Read Online A Traitor Among the Boys by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - Free Book Online Page A

that night, the men and women laughingly called to each other, “Break a leg! Break a leg!”
    Caroline could not believe her ears! What a terrible thing to say, she thought.
    But when she told her mother, who had come to pick her up in the car, Mrs. Malloy said, “Actually, that's a good-luck wish among theater folk, Caroline. They don't actually mean they wish it to happen. It's sort of a superstition that if you wish for something to happen, or say that you do, then it won't. It's like a good-luck charm to ward off misfortune.”
    “Oh!” said Caroline, and felt very important that she was actually being around theater people now, hearing their talk, and being a part of it all.
    ▪
    But the next morning, Saturday, Caroline awoke with a sore throat and a headache. She drank a little orange juice and insisted she was only tired. When shefell asleep on the couch after lunch, Mrs. Malloy made her go up to bed for a nap so that she would feel better before the long show that evening.
    There were to be speeches that afternoon and a high-school band concert, and Caroline wanted to go—wanted to tell everyone she met to be sure to come back downtown that evening to see her perform in The Birth of Buckman. But Mrs. Malloy said she had to rest for the play, so Caroline gratefully crawled under the covers and went to sleep.
    When Mrs. Malloy went to wake her at five to get dressed for the performance, she found Caroline's cheeks burning red and a light rash on her face and arms. Caroline could hardly open her eyes, and when she tried to talk, her voice was husky.
    Mrs. Malloy quickly got the thermometer.
    “One hundred and four!” she said. “Caroline, I'm sorry, but you can't be in the play this evening. You are much too sick.”
    “Mother!” Caroline wailed, tears welling up in her eyes.
    “I'm going right to the phone and call the director. Tracy Lee will have to take over, and I'll have your father run your costume over to her house. I'm so sorry, honey. I'll see if I can't reach Dr. Raskin, too.”
    She went downstairs to call.
    “Mother!” Caroline wailed again. Her voice sounded like the bleating of a sick calf. There was a thump on the floor. Then another.
    Beth and Eddie and Mr. and Mrs. Malloy went to the foot of the stairs.
    Caroline was standing at the top, trying to get one of her pajama-clad legs into her long black skirt.
    “I—I've got to be in the play!” Caroline croaked, her face pinker still. “Don't call the director! Don't! I don't want Tracy Lee to wear my clothes! I don't want her to be Beulah!”
    She tried to put the other leg in the skirt, hobbling about on one foot, but at that moment she lost her balance and came tumbling halfway down the stairs, determined, it seemed, to almost, but not quite, “break a leg.”

Fourteen

The Birth of Budmdn
    T he Hatfords were preparing to go to the theater. Josh and Wally were dressed up like boys of long ago. Josh was in a three-piece suit and a shirt with a high collar that felt like a rope around his neck. Wally wore a flannel shirt and baggy pants with suspenders. Josh wore a straw hat, Wally a leather cap, and they were each so clean and scrubbed that Wally complained his ears squeaked.
    “Wait till you see the set, Mom!” Josh kept saying. “The stage manager just turned the backdrop over and let me paint a whole new scene. It really looks like a field now, with the animals in the back smaller and the ones in the front bigger/’
    “And they don't have women's legs on them, either,” Wally said. “Everything looks real.”
    “This is an exciting day for you, Josh—almost like having your paintings in a gallery,” Mrs. Hatford said. “I've invited all my friends to come.”
    What Josh wished, of course, was that all his friends would come to see the set, and then leave before he had to hold hands with Beth Malloy and say those sappy lines.
    On the other hand, if he had to say them at all, he'd rather say them to Beth than any other