The Girls Take Over by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Read Free Book Online

enthusiasm.
    “ I'm paying attention!” said Peter.
    Wally snapped to and studied the field below. Now the coach was explaining how to field a ground ball. Wally yawned.
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw Caroline crawling along the bleachers toward him. She got halfway between the place where Beth was sitting and the place where the Hatford boys were sitting, then motioned Wally to come over.
    Wally considered it. If he did, he would probably get into trouble. If he didn't, she'd probably crawl all the way over and drop things down the back of his shirt. Somehow, though, even talking with Caroline Malloy seemed more interesting than sitting here waiting to cheer for someone.
    “I'm going over and sit with Caroline for a while,” Wally told his brothers.
    “You're nuts!” said Josh. And then, “ No, Peter! You stay here. We're supposed to be rooting for Jake.”
    Peter stayed put.
    Wally stepped behind Josh and Peter and walked over to the middle of the bleachers, where Caroline was still crawling on her hands and knees.
    “What are you, a dog?” he said.
    “I'm bored,” she told him.
    “Me too,” said Wally.
    “That's probably because we're not very good at sports,” Caroline said. “Dad says that people who are good in sports don't get bored with them. It's people like us who would rather be up on a stage who get bored during ball games.”
    “This isn't even a game, it's practice, and I don't want to be up on a stage, either,” said Wally.
    Caroline seemed to be thinking that over. “Then what would you rather be doing?” she asked.
    Wally shrugged. “Nothing. I just like to think.”
    “ Every one thinks all the time, Wally! You don't have to sit and do nothing in order to think!”
    “Well, I have my best thoughts when I do,” Wally answered.
    Caroline leaned closer, until she was within a few inches of Wally's face. “What kind of thoughts do you have, Wally? I really want to know.”
    She sounded as though she meant it. Out on the field the coach was yelling, “Keep your bat as still as possible till you're ready to swing. Don't wave it back and forth.”
    Wally sighed. He was glad it wasn't him down there on the ball diamond getting yelled at over a stupid ball. “Well,” he said finally. “Things like … like how itwould feel to be a giant walking from cloud to cloud. Or … well, you know how, if you watch ants building an anthill and taking food inside and all that, they don't even know you're there. Right?”
    “Right,” said Caroline.
    “If you put a stick in their way, they'll crawl over it or around it, but they don't know how it got there. They don't know that your shoe has a foot in it. They don't know anything about people or bridges or rockets or anything. All they know is their own little anthill.” He looked at Caroline out of the corner of his eye to see if she was laughing at him.
    But Caroline seemed absorbed in what he was saying, so Wally continued: “What if we're like ants to some huge creatures we can't even see? What if our world is like a small anthill and huge scientists are studying us under a microscope like germs or something?”
    He looked directly at Caroline as he asked the question. He really wanted to know if anyone else ever had the same thoughts he did. Caroline seemed deep in concentration as she studied his face. “Did you know that your eyes have little brown specks in them?” she asked.
    Wally let out his breath and tipped back his head. He should have known better than to tell anything like that to Caroline Malloy. But just when he'd decided she was hopeless, Caroline said, “I think about things like that too, sometimes.”
    “Like what?” asked Wally.
    “Like what if every person who ever lived leaves a sort of ghost behind, and if conditions are absolutely exactly right, you can feel what that person was feeling when he died. For just a minute, maybe, you can sort of be that ghost.”
    “Like … like what do you mean?” asked