A Spy Among the Girls (4 page)

Dumb, dumb, dumb,
thought Caroline. Who was going to be satisfied with a picture of an abaguchie? And where did
she
fit into all this? Well, Caroline Lenore Malloy was going to play a part whether Eddie knew it or not. In fact, Caroline was going to save the day. She would
be
the abaguchie.

Beth and Eddie were still discussing the plan as though Caroline weren't even there. “But there are three hundred kids in school, not counting kindergarten and first grade. Who's going to write out three hundred messages?” Beth was saying.

“We'll do it on Dad's computer,” Eddie told her. “I'll type up a message, then we'll copy it all down the page, and print a whole bunch of pages till we get three hundred messages. Then we'll cut the pages in strips.”

“And if a parent gets hold of one of the slips of paper and tells our folks?” asked Beth.

“We'll just explain. It's a scientific experiment to see if boys are more gullible than girls. There's no harm in that.”

Eddie didn't seem to care that kids would be disappointed, Caroline thought. As long as she got an experiment out of it, that was all that mattered. Well, Caroline would just have to see that no one went away disappointed.

As soon as they'd finished eating, Eddie turned on the computer and typed out this message:

Private: This is a secret message. If you want to

see the abaguchie, come to 611 Island Avenue

between 3 and 4 PM. tomorrow, Saturday. Free.

Do not tell anyone about this message or you will

not get in.

She copied it again and again all down the page, then printed out page after page, until there was a message for every student in the second through sixth grades.

Eddie and Beth took their scissors and cut the papers into strips, a message on each strip, then divided them up and stuck them in their book bags. After that, they spent the evening cutting parts of animals out of old magazines and pasting them together on a sheet of paper, until they had a weird animal that looked like no animal at all.

“This isn't any good,” said Beth. “It's just plain stupid.”

“Well, it's all we've got, so it will have to do,” Eddie
said irritably. “Meanwhile, I'll hide this under my bed. The folks will be in Morgantown on Saturday afternoon, and the experiment will be over by the time they get back. Not that I'm doing anything
wrong,
of course. I just…I don't know how Mom would feel about us luring kids over here thinking they'll see a real animal.”

Caroline said nothing. Nothing at all.

The next morning, however, before the girls left for school, Eddie gave Caroline some of the messages to put in coat pockets.
Sure!
thought Caroline.
When there's work to be done, call on good old Caroline.
Still, she took her share of the slips of paper without complaining.

She didn't say a word to Wally. She was as good as gold all day. Eddie had already decided that the messages should be put into coat pockets after the last recess so that kids wouldn't be finding them and talking about them with their friends. Better that each student should read the message alone and decide for himself or herself whether or not to go see the abaguchie.

Caroline did her afternoon arithmetic lesson, wrote a paragraph for American history, and promptly at two-thirty-five went up to Miss Applebaum's desk with a rather urgent look on her face, one hand on her stomach, and asked to use the rest room. Miss Applebaum nodded and Caroline went out in the hall.

She could see Eddie coming out of her classroom far
down one end of the corridor, and Beth in the hallway at the other end. Eddie disappeared into the south corridor, Beth disappeared into the north, and Caroline took a handful of slips from her sweater pocket and began putting them in the pockets of all the coats hanging outside her classroom. It was understood that Beth would fill the pockets of the second- and third-graders, Eddie would do the fifth and sixth grades, and Caroline would do the pockets of her fourth-grade class.

Caroline's heart was beating fast and her hands felt cold as she walked silently along the rows of coats, dipping one hand down into the pocket of her sweater. She knew she was taking an extra-long time, but she hoped Miss Applebaum would figure she had been feeling a little sick and needed extra time in the rest room.

The girls usually hung their coats on one side of the hallway, the boys on the other. On one side were purple, pink, and green nylon jackets, some with fake fur around the hoods, mittens with designs on them, and a few snow boots of blue and pink and purple.

On the other side of the hallway were brown and gray and blue and black coats, some of wool, some of nylon, and stocking caps stuffed up sleeves or flung this way and that on the rack.

Caroline finished putting messages in the girls’ pockets and started down the other side of the hall. She put her hand deep into the pocket of a brown
corduroy jacket with a sheepskin collar and didn't notice Wally Hatford walking out of the classroom toward the boys’ rest room. She didn't see him stop and stare at her before continuing silently on his way.

Six
Spy Time

C
aroline Malloy steals,” Wally announced to his brothers as they walked up to their porch that afternoon.

“How do you know?” asked Josh.

“I saw her in the hall today with her hand in a boy's coat pocket. She didn't see me, though.”

“What did she take?”

Wally shrugged. “I don't know. She was probably looking for money or something. It was Kevin Miller's jacket.”

Wally went inside and started to take off his coat.

Then he remembered the quarter he'd found on the way to school that morning and wondered if it was still where he'd put it. If Crazy Caroline was going around checking pockets to see if there was any money in them, she'd undoubtedly taken his quarter too.

He thrust both hands in both pockets. The quarter
was still there. There was also a little slip of paper, which he pulled out with two fingers. While his brothers went into the kitchen to get a snack, Wally unfolded the paper and read:

Private: This is a secret message. If you want to

see the abaguchie, come to 611 Island Avenue

between 3 and 4 PM. tomorrow, Saturday. Free.

Do not tell anyone about this message or you will

not get in.

What in the world?

Wally looked around to see if Josh or Jake had seen him reading the secret message. He wanted to go right out and show it to them, but maybe he shouldn't. That was the Malloys’ address, all right, and Caroline had obviously put it in his pocket. Maybe
that
was what she'd been doing out in the hall. She'd sure been acting weird lately, as though she wanted Wally to be her boyfriend, and now maybe she liked Kevin, too. Well, that was fine with Wally. Kevin could have her all to himself.

Still, what did it mean? Was it possible the Malloys really had captured the strange animal that had been lurking around Buckman? Maybe Coach Malloy had trapped it in their garage and Caroline was going to let Wally and Kevin have a first look at it because she liked them so much.

He stared at the note again. Why couldn't he tell anyone? he wondered. And how would they know
whether he had or not? That was easy. Everyone he told would want to come too, and a whole crowd would show up at the Malloys’. No, he had to keep this secret and go alone. But if this was a trick…

He went into the kitchen, where Jake and Josh were getting down the crackers and peanut butter. Peter was on the phone talking to their mother. She always called to see if things were okay.

“We're all here and we're not murdered or anything,” Peter told her.

When he hung up, they sat down at the table and passed around the crackers and orange juice, the peanut butter, and some cheese. But they all seemed unusually quiet to Wally. Jake and Josh would normally be jabbering away or quarreling about something, but now each of his brothers seemed to have something on his mind. Peter, in fact, was holding something tightly clasped in his left hand, and finally, when all the cheese was gone, he opened his fist, unfolded a little slip of paper, and asked, “What does
a-b-a-g-u-c-h-i-e
spell?”

Jake and Josh and Wally all paused with crackers in their hands and stared at Peter.

“Did
you
get one too?” asked Jake.

Josh turned to Jake. “What do you mean? Did
you
get one?”

“Then you got one, too?” Jake asked.

“We all must have got them,” said Wally, relieved. “I'll bet Crazy Caroline was putting them in our pockets.”

“What does it spell?” Peter asked again.

“Abaguchie,”
Wally told him. “But it's probably a big fat trick, Peter. She just wants us to make fools of ourselves.”

“What if they really did catch something?” asked Josh.

“There's only one way to find out, and you're the official spy,” Jake told him.

“Right!” Josh said quickly. “Leave it to me. I'll call Beth and say I'm coming over.” He dialed the Malloys’ three times, however, and each time the line was busy. Jake got tired of waiting and ambled upstairs. Then Peter left, and finally Wally.

Josh continued dialing.

Wally stretched out on his bed and played a few games with his Game Boy, but when he came back down, Josh was still there.

“I thought you were going over to the Malloys’,” Wally said.

“I am. Her mom said Beth stopped by the library on her way home and should be back in half an hour. Why don't you walk over there with me, Wally? I mean, you don't have to come in or anything. But we could sneak around the garage first and see if they've got anything trapped in there. Look in their basement window, maybe, and see if the abaguchie's down there.”

“Okay,” Wally agreed. He didn't mind as long as he didn't run into Crazy Caroline.

And so, with Jake upstairs listening to CDs and Peter playing with his Matchbox car collection, Josh and Wally put on their coats and crossed the swinging bridge. They circled around the garage first, so that the girls couldn't see them coming, and tried to look inside. The door was closed, however. The windows of the basement were dark as well.

“If there
was
an animal over here, I'll bet it would be making a powerful lot of noise,” said Wally.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “I'll bet Caroline thought up this whole stupid thing herself. I'll bet Beth doesn't even know about it.”

“Well, good luck,” Wally told him.

“You don't want to…uh… wait out here or anything?” Josh asked.

“Why should I wait? You might be in there a long time,” said Wally.

“Right,” said Josh. He walked toward the back door of the house, and Wally went on down the hill to the swinging bridge.

Wally couldn't figure out whether Josh really was a spy, or whether he was in love with Beth, or neither. As he crossed the river, he decided that if he ever
did
fall in love with a girl, he'd get a friend to like her too, and then they could both go see her together. Then he wouldn't have to do all the talking.

As soon as he got into the house, Jake quizzed him. “Where have you guys been? Where's Josh?”

“Just snooping around the Malloys’,” Wally said.

“Why didn't you tell
me
?”

Wally shrugged. “Somebody had to stay with Peter. Josh went inside their house, so I came on home.”

“You hear anything? Like an animal trapped somewhere?”

“Nope. I think Caroline the Crazie thought this whole thing up herself. She's been really, really weird lately.”

“Weird how? Weird mean or weird nice?”

“Weird weird,” said Wally.

“Does she still poke you in the back?”

“No.”

“Lean against you? Grab hold of your arm?”

“No! Of course not!” said Wally. “I can't explain it. She just acts goofy.”

Jake sighed and sprawled out on the couch, one foot dangling over the end. “How did we get mixed up with these goofballs anyway?” he asked no one in particular. “You know, if we hadn't spied on the girls when they were first moving in, we could have totally ignored them and we wouldn't be having a thing to do with them now. We wouldn't have had any snowball fights, wouldn't have locked Caroline in the cellar at Oldakers’. We wouldn't have howled outside their window or got them lost in the woods or…”

“Or had any fun at all,” put in Wally.

Jake looked over at him. “You don't want the Ben-sons to come back, do you?”

“What?” said Wally. “I never said that!”

“But you don't, do you?”

“Sure I do! Of course I do! I just…I'm not sure I want the Malloys to leave, that's all.”

“I'm not sure either,” said Jake. It was the very first time he'd admitted it.

Seven
A Visit Before Dinner