Boys Against Girls (12 page)

The four boys followed the paw prints around the yard, laughing at all the work the girls had done to make them think the abaguchie had been there.

“The thing is’ Wally said when they went back inside again, “Beth was really scared. Caroline too. I don't think they were faking it.”

“Even Eddie looked worried,” Jake agreed. “Maybe they
did
see something.”

“Could have been a dog or a fox or a deer or something. Two yellow eyes could be almost anything,” Josh told them.

After dinner, however, while Jake and Josh were
playing a video game, and Peter was taking his bath, Wally put on his jacket and went out in the backyard with the flashlight. For a long time he stood at the bottom of the steps and just watched and listened. If there was any creature back in the trees behind the shed, he decided, and if he waited long enough, he would hear something. See something. No animal could be one hundred percent quiet, could it? When he heard something, he'd turn on the flashlight, see what it was.

Caroline was a good actress, but she wasn't
that
good. Wally thought he knew fear when he saw it. It was possible that the girls had made the prints and then put on a show of acting scared to make the Hatfords think something was really back there, but no: they would have brushed off their hands and knees.

Standing absolutely still out in the November cold made his legs seem to lock into position, like those of a horse asleep on its feet. Wally wondered what it was like to be a sentry or guard on duty who would be shot if he went to sleep at his post. He had been standing there only ten minutes, perhaps. What if he were on watch for ten hours? What if the safety of the whole camp depended on whether he saw the faintest light, heard the slightest sound …

His knees felt frozen. He needed to move, and he began to get a little braver. He had been out this
long and heard nothing. Why didn't he go back as far as the trees behind the toolshed, where Caroline said they had seen the eyes, and just stand quietly
there
for fifteen minutes? Then if he still saw or heard nothing, he would figure the girls hadn't seen anything either.

Softly, he moved across the damp grass and stood leaning against the back of the toolshed, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the chill. There were goose bumps all up and down his legs where the wind whipped his trousers against him.

For a moment he thought he heard something, a whine, perhaps. Then he realized it was the whistle of the wind.

How long had he been standing here now? Five minutes? Ten? He began counting to sixty to keep track of the minutes, but after a while forgot which minute he was counting off—seven or eight. After that he felt he was too numb to think; even his brain was freezing.

Something snapped back in the trees, like a twig breaking underfoot.

Wally stiffened, his eyes searching out the darkness. A small forest creature scurrying home?

Snap.
Again the sound, like a footstep. Then a rustle, as though something was rooting about, pawing the ground. Sniffing.

Wally knew if he ran for the house to get Jake and
Josh he would frighten away the visitor. If he did not run for the house, he might have a heart attack on the spot. Wally did not run, not because he was brave but because he felt his feet and legs were icicles.

The air was quiet. Wally heard only the thump of his heart, the thrubbing of blood in his temples. And then, not ten yards away, two yellow eyes stared out at Wally from the trees—two yellow eyes, close together, about three feet from the ground. They moved to the left as though the creature were circling, but then they stopped and moved to the right.

Wally inched backward toward the door of the shed, heart racing, mouth dry, fingers clutching the flashlight.

Turn on the flashlight¡
his brain told him,
and see what it is. Now's your chance¡ Turn on the light¡

No, run¡
his feet argued.
Forget the light and run, stupid¡

He would get to the door of the shed and
then
turn on the light, he decided. If necessary he could jump inside and close the door after him.

The yellow eyes seemed to come closer still.

In terror Wally reached the corner of the shed and lifted the flashlight, but his hands were so cold, he dropped it. And in that split second the yellow eyes disappeared.

Frantically, Wally picked up the light and shone it
in the direction of the eyes, but there was nothing. He took a few steps forward, disappointment overcoming fear, and even rattled the branches of a nearby bush, hoping to flush the creature out if it was still lurking about, but he didn't see anything at all.

The grove of trees behind the shed seemed empty now. As sure as Wally had felt before that a presence was there, a creature unseen, he now knew that it was gone. He turned and kicked the shed hard, only injuring his toe, and limped back to the house, wiping his nose with one hand.
Stupid, stupid, stupid¡

Coming into the kitchen, he found his brothers making popcorn in the microwave.

“Where have
you
been?” asked Josh.

Wally slumped down on a chair, still shaking in his jacket. “I saw them,” he said, lips barely moving.

“The girls are back?” asked Jake.

Wally shook his head. “The eyes. The yellow eyes.”

“What?”

“But when I turned on the flashlight, they were gone.”

“Maybe you only imagined it,” Josh said.

“No¡ I saw two yellow eyes. They were three feet off the ground, just like Caroline said. And I heard something moving around, sort of sniffing and snorting in the underbrush. I
know
something was
out there. The girls
did
see it, only I don't know what it was.”

Jake and Josh sat down slowly in the chairs around the table, and only Peter remembered the popcorn and got it out of the microwave in time.

“If it's there’ Josh said after a minute, “we're going to catch it.”

Twenty
A Little Talk
with Wally

      I
t was miserable having Eddie mad at her. It wasn't so bad when Beth was angry, because all you had to do to make up to Beth was hand her a new book, and within minutes she was lost in another time and place and had forgotten what the argument was about.

Eddie, however, did not like being made to look like a fool. She did not appreciate appearing foolish in front of girlfriends, but especially did not like to look stupid in front of boys, the Hatford boys in particular. And when Eddie was upset, she simply stayed after school to shoot baskets in the all-purpose room, or came home to bounce a ball off the side of the garage, and whatever Caroline suggested, she'd say simply “That's dumb.”

If Caroline was again to have the support of her oldest sister, she was going to have to do something rather dramatic, she decided. Something that
worked.
Something braver than even Eddie would have thought of to do, but Caroline hadn't a clue as to what that might be.

At school on Monday, however, she got a break because, for the first time since she had moved to Buckman, Wally Hatford turned around in his chair, all on his own, and talked to her. Politely.

“What exactly did you see at the back of our yard the other night?” he asked.

Caroline didn't answer right away because she wasn't sure what he was going to do with her answer.

“We were only kidding around,” she said. “It was just something to do.”

“I know, but you really did see something, didn't you?”

“I'm not sure,” Caroline told him. Were they having a real conversation? Was it possible that a Hatford boy and a Malloy girl could actually behave like normal people when they wanted to?

“Did you hear anything, then?”

“Yes. Twigs snapping, I think. Like someone—
something
—was walking on them. And maybe a … well, sort of snuffing sound.”

“That's what / heard!” Wally said.

“When?”

Now Wally looked uncomfortable, as though he couldn't trust
her
with the answer. But he must have decided to take a chance, because he said at last, “After you went home that night, I stood out by the back of the shed and watched.”

Caroline felt her eyes growing larger. “What did you see?”

“I'm not sure either,” said Wally. “Did you really see two yellow eyes?”

“Well …” Caroline thought hard. “I saw
something.
It certainly looked like two yellow eyes, and I heard something.”

“Me too,” said Wally. “What did it sound like?”

“Well …” And again Caroline thought. How much was real and how much might she have only imagined? “I heard growling. Maybe just one growl. It could have been the wind, I guess.”

“But you don't think so?”

“I don't know what to think,” Caroline told him, as honest as she'd ever been in her life. “But Beth said she heard growling too.”

“Well, / think you really did see and hear something. I did too. And if something
was
back there, Jake and Josh and I are going to capture it.”

Now Caroline's eyes were
really
wide. Was this a trick? She didn't think so. Still, with all the things the Hatford boys had pulled in the past …

“How?” she asked.

“We're going to build a. cage and put bait in it,” Wally said. “Josh made a drawing, and we're going to build it tonight. If we catch anything, I'll let you know.”

She couldn't believe her ears. “Thanks,” she said.

After school that day Caroline was disturbed that Eddie still would rather play basketball in the all-purpose room than walk home with her and Beth. Caroline hated the thought that Eddie might think she was getting too old for them—might go off and spend all her time with someone else.

She glanced over at Beth, but Beth, as usual, had her nose stuck in a book. What would happen to the Malloy sisters if Eddie didn't hang around with her and Beth anymore? All Caroline's plans for a movie-production company called Malloy Enterprises would just float right out the window.

If only she could do something splendid and brave, like capturing the abaguchie barehanded, to make Eddie proud of her again.
Proud
to say that Caroline was her sister. If she couldn't do that, she would settle for
sighting
the abaguchie. But even that was farfetched.

Then she had another idea. What about making the Hatford boys believe the abaguchie had come to their trap and taken their bait? And after the boys spread the story around school, she'd tell them what
really happened. Maybe even keep the bait as evidence.

As soon as Caroline thought of it, however, she felt guilty. Wally had let her in on a secret, and look what she was about to do. On the other hand, when had Wally ever let her in on a secret before when it wasn't a trick of some sort?

This would pay him back for pulling the chair out from under her in the Halloween play, for trying to throw her in the river at Smuggler's Cove, for dropping dead birds and fish on the Malloy side of the river, locking her in the toolshed, trapping her in Oldakers’ cellar …

The longer the list grew, the more Caroline began to feel that this little trick was nothing at all compared to all Wally Hatford had done to her—Wally and his brothers. And as soon as she made up her mind that she was going to make them think an abaguchie had come and gone, she knew exactly how she was going to do it.

Twenty-one
Bait