Free The Girls Get Even by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

apart, and Caroline was walking onstage followed by five other goblins.
    “Halloween again!” Caroline was saying. “I wish we could do something different this year, don’t you? I’m getting tired of the same old thing.” And the play began.
    If it wasn’t for Caroline, Wally might have enjoyed the play—a little bit, anyway. It was sort of fun peeping out from behind the curtain to see the younger children watching, Peter with his eyes wide and his mouth open. To hear them laugh at all the funny lines, and giggle when one of the witches tripped over her broomstick on purpose and went sprawling.
    He and another boy had to pull the curtain between the first and second acts, too, and that was fun. It was also fun to watch the custodian sitting on a stool offstage, making the lights get brighter or more dim.
    But Caroline, as usual, had to ruin it all. She added lines that weren’t there. She added words tothe lines that were. Even Miss Applebaum in the first row was trying to get Caroline’s attention to hurry her along. Finally, when it came time for Wally to say his line, he felt he could not stand it any longer.
    “Your throne, m’lady,” he said, escorting her to the chair, and then, just as Caroline sat down, he pulled it backward and Caroline sat down on the floor with a plop.
    The primary children shrieked with laughter, and even Miss Applebaum, who looked horrified at first, seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh.
    Wally had thought that would be the end of it. He had thought that Caroline would be so embarrassed that she would want the play to be over quickly.
    But Caroline was not hurrying her lines. She was not even getting up. The children stopped laughing. Miss Applebaum leaned forward, looking concerned.
    And then, from the floor where she lay with her arms outstretched, Caroline said grandly, “Where are my good and faithful footmen? I am more exhausted than I knew. Please bear me thither, that I might lie among the flowers of the field, surrounded by my people.” And she folded her arms across her chest.
    Wally stared at Caroline and then at the otherfootman. They looked at Miss Applebaum, who was nodding to them.
    There was nothing else to be done. “I hear, my Queen, and obey,” Wally said.
    He picked Caroline up by the arms. The other footman picked her up by the feet. And as they carried her offstage, Caroline turned toward the audience and blew them a kiss. Everyone clapped. It made Wally sick to his stomach.
    •
    That evening the boys tried out their spaceship costume. Mr. Hatford had gone to a truck stop near Elkins and bought a bigger inner tube than the boys even knew existed. All four of them could easily fit in the center hole, one hand holding the inner tube up, the other carrying the space guns that Josh had designed out of aluminum foil. Each of them was facing a different direction, and with the strange helmets Josh had designed, also of foil, they looked like men from another planet. Josh had even made green paper ears that fit over their own.
    “Well, if you don’t win first prize, you should get a prize for originality,” their father told them, as the boys practiced moving about the living room, two walking sideways, one walking backward, and Jake in front, leading the way. NaturallyJake. It was Wally’s idea, yet Jake was always the General. ‘
    When Mother came home from the hardware store at nine, the boys showed her their spaceship, and she said it was the best costume they’d ever made, absolutely.
    As she hung up her coat, however, Wally heard her say to his father, “Tom, are the Malloys raising chickens?”
    “Chickens? I’d think the coach would have enough to do without fooling with chickens. Why?”
    “Because the Malloy girls were in the hardware store the other day buying chicken wire, and I just wondered.”
    “What?” yelled Wally, and slipped out from under the giant inner tube.
    The other boys crawled out, too, and the inner tube landed with a