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again. "It's bad, but not THAT bad. If you don't look too carefully, you can't tell that the wallpaper is goalposts. And most of the time you're asleep when you're in here, anyway."
    J.P. glared at her. "I didn't mean the room, stupid. I mean the whole situation. The whole summer. I can't stand it. I have to run away."
    "Don't be a jerk, J.P. You can't run away. Mom would freak out, and there would be lawyers and everything," Caroline pointed out.
    "But I can't stand it," J.P. said one more time. He put his head into his hands. "I haven't even been able to open my case of stuff. I won't be able to work on any of my electronics stuff all summer. There's no room and no time. And
now
look. I won't even be able to sleep tonight. I'll be off balance all night long. My metabolism's going to get all messed up."
    He pointed. His newly oiled baseball glove, folded over onto itself, had been placed under one of the legs of the double-decker bed. It was quite thick. The bed tilted noticeably. "Herbie says we won't even feel it," J.P. went on, "but that just proves that Herbie doesn't know me at
all.
I have to be absolutely horizontal when I sleep."
    "We could switch beds, just for tonight," Caroline suggested. "I don't mind being tilted when I'm sleeping. But if we switch beds, you'll be in with those disgusting babies. And they'll wake you up at dawn. They'll reach out of their cribs and pull your hair."
    "Caroline," J.P. said slowly, "we have to do something. This situation is unbearable."
    The splashing in the bathroom had stopped, so they knew that Poochie would be appearing soon, ready for bed. "J.P.," Caroline whispered, "I've been thinking all afternoon. And I have an idea about what I'm going to do. At least I
think
I'm going to. But I have to get my nerve up. It's really a horrible, horrible, horrible revenge."
    "What is it?" J.P. asked.
    "I can't tell you," Caroline said.
    "What do you
mean,
you can't tell me?"
    "It's too horrible."
    J.P. glared at her angrily. But Poochie opened the door and came in. He was wearing pajamas printed with baseball bats, and there was toothpaste on his chin. He stood there shyly. Finally he said in a low voice, "I been thinking, J.P., that if I sleep on top of the baseball glove, all crooked like that, maybe it will rub off on me and make me a good baseball player."
    J.P. didn't say anything.
    "Maybe tomorrow I'll get a hit," Poochie said wistfully. He climbed into the lower bunk after Caroline and J.P. stood up.
    "Well," J.P. said finally, "maybe."
    They turned off Poochie's light and left the room. J.P. muttered as they went down the hall, "If that's the way you feel, I'm not going to tell you what I've been dreaming up, either. I bet mine's more horrible than yours."
    "It couldn't be," Caroline replied. "It couldn't possibly."

8
    Caroline lay awake that night, in her bed between the babies' cribs. J.P. had decided to sleep in his lopsided bed after all. He was mad at Caroline because she wouldn't tell him her plan. The Tate Dé- tente, he said, was called off. He had seceded from the United Tates.
    But she couldn't tell him. She couldn't tell anyone, not even J.P. It really was too horrible. She lay there staring at the ceiling and thinking of the revenge she had figured out. It was the worst thing she had ever done in her life, she was quite sure. And Caroline had done some pretty terrible things in eleven years.
    Once, when she was eight, she remembered, there had been some asparagus in the refrigerator. Fresh asparagus. Her mother had paid a fortune for it, and her mother couldn't afford a fortune—but it was spring, and the asparagus at the market down the street was brand-new, bright green—and her mother had bought it for a treat.
    The trouble was, Caroline hated asparagus more than anything in the world. At least when she was eight (Later, when she was nine, it was broccoli. Ten, beets. And eleven, eggplant.)
    So when her mother was at work—and the asparagus was going to