Free The Girls Get Even by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

play. The Goblin Queen. Caroline Malloy, in particular.
    The trouble with Caroline was that she never stopped being queen. If she was eating lunch, she set her empty milk carton on top of her head like a crown and kept it there. If she had to go to the blackboard to explain a problem, she always picked up Miss Applebaum’s pointer and used it like a scepter, anointing a knight. And she would slowly, regally, make her way up and down staircases, back straight, head high, looking neither to the right nor left.
    To Wally there was nothing worse than being in a play with Caroline Malloy. Never mind that he would be doing something special for the younger students. He did not want to make primary children happy. The primary children were happy enough as it was. Wally wanted his recesses back. He wanted his lunch hour back. He did not want to spend them standing around a drafty stage waiting for Caroline Malloy to decide that playing good tricks at Halloween was better than playing bad ones. Whoever wrote that play was an idiot. It took thirty minutes for the Goblin Queen to get the point and the Fairy Godmother to make her beautiful, just so Wally could say, “Your throne, m’lady,” and then, “I hear, my Queen, and obey.”
    Each day of practice got longer and longer becauseCaroline kept ad-libbing her part. If her line was “What do you suppose, dear sisters, the villagers would do if we were to wash their windows for a change?” Caroline would say, “What do you suppose, my dear, dear goblin sisters, the villagers would do if, instead of causing them trouble and hardship, we did something kind instead, such as washing their windows ?”
    Wally would stand on one foot and then the other, and finally even Miss Applebaum grew tired: “Caroline, if we don’t hurry this play along, our primary students will all be asleep before we’re done.”
    And finally Caroline would say, “We must spread the word throughout the Goblin Kingdom, that there will be the kind of tricks on Halloween night that will make it a night to remember and fill all hearts with joy.” Then and only then could Wally escort her to her chair and say, “Your throne, m’lady.”
    •
    When Thursday came, Wally wasn’t sure whether he wanted to get up or not. It was the day of the play, which was a good reason to stay in bed. On the other hand, once it was over, he’d never have to do that part again, which was the only reason he could think of to get up at all.
    He turned over on his back and noticed a narrow shaft of sunlight coming through his window, illuminating the dust particles in the beam. It was as though the beam were full of dust and the rest of the room was clear. If air was always so dusty, he wondered, did you inhale a big wad of dust every time you breathed? Were your lungs like a dust mop? Was that why people sneezed, to shake out their lungs? Was that—?
    “Wally, are you up?” Mother called from below. “If you want pancakes, you’d better come now.”
    Wally, the footman, got out of bed, pulled on his jeans and socks, and gave a big sigh.
    At school the primary students filed into the auditorium about ten o’clock, and the students from Miss Applebaum’s class who were in the play gathered behind the velvet curtain onstage.
    “I can’t believe this is really happening,” Caroline said to Wally, both of them wearing their goblin cloaks and hoods. “I’m a real actress at last. Do you know where you’ll see my name someday?”
    “On a tombstone?” said Wally.
    Caroline flashed him a disgusted look. “In lights¡ On Broadway¡ Someday you and your brothers will go to the movies and see me up there on the screen.”
    “If we see you on the screen, we’ll ask for our money back,” Wally told her.
    Beyond the velvet curtain the audience had grown quiet, and Wally could hear Miss Applebaum telling them about the play. And then the music started, the lights went out, there was the sound of the curtain being pulled