Oops, did I really abandon this series for four years? Shout-out to May for reminding me that these existed and getting my butt into gear! Hopefully I’ll finish the series before I turn thirty. Anyway, previously on the Boy/Girl Battle series: bottle-floating. Seriously, that was the big conflict. Also chicken pox, spelling bees, baseball, and actual crime. Craziness!
The cover is pretty boring. That’s Wally and Caroline, obviously. I dig Caroline’s outfit — mostly because I too have rocked the bloomers-under-a-sundress look, in 1997, when I was four. Her platform Keds are also super-cute. Wally…actually looks like the Beaver.
Presumably Caroline is supposed to be embarrassed by Wally taking pictures of her in that outfit (on a Polaroid camera! This book was published in 2003, the same year I went on a class camping trip, and one girl brought a Polaroid camera to capture the memories), but seeing as you can’t see her face in them, there’s no way of proving it’s her, so I don’t get the big deal.
Let’s go forth!
When we last left the boys and girls, it was April. Now it’s May, and the elementary school baseball championships are coming up! That was fast. Didn’t they just have tryouts a month ago? Don’t they have to have a season with, like, games and stuff, before they can have a championship? Well, whatever. Everyone’s all chipper and everything is going swimmingly, until Mrs. Hatford realizes she agreed to hold “The Women’s Auxiliary of the Buckman Fire Department’s Treats and Treasures yard sale” on the day of the championship game. What kind of 1950s bullshit is a Women’s Auxiliary?
Mrs. Hatford wails that there’s no way she can miss the game, but the entire town already knows that the yard sale is going to be at their house, so they can’t get out of it. Mr. Hatford’s like, “Well, there’s no way I’M missing the game,” and Josh is like, “Well I’M not either”, and Peter’s like, “Me either!” and Wally’s like, “…fuck.”
So the family volunteers Wally to run the garage sale. He tries to point out that he’s ten years old and seriously, take some responsibility for your fuckups, Mrs. Hatford. But the family outvotes him. Wally wails that it’s not fair, and Mr. Hatford tells him that life’s not fair. I mean, they could also tell Jake that life’s not fair and your parents aren’t perfect and can’t always be there for you, but whatever.
Am I taking this personally because my parents were workaholics when I was growing up? Uh…maybe.
(By the way, I’m probably going to end up saying both “yard sale” and “garage sale” wtih zero consistency, because I usually say “garage sale” but the book says “yard sale”, which is throwing me off.)
Wally muses that one other person in Buckman isn’t super into sports, and that would be Caroline Malloy. OTP! He doesn’t really want her to help with the garage sale, because she crazy, but he thinks it might be better than being alone.
Over in Caroline’s POV, she muses that Wally’s late to school, and it would suck if he doesn’t show up. Not that like, she LIKES him or anything, she just likes “tracing her name on the back of [his] shirt with the edge of her ruler” and “tickling him behind the ear with her pencil.” Yeah, that’s normal.
Wally makes it to class, and Miss Applebaum gives the class an assignment: they can do a book report, or they can write a book of their own. Caroline asks if she can write a play and act it out, and Miss Applebaum enables her by saying yes. Miss Applebaum, do you ever learn? Wally immediately is like, “No, Caroline, I won’t be in your play.” Heh. He has her number. Caroline sighs that she needs attention, because everyone is all about Eddie and her baseball career these days. It wasn’t easy being a budding actress in a boring world. Still, a lot more happened here than had ever happened when she lived in Ohio. No offense to anyone living in Ohio, but the more I find out about it, the more I’m convinced it’s the worst state.
After school, all the kids go to watch baseball practice. Caroline goes to bug Wally, and he tells her about not being able to go to the championship game because of the yard sale. Caroline volunteers to help, and Wally kind of can’t say no at this point. I don’t know how he didn’t see this coming. Caroline thinks that, since she’s helping Wally, she can finagle him into being in her play.
The boys go home, and Wally flashbacks to the earlier books, when they would spend all their time after school plotting how to destroy the Malloys. Now he admits that they’re kind of friends, although Jake is still like, “Ugh, girls are dumb and I miss the Bensons.” He tries to make a crack about how they wouldn’t be worried about the championship if Steve Benson were on the team, and Josh is like, “Eddie is way better at baseball than Steve and you know it.” HA!
You know, I’m starting to think Jake had a crush on Steve or something. He’s like the only one of the boys still hung up on the Bensons. Get over it, Jake! Long distance relationships never work out!
Wally looks over the books he can read for his report: Hatchet, Maniac Magee, and Wringer. Aaand I just had flashbacks to my elementary school years. Then Eddie calls and asks Jake if he wants to get in some extra practice, because the two of them have no character traits besides liking sports, and Jake shoots her down because he doesn’t want to practice with a giiiiirl.
Then the phone rings again, and it’s a random lady asking if she can come to the yard sale early and buy something. Wally says that the sale doesn’t open until noon, and the lady hangs up on him. Could this be the plot showing up?
But first, a detour into the girls’ POV. Eddie is salty that Jake doesn’t want to practice with her, and bitters that men are trash. Beth is like, “#notallmen!” and adds that Josh is cute. Eddie snarks that she doesn’t like artsy boys. Beth asks if Eddie likes jocks, and needles her that maybe she was actually trying to get Jake to go on a date with her to the baseball field, and she’s mad because he rejected her. Eddie’s like, “Ew, no, he has cooties!” and stomps off. So…definitely yes, then.
The day of the first game arrives. It’s rained for the past three days, so Eddie is freaking out because she hasn’t practiced. For three days? Jesus Christ, Eddie. It’s not like you can suddenly forget how to throw a ball. Eddie frets that if they lose, everyone will blame her, because she’s the only girl on the team and these books take place in the 1950s. She’s so nervous that she ends up playing terribly. Jake is all happy that Eddie is blowing it, and plays really well. Fucking Jake. He’s going to grow up to have a Reddit account and post about how he doesn’t like, think women are inferior, they’re just coincidentally naturally worse at everything than men.
Anyway, after the game, Jake is feeling all benevolent because he showed Eddie up. He offers to practice with her (sure, now you want to date her, Jake), and they go off to the field together. Wally is emo because his parents have decided to use his room as storage space for the yard sale stuff, so he goes outside so he doesn’t have to look and it and deal with the knowledge that he’s his parents’ least favorite.
Caroline comes over and reads Wally the first act of her play, and asks for his opinion. Wally: “It stinks.” Heh. Caroline took Beth’s advice and tried to write a romantic sci-fi murder mystery about a couple that hangs around on the beach and makes out until one of them gets eaten by beach monster or some shit. Wally figures out that Caroline wants him to be the husband real fast and is like, “Aw, hell no.”
Mrs. Malloy tells the girls to go through their stuff and donate things to the yard sale. Caroline donates a Bambi “video”, and I shriek because I totally owned Bambi on VHS, too. This is like a book about my life. Mrs. Malloy takes all their nice clothes and things to donate, and says they’ll use all the ratty clothes for the rag bag. This will come up again later. Then she makes them go down to the basement and find more stuff to donate there. The girls go digging, and find a photo album hidden on top of the heating ducts. They open, and find that it’s full of embarrassing pictures of the Hatfords and Bensons. There’s a picture of Josh wearing Batman underwear, Jake putting pasta up his nose, and Wally wearing bunny pajamas. The girls cackle nefariously, and go call the boys to tell them that they found their pictures and they’re holding them for ransom.
Wally is screeching in horror that the girls found their photos. Josh and Jake find out what’s happening, and they start screaming too. Peter’s like, “I’m seven years old so I don’t really care.” They tell their mom what happened, and she’s like, “So just ask for them back, what’s the big deal.” Wally is amazed that his mom thinks the girls are just going to give up the photos like that. Right? Are you new, Mrs. Hatford?
The boys try to remember why they even took those photos, and Josh says that they were insurance, to make sure they all stayed loyal to each other. If one of them betrayed the group, they were going to spread the embarrassing photos all over school. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor totally read Sixth Grade Secrets, didn’t she?
The boys send Peter over to get the photos back, and of course Peter fails miserably. Wally writes an angsty letter to the Bensons, telling them that the girls found their photos. He adds that he would’ve emailed, but all the garage sale stuff in his house is blocking the computer. Wow, Wally has a computer in his room now? The technology in these books has come so far. Maybe they’ll have DSL by the time the series ends.
Josh is like, “Maybe if we got embarrassing photos of the girls, we’d be even,” and Wally’s like, “I thought we were done with doing creepy shit like spying in their bedrooms.” Josh is like, “Oh, right.”
The baseball team has another game. This time, Eddie plays well, and she and Jake pretty much carry the team to a win. Wally gets surprisingly into the game, and is like, “OMG, I care about baseball now.” Now he’s extra bummed that he has to watch the yard sale. Then Caroline comes over, and offers to give the photos back to Wally if he acts in her play with her. Oh, Wally. How did you not see this coming? Wally asks why the girls want the pictures so badly. Caroline’s like, “Because they’re embarrassing and middle schoolers love embarrassing each other, keep up.” Just kidding. She does say that they want to use them as blackmail, though. Wally clutches his pearls and is all, “You mean, you would use those photos to make us do things that we don’t want to do?!” Then he points out that that’s what Caroline’s doing right now, with the play, and Caroline’s like, “…duh.” Heh. Wally’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he?
Or maybe he kind of is, because he decides not to tell his brothers that he’s getting the photos back, so that he can use them to say no next time Josh and Jake try to make him do stupid shit. Heh. Fight for your rights as the middle child, Wally!
He skips out on watching Jake’s baseball practice, and goes home alone after school the next day. Two women drop by, and ask if they can look at the yard sale stuff. Wally says he has to ask his mom, and goes back inside to call her — he leaves the door open a crack, “because he didn’t want to seem rude.” Dude! Shut and lock your door!
It’s so wild to me that people from small towns don’t lock their doors. I had a roommate who never did, and it made me crazy, especially because we were living in a large-ish city.
Proving my point, when Wally comes back from talking this mom, the door is open and the two women are poking around in the Hatfords’ closet. Wally’s like, “The fuck?” and the women chirp that they were just looking around, and they’ll be leaving now. Not suspicious at all! Wally calls his mom back and she freaks out that they might’ve stolen something, but all the Hatfords’ valuables are still there. And this is why you should never be nice to strangers. You don’t know what the fuck they want.
Anyway, the next day, the boys are still being emo over the pictures. Then Peter pulls a rag from the Malloys’ house out of his pocket, and the boys realize it’s Eddie’s ratty underwear. Uh…I get using old shirts and everything as rags, but I would draw the line at underwear, personally. The boys are all hype that they can use Eddie’s old underwear as blackmail. Yeah, because holding on to a pair of girl’s underwear is less weird than spying on them in their bedrooms. The Hatfords need boundaries.
The baseball team has another game. Eddie and Jake have developed a ~secret signal~ that they use to make a play and win the game, because they’re all best friends now. Caroline is salty that Eddie and Jake are getting all the attention and not her, as usual.
When the Hatfords get home, Mrs. Hatford notices that the window is open. Everyone denies opening it, and Mr. Hatford suggests that someone was trying to get into their house. Who could it have been? WHO?
Caroline reads the rest of her play to Wally. To summarize: a wife thinks her husband has disappeared at the beach, but it turns out that he’s actually an evil amoeba who comes back to drag her down under the sea to live in his amoeba kingdom. Wally’s like, “The plot makes no sense, but I get to cover myself in slime and drag Caroline around, so I’m in.” Heh. They rehearse a bit at the Hatfords’ house, and Mrs. Hatford asks them to help inventory the garage sale stuff. Some woman named Jenny Bloomer donated an old family photo, and Mrs. Hatford tells them that Jenny’s great-grandma or something was Amelia Bloomer, a famous suffragette. Wally and Caroline don’t know what a suffragette is. I’m trying to remember when we learned about the suffragettes in school. In fairness, it probably wasn’t fourth grade. And I know Miss Applebaum is too busy making these kids have bullshit competitions instead of teaching them actual history.
Caroline goes home, and Wally reminds her to bring the photos to school tomorrow, as he’s carrying out his part of the deal by being in her play. Caroline thinks that he looks like he has a secret, and gets suspicious.
Caroline and Wally put on their play. The kids love the whole evil murderous slime monster thing, as 9-year-olds tend to do. Wally actually really enjoys performing, because he and Caroline are totally more alike than they think. Caroline thinks everyone loved her mad playwriting skillz, and Wally’s like, “I think they mostly liked watching you get dragged across the floor by a slime monster, but sure.” He’s having so much fun that he forgets to ask for the pictures back. He figures that he’ll just tell Caroline that if she doesn’t give them back, the boys will run Eddie’s underpants up the school flagpole. Isn’t that exactly what happened to one of the girls in Sixth Grade Secrets?
The night before the garage sale, the Hatfords have Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. Is KFC all this family eats? And now I want KFC. I haven’t had it in years 🙁 After everyone goes to bed, Wally is still awake, and he thinks he hears a noise outside. He goes downstairs to investigate and doesn’t see anyone in the house, but notices a flashlight beam moving across the yard. OMG, could someone be creeping around the Hatfords’ house?
The next day, everyone goes to the game except Wally and Caroline. Well, Caroline goes, but she leaves after like five minutes and goes to the Hatfords’ to help with the sale. Some old lady is also there to help, but she’s only there to be useless when the plot shows up. A woman approaches Wally and says she wants to buy Jenny Bloomer’s family photo. Okay, but for real, who donates a family photo to a yard sale? Who wants a photo of some randos in their house?
Wally tries to tell her that the sale doesn’t start until noon. She’s really pushy, and he tries to get Some Old Lady to help him, but Some Old Lady is over on the other side of the yard, being useless. By the time Wally turns back to the woman, she’s already taken the photo and left some money for it. Wally watches another woman meet up with her, and realizes they’re the women who barged into the Hatfords’ house the other day, and probably also the women who called and hung up the other day, and probably were also creeping around the house last night. He tells Caroline that the family picture must be important, and makes her go after them.
Caroline follows the women to an inn where they’re staying, and slips inside because no one in this damn town locks their doors. She overhears the women explaining the plot: they’re Jenny Bloomer’s cousins, and they found a letter from one of their relatives saying that something valuable was hidden in the back of the photo. They want whatever it is for themselves, and snark that what Jenny doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Caroline waits for them to open up the back of the frame, then runs in and steals the envelope in the back. It’s described as a white packet, which — really? Would that fit in the back of the picture frame? Have I just been using pathetically thin frames my entire life?
Caroline runs away with the packet, and the women chase her. Not creepy at all! She manages to hide from them in a gas station restroom, and opens the packet to find a pair of bloomers. She’s like, “What the fuck?” but figures that the women wouldn’t want them unless they were a big deal. She puts them on so that they won’t be able to just steal the packet from her if they find her, and walks back to the yard sale. Wally asks what was in the photo, and Caroline shows them the bloomers she’s wearing. He immediately takes a Polaroid. Oh, Wally.
Caroline gives the bloomers to Some Old Lady, and Some Old Lady gasps that these bloomers belonged to Amelia Bloomer herself. She’s all, “You just stepped out of the underpants of greatness!” She tells them about how Amelia Bloomer believed women should be able to wear pants, so she wore loose, long pants sticking out from under her dress all the time, and they were named “bloomers” after her.
This…is actually true. Real talk, I thought Phyllis Reynolds Naylor made the whole thing up, but no, bloomers are named after Amelia Bloomer. She didn’t invent them, exactly, but she was one of the best-known women for wearing those style of pants and advocating for women to wear more comfortable clothing. Check these books out, low-key teaching us feminist history. (Although it’s probably worth adding that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor also wrote the Alice books, which are probably the most honest and informative books about growing up as a girl that I’ve ever read. I remember when they were banned from libraries for being so open about sex.)
Jenny Bloomer shows up and Caroline explains what happened. She gasps that those women are Dorothy and Marva, her cousins, and they were always needling her about whether or not Jenny’s mom left them anything in her will. Jenny says that they probably thought there was money or something in the frame.
Just then, the rest of the families come back. Jake and Eddie’s team has won the baseball game, like anyone cares at this point. Some Old Lady tells them that the real excitement was happening at the yard sale, and everyone laughs at the wacky hijinks they missed out on. Jenny donates the bloomers to the town museum.
Wally shows everyone the photo of Caroline in the bloomers, and offers to trade it to her for the album of the boys’ photos. Caroline is embarrassed for about five seconds, but then is like, “Oooh, you could put it in the newspaper! Maybe someone will hire me to be an actress in a period piece!” Oh, Caroline. Wally hands over the photo, and the girls hand over the pictures of the boys. Then the boys are like, “Speaking of bloomers,” and show them Eddie’s underwear. They make a deal that the girls can’t ever speak about the photos ever again, and they won’t tell anyone that…Eddie used to own embarrassing underwear? It’s not clear. Jake and Eddie congratulate each other on winning the game, because they are in love now.
Wally writes a letter to the Bensons, telling them everything that went down. He’s like, “And if you don’t know who Amelia Bloomer was, look her up. #feminism.” Wally is woke now, guys. He says they’ll probably do some fun stuff with the girls this summer, but muses that they still need to find out who really belongs in Buckman. Dun dun dun!
You know, I just realized — there’s three books left, and Wally and Caroline are the only kids to have had birthdays. Right? I’m not totally blanking here? Maybe rest of the kids were born in the summer or something. We’ll find out!
THE END.
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