by Bryan Chick
A flash of colorful light revealed the start of Ella’s smile. She slipped her wrist into the bracelet, then held it in front of her. The blinking Christmas lights sparkled on the shiny silver. A fresh tear welled in her eye.
Richie said, “You have no idea how hard it was to find ‘Noah’ as a charm,” as he stuffed batteries into his jacket pockets. His flat, casual tone suggested he had no idea that his gift had touched Ella’s heart. “I think I spent a week Googling that thing. And then I had to pay a small fortune for shipping.”
Ella’s shoulders went limp. Her smile grew. “It’s . . .” She raised her hand and allowed the bracelet to slide a bit down her arm. “It’s really great, Richie.”
Just then, Mrs. Nowicki called out for her children to head indoors.
“Coming!” Noah shouted. He quickly gathered up the wrapping paper, wadded it, then shot it into a wastebasket. “C’mon, guys,” he said. “Time to go.”
They stood, gathered their things, and headed to the slide. Megan went first. As Noah prepared to go, he glanced over his shoulder and spotted Ella hugging Richie. As they released each other, the lights flashed and Noah saw Ella’s lips move in a soundless Thank you. Noah, sensing he was intruding on a private moment, turned and sped down the slide.
After a bit, Ella and Richie joined them on the ground. The friends tore across the backyard, leaving faint footprints in the dusting of snow. Richie and Ella headed to the street, and Megan went inside. At the door, Noah reached down and unplugged the extension cord for the lights. Fort Scout stood empty and dark.
For now.
But in just a couple of hours, it would be invaded again. This time by another set of visitors—very different visitors with very different intentions.
The door closed, leaving behind Noah’s world like an offering to the night.
Chapter 17
Richie Goes Blind and Chocolatey
“What time is it?” Ella asked Richie.
The two of them were walking home from Noah and Megan’s, Richie’s pockets full of new batteries, and a new charm bracelet dangling from Ella’s wrist. They were expected by their parents to go to Ella’s house, where a few neighborhood moms, including Richie’s, were playing cards.
Richie pulled back his sleeve. “Almost nine-thirty.”
Ella scanned the surrounding yards. “Which is a lot like almost ten o’clock.”
“Huh?”
“The tarsiers, they come out at ten.”
Richie glanced into the trees. “That’s right. I almost forgot.”
Ella stared into the bushes in Mrs. Johnson’s yard. Then she peered into the hollow of a tree. “Don’t you think it’s weird that we’ve never seen them. I mean, never.”
Richie shrugged. “You saw how small they are. And the way they blend with the trees.”
They turned onto another street and neared Ella’s house. As they headed up the driveway, Ella reached out and plucked away Richie’s glasses.
“Hey!”
She stuffed them into her pocket. “I’m going to need these.”
“What are you—”
“Let’s check out the tarsiers! We’ll tell our moms that you forgot your glasses at Noah’s. That’ll give us a reason to go back out. We can go into the woods by the Millers’, just for a few minutes.”
Richie considered this. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “What if—”
“Quit being such a wimp!”
As they turned onto the sidewalk leading to the front door, Richie felt his way, his hands probing the space in front of him. “I can’t see a thing without my glasses!” His ankle slipped off the edge of the concrete, and he almost fell.
Ella grabbed his wrist and escorted him onto the porch. Richie stumbled on the welcome mat and banged his forehead on the door. Someone inside hollered, “Come in!” and Ella burst out laughing.
“You could always try the doorbell,” Ella teased as she led Richie into the house.
A group of women were seated around the dining room table. They were sipping wine and holding spreads of playing cards that looked like Asian fans.
“Why, here they come now!” Richie’s mother said. Her cheeks were flushed, and she seemed a bit cheery. “We were just wondering about you two! I was just about to call—” She stopped herself short and swung around in her chair. “Richie, where are your glasses?”
Richie squinted down at his mother. “Huh?”
“Your glasses. How come you’re not wearing them?”
Richie groped at his face. “Oh great. I must have left them at Noah’s.”
Ella peered over at him. “I thought you looked weird. More than normal, I mean.”
At Ella’s joke, the ladies spasmed with laughter. Mrs. Morris set down her cards and squarely clapped her palms.
“Well, you’ll have to go get them,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “Right away.”
Ella checked the clock and saw it was still more than twenty minutes until ten. She had to stall.
“Let’s get a cup of hot chocolate first.” She went to the cupboard in the kitchen and pulled out two white packets. “We’re freezing. It’s snowing out there, you know.”
“Is it?” the ladies said in various ways. They turned to the picture window and discovered the drapes drawn. None of them cared enough to get up and open them.
“Not much,” Ella added. “Just enough to cover the grass.”
“Well, thank goodness for that,” Mrs. Cooper said. “It’s too early to be shoveling the driveway.”
The ladies turned back to their game, nodding and groaning in ways that expressed their agreement.
Ella filled two cups and placed them in the microwave. Richie eased into the kitchen, the tips of his flashy sneakers reflecting off the floorboards, the oven, the refrigerator. The microwave dinged, and Ella lifted the steamy cups. She set one on the countertop in front of Richie. “Very hot. Don’t burn your face off.”
Richie raised the chocolately drink to his lips, blew steam across the room, and took a sip. Chocolate spilled down his chin.
“Honestly, Richie.” Ella swept up a nearby napkin and dabbed his chin like a mom. “How blind are you?”
Richie peered at her. “Let’s just say your face looks like someone squashed it with a really big thumb.”
The two of them slurped their hot chocolate and watched the clock. Minutes slipped by. In the dining room, the ladies shuffled cards and laughed too loudly. As soon as the clock read 10:00, Ella and Richie dumped their cups into the sink and headed down the foyer.
“We’ll be back,” Ella said as she opened the front door.
“Be careful!” Ella’s mother called out. “Don’t let the bogeyman get you!”
The two scouts shared a nervous look between them. Then they turned and walked out.
Chapter 18
Catching Snowflakes
Ella and Richie hunkered down and headed across the Millers’ backyard. The property backed against a wooded area between two sides of the neighborhood. In the thick of the trees, the scouts dodged trunks and fallen branches. They stopped in a clearing and stared out in different directions. A few houses were barely visible, their lights off. Confident they couldn’t be seen, the scouts moved their attention to the treetops.
“I don’t see any,” Ella said.
“Me either,” Richie said. He adjusted his glasses, which Ella had given back to him on their walk over.
Around them, a few snowflakes fell.
“Are they even out here?”
Richie shrugged. “Tameron said ten o’clock, right?”
She nodded. Hearing Tameron’s name made her think of the Descenders. She wondered if they could see them from their zoo posts and decided there was no way.
They strolled around a bit, their gazes held toward the heights. The web of branches was perfectly still. Richie crouched beside a hollow of a trunk and shined his penlight in. He straightened up and shrugged his shoulders. Nothing.
“We need to go
up,” said Ella.
“Up where?”
Ella pointed into the heights. “There.”
“I don’t think—”
“C’mon! It’ll just take a second. I want to see these little furbies. ”
“You know how I climb.”
Ella grabbed his wrist and pulled him over to a tree. She knelt and cupped her hands out in front of her—a step for Richie’s foot. “Here. The first limb’s always the toughest.”
“And the second. And the third. And—”
“Richie!”
He mumbled something under his breath and then planted his foot in her hands. He pushed up and landed his other foot in the crook of a limb. As he tried to lift himself, he lost his balance and fell to one side, his rear end touching down on Ella’s head.
“Gross!” Ella groaned. “Your butt is totally on me!”
Richie found his balance and climbed into the tree. As Ella stood straight, she scrunched up her face and shook out her hands. “Ew,” she said. “Just way, way ew.”
She hurried to the neighboring tree, jumped into it, and ascended with the grace of a gymnast, her movements long and sweeping and exact. Richie battled his way up, cinching branches and clutching the trunk. At about twenty feet, Ella stopped and waited for Richie. In quite a few minutes, he joined her in the heights.
“See anything?” Ella asked.
“Nuh-uh. But my eyes are closed.”
Ella looked over and realized he was serious. “Richie!”
He forced his eyes open. Then he stared all around. “Nope, no tarsiers. I don’t think they’re even out here.”
Ella considered this. It didn’t make sense. This was probably the most wooded area in their neighborhood. Wouldn’t the Secret Society want to pay close attention here?
A snowflake landed in her eye and blotted out the world. She wiped it away and peered up. The once-thin snowflakes were now plump. They fell from the sky like silvery coins. As they touched down on Ella, they briefly kept their shapes before melting away.
“It looks like—”
She cut herself short and listened. She’d heard something. A soft squeak.
“What’s wrong?” Richie asked. “Did you—”
Ella held up a pink glove, stopping him. Then she quietly slid over to a new branch, her ears perked up.
Eep! The noise again.
She ducked her head for a new angle and spotted something along a vertical branch. Was it a bump? No. She swung her head around and saw a small, furry body with two upturned ears and round, bulging eyes. A tarsier. It was looking straight at her.
Eep!
Ella slowly moved to a new branch. “Hey, buddy.”
The tarsier crawled to a spot just inches in front of Ella’s nose. The critter was tiny—barely the size of a hamster. Being so close, Ella could make out its details. It had long, thin fingers with tips that looked like suction cups. Its rear, kangaroolike legs were tucked against the sides of its body.
Without warning, the tarsier sprang from the branch and landed on her shoulder, just beside her cheek. Then, as if from nowhere, a second one touched down on her other shoulder. The animals traded eep!’s and settled into stable positions, their fingers stuck to her jacket.
“You guys are way cool.”
“Ella!” Richie called. “You see anything yet?”
“You could say that.” She swung around the tree trunk to show her discovery.
“Oh my gosh!” His eyes had swelled to twice their normal size. “You found them! Are they friendly?”
“Seem to be. You haven’t seen any?”
“Nope. I think my tree’s empty. I’m going back down.”
As Richie started to descend, Ella saw that his back had three very peculiar bumps along it.
“Richie, you’re covered in tarsiers!”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Your back—you got three on it.”
He became deathly still and seemed to consider this. “What should I do?”
“Not what you’d normally do, which is scream and fall from the tree. I don’t care so much about you, but the tarsiers . . . they’re kind of cute.”
Richie glanced over his shoulders and tried to see down his back. “What are they doing?”
“It looks like they’re getting ready to chew off your cheeks.”
Richie’s expression opened with fear.
Ella shook her head. “You dork. Meet me on the ground.”
She climbed down and waited beneath Richie’s tree. On her shoulders, the tarsiers craned their necks to watch the action. Richie successfully navigated to a new branch, then another. When he tried to go to a third, he slipped, almost fell, then released a mild profanity into the night. The tarsiers turned to Ella, their bulbous eyes seeming ripe with concern.
“Don’t worry,” Ella advised. “He’s actually doing pretty good. I thought he’d be dead by now.”
Richie touched down to the ground and swung his back toward Ella. “What are they doing now?” he asked, concern blending his syllables.
“Sitting there. Looking cute.” She reached out her arm, and a tarsier jumped to it like a parrot. She shoved the animal toward Richie. “Check him out.”
“Last time I did that I almost had my head swallowed.”
“Well, this one doesn’t look hungry. Now, hold out your arm.” When Richie did, Ella shook her arm a bit. “Go get him, Gizmo.”
The tarsier kicked out its hind legs and hopped through the air like a frog. It touched down on Richie’s forearm and shot its wild-eyed gaze up at him. It eeped once. As Richie nervously looked it over, Ella reached behind him for another tarsier.
“It is sort of cute,” Richie said. “If you can see beyond the terror of the experience, I mean.”
Ella pitched her arm in front of Richie again. “Here,” she said. “Have another.”
The tarsier lunged onto the front of Richie’s jacket, climbed into one of his pockets, and poked its head out. The two scouts started laughing, Richie a bit tensely.
“How funny!” Ella said. “He looks like—”
She stopped short as the tarsier on her left shoulder sprang several feet into air. It chomped down on a fat snowflake, then landed on her shoulder again, its eyes wider than ever from the shock of the cold.
As the scouts broke out laughing again, the tarsier on Richie’s back leaped off, snagged a snowflake out of the air, and landed on Ella’s arm.
“Too cool!” Ella said. She stepped into the clearing for a place where the snowflakes could have an unobstructed fall. She looked up and saw them streaming down from the night’s nothingness. They were bigger than quarters. “Richie! Over here!”
In the clearing, Richie faced Ella, about ten steps dividing them. A tarsier kicked off Ella’s arm and shot forward. It gulped a snowflake in mid-flight, then grabbed on to Richie’s leg. The tarsier on Richie’s shoulder went next. It soared through the air, its long legs dangling behind it, and caught a snowflake before landing on Ella, where another pushed off and flew across the distance back to Richie.
Ella said, “They’re so strong!”
The strange little animals continued like that, one after another streaking through the open area between Ella and Richie. They pulled snowflakes out of the air and gobbled them down. Ella didn’t know if they thought the icy crystals were bugs, or if they were just having fun. Maybe both. Or maybe they were just happy to be playing with the scouts.
A tarsier landed on Richie’s head, plowed over his pom-pom, then fell down to his back. Ella went into a fit of laughter. Seconds later, another tarsier missed Ella and passed over her head. It grabbed onto a nearby branch and quickly sprang back, striking down on one side of Ella’s fluffy earmuffs, knocking them askew.
A cloud emptied a fresh load of snowflakes. Big and white and patient, they floated down into the clearing, dotting out the scenery. To Ella, parts of Richie kept disappearing. Sounds softened. The crunch of leaves beneath Ella’s fe
et, the eep!’s of the animals, Richie’s laughter—the noises dulled as they passed through the filter of the falling snow.
Excited by all this, the tarsiers jumped back and forth with new energy. They ping-ponged off Ella and Richie, speeding past one another in the air. Each time one landed on Ella, she watched its big eyes blink away the snow. Snowflakes melted on their bodies and matted their fur.
Within minutes, the storm slowed down. And with it, so did the tarsiers. They settled on the scouts, three on Ella, and two on Richie. Ella felt their slight shudders as their tiny chests heaved.
“We better go,” Ella said. “We should have been home a long time ago.”
Richie nodded, and the two of them hurried over to a tree. The tarsiers climbed onto the branches and stayed perched in low spots. They suddenly seemed exhausted.
“Later, dudes,” Ella said. Then she turned and led Richie out of the woods.
By the time they reached the street, the snow had already died down. Most of what was on the ground probably wouldn’t survive the night. As they walked, Ella turned again to the treetops. Somewhere in them, hundreds of tarsiers were perched on branches, perfectly still and hidden. She imagined their bulging eyes staring down. Right now, they could see her and Richie. They even knew what the two of them had just done.
“We’ve been watched,” Ella said. “Our whole lives. Every night.”
“Yeah,” Richie said. “And maybe not just by the tarsiers.”
She turned to him. “What are you talking about?”
Richie lifted his eyebrows. “DeGraff.”
With all their concern on the sasquatches lately, Ella had almost forgot about the Shadowist. She swept her stare across the nearby yards. Bushes, sheds, corners. Was he somewhere out there? Was he watching them right now?
Ella shuddered.
“C’mon, Richie. Let’s get the heck out of here.”
The two of them bolted up the street, away from the hiding spots in the yards, and beneath the watchful stares of the tarsiers.
Chapter 19
Roger, Roger
When the final school bell rang on Monday, the scouts snatched their backpacks from their lockers and ran to the bathrooms, where they used the stalls to change into their zoo uniforms—ugly button-up shirts with vertical stripes and long, flat collars—that disguised them as zoo volunteers. Back at their lockers, they threw on their jackets and winter gear, then squirmed down the crowded halls and pushed through the exit, the cold air rushing into their lungs. They bolted across the playground, across the street, then through the west entrance of the zoo, which was adjacent to Clarksville Elementary. At the entrance to Butterfly Nets, a familiar sign read “CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION!” Noah plucked the magic key from his pocket, checked over his shoulders, then cracked open the door, saying, “Voilà.” The scouts turned their shoulders to slip inside.