Girls Rule!

One
The Trouble with Being Nice

C
aroline Malloy decided to be nice. If she was ever going to get all the things she wanted in this world— all the things she
deserved
—she would have to start thinking of others first.

She knew she had been selfish too often since her family had moved to Buckman. Now she was ready to show the people of West Virginia just how sweet she could be.
Because
—Caroline had found out that there was a strawberry festival in Buckman every June. In every festival there was a parade. In every parade there was a queen—the Strawberry Queen of Buckman.

Caroline was beautiful, wasn’t she? She was talented and she lived in Buckman. So if she put her mind to
it, why shouldn’t
she
be queen of the Strawberry Festival?

“Because,” said her sister Eddie, the oldest of the Malloy daughters, “you have to be a woman, not a girl, to be queen.”

“A
college
woman,” said Beth, the middle sister.

“And you have to be
chosen,
you can’t just volunteer,” said Eddie.

For a while Caroline was down in the dumps, but then she thought about something else. Didn’t queens have ladies-in-waiting? There had to be helpers, didn’t there? And wouldn’t they ride on the float along with the queen? How did they get to be helpers unless they were chosen?
That
was when Caroline Malloy, precocious fourth grader, decided to be so nice that people would hardly recognize her, beginning at home.

“Do you want me to set the table, Mother?” Caroline asked that evening before dinner.

Mrs. Malloy turned and stared at Caroline. “Why, I would be delighted!” she said.

During mealtime, Caroline started to take the last of the scalloped potatoes, then said, “Dad, would you like to have the rest?”

“I sure would!” said Mr. Malloy. “
Thank
you, Caroline!"

Upstairs later, when Eddie and Beth were studying for final exams, Caroline stopped in Beth’s doorway and whispered, “I was going to play my new CD, Beth, but I won’t if you think it might bother you.”

Then she moved across the hall to Eddie’s room and
said, “If you need any pencils sharpened, just let me know.”

“Knock it off, Caroline,” said Eddie. “You’re as fake as a wooden nickel.”

“Well, I can
practice,
can’t I?” Caroline replied. “If you haven’t been nice for a long time, the only way to get nicer is to practice.”

“Then practice on somebody else,” Eddie said. “Go practice on the Hatfords, if you have to.”

Caroline had been afraid someone would suggest that. She could do it, though. She
would
do it! There were only two more weeks of school before summer vacation began, and after that she wouldn’t have to even look at the four Hatford boys unless she wanted to.

Caroline went to her room and sat on the edge of her bed. She looked out over the Buckman River, which came into town on the side of Island Avenue where the Malloys lived, ran under the road bridge that led to the business district, and flowed back out of town on the other side of Island Avenue.

It would be hard to leave West Virginia if their father moved them back to Ohio in the fall. Mr. Malloy was coach of the Buckman College football team for one year on a teacher-exchange program, and he still hadn’t made up his mind whether he would stay or go back to Ohio. This was a bit unsettling to them all because no one knew where they would be come September. How could you get excited over moving on to a higher grade when you didn’t even know what state your school would be in?

Caroline knew what the Hatford boys would like, however. They would like the Malloy girls to go home. They would have liked the Malloy sisters to go back to Ohio the week after they’d come to Buckman. They would have preferred that the Malloys had never come to West Virginia in the first place.

Why? Because the Malloys were renting the house where the Bensons used to live, and the five Benson brothers had been the Hatford boys’ best friends. Jake and Josh and Wally—and sometimes even Peter Hatford—simply could not stand that three attractive, intelligent, talented
girls
(Caroline in particular) had taken the place of their best friends, Caroline decided, and they wanted the Bensons back.

Wally Hatford was the worst because Caroline had been moved up to his grade even though she was a year younger than he was. Could
she
help it if she was smart? Could she help it if she was precocious?
Get over it!
she would have liked to say to Wally, but she knew she was going to have to be nice. She was going to have to be so kind, in fact, that if her name came up on a list of possible helpers for the Strawberry Festival Parade, all pencils would automatically make a check mark in the box beside her name.

On the way to school the following morning, the Hatford boys were waiting for the girls, as usual, on the other end of the swinging footbridge that spanned the Buckman River.

Despite all their quarrels and tricks, the boys had
been doing this ever since a cougar had been seen lurking about Buckman and the two sets of parents had insisted that the kids all walk together as a group. Even though the danger was past—the cougar had been caught and transported to the Smoky Mountain area—walking to school together had become a habit. Much as the Hatfords and Malloys hated to admit it, they probably didn’t dislike each other as much as they thought. There were times, in fact, when the boys
seemed
to wish the Malloys would
stay
in Buckman.

“Good
morn
-ing, Wally!” Caroline said pleasantly as she stepped off the footbridge.

“No,” said Wally, his eyes straight ahead as he started toward school.

“No, what?”

“No to whatever you want me to do,” Wally told her. He had a round face and a square shape, same as his little brother, Peter, who was in second grade, while the older twins, Jake and Josh, were taller and as lean as string beans.

“I’m not going to ask you to do anything,” Caroline said. “I just wanted to show you that beginning today, I’m going to be about the nicest person you’ve ever met.”

“What took you so long?” asked Wally.

“I’ve just decided to be a better person,” Caroline explained.

“Better than who? You’ve
always
liked to be better than everyone else, Caroline,” Wally told her.

Caroline decided she would not waste her time with
people who did not understand what a wonderful person she could be. She moved up and fell into step beside Peter, who was following Eddie and Beth and Jake and Josh. Peter was walking with his arms straight out in front of him and his eyes closed.

“What are you doing?” asked Caroline.

“Pretending I’m blind,” said Peter, opening his eyes. “I want to find out if I could get to school by myself if I couldn’t see.”

“If you ever went blind, I would walk you to school and back every day,” said Caroline sweetly.

“But that wouldn’t count, because I want to do everything myself,” said Peter. “I don’t need any help.”

How did nice people stay that way if nobody wanted them around? Caroline wondered. It used to be that she could count on Peter, at least, to be friendly.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” she asked.

“No, I’m just getting ready for not caring if you move back to Ohio,” said Peter.

That’s so sweet!
Caroline thought. “Peter, I’m not sure
I
want to move back to Ohio either, but we can at least be friends, can’t we?” she said.

“I guess so,” said Peter.

“I’ll even bake you some friendship cookies if you want,” Caroline promised. Now if
that
wasn’t nice, what was?