The Girls' Revenge (16 page)

Father looked at Wally.

“I guess I exaggerate a little,” Wally said.

“I guess you do,” said his father. “Suppose you start at the beginning.”

Jake was giving Wally his “traitor” look, but Josh seemed to be nodding, urging him on, so Wally explained: “We were holding club meetings up in the
loft just to bug the girls, and they decided to trap us up there. So Eddie got some paint and painted the ladder, and when we started to come down we got paint on our clothes.”

“What?” said Mother.

“Don't worry. We got it out with turpentine,” Wally said. “Then, when Mr. Malloy came home, he got some on his sport jacket and now the girls have to earn money to pay for it, that's all. All they painted were the rungs of the ladder. And they've really taken pretty good care of the place.”

“My goodness, you
do
exaggerate, don't you!” Mrs. Benson said.

Wally hoped that once the truth was out, that might be the end of it. He thought now that he'd told how it really happened, Mrs. Benson would say,
Well, then, I see there's nothing to worry about!
and go back to Georgia.

She sipped her coffee thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “It's hard being away from your own house for so long. I wanted to feel at home in Georgia, and in some ways I do—the boys seem to like it a lot— but I miss Buckman. I suppose if we come back, I'll miss Georgia too.”

“Has Hal made a decision yet?” Father asked.

“Not really. He's had one offer from the college where he's teaching now, and he's waiting to hear from some other schools before he decides. I suppose it could go either way. It would just be nice to know that if we
do
come back to Buckman, though, there will be a house to come home
to.
”

Jake and Josh, Wally, and Peter, excused themselves
as soon as they thought they could get away, and made a beeline for the stairs. Once they got to Jake and Josh's bedroom, they closed the door and sat down on the beds.

“Wally, you jerk!” Josh said, still mad that he'd told on the girls.

But Jake asked, “What are we going to do if the Bensons don't come back?”

“What are we going to do if they
do
?” said Josh.

“What do you mean?” asked Jake.

“Come on, Jake, the girls have been fun and you know it,” said Josh.

“Yeah, but we used to play ball with the guys every evening in the summer!”

“We can play ball with the girls,” said Josh. “Eddie especially.”

“We used to explore the cove and fool around the old coal mine,” Jake protested.

“We can explore them with the Malloys,” said Wally.

“The girls are nice!” piped up Peter. “They make good cookies!”

Jake threw back his head in exasperation. “What's happened to you guys? You've been brainwashed! You
know
we've been waiting for the Bensons to come back! We
always
wanted the Bensons to come back.”

“Maybe we can have both,” said Wally. “Maybe the Bensons will come back and the Malloys will stay.”

“Not likely,” said Jake. “Buckman isn't that big a place. They don't need two football coaches at the college.”

The boys sat morosely on the beds, staring at each other.

“The thing is,” said Josh, “Coach Malloy might ask his family what they want him to do. If they all hate it here, they'll probably go back. If the girls really want to stay, though, maybe he will.”

“You think they'll want to stay after all we've done to them?” asked Wally.

“Hey! They'll probably stay
because
of what we've done. They had as much fun as we did,” Josh told him.

Wally walked out in the hall to see whether Mrs. Benson had left yet, to go check on her house. She was still downstairs. In fact, she was on the phone in the hallway at that very moment, talking to Mrs. Malloy.

“Well, I'm glad to know you're enjoying our house,” he heard her say. “I didn't want to just come barging over with no warning at all, but I did want to see it. I wondered if there was anything needing repair…. I see…. Yes…. Well, that's fine then…. Of course. I'll come by.”

Upstairs, the boys crowded around the door, listening.

When Mrs. Benson hung up, she said, “Well, I'm going over there and see for myself if they're taking care of things. Once you open your house to renters, you have no idea what's happening to it, do you?”

“I'm afraid not,” said Mother. “But I feel quite sure the Malloys are responsible people, Shirley.”

“I hope so,” said Mrs. Benson.

The boys watched from the crack in the door as
Mrs. Benson pulled on her coat again, went out the door, and drove her sister's car around to the road bridge, and the Malloys' on Island Avenue. For the next hour and a half, they didn't leave the bedroom. Using their father's binoculars, they watched out an upstairs window, half expecting to see a moving van pull up Island Avenue and all the Malloys pile out of the house with their furniture, to go back to Ohio.

Instead, they finally saw Mrs. Benson come out of the house. She went into the garage for a minute, then came back out and got into the car.

“What do you suppose happened?” breathed Wally.

“I don't know,” said Jake.

“We could call and find out,” Josh suggested.

Jake shook his head.

And then all eyes fell upon Peter.

“They never did get their five dollars for shoveling our sidewalk,” said Josh. “Peter, how about you taking it over to them along with a note?”

“Sure!” said Peter. “Every time I go to their house I get cookies!”

So Wally went downstairs and got the five dollars from his mother, along with a lecture.

“What goes on in the Malloy house is strictly between them and the Bensons, and you shouldn't be telling tales,” Mother said. “If you can't write a letter without exaggerating, Wally, don't write one at all.”

Wally went back upstairs with the money, and Josh wrapped it up in a piece of notebook paper on which he had written,
So, are you guys getting kicked out or what?

“Give it to one of the girls, Peter, not the parents. Okay?” Jake instructed.

Peter stuffed the note with the five dollars in his pocket, and his brothers watched as he went across the front lawn in his boots and parka toward the swinging bridge.

In summer, when leaves were on the trees, you could hardly see the Malloy house unless you went through the trapdoor in the attic and up onto the widow's walk on the roof. But now, with the trees bare, they could see many things across the river they couldn't see at any other time. Still, the binoculars helped.

They watched as Peter shuffled along. Every few feet he scraped the snow away with one boot to see what was beneath it. All along the swinging bridge, he ran his hand along the cable handrail to push off the snow. Every so often he stopped to throw a handful of snow into the river, then leaned over to see where it landed on the ice.

“If he went any slower, he'd be crawling,” said Jake.

“If he went any slower, it would be Monday by the time he got there,” said Josh.

“If he went any slower, the Malloys could be moved out and back to Ohio,” Wally observed.

It had begun to snow again, and big frosty flakes drifted down from the sky. The boys groaned as Peter stopped in the middle of the bridge again, his head thrown back, and tried to collect snowflakes on his tongue.

Finally he reached the other side and slowly made
his way up the hill to the Malloy house, taking two steps up the steep slope of their back lawn, sliding one step back, taking two steps more, sliding one step back, before he disappeared in the snow and fog.

An hour went by. An hour and fifteen minutes. An hour and a half.

“What could he be
doing
over there?” groaned Josh. “What'd he do, take a suitcase? Is he moving in?”

The snow continued to fall. There was now almost an inch and a half on the window ledge.

“I want you boys to shovel that sidewalk before it gets any deeper,” Mother called up the stairs.

“What? We already did it once! You paid the girls to do it!” Jake protested.

“Well, it's got to be done again,” Mother said.

Just then they saw Peter coming back across the bridge. It took him about as long to get home again as it had taken him to cross in the first place.

Finally, when he opened the front door and began stomping his feet in the hallway, Jake and Josh rushed down and brought him up so fast he didn't even have time to get his boots off. There was chocolate syrup around his mouth. Cookie crumbs on his jacket. Peter looked dazed and happy and kind of sleepy.

“What did they
say
?” asked Josh.

“Are they leaving?” asked Jake.

“Did Mrs. Benson tell them they had to move?” Wally wanted to know.

In answer, Peter pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to Wally. Wally read it silently first, then swallowed, and read it aloud to his brothers:

So you were the ones who told the Bensons about the “murder” up in Beth's room, and our “painting the garage”! And now you want to know whether we're leaving or not. You want to know whether we're going back to Ohio and if your old buddies will be back from Georgia.

Well, you know what? We're not going to tell you. And if you think it was hard waiting for Peter to get back across the bridge with this note, just think what it will be like waiting till next summer for your answer!

Eddie, Beth, and Caroline

P.S. Thanks for your help in shoveling the sidewalks.

Double P.S. Did you notice it's snowing again?

          Did you notice we took your shovels?
             Did you know it will cost you five dollars to get them back?

The Whomper, the Weirdo, and the
Crazie

Read all about the Hatford boys and the Malloy girls.

The Boys Start the War

Just when the Hatford brothers are expecting three boys to move into the house across the river where their best friends used to live, the Malloy girls arrive instead. Wally and his brothers decide to make Caroline and her sisters so miserable that they'll want to go back to Ohio, but they haven't counted on the ingenuity of the girls. From dead fish to dead bodies, floating cakes to floating heads, the pranks continue—first by the boys, then by the girls— until someone is taken prisoner!

The Girls Get Even

Still smarting from the boys' latest trick, the girls are determined to get even. Caroline is thrilled to play the part of Goblin Queen in the school play, especially since Wally Hatford has to be her footman. The boys, however, have a creepy plan for Halloween night. They're certain the girls will walk right into their trap. Little do the boys know what the Malloy sisters have in store.

Boys Against Girls

Abaguchie mania! Caroline Malloy shivers happily when her on-again, off-again enemy Wally Hatford tells her that the remains of a strange animal known as the abaguchie have been spotted in their area. Wally swears Caroline to secrecy and warns her not to search by herself. But Caroline will do anything to find the secret of the bones and finds out the hard way that she should have listened.

The Girls’ Revenge

Christmas is coming, but Caroline Malloy and Wally Hatford aren't singing carols around the tree. Instead, these sworn enemies must interview each other for the dreaded December class project. Caroline, as usual, has a trick up her sleeve that's sure to shock Wally. In the meantime, Wally and his brothers find a way to spy on the Malloy girls at home. The girls vow to get revenge on those sneaky Hatfords with a trap the boys won't soon forget.

A Traitor Among the Boys

The Hatford boys make a New Year's resolution to treat the Malloy girls like sisters. But who says you can't play tricks on sisters? The girls will need to stay one step ahead of the boys and are willing to pay big-time for advance information. Homemade cookies should be all it takes to make a traitor spill the beans. In the meantime, Caroline is delighted with her role in the town play. Don't ask how Beth, Josh, and Wally get roped into it—just wait until showtime, when Caroline pulls her wildest stunt yet!

A Spy Among the Girls

Valentine's Day is coming up, and love is in the air for Beth Malloy and Josh Hatford. When they're spotted holding hands, Josh tells his teasing brothers that he's simply spying on the girls to see what they're plotting next. At the same time, Caroline Malloy, the family actress, decides she must know what it's like to fall in love. Poor Wally Hatford is in for it when she chooses him as the object of her affection!

The Boys Return

It's spring break, and the only assignment Wally Hatford and Caroline Malloy have is to do something they've never done before. Wally's sure that will be a cinch, because the mighty Benson brothers are coming. It will be nonstop action all the way. For starters, the nine Benson and Hatford boys plan to scare the three Malloy sisters silly by convincing them that their house is haunted. Meanwhile, everyone in town has heard that there's a hungry cougar on the prowl. When the kids decide to take a break from their tricks and join forces to catch the cougar, guess who gets stuck with the scariest job?

The Girls Take Over

The Hatford boys and the Malloy girls are ready to outdo each other again. Eddie is the first girl ever to try out for the school baseball team. Now she and Jake are vying for the same position, while Caroline and Wally compete to become class spelling champ. As if that's not enough, the kids decide to race bottles down the rising Buckman River to see whose will travel farthest by the end of the month. Of course, neither team trusts the other, and when the girls go down to the river to capture the boys' bottles, well … it looks as if those Malloy girls may be in over their heads this time!