The Girls Take Over (4 page)

But next to throwing a baseball, throwing her weight around seemed to be what Eddie did best. When they all walked to school together the next day, she made a point of telling them that she was wearing her backpack on her left shoulder only because it was important not to put any stress on her pitching arm.

When they stood on the playground waiting for the
bell, she did finger exercises because, she said, it was important to keep her fingers flexible.

When she had to write an essay on the topic of her choice for sixth-grade English, Eddie chose “The History of Baseball,” Jake told Wally at recess. “She needs to be taken down a peg,” he said.

Uh-oh,
thought Wally. Whenever Jake talked like that, it meant trouble.

As all seven of them walked home together that afternoon, talking baseball, Wally said, to change the subject, “We'd better do that bottle race today. The water's already going down.”

It was true that although they still couldn't see the rocks that lay in clumps in the riverbed, the river wasn't as high as it had been only a few days before.

“All right,” said Eddie. “We'll go home and find something secret to go in your bottles. Then we'll be over.”

“Why don't we follow the river back as far as we can before we throw the bottles in?” Jake suggested. “Then we can watch them pass by our house, go down around the bend, and float back up the other side of Island Avenue.”

“Unless they get stuck upriver somewhere,” said Wally. “The river twists and turns a lot before it gets to our house.”

“We decided to paint the caps on our bottles red,” said Josh. “That way we can tell them from yours, Eddie, and see which ones are ahead. Just for fun.”

Wally saw Eddie's eyes narrow. “Are you sure that's the only reason?” she asked.

“Of course!” said Jake. “What other reason could there be?”

“Ha!” said Beth.

“Double ha!” said Caroline.

Five
Into the Drink

“Y
ou just
know
they're up to something!” said Eddie, once the girls were home.

Caroline and Beth had to agree.

“They didn't paint those bottle caps red for nothing!” said Beth. “I'll bet they're going to sneak around to the other side of Island Avenue where we can't see them and try to fish out our bottles as they go by.”

“Maybe they won't be able to reach them,” said Caroline.

“And maybe they
will
!” said Eddie. “You know what? We'll just have to fish theirs out first! And they've made it easy for us to tell which ones are theirs.”

“They've ruined it all!” said Beth, disappointed. “I don't want to win by cheating.”

“We're just saving our own skins, beating the boys at their own game,” Eddie told her. Her eyes began to gleam. “Do you know what's up in the loft of our garage?”

Caroline thought. “Window screens,” she said. That was all she could remember.

“What else?” said Eddie, her eyes becoming little slits. They looked almost like cat's eyes.

“Boxes? Dry leaves? Pigeon poop?”

“What else?” said Eddie, and when neither Caroline nor Beth could guess, she said, “A butterfly net.”

Caroline remembered. There was indeed an old pole with a net at the end.

“Perfect!” said Beth, finally enthusiastic about their plan. “Absolutely perfect! Are we in charge or
what
?”

When the girls got to the Hatfords', they found seven white bottles on the kitchen table, four with caps painted red and three with white caps. Each person was to put a slip of paper in a bottle, giving his or her name and phone number. Wally helped Peter with his.

“You know,” Caroline said, looking up, “maybe we ought to write a little more on our slips of paper, saying how important it is that people call us before the end of April. Otherwise, maybe nobody will bother.”

That seemed like a good idea, so there was more writing and erasing.

When all the girls' messages had been written, rolled, and thrust down into the bottles with the white caps and the boys' messages had been thrust down into the bottles with the red caps, they exchanged bottles. They turned their backs on each other, and Eddie reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out four buttons off an old Girl Scout uniform. She dropped one
button in each of the boys' bottles and put the caps back on.

Jake reached into the pocket of his faded denim jacket and pulled out three matchbook covers from a Mexican restaurant in Parkersburg. He bent each matchbook cover until it would go through the neck of each of the girls' bottles. Then he put the white caps back on the bottles.

When everyone had his or her own bottle back, each screwed on the cap as tightly as possible and sealed it with candle wax.

“Ready?” said Josh.

“Ready,” said the girls.

They put on their jackets again and started up the road outside the Hatfords' house, going in the opposite direction from school. College Avenue began downtown by the college and ran out past the Hatfords' house, on and on, following the Buckman River, until finally, about a mile away, it began to veer off from the water and ended at last at the highway.

The kids decided they would follow the avenue down to where it left the river, and there they would throw the bottles in, then walk back home to the swinging bridge and watch the bottles float by.

“Wouldn't it be wild if one of our bottles was swept out into the Atlantic and bobbed around for years before anyone found it?” said Jake.

“Wouldn't it be weird if one of us was shipwrecked, and one day one of our own bottles washed up on shore?” said Caroline.

As they followed the road, there were times when they could see the river and times when they couldn't, for it wound and twisted and curved before it came back to amble along the road again. At last they came to the bend in College Avenue where the road left the river for good. The seven of them left the road and walked along the ground until they were close enough to the water to toss their bottles in. The air had been mild for the past few days, and the kids were warm inside their jackets.

“Okay, who wants to go first?” asked Eddie. And then, answering her own question, she pulled back her arm and, with an underhand pitch, sent her bottle sailing out into the very middle of the river. The bottle disappeared for a moment, and then they saw the white cap bobbing slowly along the surface, beginning its long journey down the Buckman River, and everyone cheered.

Jake and Josh threw next, then Beth, then Wally, then Caroline, and finally Peter. Peter's bottle landed only a few feet from the bank beside an old rubber tire, so Wally reached out with a stick and retrieved it, and Jake threw it in again for his brother.

“Well, there they go,” said Josh. “

‘Luck, be a lady tonight!' ” Jake called, a line from a song his dad used to sing, and everyone laughed.

“Goodbye!” called Caroline.

“Happy landing!” said Beth.

“May the best bottle win,” said Wally, and they laughed some more.

They climbed back up the bank and made their way over to College Avenue again, heading home.

When they reached the swinging bridge, Jake said, “You know, it's going to take those bottles forever to get here, and we're going to have dinner soon. I don't think I'll wait around to watch them go by.”

“I'm tired,” said Peter. “I want to go in.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Josh.

And when the boys began walking up toward their house, Eddie said, “We're leaving too. I've got a ton of homework.”

“So have I,” said Beth.

“See you!” they all said to each other, and then the Hatfords went up on their porch and the girls started across the bridge.

“I thought you said you didn't have any homework tonight,” Caroline said to Eddie.

“I don't!” said Eddie. “But we've got a job to do anyway. Didn't you notice how Jake was trying to make us believe he wasn't interested in watching the bottles go by after all? That's because he doesn't want
us
to be around when they do. I'll bet they're going to come out later. They know we could see them from our upstairs windows if they tried to fish our bottles out here by the bridge. I figure they'll wait until they think the bottles will reach the other side of Island Avenue, and then they'll go pull our bottles out as they go by over there.”

“The dogs!” said Caroline.

“And here's what
we're
going to do!” said Eddie. “I'm getting the butterfly net from the garage. We'll take it
down under the swinging bridge and fish
their
bottles out first.”

“But
they'll
see
us
!” Caroline said.

“Not if we can get over the bridge first and down the bank on their side. They could see us from their upstairs windows if we tried to do it over here, but the bank's steep enough on their side that it will hide us.”

“So we'll fish out their bottles, and they'll fish out ours, and there won't be any bottles at all finishing the race,” said Beth.

“I guess that's about it,” said Eddie. “Better no race at all than us getting humiliated and having to be their slaves.”

“But they'll see us crossing the bridge with the butterfly net!” said Caroline, still wondering if Eddie's idea would work.

“Yeah, that's the hard part,” Eddie agreed. She was quiet a moment. “Okay, here's what we'll do: Beth and I will go first, and Caroline, you walk right behind us with the net, hiding it if you can. If we can just make it to the other side, they won't be able to see us anymore from their windows.”

Eddie got the net, and off they went.

“Now, walk close to me, Beth, so our shoulders touch,” Eddie instructed, “and, Caroline, try to keep the pole hidden behind us, if you can, as we cross the bridge. As soon as we get to the other side, slide down the bank and out of sight. Okay?”

The three girls went down to the footbridge again, Caroline trying to hold the long pole so that it could
not be seen from an upstairs window of the Hatfords' house. This was hard to do.

At least the boys were all inside now. That was in the girls' favor. The wooden planks bounced as they walked, and it was hard to move all stuck together.

“Look!” Beth said suddenly. “I see the bottles! Two white caps and a red one!”

“Hurry!” said Eddie.

They reached the other side and went sliding down the muddy bank to the river, out of sight of the Hatfords' upstairs windows.

“Here comes a bottle!” cried Beth. “Give me the pole, Caroline.”

But Caroline was already out on a large rock that extended into the water. “I'll get it, I'll get it!” she said.

“Ouch!” said Eddie as the end of the pole hit her on the head. “Be careful, Caroline! Give the pole to Beth. Her arms are longer.”

“No, I'll get it! I'll get it!” Caroline cried, leaning out as far as she could.

And then, of course, it happened. Where Caroline was concerned, anything could. She felt her left foot slip, her right foot slide, and with a little shriek, she plunged face first into the river.

Six
Double Cross

M
rs. Hatford was home when the boys reached the house. Peter went into the kitchen to get a snack. Jake grabbed Josh and Wally by the arms and rushed them upstairs where their mother couldn't hear.

“If we go back to the river, I'll bet we'll see those bottles come by, and we can grab the girls' bottles and pull them out.”

“That's cheating!” said Wally. “I thought this was going to be a real race.”

“
I
thought you just wanted to bring Eddie down a peg or two. I don't know why you want to punish Beth,” said Josh, who rather liked the middle Malloy girl.

“Well, if I knew which bottle was Eddie's, I wouldn't have to take them all. Tell you what—if I pull out either Caroline's or Beth's, I'll toss it back in.”

“How are you going to know which is which without
opening them up? And if you open one up, it won't be waterproof anymore,” said Wally.

“Tough luck,” said Jake.

“But how are you going to get them out of the river?” Wally could see it now. They'd make him put on Dad's hip-high fishing boots, take the fishnet, and wade out into the water. No! This time he would not do it! He simply wouldn't!