Boys in Control (8 page)

“No way! I can't!” said Wally. “I'm not an actor.”

“Well, just read your part, that's all. You don't have to do anything.”

“But I don't even like it!”

“You don't understand it yet, Wally. Once you hear act three, you'll understand it, and if you understand it, you'll probably like it. And even if you don't, well… you don't want that picture of you in your bunny pajamas to go around school, do you?”

“No!” said Wally.

“Okay, then. I just want you to sit right here and listen to act two, and then tell me what you think,” said Caroline.

“If I listen to the play and read it with you in class— just
read
it—you'll give me the picture of me in my bunny pajamas?” Wally asked.

“Yes,” said Caroline.

“And you'll give me the rest of the pictures too?”

“Yes,” said Caroline. “But we can't tell
any
body. If Beth and Eddie find out I gave those pictures back, they'll kill me.”

“Why? What do they want to do with them?” asked Wally.

Caroline looked deep into Wally's eyes. “Blackmail,” she said.

“You mean they'd use them to make us do anything they want?”

“That's right.”

“That's exactly what you're doing to me!” said Wally. “You're making me read a play in front of the class.”

“Correct,” said Caroline.

“That's blackmail!” said Wally.

“Bingo,” said Caroline.

A half hour later, Caroline took her play home.

“Where have
you
been?” asked Beth.

“I just read act two to Wally Hatford and he listened,” said Caroline.

“So?” said Beth. “What else could he do? Did he
like
it?”

“I don't know,” said Caroline. “But guess what? He's
going to read Jim's part in front of our class so that I can get an A-plus. If he didn't like it, do you think he'd do
that
?”

“How did you get him to say yes?” asked Eddie from across the room. “Wally Hatford wouldn't do that unless he was hanging upside down over the Grand Canyon by his heels.”

“Well, something like that,” said Caroline, and went on up to her room to write act three.

W
hen Wally's brothers went to baseball practice on the Monday before the third game, Wally walked home alone. He didn't feel like watching Jake practice. He was afraid that if he was around Jake and Josh for very long, he might let it slip—what he was going to do to get their pictures back. And the reason he didn't want it to slip was because he didn't entirely trust Caroline Malloy to keep her promise.

Not that she would deliberately lie to him, but she might not actually have the pictures. Eddie or Beth might have put them away for safekeeping, and no matter what Caroline told Wally about giving them back, she might not be able to do it. And he would have made a fool of himself in front of the class for nothing. No, if he was to suffer, he would suffer alone.

The second reason he didn't want his brothers to know was…well, maybe Wally would have to do a
little blackmail of his own. The twins were always getting Wally to do things he didn't want to do. And if he had the pictures, he could say no and mean it. He could say that if they made him do whatever it was he didn't want to do, he would take their pictures to school. He could only do this once, of course, because they would pulverize him if he tried it twice and didn't give the pictures back, but maybe he should hang on to them for an emergency.

He opened the door with his key and went to the kitchen. Now that he was ten years old, he had his own key. His mother didn't call to see if the boys were all right because she thought they were all at the school watching Jake practice. So Wally prepared to enjoy having the house to himself.

First he got down the crackers and peanut butter. He got out the cheese. He found the corn chips and the pickles and the pitcher of cold tea, the applesauce and leftover macaroni. Then he sat down at the table.

It wasn't very often that Wally had the house to himself, and it was nice. It was great, in fact, without Peter's constant chatter and Jake's complaining and Josh's bragging about this or that.

Wally propped his feet up on the chair at the end of the table, smeared a cracker with peanut butter, placed a little square of cheese on top of the peanut butter and a piece of pickle on top of the cheese. He was just about to pop it all into his mouth when the doorbell rang.

Wally put down the cracker and walked to the front
door. When he opened it, he saw two women with purses tucked under their arms. One had on a pink jacket and the other wore her hair in a braid over one shoulder.

“Hello,” said the woman in the pink jacket. “Are you one of the Hatford boys?”

“Yes,” said Wally.

“We understand that this is where the things for the Women's Auxiliary yard sale are being stored,” the woman said.

“Not till the last Saturday of the month,” Wally said. “Sorry.”

“Oh, but we've heard that some things were donated early,” said the woman with the braid. She was wearing sandals and had bright red polish on her toenails.

“Well, some things, but most of the stuff is coming the Friday before the sale,” Wally explained.

“We'd just like to come in and look at what you have so far,” said the woman with the red toenails.

“Oh, I can't let you do that,” said Wally.

“But we'll pay for anything we find now and take it off your hands,” said the woman in the pink jacket.

“Well …” Wally hesitated. He wondered if she'd buy everything that was piled in his room. He didn't know these women, but then he didn't know a lot of women in Buckman. “I'll have to go call Mom,” he said.

“Certainly,” said the red toenails.

Wally shut the door, but not quite all the way because
he didn't want to seem rude, and went to the phone in the kitchen.

The owner of the hardware store answered. “Your mom's with a customer, Wally,” he said. “She'll be with you in just a minute.”

Mrs. Hatford must have been selling a customer nails, because Wally could hear the sound of nails being poured into one of the metal scoops on the scales. The hardware store had a metal scoop where you put the object being weighed. Then Mrs. Hatford would take little round weights and put them on the other side of the scales, one by one, until both sides of the scale dangled evenly in the air. There was no digital anything in the hardware store, and that, said the owner, was just the way he liked it.

Finally Mrs. Hatford got on the line. “Wally?” she said.

“Mom, I came home from practice early because I was tired of watching Jake, and there are two women out on the porch who want to look at what we've collected for the yard sale so far.”

“Who are they?” his mother asked.

“I don't know.”

“Well, it doesn't much matter, because we can't let anyone buy anything until the sale opens on the twenty-ninth. That's the rule. We have to be fair. Otherwise people would be sneaking over all the time and buying the best things before anyone else got a chance. Tell them I'm sorry, but they'll have to wait till the last
Saturday in May. Goodness, I had no idea the sale would be so popular!”

Wally went back to the door and put his hand on the knob. “I'm sorry,” he said as he opened it. Then he stopped. The porch was empty. At that moment he heard the floor creak in the hallway and when he turned around, he saw the two women poking around in the walk-in closet.

“Oh, forgive us, but we're just so eager to see what you have for sale,” said the woman in the pink jacket.

“Mom says I can't let you buy anything before the twenty-ninth,” said Wally. “Sorry.”

The women looked disappointed. “Well, we won't even try to buy anything, then, but if you could just let us look the things over? Have a peek? Just show us where they are?”

Something told Wally that he didn't much like these women. He knew his mother's rule about strangers in the house. “No,” he said, and opened the front door wide. “I guess you'll have to go now.”

“Of course,” said the woman with the red toenails. “We're just too eager. We do love a good yard sale. Thank you anyway, young man.”

“You're welcome,” said Wally, and shut the door.

He went to the kitchen again and ate his crackers. Then he called his mother and told her what had happened.

“You mean they walked right into our house while you were on the phone with me?” she gasped. “Why,
Wally, they could have been kidnappers! They could have whisked you away before you knew it!” There was a pause. “Did they take anything?”

Wally began to worry. “I don't know. I don't think so.”

“Go look in the dining room and see if the green vase is still on the buffet,” said Mrs. Hatford.

Wally went into the dining room and looked. “The vase is still there,” he told his mother.

“Did they go upstairs?”

“No.”

“Well, look in the living room and see if that little marble dish on the coffee table is still there.”

Wally went into the living room.

“It's there,” he told his mom.

“What about the little picture hanging beside the coatrack in the hall? Is that still there?”

“Just a minute,” said Wally. He checked the wall by the coatrack. “Yes,” he told his mother. “That's still there.”

“Well, I imagine they were just curious, as they said. We get some frenzied shoppers at these sales, let me tell you! But in the future, don't let anyone in unless it's a member of the auxiliary, Wally, and you know who those women are.”

“Okay,” said Wally.

At school the next day, Miss Applebaum said, “Class, you have just one more week to turn in your book reports. I know that some of you may have been waiting
for a certain book at the library that hasn't come in yet, and that baseball season is here and a lot of you have been watching the team practice. But there are eleven of you who have not turned in your reports, and you have only seven more days to finish the project.” She turned to Caroline. “Caroline, are you still determined to write a ten-page play, or will you do a book report?”

“I'm working on the play, Miss Applebaum,” Caroline said. “But I'll have it done in a week and I'll read it to the class.”

“I'm sure we're all looking forward to that,” the teacher said, and perhaps she didn't hear the low moans that went around the room. A precocious girl who
knows
she is precocious is not always the most popular girl in school. Especially if that girl is a year younger than everyone else, and especially if she is Caroline Lenore Malloy. From
Ohio,
as Caroline would say, meaning that much closer to New York City and Broadway.

After baseball practice that afternoon, the girls went on ahead and Wally walked behind with his brothers.

“Life would be great right now if only we had those pictures,” Jake said. “That's the only thing in the world keeping me from being really happy now that I've made the Buckman Badgers.”

“We
have
to get them back,” said Josh.

“Maybe we should just go to the sheriff and tell him the Malloys have something that belongs to us,” said
Wally. “Maybe Dad, as sheriff's deputy, could go over to the Malloys’ in uniform and demand them back.”

Josh and Jake stared at him.

“Are you nuts?” asked Jake. “Do you think for one minute he'd do that?”

“If it was important enough, he would,” said Wally, beginning to waver.

“And what would you tell him was so important?” asked Jake. “A picture of you in your bunny pajamas? A picture of me with spaghetti hanging out of my nose? Get real.”

The day didn't seem quite as sunny, somehow, as it had before.

Perhaps because they were out of sorts, everything seemed to irritate them. Peter had a spring cold, for one thing. His nose was dripping and he snuffled constantly.

When they got home and were getting out the cheese and crackers, Josh said, “Peter, you're disgusting! Wipe your nose, will you?”

Peter started to run his sleeve along under his nose, but Wally yelped, “Not snot on your sleeve! Get a Kleenex or something!”

Peter looked around the kitchen for a box of tissues and, not finding any, dug around in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a rag. As he wiped his nose with that, he smeared chocolate across his face.

“Yuck!” Jake yelled. “What's that?”

Peter looked at the rag in his hand. “Chocolate,” he said.

“Where did you get it?”

“When I was having dinner at the Malloys',” Peter said. And because his brothers were still staring, he added, “I went out in the kitchen and took some of their fudge pie, but then I saw Caroline coming, so I grabbed the dishcloth and wiped my mouth and stuffed it in my pocket so she wouldn't see.”

Jake's face was wrinkled in disgust as he studied the rag in Peter's hand. “Now it's got chocolate
and
snot all over it!” he said. “What a weird dishcloth. It looks like it's got elastic, too!”

Josh leaned over. “It's got
words
all over it!” He looked even closer. “The words say
Let's play ball
!”

Wally took the rag from Peter's hands and shook it out. Then he held it up by two fingers. The four boys gasped in unison, for Wally was holding a pair of girls’ underpants—old underpants with worn elastic and holes all over.