“Nice truck,” Beth said. “What do you want, Peter?”
“I came for Wally's clothes,” he said.
Beth started to laugh. “Wally's clothes? Are we running a laundry service now? Hey, Eddie, Peter says he's here for Wally's clothes.”
Caroline, who had been pouring herself a glass of orange juice, said, “Come on in, Peter. Tell me what happened.”
Peter plunked his bus on the Malloys' kitchen table and sat on the edge of a chair. “Wally was mad.”
“Yeah, well, I'm mad too, 'cause we both failed the December project, and maybe the whole fourth grade,” she said.
“They said maybe I wasn't old enough to be in their club,” Peter said, his lip trembling just a little.
“Ha! They're not old enough to be in an Explorers' Club!” said Eddie. “If they're explorers, I'm a fruit fly.”
“So, what did they do, Peter? You guys were all up there in the loft. Did they tell you to get Wally's clothes, and then they went on home?” Beth asked.
“Yeah. I'm not supposed to come home without his clothes,” said Peter.
“Well, they'll turn up in a little while,” Caroline told him.
“Yeah,” said Beth. “We were going to bake some more Christmas cookies. Want to help?”
“Chocolate ones?” asked Peter, brightening.
“Chocolate cutouts, peanut butter bars, and shortbread cookies,” said Beth.
“Yeah!” said Peter.
“Wash your hands,” said Beth, and then to Caroline and Eddie, “This is a riot!”
Caroline rolled out one kind of dough and Beth another. Eddie gave Peter the Christmas-tree cutter and the bell and the Santa, and let him do the cutting. But they had barely got started when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Hatford wondering if Peter was there.
“We're making cookies,” Eddie explained.
“Cookies?” Mrs. Hatford asked, surprised. “Is he behaving himself?”
“Oh, yes. He's a big help,” Eddie said.
“Well, send him home if he's any bother,” Peter's mother told them.
Eddie winked at Caroline. “Now we wait for twenty minutes, and then we call the guys,” she whispered.
When the first batch of cookies was out of the oven, Eddie called the Hatfords from the phone in the hallway.
“Hello?” said Jake.
“This is Eddie,” Eddie said. “Peter was over here a while ago, and I wondered if I could talk to him again.”
There was a pause.
“What time did he leave your place?” Jake asked.
“A long time ago.”
Another pause. “Well, he's not here. I'll tell him to call you.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said, and hung up. She went back to the kitchen and put another pan of cookies in the oven.
About fifteen minutes after that, Beth called the Hatfords.
“Is Peter there?” she asked softly, watching Peter through the doorway. He had a glass of milk in one hand and a cookie in the other.
“No, he hasn't come back yet.” It was Wally on the phone this time, and he sounded worried.
“Gee, he should have been there by now. What'd he do? Fall in the river?” Beth asked, teasing. Then she hung up. “Now we've got them hopping,” she whispered to Eddie.
When she went back into the kitchen she said, “Well, Peter, it looks as though it's about time for you to go home. You want to take a little bag of cookies with you?”
“Yeah! All chocolate!” he said.
Caroline helped him put on his coat, and he was no sooner outside than the girls heard Wally's voice saying, “Peter, where the heck have you been?”
“I didn't find your clothes, Wally, but I've got some cookies for you,” Peter said.
Caroline quickly closed the door, and she and her sisters leaned against the wall, laughing.
Why am I laughing ? Caroline wondered after a minute. I can keep teasing Wally Hatford the rest of my life, but I still haven't passed the December project!
There were car lights on the kitchen wall as Mrs. Malloy drove up from another Christmas shopping trip.
“Mmmm, I smell cookies,” she said as she came into the house with two shopping bags.
Caroline had begun to feel more and more lost. Christmas was coming, but it wouldn't seem like Christmas to her, because she was failing fourth grade! Miss Applebaum was probably so disgusted with her that if there was a spring play, Caroline most definitely would not get a part. In fact, Miss Applebaum was probably so disappointed in her that, if the Malloys decided to stay in Buckman, she would tell the fifth- and sixth-grade teachers that when Caroline got to their grades, they should not let her have a part in a play either. Or if they did, she would have to be a tree or a bush or something, certainly not the star.
She was shocked to find that tears were running down her cheeks, and even more dismayed to hear her mother say, “Caroline, what in the world is wrong?”
Instantly she was in her mother's arms, sobbing. But Mrs. Malloy, who had been through more dramas with Caroline than she could count, merely said, “Well, are you going to prison or dying of a fatal disease? Which one is it this time?”
“I'll never make it to college!” Caroline wept.
“Well, dear, then I'll have you around to help me in my old age,” her mother said as she let loose of Caroline and began sorting through the things she had bought for their father. “Sit down and tell me about it.”
As Beth and Eddie took the last batch of cookies from the oven, Caroline wiped her face on a tea towel and said, “I'll never make it to college, because I'll never get to high school.”
“She doesn't think she'll get to high school because she doesn't think she'll get out of elementary,” said Eddie.
“And she doesn't think she'll get out of elementary because she won't pass fourth grade,” said Beth.
“And I won't pass fourth grade because I've failed the December project!” Caroline said dramatically, flinging her arms wide and bursting into tears again.
“The December project?” asked Mrs. Malloy. “I thought you'd been spending the last two weeks on that report. What happened?”
“She went overboard,” said Eddie. “She dressed up in Wally Hatford's clothes.”
Mrs. Malloy sat down and listened as the story slowly came out.
“It sounds to me as though it wasn't Wally's clothes that did you in, my dear, but the way you described him to the class. It wasn't flattering, which of course it didn't have to be, but I doubt very much if it was fair.”
“But you should have heard what he said about me, Mother! I may be a lot of things, but I am not boring!”
“Was that fair?”
“No!”
“Then I guess you're even. Now the two of you have to straighten it out with Miss Applebaum.”
We are not even! Caroline thought. We are not even until I give Wally a present for Christmas that will absolutely knock him out. Then, maybe, we'll be even.
The next day Miss Applebaum did not say anything to Caroline or Wally about their reports, nor did either of them bring the matter up. It still seemed much too scary. Caroline and Wally didn't say anything to each other either, and after school, when the three girls were crossing the bridge, Eddie said, “Let's crawl up there and see what they've got in their clubhouse.”
“We're not supposed to,” said Beth. “Squatters' rights. Dad said they could use the loft.”
“They don't own it, though. We're the ones who are paying the rent on the Bensons' house, remember. I guess if anybody has a right to go up there, we have. We just want to see what the guys are doing.”
So they left their book bags on the steps and went into the garage. Eddie went up the ladder first, then Caroline, then Beth, as Patches, the stray cat, watched sleepily from below.
“Ha!” came Eddie's voice. “Members Only! That's a laugh. I now pronounce you a member, Caroline. You too, Beth.”
When all three had reached the loft, they knelt in the
center of the floor, and looked around.
There were empty soda cans and candy wrappers, a mitten, a newspaper… There was also an old tin milk box in one corner, from back in the days when milkmen delivered the milk. It was covered with dust, and Caroline crawled over to look inside.
“Aha!” she cried as she lifted the lid.
“What?” asked Eddie and Beth.
Caroline reached down into the milk box and lifted something out. “Binoculars,” she said.
Ten
Truce
He had his clothes back, but he'd still failed the December project.
Wally sat at the dinner table that night and confessed, while his father stared at him from one end, his mother from the other. Jake and Josh sat across from him, and Peter, who was sitting beside him, stared at his ear.
In the next room, the lights on the Christmas tree twinkled gaily, but it didn't feel like the Christmas season to Wally; it felt like the end of the world.
“How,” asked Mr. Hatford, spearing a forkful of lima beans, “can you possibly have written a report so terrible that you failed the whole project?”
Wally swallowed. “I don't know, Dad. I guess I just take stupid pills or something.”
“You aren't stupid, Wally. I know you knew how to do that assignment. An interview can't be that hard. Something must have made your teacher angry at the way you went about it,” his father said.
“She says Caroline and I probably hate each other,” Wally told him.
“Why, what a terrible thing to say!” exclaimed Mother. “What would make her think that?”
Jake and Josh rolled their eyes.
“ 'Cause they steal each other's clothes,” said Peter.
“What?” cried Mother and Father together.
“Forget it,” said Wally.
“What I want you to do, Wally, is go to school early tomorrow and talk to your teacher. Ask what you can do to earn extra credit and bring up your grade,” said his father.
“I'll just spend the rest of my life in fourth, I don't care,” said Wally.
“Over my dead body,” said his dad.
“He'll just stay in fourth grade long enough for Caroline Malloy to either move back to Ohio or graduate to junior high school; then he'll move on,” said Jake, trying not to smile.
“Since when is a son of mine so frightened of a girl that he can't even be in the same grade with her?” asked Mr. Hatford.
It never occurred to Wally that people might think he was scared of Caroline. It never entered his head that somebody might think he was chicken.
“I'm not scared of Caroline or anyone,” Wally mumbled. “I'll go to school tomorrow and talk to Miss Applebaum.”
When he woke the next morning, Wally climbed out of bed before he could change his mind and pulled on his jeans and his sweatshirt with the words I EAT NAILS on the front. Then, after gulping down a glass of juice and half a doughnut, he pulled on his parka, stuffed his hands in his gloves, and tramped down the front steps and off to school. The snow of the day before scarcely measured an inch, and the ground was bare in places.
There were hardly any students on the playground yet. The janitor hadn't even unlocked the front door. Only the teachers' entrance was open.
Wally took a deep breath, walked in the teachers' entrance, and clomped down the hall in his Huskies boots. With his I EAT NAILS sweatshirt showing through the opening of his jacket, he banged through the door of Miss Applebaum's classroom.
There stood Caroline Malloy, talking to the teacher.
“Well, well,” said Miss Applebaum. “I seem to have a delegation here this morning. I wonder what's on your mind, Wally?”
“I'd like some work for extra credit to make up for the December project,” he told her.
“That's very interesting, because this is exactly what Caroline came to say. Since I have no idea why you chose Wally for a partner, Caroline, and then proceeded to stand up here and insult him, or why you, Wally, did your best to insult her, it seems to me that the two of you should decide what you can do to make up the credit. Go sit down at the back of the room and talk to each other while I finish up some work here at my desk.”
Wally followed Caroline to the chairs back by the encyclopedias. She sat down on one, and he sat down on another, with one empty chair between them. Wally half turned toward Caroline, and Caroline half turned toward Wally.
Caroline was staring at her lap. She did not look like the same girl who had stood at the front of the room in Wally's underpants. She didn't look like the same girl who had pretended she had died and been buried in the river, either, or the girl whom Wally and his brothers had locked in the toolshed, the girl who, when they opened the door at last to let her out, had pretended that she had rabies.
This looked like a girl who was afraid she was going to spend the rest of her life in fourth grade and would do whatever it took to pass the December project.
“So what do you want to do?” Wally said at last.
Caroline shook her head. “I don't know. What do you want to do?”
They were quiet for a minute or two.
“I suppose we could ask each other questions all over again and write a better report,” said Wally.
“We could if you'll give me better answers,” said Caroline.
They agreed.
“So what do you really like to eat?” Caroline asked him.
“Pizza, like you said. Chicken McNuggets. Fries,” Wally told her.
“And what do you really like to do when you're not in school?”
Wally tried not to smile. “When we're not teasing you?” he asked.
Now Caroline was trying not to smile. “Yeah.”
Wally put one foot on the rung of the empty chair between them and thought about it. “I don't know. I just like to… fool around, I guess. I mean, I like to float things down the river and see how long it takes them to circle around Island Avenue and reach the other side. I like to explore the old coal mine and camp out at Smuggler's Cove. Things like that. How about you?”
“When we're not trying to bug you guys, you mean?” Now Caroline was smiling. “I guess I like to imagine things—how it would feel to be lost in the woods or to be starving to death or to be an old lady—things like that.”
Wally started to say, “Isn't that sort of crazy?” but then he remembered that when he'd said he liked to float things down the river, Caroline could have said the same thing about him.
“I suppose we should be writing some of this down,” he told her.
“Yeah,” said Caroline. They each took out a notebook and began.
On the way home that afternoon, Wally told his brothers about his interview with Caroline and how he was probably going to pass fourth grade after all. And how Caroline had really changed.
“She's not completely crazy,” was the way he put it.
“She sure bakes good cookies!” said Peter.
That evening, however, as Peter was watching a Bugs Bunny tape on the VCR, and Mother was busy at the dining room table, which was covered with wrapping paper and presents, Jake looked at Josh.
“Why don't we hold a club meeting?” he said.
“Now?” asked Josh.
“Explorers don't just go out in the daytime,” said Jake, and grinned.
“You mean, spy on the girls?” whispered Wally.
“Why not?” said Jake.
Wally thought about it. Why not? The girls knew the guys could be in the loft at any time. If they didn't want to be spied on, all they had to do was pull down their shades.
“Whose room faces the loft?” asked Josh.
“Beth's, I think.”
“Okay,” said Josh. “Let's do it. But leave Peter behind.”
They put on their jackets.
“We've got a little errand to run, Mom,” said Jake, poking his head into the dining room, where their mother was putting a label on a box for one of their aunts.
Mom winked. “Okay,” she said.
<
br /> That was the nice thing about Christmas; there were secrets all over the place. If you said you had to go out for a while or you had to run an errand or you were going to your room and didn't want to be bothered, everybody understood. Mom, of course, didn't have a clue, and Dad was still out delivering packages.
Jake carried a flashlight because there was no moon at all. At the bottom of the bank where the swinging bridge began, there was only blackness. They climbed up the bank on the other side and went single file, glad they didn't have Peter to worry about, and made their way to the old garage, around Coach Malloy's car, to the ladder on the side wall. Then they climbed up to the loft.
They crawled across the dusty floor to the window and crowded around it. Wally got the binoculars from the tin milk box and held them to his eyes.
The lights were on in Beth's bedroom. Beth was sitting on the bed talking to Caroline, who was standing in the doorway. The girls seemed to be having an argument.
“Look at the Crazie,” said Jake. “She's really teed off about something. Let me see those binoculars for a minute, Wally.”
The boys took turns watching through the binoculars. Beth would say something, then Caroline, then Beth, then Caroline. Beth stood up finally, hands on her hips, and leaned forward. Now they appeared to be shouting, though of course the boys couldn't hear what they were saying.
“Boy, I never saw Caroline this mad before,” said Wally. “I wonder what it's all about.” He didn't even need binoculars to see how angry Caroline was getting.
Through the window they watched Beth shouting back, stamping her foot. She turned her back on Caroline finally, arms folded across her chest.
Suddenly Jake and Josh and Wally gasped in horror, for at that very moment, Caroline picked up a hammer from on top of a dresser, raised it high in the air, and brought it down on her sister's head.
Beth Malloy crumpled to the floor, and the light went out.
Eleven
A Case of Murder
Eddie had been lying on her bed in the dark in her stocking feet, listening to a new CD, when she happened to look out the window and see a small yellow light bobbing across the swinging bridge and then up the hill toward the Malloys' backyard.