The Girls' Revenge (2 page)

L
ife for Wally Hatford, age nine, was going surprisingly well.

He had never expected this to happen. Ever since their best friends, the Bensons, moved to Georgia for a year, and the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie moved in, he had thought life would never be the same again.

Eddie Malloy, the Whomper, could hit a ball from one side of Buckman to the other, practically; Beth, the Weirdo, read the kind of books that were meant to be read at night in a graveyard; and Caroline—well, having Caroline Malloy sitting right behind you in school, breathing on the back of your neck, meant that anything at all could happen.

Wally, unlike his twin brothers, Josh and Jake, did not seem to need a lot of excitement to make him happy. He was happy just to have one day go the same as the one before, peaceful, unhurried, with
plenty of time to dream and imagine, to think about what he did the past summer and plan how he would spend his next vacation.

“He'll never set the world on fire, but he's steady,” Wally overheard his mom say to his aunt once. And that was just fine with him.

But when the Malloys moved in, he forgot what peaceful was. He forgot what quiet was. When a strange animal, possibly a cougar, was sighted around Buckman—an animal the newspaper nicknamed an abaguchie—Wally even dreamed that the animal had carried off Caroline, and he would never have to feel her poking him in the back again with her pencil.

But suddenly, as though she had changed overnight from a dragon to a duchess, Caroline Malloy turned polite. She turned kind. In fact, she turned downright strange.

“Nice pen, Wally,” she said on this particular day as Wally was trying out a pen with five colors of ink in it, which he had bought at the five-and-dime.

“Thanks,” said Wally.

“It was really cold this morning, wasn't it?” Caroline went on. “Do you usually have snow here at Christmas?”

“Sometimes, but not always,” Wally told her.

“Back in Ohio we usually did. I guess we'll have to wait and see.”

Miss Applebaum was taking the roll now, so Wally didn't answer. But he was thinking about what Caroline had just said. Did that mean that she and her sisters were getting to like it here? Did that mean they were going to
stay
? Could he stand it if his best
friends in the whole world decided to spend the rest of their lives in Georgia?

Now Miss Applebaum was talking about something she called the December project. She made it sound as though the December project were the biggest thing since the space shuttle. She made it sound as though, if you flunked the December project, you could say goodbye to fifth grade. Everybody had to do it, and you had to choose partners and work together as a team.

Caroline's hand shot up in the air, and Miss Applebaum looked at her curiously.

“Yes, Caroline?”

“I choose Wally Hatford,” she said.

Wally felt all the blood in his body rise to his ears. A giggle went around the room.
Say no!
he was thinking, but his lips wouldn't move. Maybe if he refused Caroline as a partner, the teacher would flunk him before he even began.

“Well, we hadn't quite got to that, Caroline, but I'll put it down,” Miss Applebaum said, and made a note in her planning book.

Wally swallowed. Any minute he expected to feel Caroline's breath on the back of his neck, Caroline's pen poking his shoulder. Nothing happened, however, and he listened as Miss Applebaum explained what the December project was.

“We're going to work on improving our listening, observing, and writing skills,” she explained. “Writers will tell you that only a small part of what they do is actually putting words on paper. Most of their time is spent paying attention to what is going on around
them, imagining themselves in the place of their characters.”

Wally began to feel sick.

“What I want you to do, after you have chosen partners, is to interview each other. Find out everything you can about your partners—what they like to eat, to read, to watch on TV, to do. And then, for a whole day, I want you to try to live as if you really were your partners, eating what they eat, doing what they like to do. The report you will write for me will be in two parts: part one, your interview with your partner, what you have found out about him or her; and part two, how it feels to ‘be’ that person for a day, the ways in which you're alike and the ways you're different. We have an even number of students in class, so no one should be left out. You may choose your partners now.”

Everyone began talking, calling across the room, friends calling friends, laughter, shouts.

Not Wally. Wally Hatford sat face forward, eyes on the blackboard, wondering what would happen if he just went down to the Greyhound bus depot, bought a ticket to anywhere, and didn't come back till Christmas.

He had to interview Caroline Malloy?

He had to let
her
interview
him
?—to ask questions about what he liked, how he lived, what he
ate
?

And then, as though that weren't enough, he had to
be
Caroline for a day? Did Miss Applebaum go to Torture School to come up with these projects or did she think them up all by herself in the dead of night?

“Oh, Wal-ly!” teased one of his friends in the next row. “How's it going to feel to be Car-o-line?”

“Yeah, where are you going to go for your
interview
?” asked a girl, giggling.

But Wally was surprised to hear Caroline say, “We're going to interview like everybody else, and there's nothing silly about it.”

He could hardly believe his ears. She still sounded polite. She sounded grown-up, yet she was a year younger than he was. She sounded, in fact, perfectly normal.

Still, he did not want to be Caroline Malloy for a day. He did not want to be her for even a minute, and he did not want her to be him. He could have chosen Bill Thompkins or Bobby Lister or John Meese—
any-one
but Caroline.

He did not sit at her table at lunchtime.

He did not go near her at recess.

“Hey, Wally, I hear you've got a girlfriend,” his buddies teased when they came back inside for class.

And one of the girls called, “Caroline Malloy thinks you're cute!”

Wally felt like throwing up. He was not cute. He was not a boyfriend, and Miss Applebaum's December project was one of the dumbest assignments he'd ever had.

After school he waited outside for Peter, who was carrying a school bag with purple dinosaurs on it, and then Jake and Josh, who were wearing baseball caps backward, and the four of them started the walk home along the Buckman River.

“What's up?” Josh asked Wally.

“I don't want to talk about it,” said Wally, staring at the water and thinking how, if it weren't for the river, Caroline Malloy would be living even closer to him than she did now. How could it be that he had been feeling so good when he started off to school that morning, and so awful now?

“Why? What happened?” asked Jake.

“I have to be Caroline Malloy for a day and she has to be me,” said Wally.

“You have to wear her clothes and everything?” Peter asked.

“No!” yelped Wally. But he told his brothers how he had to interview her and do whatever she would do for a day. “Worst of all,” he said, “she chose me for a partner in front of the whole class, and now kids are saying I'm her boyfriend.”

“Ha!” said Jake. “That's easy to fix.”

“
How?
I've got to do this, Jake! I can't say no. If we don't do our December projects, we practically flunk fourth grade!”

“So
do
it,” said Jake. “If you have to be her for a day, she has to be you, doesn't she?” Jake was beginning to grin.

“Yes,” said Wally.

“She has to do whatever you tell her you'd be doing?” added Josh.

“Yes…,” said Wally. And then the light began to dawn. It was a wonderful thought. A wonderful, terrible thought. He would tell Caroline Malloy that he loved to do something he knew she would hate. That he loved to eat things that would gross her out. Wally began to smile.

It made him feel a little bad, because Caroline had been especially nice to him lately. But what if there was a January project and a February project, and Caroline chose him for a partner every time? If the Malloys didn't go back to Ohio at the end of the summer, there might be fifth- and sixth-grade projects as well, and then she'd follow him into junior high school and high school and…

“Only nine more months and the Bensons come back,” said Jake, saying what they all were thinking.

“We hope,” added Josh. But strangely, Wally noticed, he didn't sound all that eager.

Three
The Promise

“Y
ou look awfully smug,” Beth said to Caroline at dinner that evening.

“I do?” Caroline looked innocently around the table. “I was thinking about school, actually. I'm doing a special project with Wally Hatford.”

“Well, that's a change!” said Mother. “I'm glad to see you getting along with the Hatfords, dear. They seem like such nice people.”

Eddie put one hand over her mouth and gagged, but Caroline was surprised to hear Beth say, “I think Josh is the nicest. You should see his paintings, Mother. One hall at school is decorated with student paintings, and four of them were done by Josh.”

“Airplanes, mostly,” said Eddie. “Airplanes and horses and cars.”

“But they're good!” said Beth.

“My, haven't
we
changed!” said Eddie.

Eddie too, however, seemed to have other things on
her mind besides teasing the boys. Though she had never been advanced a grade as Caroline had, she was considered the brain of the family, and she often had other things on her mind besides softball. “I think I've decided what I want to do when I'm grown,” she announced, examining a stalk of broccoli before she popped it into her mouth.

Father looked up, fork poised. “Yes?” he said.

“Sports medicine. Treat athletes.”

“Ouch!” said Coach Malloy.

“
What
?” asked Eddie.

“That was my wallet groaning,” said Dad. “A sports doctor means medical school, you know.”

“I know,” said Eddie. “But I think I'd be good at it. I'm good in science.”

“You
would
be good at it, Eddie, and if that's what you want, we'll see you through school,” her father told her.

“I think that would be a wonderful career for you,” Mother said, looking at Eddie admiringly.

Caroline pushed her meat loaf from one side of her plate to the other. There went her dream of a Malloy movie studio. But she could still be a stage actress.

“Well, I know what
I
want to be too,” she told her parents. “An actress on Broadway.”

“Caroline, you're always onstage, twenty-four hours a day,” said her father. “You can't even tie your shoes without making a production of it.”

Caroline wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not. Miss Applebaum, though, had said that writing was only part of being a writer—the rest was observing and listening. Maybe the same was true of an
actress. You were always practicing, making a story out of the everyday things that happened to you.

“When do you have to decide what you want to be?” asked Beth. “I haven't the slightest idea what
I'll
do.”

“Hopefully, before you're through college,” her father said.

Caroline curled up in a chair in the living room after dinner and wrote out a list of questions she was going to ask Wally. She was certainly being friendly enough to him—even choosing him for her partner. He would just
have
to open any present she gave him!

What is your favorite food?
What is your favorite game?
What is your favorite TV show?
What kind of books do you like to read?
What time do you go to bed?
What time do you get up?

She was thinking about what she would put in her report. Then she started thinking about how she would
give
the report. That was even better. Whenever Caroline had to stand up in front of the class and read something, it was her favorite time of day. And for the second time that week, she had a wonderful idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea, and she gave up all thought of being kind to Wally. This idea was too good to let go.

If she could slip into the rest room just before it was time to give her report and actually put on Wally's clothes, she would get an A+++ on her report.
How could Miss Applebaum
not
give her the best grade in class? She would even
look
like Wally. But she knew as sure as she had eyes in her head that Wally would never lend her any of his clothes.

That Saturday, Caroline went to the five-and-dime to buy some socks and saw seven-year-old Peter. He was standing at the Matchbox car display case, turning it around and around and saying to himself, “I've got that one… don't have that one…I've got that one… don't have that one…”