The Girls Get Even by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

figure we’ll go right home, confess everything, and lose out on trick or treats.”
    Wally felt an enormous burden lifting off his chest. “Then we don’t have to go straight home?”
    “Of course not. Somebody’s got to carry the pan, but there’s still time to hit a lot of houses.”
    Wally carried the pan. They headed for the cemetery entrance, and the first row of houses just beyond.
    “Where are your costumes?” one womanasked them. “You boys don’t look like trick-or-treaters to me.” But she gave them candy anyway.
    The pickings were slim, however. Some people had already turned off their lights. Some houses had run out of candy, and still others were down to little boxes of raisins or pennies. The dentist was even giving out apples instead of candy¡
    Desperate, they fanned out, trying to ring as many doorbells as possible. Sometimes, Wally knew, when you were the last one to come by, people dropped all the remaining candy in your bag, but it wasn’t happening now, and he had to work twice as hard and run twice as fast to fill up even his pockets.
    They met again on the corner, and by twenty after nine there were no more porch lights on anywhere. A policeman cruising by stopped when he saw them and rolled down his window. “You fellas better get on home now,” he called.
    Silently, glumly, Jake and Josh and Wally turned toward home, with barely enough candy to carry in their jackets. Mother always said that Halloween candy should last all year, and they’d hardly picked up enough to last through December.
    “You know what I’m thinking?” Jake said as they turned up their street. “Maybe it’s time we called a truce. I mean, just give up bugging thegirls. Forget about them. Find other guys at school to hang around with. Whether the Malloys stay here or not probably doesn’t have anything to do with what the Bensons decide. Those girls have ruined enough things for us. This Halloween was really the pits.”
    “I’ve been trying to tell you that,” said Wally. “I’m getting a little tired of ‘The Malloys this …’ and ‘The Malloys that….’ Everything we do, practically, is connected to the Malloys.”
    “Okay,” said Jake. “As of right now, we just forget about them. They can go, they can stay, it doesn’t make any difference to us.”
    “I feel better already,” said Wally, with a sigh.
    “So do I,” said Josh.
    They went up the steps to the house.
    “We should have done this long ago,” said Jake. “We’re free¡ Back to boy-stuff again.” He smiled. Josh smiled. Wally smiled. They opened the door.
    There in the living room sat Eddie, Beth, and Caroline in their costumes, as well as Peter in his pajamas, a ring of chocolate around his mouth.
    Mrs. Hatford hurried toward the boys. “Where in the world have you been?” she asked, and for a minute Wally thought she was going to sail right past them and on out the door. “Why did you invite these girls to a party and then not even have thedecency to show up? You didn’t even mention it to me.”
    “A party? “ cried Jake and Josh and Wally together.
    But before they could say another word, the girls all chanted together:
“Little witch has come to say,
Ghosts and goblins like to play.
Wont you come and join the fun?
There’ll be treats for everyone.”
    “Jake, I want you to take your money and run to the store for some Cokes or something. Josh, you’re in charge of games/’ Mrs. Hatford said.
    And as Wally watched helplessly, his mother took all the candy they had collected, dumped it in a bowl, and passed it around the room for starters.

The Boys Start the War
    Just when the Hatford brothers are expecting three boys to move into the house across the river where their best friends used to live, the Malloy girls arrive instead. Wally and his brothers decide to make Caroline and her sisters so miserable that they’ll want to go back to Ohio, but they haven’t counted on the ingenuity of the girls. From