“I don't know how it happens,” he went on. “I'm not even sure exactly what happens, for that matter. But whenever the seven of you get together, the roof falls in, so to speak. Surely you boys had other friends before my daughters came to Buckman.”
The girls were aghast. They had never heard their father talk like this. It seemed so rude. Caroline couldn't stand it. If her father actually forbade the Hat-ford boys to come over, what in the world would she do for fun? Where would she ever find the same excitement, the romance, the mystery, the revenge ?
But Wally was talking next. “We did have best friends, but they moved out when you moved in,” he explained.
“There are other boys in this town, surely!” said Mrs. Malloy. “You don't have to spend all your time over here.”
Caroline burst into tears. “I can't believe what you're saying! How can you be so rude? You're telling the Hat-fords they can't cross the river in their very own town?”
“Now, wait a minute—” said the coach.
But Eddie interrupted. “It's still a free country.”
“We don't tell you when your friends can come over,” cried Beth, real tears in her eyes, while the Hatford boys stared, openmouthed. She turned to her mother. “We don't stop you from being friends with that awful woman in the Faculty Wives’ Club who—”
“Now, girls!” said their father.
Suddenly Josh reached out, handed Beth his note, then charged toward the door and out into the night, his brothers at his heels.
Beth stared at the folded piece of paper for a moment, then ran up to her room and slammed her door.
“Well, Jean, it looks like we blew it,” said the coach.
“You'd make a fine dictator!” said Eddie, and followed her sister upstairs.
As her parents stared helplessly after Eddie, Caroline grandly walked over to the staircase, put one foot on the bottom step, and said, “You may win this battle, General, but don't be surprised if you lose the war.” And with her head held high, she too went upstairs.
As soon as she reached Beth's room, Caroline slipped inside and crawled onto the bed beside Beth and Eddie. Beth, her cheeks pink, had opened the note, and she handed it to her sisters. It was Josh's handwriting, all right:
I shouldn't have sent Peter with the chocolates. I didn't know he'd eat them. XXXOOO Josh
Caroline looked at the note, then at Beth, whose eyes were wide with delight. Josh was sending hugs and kisses? This was even more romantic than the box of chocolates. This was almost like kissing Beth in person. Beth Malloy had almost been kissed.
“I sure don't want any boy sending me X’s and O’s,” said Eddie disapprovingly.
“Why?” asked Beth. “Don't you ever want to fall in love?”
“Sure,” said Eddie, “but I don't want a boy acting romantic now. I want the boys on the baseball team to look at me and see a pitcher, not a girlfriend.”
Caroline could hardly stand it. She was caught up in romance. Going into her own room, she took out the valentine she had bought for Wally Hatford, the one that said For My Beloved on the envelope, and on the inside, where she had signed it Achingly yours, she added a row of X 's and a row of O's.
Fourteen
Party
When Wally and his brothers got home, they were met at the door by Peter.
“I've got a surprise !” he said, eager to make friends with Josh again, and led them up to his room.
“Boy, Peter, this better be good,” Josh muttered.
Peter closed the door after him, then reached under his bed and pulled out a low square box. Inside the box were the crumpled remains of a chocolate heart.
“Look what I found outside! Somebody threw it away, and it's delicious!” he said, smacking his lips. He pushed the box toward Josh. “I'm sorry I ate Beth's chocolates, but I saved half of this for you.”
Wally stared. Josh stared. Jake put out one finger and dug into the center of the chocolate heart. He licked his finger.
“So you bet it was gross, huh?” he said to Josh. “So
Beth's not your girlfriend and you only hang around her to spy? If you're a spy, then I'm the president.” He went across the hall to the boys’ room and shut the door.
Josh looked at Peter. “How did you find this box?”
“I wondered where you guys had gone, and when I went outside with my flashlight to see if you were there, I found the box.” He looked from Wally to Josh and back again. “What'd I do ?” he asked. “What's wrong?”
“You're still breathing, that's what,” said Josh.
Wally wrote a letter to Bill Benson in Georgia:
Dear Bill (and Danny and Steve and Tony and Doug),
I don't know what's happening here, but things were never like this before you guys moved away.
I don't know if the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie are friends or enemies.
I don't know if they're nuts or not.
I don't even know how we feel about them anymore. Josh is in love with Beth, I think, and Caroline is acting strange. We're not supposed to cross the river, and nobody ever told us before where we could and couldn't go in this town.
By the time you guys get back here, if you ever do, Josh and Beth will probably be married, and Jake and I will have joined the marines. I will probably have to run off to get away from Caroline, but then she'd only go after Peter instead.
COME BACK! NOW!!!!!
Wally
On Monday, Valentine's Day, Wally took an old shoe box without any decorations whatsoever on it, and with a Magic Marker, simply wrote his name on the side of the box. He cut a slit in the top for valentines. He wished he were in sixth grade and didn't have to go to any stupid Valentine's party. He would much rather have a Halloween party, where everyone got to roam around the room in masks and gulp handfuls of candy corn.
When he got to school, he walked into the classroom to find Caroline Malloy sitting primly in her seat, wearing a red velvet dress with a white lace collar, and smiling a smile as wide as a banana.
“Hello, Wally,” she purred as he took his seat, and she leaned forward so far that he could feel her breath on his neck.
“Hi,” said Wally without turning around, and leaned forward so that she couldn't possibly touch him. Caroline Malloy as herself was bad enough, but Caroline in a red velvet dress meant trouble.
“Happy Valentine's Day,” came the voice behind him again.
Wally got up and crossed the room to sharpen his pencil and stayed there until Miss Applebaum took the roll. When he finally sat down again, he realized that Caroline was using the edge of her ruler to trace a large heart on the back of his shirt.
All day Wally did his best not even to look at Caroline Malloy. He tried his best not to listen to her. He wished it were three o'clock and he could go home, but there had to be a party, and at two o'clock, Miss Applebaum said to put their books away and go collect the valentine shoe boxes from the windowsill, where friends had been slipping valentines all day.
Then the teacher sent a boy around with a tray of paper cups filled with pink punch, and a girl followed carrying a tray of cupcakes with red-and-white frosting, and somebody else passed out little paper cups filled with heart-shaped candies that said things like HEY KID and HOT MAMA, BLUE EYES and IDIGU.
Wally took a bite of his cupcake with the red-andwhite icing and opened the lid of his shoe box. There were just a handful of valentines, the silly kind, from his buddies, and that was just fine with Wally. He didn't want any dumb valentines from girls that would make Jake tease him.
He had just taken another bite of his cupcake when something flew over his left shoulder and landed on his desk. Wally picked up an orange candy heart and looked at it.
NEW LOVE, it said on the heart.
Wally popped it in his mouth and stared straight ahead.
Ping!
Another candy came flying over his right shoulder and hit his hand. Wally didn't move, but the candy was resting against his thumb, so h
e finally reached over with his other hand and picked it up.
SWEET DREAMS, it said.
Wally popped that in his mouth too.
This time Wally felt fingers on the back of his neck and a candy tucked under his collar.
Wally grabbed at the candy and tossed it behind him, but it came flying back again, and he could not help noticing that the writing said SWEETHEART. Wally's ears turned as red as the frosting on his cupcake.
The class played a few word games next. Miss Applebaum wrote Valentine on the blackboard, and the class was supposed to see who could make the most words out of the letters by mixing them up. They sang songs and did relay races with shiny red apples. Wally stayed as far away from Caroline as he could.
When the bell rang at three, Wally was the first one out of his seat. He threw his cupcake wrapper and paper cup in the trash and hurried out to the coatrack. He tossed on his jacket and had just turned to leave when he found himself face-to-face with Caroline in her red velvet dress with the lace collar.
“For you,” she said sweetly, pressing an envelope into his hand.
Wally stared at Caroline, at the weird smile on her face. Then he looked down at the envelope.
For My Beloved, it said.
Wally raced outside as though bees were after him, afraid lest anyone else should see the words, and thrust the card at the first person he met, who happened to be Jake.
“For you,” he said.
Fifteen
Love Lost
What Caroline couldn't stand was that all the excitement in the family these days—among the three girls, anyway—seemed to be happening to Beth, not to her.
Beth was absolutely impossible. Since Josh had sent her chocolates and then a note with X’s and O’s, Beth was dreamy and giggly and excited and silly and didn't even know what day it was half the time. She put a white sock on one foot and a pink one on the other and didn't even notice.
This should all be happening to me, Caroline thought, not Beth. Yet for a week after Valentine's Day, Wally wouldn't even speak to her. He wouldn't even look at her. How could anybody with half a brain resist a girl in a red velvet dress with a white lace collar? How could he not even thank her for a card addressed For My Beloved and signed Achingly yours ?
Wally was mad at Caroline, and Jake and Josh were mad at Eddie about the science project. They had not gotten a very good grade on it. In fact, at the science fair, the teacher had used it as an example of how a project should not be done. First, she'd written, the three students had not started out with the same hypothesis, that boys were more gullible than girls; second, there was no sure way of knowing whether students had come because they really believed they would see the abaguchie or just for fun; third …
Eddie had been too discouraged to read the rest of her teacher's comments. She had crumpled up the paper her teacher had returned and left it on the kitchen table for her parents to read, but not before Caroline had seen a big red C– at the top. The only people who seemed to be getting along these days were Beth and Josh.
At lunchtime in the all-purpose room one day, Caroline was eating with some of her friends, and one of the fourth-grade girls was talking about her boyfriend. Caroline stared at her in dismay. A fourth-grade girl actually did have a boyfriend? And Caroline didn't?
“The problem is,” the girl was saying importantly, “boys are shy. A boy can be in love and not even know it. And if he does know it, he won't admit it.”
“Really?” said Caroline.
“Really,” said her friend. “If you see a boy looking at you sideways out of the corner of his eye, it means he likes you. But he'll never tell you so, and when he's around his friends, he might even insult you so no one will guess how he really feels.”
That's it! thought Caroline. Wally's just shy.
The first thing to do was to see whether or not he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. So after lunch, when the whole class was making maps for social studies, Caroline went to the pencil sharpener to sharpen all her colored pencils, whether they needed it or not. She put the green pencil in the sharpener and began to turn the handle. Then suddenly she whirled around and stared straight at Wally Hatford.
She couldn't tell if he had been watching her or not, but he was certainly watching her now. In fact, when he saw Caroline staring straight at him, his own pencil fell out of his hand and onto the floor.
Aha! thought Caroline. She turned back to the sharpener again and did her blue pencil, then the red, and when she was halfway through sharpening the purple one, she whirled again, her eyes on Wally, and he seemed to rise two inches off his chair.
So he was watching her, she decided. And with a knowing smile on her face, she collected her colored pencils, went back to her desk, and tickled Wally lightly behind his ear with the tip of the blue pencil. He swatted it away as though it were a mosquito.
“That's okay, Wally,” she whispered, leaning forward so that she was breathing on his neck again. “I know you really like me.”
“I do not!” Wally said aloud, and the whole class looked up. So did the teacher.
“Yes, Wally?” she said.
“I don't !” said Wally, his ears as red as his sweater.
“You don't what?”
“Really like Caroline,” said Wally, and now the red was spreading to his face and neck.
Miss Applebaum looked puzzled. “Did someone say you did?”
“Caroline did, and I don't !” Wally's words shot from his mouth like bullets.
Caroline was surprised to find that her own cheeks and ears seemed to be getting feverish, and when the other kids giggled, her skin grew warmer still.
“Caroline, perhaps you could save your personal conversation with Wally till after school,” the teacher said.
“No!” said Wally again. “Not then, not ever!”
“Oh,” said the teacher. “Well, if you have anything to say to Wally, Caroline, please write him a note and give it to him after class.”
“No!” Wally yelped again. “She already did, and I don't really like her.”
Caroline had never heard Wally talk up like this in class. Usually he was on the quiet side, rather dreamy and somewhat polite—to the teacher, anyway. But now his voice was too loud, his face too red, and it could mean only one thing: that he really, really liked her, because he had to try so hard to convince everyone that he didn't. She smiled to herself and leaned over her map again, exchanging winks with the friend she'd talked to at lunch.
After school, the Hatford boys were far down the sidewalk before Caroline and her sisters came out. Caroline hadn't told Beth and Eddie about the valentine she'd given Wally because she knew Beth thought she was the only one who could be in love, and Eddie would call her ridiculous. So she couldn't very well tell them what Wally had said in class. Thoughtfully, she followed along behind her sisters while they talked of school and this and that, and wondered how in the world to make a boy fall in love with her just long enough for her to experience romance.
When they came to the swinging bridge, however, Eddie went first, and Beth hung back, so Caroline stepped onto the bridge. When she had taken only a few steps, she glanced over her shoulder in time to see Beth taping a small piece of paper to the cable handrail.
Caroline quickly faced forward again as Beth came up behind her.
A note! Beth was taping a secret message to Josh, Caroline was sure of it. This was wonderful! It was wonderful because it was full of mystery and romance and intrigue. And it was awful because it was happening to Beth instead of her.
The girls gathered in the kitchen for corn chips and pop. Mrs. Malloy was ironing shirts in the dining room and listening to a symphony on a CD. Caroline and her sisters talked for a few minutes, and then Beth and Eddie took their books upstairs. As soon as Beth was out of the kitchen, Caroline put on her coat again and slipped out the back door. Darting from bush to bush, she made her way down the hill until she found a spot where she was sure she could not
be seen from either Beth's window or the other side of the bridge. Then she waited.
She didn't have to wait long. Almost no time at all, in fact, because thirty seconds later, she saw Josh Hat-ford saunter down the bank, hands in his pockets. Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he stopped on the bridge, resting his arms on the cable handrail as though just thoughtfully looking out over the river. But ever so stealthily, he reached over, peeled off the note Beth had taped there, thrust it into his pocket, and then ambled back up the bank.
Tears rolled down Caroline's cheeks. She wanted a note. She wanted romance. She didn't especially want Wally Hatford as a boyfriend, but if she had to have one to experience love, she'd do anything.
She went back to the house and lay facedown on the couch.
Mrs. Malloy looked in on her. “Tummyache, Caroline?” she asked.
Caroline rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling. “Heartache,” she replied in as tragic and dramatic a voice as she could manage.
Mrs. Malloy leaned against the doorway and studied her daughter. “Are we talking heartache as in a pain in the chest, or heartache as in a broken heart?” she asked.
“A broken heart,” said Caroline. “Shattered into a million pieces.” Oh, she was good. Even her mother believed her!
“Hmmm,” said Mrs. Malloy. “We wouldn't be talking about one of the Hatford boys, would we? I thought we had an understanding that—”
“I don't want to talk about it,” said Caroline, and turned her face to the wall. She felt so sorry for herself, she couldn't help smiling.
Dinner was early that evening because Mr. and Mrs. Malloy were attending a concert at the university.
“We won't be late, girls,” their mother told them. “But I expect you to have your homework done and be in bed by the time we come back. Okay?”
“We will,” Eddie promised.
The girls did watch TV for a while, however, but when they turned it off at eight-thirty and headed upstairs, all three of them saw it at the same time: an envelope thrust under the front door.
A Spy Among the Girls Page 7
