Free Boys Against Girls by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

not.
    It's not cold here like it gets in Buckman. Yesterday I went to school without a jacket. Danny has this real good-looking teacher who rides a bike to school some days. She had a flat tire and Danny fixed it for her, and she gave him some chocolates. I mean, can you imagine old Applebaum giving anyone chocolates?
    There are seventeen boys in my class and only eight girls. This is probably the very best year I ever had in school. Fun, I mean.
    How are you guys doing, anyway? What are you going to do for Thanksgiving? Write sometime.
    Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug)
    Dear Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug):
    You want to know what we're doing for Thanksgiving? Just because you guys left Buckman for Georgia and rented your house to a Whomper, a Weirdo, and a Crazie, we've got to eat Thanksgiving dinner with them. Mom invited those girls over here¡ I can't believe this. It is going to be the worst Thanksgiving I ever had in my life, and if you guys don't come back soon, I don't know what we'll do.
    I think you're just nuts about that teacher. I think just because she gave Danny chocolates when he fixed her bike, she's making you all sort of nuts. Have you forgotten all the fun we had here? Have you forgotten all the things we've done together in Buckman? Especially, have you read anything in the newspapers there about the abaguchie? Bet you haven't. There's even a new rumor that it got in the bookstore somehow.
    If you want to know more about the abaguchie you have to come back. You have to hear it with your own ears.
    COME HOME NOW!!!¡
    Wally (and Jake, Josh, and Peter)
    P.S. We mean it, guys¡

Eighteen

Paw Prints
          I t was Eddie's idea, actually. It had rained Saturday morning—a cold November rain—gray sky over gray trees over a gray landscape—the kind of day that made Eddie wish for baseball summers, Beth to wish for warm July days of hammock reading, and Caroline to fantasize herself under bright lights in a packed auditorium, with her name, of course, on the marquee.
    “What we need,” Eddie said, lying on the floor, tossing a baseball up in the air and catching it while flat on her back, “is something that would make a great paw print. We could go over to the Hatfords’ after dark and make paw prints in the wet ground, right up that dirt path to their back door.”
    It was a better idea than Caroline had ever thought of herself, and Beth—who lived half her life inside her head along with vampires and headlesshorsemen—at once put her mind to the kind of paw prints an abaguchie might make.
    They went outside to experiment in the damp earth of Mother's empty flower bed, and discovered that by pressing the palm of their hands down in the dirt, then using the thumb to make prints for the toes, they had a good imitation of an animal's paw print—something resembling the print of a large cat.
    After that they worked to make it look real, placing the paw prints almost in front of each other, the way a large cat might go slinking about.
    Evening could not come quickly enough. There had been a lot more talk of the abaguchie since the small tuft of Caroline's fur trim had been found along the door frame at Oldakers'. Not a day went by at school that someone didn't mention it, and Caroline and her sisters could not think of a better way to keep the story alive than to place some odd paw prints where the Hatford boys would find them.
    Why the Hatfords? Who else was as much fun to tease, trick, fool, annoy, harass, and just plain drive to distraction? And things could not have gone more perfectly when Mother announced that there was chili on the stove for dinner, bagels for toasting with cheese, a salad in the fridge, and everyone could eat when ready. She was working on new curtains for the sun-room, and did not want to stop and put a formal meal on the table.
    The girls ate early and then, when it was almost, but not quite, dark, set out in dark jeans, socks, sweaters, and gloves. When