And now, it is time for another installment in the Boy/Girl Battle Series (what a name). You will recall that the boys and girls were last at odds during Halloween, when the girls destroyed the boys’ Halloween costume and the boys tried to trap the girls in a graveyard. Yeah, the last book was pretty boring. However, the back of this book promises “abaguchie mania!” so hopefully this one is better.
The cover! Beth appears to be telling Eddie something ~scandalous~, although I would call shenanigans on that scenario — Beth is almost criminally boring. I doubt she even knows anything scandalous. Caroline would be a better fit there, I think. At the bottom corner, Josh (who is wearing the same outfit that he does on the header!) checks out abaguchie footprints while one of the brothers looks on. I think it’s Peter — it’s definitely not Jake, and Wally is supposed to have dark hair. Although the consistency of the characters’ appearances in the earlier books is…lacking.
Anyway! Onto the story.
It’s the day right after Halloween (known in some circles as November 1, I believe), and the Hatfords are angry pandas. Their plan to trap the girls in the cemetary and dump worms on their heads (ew) had gone awry, and instead the girls came to their house and ate all their candy. Wally fumes that their plan had been foiled by girls. With double-X chromosomes and everything! O, the humiliation. Jake and Josh are also fuming about how they wish the girls would just go away and aren’t they bothersome and don’t you just hate them? Wally’s like, “idk, I guess,” because he’s sick of talking about the girls. He wonders why Jake and Josh are so obsessed with them. Oh, Wally. Just you wait until sixth grade. It is an exciting cocktail of hormones, sex ed, and thinking you know everything.
Anyway, Jake and Josh keep bothering Wally to tell him how much he loathes the Malloys, so finally Wally’s like, “I wish the abaguchie would carry them away, all right?” And Jake is like, “That’s it! Wally, you’re a genius!” After two books, Wally knows what happens every time Jake says that, and he peaces out of the conversation by lying back and wondering why you never see cracks forming.
…huh. Why don’t you ever see cracks forming?
Exposition: the Bensons were the Hatfords’ BFFLs until they moved to Georgia for their father’s job. Wally and his brothers apparently had no other friends in the whole town of Buckman, and spend half of every book bitching about Mr. Benson’s job choices. Got it? Got it.
ANYWAY. There’s some more exposition, this time about the abaguchie: blah blah vaguely catlike creature stalks the citizens of Buckman, eating their chickens and all that jazz. I have no idea how they came up with the term “abaguchie,” particularly if they’re already sure that it’s some kind of big cat. Jake and Josh (rightly) decide that Eddie and Beth won’t believe them, but Caroline will eat it up if Wally tells her. Wally is like, “Why do I have to do everything?”
The next morning, though, Wally’s jerkass side wakes up and he decides that it’ll be fun to freak Caroline out. Abaguchie mania it is! He meets her in the classroom and hilariously thinks, “She looked fatter.” Oh, Wally. So he turns around and says, “You don’t have any pets, do you?” Caroline’s all, “No, why?” and Wally’s like, “~No reason~” and Caroline predictably bugs him to tell her. When he does, she asks if the abaguchie has ever attacked a person, and Wally’s like, “Not yet” like the hilarious asshole that he is. Oh, Wally.
The girls walking home from school. Naturally, the first thing Caroline thinks about is how she will one day star in a movie called Abaguchie. Let me tell you, I would never see a movie called Abaguchie. I’d feel stupid just asking people, “Hey, you wanna go see Abaguchie on Saturday?” No. Anyway, Caroline plays out a scene in her head, as she is wont to do, in which the abaguchie kills her fictional pet kitten. Beth’s like, “You look like you’re going to vomit.” And Caroline’s like, “I was just thinking about my dead kitten…if I had a kitten.” Oh, Caroline. She tells her sisters about the abaguchie. Caroline! No! That’s what the boys want you to do! Beth says “Spookie!” What is it with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and her aversion to the letter Y? Eddie’s like, “Are you really believing anything the Hatfords say?” but Caroline points out that Wally said they could look it up in newspapers. This is pre-Internet, I assume. Eddie’s like, “Oh.”
Dinner at the Malloy house. Caroline revises her dead-kitten scene, thinking about how to cast the kitten — after all, no one would let a real kitten be clawed to death. This is pre-CGI too, I guess. Caroline’s lucky she lives in a world without Jar Jar Binks. She brings up the abaguchie at the dinner table and Mr. Malloy says that he’s heard about it from his football team (he coaches football at the college). Gasp! Wally wasn’t lying! There truly is a creature terrorizing Buckman at night! SHENANIGANS.
The next day. The Malloy parents leave to go a PTA meeting at school. They ask if the girls have anything they want their parents to ask the teachers (that…was a really convoluted sentence), and the girls give typical responses that reflect their broad character archetypes: Eddie asks about sports, Beth asks about reading, Caroline asks about drama. The parents leave, the girls study, and then! They hear howling outside the window! Horrors!
(It’s totally the Hatfords.)
Eventually Eddie recognizes the howling sounds as being a tape she had to listen to in science class, so the girls decide that they’ll just act scared while Eddie goes into the driveway and “catches” the boys. That sounds like it should lead to an exciting confrontation but instead Eddie just kidnaps Peter. How anticlimactic.
We skip back to the boys, a bit earlier in the evening. It’s at this point, a quarter through the book, that we get a description of what the Hatford boys look like: Wally and Peter are supposedly sort of stocky, pale, and dark-haired — although the cover of this book depicts one of them as a blonde, so…yeah. Jake and Josh are both tall, blonde, skinny, and tan. If this were a ’90s sitcom, they’d be that one really dumb character that all the girls send Valentine’s to anyway.
(Also, is it a coincidence that the two main characters, Caroline and Wally, are the dark-haired ones to their older siblings’ blonde?)
Anyway, they sneak over to the Malloys with a cassette (!) of Wolves in the Wild and creep around the house for a while. What’s creepy about this part is that they literally walk up to the house and look in the windows and see that the girls are alone. What if it was a serial killer instead of just a group of middle school boys? What then, Malloy parents?
Well, whatever. Peter whines that his feet hurt so they sit him on a rock at the end of the Malloys’ driveway and go play the tape. After a while, Wally wonders aloud if the girls are going to call the police (continuing with his character trait of always worrying about being sued), so they decide to scram. Except when they get back to the end of the driveway, Peter is gone. The Hatfords are the worst babysitters ever.
The girls. Caroline and Beth cackle over how brilliant their performance was and Eddie comes back with Peter. The girls make a root beer float and give him cookies and casually ask what his brothers are up to. Peter, who acts about five years old instead of seven, mumbles that they were, uh, you know, just…playing. The girls are like, “Oh? What were they playing? Wolf?” Peter’s like, “HOW DID YOU KNOW?” Peter is the worst spy.
Wally calls in a panic all, “WHERE IS PETER?” The girls are like, “No idea, sorry!” and hang up. Aw! I can’t tell whether this is funny or just sad. There’s a lot of kind of…weirdly callous behavior, I’d say, in the first few books.
(Also, how do these kids know each other’s phone numbers? Don’t they hate each other?)
House of Hatford, Sans Peter: the boys are panicking. Their parents come home and are like, “So good to see you! Peter in bed? Did he take a bath?” And the boys, who also don’t know how to effectively lie, say, “Uhhhh…we don’t know.” Mrs. Hatford freaks out and is all, “Wallace Hatford, where is your brother?” and Wally says, “We left him on a rock,” which makes me laugh harder than it should. So the Hatford parents make them go to the Malloys’ house and there’s Peter, sitting at the end of the driveway in his bunny slippers. There’s some back and forth about what he was doing (“Where were you?” “Here!” “No you weren’t!” “Well I was around!” “Around where?” “The Malloys’ house!” “What were you doing there?” “I had a root beer float!” “How did you get a root beer float?” “From Eddie!” “How did you talk to Eddie?” “She found me!” and so on for infinity.) Peter says that the girls already knew that the boys were “playing wolf” anyway and Jake “let out a howl and clutched his head” and Peter says “See?” Ha! Sometimes I do like Peter.
Mrs. Hatford is Very Disappointed in her sons. Embarrassing punishment will probably ensue, but I’m not sure.
We skip ahead to a few weeks later. Buckman Elementary School is having a bake sale! Aren’t you excited? Mrs. Malloy bakes another pumpkin chiffon pie (you’ll recall that the boys mauled her last one looking for dog poop) and the girls bring it to school. Mrs. Hatford bakes a chocolate chiffon pie (you’ll recall that the girls threw her last one in the river because they thought the box was full of dead birds) and the boys bring it to school. Shenanigans!
So Mrs. Malloy and Mrs. Hatford meet up and predictably talk about their respective cakes and their children’s escapades come to light. Mrs. Hatford marches the boys home and yells at them. You’ll be interested (or maybe not) to know that Jake and Josh are nicknames for Joseph and Joshua, respectively. Wally is the odd one out, apparently, in not having a Biblical name. Also, is Jake really a nickname for Joseph? Surely Joe would be more common, wouldn’t it? I’m thinking too much about this.
ANYWAY. Mr. Hatford tells Mrs. Hatford not to ask too many questions because, as he puts it, “The more you ask, the more they’ll tell you, and the more you find out, the more upset you’re going to be.” Well, he’s not wrong. All the cake shenanigans are forgotten, however, as some dude named Clyde Downs has claimed to see the abaguchie again. Wally thinks that if he saw the abaguchie, it might be enough to bring the Bensons back from Georgia. I smell hijinks ahead!
The Malloys have also seen the article. Beth thinks it would make a wonderful story (which she calls The Age of the Abaguchie. I wouldn’t buy that book). Caroline starts imagining that the abaguchie is attacking her and begins making gurgling noises at the table. Mrs. Malloy is like, “Wtf are you doing” and Caroline’s like, “I was attacked by the abaguchie! It put its claws around my neck!” And Mrs. Malloy says, “If that happened, my dear, you would not make another sound for the rest of your life. If you would like to practice that, I wouldn’t mind at all.” Ha!
Eddie plays baseball because that is her only character trait. She sprains her thumb and as the girls are walking back, they run into the boys. Josh asks what happened, because he is supposedly the nicest Hatford brother (I’d say that varies depending on the book). Eddie’s like, “SAY NOTHING” because…it’d be shameful to admit that she hurt her thumb? The Hatfords are dicks, but I don’t think they’d make fun of her when she’s in pain. Beth tells them that Eddie was bitten, and Jake proves me wrong by asking, “By what? A little bitty bug?” Jake is such a douche. Beth tells them no, she was bitten by an animal that was hiding in the bushes…if you know what she means. The Hatfords are like O_O and the girls waltz off.
“Wally was prepared not to speak to the Malloy girls for the rest of his life, if necessary.” Hey, Wally, then we wouldn’t have a book series! Keep up! His plan is foiled, however, when Caroline taps him on the shoulder and asks if anyone has ever found a skeleton, to help figure out what kind of animal the abaguchie is. Wally, who three seconds ago didn’t want to ever be involved with the girls again, decides to trick Caroline. What? Make up your mind, Wally! He tells her that there’s something secret hidden in the cellar of Mr. Oldaker’s bookstore….if you know what he means. Caroline’s like O_O and Wally tries to waltz off but he spills his crayons all over the floor. Caroline takes the opportunity to trap Wally in the classroom and make him tell her about the cellar. So Wally makes up what he calls a tall tale because “How could you call something this wild a lie?” Hmm, well, let’s see:
lie
verb ˈlī
intransitive verb1: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive2: to create a false or misleading impression
That…kind of sounds like what you’re doing, Wally! Just saying.
(Caroline, God love her, totally falls for it.)
Caroline. “She had promised Wally she wouldn’t tell her sisters, but her shoelaces were crossed when she said it, and everybody knows that if something is crossed when you promise, it isn’t a promise at all.” Ah, fourth grade logic. She tries to convince Beth and Eddie to go with her, but Eddie has to write a report on Balboa (I think I did the same thing in sixth grade as well, actually) and Beth is reading Land of the Leeches. I hate Beth. I don’t know why, since she doesn’t do anything, but she’s just…there, always fucking up everyone’s plans because she wants to read a book. (With only sixteen chapters! I’ll have Beth know that I read a thirty-two chapter book when I was eight. Granted, it was T*Witches, but whatever. It was still pretty long!)
Well, anyway. Caroline decides that she’ll just go by herself then.
Wally. He’s all aflutter at the thought of trapping Caroline and bets his last nickel (!) that Caroline will be going to Oldakers’ right after school. His last nickel? This must be serious. He reveals his master plan to his brothers, only to have the twins shoot him down faster than…uh…something else that gets shot down rather quickly. “So?” asks Jake. “Then what?” asks Josh. Wally is crushed that they don’t see how brilliant he is, then realizes that he totally doesn’t know what to do either. So he immediately decides that they’ll go in and stand on top of the trapdoor so Caroline won’t be able to get out. Those fiends!
So the Hatfords go hang out in the pharmacy across from the bookstore to ~lie in wait~ for Caroline. But alas! She doesn’t show up! There goes Wally’s last nickel. A bit of wacky comedy ensues when the pharmacist asks if he can help them, because what pharmacist wants a bunch of middle school boys hanging around his shop all day, and Wally makes up a lie about his dad needing an elastic knee sleeve and the boys skedaddle. I lied, it’s not that funny. But whatever. Caroline has arrived! Let’s go trap her!
Caroline. As always, we go back in time a few hours to right after school. Maybe Wally can get a penny or something back, because Caroline did intend to go to Oldakers’ directly after school. But alas! She is thwarted first by her mother, who demands that Caroline clean her room and change her bedsheets. Then a friend from school calls and wants to talk about “paper dolls of all the country singers.” I feel deep pity for Caroline. Also I can’t believe that a nine-year-old is actually still interested in paper dolls. Or country singers, for that matter.
Anyway. Free at last! Caroline waltzes off to Oldakers’ Bookstore, pleased to note that the Hatfords are nowhere in sight, as she doesn’t want them making fun of her if the trapdoor turns out to be a trick. Oh…dear. Well then. There is indeed a trapdoor, but alas, those pesky bookstore owners are hanging around, blocking the way. How rude. As if they own the place! Finally some woman walks up and asks for help finding a book with photos about “the way Chinese children live.” The bookstore owner suggests a book titled City Kids in China, which sounds hilariously fake. But anyway. Caroline descends into the darkness and…there’s nothing inside the cellar except old crates. Wally lied to her! I, for one, am shocked. Caroline decides that Wally doesn’t ever have to know that she fell for it and tries to get out. After all, there’s chicken and dumplings for dinner, and she doesn’t want to miss that. But! The door won’t budge! No chicken and dumplings for Caroline after all.
Hatfords. They are, of course, standing on top of the trapdoor. Wally is delighting in the thought of Caroline panicking and screaming for help in the cellar. Wally is a rather disturbed child. He gets some more mileage out of the Mr. Hatford-hurt-his-knee lie by telling Mr. Oldaker that’s why they’re in the store.
Sadly (for Wally, anyway), the screams never come. Mr. Oldaker kicks them out of the store as it’s closing time, and the boys go home. Well…that’s anticlimactic. Wasn’t the whole point of this because they wanted to see Caroline crawl out in embarrassment? At home, Mr. Hatford has received a call from the pharmacist about his not-injured knee, and is confused as to why there are people gossiping about his knees. Then Eddie calls and asks where Caroline is, because no one has seen her all day, but maybe the Hatfords know, Wally in particular…Wally mumbles that he saw her at school and he, uh, might’ve seen her on, like…Main Street? Maybe Oldakers’? Yeah, Oldakers. Mrs. Hatford is like, “Peter?” and Peter’s like, “…what Wally said.” These kids are so subtle.
Then a police car goes by, sirens on. Whoops.
(By the way, my question about what, exactly, Mr. Hatford’s job is — he seems to alternate between being a mailman and being a policeman, depending on the plot requirements — is answered: he’s both. So…yeah.)
Caroline. She has no idea how to get out — if she crawls out while Mr. Oldaker is still there, how will she explain why she was down there in the first place? So she waits until Mr. Oldaker leaves and crawls out. Except he’s locked up and now she can’t get out the front door. Whoops. She calls home and Beth (who continues in her character trait of annoying me) wants to know everything. How was the cellar? Was it creepy? Were there bones? Rats? Creaking noises? Uh, Caroline asked you to come with her, Beth. Caroline’s like, “Can you focus for five minutes?” Beth suggests going out the back door. An excellent plan! I’m kind of sad that Caroline didn’t manage to come up with that at all.
The back door it is. Caroline opens it and immediately the burglar alarm goes off. Given that Buckman apparently has the square mileage of a large farm, the police are immediately on the scene. The door closes on Caroline’s jacket (which is lined with fake fur), but she tugs it loose. This will be important later. Then she waltzes into the house like nothing has happened and asks what’s for dinner. Chicken and dumplings, Caroline! I thought you knew that!
Wally, meanwhile, is imagining the headlines. Hatford Boy is Sued Over Disappearance of Malloy Girl! Okay, so not exactly that, but close enough. I’m confused as to why Wally is always so worried about getting in trouble with the law. He’s like ten years old! But whatever. Peter suggests that the abaguchie got her (because…the abaguchie was totally hanging out in the bookstore?) and Wally panics even more. What if it eats Caroline? What if her bones end up in the Chamber of Secrets cellar forever? The boys decide to do the noble thing and go downtown and turn themselves in, like the overdramatic middle schoolers that they are. Fortunately, there’s no need for their sacrifice, as the “burglar” has already escaped from Oldakers’ and there’s nobody inside. Except for something caught in the doorway…a tuft of light brown fur. DUN DUN DUN! Yes, the abaguchie has moved up from killing animals to petty theft. Quite an accomplishment for a creature without opposable thumbs!
(It’s totally Caroline’s jacket.)
The boys play baseball and the girls join them. But the boys leave before the girls can have their turn batting. “Why, those rotten rats!” exclaims Beth. Yeah.
Buckman College is having a football game! How thrilling. And by “thrilling” I mean “I can’t understand why this is even in the book.” Caroline pretends to be a cheerleader and embarrasses everyone, as usual. Mrs. Malloy asks, “Caroline, must you act like a pagan?” I don’t know what paganism has to do with cheerleading, but whatever. Eddie leaves to get a Coke and Beth and Caroline follow. Then they see the Hatfords outside the stadium, so they leave to dump ice down the boys’ necks. As you do. But when they try to get back in, the douchey guard at the gate stops them. Eddie’s tells him that they left their ticket stubs with their mom, but the guard refuses to let them back in. They name drop their dad (who you’ll recall is the coach) and the guard mocks them all, “Coach Malloy’s daughters, and they don’t even know enough to keep their ticket stubs?” Seriously, what a dick. Does he really have nothing better to do than enforce the ~rule of the gate~ against a bunch of middle schoolers? The Hatfords, naturally, find the whole event hilarious.
After the game, Mrs. Malloy tells them that they were invited to the Hatfords’ for Thanksgiving. This will end well.
The girls, in their anger, decide to go over the Hatfords’ and make paw prints in their yard to make them think that the abaguchie was skulking around. Halfway through, however, they see a pair of yellow eyes and Caroline screams. The Hatfords run out and catch them and the boys have a hearty chuckle.
Later, Wally also sees the yellow eyes. Hmmm…could Caroline be telling the truth? After all, she’s not that good of an actress (hee). The boys decide that if there really is an abaguchie in their yard, they’re going to catch it. Ah, yes, you will all recall the schooltime hobby of trapping wild animals in your backyard.
The next day, Wally and Caroline put aside their mutual loathing to discuss the ominous yellow eyes. Wally tells her that if they catch anything, he’ll tell her. Aw.
Caroline decides to ruin the Hatfords’ plan by cutting off some more fake fur and planting it in the trap. Oh, Caroline. You and Wally were getting along so well! She does feel momentarily guilty, but decides that this is vengeance for him tricking her into going into the Oldakers’ cellar. Fair enough.
Wally. He’s kind of regretting telling Caroline about their plan (as well he should) but decides that if they do catch the abaguchie, the girls will realize how badass they are and leave them alone (I doubt it) and “you bet your boots” the Bensons will come back! Yes, because it’s not as if they’re down in Georgia because of their father’s job or anything. They can totally just move back on short notice with another family living in their house! Why are you so dumb, Wally? The boys get a refrigerator crate from their mother (who works in a hardware store), put a chicken leg inside, and attach a bell that will ring when the abaguchie grabs the chicken.
Caroline sneaks out to exact her vengeance, only she gets stuck and the crate comes down around her, bell clanging. The boys think they’ve caught the abaguchie and rush out to check, only to find Caroline inside the trap. Well, at least they get a good laugh out of it. Wally thinks, for a moment, that it would be nice to keep Caroline in a box. I kind of fear for Wally’s peers. Mrs. Hatford is like, “What was Caroline doing in your trap?” and Peter says, “Maybe she was hungry.” Hee. Oh, Peter.
Malloys. Apparently Caroline’s solution to her failed revenge is more vengeance — how dare those boys embarrass her! (even though…the whole thing was her idea?) — and she decides to take apart the trap and set the refrigerator crate sailing down the river. She ropes Beth and Eddie into it and they have a hearty chuckle over the whole thing. It’s all rather boring, particularly after the escape-from-Oldakers and Caroline-in-a-box shenanigans.
The newspaper reveals that the fur from the bookstore is fake. We already knew that, but whatever.
The last chapter! Finally. Wally recaps why they call the girls the Whomper (Eddie, because she can hit baseballs farther than a ~girl~ should be able to, like, way to be sexist), the Weirdo (Beth, because she reads scary books and ~girls~ don’t like scary things, naturally), and the Crazie (Caroline, because she’s nuts. I can’t really contest that one). I like how they’ve been calling the girls those names for the whole book and only bother to explain them now. The Malloys bring over three pies, which seems excessive to me, but whatever. Jake switches his place card so he doesn’t have to sit beside Eddie (Jake/Eddie OTP!) and Josh switches his so he doesn’t have to sit beside Beth (I wouldn’t want to sit beside Beth either), but Wally makes sure he’s sitting right next to Caroline. OMINOUS.
Dinner begins and Wally reveals why he wanted to sit next to Caroline so badly: he has a worm in his pocket, and he puts it on her dinner plate. Sadly, Caroline does not freak out and instead laughs and passes the worm on. Foiled again, Wally! The boys and the girls all pass around the worm and ~unite~ in their prank. Malloy/Hatford BFFs for lyfe!
Then Mr. Malloy eats the worm.
…ew. 🙁
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Wally decides that he likes having the girls around after all. After all, when had the Bensons ever thrown a cake in the river?
(Note: Wally will go back to hating them in exactly one book.)
Then the abaguchie makes off with the leftover turkey, which was on the back porch. OMINOUS! Abaguchie mania it is, and so it shall continue to be until The Boys Return, which is like…four books from now.
THE END.
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