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"No," Caroline told her brother. "I'm all alone. Why? I thought everything was okay."

"It is," J.P. said. "But I'm going to be here most of the night, though, unraveling all of this. I want you to take over baseball practice in the morning if you can."

"Sure. I already told Pooch that I would. No sweat. Lillian's going to stay home with the babies. One of them has a fever. And anyway, if things are okay at the store, and Herbie's not bankrupt after all—"

"He isn't," J.P. said. "The money's all there. It was in the data base, but the report maker was sabotaged, like I thought."

"Well then. Lillian can quit the real estate course!"

"I want you to sneak into my room," J.P. said. "Don't wake Pooch up. Get my notebook out of my suitcase—it's under some of my electronic stuff."

"Okay. Why?"

"You'll need it for baseball practice. Listen, Caroline—Dad's coming, so I have to say this fast—"

"What?"

J.P. was whispering. "
Undo
it. Everything in the notebook. You'll see when you look at it. Undo my revenge. Tomorrow's the last possible chance.

"I gotta go," he said suddenly. "Good luck."

And J.P. hung up the telephone.

Caroline walked with Poochie to the ball field in the morning. It was very relaxing, not feeding babies and changing babies and bathing babies. Back at the house, Lillian was doing all of that. Even the fussing and feverish baby seemed to notice the difference and was in a better mood now that her mother had taken over.

Caroline flipped through the pages of J.P.'s notebook as she walked.

"Poochie," she said, "I'm going to make some changes this morning, since I'm coaching."

Poochie nodded happily. "Now I'll get some hits," he said. "J.P. didn't know that I—"

Caroline interrupted him. "Things will be different now," she said.

J.P.'s revenge had been truly rotten. But she didn't want Poochie to know about it, ever. At least she was going to undo it. Her own revenge had been not only rotten but was also undoable; and she could only hope that no one would ever find out about it.

She flipped through the pages of the notebook again. As soon as practice was over this morning, she would destroy the incriminating pages. But for now, she needed them.

Each page held a player's name. And then it listed all that player's baseball-playing flaws. She had to give J.P. credit; he wasn't much of an athlete or a coach, but he certainly was observant. He had noticed the smallest details of each little player's baseball style. Then he had planned the big game tomorrow to take maximum advantage of every single flaw.

He had programmed the Tater Chips to lose. He couldn't have done it more effectively if he had used a computer.

Turning back to the page marked "Poochie," she realized that J.P. had already noticed the same things that she had. One of Poochie's problems, unfortunately, was not going to be solved by tomorrow's game.

"Pooch," Caroline began to ask, as the baseball field came into view around the corner, "who's that kid waiting there in the bleachers? I can't remember his name." She pointed to Matthew Birnbaum, who was punching his fist into his glove rhythmically as he waited for the team to assemble.

Poochie looked toward the bleachers, where Caroline was pointing. He squinted. "Where?" he asked.

Caroline squatted on the sidewalk beside him so that her face was level with his. She pointed again, very carefully, to Matthew Birnbaum.

"See that kid in the bleachers?" she asked.

Poochie squinted so hard that his face was distorted. "No," he said finally.

"Do you see the bleachers?" Caroline asked.

"Sort of," Poochie said uncertainly.

Caroline took his hand. Slowly they walked on toward the ball field. "Poochie," she said, "you need glasses. And it will take a little while to get your eyes examined and then to have the glasses made. So they won't be ready for tomorrow's game. But probably by the
next
big game, you'll be able to see."

Poochie squinted up at her in amazement. "You mean when the ball is coming at me, I'll be able to
see
it?"

"Right. After you get glasses."

"Then I'll be able to
catch
it!"

"Right. And hit it, too."

Poochie grinned. "I can already hit it, Caroline. Even when I can't see it, I can hit it sometimes, if I bat lefty."

Caroline nodded. It was amazing, considering Poochie's terrible eyesight. But he
could
bat. It was just that he was left-handed, and he'd been batting right-handed until Caroline had turned him around. His batting average had skyrocketed immediately from zero to .05.

If Poochie could get an occasional hit when he was blind, imagine what his average would be after he got glasses!

"You might be the star of this team by the end of the summer, Pooch," Caroline said.

Carefully she tore out the page marked "Poochie," so that he would never know what was written on it: "Practically blind. Left-handed. Make him bat right-handed, and he'll never get a hit."

Caroline crumpled the page and tossed it into the trash can at the entrance to the ball field. Then she leaned the notebook against one of the bleacher seats and started a new page. "Poochie," she wrote. "Get Lillian to take him to eye doctor. Be sure he bats left-handed."

She looked at the new page. She crossed out "Poochie." Above it she wrote, "David Herbert Tate."

Then she sighed. She had eleven other pages to deal with. And when she looked up, she saw that all eleven other players had arrived now and were poking each other and scuffling in the bleachers.

It was going to be a very long morning. She adjusted J.P.'s baseball cap on her head. It was a little too large, and it bent the tops of her ears.

"C'mon, troops!" Caroline called and clapped her hands. "Let's get to work! We gotta make some changes in the way this team operates, because after tomorrow we're going to be—"

"CHAMPIONS!" the twelve little ballplayers shouted as they scrambled down from the bleachers and headed for the field.

The house was quiet for a change. No wailing babies—the twins were asleep. No TV—Poochie had gone to bed, promising to practice batting in his dreams for tomorrow's game. And even J.P. was asleep. He had been up all through the previous night and had wandered around groggily during the day, calling the store occasionally to make sure that the computer was still giving out the correct information. Finally, at seven
P.M.,
he had gone to bed.

Caroline was sitting in the family room with Lillian and her father. Herbie Tate was going through a stack of papers.

"I can't believe it," he said, looking up. "I can't believe I have a son who is such a genius. Did I tell you what one of the accountants said after he watched J.P. at work on the computer?"

"Yes," Caroline and Lillian said. "You told us several times."

"And did I tell you that our financial situation is just fine, Lillian? The income was all there the whole time. It was just that it was concealed, apparently, by the way the computer had been programmed—"

"Yes," Lillian said, laughing. "You told me, Herbie. The instant you told me, I resigned from the real estate course." She put her knitting down. "How about some iced tea?"

Caroline and Herbie both nodded, and Lillian went to the refrigerator.

Herbie set his papers aside and shook his head. "Revenge," he said. "The guy got fired for stealing two tennis rackets, and he was lucky I didn't prosecute. Imagine doing something like this for revenge. If I had any idea where he is now, I think I'd go after him and—"

Lillian handed him a glass of iced tea. "No you wouldn't, Herb. Because that would be revenge, too."

Caroline took her glass of tea, thanked Lillian, and sipped. She was uncomfortable listening to the talk about revenge.
Very
uncomfortable. But at least J.P.'s revenge had been undone, and the Tater Chips now had a better chance of winning their game tomorrow.

"I know I told you about this, Lillian," Caroline said, "but I want to make sure you don't forget. About Poochie's eyesight—"

"I already made an appointment," Lillian said. "I'm taking him to the ophthalmologist on Monday afternoon. And I'm ashamed of myself that I never realized he needed glasses. I thought
all
kids sat four inches away from the TV."

"He's going to be a really good ballplayer after he gets glasses, Dad," Caroline told Herbie. "Even
without
glasses, I bet anything he gets a hit tomorrow."

Herbie beamed. "I can't wait to watch that game," he said. "Thank goodness the mess is cleared up at the store so I can take the morning off. I'll stop by the store early so that I can pick up your COACH shirt, Caroline, and your cap. Do you need a glove? We wouldn't have time to give it the old neat's-foot oil, but—"

"Nope," Caroline told him. "Thanks anyway. But I really don't need a glove."

Lillian held up the sweater sleeve she was knitting and measured it against one that was already finished. "I'll be late to the game, Caroline," she said. "I wouldn't miss it for anything, but I probably won't get there until the second or third inning. I talked to the pediatrician this afternoon about Ivy's earache, and I'm going to run her over to his office in the morning for a penicillin shot."

"I'll tell Poochie," Caroline said. "His big rooting section will be there by the third inning."

Lillian stood up and went to the refrigerator again. "It won't take long at the doctor's," she said from the kitchen as she poured some more iced tea into her own glass. "It's a good thing it's Ivy, though, who has the earache. Holly's allergic to penicillin."

She brought the pitcher in. "More tea?" she asked Caroline.

Caroline stared at her. "No, thank you," she said finally, in a stricken voice.

"Is something wrong?"

"I'm going to bed," Caroline said tensely. "All of a sudden I feel as if I want to go to bed."

But she couldn't sleep. For hours Caroline lay in the dark bedroom, wide awake. She heard the babies sigh and snore and toss as they slept. After a while she heard Herbie and Lillian go down the hall to their bedroom. She heard the muted sounds of their voices and water running in their bathroom, and then the house was completely silent. And still Caroline couldn't sleep.

Finally she got out of bed. In the bathroom across the hall, she turned on the light, blinked, and looked at her watch. It was after one
A.M.

Unhappily she wandered out into the dark family room and sat on the couch. Lillian's partly knitted sweater sleeve was there, on top of the knitting instruction book. Yellow, for Ivy. She had already finished the little pink one for Holly, with a matching cap.

Caroline picked up the little pink cap, turned it over in her hands, and began to cry.

Had she said, just a few days ago, that she hated the babies? It wasn't true. She didn't hate them. It was true that she didn't like taking care of them. She found it boring. And it was true that she hoped
she
would never have twin babies—or maybe any babies—because she would much rather spend her adult life in Asia Minor, digging up fossils and prehistoric skeletons, and she would not have time to knit little sweaters and hats.

But she did
like
Holly and Ivy. And Poochie:
David Herbert Tate.
And Herbie and Lillian, for that matter.

Maybe even
love
would be the right word.

But thinking that made her cry harder. Caroline couldn't come up with any solution to her problem; there was simply no way to undo what she had already done.

Finally, in desperation, she crept down the dark hall and opened the door to the room that Poochie and J.P. shared.

When her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she could see that Poochie was sprawled, sound asleep, with his mouth open, on top of his covers. He was wearing his baseball glove.

In the upper bunk, she could see J.P. also, sound asleep with the pillow on top of his head.

Carefully and quietly, Caroline climbed the little ladder to the top bunk. She removed the pillow from her brother's head and whispered, "J.P.?"

"Nnnnnhhhhh."

"J.P.," she repeated a little more loudly. "Wake up. It's Caroline."

"They must be on a LAN," J.P. murmured in his sleep. "I wonder what protocol they were using."

Caroline shook him gently by the shoulder. "J.P.!" she said urgently.

"The jogging shoes data base menu is up on one terminal," J.P. said groggily.

"Wake up!" Caroline said aloud. Quickly she glanced down at Poochie, but he was still sound asleep.

J.P. opened his eyes. "Is the tape drive on line?" he asked.

"No," Caroline said, "the sister is on the bunk-bed ladder and about to fall. Wake up, J.P. I need you. Quit dreaming about computers."

J.P. rubbed his eyes. "Whaddaya want?" he asked.

"Shhhhh. Don't wake up Poochie. Meet me out back. I'm in serious trouble." Caroline climbed back down the ladder and tiptoed back across the room and out into the hall. Carefully she made her way through the darkened house, opened the sliding doors in the family room, and went out to the patio. She waited there, in one of the wrought iron chairs, for her brother.

In a moment J.P. appeared in his baggy pajamas and bare feet. "It's the middle of the night, Caroline," he said. "This better be important. Because I don't get out of bed in the middle of the night for trivia."

"It is important, J.P.," Caroline told him. "I've wrecked everything. It's much worse than when I flushed the asparagus down the john. I've caused a very major, major catastrophe this time."

J.P. opened his eyes a little wider. "Was that YOU who flushed the asparagus?"

"FORGET THE ASPARAGUS! I need help, J.P.! I need advice. Maybe I even need lawyers."

"Why? I fixed up the computer situation, so Dad and Lillian aren't bankrupt. And you told me you fixed up the baseball team situation, so the Tater Chips have a shot, at least, at winning their game. What else is left?"

"The babies," Caroline said miserably.