Boys Rock! Read online

  It wasn’t difficult to find an early map of Buckman at the library, but Caroline didn’t know how she could find out which theater had been the very first.

  “Try the vertical files,” the librarian told her, and showed her where the file cabinets were that held newspaper clippings of long ago. Caroline didn’t even know such files existed.

  There it was at last, a brown folder marked Theaters on the tab. Inside was a photograph of the Cinema Theater on Main Street, which had been called the Princess Theater before that and the Royale when it first opened. And there, just as Caroline had hoped, was a newspaper story about the grand opening in 1920—the very first movie, Pollyanna, starring an actress named Mary Pickford!

  Those old silent movies! Caroline thought. Imagine being an actress and not having to say a word because moving pictures didn’t have sound back then. Everything an actress needed to tell, she did with her eyes, her lips, her hands, her posture!

  Caroline studied the picture of Mary Pickford, who looked very shy, with her eyes downcast. Caroline lowered her own eyes and studied the floor.

  Now terror. Silently she put her hand to her throat and shaped her mouth into a huge O, her eyes wide.

  Anger next. Caroline brought her eyebrows together over the bridge of her nose. She clenched her teeth, her fists.

  Sadness? She tried to think of the saddest thing that had ever happened to her, and decided it was the death of her puppy back in Ohio. Her mouth began to sag at the corners, her chin began to quiver. She could feel tears forming in her eyes.

  Then she saw a boy staring at her from between the rows of books. She quickly picked up her pen and got to work.

  “A Look at Yesterday and a Glimpse of Tomorrow,” she had titled her story. Nine decades ago, Mary Pickford, appearing at the old Royale Theater on Main Street, now the Cinema, took Buckman by storm, she wrote. And today an aspiring young actress lives in Buckman, hoping to follow in the footsteps of that famous actress. …

  When she had finished her story, Caroline stared again at the photo of Mary Pickford. Except for the curls, did Mary look that much different from her? she wondered. Why wasn’t it possible that Caroline had been Mary Pickford in an earlier life? Why else was she so passionate about being onstage? Why else did she want to be an actress more than anything in the world?

  Caroline got out the pictures of herself she had brought to use with her article. She found one the same size as the photo of Mary Pickford. Their heads in the photos were turned in the same direction. Caroline took the newspaper article over to the copy machine, put in her dime, and made a copy of the article. Back at the table, she carefully, carefully cut out Mary Pick-ford’s shy face from the copy she had made, and slid her own photo beneath the paper so that her own face was showing through the hole.

  And there she was, curls and all—Caroline Lenore Malloy Pickford. But this Mary Pickford was smiling.

  Back she went to the copy machine and made a copy of the copy. Then another. She would not share this with anyone, of course, but it would be her dream and inspiration. When the road was rough and she was discouraged, she would get out this picture of her as Mary Pickford, and she would tell herself that anything was possible.

  Finished with her article at last, Caroline put the newspaper story back in the vertical file and packed up the rest of her things. The boy who had been staring at her while she practiced her emotions peered at her over the top of a magazine, and Caroline smiled sweetly so that he would know she was perfectly normal.

  Two days later, when Mrs. Malloy went to lunch with some of the faculty wives from the college, the three girls took their sandwiches out to eat on the grass.It was a bit cooler than it had been for some time, and they decided to have a picnic.

  “Olives,” said Beth, spreading their lunch out before them. “Grapes, cupcakes …”

  “This is a perfect day,” said Caroline. “Not too hot, not too windy. If every day was like this one, summer would be my favorite season.”

  It was a perfect day, that is, until Eddie said, “Look!”

  Caroline turned to see all four Hatford boys thundering across the bridge below.

  As they came up the hill where the girls were having their picnic, Josh waved something in his hand.

  “What is it?” Beth called.

  “The Old Times Tribune,” Josh said. “Their paper came out two days before ours will.”

  “Is it any good?” Eddie wanted to know.

  “See what you think,” Jake said, and Josh handed the newspaper to the girls. There on the first page was the article that had appeared in the Buckman Bugle ninety years before about the grand opening of the Royale Theater. The kids who had made the newspaper hadn’t even bothered to rewrite the story. All they’d done was make a copy of it.

  But in the photo where Mary Pickford should have been was the face of Caroline Lenore Malloy, curls and all.

  Thirteen

  Down with Tyranny!

  How the heck did the Old Times Tribune get this picture?” asked Jake. “You’re not working for them, are you, Caroline?”

  Caroline just stared.

  “Caroline wasn’t even born yet in 1920!” said Wally “That can’t be her.”

  “Duh!” said Eddie, and turned to Caroline.

  Wally couldn’t tell what Caroline Malloy was thinking. He knew by her face that she was just as surprised as anyone else.

  Suddenly she cried, “The boy! That’s who it was!”

  “Huh?” said Beth.

  “At the library! Some boy was watching me! I must have left a copy of that picture in the copy machine, and he took it and used it for their paper! I’ll bet he was working on the Old Times Tribune. I’ll bet he knew all along I was writing for the Hatford Herald.”

  “They probably thought they were stealing a good story,” said Josh, starting to laugh. “They wanted to get it in print before we did.”

  “Instead, this looks ridiculous!” said Beth. “ You look ridiculous, Caroline, with all those curls. Everyone will know this isn’t the real Mary Pickford! Why on earth did you ever mess with her picture?”

  “I … I just… just wanted to—” Caroline began, but Eddie interrupted.

  “So what’s the rest of their paper like?” she asked, turning the page. “Is it any good?”

  “Not really,” said Josh. “See for yourself. It’s mostly stuff they’ve copied from somewhere else.”

  Caroline was still upset. “That picture was … was just a private thing that nobody else was supposed to see!” she said. And to Wally’s horror, she began to cry.

  The problem with Caroline’s crying was that Wally couldn’t tell whether it was real or fake. If actresses could cry just thinking about something, how did you know whether it was the real McCoy? They all stared at Caroline for a few seconds, waiting to see if the tears would blow over.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” said Beth. “No one will know you did it. The guys doing the Old Times Tribune probably didn’t even realize it was a fake.”

  Caroline’s tears turned to sniffles.

  “Speaking of pictures,” Eddie said, “we need one more thing to fill up our first issue, and I’ve got a great idea. I thought it would be fun to put all our names in one column and a baby picture of each of us in the next column. Only, they’ll be all mixed up so no one can tell whose picture is whose. Readers will have to guess. And in the third issue, we’ll put the right picture by the right name and people can see if they guessed right.”

  Caroline’s face broke into a happy smile. “That’s a great idea!” she said.

  Oh, no! thought Wally Eddie wasn’t going to get any baby picture of him! He couldn’t remember one single picture of himself as a baby that he would like to see in a newspaper. A baby with birthday cake all over his cheeks. A red-faced baby crying because he’d gotten his foot stuck in a flowerpot. A rain-soaked baby, hair plastered to his head, sitting in a puddle. A bare-bottomed baby crawling into the bathtub.

&nbs
p; Jake and Josh felt the same way.

  “Count me out,” said Jake.

  “Me too,” said Josh. “I’m not having any baby picture in a newspaper. Not even ours.”

  “Oh, come on!” said Beth. “I think it’s cool! It could be fun! People love to do matching games.”

  “Then match something else,” said Jake. “Dental records. Fingerprints. You won’t get any baby pictures from me.”

  “Well, I’m editor in chief, and you’re overruled,” said Eddie. “We go to press in two days, and I want a picture of each of you by tomorrow.”

  “I don’t care if you’re commander in chief! You can’t go bossing everyone around,” said Jake. “If we don’t want our baby pictures in a newspaper, then we’re not going to give them to you.”

  “Right!” said Peter, standing up for his brothers.

  For once, Wally thought, his brothers were on his side. Leaving the Old Times Tribune on the picnic blanket beside the girls, Wally and his brothers trooped back down the hill and on across the swinging bridge.

  “All for one, and one for all. We stick together!” said Jake.

  “Right!” Peter said again.

  Wally felt sure that Eddie would call again that night and say okay, the paper would go to press without the baby pictures, but she didn’t.

  “What if she won’t put out the paper at all?” said Josh. “We’re the ones who will suffer. We’re the ones who need the credit.”

  “Her name’s on those posters, remember? The Hat-ford Herald, Eddie Malloy, Editor in Chief,” said Jake. “She’ll print it, don’t worry. It’s about time she learned that she can’t do it alone.”

  “So how’s the newspaper coming along?” Mr. Hat-ford asked that night at dinner. He was still wearing his mail carrier’s uniform, which meant he’d been working late. The fall JCPenney catalog had just come out, and when it was time to deliver those, he was always late getting home.

  “Well, the first issue is supposed to come out on Friday,” Jake said. “Josh and I have done our part. The rest is up to Eddie.”

  “Nice going,” his father said.

  “I remember making a little neighborhood newspaper when I was in school,” said their mother. “But I didn’t have a computer then, so I wrote each copy by hand. It took forever, and I only made two of them before I gave up. I think I sold them for three cents apiece. You guys don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “Yeah,” said Wally. “Lucky us.”

  The following day Mrs. Hatford came home from the hardware store for lunch. After she’d put the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on the table, she said, “Wally, which of your baby pictures do you like best? The one of you eating your first birthday cake or the one of you sitting in a puddle?”

  Wally almost choked on his cheese sandwich. “Neither one!” he yelped.

  “Why are you asking?” Jake said.

  “Yeah!” cried Josh. “Why do you want to know?”

  Mrs. Hatford looked confused. “Well, for heaven’s sake, what’s the matter? Eddie called this morning before you boys were up and asked if she could have a baby picture of each of you for the newspaper. She said if I could bring them with me to work, she’d stop by the hardware store and pick them up.”

  “Noooooooooo!” cried the three oldest Hatford boys in unison.

  “What’s wrong? I wasn’t going to wake you up and ask which ones I should give her. But I just wondered which of those two pictures of Wally he liked best. I guessed the birthday cake, so that’s what I gave her.”

  “She tricked us!” Josh yelled. “We told her she couldn’t have any!”

  “Well, how would I know that?” said his mother. “Good heavens, don’t make a federal case of it. Are you and those girls fighting again? I thought you were over that by now.”

  “It’s Eddie who’s bossing us around!” said Jake. “She had no right to ask you for our pictures, and you shouldn’t have given them to her without asking us.”

  Mrs. Hatford sighed and lowered her head. “Do you see these gray hairs?” she asked, pointing. “Do you know what’s causing them?”

  “Dandruff?” asked Peter.

  “Boys!” said their mother. “Four boys who are driving me right out of my mind.”

  At three o’clock that afternoon, the four boys marched across the swinging bridge, up the hill to the Malloys’, past the house, and on down their driveway to the road out front. Then, between the Malloys’ mailbox and the lilac bush, they marched back and forth, back and forth, holding hand-lettered signs in black ink with a different message on each:

  Jake held a sign that read EDDIE MALLOY, DICTATOR.

  Josh’s sign read INVASION OF PRIVACY.

  Wallys read DOWN WITH TYRANNY!

  And P eters: WE WANT JUSTICE!

  They saw Eddie, Beth, and Caroline come out on their front steps and stare at them. The UPS truck was coming down the road. It started to turn up the Mal-loys’ drive to deliver a package, then kept going instead. Every car passing the house slowed down so that the driver could read the signs.

  Half an hour later, just when Wally felt that he and his brothers were getting the hang of it, a dark green Chevy came into view and began to slow. Then it slowed even more and came to a stop.

  Wally couldn’t make out who was driving, but he saw the man roll his window down. Then Coach Mal-loy leaned out the window and said, “Hey, fellas, do you think I could go up my own driveway?”

  Fourteen

  A Roundtable Discussion

  Dad! Dad’s home!” Caroline shrieked, jumping off the porch and running down the drive to meet her father.

  Mr. Malloy got out of the car as his wife and daughters gathered around him.

  “George!” Caroline’s mother said, giving him a hug. “We didn’t know you would be coming home!”

  “Thought I’d surprise you and drive back for a few days. We’re still negotiating that contract,” Coach Malloy said. He motioned toward the end of the driveway. “Quite a welcoming committee out there, I must say”

  “I can’t tell what in the world is going on,” Mrs. Malloy said. “It’s all about the newspaper, I guess, and who is or who is not in charge. But the neighbors have been calling, wondering—”

  “I’m editor in chief, so I’m in charge,” Eddie declared. “It’s a labor dispute, that’s all.”

  “Well, I saw a ‘We Want Justice!’ sign down there,” said her father. “I saw a ‘Down with Tyranny!’ sign. Sounds pretty serious to me. Not exactly the kind of thing I want in front of my house after coaching a football team all year.”

  “Oh, nobody will take them seriously,” said Eddie.

  “I don’t care,” said Mr. Malloy, picking up his bag. “I want you to end this. Now.”

  “Dad!” cried Eddie, Beth, and Caroline together.

  “If I give in now, it will show I’ve lost control of the newspaper!” Eddie protested.

  “Well? What do you think that picket line tells you? Do the honorable thing, Eddie, and take a vote,” Mr. Malloy said. “And then those guys can go home.” He started for the house, and Mrs. Malloy followed.

  The girls looked at each other.

  “That’s suicide!” Beth said. “It’s four against three. You know how the boys will vote.”

  “I don’t care so much about using the baby pictures, though I still think it’s a fun idea. It’s the principle of the thing,” said Eddie. “They tricked us when they named the paper. Now we should get what we want. They are so immature. There must be a way. …”

  “Maybe if we stall long enough, they’ll get tired and go home,” Caroline suggested.

  Mr. Malloy appeared in the doorway again. “I mean now!” he thundered, and Caroline knew he meant it.

  “Listen,” Beth said to her sisters. “There’s a swing vote here. Peter’s.”

  Eddie and Caroline began to smile.

  “And you know what will change his mind,” said Beth.

  “Cookies!” Eddie and C
aroline said together.

  They walked to the end of the driveway, where the boys were parading back and forth between the mailbox and the lilac bush. Peter marched like a soldier, his back straight, his sign high over his head.

  “You want to negotiate?” Eddie asked Jake.

  “What’s to negotiate?” Jake answered. “We don’t want our baby pictures published, period!”

  “Well, why don’t you come up to the house where it’s cool and we’ll discuss it,” Eddie told them.

  The boys seemed ready for a break.

  “All right. A fifteen-minute break, that’s all,” said Josh.

  Up the driveway they went. Mr. and Mrs. Malloy were in the living room talking about the job contract back in Ohio. Eddie led the Hatford boys to the kitchen, and they all sat around the big table.

  “Now, we just want to discuss this calmly like intelligent human beings,” said Eddie. “A newspaper needs to please its customers, and readers enjoy things like crossword puzzles and quizzes and matching names and stuff. You know how magazines often have pictures of famous people—movie stars and basketball players—and you’re supposed to match them with their high school graduation pictures?”

  “We’re not famous people,” said Wally

  “Yet!” said Caroline.

  “So if we want to please our readers, we need to lose a little pride,” said Eddie. “Beth and Caroline and I are certainly ready to do our part. Here are three pictures of us when we were babies.”

  She went into the dining room and returned with three photos:

  Eddie at eighteen months in baseball pajamas, with a much too large baseball cap all but hiding her eyes. Cute as the dickens.

  Beth in an adorable pair of overalls, holding a huge storybook on her lap, bigger than she was, almost, her mouth open as though reading the book to herself. Absolutely precious.

  Caroline dressed as an Easter bunny, huge ears towering over her head. Utterly charming.