A Traitor Among the Boys (8 page)

“Same here,” said Mr. Hatford. “I promised Wally I'd take him and his brothers bowling. We're delighted that you folks could stop by.”

“We are too. Thanks for inviting us,” said Mr. Malloy.

Wally, Jake, and Josh went upstairs and brought down all the coats. Each of the three boys helped one of the girls on with her parka, and they were all so polite that for once even Eddie was speechless.

As soon as they got out on the porch, Beth said, “I can't believe how nice they were.” A sharp wind from the north caught them full in the face, and the three girls yanked up the hoods of their jackets.

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!

Bing!

Pong!

Pop!

Bap!

Showers of something small and hard rained down on the floor of the porch. Cupfuls of something that had been nestled in their hoods.

“What in the world?” said Mrs. Malloy, turning to stare.

“Lima beans!” yelled the girls all together, and as they walked out to the street, they saw the boys waving at them from an upstairs window.

Twelve
P.S.

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

We got even with the girls. Mom did the dumbest thing. She invited the Malloys over for cake and ice cream just because my birthday and Carolines are one day apart. Did you ever hear anything so dumb? If the county dogcatcher had a birthday next to mine, would anybody think to invite
him?

We not only had to share our cake, but we had to be nice and polite too. We even had to carry their coats upstairs. Well, we were nice, all right. We gave them all our lima beans. I mean,
all.
Jake found a package in the cupboard, and we poured lima beans into the hoods of the girW jackets. When they started home and flipped up their hoods, they got a shower of lima beans.

I'm sick of winter. You want our snow? You can have it
.

I'm sick of school, too. I'm sick of being nice to Caroline.

Please come back!

Wally

▪

Dear Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter):

Hey, don't feel so bad. It isn't so great down here either.

1. Yeah, we'll take your snow. Not only was there no snow at ChristmaSy there wasn ‘t any snow at all! There will never be any snow here in Georgia!
   

2. Dad still hasn't made up his mind whether we're moving back or staying here. I think the worst thing of all is not knowing where we'll be.
   

3. I had a cavity and I hate the dentist down here. He doesn't believe in Novocain.
   

4. Remember that really cool teacher here in school that Georgia peach? She's getting married
   _y
   and she left right after Christmas.
   

If we come back and find that the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie have put ballerina wallpaper in our rooms, we will barf.

Bill

Thirteen
“Break a Leg”

I
t was almost time for Buckman's anniversary celebration.
The Birth of Buckman
was probably as good as it was going to get. The costume committee had helped each player fashion a costume that looked at least something like the way people were supposed to have dressed back around 1800. Josh had finished painting the set—one horse, three cows, a barn, a fence, and a field. And Beth and Josh had held hands so many times and looked into each other's eyes so often that they could do it quite naturally now, with only a minimum of blushing.

“You're all going to come, aren't you?” Caroline asked her family the day before the performance. “I want you all sitting in the first row. Are you going to send me flowers onstage for the curtain call?”

“Why? Are you dying as soon as the show is over?” her father asked, lifting a piece of bacon to his mouth and snapping off the end.

“Dad!” Caroline scolded. “Actresses always get bouquets of flowers at the curtain call.”

Mr. and Mrs. Malloy studied their youngest daughter across the table.

“Sweetheart,” said her mother, “there's a little something you should know. You are
not
the only actress in the play, you do not even have the leading role, and this is not Broadway. You are learning a lot of different roles these days, and I would strongly suggest that you practice the role of being humble.”

Caroline bristled. She hated criticism. She knew she'd have to learn to take it from a director, but she didn't want to take it from her parents.

“Well, I have the lead role of all the
girhl”
she said confidently.

“Excuse
me?” said Beth.

“Besides you, I mean,” Caroline said hastily.

Mr. Malloy finished his bacon and glanced at his watch. “Why don't you accept the fact that you were lucky to get a part in a community play and that everyone's part is important, and stop looking for special favors?” he said.

Caroline pressed her lips together and didn't reply. She didn't want her family so disgusted with her that they wouldn't even come to the performance. Down in her heart of hearts, however, she knew that she was perhaps the most precocious child in Buckman and that some day, when she was a famous actress, people would be standing in line for her autograph.

She dressed for school and tried not to say anything else that would upset Beth. Eddie seemed restless, however. Plays did not interest her very much. She
longed to be doing something more active, and baseball season still seemed a long way off.

But all that restraint on Caroline's part was a little too much, and when she slid into her seat behind Wally, she could not resist poking him a little with her ruler and saying, “Good morning, Clyde! Are
you
going to send me flowers?”

“Huh?” said Wally, turning around.

“Flowers! For being in the play.”

“Why would I send you flowers?” said Wally, and faced forward again.

Poke, poke.
This time she poked him with her pencil.

“What?”
Wally snapped, turning again.

“Do you suppose we'll still be in plays together when we're in high school?”

“You mean
you'll
still be around when we're in high school?” Wally asked in despair.

“I don't know. I just mean if we are.”

“No,” said Wally. “I don't ever plan to be in a play again the rest of my entire life. And I will never, ever send you flowers.”

“Oh,” said Caroline.

▪

It was cold at recess and Caroline's throat felt a little scratchy, so she stayed in the shelter of the door and didn't venture out into the yard. Actresses had to be careful of so many things. It was amazing all the things you had to think about when you became an actress.

“Class,” said Miss Applebaum. “I hope you are all planning to go to the grand birthday celebration of
our town tomorrow. Sometimes we think about history only in terms of our country—the leaders who made it great—and we forget that even little towns like ours have a history—somebody, sometime, had to start the ball rolling and think about what
our
community might become. Everyone who attends one of the festivities this weekend will get an extra ten points for the unit. And that includes the play,
The Birth of Buckman,
in which two members of our class will star—Wally Hatford and Caroline Malloy.”

What does she mean, mentioning Wally! Why, he doesn't even have any lines!
Caroline thought. She started to stand up and take a bow, and then remembered what her mother had said about humility and decided she'd better stay seated.

▪

Everyone was excited at rehearsal that night, because it was the final rehearsal before the performance and the players came in costume. Caroline wore a silver brooch at the collar of her high-necked blouse, and Mrs. Malloy piled Caroline's dark hair on top of her head and fastened it with a tortoiseshell comb.

Beth, however, looked even more beautiful in a long, soft blue dress with lace on the sleeves. A little spray of blue artificial flowers was tucked into her blond hair.

It was almost enough, Eddie declared, to make
her
want to be in the play so that
she
could look beautiful, but not enough to make her go onstage and act stupid.

Caroline was very quiet as Mr. Malloy drove them to the old theater that evening. What she was feeling
was tired. All the excitement and stress of the past two weeks, all the evening rehearsals, were beginning to show, and she didn't have her usual spunk. But when she got up on the stage and saw Tracy Lee watching from the seats below, just waiting to spring onstage and take over if anything happened to Caroline, she performed with every ounce of energy she had, and the director told her it was one of her finest performances.

“Just do that well tomorrow night,” she told her, “and you will never have done better.”

The set was finished, the paint was dry, the old-time furniture collected and placed onstage, and as all the players left the theater that night, the men and women laughingly called to each other, “Break a leg! Break a leg!”

Caroline could not believe her ears! What a terrible thing to say, she thought.

But when she told her mother, who had come to pick her up in the car, Mrs. Malloy said, “Actually, that's a good-luck wish among theater folk, Caroline. They don't actually mean they wish it to happen. It's sort of a superstition that if you
wish
for something to happen, or say that you do, then it won't. It's like a good-luck charm to ward off misfortune.”

“Oh!” said Caroline, and felt very important that she was actually being around theater people now, hearing their talk, and being a part of it all.

▪

But the next morning, Saturday, Caroline awoke with a sore throat and a headache. She drank a little orange juice and insisted she was only tired. When she
fell asleep on the couch after lunch, Mrs. Malloy made her go up to bed for a nap so that she would feel better before the long show that evening.

There were to be speeches that afternoon and a high-school band concert, and Caroline wanted to go—wanted to tell everyone she met to be sure to come back downtown that evening to see her perform in
The Birth of Buckman.
But Mrs. Malloy said she had to rest for the play, so Caroline gratefully crawled under the covers and went to sleep.

When Mrs. Malloy went to wake her at five to get dressed for the performance, she found Caroline's cheeks burning red and a light rash on her face and arms. Caroline could hardly open her eyes, and when she tried to talk, her voice was husky.

Mrs. Malloy quickly got the thermometer.

“One hundred and four!” she said. “Caroline, I'm sorry, but you can't be in the play this evening. You are much too sick.”

“Mother!” Caroline wailed, tears welling up in her eyes.

“I'm going right to the phone and call the director. Tracy Lee will have to take over, and I'll have your father run your costume over to her house. I'm so sorry, honey. I'll see if I can't reach Dr. Raskin, too.”

She went downstairs to call.

“Mother!” Caroline wailed again. Her voice sounded like the bleating of a sick calf. There was a thump on the floor. Then another.

Beth and Eddie and Mr. and Mrs. Malloy went to the foot of the stairs.

Caroline was standing at the top, trying to get one of her pajama-clad legs into her long black skirt.

“I—I've got to be in the play!” Caroline croaked, her face pinker still. “Don't call the director! Don't! I don't want Tracy Lee to wear my clothes! I don't want her to be Beulah!”

She tried to put the other leg in the skirt, hobbling about on one foot, but at that moment she lost her balance and came tumbling halfway down the stairs, determined, it seemed, to almost, but not quite, “break a leg.”

Fourteen
The Birth of Budmdn