“Oh, brother!” murmured Tony.
All day, neighborhood kids came by the garage to see where the cougar had been trapped. They wanted to climb up into the loft to see where Wally had been hiding, to see the window where the animal control man had climbed inside. Caroline sat at the back of the garage holding court like a queen, and all she would say when friends asked if she had been scared was, “Absolutely, positively terrified.”
“She's sickening,” said Beth. “Do something, Eddie!”
“Hey, Caroline,” Eddie called. “You know what we just found out? You may have RM disease. Anyone who is anywhere near a wild animal, like a cougar, is susceptible to an airborne virus that's sometimes fatal. You were probably closer than anyone.”
Caroline stopped bragging and stared at her sisters. “I wasn't as close as the animal control people.”
“They've all been vaccinated against it,” Eddie said. “You weren't.”
Caroline's face paled. “What are the symptoms?”
“Rapid heartbeat, excitability, flushed face, sweating hands, delusions of grandeur…”
“Oh, my gosh, Eddie, what will I do? How will I know if I've got it?” Caroline cried in alarm.
“You'll have to go to the hospital and get a bunch of tests. They stick a tube down your throat and take about twenty blood samples, and put wires in your ears and everything.”
“What is RM disease?” Caroline asked, quickly getting to her feet and ready to run inside the house.
“Running-mouth disease,” said Eddie, and everyone laughed. Caroline glowered at her sister and sat back down, arms folded across her chest.
Wally laughed too, and looked around at the guys, glad it was all over and they could enjoy the rest of spring vacation. The boys were sitting on one side of the garage, the girls on the other. All except Steve and Eddie. They were sitting together, side by side, and they were practically touching, Wally noticed. After all this, one of the Bensons had fallen for Eddie Malloy! He couldn't believe it!
Sixteen
Goodbye
“This was the most exciting spring vacation we ever had,” Beth declared on Saturday as the girls woke to still more rain on the roof. “Even though I feel like I'm turning into a mushroom. Will this rain never stop?”
“I'm going to miss Steve, I think, when the Bensons go back to Georgia,” said Eddie.
“What?” cried Caroline.
“I will. He's the nicest Benson of all.”
“Well, I'm going to miss all the excitement,” said Caroline, “but at least I finished my school assignment, and the newspaper story makes a new page for my résumé when I become an actress. Then they'll see that I can play incredibly brave roles onstage. I'll bet I'm the only girl in the whole United States who ever locked a cougar in a garage.”
“I don't know about that, but I'll bet you're the only girl in the whole United States who goes around bragging so much about it,” Beth told her.
“You don't understand, Beth! Actresses need all the attention they can get to stay in the public eye. It's not wrong to go around tooting my own horn.”
“No, but you don't have to lean on it!” said Eddie dryly.
The girls had scarcely brushed their teeth when there was a knock on the back door. Eddie opened it.
“Steve!” she said.
He smiled a little shyly. “Just came over to say goodbye. We'll be leaving in a little while.”
“Goodbye?” said Eddie. “Why, you just got here, practically.” She saw the other boys coming across the yard behind him.
“I know. But Mom wants a day to get the laundry done and everything before we start back to school,” Steve said. “So we're going home this morning.”
Eddie and her sisters stepped out on the back porch. “We didn't get to do half the stuff we really wanted,” Caroline complained.
“We didn't either,” Doug piped up. “We were going to wave sheets in front of your window and make you think it was ghosts.”
“Shut up, Dougie,” Bill told him.
“And Steve was going to slip a note under your door,” said Peter.
“Shut up!” said Steve. His face turned pink.
Eddie's did as well.
“Have you decided whether or not to move back to Buckman?” Beth asked Tony.
“I don't know. Dad hasn't said. What about you?”
“We don't know either. Maybe it depends on what your dad does,” said Beth.
“I guess there's not room for two football coaches at the college,” said Eddie. “What they should do is start a baseball team or something.”
“Yeah,” said Steve. “That would be neat.”
There was a blast from a horn across the river. “We've got to go,” Tony said. He looked at Jake. “You guys better write to us, okay?”
“Yeah, now that we've met the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie, you have to keep us posted on what they do,” said Danny, and he and Bill grinned.
“That's us, I suppose? Ha, ha, ha!” said Eddie.
“Hope you make the team, Eddie,” said Steve, smiling at her.
“I'll write you if I do,” she said. “Hope you don't hear any more ghosts, Beth,” said Tony.
“Hope you get laryngitis, Caroline, and can't talk for a month!” said Bill. The boys laughed, and so did Caroline.
The horn sounded again, and the Benson boys set off down the hill beside the Hatfords.
“I never thought I'd miss those guys, but I will,” said Beth.
“I never thought I'd miss boys at all, but I do,” said Eddie.
“But isn't it nice just to be sisters again and not have them coming over every day, climbing all over the loft and tracking mud up on the porch with their stinky shoes?” said Caroline.
“No,” answered Beth and Eddie together.
That night, Caroline lay in bed thinking about school, and about how she might be asked to describe for the class how she had caught the cougar. I know! she thought. Wally and I can do it together! He can stand up on Miss Applebaum's desk and pretend it's the loft, and I'll be down below… She felt herself drifting off into a dream about cougars and firemen and Wally Hatford when she suddenly heard a tap… tappitytap…tap…tap…tap… tap.
She opened her eyes.
Tap…tap… tap, it came again.
Caroline turned and looked at the clock. Almost midnight.
Tap…tap… tap. The noise was coming from the wall behind her bed.
Caroline got up and put her mouth to the floor register. “Okay, you guys, I know you're down there,” she called softly.
Tap… tappity-tap. The noise continued.
Bolder now because of her encounter with the cougar, Caroline decided not to tell her sisters but to investigate on her own. Undoubtedly, one of the Hatford boys had crawled back through the basement window, as Tony had done before, and was tapping on the water pipes to make her think the house was haunted for sure.
She slipped into the hall and down the stairs and got a flashlight from the kitchen. Then, without turning on any lights, she opened the basement door and stealthily started down the stairs. One step…two steps…three steps… four…
She waited until she got to the bottom before she snapped on the flashlight. The furnace pipes made grotesque shadows on the wall, like long fingers against the cinder block.
“I know you're down here,” Caroline repeated, a little less boldly than before. Holding the flashlight out in front of her, she began moving around the corner of the basement toward the Ping-Pong table.
Step by step, closer and closer. When she got right over to the table, she directed the beam of the flash-light toward the basement window. Closed. Locked, in fact. She turned slowly and pointed the light in all directions, but she saw no one. No one at all.
Tap…tap… tap. She could still hear the ghostly tapping from somewhere. Then she heard another sound. Footsteps. The creak of the floor above.
Step by step, step by step… closer and closer. Now the f
ootsteps were crossing the kitchen floor. Now they were at the door of the basement. Now they were coming down the basement steps….
“Helllp!” screeched Caroline.
“Good grief!” called her father. “Caroline Lenore, what in the world are you up to?”
“Oh, Dad! I heard a noise….A ghostly tapping … And I thought the house was haunted, or the boys were back, or—”
“We've got a leak in the roof from all the rain. Water's running down inside the wall and hitting a heat duct, that's all,” her father said.
Beth and Eddie appeared behind him in their pajamas and bare feet.
“What is it? What's the matter?” they asked.
“Your sister's imagination is on the loose, that's what,” said Coach Malloy. “Caroline, could you possibly make the effort to forget about ghosts for one night?”
“It won't be easy,” said Caroline.
“Do you think it's too much to ask that you stay in your bed until morning?”
“I suppose not,” said Caroline.
“Do you think your father could have one night of peace and quiet before spring vacation ends?” he asked.
“I'll try,” said Caroline.
“Then get the heck to bed,” said her father, and she did.
On Monday morning, Wally came out of the house with his brothers and found the Malloy girls waiting for them at the end of the bridge. They were used to walking to school together now, and Jake and Josh fell in beside Beth and Eddie, while Peter skipped happily on ahead. That left Wally, of course, to walk with Caroline, who had a sickening smile on her face. A scary smile. A sickening, scary smile that could mean only one thing: trouble.
“Good morning, Wally!” she said, moving up beside him.
“No,” said Wally. “Whatever it is, no!”
“I have an idea for our spring assignment, and I'll bet you can guess what it is.”
“The answer is no,” said Wally.
“Everyone is going to ask you about it anyway, so you might as well get up and tell the class.”
“No,” said Wally, but even then he knew he was doomed.
“We'll not just tell about capturing the cougar, Wally, we'll show it. We can use Miss Applebaum's desk for the loft, and I'll be down below, and maybe we could get Peter to be the cougar, and—”
We who are about to die salute you, Wally said to himself, smiling a little, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead.
About the Author
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor enjoys writing about the Hatford boys and the Malloy girls because the books take place in her husband's home state, West Virginia. The town of Buckman in the stories is really Buckhannon, where her husband spent most of his growing-up years. There are now seven books in the series —The Boys Start the War, The Girls Get Even, Boys Against Girls, The Girls' Revenge, A Traitor Among the Boys, A Spy Among the Girls, and The Boys Return—and Mrs. Naylor plans to write five more, one for each month that the girls are in Buckman, though who knows whether or not they will move back to Ohio at the end?
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is the author of more than a hundred books, a number of which are set in West Virginia, including the Newbery Award–winning Shiloh and the other two books in the Shiloh trilogy, Shiloh Season and Saving Shiloh. She and her husband live in Bethesda, Maryland.
Copyright © 2001 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
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Library of Congress Cataloging Card Number: 00-050944
eISBN: 978-0-307-51483-7
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Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, The Boys Return
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