, the phone rang. It was Ben. "You're alive!" I said, relieved. "Was it too horrible for words?" "It was no problem," he said. "They were great." For a moment I was sure I had fallen asleep at the table again and was having some bizarre dream. "What?" I asked.
"No kidding." "They didn't destroy your house?" "No. .Mom made a special dinner and we ate it in the dining room. They told my parents about school and the Zuni pen-pal program. Adam talked about the plight of the Zuni people. He was very interesting, really." "Adam was interesting?" I said in disbelief.
"Yeah. So was Byron. He told us how he came up with the idea to start his own lending library. Then, after supper, Jordan played the piano for us." "Jordan played the piano!" I shrieked. "Ben, is this a joke?" "No. Jordan mentioned that he took lessons and Dad asked him to play. He was good." "I bet Nicky was a terror, though. Right?" "Nope. Later that evening Dad showed slides of our home in Australia. Nicky was super interested. He asked all sorts of questions. Dad was thrilled with him. Most people yawn through his slide shows. The triplets asked him some good questions, too. Dad was in his glory." "Ben, did you and my brothers get together and dream all this up? If you're playing some practical joke, I'm going to kill you." "This is what happened," Ben said, laughing. "Honest." "Keep going," I said, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. "How was bedtime?" "No problem. They went right to bed. Then this morning we went downtown for breakfast at Renwick's." "Oh, that's why you weren't home when I called. I bet that's when your parents saw the real Pike brothers. I hope they didn't have a food fight in Renwick's or anything." "No. They ordered fruit cups and oatmeal and ate it all. I don't know what you're talking about, Mal. They have very nice manners." "Good manners? Fruit cups and oatmeal? I'm losing my mind. I can't be hearing this!" "Is now a good time to drop them home?" Ben asked.
"I guess so," I replied. "Tell your parents James might have to go to the hospital. He may have dislocated his shoulder when he fell out of the top bunk last night." "Oh, wow! But he's probably all right. James is a big baby when it comes to pain. He always exaggerates." "He does?" "Yeah." "There are so many things I never knew about your brothers," I told him.
"How were they?" asked Ben.
Somehow, I couldn't bear to go into all the details. "They'll tell you about it," I said with a yawn. "See you in a little while." Still numb with shock, I trudged out of the kitchen and back to the Hobarts. They were busy shooting rubber bands at one another. James had found a way to do it with one hand. Suddenly I wasn't too worried about him.
Not wanting Ben to see me in my pajamas, I went upstairs to get dressed. My bed looked awfully inviting. Vanessa lay snoring lightly in her bed. But I couldn't go back until Ben got here.
As I dressed, I thought about what had happened. It was too weird. It must be something about my house that made boys act zooey. Just like something at the Hobarts' house made boys behave.
Maybe just having so many other kids around made the Hobarts wild. They weren't used to it. Perhaps it was the relaxed atmosphere at my house. There aren't many rules here. The Hobarts probably felt like zoo animals who had suddenly been released. But why had my brothers been such darlings? I guess they just had the sense to put on their company manners. It was more sense than I would have given them credit for having.
Once they were dressed, I rounded up the Hobart boys. I was just helping Johnny tuck in his shirt when the bell rang. "Your brother is here/' I told them, surprised to hear how happy my voice sounded.
As we walked down the hall, my mother appeared in the hallway already dressed. She smiled when she saw me. "Rough night with the angels?" she asked.
I just sighed and shook my head wearily.
The triplets and Nicky tumbled into the house, happy and bubbling over with enthusiasm about their night at the Hobarts'.
"Did you have fun?" Ben asked his brothers as he stood waiting for them to pull on their jackets.
"We had a great time," said Mathew. "They have bunk beds and you can do whatever you want here." "We played lots of games and told ghost stories," Johnny added.
"I hurt my arm," James said sulkily. "B
ut it was okay." Ben looked at me. "I have a feeling they gave you a hard time," he guessed.
"Let's just say I discovered that they're boys, not angels," I admitted.
"Told you so." Ben laughed.
I waved as they ran down the walk. Then I shut the door and pressed my back against it. "Hey, Mal/' said Nicky. "That was a great idea. When are we going to do it again?" "Never," I told him. "Never. Ever!" Chapter 14.
On Monday I reached gym a few minutes early. Ms. Walden was in her office. "Can I talk to you?" I asked nervously.
She nodded and waved me in. "What's up, Pike?" Taking my mother's advice, I told her I'd like extra help in volleyball.
"I don't think so," she said. "I don't want to pull a player out of the games at this point." "Okay," I muttered. Why did I ever think I could talk to Ms. Walden? Feeling foolish, I turned to leave.
"Wait, Pike," she said. "I'm glad you came in because I wanted to talk to you." "You did?" I asked, worried.
"Yes. I was going to offer you a deal. If you'll play volleyball and try your hardest, I'll ask Mr. De Young to talk to the boys on the other team and ask them to let up on you. I think it's that Brooks kid who's giving you a hard time, isn't it?" "Kind of." I was surprised - happily surprised. I'd tried to approach Chris Brooks several times in the lunchroom to talk to him, but I couldn't get up the nerve. I didn't know him, and anyway I felt dumb.
"Don't get me wrong," Ms. Walden continued. "Brooks is doing the right thing in terms of the game. He's found the other team's weakest point and he's playing to it. That's good strategy. So we're only asking him to do this as a favor to you." She looked at me and, for a second, her face softened. "It's rough getting clobbered all the time. I can understand that." "Thanks," I said.
Ms. Walden got up from her chair. It was almost time for class. "I'm meeting you halfway. I expect the same from you," she said.
"Okay," I agreed.
That was how I survived the next four sessions of volleyball. I tried my hardest, as I'd promised, and the other team (especially Chris Brooks) stopped targeting me as their key to easy victory. I did not grow to like the game, but I actually returned the ball twice. (Okay, so one time I returned it into the net. The other time I got it to teeter on the top of the net and then fall to the other side. It was something, anyway.) Then, one glorious day, I arrived at gym to discover that volleyball was over! "Don't change into your gym suits," Ms. Walden told the class while we were still in the locker room. "We're going outside today to begin the archery unit." "Swell," I grumbled to Jessi. "Now I don't have to worry about being hit with a ball anymore. I only have to worry about being shot in the heart with an arrow." Jessi laughed and shook her head. "Hey, I've never done this before, either. I know I'm going to be terrible at it. I don't care, though. It's exciting. It'll make me feel like Robin Hood." "Boy, you see the bright side of everything," I said as we walked outside to the soccer field.
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