Malcolm Under the Stars

by Brian Lies

  “I don’t know this one, though.” Malcolm tried to memorize its shape so he could recreate it back at McKenna. What did it mean, that Academy Marks were outside the school? Did Aggy know this?

  “Well, in the Outside world, this means ‘this is the place,’” Beert said.

  Then he turned away from the Mark/Sign. “Malcolm, you should know: I’m not going in with you. I’ll only be . . . you do better than me in enclosed spaces. But”—he ruffled Malcolm’s fur with his beak—“be careful.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The Striped Shadow is an omni.21 Omnis are unpredictable: they’ll eat anything. I’m not saying he will eat you—I’ve never heard of him eating someone who’s gone to him for help—but you can’t fully trust an omni. They have no loyalty, not even to their own kind.”

  Malcolm nodded. He swallowed hard. “Okay.” Then he gave a half smile. “Rats are omnis too, you know.”

  “I just want you to be aware of what you’re getting into.”

  “Thanks,” said Malcolm, and he turned again toward the door. “Do I knock?” He tapped at the door with the tip of his tail. How would anyone hear a tiny rat knocking in a building this big?

  Then he spied it—at the bottom of the door, where it was dented the most: a gap. An entrance. Malcolm took a deep breath. “Meet you back here in a few minutes?”

  Beert nodded. “I’ll do some holding patterns out here to keep an eye on things. Just squeak when you’re ready. I’ll hear.”

  Malcolm nodded. He took another breath and slipped in through the space.

  On the other side, he waited for his eyes to adjust. “Hello?” he called out. There was no answer.

  Slowly, Malcolm came to realize he was in a vast room—the biggest space he had ever seen, bigger than the auditorium at McKenna, even. And it was full. Mountains—rows upon rows upon rows of mountains of . . . junk. As Malcolm moved through the space, a multitude of scents—peanut butter, old motor oil, metal, burnt wood, acorns—stirred his nose. After several minutes, he reached the back of the room. This side had a huge bank of greasy windows through which the moon and starlight22 barely penetrated. In their dim light, Malcolm could make out pieces of machinery as big as playground equipment.

  Malcolm’s ears twitched. Was that . . . breathing? A critter moving in the darkness? Every ratty instinct in him told him to stay in the shadows, to stay on the edges, but that was not why he was here.

  “Hello,” Malcolm called out again. The creature froze and slowly turned toward Malcolm. He was big, bigger than a cat but smaller than a dog (at least the dogs that walked by McKenna’s windows during the day), with rough gray fur and strange markings on his face that made him look like he was wearing a mask.23 The critter held his right front leg curled up under his chest.

  For a brief second, Malcolm thought he saw the gleam of bared white teeth, but then the critter managed a tight smile instead. “Here to see the Striped Shadow, are you?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “Well, you’ll have to come back. Tuesdays are for walk-ins. The rest of the week is by appointment only.”

  “But—I—” Malcolm started. He called after the quickly disappearing striped tail. “Wait!”

  The critter turned and blinked, his eyes disappearing in the black of his mask. “Let me guess,” he said. “It’s an emergency, you may not be able to come back, and time is of the essence.”

  “Well . . . yeah,” Malcolm said. “Pretty much.”

  The critter sighed. “Okay, I’ll let him know. Wait here.” He limped off, and Malcolm thought he heard him mutter, “Never give any notice, just think they can show up . . .” before he disappeared behind the heart of the pile of junk, a tower of—coat hangers?—so rusted, they had melded together.

  Malcolm waited for what seemed like hours. He wondered if Beert was getting worried, or Honey Bunny too, for that matter. He sniffed a pile of tin cans. Embarrassingly, his stomach growled. How could he be hungry at a time like this?

  He could hear voices behind the mountains, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then rattling plastic. Then silence. A long silence. Malcolm sniffed at a can near his foot. These didn’t seem as old as some of the other stuff. Was that tuna? He snuffled closer.

  Behind him, the masked critter cleared his throat.

  Malcolm jumped, caught his right foot in a can, tripped, and plowed into another, and suddenly the whole pile tumbled down around him in the loudest, longest noise he had ever heard. Seriously, no fifth-grader had anything on this racket. In fact, they could probably hear it back at McKenna.

  “Oh, scrap,” he said, when the cans finally stopped rolling around.

  A can wobbled slowly to a rest near the curled front leg of the masked critter, and Malcolm saw the paw was missing. The animal cleared his throat. “Follow me.”

  It took all of Malcolm’s willpower to get up and follow that critter. First of all, it was hard going, wading through all those spilled tin cans. Second, his paws quaked. But with each step, he thought of McKenna and the Academy and the legend of Ernie Bowman. He had to find out. It’s what kept him going. Have you ever experienced that, Mr. Binney? Terrified to do something, yet it’s also something you want more than anything else in the world?

  The critter led him on a winding path, through the tunnels and amid piles to another wall, where a weathered tarp hung across two stacks of boxes, making deeper shadows in the darkness, if that was even possible.

  The masked critter nodded. “Go on.”

  Malcolm took a step forward. Then he glanced back. His masked escort had disappeared. “Where did he go?”

  The tarp rattled, and now Malcolm could see there was an animal under it, but only part of his striped tail curved out of the blackness. The Striped Shadow. Literally. He answered, “Acer runs errands for me. He’s off on another one. Surely your question doesn’t depend on him?” His voice was a deep, dramatic whisper that Malcolm had to strain to hear.

  “Well, no,” Malcolm admitted. But he would have liked to have another somewhat-friendly face with him. Or another face of any kind, for that matter. As a witness—in case any omnivore-ish snacking happened. Instead, Malcolm sidled toward the entrance, so he couldn’t be trapped. “I heard that you help.” Suddenly, Malcolm remembered his Academy training. Dignity and decorum, right? He stood up straight and cleared his throat. “I’m here tonight representing the Midnight Academy of McKenna School . . . um, the big building on the other side of the river. We are in trouble. You see—”

  “Please.” The Striped Shadow swished his tail impatiently. “Don’t waste my time. Skip the story. What do you want? A new home? Medical services? A troublesome mate relocated?”

  Gristle, when this was all over, Malcolm was going to suggest to the Midnight Academy that they update their handbook. Dignity and decorum really didn’t go very far these days. “Oh. Um . . . I guess we need information.”

  There was a pause. The tarp crinkled as the critter sat up. “Information?” he said. “Information?”

  “Yes.”

  The tip of his tail flicked. It was white-tipped too, like Snip’s had been, Malcolm noticed.

  “Hmmm.”

  Malcolm tried to wait him out for an answer. He didn’t want to be a pest. But the longer the silence stretched out, the more he felt the urge to nibble his whiskers.

  Finally, the Striped Shadow spoke. “The truth is, you have an unusual request. I get asked for things, for actions, but not for information. You see, information is what I deal in. If I told everyone where I get the things I do—how I do the things I do—then why would anyone need me?”

  Malcolm didn’t know how to answer that.

  The white tip of the Striped Shadow’s tail twirled in a slow circle. “Have you ever heard of a promise made under the stars?”

  Malcolm twisted his own tail. “Um, no. In fact, I only saw stars for the first time to—”

  “A promise made under the stars,” the Striped Shadow interrupted, “is an Outside
promise. A promise made in front of the whole wide world. When I help critters, they give me a promise—a promise made under the stars—to repay me. If I help you, are you willing to agree to this?”

  Malcolm’s feet had begun sweating. “I . . . I guess it depends on what it is I’m promising.”

  There was a low chuckle. “You’re a smart one. Most critters have already agreed by now. But don’t worry. It’s not your first litter of pups or anything. It’s only doing me a favor or giving me some information in return. See, that’s really the heart of my business. I trade secrets and information. You need something. I give it to you, and in return you tell me or show me something that another client might need. Sometimes what you have is something I don’t have a use for immediately, so I store it away for when I do. It’s a wonderful business model, really. Low overhead.”

  A huge sense of relief washed over Malcolm. That was it? Why, he didn’t have any secrets! Not any that would matter, anyway. What could the Striped Shadow possibly ask for? To reveal the big secret that Malcolm still sometimes snuck into the dumpster outside the cafeteria at night? He had no secrets. He had no information of importance.

  “So, do you promise?”

  “You don’t even know what I want yet,” Malcolm pointed out. “How do I know you can help me?”

  “Fair enough,” said the Striped Shadow. “Why don’t you tell me.”

  Malcolm took a deep breath, and for the third time that night, he told about the school closing and the legend of Ernie Bowman (hopefully, his version wasn’t changing!) and the Loaded Stash. He even threw in the fact that the Midnight Academy and the Striped Shadow were apparently using the same symbols, only calling them something different. “Do you think you can help?” Malcolm asked. “Do you know about any of that?”

  The Striped Shadow was quiet again. A crinkle of tarp, and Malcolm caught a flash of an eye. It was masked too. “No. Not off the top of my whiskers. But . . . I have some sources I’d like to talk to. So how about this: Let’s meet in a week, in the oaks outside your school, when that noisemaker on your roof clangs twelve. If I bring you information, you keep your promise. If I do not, you are not obligated to fulfill it.”

  That seemed fair. But . . . “How do I know which tree? And—a week! We don’t have that kind of time—”

  The Striped Shadow held up his tail. “If you want your information, meet me in a week.” He pulled his tail back into the darkness of the tarp. “As for which tree . . . just look for a Shadow Sign.”

  Chapter 13

  Blue

  A week. A week is a long time to wait. Especially if you’re afflicted with hero brain. And especially when things aren’t going so great.

  Even though the Midnight Academy kept their regular Thursday-night meeting, they were clearly floundering. Honey Bunny and Malcolm had agreed that there was no point in bringing up the Striped Shadow unless, or until, he actually had something to tell them, so all that came out of the Midnight Academy meeting were stray bits and pieces. Malcolm shared the Shadow Sign/Mark with Aggy (saying he had found it “outside,” with a vague wave of his paw). Aggy had found it interesting, but it didn’t really change anything.

  The most exciting thing was that Harriet had dragged in a yellowed scrap of paper that turned out to be a newspaper article from 1952 about Walton McKenna’s death. There was one paragraph that had the critters leaning in: “Mr. McKenna, truly an outstanding gentleman, left a long and lasting impact on our community. Even in death, his concern was for the young people and the beauty of Clearwater. His will left all of his remaining money to the Clearwater Education Foundation and the Council for the Arts. Ironically, when it came time to disperse the funds, his bank accounts were empty. ‘Generous to a fault, I guess,’ his daughter Evelyn said with a laugh. ‘That’s just like Daddy, to give it all away before he could give it all away. He never did like banks, anyway.’”

  “That’s weird,” said Tank. “Why say you’re going to leave something for someone if you have nothing to give them? How did he have money to build all these things in our town, anyway?”

  Jesse had jumped up at that. “Do you think they couldn’t find his money because he stashed it in the school? In a Loaded Stash? Do ya? Do ya? Do ya?” He bounced with each question.

  “Calm down,” barked Honey Bunny. “I doubt it. He probably just spent it all.”

  “Most people think he was tricked out of it, or that it was stolen,” Harriet said. “Possibly invested badly. But . . . maybe not.”

  “Well, even if any of that is true, there’s nothing in there to help us find it,” Polly pointed out.

  And she was right. So the Academy was back to watching, listening, sniffing, exploring . . . and hoping.

  The All-Stars weren’t doing much better either. They had learned the Council Oak was right outside the school. An enormous oak tree that shadowed the auditorium. But the ground under it was too frozen to search for anything.

  And despite Amelia making them stay in for a couple recesses to look at the yearbooks, they didn’t have a whole lot more. They did find out that there used to be a pet blue jay in the library. The yearbook from 1939 included a picture of it perched near the windows. “Cute!” Kiera cried out. She read, “‘This year brought a new mascot to the Clearwater Central High School library—an injured blue jay. Mr. Randall Carson, Clearwater’s handyman extraordinaire, rescued the bird, but when it became apparent that it would never fly again, he brought it to Miss Wilson in the library. “Blue’s great company,” Miss Wilson says. “I can’t imagine the library without him now.”’”

  “Huh,” said Jovahn. “And now we’re the McKenna Blue Jays. I wonder if that’s why?”

  For a minute, as Malcolm examined the picture, his hopes perked up. Could this be the “birds coming back to life” part of the story? But then again, like McKenna’s missing money, even if it was, it didn’t really help them in any way.

  And McKenna’s portrait was nowhere to be found. “For the last time, I don’t know,” Ms. Brumble grumbled. “I’ve never seen it. It’s been gone since I started here.”

  Malcolm had even checked for it himself one night—the closest he came was finding a dark rectangle on the rear wall of the auditorium. You could tell a picture had hung there for a long, long time, the paint fading around it. But it was definitely gone now.

  So they were left with the yearbooks.24 Amelia paged through them, scanning pictures, while Kiera and Jovahn put together a slide-show presentation of current photos of the school. They hadn’t exactly found a job for Skylar yet—mostly they were hoping that he wouldn’t destroy anything.

  It was like Sylvia’s acorns. The Midnight Academy, the All-Stars, everyone, was just nibbling and gnawing. Getting the taste in their mouths, but what they really needed was someone—something—to crack the whole thing open. As each day passed, Malcolm’s hopes hung more and more on the possibility of the Striped Shadow being the one to help them.

  Then on Friday, after a disheartening Midnight Academy meeting the night before, Skylar stumbled into Room 11, lugging a black contraption that looked a little like a cross between a trombone and a weed whacker.25

  “Well . . . hello there, Skylar,” you said, as he walked past you. “Is that a . . . metal detector?” Skylar turned, and you winced as the disk part of it rammed, then tangled, into the legs of Jenna’s chair.

  Skylar nodded, wrestling to pull it free. “Amelia said we needed to find the time capsule under the oak tree. That we needed something sappy for the listening session.”

  Amelia sat up. “No, I didn’t. I said—oh, never mind.”

  Skylar continued, “The ground may be frozen, and we can’t dig down very far—digging is my hobby, you know—but we could still look for it. I found my metal detector under my bed, and my Gram was giving me a ride to school, so”—he brandished it, and Jenna ducked to avoid getting hit—“here it is.”

  Your mouth flapped a little. No offense, Mr. Binney, but Malcolm had notic
ed something peculiar going on ever since Skylar had joined your All-Stars group to save McKenna: no one was sure where he fit in anymore. He was like candied beets on a cafeteria tray. Technically, they’re a vegetable. They belong in that compartment. But they’re also sweet, so possibly they go better with the fruit? Or maybe even with dessert because they’re “candied”?26 And so you end up standing there in line with the serving spoon hanging over your tray while you try to figure out where to put them. That was the class staring at Skylar right now.

  Jovahn jumped in. “That is so cool, Skylar! You are a genius. Genius.” (Well, maybe everyone except Jovahn didn’t know what to think of Skylar.) He turned to you. “Can we look, Mr. Binney? Can we go check under the trees? Can we go now?” He was already half out of his seat.

  You finally closed your mouth. You pointed at the window. “It’s raining.”

  And it was. Pouring, in fact, in that freezing-cold, almost-as-much-ice-as-water, first-hint-of-spring rain. The playground was going to be a mess later.

  “Please?” Jovahn said it so eagerly, Malcolm was pretty sure you didn’t have the heart to turn him down.

  You sighed. “Maybe right before lunch.”

  It was still raining then, but that didn’t stop the class from trudging out to the giant oak tree on the edge of the McKenna school property. As you hunched, water dripping down your face, your hands red with cold, you looked a little like you’d rather be in the dry teachers’ lounge with Ms. Brumble. But Malcolm couldn’t be sure.

  Of course, you turned it into a lesson, Mr. Binney. “The reason this tree is called the ‘Council Oak’ is because Native Americans and other travelers used it as a meeting place. You can see that because of its size and location along the river, it’d be easy to spot. Years ago, it was struck by lightning; that’s why it’s got this funny V shape now.”