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he answered. And then he sat down. He heard Caroline asking permission to go to the rest room, and her footsteps leaving the room. Ha! He grinned in spite of himself.
    Miss Applebaum was frowning, however. She said that while the questions Wally had asked Caroline might have seemed original, they did not deal with the important things about a person at all, and therefore we did not know Caroline much better after the interview than we did before.
    Wally didn't care. Flunk me, he decided. It would be worth it just to make sure he wouldn't have to be in Caroline's class next year if the Malloys stayed on.
    As the class discussed what was good about his report and what wasn't, Wally realized suddenly that there was no one breathing on the back of his neck, no poke in the ribs. Caroline wasn't back yet. What was taking her so long? Had she gone home?
    “All right, let's hear from Caroline next,” Miss Applebaum said, and then she asked, “Where is Caroline?” The door at the back of the room opened, and in walked Caroline Malloy.
    She had on a T-shirt that said BUCKMAN EXXON in red-and-blue letters on the front, baggy blue pants, white tube socks with yellow and green stripes around the tops (she'd rolled the pant legs up so everyone could see), a pair of black Nikes with purple laces, anda dirty baseball cap worn backward. Everyone started to laugh.
    “What it feels like to be Wally Hatford,” Caroline began, smiling too. She patted the clothes she was wearing: “Wally's shirt, Wally's trousers, Wally's socks …” She held up one foot. “Wally's shoes…” And then, most humiliating of all, Wally found, she raised the bottom of the T-shirt to show the waistband of his Fruit Of The Looms: “Wally's underpants.”

Seven

Humiliation
    C aroline was in her glory. The only thing better than this would be standing onstage in a huge auditorium before a thousand people.
    She loved being onstage. She adored being the center of attention. And someday, she knew, her name would be in lights on Broadway and people would pay a hundred dollars just to see Caroline Lenore Malloy in a play.
    Meanwhile, she had to make do with the fourth-grade class at Buckman Elementary, and she played it for all it was worth.
    “I decided that if I had to be Wally Hatford for a day, I should be as close to the real thing as I could get, so I borrowed his clothes,” she said.
    The class laughed again, and Caroline could see Wally's ears burning as red as the nose on Rudolph the Reindeer.
    It serves him right, she told herself. Wally could describeher as dramatic or loud or conceited or even crazy, but how dare he call her boring? Caroline Malloy was never boring. And so the brighter Wally's ears burned, the better she felt.
    “What it's like to be Wally Hatford for a day is to be Mr. Average,” she continued. “He isn't very smart, but you can't call him stupid; he's never late for school, but he takes his time about getting here. The most interesting feature about Wallace James Hatford is that he lies.”
    Miss Applebaum leaned forward and looked at Caroline. Caroline merely nodded for emphasis.
    “It's sad, but true. I discovered later that everything he told me during our interview was a lie. His favorite food is not parsnips and chicken livers, it's pizza. The best book he ever read was not The History of Military Strategy in the United States in the Eighteenth Century, it's The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel. It took some skillful detective work on my part, but I—”
    “May I interrupt?” came Miss Applebaum's voice from behind her.
    Caroline frowned as she turned toward the teacher's desk. How rude! Whoever heard of interrupting an actress during a play! Stay in character, she told herself. Just freeze, and as soon as she stops talking, start in again right where you left off. This would be a good lesson in improvising.
    “Class,” said Miss Applebaum. “These two reports are the finest examples I know of how not to conduct an