The Girls Get Even (3 page)

“Bingo!” said Eddie softly. “Okay, let’s make camp.”

•

Lying on a bed of leaves in the daytime was a lot more pleasant than lying on a bed of leaves in the dark was going to be, with no tent over them, Caroline decided.

As the girls spread out their sleeping bags beneath the trees, Caroline wondered about wild animals.

“Are there bears in West Virginia?” she whispered.

“Cut it out, Caroline, ” said Eddie.

But Beth gave a little gasp. “Are there?’’

“If there are bears in West Virginia, they’re way up in the mountains,” Eddie said.

Caroline knew that Eddie didn’t know what she was talking about any more than Beth knew about bears, but she didn’t ask any other questions because she didn’t really want to know the answers. She unzipped her sleeping bag, took off her shoes, and crawled in.

“Who’s going to steal their clothes?” Beth whispered.

“I am, as soon as I’m sure they’re asleep,” said Eddie.

Caroline scrunched down as far as she could into her sleeping bag, feeling secure with Eddie on one side of her and Beth on the other. Within minutes Beth began her noisy sleep that sounded like a motorcycle revving up. And then, Caroline could tell from Eddie’s slow measured breathing next to her that she had fallen asleep as well.

How could this be? Caroline lay with her eyes wide open. They had come all this way to steal the boys’ clothes, and Eddie was asleep? She was just about to poke her and remind her of her obligations, when she remembered the poncho she’d brought along, and Agent XOX. Wasn’t it she herself who should be the spy, the scout, the secret
agent—creeping through the trees, slithering along the ground, and stealing the boys’ clothes?

“Caroline did it again!” her sisters would say in awe.

Wriggling back out of the sleeping bag, she put on her sneakers and picked up the flashlight. Caroline pulled the rubberized poncho over her and then, like a small tepee moving along the ground, set out softly for the boys’ tent.

The boys, she figured, would have taken off their clothes and thrown them at the foot of their sleeping bags or perhaps wadded them down between their sleeping bags and the sides of the tent. If she could just slip her hand underneath, perhaps she could pull the clothes out from under the edge without having to open the tent flap at all. Unless, of course, the tent had a canvas floor.

She turned off the flashlight when she reached the tent. Like fingers searching out the keys on a piano, Caroline’s fingers inched their way beneath one side. She was in luck. No floor. She lay down on her stomach and extended her arm, her fingers exploring inside the tent.

There was something there, all right. A down jacket? Or was it a sleeping bag she was feeling? She couldn’t see a thing, of course, because the poncho had slipped down over her face. Now her hand touched something else and her fingers ran
along the edge. Something warm. Somebody’s pajamas?

“Yipes!” There was a yell from inside the tent.

She tried to pull her hand back, but someone had grabbed it.

Another yell. A bleat. A bellow. “A hand¡ Josh¡ Jake!”

Caroline rolled over, struggling hard to pull her arm loose, but someone was pressing it to the ground.

Pushing the poncho off her face, Caroline could see the beam of a flashlight inside the tent, see the jiggling of the canvas as the boys tumbled around, and then the tent flap opened and out they spilled.

“It’s Caroline!” yelled Josh. “They found us!”

They found us?
They knew? Whoever was inside the tent holding her arm let loose to come outside, and as soon as she was free, Caroline struggled to her feet but tripped on the long poncho and fell on her face again. The boys laughed and yelled.

More footsteps. Running footsteps. Caroline could hear Eddie’s voice, trailed by Beth’s. Somebody had hold of her feet and was pulling her toward the river. Was Agent XOX to die a drowning death?

“You let go of her!” came Eddie’s voice, and suddenly Eddie had one arm, Beth the other, and
they were pulling her the other way. Back and forth, back and forth. Secret Agent XOX was going to die a stretching death instead. Torn limb from limb.

“Keep hanging on, and we’ll throw you all in!” Jake yelled to Caroline’s sisters.

And then Peter’s voice wailed sleepily from the door of the tent: “Wally, come back in¡ It’s freezing¡

In that instant Eddie and Beth yanked Caroline free, and finally Caroline was on her feet again, half running, half stumbling back into the underbrush beside her sisters.

•

They sat on top of their sleeping bags while the boys whooped some more and shone the flashlight on them.

“They don’t even have a tent!” exclaimed Peter.

“Hey, you girls lost?” Jake’s voice.

“You cold? What were you looking for? A blanket?” Wally’s.

“You want any directions, just ask us,” called Josh. “We’ll direct you right into the river.”

“Yeah, who asked you to come on this camping trip?” called Jake.

It seemed just too much for Eddie. “You don’t
own these woods¡ You don’t own the river¡ We have as much right to be here as you do!” she screamed.

“Ha¡ You wouldn’t even have found your way out here if you hadn’t followed us!” Josh yelled.

“We saw you sneaking along, hiding behind bushes¡ We knew you were behind us all the time!” called Wally.

Caroline felt her face burning. How embarrassing to know that the boys had known they were back there all the time.

Josh and Jake were laughing again, shining the flashlight right in her eyes. “Old Caroline sneaking over here in that poncho. You look like a witch, Caroline!”

“They’re all witches!” declared Josh. “They don’t even need to dress up for Halloween. Just come as they are and they’ll scare the little kids.”

The boys laughed some more.

“Hey, girls!” came Jake’s voice. “What are you going to be in the Halloween parade?”

“What Halloween parade?” Caroline called back, in spite of herself. If there was any dressing up in costumes to be done, she wanted to know about it.

“The school parade,” yelled Wally. “We and the Bensons won first prize almost every year.”

“Well, whatever we think of, it’ll be a lot better than what
you
wear,” Beth retorted.

“You wish!” said Josh.

“We’ll win again, won’t we, Wally?” came Peter’s voice.

“Sure we will.”

“Wanna bet?” yelled Eddie. “You must feel you own this town. You must think you’re going to go on winning the prizes and hogging the best camping spots just because you lived here first. Well, I’ll tell you something, wise guys. Maybe you
won’t\
Maybe somebody else will win this year.”

“Keep dreaming!” called Josh.

Caroline was beginning to shiver. The air seemed cooler than it had when she’d started out for the boys’ tent, and she wished Beth and Eddie would crawl into their sleeping bags and shut up. But Eddie was angry, and when she was angry, she was unstoppable.

“Wanna bet?” she yelled again.

“Sure¡ Bet!” yelled Jake. “Whichever group wins first prize—you or us—will be the masters and the other group will be the slaves.”

Were they crazy?
Caroline wondered.
No one would agree to
—

“You’re on!” Eddie yelled back. “Deal!”

Caroline gasped. “Eddie, are you nuts?”

“They think they’re
so
smart!” Eddie sputtered. Caroline had never seen her so angry.

“What will the slaves have to do?” Caroline called out.

Josh answered, “Whatever the masters tell them to do.”

There seemed to be a brief discussion going on in the boys’ camp. Then Wally replied, “The slaves have to do all the masters’ work for a whole month.”

“Fine with us!” yelled Eddie.

“Eddie, if they win, they’ll—” Beth began.

“They
won’t¡ We
will!” Eddie said. And then, more desperately, “We
have
to!”

Caroline let out her breath. She was too tired to argue anymore. All she wanted was her warm sleeping bag and a soft place to lay her head. She had just started to crawl in when suddenly,
Splat.

Caroline looked around. Another splat.

“Rain!”
cried Beth and Eddie together.

The girls quickly rolled up their cotton sleeping bags, sat on top of them, and spread out the poncho over their heads, while the boys whooped again and tumbled back into their tent.

The rain came down harder and harder. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. On and on. All around them the ground was getting soggy and spongy. A damp earth smell arose from the floor of the forest. Caroline felt like a mushroom. She smelled like a mushroom. She imagined that she
had little bugs crawling up one side of her stalk and down the other.

The food was gone. The water was almost gone. Caroline needed to go to the bathroom, but she didn’t want to get rained on, so she stayed where she was and felt miserable.

It was all such a dumb idea, following the boys out here to steal their clothes. They hadn’t even taken their clothes off, come to think of it, and neither had she or her sisters.

“Hey, girls!” came a yell from down on the riverbank. “You going to stay there and get wet?”

“Why don’t you find your way home?”

“Are your sleeping bags soggy?”

Caroline could hear her teeth chattering. Or maybe it was Eddie’s or Beth’s. For a while none of them moved. None of them spoke. The rain drummed on the poncho over their heads, and Caroline was sure that by morning it would have driven them all mad. None of them spoke; they were too disgusted and angry.

And then, after a long while, Eddie murmured, “Wait till Halloween!” And she said it with conviction.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •
Four
•
Spy

A
ll the way home from Smuggler’s Cove, Wally worried.

First, he worried that the girls might not have found their way home. When he and his brothers went looking for them the next morning, all they had found was a sock.

Second, he worried that if they
did
make it home all right, Caroline and her sisters really might win first prize in the Halloween parade, and he and his brothers would have to do the girls’ work for a month. He tried to imagine going over to the Malloys’ house for four Saturdays asking Caroline what needed doing. Imagined her telling him to make her bed and wash her clothes. Maybe even clean the toilets¡

Josh must have been thinking the same thing. “Jake,” he said as they turned up the alley behind
their house, ‘ ‘maybe we should pull out of that bargain with the Malloys. What if we
don’t
win?”

“We will!” Jake said. “Don’t even talk about not winning¡ What we Ve got to do now is think up the best costumes we’ve ever had.”

Wally wondered what it would be like to live on Mars. He imagined that he might see a note on the school bulletin board Monday that said,
Wanted: Boys to live on Mars for one month. Girls need not apply.
He would go. He would be first in line. He would come back to earth just as the horrible month of being slaves to the Malloys was up.

He tried to think of a costume to end all costumes. He remembered how the Hatfords and Ben-sons had once painted black stripes on their white T-shirts, chained themselves together, and walked in the parade as a chain gang. Another time they had all worn cardboard fronts and backs, painted black with white dots, and entered the contest as a set of dominoes. They had even been a fly swatter and bugs. Wally didn’t see how the girls could ever come up with something better than that. They might, though. The only thing the boys could think of to do this Halloween was to go as “punkin’ heads,” with pumpkins cut out at the bottom so that Wally and his brothers could slip their heads up inside from underneath.

“What we need to do,” he said, almost to himself,
“is spy on the girls and see what they’re going to be. Just in case.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Josh, busily making a sketch of Caroline in the poncho, almost being tossed into the river. Josh took a sketchpad wherever he went. “One of us has to be a mole.”

“A mole?” asked Wally.

“A spy from the inside out,” said Jake, and they all turned toward Peter.

“What’s the matter?” Peter asked warily. “Why are you looking at
me?”

“How would you like to be a mole?” said Jake.

“The most important job you’ve ever had,” added Josh.

“And if you goof up, we’re dead meat,” said Wally. He heard Peter swallow.

•

At school the next day there was not a notice on the bulletin board requesting boys to go to Mars. There was a sign-up sheet outside the principal’s office for entering the Halloween contest. Some students wanted to be in the parade just for the fun of dressing up, but others wanted to be judged on their costumes. If you wanted to be judged, you were supposed to put your name on
the sign-up sheet and say whether you were coming as a group or as an individual.

Jake saw the sign-up sheet first, and right there at the top, under group entry, he wrote:
The Hatfords: Jake, Josh, Wally, and Peter.

By lunchtime there was another entry on the sheet under “group” :
The Malloys
—
Eddie, Beth, and Caroline.

It was official. This time
Wally
swallowed.

‘‘Think!” said Jake when the boys got home. “What excuse can we think of to send Peter over there to look around?”

“Maybe he could ask Caroline about your homework assignment, Wally,” said Josh.

“Are you nuts?” said Wally. “She’s the last person I’d ask, and she knows it.”

“Peter could ask to borrow a cup of sugar,” said Jake.

Josh wrinkled his nose. “That’s about the phoniest excuse there is.”

Everybody looked at Wally.

“He could return Caroline’s sock,” Wally said.

“Bingo!” said Jake and Josh together.

They sat Peter on the kitchen table, gave him half a Hershey bar that Jake had been carrying around in his pocket, and went over his instructions.