Boys in Control (7 page)

O
n the way to school the next morning, the only two people who were talking to each other were Jake and Eddie. They talked about the Clarksburg team—what they had heard about the pitcher and who was most likely to strike out.

Behind them on the sidewalk, Caroline and Wally glared at each other, and Josh glared at Beth, while Peter strolled along at the rear, humming a little song and running his hand along a row of azalea bushes.

Wally didn't think he could ever be friends with the Malloy girls again. If Caroline ever
—ever—
brought that picture of him in his bunny pajamas to school, with
whiskers
at the sides of his face, even, he would be laughed right out of fourth grade.

He didn't know if he was angrier at the girls for not giving the pictures back or at the Bensons for leaving them behind in the first place. How could they have
forgotten
those
? You don't just take the most humiliating pictures of each other you can possibly imagine and then go off and leave them on top of a heating duct in your basement! You especially don't go off and leave them when a family of
girls
is going to rent your home for a year, especially girls like the Malloy sisters, who had caused Wally more trouble in the ten months they had been living there than the Bensons had caused Wally his whole life!

And yet… had
he
thought to remind the Bensons to take those pictures with them? Had he even remembered where the pictures were hidden? Had his brothers thought to remind them either?

When he was in his seat, leaning forward so that Caroline couldn't tickle him with her ruler, he tried to concentrate on the next week's assignments, which Miss Applebaum was explaining to the class. But when her back was turned and she began writing the new spelling words on the board, Wally heard a soft voice behind him saying, “Hippity-hop, little bunny, hippityhop,” and he felt his ears beginning to turn red. He didn't know which he disliked more at that moment— Caroline Lenore Malloy or his ears.

At recess, Eddie and Jake went over by the fence to practice pitching and catching. Wally stood glumly off to one side with Josh, but their minds were on other things. Finally Josh spoke:

“There's only one thing left to do: get embarrassing pictures of the girls. Then we'll say that if they don't
give those pictures back, we'll put their pictures in that glass case by the auditorium, and by the time the principal sees them, everyone in the whole school will have seen them first.”

“Yeah? How are we going to get embarrassing pictures of the girls? Hide in their bathroom? We
posed
for those pictures, remember?” said Wally.

“Yeah, that's the problem,” said Josh. “I can't think of a way to do it either.”

It was the day of the second baseball game, and cars full of excited players and their parents and friends were on their way to Clarksburg. It seemed to Wally that in every other car they passed was someone they knew. Horns honked. People waved to each other, and by the time they got to Clarksburg High School, the bleachers were beginning to fill up. Mr. Hatford, who had taken the day off work from the post office, and Mrs. Hatford, who had taken a day off from the hardware store, gave Jake a final pat on the back and a squeeze of the shoulder.

“Good luck, Jake. Just play your best,” his mother said.

“Get out there and show 'em what you've got, son,” said his father.

It seemed to Wally that Eddie was in better form than she'd been for the first game. She seemed excited but not too nervous. Buckman was to bat first, and Eddie was first in line. She swung the bat, the ball sailed
right over the head of the center fielder, and Eddie made it home. Clarksburg was beginning to look nervous, and the Buckman fans, especially the Malloys, clapped and cheered.

But Clarksburg didn't have anything to be ashamed of, because they had just as good a batter on their team. Wally didn't study the clouds this time. He didn't hang over the edge of the bleachers looking for ants or think about whether the ball diamond might have been a battlefield in the Civil War and whether there were ghosts of soldiers around. He kept his eyes on the ball, and once, when Jake threw a really fast pitch, he caught Caroline Malloy looking down the bleachers at him and smiling, and he started to smile back before he remembered they were enemies. He turned his eyes toward the pitcher's mound again. All Caroline saw when she looked at him, he was sure, was Wally in his two-sizes-too-small bunny pajamas with floppy ears and feet.

Both teams played well, but the game wasn't especially exciting, Wally decided. After the one home run that Eddie made, there weren't any others. Not until the seventh inning did either team score again.

By the final inning, Buckman was ahead by a run. Clarksburg, however, was at bat, and tension was rising.

This time Eddie was pitching and Jake was at shortstop. There were players on first and second. A tall boy
stepped up to bat, and the Clarksburg crowd began cheering. All he had to do was hit the ball between two of the outfielders, and his team might get not just one run, not just two, but three. Wally swallowed. So did Josh, beside him.

The boy gripped his bat, his eyes on Eddie. Eddie stood still for a moment, seeming to think it over. Glancing quickly at both runners, she faced the batter again, lifted one foot off the ground, and threw. Strike one. Maybe there was hope yet, Wally thought.

The umpire leaned forward. Eddie pitched again. The batter stood motionless. “Ball one,” the umpire said.

This time Eddie took a longer pause, figuring what to do. Then her arm went back, and before anyone expected it, the ball was on its way. The batter swung, the bat connected, and just as he must have planned it, the tall boy hit a line drive between third base and shortstop.

Jake was in control, however. One arm swooped down and he caught the ball with a soft
plop
in his glove.

“Out!” yelled the umpire. But Jake wasn't through yet.

Both base runners were going at top speed. They skidded around to head back. Jake tagged the boy from second on the shoulder.

“Out!” the umpire yelled again.

Jake wheeled around and fired the ball toward first base. The first baseman caught it and put one foot on the bag before the runner could get back.

“Out!” came the umpire's voice again over the cheers from Buckman fans. All three Clarksburg batters were out.

“A triple play!” Josh yelled.

Out on the field, Eddie was jumping up and down. The second baseman had leaped onto Jake's back, and the rest of the team was swarming around him, throwing their gloves in the air and cheering. The Clarksburg team wasn't cheering, of course, but they too had played well and the score was close.

“Jake, that was something else, let me tell you!” said the coach. “With Eddie's home run and your triple play, I don't think we've ever played better.”

Jake beamed. All the Hatfords were out on the field now, slapping him on the back and talking excitedly. It felt pretty good to be a brother of one of the best sixth-grade ballplayers in the school district, Wally thought. Baseball wasn't so bad when he could sit up in the bleachers and watch his brother make a triple play. Maybe if there were triple plays more often, he wouldn't feel like watching the clouds, or the ants carrying crumbs, or a spider weaving a web. If baseball had a little more action, maybe there would be a little more to watch.
should have a parade in Jake's honor, even though the triple play had happened so fast Peter hadn't even seen it and couldn't describe what it was if he tried.

“Well, at least your team will make it to the third game,” said Mr. Hatford. “That much is sure.”

“And I'll just bet they'll be one of those two teams playing the championship game,” said Mrs. Hatford. “I'm certainly glad that Wally is going to watch over the sale tables on the twenty-ninth, because I wouldn't miss that final game for the world. Not if Jake is playing.”

The Women's Auxiliary yard sale!
Wally had almost forgotten about it. Now that baseball had suddenly gotten so exciting, he wanted more than ever to be at the championship game instead of sitting with a bunch of lampshades.

Still, that wasn't the worst thing that could ever happen to him. If that was all he had to worry about, it was only a little thing. Then he remembered: the pictures. The bunny pajamas. He had been feeling so good before, about being the brother of Jake Hatford, and now…

Wally began to think that for the rest of his life, perhaps, the Malloy girls would take those pictures with them wherever they went, and they would always, always be laughing behind his back.

W
ell,” said Eddie as her family went into the house after the game. “I guess I've got my zip back.”

“You have indeed!” said her father. “You played like your old self this afternoon. Between you and Jake, I'd say the coach has himself a pretty good team this year.”

Eddie, Jake; Eddie, Jake; Eddie, Jake; Eddie, Jake…,
thought Caroline in the backseat. As glad as she was for Eddie, as much as she wanted the Buckman Badgers to win the championship, she was sick of hearing about it all the time.

She was tired of Eddie being the center of attention day after day, week after week. Yet, short of running across the baseball field in her underwear, she couldn't think of a single way to focus the attention on herself for a change. Just long enough to remind everyone that she was the girl who would someday
—some
day—have her name in lights on Broadway, and people would say,
“Oh, yes! We knew her when she lived in Buckman, West Virginia.”

The only answer was to get right to work finishing act two of her play, so as soon as they got inside, Caroline went up to her room and shut the door. She came down only long enough to have lunch and dinner, and by evening she was ready to knock on Beth's door.

“I finished act two, Beth,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”

Beth was in the middle of her math homework. When Beth did math, she put her notebook and papers on the floor, then stretched across her bed, her head and arms hanging down one side, and wrote on the paper from above. The way to do math, she declared, was to let the blood rush to her head. Only then could she figure it out.

“Okay,” Beth said, wriggling her body back up on the bed. “I'm ready for a break.” She propped her pillows against the headboard and leaned back, closing her eyes. “Shoot,” she said.

Caroline perched on the edge of Beth's bed and held her tablet out in front of her.

“Like this, Beth,” Caroline said, raising her eyebrows as high as they would go, opening her eyes wide, and shaping her mouth in the form of an O.

Caroline put her tablet down. “Well, how do you like it?” she asked.

“That's it? That's the end of act two?” asked Beth.

Caroline nodded.

“Well, I don't see how a woman whose husband is missing can eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” said Beth.

“She has to keep up her strength,” said Caroline.

“Whatever,” said Beth.

“You don't like it!” said Caroline.

“I didn't say I didn't like it. I just can't quite believe it.”

“Everything will be made clear in the end,” said Caroline. “Everything will come together in act three.”

“Good,” said Beth. “I can wait.”

On Sunday afternoon, Caroline tucked the play under her arm and went over to the Hatfords'. She knocked on the door, and when Peter answered, she said, “I'd like to see Wally, please.”

“Did you bring the pictures?” asked Peter.

“No,” said Caroline. “This is business.”

“Okay,” said Peter. He opened the door wider and Caroline stepped inside.

Wally came downstairs in his stocking feet. He still had on his Sunday clothes, but his shirttail was hanging out in back.

“What do you want?” asked Wally.

“Come out on the porch, Wally. We're going to talk business,” she said. And then, to Peter: “Go back inside, Peter. This is personal.”

“Okay,” said Peter, and shut the door after them.

“What is it?” asked Wally.

Caroline sat down on the steps. “I have a proposition to make. How much do you want those pictures back?”

“You're going to give them to us?” asked Wally, looking wary.

“I didn't say
give,
” said Caroline. “I asked how badly you wanted them back.”

“What do you think?” said Wally. “Badly. A lot.”

“Okay, here's the deal,” said Caroline. “I want something a lot too. You've heard the first act of my play. I want to read the rest to you, and you tell me how you like it. Then
…then…
you perform it with me in front of the class. If you do that, I'll give you the pictures back.”