The Boys Start the War Read Online Free PDF Page A

happened to pass Eddie’s class in the hall on the way to the library. She grabbed her sister’s arm and said, “Eddie, is my nose broken?”
    “What?”
    “Is it crooked?”
    “No. What happened?”
    “Wally Hatford.”
    “What?” cried Eddie, but by this time her classmates were well down the hall, and she had to run to catch up.
    What bothered Caroline most about her predicament was that she wouldn’t be able to walk home with Beth and Eddie, and would have to wait to tell them about Wally Hatford banging her nose.
    At three o’clock everyone left except Caroline and Wally.
    “What is so wrong about not listening when I’m talking,” Miss Applebaum told them, “is that you disturb other students as well.”
    Caroline stared down at her desktop. She wondered how old it was. There were all kinds of thingsscratched in the wood—initials and numbers and little cartoon faces.
    “And because listening is the most important thing in my class, and talking out of turn is so distracting,” Miss Applebaum continued, “I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Come up here, both of you.”
    Caroline got woodenly to her feet. Miss Applebaum wasn’t going to paddle them, was she? She didn’t think she could stand the humiliation. Wasn’t that against the law? Or could teachers do things like that in West Virginia?
    She followed Wally up front where Miss Applebaum was placing two chairs, face to face, about three feet apart.
    “I want you to sit here,” she told them, “and I want you to talk to each other for ten minutes. Perhaps at the end of that time you will have said everything there is to say, and there will be no more disturbances in class.”
    No! Caroline thought. She would rather be paddled! One minute would be bad enough, five minutes would be cruel and unusual punishment, and ten was torture!
    She lowered herself sideways into one of the chairs. What was she supposed to say to a boy who, up until that morning, had thought she was dead?
    Miss Applebaum stood with arms folded. “Well? I’m waiting.”
    Caroline crossed her ankles. “You started it,” she said to Wally.
    “What did I do?” he mumbled, sitting sideways himself.
    “Dumping all that dead stuff on our side of the river.”
    “So you pretended to die.”
    “Is this a normal conversation?” asked Miss Applebaum as she picked up a box of supplies and headed for the closet at the back of the room.
    “No,” said Caroline, but she was talking to Wally, not her teacher. “This is not a normal conversation because you and your brothers aren’t normal human beings. Normal people don’t go dumping dead fish and birds around the neighborhood.”
    “It wasn’t my idea,” said Wally. “Well, actually it was my idea—dead fish, I mean—but it was Jake and Josh who—”
    “So none of you are normal.”
    “We’re not normal?” said Wally, his voice rising. “What do you call people who go burying each other in the river?”
    “It was a great performance, and you know it.”
    “It was dumb.”
    “You believed I was dead.”
    “I believe you’re crazy.”
    “We’ll see about that.”
    “Whatever you two are arguing about, you’d better get it out of your systems now, because when you come to school tomorrow, I expect you to payattention,” Miss Applebaum called, sticking her head out of the supply closet.
    “You and your dumb brothers,” Caroline muttered because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    “You and your stupid sisters,” said Wally.
    “We’re smarter than the four of you put together,” Caroline told him.
    “We’ll see,” said Wally.
    “If you’d just left us alone instead of dumping that dead stuff, things would be okay,” said Caroline.
    “If you’d go back where you came from, there wouldn’t be any more trouble,” Wally replied.
    “Oh, yeah? If you went back to where you came from, you’d be in a cave!”
    “That does it,” said Wally, hotly. “The war is