Eggs with Legs

by Judy Delton

  Mary Beth thought. “He hates to be teased about girls,” she said.

  “Exactly!” said Molly. “I think we should pretend to be a girl who likes him a lot. We can write him real mushy notes and he’ll hate it!”

  “Will we sign our names?” asked her friend.

  “Of course not!” said Molly in alarm. “We’ll put ‘from an admirer.’ ”

  “Then he’ll think some girl is after him,” said Mary Beth, “and he’ll hate it!”

  Molly nodded. “And the best part is, it isn’t real mean or nasty, it’s just a little bit nasty. I mean my mom and dad wouldn’t like us to do something really bad.”

  “I don’t think we should tell them, though,” said Mary Beth.

  “Of course not!” said Molly.

  Mary Beth ran to get her perfumed notes and envelopes, the ones with the flowers on them.

  “I’ll do the writing,” said Molly. “I think we should write at least three mushy notes and put them in his mailbox one at a time.”

  “We could put one in his desk,” said Mary Beth.

  “Good idea,” said Molly. She wrote, “Dear Roger,” and then she frowned. “I don’t know how to write mushy stuff,” she said.

  “Let’s go down to the drugstore and look at the greeting cards,” said Mary Beth. “We can copy those.”

  The girls dashed downtown. There were racks and racks of cards in the store. They went to the ones that said “Husbands, Wives, Loved Ones.” One by one they read them.

  “Here’s a good one!” said Molly. “Listen. ‘I dream of you all night and day. Come be my love and make my day. Happy birthday.’ ”

  “Let’s leave off the ‘happy birthday’ part,” said Mary Beth sensibly.

  Molly copied the rest of it. “We need two more,” she said.

  “Here is an anniversary greeting ‘to my wife,’ ” said Mary Beth. “We can just use the verse. ‘You’ve been by my side, through joy and tears. Let’s love each other for many more years.’ ”

  “Have we been by his side?” asked Molly, frowning.

  Mary Beth stamped her foot. “This is a trick,” she said. “It’s not a lie-detector test!”

  “Okay,” said Molly. “Now number three.”

  “ ‘For one I love from afar,’ ” read Mary Beth. “ ‘A secret pal.’ ” She picked it up.

  “ ‘I’ve loved you in secret, my heart has been true. Call me your kitten, if you love me too. Your secret pal.’ I think this is the best one. We should send it last.”

  “But he can’t call us his kitten, he won’t know who it is,” said Molly.

  “That doesn’t matter!” said Mary Beth. “That’s the joke! He keeps getting these love notes but he’ll never know who sent them! That’s a great April Fools’ trick.”

  “Is it too mean?” asked Molly.

  Mary Beth shook her head. “It won’t hurt him,” she said. “He can just throw them away and not show them to anyone. But it will make him mad, nonetheless.”

  “Okay,” said Molly, copying all three cards. Just as she was finishing, a clerk came over and said, “You’re supposed to buy the cards, not copy them.”

  “We’re just leaving,” said Mary Beth sweetly.

  Mary Beth seems better at planning tricks than I am, thought Molly.

  When they got back to Mary Beth’s, Molly copied the three verses on three different pieces of Mary Beth’s flowered smelly stationery. They put each into an envelope and wrote “Roger White” on the front.

  “Thursday is April Fools’,” Molly said. “Let’s deliver them the night before.”

  On Wednesday after school, the girls went to Roger’s house. When no one was around, Molly snuck up to the mailbox and slipped the first envelope into the box. Then the girls ran home.

  At school the next day they waited until recess. Then Mary Beth handed Molly the second envelope. She slipped it into Roger’s desk on top of his binder. Then they went out to play.

  After recess they kept their eyes on Roger. They saw him take his binder out. Then he saw the card. It dropped to the floor and he picked it up. He opened it and sniffed it and turned red. Then he put it back in his desk.

  “This is a great trick!” said Mary Beth, laughing, on the way home. “He has no idea who it is who loves him!”

  “I wonder if he got the first one,” said Molly.

  “Of course he did,” said Mary Beth. “Everyone gets their mail. It’s a law. You’ve got to read it.”

  “Where should we put the last one?” asked Molly. “The one that says he should call his secret pal ‘kitten’!”

  “Somewhere where we can see him open it,” said Mary Beth. The girls thought.

  “How about in his bike saddlebag?” said Molly. “Or his backpack.”

  “His bike,” said Mary Beth. The girls ran to the bike rack. Roger’s bike was there! Its license plate said “Roger.” They popped the note into the saddlebag.

  Then they hid behind a tree till Roger came. He opened the bag to put his books in and saw the card. He didn’t open it. He just rode off toward home.

  “Rat’s knees!” said Molly. “He could have opened it so we could watch.”

  On the way home Molly felt let down. Their trick was over too soon and not very exciting.

  But when she got home she found out that the excitement was just beginning. Her mother had the phone in her hand.

  “It’s for you, Molly,” she said. “I believe it’s Roger White.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Hi, Kitten”

  Molly stared at the phone in her mother’s hand. Roger? Why in the world would Roger call her at home? He never called her! Her stomach flip-flopped. His call had something to do with the April Fools’ trick. The trick had gone wrong! Molly took the phone and said, “Hello?”

  “Hi, kitten,” said Roger.

  “What did you say?” asked Molly. She must have heard him wrong!

  “Kitten. You said in your letter to call you ‘kitten,’ ”

  Molly’s stomach did another flip-flop. She had just told herself that the trick was boring. Well, it did not feel boring any longer! How did Roger know she had sent the letters? Could he read her mind? Had he traced her fingerprints on the notes?

  What could she say to him? If she denied she wrote the letters, it would be what her father called a bald-faced lie. She couldn’t keep lying.

  And if she said yes, that she wrote them, then she would have to claim she loved Roger! Was wild about him! That was a lie too! Of course she didn’t love him. She was too young to really have boyfriends. And when she was old enough, her boyfriend would be Jody, or Kevin. Never ever Roger! He was no one she would choose for a friend, let alone a boyfriend.

  Molly didn’t know what to do, so she hung up the phone. She called Mary Beth and told her the awful news.

  “How could he know it was you?” Mary Beth asked.

  Molly noticed that Mary Beth did not say “us.” She said “you”!

  “I don’t know!” cried Molly. “I just know I’m in trouble!”

  “Well, Roger doesn’t want a girlfriend, you can be sure of that,” said Mary Beth.

  But the next day at school it appeared that he did! And he wanted Molly!

  “Hey, you guys,” he said to everyone on the playground, “look at the love letters I got from Molly Duff! She wants to be my girlfriend. She wants me to call her ‘kitten.’ ”

  Everyone was reading the April Fools’ letters and laughing at her! Molly turned bright red and ran into the school. But that didn’t help. As the children came in, they all turned around and pointed at her. Molly would have to quit school and move away. That was all there was to it. She’d have to get out of town and start a new life.

  On the way home Roger followed her and Mary Beth and kept saying, “Hey, kitten, we have years together ahead of us!” Then he made a terrible kissing noise with his mouth that made Molly cringe. Molly made a resolution that she would never never never play another April Fools’ jo
ke in her whole life. It was definitely not her favorite holiday anymore. Probably Mrs. Peters and the others were right—it had never been a holiday to begin with!

  Back at Molly’s the girls tried to think of what to do.

  “This is an emergency,” said Mary Beth.

  While they were thinking, the phone rang. Molly’s parents were not home, so Mary Beth answered it. She signaled to Molly that it was Roger. “How did you know it was Molly?” Mary Beth asked. Molly thought she could at least have said “us”!

  Mary Beth listened. Then she hung up. “He saw you from his bedroom window when you put the card in his mailbox. And he saw you near his bike. He said he’d have known anyway, because you’re the only one who makes little circles when you dot your i’s. He says he wants to go to a movie with you Saturday.”

  Now Molly burst into tears. “I thought you said Roger didn’t want a girlfriend!” she cried. “This was supposed to be a trick on Roger, not a trick on me!”

  “It backfired,” said Mary Beth. “How could I know that?”

  After a little while Mary Beth said, “There’s only one thing to do, I guess.”

  “Move to China or somewhere,” said Molly.

  Mary Beth thought about that. She shook her head. “Your dad and mom would have to get jobs there,” she said. “You can’t move alone. No, I think you’ll have to go out with him. He’ll get tired of it and then you can have a fight and break up and forget all about it.”

  Molly stared at Mary Beth. “Are you kidding?” she said. “I am not going to be Roger’s girlfriend!” It was fine for Mary Beth to suggest this awful thing. She didn’t have to do it! Even though the trick was both of theirs!

  “Well, what else can you do?” Mary Beth said.

  Molly sighed. “There’s always the truth,” she said. “I’ll have to tell him it was a joke. An April Fool.”

  “He’ll really be mad then,” said Mary Beth. “He doesn’t like to be the butt of a joke.”

  “Well, he’s always doing it to other people,” said Molly.

  “But he’s not a good loser,” said Mary Beth. “He plays jokes, but he doesn’t let anyone play jokes on him.”

  “I’ll write him another letter,” said Molly, “and tell him it was an April Fool.”

  After Mary Beth left, that was what Molly did. She wrote that she was sorry and then she took the note (on nonsmelly paper) and put it in Roger’s mailbox. When she got home, the phone was ringing.

  “Why is Roger calling so often?” asked her dad.

  “He likes me,” Molly said, sighing. She took the phone from her dad.

  On the other end Roger said, “Hey, that was no trick. You really like me, I know you do. And Saturday we’ve got a date. I’m coming over to take you to a movie at two o’clock. Then my dad wants you to come over for dinner. You know, like one of the family.”

  Things were not getting better! Molly had heard about things like this on the TV talk shows! She would hide on Saturday! She would run away!

  All week Molly couldn’t think of anything except the “date”! As it got closer and closer she knew she couldn’t hide. Her parents would come looking for her when Roger arrived, and they would be very worried if they couldn’t find her. And if she ran away, they would be even more worried! It looked as if she had to face the music. Bite the bullet.

  It took all her courage to tell her parents she was going to a movie with Roger and over to his house afterward.

  Her father frowned and her mother smiled. “Well, I think it’s nice to get along with all your classmates, dear,” her mother said. “After all, Roger is a Pee Wee too.”

  But when Roger came to the door at two o’clock, he wasn’t alone. Sonny was with him, and so was Tim. When she opened the door, all three of them shouted, “April Fool!” and began to laugh.

  “I really had you fooled, didn’t I?” roared Roger. “You really thought I’d go to a movie with you! And ask you over for supper! Hey, that would be the day! That will teach you to play a joke on Roger White,” he said. “The April Fool is on you!”

  Sonny and Tim were bent over laughing with Roger now. Molly thought of acting hurt. But this trick had gone far enough. The buck stopped here, as she’d heard her dad say.

  “That was a good joke on me,” she told Roger.

  “You bet it was,” he roared. “It wasn’t a joke on me, it was on you,” he repeated. “Say it, tell me you were the Fool.”

  Molly sighed. This was awful. “It was your joke,” said Molly. “I was the Fool.”

  The boys ran down the street, whooping and hollering, and Molly went into the house. She’d never live this down. Roger wouldn’t let anyone forget it. It was the very last April Fools’ Day she would celebrate in her life.

  But even though she felt humiliated, she was relieved. She didn’t have to go to a movie with Roger! He didn’t want her to be his girlfriend! Whew. It had been a close call. But she was free.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Great Idea

  To put the joke that had backfired out of her mind entirely, Molly got out her notebook and tore out the April Fools’ pages. She ripped them into small pieces and threw them in the wastebasket. Now she would concentrate on the Easter baskets and Mother’s Day.

  At the next Pee Wee meeting, everyone talked about what he or she was going to do for his or her mother that was new and different. Almost all of them had ideas.

  “Mrs. Peters!” shouted Rachel. “We’re taking my mom out for dinner because she’s so tired from all the work she does going to graduate school. My dad and I made reservations at this place called The Trout Farm where they give you a pole and you catch your own fish and then a cook fries it for your dinner right by the lake. I’ll bet no one else thought of that!”

  “Hey, that’s not fishing,” said Roger. “They’ve got this little pond there and they put the fish right under your nose to catch. You could reach in and grab one with your hand! They may as well hand you a fish when you come in the door. That’s no sport, my dad told me so.”

  “It does sound mean,” said Lisa. “Those poor little fishies don’t even have a chance to hide!”

  “The animal cruelty people wouldn’t like it if they knew,” said Kenny. “Someone could report them.”

  Rachel’s Mother’s Day plan was not getting a lot of positive response. Instead of everyone congratulating her on her clever idea, they were booing her.

  “Well, I think my mom will like it!” said Rachel. She sat down so hard, her curls bounced.

  “She’ll only like it if she’s an animal hater,” said Tim.

  “My mom does not hate animals,” said Rachel. She looked as if she might cry. “Anyway, fish are food,” she added. “That’s what they’re for. To eat.”

  “I’ve got one in a bowl,” said Patty Baker. “His name is Spot. I wouldn’t want to eat him!”

  Now the rest of the Pee Wees told about their aquariums and their guppies and how pretty they were.

  “I went to Sea World in Florida,” said Tracy. “And they have these nice big dolphins that smile at you and do tricks. I’d never want to eat one of those.”

  Rachel was outnumbered. Molly went over to her and said, “I like to fish. And I like to eat the sunfish my mom fries at the lake.”

  “So do I!” said Ashley. “I go salmon fishing with my dad, and lots of times we have lobster right on the beach at home.”

  Mrs. Peters held her hand up for silence. At least two people defended Rachel, thought Molly. Rachel seemed grateful.

  “Now let’s hear some other fresh Mother’s Day ideas,” said their leader.

  “I’m cooking my dad a big thick steak,” said Roger.

  “And some poor cow died for that,” said Ashley. “I mean, a cow has more feelings than a fish.”

  Molly wished they would get off the subject of food.

  It looked as if Mrs. Peters did too. “No more food talk,” she said.

  Lots of the Pee Wees told about foodless plans. The
y announced that they would run errands and spade gardens and sort laundry and push the grocery cart at the market. Others were going to paint pictures or scrub the bathtub or write a poem. Sonny was going to baby-sit the twins so that his mom could have a rest.

  “She won’t rest with you baby-sitting,” said Roger.

  Sonny hit Roger on the arm and Roger tripped him and Mrs. Peters glared at them both.

  “I’m giving my mom lightbulbs,” said Tim. “Ones that are burned out.”

  Everyone stared at Tim.

  “I might put some in the Easter basket too,” he said.

  “Why?” demanded Kevin.

  “So she can paint them, what do you think?” said Tim. “You paint them and use them for Christmas tree ornaments.”

  “How did Christmas get into this?” whispered Lisa.

  But Mrs. Peters said, “Good, Tim,” and then Molly remembered that Tim collected old lightbulbs. When the Pee Wees had recycled, he had told them about painting them for ornaments.

  Everyone seemed to have some plan but Molly. Even Mary Beth said she was going to set her mom’s hair the night before, and that was surely something original, Molly thought.

  “I can’t think of anything special,” said Molly.

  “You will,” said Mary Beth.

  “You can come to The Trout Farm with us,” said Rachel kindly.

  That was nice of Rachel, but Molly didn’t feel like catching a fish in a tank.

  “I’ll help you think of something,” said Rachel.

  The Pee Wees ate the cupcakes Mrs. Stone had brought in (Sonny’s mother was assistant troop leader), and then Mrs. Peters said, “Let’s talk about the Easter baskets now, so that we all have something in mind for our badges, and so that we’ll be able to brighten the seniors’ holiday at the nursing home.”

  Everyone talked about the baskets, and what he or she would put in them besides the eggs. Then Mrs. Stone brought in the hard-boiled eggs to dye. She showed them how to write a message like “Happy Easter” on them with a crayon. After they were dyed, the writing showed up on the egg in white.

  “This is fun!” said Tracy, who had a big blob of blue dye on the front of her blouse.