Boys Rock! (9 page)

Two days later, when Mrs. Malloy went to lunch with some of the faculty wives from the college, the three girls took their sandwiches out to eat on the grass.
It was a bit cooler than it had been for some time, and they decided to have a picnic.

“Olives,” said Beth, spreading their lunch out before them. “Grapes, cupcakes …”

“This is a perfect day,” said Caroline. “Not too hot, not too windy. If every day was like this one, summer would be my favorite season.”

It was a perfect day, that is, until Eddie said, “Look!”

Caroline turned to see all four Hatford boys thundering across the bridge below.

As they came up the hill where the girls were having their picnic, Josh waved something in his hand.

“What is it?” Beth called.

“The
Old Times Tribune
,” Josh said. “Their paper came out two days before ours will.”

“Is it any good?” Eddie wanted to know.

“See what you think,” Jake said, and Josh handed the newspaper to the girls. There on the first page was the article that had appeared in the
Buckman Bugle
ninety years before about the grand opening of the Royale Theater. The kids who had made the newspaper hadn’t even bothered to rewrite the story. All they’d done was make a copy of it.

But in the photo where Mary Pickford should have been was the face of Caroline Lenore Malloy, curls and all.

Thirteen
Down with Tyranny!

H
ow the heck did the
Old Times Tribune
get this picture?” asked Jake. “You’re not working for them, are you, Caroline?”

Caroline just stared.

“Caroline wasn’t even born yet in 1920!” said Wally “That can’t be her.”

“Duh!” said Eddie, and turned to Caroline.

Wally couldn’t tell what Caroline Malloy was thinking. He knew by her face that she was just as surprised as anyone else.

Suddenly she cried, “The boy! That’s who it was!”

“Huh?” said Beth.

“At the library! Some boy was watching me! I must have left a copy of that picture in the copy machine, and he took it and used it for their paper! I’ll bet he was
working on the
Old Times Tribune.
I’ll bet he knew all along I was writing for the
Hatford Herald.”

“They probably thought they were stealing a good story,” said Josh, starting to laugh. “They wanted to get it in print before we did.”

“Instead, this looks ridiculous!” said Beth. “
You
look ridiculous, Caroline, with all those curls. Everyone will
know
this isn’t the real Mary Pickford! Why on earth did you ever mess with her picture?”

“I … I just… just wanted to—” Caroline began, but Eddie interrupted.

“So what’s the rest of their paper like?” she asked, turning the page. “Is it any good?”

“Not really,” said Josh. “See for yourself. It’s mostly stuff they’ve copied from somewhere else.”

Caroline was still upset. “That picture was … was just a private thing that nobody else was supposed to see!” she said. And to Wally’s horror, she began to cry.

The problem with Caroline’s crying was that Wally couldn’t tell whether it was real or fake. If actresses could cry just thinking about something, how did you know whether it was the real McCoy? They all stared at Caroline for a few seconds, waiting to see if the tears would blow over.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” said Beth. “No one will know you did it. The guys doing the
Old Times Tribune
probably didn’t even realize it was a fake.”

Caroline’s tears turned to sniffles.

“Speaking of pictures,” Eddie said, “we need one
more thing to fill up our first issue, and I’ve got a great idea. I thought it would be fun to put all our names in one column and a baby picture of each of us in the next column. Only, they’ll be all mixed up so no one can tell whose picture is whose. Readers will have to guess. And in the third issue, we’ll put the right picture by the right name and people can see if they guessed right.”

Caroline’s face broke into a happy smile. “That’s a great idea!” she said.

Oh, no!
thought Wally Eddie wasn’t going to get any baby picture of him! He couldn’t remember one single picture of himself as a baby that he would like to see in a newspaper. A baby with birthday cake all over his cheeks. A red-faced baby crying because he’d gotten his foot stuck in a flowerpot. A rain-soaked baby, hair plastered to his head, sitting in a puddle. A bare-bottomed baby crawling into the bathtub.

Jake and Josh felt the same way.

“Count me out,” said Jake.

“Me too,” said Josh. “I’m not having any baby picture in a newspaper. Not even ours.”

“Oh, come on!” said Beth. “I think it’s cool! It could be fun! People love to do matching games.”

“Then match something else,” said Jake. “Dental records. Fingerprints. You won’t get any baby pictures from me.”

“Well, I’m editor in chief, and you’re overruled,” said Eddie. “We go to press in two days, and I want a picture of each of you by tomorrow.”

“I don’t care if you’re
commander
in chief! You can’t
go bossing everyone around,” said Jake. “If we don’t want our baby pictures in a newspaper, then we’re not going to give them to you.”

“Right!” said Peter, standing up for his brothers.

For once, Wally thought, his brothers were on
his
side. Leaving the
Old Times Tribune
on the picnic blanket beside the girls, Wally and his brothers trooped back down the hill and on across the swinging bridge.

“All for one, and one for all. We stick together!” said Jake.

“Right!” Peter said again.

Wally felt sure that Eddie would call again that night and say okay, the paper would go to press without the baby pictures, but she didn’t.

“What if she won’t put out the paper at all?” said Josh. “We’re the ones who will suffer. We’re the ones who need the credit.”

“Her name’s on those posters, remember?
The Hat-ford Herald, Eddie Malloy, Editor in Chief,”
said Jake. “She’ll print it, don’t worry. It’s about time she learned that she can’t do it alone.”

“So how’s the newspaper coming along?” Mr. Hat-ford asked that night at dinner. He was still wearing his mail carrier’s uniform, which meant he’d been working late. The fall JCPenney catalog had just come out, and when it was time to deliver those, he was always late getting home.

“Well, the first issue is supposed to come out on
Friday,” Jake said. “Josh and I have done our part. The rest is up to Eddie.”

“Nice going,” his father said.

“I remember making a little neighborhood newspaper when I was in school,” said their mother. “But I didn’t have a computer then, so I wrote each copy by hand. It took forever, and I only made two of them before I gave up. I think I sold them for three cents apiece. You guys don’t know how lucky you are.”

“Yeah,” said Wally. “Lucky us.”

The following day Mrs. Hatford came home from the hardware store for lunch. After she’d put the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on the table, she said, “Wally, which of your baby pictures do you like best? The one of you eating your first birthday cake or the one of you sitting in a puddle?”

Wally almost choked on his cheese sandwich. “Neither one!” he yelped.

“Why are you asking?” Jake said.

“Yeah!” cried Josh. “Why do you want to know?”

Mrs. Hatford looked confused. “Well, for heaven’s sake, what’s the matter? Eddie called this morning before you boys were up and asked if she could have a baby picture of each of you for the newspaper. She said if I could bring them with me to work, she’d stop by the hardware store and pick them up.”

“Noooooooooo!”
cried the three oldest Hatford boys in unison.

“What’s wrong? I wasn’t going to wake you up and
ask which ones I should give her. But I just wondered which of those two pictures of Wally he liked best. I guessed the birthday cake, so that’s what I gave her.”

“She
tricked
us!” Josh yelled. “We told her she couldn’t have any!”

“Well, how would I know that?” said his mother. “Good heavens, don’t make a federal case of it. Are you and those girls fighting again? I thought you were over that by now.”

“It’s Eddie who’s bossing us around!” said Jake. “She had no right to ask you for our pictures, and you shouldn’t have given them to her without asking us.”

Mrs. Hatford sighed and lowered her head. “Do you see these gray hairs?” she asked, pointing. “Do you know what’s causing them?”

“Dandruff?” asked Peter.

“Boys!” said their mother. “Four boys who are driving me right out of my mind.”

At three o’clock that afternoon, the four boys marched across the swinging bridge, up the hill to the Malloys’, past the house, and on down their driveway to the road out front. Then, between the Malloys’ mailbox and the lilac bush, they marched back and forth, back and forth, holding hand-lettered signs in black ink with a different message on each:

Jake held a sign that read EDDIE MALLOY, DICTATOR.

Josh’s sign read INVASION OF PRIVACY.

Wallys read DOWN WITH TYRANNY!

And P eters: WE WANT JUSTICE!