Girls Rule! (4 page)

“This means… they’ll stay in Buckman!” said Josh, stunned.

“Yep!” said Wally. “For
ever,
maybe! It means that Eddie and Beth and Caroline will grow up here and get married—maybe even marry our best friends—and have children who act just like them!"

“Dinner!” Mrs. Hatford called from downstairs.

Instead of the usual pounding of feet on the stairs, the three boys descended as though they were walking to a funeral. Peter had already washed his hands and had made it to the table before them.

Mrs. Hatford set the baked chicken and rice on the table with a bowl of creamed peas and onions.

“Ah, you know it’s summer when we get the first fresh peas of the season!” said Mr. Hatford.

“Well, not quite,” said his wife. “These came from the supermarket and were probably shipped in from somewhere else. But it won’t be long before we’ll be getting them from our own garden. Wally, would you start the asparagus around, please? Peter, help yourself to the bread.”

“Only nine more days of school!” Peter said as he buttered his slice. “And then—va-
ca
-tion! Aren’t you excited, Wally?”

“Yeah,” Wally said flatly.

Mr. Hatford looked amused. “You don’t
sound
excited. Are you going to miss your teacher over the summer?”

“No way!” said Wally.

“It’s just that every time something
good
happens, something
bad
always follows,” said Jake.

“Now, what in the world makes you think that?” asked his mother. “Sometimes something good happens and then something even better happens after that.”

“Ha!” said Josh.

“So what awful thing could it be?” asked Mr.
Hatford. “I thought you guys would be excited that the Bensons are coming back.”

“We are, except that the Malloys might stay after all,” said Josh, and told his father about Coach Malloy.

“That’s interesting,” said Mr. Hatford. “Most high school coaches would rather teach college.”

“Unless he’s tired of living in a fishbowl,” said Mrs. Hatford. “Everybody watches the college faculty, every move they make. It must be awful. I don’t know how Jean and George stand it.”

“Where would they live if they stayed?” Josh asked. “They’ll have to leave the Bensons’ house.”

“They could move in with us!” Peter said helpfully, smiling around the table. “The girls could bake cookies for us!"

“Are you nuts?” yelped Jake.

“Caroline’s going to bake cookies for
me
!” Peter crowed, his mouth full. “She’s going to bake me some friendship cookies, and all I have to do is put a mark in a box by her name.”

Mr. Hatford stared at his youngest son. “Come again?”

“Caroline said if I vote for her, she’ll bake friendship cookies for me and then she’ll get to be in the parade.”

“Ha! Anyone can be in the parade if they collect twenty dollars for the hospital,” said Wally.

“Only
I’m
not going to choose the parade when I get
my
twenty dollars!” said Peter. “
I’m
going to choose to have all the strawberry treats I can eat.”

His father laughed. “Sounds to me as though you’re
going to choose to have the biggest stomachache you’ve ever had,” he said. “Pass the bread again, Wally, would you?”

Wally mechanically reached out and passed the bread. Then, like a robot, he passed the peas and the rice. He would have passed the chicken if his mother hadn’t stopped him.

“Helloooo!” she said, waving one hand in front of his face. “If the girls stay in Buckman, it’s not the end of the world, Wally.”

After dinner the boys sat out on the front steps in the early June evening and watched the fireflies flitting about in the tall weeds between the road and the river.

“It may not be as bad as we think,” Josh said, trying to find some good in the situation. “You
know
we’d miss the Malloys a
little
if they moved. Do you remember the time we howled outside their windows and scared them half to death?”

Jake grinned. “And tapped on the water pipes in their basement to make them think the house was haunted?”

“And the time we trapped Caroline in the cellar at Oldakers’ Bookstore?” Josh chuckled.

“The fact is, they won’t be in the Bensons’ house, so why should we care if they stay or not? We’ll probably be busy with the Bensons and won’t see the girls at all. We’ll only read about them in the paper when they get married or something,” said Jake.

“Yeah, and Caroline will move away before any of
them, because
she
wants to live in New York City!” said Wally. “
She
wants to be on Broadway.” He was beginning to feel better, and so were his brothers. They stretched out on the steps and put their hands behind their heads, looking up at the night sky.

“So how are we going to collect twenty dollars each before they do, that’s what I want to figure out,” said Jake.

“Are we sure we want to do all that work?” asked Josh.

“
I’d
like to ride on a float with a brass band following along behind,” said Wally.

“Ha! Nobody promised we could ride on a float,” said Josh. “They just said that if we collected twenty dollars or more, we could be in the parade. They didn’t say we’d ride on anything. We could be assigned to walk behind a horse and sweep up manure, for all we know.”

Wally’s eyes opened wide. “They
wouldn’t
!"

“Well, somebody’s got to do it. They always have a few policemen on horseback at every parade, and there’s always someone following along behind with a broom and a bag. You know that,” Jake told him. “ ‘Earn twenty dollars and shovel up horse manure!’ How’s that for a reward?”

“
I
don’t want to shovel horse manure! I want to eat strawberries!” said Peter.

“Yeah, and how are you going to earn the money?” asked Josh.

“I’m just going to stand downtown on a corner, hold
out my collection can, and say, ‘Save a child! Save a child!’ “ Peter said. “No one can walk on by a boy who’s saying ‘Save a child.’ “

Jake looked at his brothers and grinned. “He just might be right.”

“Well, I guess I’ll sit outside the library and try to sell some of my sketches,” said Josh. “I don’t know if anyone will buy them or not.”

“Maybe I’ll offer to mow lawns,” said Jake. “What are you going to do, Wally?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” Wally said.

Five
Onstage

When Caroline got home from the library, she went straight out to the kitchen, where Beth and Eddie were setting the table for dinner.

“The sky is falling,” she said.

Mrs. Malloy turned from the stove, one hand on her hip. “Translation, Caroline?”

“The Bensons are definitely coming back. I heard it from Wally.”

“So what else is new? We were pretty sure they would,” said Eddie.

“No, we weren’t. They kept saying that maybe Coach Benson would take a job down there in Georgia,” said Caroline.

“Well, I’m not surprised,” said her mother. “This just means I’ve really got to start looking around at houses for rent in case we stay. Meanwhile, if we’re here for the summer, what do you girls have in mind? I don’t want you moping around with nothing to do.”

“I signed up for the mystery book club at the library,” said Beth. “And Eddie’s playing summer baseball.” She turned to Caroline. “What about you?”

“
I
just might have a job,” said Caroline. “I might go on performing at birthday parties all summer long. If I do, I can always say that I had my first acting job when I was nine years old.”

“Oh, puh-
leeze
!” said Eddie, and clunked a handful of forks on the table.

The following day when Caroline got home from school, her mother said, “Someone called about a birthday party, Caroline. They want you to act out a fairy tale on Friday after school. The number’s there by the phone.”

Caroline clapped her hands excitedly, but then her face fell. “Only
one
call?” she asked. She had thought she’d get a dozen at least! Beth and Eddie rolled their eyes.

“Once word gets around, Caroline, the phone will ring off the hook,” said Eddie.

“Yeah. There’ll be a line halfway around the block, wanting to sign you up,” said Beth, opening the cupboard and reaching for the pretzels.

Caroline cleared her throat and picked up the
phone. She dialed the number. When a woman answered, she said, “This is the actress Caroline Lenore Malloy calling about my performance at your party.”

Her sisters groaned.

“Oh, yes,” said the woman on the line, sounding a little surprised. “We live right across the street from the college. We’d like you to act out a fairy tale for some six-year-old girls. Could you do ‘Hansel and Gretel’? It’s my daughter’s favorite.”

“Of course,” said Caroline.

“Friday at four-thirty,” the woman said, and gave her the address. “Will five dollars be about right?”

“Yes, thank you. The money goes to the Hospital Building Fund, you know.”

“Yes, that’s lovely,” said the woman.

As soon as she hung up, Caroline raced upstairs. She went through her closet looking for everything she might use as a costume for her fairy tales—a long black skirt, a red jacket, a fur-trimmed parka, a velvet dress with a lace collar.

She would have to be three different characters for this performance, she decided: Hansel, Gretel, and the witch. For Hansel’s part, she borrowed Eddie’s baseball cap; for Gretel, she chose a blue shawl to wear over her head. For the witch, she got down the pointed black hat she sometimes wore on Halloween.

Then she wrote out the script as she would say it and made little check marks beside each point where she was supposed to put something different on her head. Oh, she was going to be wonderful! She hoped
the woman would call the newspaper and ask a photographer to come over on the day of the party and take a picture of the performance for the front page.

“Well,” Caroline told the boys the next day when they met the Hatfords at the end of the bridge. “I have my first job! I’m going to collect five dollars on Friday for performing at a birthday party.”

“What are you going to perform?” asked Josh.