A Traitor Among the Boys (7 page)

Maybe twelve was the really big birthday celebration. Or what about sixteen?

His birthday came a little too soon after Christmas to suit him. Jake and Josh had their birthdays in April, and Peter didn't have his till August.

Mrs. Hatford didn't go in much for parties, but sometimes she said they each could invite a few friends to go bowling or something, or she'd take Wally and some of his friends to the movies, but she hadn't said anything yet about his birthday this year.

▪

It was at breakfast the next morning that Mrs. Hatford mentioned the birthday. Actually, it was Mr. Hatford who said something. “Ellen, do you realize that Wally will be ten years old this weekend?”

“I was thinking of that yesterday,” Mrs. Hatford
said, “because Jean Malloy was in the hardware store looking for a snow saucer for Caroline's birthday, and—”

“Caroline's
birthday?” Wally asked.

“Yes, she's having a birthday the day after yours, and I said ‘Why don't you come over this Saturday and we'll celebrate their birthdays together?’ ”

“Mom!”
yelled Wally.

“They're not coming, are they?” asked Jake.

“Well, I don't see why not,” Mrs. Hatford said, looking around uncertainly.

“Why did you invite them?” Wally bleated. “You could at least have asked me! I don't
want
to celebrate my birthday with Caroline.”

“Ellen, you should have asked Wally first,” said Mr. Hatford. “It's his birthday, after all.”

Mrs. Hatford looked confused and upset. “Tom, it just seemed the least I could do, after all our boys have done to torment those girls.”

Jake, Josh, and Wally groaned in protest.

“Besides,” their mother went on. “It's our turn to have the Malloys here. We invited them at Thanksgiving, they invited us at Christmas, and now with two birthdays coming up on the exact same weekend, I thought …”

“Mom, Caroline is a year younger than I am! She's
precociousl
She'll only be nine. This is my tenth birthday, the only tenth birthday I'll ever have, and I don't want to spend it with the Crazie.”

“That's what we call them,” Jake explained. “Eddie, Beth, and Caroline—the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie.”

Mr. Hatford finished his last bite of oatmeal and got up.

“Well, I've got mail to deliver. You'll have to work this out yourselves, but I think you went a little too far this time, Ellen.”

“Tom, what can I do? I can't
un'invite
them, can I?”

“I guess you can't,” said Mr. Hatford as he went upstairs to brush his teeth.

Mrs. Hatford looked guiltily about the breakfast table.

“I'll tell you what, Wally,” she said. “We'll just invite them over in the afternoon for cake and ice cream, and then we'll have our real celebration in the evening, and you can invite whomever you like. We'll have your official party then.”

“Okay,” said Wally, but he knew very well that if he had to spend the afternoon with the Malloys, being not only nice and friendly but polite as well, he might not feel like celebrating later at all.

Ten
Letter to Georgia

Dear Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug):

I mean it, if you guys don't come back soon, something terrible is going to happen. Do you know what's going on here?

1. We had to make a New Year's resolution to be nice, friendly, and polite to the Malloy girh.
   

2. Josh is falling in love with Beth, I think, and is even in a pUy with her, and they ‘re going to hold hands.
   

3. I have to be in the play too because Josh is.
   

4. I have to celebrate my birthday with Caroline, whose birthday is the day after mine.
   

5. We are all going nuts.
   

Wally

Eleven
A Curious Celebration

M
orn!” yelled Caroline.

Mrs. Malloy looked anxiously around the dinner table. “Well, I just didn't know what to say,” she confessed. “We were talking about the coincidence of you and Wally having birthdays only a day apart, and when she invited us over for cake and ice cream, it would have seemed terribly rude to say no.”

“Caroline, it's not going to kill you,” said Mr. Malloy. “You can have a regular celebration on Sunday, but there's no reason we can't go over to the Hatfords’ for an hour on Saturday and wish Wally a happy birthday.”

“Do we have to take him a present?” asked Eddie.

“Well, it seems the most friendly thing to do,” Mrs. Malloy said.

“We
each
have to bring him a present?” wailed Beth.

“No, we'll find something we can give him from the whole family,” said her mother. “It will be perfectly painless, I assure you.”

“I doubt it,” said Eddie.

It seemed to Caroline as though the Hatfords and the Malloys were destined to live overlapping lives as long as the Malloys stayed in Buckman. Whether this was bad or good, she wasn't sure, but she
was
sure she didn't want to share her birthday with Wally Hatford.

Nevertheless, she did not want to do one single thing that might affect the play, which was being advertised as
The Birth of Buckman.
If she insulted Wally, he might not come to rehearsals. If Wally dropped out of the play, Josh wouldn't come either. If Josh didn't come, they might not find a replacement, and if there were no grocer's lazy sons, the whole play might be called off and she herself would lose her chance for the performance of her life.

At school the next day, Caroline left Wally strictly alone. No poking him in the back with her ruler. No sticking him in the arm with her pencil. No blowing on the back of his neck. She did not call him Clyde either.

That evening she saw him at the Buckman Community Players, where he sat reluctantly in the back row of the theater and only went onstage when he had to. Josh, on the other hand, worked eagerly on the scenery, stopping only long enough to say his lines with Beth, and went immediately back to his painting.

“What do you think, Caroline? Do you think Josh
likes me?” Beth asked as the girls walked home together afterward.

It was hard to tell. It was obvious that Josh was more interested in painting the scenery than in being in the play, but still, if he didn't like Beth, not even a little, he wouldn't hold hands with her in front of a bunch of people, would he?

“Of course he likes you,” said Caroline. She might be only eight years old—well, almost nine—but Caroline knew perfectly well that if
Beth
didn't like Josh a little,
she
wouldn't come to rehearsals.

The rehearsal had gone a little more smoothly this time, the lines said with more expression. Most of the lines were read by a narrator who was telling the story of how a grocer and farmer got together to propose the town of Buckman, but every so often the actors would act out a little scene that the narrator was talking about.

The only people who hadn't seemed to be having much fun were the understudies, who would have liked to be main characters instead of townspeople. Tracy Lee had looked at Caroline as though she would be absolutely delighted if Caroline were to break a leg.

▪

The next afternoon, Saturday, the Malloys walked across the swinging bridge to the Hatfords’ house and knocked at the door.

Mrs. Malloy had bought a computer game for Wally that he and his brothers could play, and she'd also bought a gallon of French vanilla ice cream to go
with the chocolate chiffon cake that Mrs. Hatford had made for the birthday party.

“Oh, come in! Come in!” Mrs. Hatford said. “Wally, take their coats, will you, and put them upstairs on our bed?”

The Hatford boys were obviously freshly washed, combed, and dressed, and looked thoroughly uncomfortable. Beth and Josh glanced at each other and both blushed, Caroline noticed.

“Don't take your eyes off those guys for a minute,” Eddie had warned as the girls had dressed for the party that afternoon. “After what Caroline did to their brownies, you can just bet they'll have some horrible trick up their sleeves.”

“Like mud in the ice cream or cardboard in the cake,” said Caroline. Nevertheless, she
was
the birthday girl, and she was wearing a gorgeous yellow dress that made her look and feel like a princess, and she decided that no matter what the Hatford boys did to annoy her, she would not allow them to ruin her birthday weekend.

“Well, Coach,” said Mr. Hatford when they all sat down in the living room, “how do you think your team is going to size up in the play-offs?”

“It's been a pretty good season, actually,” said Caroline's father. “We may never make it to the Big Ten, but we haven't done so bad in our division.”

“Do you think you'll stay on here?” Mr. Hatford asked.

“I don't know yet. I guess it will depend on what
offers I get between now and summer,” Mr. Malloy replied.

The talk shifted then to the Christmas season just past, and Mr. Hatford said it had been a record year for the post office.

“How long have you been carrying the mail?” Mrs. Malloy asked.

“Since I was twenty-two,” Mr. Hatford told her. “Started out as a rural carrier only, way up in the hills. The one good thing about being a rural carrier, you never know what you'll find in people's mailboxes. Could be a piece of cake one day that somebody's left: for you, and a kitten another. Folks'll do that, you know. Take a mess of kittens and go around putting ‘em in folks’ mailboxes. Somebody even put a skunk in a box once.”

Everyone laughed.

“The only time he came home and I wouldn't let him in the house,” said Mrs. Hatford, and everyone laughed again.

“Boys,” said Mrs. Hatford, suddenly remembering what the visit was all about. “Don't you have a present for Caroline?”

“Oh, sure,” said Wally. He went upstairs and returned with a flat box wrapped in gift: paper from the hardware store. The Malloys, in turn, handed Wally his gift.

Somewhat awkwardly, Caroline and Wally both opened their gifts at the same time.

Wally seemed very pleased with his electronic game.

“Dragonia!” Jake and Josh said when they saw it. “Hey, that's a good one, Wally!”

“Thank you,” Wally told the Malloys, surprised. “I think I'll like it.”

Caroline opened her present then. It was a mirror, decorated with tiny ceramic dolls around the edge, each wearing the costume of a foreign country.

It was such a nice present that Caroline was shocked.

“So you can look at yourself all day if you want,” Wally said.

Everyone laughed. Caroline was so pleased with the gift that she didn't mind.

“Well, I have coffee waiting. And cake and the Malloys’ ice cream,” Mrs. Hatford said.

“Chocolate chiffon cake, too!” said Josh, grinning a little at Beth.

“The kind you tossed in the river,” added Jake, looking at Caroline.

Caroline blushed furiously, but everyone seemed to take it in good humor and they moved into the dining room for the refreshments.

“Watch the cake and ice cream,” Eddie whispered. “I sure won't take the first bite.”

Everyone took their places. The beautiful chocolate chiffon cake in the center of the table was cut into a dozen pieces, and a large piece was distributed to each plate. Mr. Hatford took the gallon of French vanilla that the Malloys had brought and put a large scoop of it on top of each piece. Then Mrs. Hatford poured coffee for the adults, pop for the kids, and everyone picked up their forks.

All the Hatfords took a bite. Mr. and Mrs. Malloy took a bite. They all said how delicious it was, and Caroline saw no reason not to eat it. After all, Mrs. Hatford had cut the pieces, not the boys. Mr. Hatford had dipped up the ice cream, not Jake. She took a large bite of cake and put it in her mouth. Absolutely delicious. Beth took the next bite, then Eddie. And soon surprised looks traveled between them as they all devoured their dessert and even wished there were more.

“This has been a lovely afternoon,” Mrs. Malloy said, “but I'm afraid we must go. Caroline has invited some girls from school over for a little party tomorrow, so I'd better get ready.”