Free The Girls Get Even by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

loud whap on the floor.
    Mrs. Hatford turned around. “Wally, don’t yell. I simply asked if the Malloys were raising chickens.”
    Jake and Josh stared at her openmouthed.
    “What did I say?” Mrs. Hatford looked around her. “It’s not as though I announced the Second Coming¡ All I said was that the Malloy girls were in the store to—”
    “How much wire?” asked Jake.
    “Why, I don’t know … quite a lot, as I remember, but it isn’t our best grade at all. It was that bendable stuff that will sag if even a cat jumps on it.
    “Their costume,” cried Wally.
    “They aren’t going to be a tepee at all, I’ll bet!” said Josh. “Think, Mom¡ Did they buy anything else? Say anything? Do anything?”
    “What’s got into you boys? The youngest one stood there wrapping it around and around herself, while the older sisters were paying for it, but I figured she was just being a bit silly, and …”
    The boys huddled around the kitchen table.
    “What do you suppose it could be?” asked Josh.
    “Something awesome, I’ll bet,” said Wally.
    “There’s only one thing to do,” said Jake, when the others turned toward him. “Smash it.”

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Eleven
•
Izzie
    T he “natural habitat” had simply not worked. Murphy’s Five and Dime didn’t carry the little birds and things the girls had wanted to tie to the branches. And when Caroline, Beth, and Eddie were all bound together to make the trunk, it was hard to walk. They finally decided on a lizard made out of chicken wire.
    “The principal has a terrarium in his office,” Eddie remembered, “with a lizard and stuff. I even know the name of the lizard—Izzie, he calls it. Why don’t we be a lizard and wear a collar that says IZZIE ? ”
    So they bought some chicken wire at the hardware store, fashioned it into a huge lizard in three sections, one for each of them, then spent the evening before the parade tacking green cloth over it, using buttons for eyes, and printing IZZIE on a collar to go around its huge neck.
    When Caroline awoke the next morning, she decided that life was more wonderful in Buckman than she had ever imagined. The day before, she had been a Goblin Queen, and today she was the hindquarters of a giant lizard. She made her parents laugh by waddling around in her part of the costume, sticking out one leg, then the other.
    Coach Malloy carefully tied the lizard forms to the roof of his car and drove them to school. As the girls carried them in on their heads, they saw the Hatford boys stop in their tracks and stare.
    “You guys still in the parade, or do you just want to give up now?” Eddie asked, as they arranged the sections in the proper order.
    “Why don’t you just promise to be our obedient slaves and get it over with?” said Beth.
    “Whatever you’ve thought of, I’ll bet it can’t top this,” said Caroline.
    And she saw Peter look up at Wally. “We can’t, can we?” he asked, and Caroline and her sisters smiled.
    Why didn’t the boys stop trying to drive them out of Buckman? Caroline wondered. That trick Wally had pulled on her during the play really backfired when he had to carry her out. Everyone had cheered for her. She was the Goblin Queen to end all Goblin Queens, and Wally had only created a scene that was even better.
    “The contest isn’t over yet,” said Jake.
    “It hasn’t even started,” Peter said.
    “Don’t count your chickens … uh, lizards … before they’re hatched,” said Wally.
    •
    It was hard to keep their minds on their studies that morning. Wally seemed nervous as a cat in a doghouse, Caroline thought, and it was strange to know that with a mother who worked in a hardware store, the Hatford boys couldn’t have thought up something original themselves.
    At noon the lunchroom was buzzing with chatter about the afternoon, and when the bell rang at one,