A Spy Among the Girls by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

Caroline in her red velvet dress with the lace collar.
    “For you,” she said sweetly, pressing an envelope into his hand.
    Wally stared at Caroline, at the weird smile on her face. Then he looked down at the envelope.
    For My Beloved,
it said.
    Wally raced outside as though bees were after him, afraid lest anyone else should see the words, and thrust the card at the first person he met, who happened to be Jake.
    “For you,” he said.

Fifteen

Love Lost
    W hat Caroline couldn't stand was that all the excitement in the family these days—among the three girls, anyway—seemed to be happening to Beth, not to her.
    Beth was absolutely impossible. Since Josh had sent her chocolates and then a note with
X’
s and
O’
s, Beth was dreamy and giggly and excited and silly and didn't even know what day it was half the time. She put a white sock on one foot and a pink one on the other and didn't even notice.
    This should all be happening to me,
Caroline thought,
not Beth.
Yet for a week after Valentine's Day, Wally wouldn't even speak to her. He wouldn't even
look
at her. How could anybody with half a brain resist a girl in a red velvet dress with a white lace collar? How could he not even
thank
her for a card addressed
For My Beloved
and signed
Achingly yours
?
    Wally was mad at Caroline, and Jake and Josh were mad at Eddie about the science project. They had not gotten a very good grade on it. In fact, at the science fair, the teacher had used it as an example of how a project should
not
be done. First, she'd written, the three students had not started out with the same hypothesis, that boys were more gullible than girls; second, there was no sure way of knowing whether students had come because they really believed they would see the abaguchie or just for fun; third …
    Eddie had been too discouraged to read the rest of her teacher's comments. She had crumpled up the paper her teacher had returned and left it on the kitchen table for her parents to read, but not before Caroline had seen a big red C– at the top. The only people who seemed to be getting along these days were Beth and Josh.
    At lunchtime in the all-purpose room one day, Caroline was eating with some of her friends, and one of the fourth-grade girls was talking about
her
boyfriend. Caroline stared at her in dismay. A fourth-grade girl actually
did
have a boyfriend? And Caroline didn't?
    “The problem is,” the girl was saying importantly, “boys are shy. A boy can be in love and not even know it. And if he
does
know it, he won't admit it.”
    “Really?” said Caroline.
    “Really,” said her friend. “If you see a boy looking at you sideways out of the corner of his eye, it means he likes you. But he'll never tell you so, and when he'saround his friends, he might even insult you so no one will guess how he really feels.”
    That's it!
thought Caroline.
Wally's just shy.
    The first thing to do was to see whether or not he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. So after lunch, when the whole class was making maps for social studies, Caroline went to the pencil sharpener to sharpen all her colored pencils, whether they needed it or not. She put the green pencil in the sharpener and began to turn the handle. Then suddenly she whirled around and stared straight at Wally Hatford.
    She couldn't tell if he had been watching her or not, but he was certainly watching her now. In fact, when he saw Caroline staring straight at him, his own pencil fell out of his hand and onto the floor.
    Aha!
thought Caroline. She turned back to the sharpener again and did her blue pencil, then the red, and when she was halfway through sharpening the purple one, she whirled again, her eyes on Wally, and he seemed to rise two inches off his chair.
    So he
was
watching her, she decided. And with a knowing smile on her face, she collected her colored pencils, went back to her desk, and tickled Wally lightly behind his ear with the tip of the blue pencil. He swatted it away as