When I first got into this series, books one through seven had already been published, so this book was the first one that I had to actually wait for. Weirdly, according to the inside cover, it was published in 2002, but the little price sticker on the back says 5/26/04. Then again, my mother refused to drive me to Barnes & Noble every weekend to check if they had it, which I felt was one of the crueler injustices of my childhood, so I didn’t actually realize it was out until I saw another girl in my class reading it. I got overly excited and she was nice enough to offer to let me borrow it, and then we both got swamped under the intensive workload of fifth grade. She forgot to ask for it back, I forgot to bring it to class, and sometime in seventh grade I was cleaning out my drawers and saw it there. Oops. So, uh, Samantha, if you’re reading this, that’s what happened to your book. I’m sorry!
My decade-old guilt aside — previously, in the Boy/Girl Battle Series, the Bensons came to visit! They made Caroline believe there was a ghost in her bedroom wall, Wally got stuck in a garage with a cougar, and Eddie liiiiikes a boy. Also, Mark McGwire. Also…no, that was about it. I feel like more happened, but I can’t remember it, which is weird, because I literally just recapped that book. Oh, well. Anyway. The cover: for once, it’s obvious who the kids are. Eddie is in the upper right corner, looking like every tomboyish (white) girl from the late ’90s that I can think of, so good job there. In the bottom left hand corner, Jake is pouting about something, and also looks weirdly like a blonde Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Not the most topical model in the year 2002, but whatever. Let’s do this!
Casa Malloy. After seven books, it’s finally (finally) time for the sixth grade baseball tryouts. Eddie is excited, because she is the resident tomboy. Caroline is bored, because she is the resident drama queen. Beth is…reading a book about ants. Okay. Eddie is fuming that it’s raining, so they probably won’t have tryouts today after all, and this is her “one chance” to show Jake Hatford that she’s just as good as he is, and Title IX didn’t get passed for nothing! Again, I question the timeline these books are set in — even my pathetically tiny grammar school made room for boys’ and girls’ sports teams; the weird insinuation that “the” baseball team is boys-only by default strikes me as some pre-1970s shenanigans. Then again, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in 1933, so maybe I shouldn’t expect her to be up on the latest in middle school policy.
On the other hand, Eddie wants to either be a professional baseball player or a scientist, and no one treats this like a weird thing, least of all her father, so…whatever, I give up.
So everyone heads off to school, and even though they’ve caught the abaguchie, the boys and girls still walk together because they’re kind of friends, whether any of them want to admit it or not. There’s some mildly interesting trade-off in the usual pairings of the kids here — Beth and Wally have a conversation, and Jake teases Caroline a bit, which I always thought was kind of cute. Jake and Josh probably have the least to do with Caroline, overall, so seeing them interact with her is fun. Anyway, the river is unusually high on account of the rain, and Josh, apparently deciding that last book’s hijinks weren’t enough to hold him over, suggests having a bottle-floating competition: They’ll all put their names and phone numbers in a bottle and send it down the river, and whoever gets the farthest wins. I definitely wanted to do this when I was little. The prize, of course, is that the winner will be “king for the day” and everyone else has to be their slaves. This will end well.
Wally has about the same realization back at Casa Hatford. He’s happy that they’re finally doing something that he finds fun, but immediately panics when he remembers that the girls could potentially win their bottle-floating competition. “What if one of the girls’ bottles goes farthest? What if it’s Caroline’s?” Ha! The boys all immediately start freaking out at the thought of losing to giiirls, and start making plans to cheat, as you knew they were going to. (Jake justifies this by saying that the girls are obviously going to cheat, because I mean, playing fair? Who does that? Only squares, that’s who.) Wally wonders if the “war” is going to go on forever, or at least until the Malloys leave Buckman. I’m not sure this has been a “war” since, like, book three.
Malloys. Eddie is pacing the floor in a fit of delayed-baseball rage. Caroline weirdly thinks her sister is “like a tiger,” which didn’t make any sense to me when I was eleven and doesn’t make sense to me now. Anyway, Eddie is sure the boys are going to cheat. Caroline says she’ll cheat if the boys are, but not if they’re not; Beth concurs. So Eddie decides they need a contract, because this is serious business, and they head on over to Casa Hatford with their business proposal. Mrs. Malloy, in a weird detail, is mentioned doing her taxes, with the forms all over the table. The days before TurboTax!
Anyway, the boys and girls decide to make their competition “cheat-proof.” This is an amazing amount of energy to put into floating bottles down the river. They agree to each put something secret in each other’s bottles, so they’ll know if anyone tries to float an identical bottle earlier. This is practical and all, but I’m bored. I seem to remember that this book lacked hijinks, compared to the rest. Yawn.
Blah blah the girls don’t want to leave Buckman, their parents don’t have any say in the matter blah. The weather clears up. Eddie is excited because that means they’ll hold baseball tryouts tomorrow.
The “Big Bottle Race” has to be put off, though, because tryouts are finally (finally) held on Tuesday. Eddie is naturally the only girl trying out, because other girls that are interested in sports? Unpossible! I went to a Catholic school that was pretty rigid with their gender roles — I remember my friends and I got yelled at once because we were boys and girls sitting together on the stairs, in front of God and everybody, and they used to measure the girls’ skirts to make sure they were no more than two inches above the knee, or something like that. But even then, pretty much all the girls played sports — in fact, it was really me and maybe two other girls who didn’t, and we were definitely the odd ones out. Even more at odds with the way this (and other children’s books) present tomboyish girls, in both grammar and high school, it was usually the athletic girls who were the most “girly” off the field.
But I digress. In this world, there can only be one girl who plays sports, because all the other girls in the sixth grade are content carrying medicine balls or whatever. The coach tells them the best players will be on the A team, and then there’s a B team that will substitute for each A player. All the boys are staring at Eddie, because they’ve never seen a girl who liked sports before, ever in their entire lives! It’s mentioned that “half the kids in school — the boys, anyway” wanted to be on the Buckman Badgers when they were in the sixth grade, because “[b]aseball was big in Buckman.” How very ’50s of them. Aren’t most small towns organized around football now? Also, I feel the need to point out that basketball was the big sport for students to play when I was in sixth grade. But whatever.
Anyway, Jake and Eddie naturally both want to be pitcher, because they secretly both love attention as much as Caroline. When they finally try out, they’re both so good that the coach (“Mr. Bailey”) puts them both on the A team and intends to have them both switch off as pitcher. That worked out nicely! Eddie is all thrilled that she showed up all the stupid sexist boys, as she should be. Jake, meanwhile, pouts on the way home about how insufferable Eddie is. “Did you hear how many times she kept saying, ‘I told everyone I could pitch! I told everyone I could bat!’ So okay, already!” I feel like Eddie’s earned the right to brag, though, given how she was apparently up against some 1950s gender stereotypes. Jake’s probably going to become an MRA in the future. He bitches about Eddie all the way into dinner, at which point Mrs. Hatford is like, “Do I need to buy you a fedora?” and he’s like, “NO”, but he’s totally still mad. Whatever, Jake.
Eddie is being kind of annoying, though. She shows up the next day talking about how she’s only carrying her backpack on her left shoulder now, because she can’t risk putting pressure on her pitching arm. Yeah, it’s not that serious. Jake gets all mad and decides she needs to be “taken down a peg.” Whatever, Jake. Wally, bless his soul, tries to change the subject and points out that the water level is already going down, so they should send their bottles out soon. They decide to do it that very afternoon and also, the boys have painted their bottle caps red, to tell them apart from the girls’. And also to cheat. (Spoilers!) The girls are suspicious.
Casa Malloy. The girls decide that the boys are probably cheating, so clearly they’re going to have to cheat right back. I mean, that’s just logic. Beth is annoyed, because she doesn’t want to win by cheating, because she’s boring. Of course, once Eddie points out that there’s a butterfly net in their garage, Beth says, “Perfect! Are we in charge or what?” Because cheating is suddenly fun when it involves butterfly nets? Beth is weird.
The boys and girls all go down to put their bottles in the river. Eddie puts buttons from her Girl Scout uniform in the boys’ bottles. I’m excited because I totally used to be a Girl Scout, too. I sold so many cookies one year that I won a frog-shaped phone, but I couldn’t use it, because there wasn’t a phone jack in my room. The memories!
Anyway, they all send their bottles off, and immediately pretend like they’re not interested in watching them go around the river, to head each other off. Eddie, weirdly, lies that she has a ton of homework, which I feel like Jake and Josh should pick up on, since they’re in the same class as her. But whatever. The girls grab the butterfly net and head back, and decide that Caroline should be the one to fish out the bottles. And Caroline falls into the river, for the second time in this series.
Hatfords. Jake, of course, wants to cheat. Josh is all offended that Jake would want to ~punish~ Beth for what her sisters do, because he totally wants to sit at her lunch table. Jake is like, “Well, if knew which one was Eddie’s, I wouldn’t have to take them all!” Oh, Jake. Wally immediately works out their plan and is like, “I’m not wading out into the river wearing Dad’s hip boots to fish out the girls’ bottles.” I’m deeply grateful I live in a place where no one (unironically) owns hip boots. Anyway, Jake agrees to wear the hip boots himself, but Wally has to go into the attic to get them, because that’s what the sibling hierarchy is for.
While he’s in the attic, Wally looks out the window and sees the Malloys coming across the bridge, and Eddie looks like she has a tail. He runs back to tell Jake and Jake’s like, “I knew she was the devil.” Heh. They work out the girls’ plan and head out to catch them, sans hip boots. Then Caroline falls in the river. Jake and Josh point out that she could totally just stand up if she wanted to, but Caroline decides to milk her apparent drowning for all it’s worth. You’d think this would be more exciting, but it’s not.
Caroline. No one notices her not-drowning, and eventually she gets unceremoniously pulled out. No one’s even taking her picture! Who will see her hair floating on the water, her pale skin, her blue lips? Yeah, drowning is a lot less sexy than Caroline thinks it is. She pretends not to remember who she is for about five minutes before everyone starts yelling at her. Mr. Hatford — postman/policeman that he is — shows up and everyone’s like, “Lol, it’s your kids again, Tom.” I wonder if anyone in town questions the Hatfords’ and Malloys’ parenting skills.
So that happened. The next day, they all gather for Eddie and Jake’s baseball practice. Wally doesn’t care about sports, but he doesn’t want to be left out of the dinner discussion about practice, since “being the middle child in the family, he did not want to be ignored any more than he already was.” Aw! Also, Coach Malloy is suddenly coaching the middle school baseball team. I thought he coached football at the college? Why isn’t Mr. Bailey doing his job? Maybe he got fired for barring girls from the school baseball team and violating Title IX.
Anyway, Wally is so bored he decides to go talk to Caroline. I’m glad I’m not the only bored one here. Caroline says that they’re probably bored because they’re not very good at sports, and they’d probably rather be up on a stage than playing a ball game. Wally’s like, “This isn’t a game, it’s practice, and also I don’t want to be on stage either, so there.” Heh. Caroline asks what he does like to do, then, and Wally says that he likes to think. Caroline gets all up in his face and asks what he thinks about, and he rambles at her about ants and whether or not the world is an anthill. Caroline’s just like, “Did you know your eyes have little brown specks in them?” Oh, Caroline. But then she gets serious and admits that she has ~thoughts~ too, and babbles about the Civil War and ghosts. Wally thinks she has a point for like five seconds, then she starts talking about the sensation of bullet entering someone’s temple and he’s like, “I did not sign up for this.” Caroline asks if he thinks they could ever be BFFs. Wally’s like, “No. You’re weird, and you have cooties.” Caroline’s like, “Well, we could be regular friends,” and Wally’s like, “I’ll think about it.” Heh.
The Hatfords write a letter to Georgia! Using that newfangled “electronic mail.” Weirdly, they mention that they’ve just gotten e-mail, but I feel like they’ve been emailing the Bensons since book four or so? Whatever. Wally writes, “You can get this letter about as fast as I can type it,” except he probably types with two fingers, so whatever. The Bensons write back, “Yeah, e-mail rules!” HEE! I’m sorry, that actually made me laugh out loud. “Except somebody e-mailed a love letter to a girl in my class and signed my name and now she hates my guts.” What wacky things kids get up to, with this newfangled “e-mail”!
The Malloy parents are mad at Caroline for falling into the river, and they ground all three girls for being dumb. “No bookstore, no playground, no drugstore, no library, and no friends invited to the house.” No drugstore? That’s just cruel. I would have been devastated if my parents didn’t let me hang out at Walgreens all day when I was eleven.
(Yes, yes, I know the drugstore was the hip place to be back in the 1950s, with the jukebox and the soda fountain and all. Don’t ruin my joke.)
Back in school, Miss Applebaum continues to be the most useless teacher ever — the class is going to have a spelling bee, and the winner gets to go all the way to the “county spelling championship.” A prestigious moment, to be sure. Miss Applebaum tells them that this is the reason she’s asked them to “include at least five new [words] in every book report you write. It’s why I’ve asked you to use a new word each night at the dinner table. For the next week I would like you to use a new word each time you ask a question in class.” What? How on earth can she tell which words are “new” for the kids or not? Why is she making them sift through their vocabularies every time they want to ask a simple question? Case in point, a girl raises her hand and asks if they have to take part in the spelling bee, and Miss Applebaum makes her try it again with new words, so the girl asks if they’re going to be forced to be in the contest. What word in there was new for a nine-year-old? Forced? Contest? Miss Applebaum sucks.
Anyway, Caroline knows she’s good at spelling, and immediately plans on being “Upshur Country’s reigning spelling-bee queen.” Except, of course, spelling is the one subject Wally isn’t terrible at. Caroline corners him in the cafeteria and tries to get him to lose on purpose, but Wally’s like, “Never!” and runs away. That happened.
“This is a weird school,” Beth says at dinner. Sing it, Beth. She points out that everything these days seems to be a competition — baseball, spelling, and now books! Not the books! Apparently their principal has made a deal with the student body: if they read a thousand books by the end of April, he’ll spend the night on the school roof. I hope he enjoys his pneumonia. The girls aren’t focused on that, though: they’re all outraged that the principal feels the need to bribe kids to read, when kids should enjoy reading anyway, and do it on their own for fun. The Malloy parents think that their daughters make a good point, although I’m a little more torn. Like it or not, a lot of kids don’t like to read, and not necessarily just because TV and movies are ruining imaginations or whatever — even before the invention of the moving picture, you had kids who preferred running around to staying put and reading, and it’s really more a matter of people not always being easily absorbed by words, and preferring active movement or pictures or audio. And kids should be forced to read, because reading isn’t just fun, reading helps you learn how writing works — how to spell, how sentences are structured, how to punctuate, the rhythm of engaging writing, how to recognize and use/create themes and arguments, et cetera to infinity. And really, school is more about teaching kids how to write and how to analyze writing, than actually trying to instill a love of reading in them.
(I mean, reading is also important for sparking interest in different perspectives and subject areas, and understanding works that inform culture, but in terms of practical skills, writing is a big thing that gets overlooked in the importance of reading.)
But I digress again. Sorry, this book is boring, and I’m getting easily distracted. Also, a thousand books is weaksauce. Assuming Buckman Elementary is a fairly small school — 200 kids, maybe? — each kid would only have to read four or five books, which seems manageable if they have the entire month, and read fairly short books (this very book is less than 150 pages). Also-also, the teachers’ method of checking the books — quizzing the students on all the titles they write down — seems time-consuming, and way too much effort if the students, say, choose a book the teachers aren’t familiar with. I think I’m overanalyzing this.
Then Wally calls and asks if any of them feel itchy, because Peter has chicken pox. “Have a nice day!” he chirps. Wally is going to grow up to be such a dick.
Hatfords. Mrs. Hatford is calling all the Hatfords’ friends (what friends?) to tell them that they might’ve been exposed to chicken pox. The Hatford parents tell Wally that he could get chicken pox too, since he hasn’t had it yet. They hope he gets it soon, though, because this is before the vaccination came out, presumably. My mom totally tricked me into catching chicken pox off of the neighbor’s kid when I was four. She was all like, “Oh, look, there’s Andre! He looks lonely. You should go say hi.” And like a chump, I did so, and started itching a week later. Anyway.
Wally tells his brothers that he doesn’t want to be in the spelling bee, and Jake’s like, “So mess up on purpose,” but see, Wally can’t suffer the indignity of losing to Caroline. Jake can relate: Eddie’s baseball skills are making him feel unmanly. And Josh is all upset that Beth is probably going to read the most books in the reading competition. “She’ll probably read three books a week!” Jake says.
That’s supposed to be a lot? That’s precious.
Anyway, Jake and Josh insist that Wally has to win the spelling bee, for the honor of their family, and their cow, and to prove that women have no place out of the kitchen. If the girls win everything, then what does that make the boys? Losers, that’s what. A very serious thing, when one is in sixth grade.
Still, the next day, they go over to play Monopoly with the girls so they won’t look like they’re bitter, even though they totally are. Wally thinks that he wishes the Bensons would just come back, but then decides that he doesn’t want things to be as boring as they were when the Bensons lived in Buckman. We’ve been over this a million times, so whatever.
Anyway, a park ranger and someone named “Sergeant Bogdan” who we are apparently supposed to know show up with a search warrant, because Caroline put a note in her bottle saying that she was being held captive in the cellar of the Malloy house. Oh, Caroline. Wally’s kind of like, “That Caroline, she crazy” but then he’s also kind of like, “Nothing like this had ever happened when the Bensons had lived here!” Oh, Wally.
Caroline, of course, realizes her parents are Not Pleased and starts crying. The Malloy parents yell at her for wasting the time of the state and town police, which I think is fair enough. “Not to mention the embarrassment this has caused our family!” Mrs. Malloy adds, because it’s suddenly the 1800s and they can’t have this besmirching their good name or no one will marry their daughters, or something. Mr. Malloy ticks off all the other times the police have gotten unnecessarily involved, including the time Wally was locked in the garage with the cougar and the time that girl went missing when they were doing that science project. Weirdly, I don’t think either of those really count? One was a legitimate emergency, and the other didn’t actually have anything to do with the kids. He doesn’t bring up the two times Caroline pretended to commit suicide or the time the girls pretended to kill Beth, which are much better examples, in my opinion. But whatever.
Anyway, Mr. Malloy decides the best punishment would be to have all the kids do work down at the police station. He’s weirdly self-assured that Mr. Hatford will be cool with his volunteering the boys as well, which — I mean, even if Mr. Hatford agrees with the punishment, if I were him, I’d still kind of be like, “Hey, step off disciplining my kids for me, yo.” But that’s me.
(Hilariously, Caroline imagines herself in an orange jumpsuit. Orange is the New Black crossover?)
So everyone is (rightfully) mad at Caroline. The next day, after the Hatford boys come home from church…wait, what? None of the kids were ever mentioned going to church before; the Hatfords didn’t go with the Bensons when they were visiting. Maybe their parents decided they needed Jesus. So I guess the Malloys are the only godless heathens in town? Anyway. All the kids go to the police station. Caroline tries to gain some sympathy by singing what looks like “Nobody’s Darling On Earth“, except the first two lines don’t appear in any version of the song online. Everyone tells her to shut up and they’re all mean to her the rest of the day and make her scrub toilets. Caroline hatches a plan.
Wally wakes up with chicken pox the next day, as we knew he would. He goes to school anyway, because he can’t let Caroline win the spelling bee. Or spelling contest, which is what they keep calling it. They’re taking this way too seriously. Josh and Caroline tease him about his red ears, saying that he must have done something really embarrassing. Hee. In class, though, Caroline figures out he has chicken pox, but doesn’t say anything, because “even” Caroline is capable of doing the right thing. Bless.
Miss Applebaum is way, way too enthused about a fucking spelling bee. She tells them that this is the moment for which they’ve been practicing for months, which — Jesus, my school usually dropped spelling bees on us like three days before they happened. Wally stands by the doorway so he can scratch his back against it. Weirdly, it’s mentioned that he wants to scratch “places he would never scratch in public.”
You know, between this and the boys blushing at the thought of “horsing around” with the girls, these books have become slightly off-color. I remember thinking that was a weird thing to mention even when I was eleven.
The first girl gets knocked out on the word “squirrel.” What a loser. Wally spells “anonymous” correctly. And then it’s Caroline’s turn, and she spells “precocious” wrong. She immediately realizes and tries to correct it but nope, you have to get it right on the first try. I always hated this rule. Like, how anal do you have to be to ignore the nerves of a bunch of children? I’m so glad I’m out of grammar school. College is less stressful than that shit was.
Anyway, Wally wins the spelling bee, and will be representing the fourth grade at the county spelling contest. Does that mean he’s representing fourth grades everywhere? So…the county spelling contest is only going to consist of the classes at the Buckman school? Is Buckman school the only one in the county? Why make a big deal out of it being held in the school auditorium then? Of course it’s going to be held there, it’s a schoolwide spelling bee! Ahem. Sorry. Wally runs off to the bathroom and scratches himself to death. Band-Aids, Wally. Put ’em over your spots, it works great.
Malloys. The girls walk home from school, and Caroline is pathetic enough that her sisters forgive her. Then she tells them about the plan she hatched in the police station bathroom: they’ll do what they did to their rooms when the Bensons visited and decorate the police station with ribbons and bows and lace doilies. Eddie and Beth agree, but decide not to tell the boys about it, and to put Jake in charge, so he’ll get in trouble instead of them. Am I done with this book yet?
The girls go over to Casa Hatford where they see…Wally wearing his racing-car pajamas. Hee! You know, these kids have walked in on each other in situations that probably would’ve been enough to make me leave town if my classmates had seen me. The girls apologize to the boys and offer to make Jake supervisor. Jake, being mad with power, agrees.
Casa Hatford. The boys tell Mrs. Hatford that the girls — especially Caroline — had come over to apologize. Mrs. Hatford says, “Really? Maybe there’s hope for that girl yet!” What a weird thing to say about someone else’s child.
The chapter skips ahead to the following Monday, when Wally feels well enough to go watch Jake and Eddie’s baseball practice again. He admits to himself that Eddie is, in all honesty, a better baseball player than Jake. During a break, Jake gulps down a Gatorade (product placement!) and bitters to Josh and Wally that he’s been waiting to play for the Buckman Badgers since he was in kindergarten, and now that he’s finally in sixth grade, the Malloys are messing everything up. At dinner, he complains that Eddie is only good at baseball because her dad’s a coach. A football coach, though? Whatever, Jake. I mean, I feel bad for him and all — getting shown up sucks no matter what — but he’s being such a douche about this.
Someone finds Jake’s bottle, but it turns out it got stuck in the roots of a tree like five feet from where they sent it off from. And he forgets to ask what was inside, so it doesn’t count, anyway. For a moment, he considers lying, but then he doesn’t. I’m falling asleep in my seat, here.
The book rewinds a bit to Monday morning, when the girls come to school to see that the student body has managed the incredibly difficult task of reading a thousand books. And of course, Beth has read the most, with thirteen books. That’s…well, it’s cute that they think that’s a lot. The principal also announces the winners of the spelling bee from each class and Caroline “forces” herself to clap for Wally. Oh, Caroline. Sometimes you make it hard to love you. She leans over until she’s invading Wally’s personal space and says it would be fun if they all snuck over to the school to see if the principal is really asleep on the roof. Wally, for once, doesn’t immediately shut her down. Hijinks!
The girls put their plan into motion at the police station. Jake predictably makes them scrub the floors and clean the toilets while the boys clean the windows and doorknobs. It’s boring. Then the girls skedaddle while Sergeant Bogdan introduces Jake to the chief of police as the guy in charge. Predictably, the police get all mad over the hippo in a tutu stuck to the refrigerator, and the doilies in the waiting room, and stick-on hearts in the bathroom, and smiley faces in the holding cells. Sergeant Bogdan blows his top, because he’s taking his job as the police officer of a town in the middle of nowhere way too seriously. The police chief is kind of annoyed but then starts laughing. The boys run off before it can get any worse. Oh, those girls, they are so wacky.
The boys yell at the girls. Caroline says Sergeant Bogdan should keep the hippo in the tutu around as “a reminder of what he’s going to look like if he keeps on eating so many doughnuts.” Hee! Jake is still pissed, because he’s getting the brunt of the blame. I have to say, I can’t blame him. Nothing is really going his way in this book, and immature as he is, I think we’ve all known what it was like to feel like you can’t win, and instead of sympathizing with Jake, everyone either laughs at him or tells him to get over it. He’s not always right, obviously, and he has to get used to giiiirls being good at boy stuff, but a little sympathy in his direction wouldn’t be unwarranted, you know?
Later that night. The Malloys go to the spelling bee. Caroline is still all offended she isn’t getting to rep the fourth grade in the countywide spelling contest, and she bitters her way through the entire presentation about how Wally doesn’t deserve to be in the contest, and she would have bowed after she won first place, Mrs. Malloy tells her that Caroline misspelled her word, so no, she doesn’t deserve to be in the contest. Caroline predictably ignores this advice. When it’s down to Wally and one other girl, he hesitates on the word “handkerchief”, and Caroline stands up and yells that she knows, and proceeds to spell it. Of course, instead of everyone agreeing on the injustice of Wally being up there instead of her, they’re just like, “That girl is crazy” and get mad at her. The superintendent lets Wally spell another word, but Caroline’s outburst has knocked him all off-kilter and he spells “gymnastics” wrong. Everyone is mad at Caroline, even Peter.
Wally. He legitimately didn’t know how to spell “gymnastics”, and anyway, he’s glad to be out of the competition. He’s not even upset, since Caroline has made everyone mad at her, and that makes Wally feel good. Wally and Caroline both have problems, tbh. The Malloys drag Caroline up to Wally and she apologizes to him. All is well in Malloy-Hatford land, for now.
Casa Malloy. Caroline has learned her lesson, and Mrs. Malloy tells her that to be a great actress, she first has to be a great human being. I…well, there are too many examples to the contrary to link, but the sentiment is nice. Mrs. Malloy tells Caroline to work on her personality, but more nicely.
The boys don’t needle Caroline about her outburst, either. Instead, it’s the night the principal is supposed to be sleeping on the roof, so they ask the girls if they want to go over to the school at midnight to see if he’s really up there. The girls agree, and all the kids get worked up about sneaking out! At midnight! They’re such rebels. Both the Papas Malloy and Hatford figure out what they’re up to — Mr. Hatford figures a bunch of kids will be going over there to see the principal anyway — so they give them permission as long as they go together. And, you know, teenage rebellion with permission just isn’t fun. The kids decide to sneak out at one instead. (Cutely, they all worry if they’ll be able to stay up that late. Bless.)
At one, the kids meet up, but of course there’s a police car watching the building. Foiled! Even after “Officer Clay” drives off, as no one’s been by for the past forty minutes or so, there’s a big “Keep Off” sign on the ladder up to the roof, and that’s enough to deter them. They’re not very good rebels. Still, they decide to take the long way home, and see what movie is going to be playing at the theater next week (see? They have a movie theater! What’s the deal with having to float bottles down the river for fun?), or check the new ice cream flavors. Life in Buckman sounds thrilling.
But then! Caroline spies some Suspicious Figures sneaking around — two men go up to the roof, steal the school keys out of the principal’s pants (really?), and go into the school. I like how there’s crime in Buckman when it’s convenient to the plot, but a bunch of kids running around at one in the morning isn’t any cause for worry. The kids think maybe they should call the police, but they’re afraid that if they’re wrong — and the Suspicious Figures are just plainclothes policemen or something — they’ll have to clean the station again. Nice job making people afraid to report crime, Buckman police.
Wally. Jake is all excited about the possibility the men are robbing the school. I know, I too would steal from a public school. All those outdated textbooks and underfunded computer labs? I’d make a killing, I’m sure. None of the kids can agree on what the guys looked like, but Wally notices that they were both wearing white Nikes. More product placement! But I guess this isn’t very positive promotion. White Nikes: the shoe choice of burglars. (Way to wear white clothing in the dark, guys.) They all run back to Casa Hatford and make Wally wake up Papa Hatford. The Hatfords are skeptical, especially when they hear that it was Caroline who first saw the men, but then Wally mentions that they took the keys from the principal’s pants, and Papa Hatford springs into action. Policeman/Postman to the rescue! He calls Sergeant Bogdan, which — why would you do that? Sergeant Bogdan sucks. Anyway, Officer Clay is on the scene, along with “Frank Miller.” Uh…well, anyway, they bust the two guys, who were apparently after the school’s computers. Aw, yes:
I played the shit out of Oregon Trail on these. Or, actually, the boys in the after school program wouldn’t let me play, so I stood over their shoulder and yelled at them about poor life decisions because they spent all their money on ammo instead of food. I would’ve made a way better greenhorn than those assholes.
Sergeant Bogdan congratulates Caroline for her sharp eyes. She surprisingly demurs and tells him that it was the Hatfords who knew what to do. Bogdan’s like, “Oh, well, whatever, you all get credit.” He almost forgives them for doilying up the police station, like, what a prince. Also, the Hatfords and Malloys will get their names in the paper. Again. I bet all the other Buckman residents just roll their eyes by now.
Beth wins the bet, and starts listing off all the things she wants the boys to do. I mention this because she wants them to polish her toenails and perm her hair, which are not things I would have felt comfortable asking my male classmates to do when I was ten. Or ever. But then the phone rings and it’s someone who has found another bottle, and it’s actually Peter who wins the bet. I bet you didn’t see that coming.
Man, this book had theft, slavery, and the pox. And yet, it was one of the most boring books so far. A+ ideas, C- for execution.
THE END.
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