Boys Rock! (6 page)

The swinging bridge swayed as they started across. Peter ran his hand along the rope railing, taking it away each time they reached a support cable, then putting his hand back again. He counted each cable: “One … two … three …”

When they got to the other side, both boys cast wary glances at the tall brush on either side of the path that
led up the hill to the Malloys’ backyard. Peter moved a little closer to Wally’s leg.

Suddenly Wally slowed and listened, his head cocked to one side. He heard something but couldn’t tell what. It sounded like a small motor. A long, low hum that was strung out for fourteen or fifteen seconds. Then, after a short pause, it continued on the same note.

Peter heard it too. Hesitantly, they started forward again, heads turning right and left to see if they could tell where the sound was coming from.

Then Wally came to a dead stop and grabbed Peter’s arm. For there, on the big rock on this side of the river, was a white apparition. A strange unearthly hum was coming from the ghostlike figure. Wally couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, human or beast. It was covered with a thin white film that fluttered slightly in the breeze.

Wally thought of the ghost in his summer reading book; the fog people in the movie, with their long fingers that you could see right through; the mysterious scratching, clawing, scraping sound beneath the floorboards in Mike Oldaker’s cellar. Suddenly he felt his feet turning, his legs moving, and before he knew it he was back on the swinging bridge heading for home at breakneck speed.

When he collapsed on the porch and turned to ask Peter if he had seen it too, Peter was not there. Peter had disappeared.

Eight
Peter Squeals

N
ow
what? Caroline wondered, looking around. Maybe her aura was working and she was attracting people already.

It sounded as though someone had started up the path, then stopped, then run back over the footbridge again. Probably one of the Hatford boys spying on her, as usual. Caroline reached up and pulled the curtain off her head. There stood Peter Hatford, staring at her.

“I
thought
it was you,” he said.

“Really?” said Caroline. “Did you sense something unusual in the atmosphere, Peter?”

“No,” said Peter. “I saw your shoes beside the rock.”

“Oh,” said Caroline, disappointed.

“Why do you have a curtain over your head?” asked Peter.

“It’s a shawl,” said Caroline. “So who else is hanging around over here? Wally? The twins?”

“Wally thought you were a ghost, I think,” said Peter. “He went home.”

Caroline laughed. “So where were you going?”

“To your place,” said Peter. “I guess I’ll have to go by myself.”

“I guess so,” said Caroline. She slid down off the rock and picked up her sandals. She’d have to work on her aura another time, because it was always fun when Peter came over. He could be bribed with a couple of cookies to tell the girls almost anything they wanted to know. He followed her up to the house.

“Peter’s here,” Caroline called out as they went through the back door. Eddie and Beth were finishing the dinner dishes, and Caroline knew she’d have to do them the next night.

Beth grinned at Eddie. “And I wonder what
he
wants?” she murmured, hanging up the dish towel.

Peter walked over to the table and waited expectantly.

“So what’s up, Peter?” said Eddie.

“Nothing,” said Peter. “I’m helping Wally. We were bringing over the cartoon Josh drew for the newspaper.”

“Yeah? Where is it?” asked Eddie.

“Wallys got it.”

“So did he fall off the bridge or what?” asked Beth.

“I think he got scared by Caroline with the curtain over her head,” said Peter, his eyes traveling around
the kitchen until they came to rest on the cookie canister.

“She’s enough to scare anybody, curtain or no curtain,” said Eddie. “What kind of cartoon did he draw?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “I just came along to keep Wally company.”

“Uh-huh,” said Eddie, and she and Beth and Caroline exchanged smiles.

Beth leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded over her chest. “Well, I don’t know if we have any cookies for you or not, Peter.”

“Yeah. We can’t give you cookies for
nothing
” said Eddie. “But maybe we could find some if you give us information in return.”

Peter sighed. “What kind of information?” he asked.

“Oh, any
other
secret plans your brothers might have for the newspaper,” Eddie said. “It was a dirty rotten trick to name the newspaper the
Hatford Herald
and put posters all over town without telling us.”

“Yeah. That’s what Jake said you’d say,” said Peter.

“So is there anything else we don’t know about?”

Peter thrust his hands into his pockets and frowned thoughtfully. “Like an ace in the hole?” he asked.

“Exactly,” said Eddie.

Peter frowned some more. “What kind of cookies?”

Beth reached around for the canister and checked. “Peanut butter chocolate chunk, your favorite kind.”

“Okay,” said Peter.

“First,” said Eddie, “what have Jake and Josh and
Wally said about us? Are they okay with me being editor in chief?”

Peter climbed onto a kitchen stool. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Jake isn’t, anyway.”

“No? What has he said?”

Beth dug into the canister and held up a large cookie studded with chunks of dark chocolate. Eddie poured Peter a glass of milk.

Peter squirmed hard and pursed his mouth, trying to remember. “Um … he said … ‘That old hotshot Eddie doesn’t know about our ace in the hole if she gets too bossy’ ”

“Yeah? And what would that be?” Eddie said, putting the milk down in front of Peter.

“How many cookies do I get?” asked Peter.

“Three,” said Beth.

“Four,” said Peter.

“Okay, four. Now what’s their ace in the hole, Peter? What would they do?” Eddie asked.

“Strike,” said Peter, and took the first cookie.

Beth and Eddie and Caroline all stared at Peter.

“Strike?” said Eddie. “Hey, we’re not the ones who are getting summer reading credit for making a newspaper. We’ll probably be back in Ohio by September.”

Peter shrugged. “That’s what he said. Strike.” He swung his legs back and forth while he chewed. Beth put three more cookies on a saucer and set it before him.

“The problem,” Beth said, thinking it over, “is that
your name is on it as editor in chief, Eddie. If the paper doesn’t come out…”

“It’ll come out if we have to do it all ourselves!” Eddie said hotly. “Besides, who said I’m bossy? Who said I’m not fair? I can be the unbossiest, most fair person in the world when I want to be.”

“That’s good,” said Peter, swinging his legs some more.

“Hello, Peter,” Mrs. Malloy said, coming into the kitchen with a pan full of peas she had been shelling in front of the TV. “How are things at your house?”

“Sort of boring,” said Peter. “I’m supposed to have a job on the newspaper and nobody lets me do any work.”

“Poor thing,” said Beth.

“Are you going to miss us if we move back to Ohio?” Mrs. Malloy teased.

Peter nodded.

“What will you miss the most?” asked Beth.

Peter looked down at the cookies in front of him and everyone laughed.

“I thought so,” said Eddie.

The phone rang just then and Caroline answered. It was Wally

“Is … is Peter there?” he asked.

“Peter … ?” Caroline paused, smiling at her sisters. “Why? Is he missing?”

“Caroline!” her mother said sternly.

“Yes, he’s here,” said Caroline.

Now it was Jake on the phone. “Let me speak to Peter,” he said.

“He’s got a mouthful of cookies, sorry,” said Caroline.

“Well, tell him to swallow,” said Jake.

Caroline turned to Peter. “Swallow,” she said.

Peter did. Then he drank some milk and took another bite.

“Okay, he’s listening,” Caroline said, and held the phone up to Peter’s ear, but far enough away that she and her sisters could hear too.

“Peter!” said Jake. “Don’t tell the girls anything. Do you hear me?”

Peter nodded.

“Are you listening, Peter?”

“Uh-huh,” said Peter, and went on chewing.

“
Any
thing!” Jake repeated. “Josh will take his cartoon over there tomorrow and you come on home. Now! And keep your mouth shut.”

“Okay,” said Peter.

Mrs. Malloy put the peas in the refrigerator for the next day’s dinner. “Caroline, when Peter finishes eating, walk him home, will you? He shouldn’t be crossing that bridge in the dark by himself. Take a flashlight.”

Peter finished the last cookie and rubbed his stomach contentedly.

“Come on,” said Caroline, and he followed her outside.

They went back down the path to the river, the beam from the flashlight leading the way. Caroline took the opportunity to ask, “If we move back to Ohio, Peter, what will you remember most about me?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter.

“Well, think. Does anything in particular come to mind? My face? My voice? My hair? My eyes?”

“Your elbows,” said Peter.

Caroline stopped and stared at him. “My
elbows
?”

“Yeah,” said Peter. “They’re sort of dirty. I think you lean your arms on the paper when you read the comics or something. Wally does the same thing and he gets dirty elbows too.”

Caroline did not care to walk Peter across the bridge. She shone the flashlight on the wooden planks till he was safely on the other side, and waited until she heard the door slam in the house across the river. Then she turned and went back home.

Her elbows! All this time she’d been going around with ink smudges on her elbows! The embarrassment! The humiliation! Now she’d have to do something really spectacular so that people would forget all about her elbows!

Nine
The
Old Times Tribune

W
ally was ashamed of himself. He had not meant to leave Peter behind. He had not even meant to run. He was enormously relieved when he called the Malloys and found out that Peter was there—eating cookies, as usual—but he was embarrassed to tell his brothers how it had happened. About all the ghosts that had taken a room in his brain.

“Don’t ever leave Peter alone with those girls, not even for a second!” Jake said. “You can never trust him to keep his mouth shut.”

“So what’s there to tell?” Wally asked.

“You never know, where Peter’s concerned. He picks up things like you wouldn’t believe,” said Jake.

So when the door banged and Peter finally came in, the three boys descended on him and spirited him
away upstairs. They sat him on one of the beds in the twins’ room.

“What did you do at the Malloys?” Josh asked.

Peter still had crumbs on his T-shirt. “Ate cookies,” he said, and held up four fingers.

“So what was on the rock?” asked Wally

“Caroline. With a curtain over her head,” said Peter.

Wally felt his cheeks grow warm.
Doubly
embarrassing. He had run all the way home because of
that
? It was useless, of course, to ask why Caroline had had a curtain over her head. It was useless to ask why Caroline did any of the things she did.

“Well, she sure fooled you, Wally,” said Josh. “What did you think she was? A ghost? Peter didn’t run.”

“ ’Cause I saw her shoes. I knew it was Caroline,” Peter told them.

Wally hadn’t seen any shoes.

“So how did you get inside their house, Peter?” asked Jake.

“Walked.”

“We
know you
walked! I mean, what did you have to do to get cookies?”

Peter shrugged.

“Did they ask you any questions?” Josh wanted to know.

“I guess so,” said Peter.

“What?”

“They wanted to know if you liked the idea of Eddie being editor in chief, and I said, ‘Not much.’ ”

“Yeah? What else?”

Peter shrugged again, this time holding his shoulders high for a second or two before he dropped them.

“What
else
?” Jake insisted.

“I didn’t say we would go on strike,” said Peter.