Emmy and the Home For Troubled Girls

by Lynne Jonell

  It took no time at all for her to prick her arm with a lancet and prepare a glass slide with some drops of her blood. It took a little longer to climb up to the eyepiece of the charascope, but her bare feet gripped the smooth pewter with its brass fittings, and she inched her way up until at last she was looking down into a bright, swirling mass.

  The shapes were similar to the ones she had seen before, flipping and joining and swimming in a vividly colored sea. Emmy was just beginning to feel relieved—maybe her character wasn’t so bad, after all—when something new came into her field of vision.

  It wasn’t the green wormy ball of resentments and hate that she had seen in Miss Barmy’s blood. But it looked equally difficult to untangle. There before her, wriggling in her very own blood, was a knotted orange rope, thick and barbed.

  It looked like a whip, thought Emmy—a whip with thorns.

  She looked at it for some time. At last she climbed down and rubbed off the blood with the edge of a paper towel until the slide was quite, quite clean. And then she waited, staring at nothing, until Thomas came in again with his soccer ball under his arm.

  Emmy asked him if he would take her to the art-gallery steps. She had agreed to meet Meg there, she said, around noon, and wasn’t it almost lunchtime? Thomas nodded, put her in his pocket, and said his good-byes.

  “Did Mr. Peebles wonder where Joe was this morning?” Emmy asked as the door slammed behind them. She felt uncomfortable with silence just then.

  Thomas chuckled. “Nope. I turned on the shower and put Joe in the bathroom. Then, when Cousin Peter came up, Joe talked to him through the door. I said I’d bring Joe’s breakfast up to him so he wouldn’t have to go on the stairs with his ankle, and Peter said okay. And it was all true,” he added virtuously. “A Cub Scout never lies.”

  “Good for you,” murmured Emmy, feeling a rumble in her stomach at the mention of breakfast. She hadn’t wanted to ask anyone in Rodent City to feed her. Maybe Meg would bring a crumb or two for lunch.

  Thomas’s steps echoed in the alleyway, and Emmy thought of another question. “Did Joe and Ratty and Buck rig up the pulley and rope?”

  Thomas nodded. “It goes between the two attic windows. They’re gnawing a hole in the other attic’s wall now, but it’s taking a long time.”

  Emmy considered this. “Aren’t they worried about—owls and things?”

  “One of them stands guard, and they dive for the gutter if they have to. Here’s the art gallery. Do you want to wait inside Rodent City?”

  Emmy looked out of his pocket at the loose pipes, the dug-up sidewalk, the crumbling crack in the gallery steps, and realized that she did not want to be anywhere near the underground city, or its scornful, whispering rodents.

  “Let’s go across the street. We can watch for Meg from the playground.”

  It was high noon. A dull, steady thwack came from the schoolhouse wall as Thomas practiced his kicks. Meg, who had brought a bag lunch, sat in the shade under the kiddie slide and laid out pickles, grapes, and a wrapped sandwich. “Sorry if you don’t like egg salad, Emmy. I wish my mom had made peanut butter and jelly.”

  The hot sun beat down on the playground with its scrubby dandelions, but beneath the slide the grass was thick and cool. All around them were the subdued rustlings and chirpings of small creatures, flying and scampering and leaping.

  “Egg salad’s fine, but I can’t eat this,” said Emmy, holding up a single grape. “It’s like trying to eat a basketball.”

  Meg cut the grape into quarters with her jackknife and poured some lemonade into a bottle cap. Two flies, each as big as Emmy’s hand, went droning by, their shiny eyes staring, and Emmy flapped at them with a bit of waxed paper.

  “Hey, this isn’t egg salad!” Meg peeled back the top slice of bread. “It’s straight jelly—no peanut butter.”

  “I don’t mind.” Emmy ducked as the flies circled her head. “I just wish these stupid bugs would leave me alone!”

  One of the insects promptly flew off. The other, more persistent, made regular attempts to land on the jelly sandwich. Meg fanned it away as Emmy told her what had happened since the night before, leaving out the charascope. Meg, in turn, told Emmy how she had sneaked into her house, never waking the sleeping girls on the floor.

  “Plus, I called your mom to invite you over for one more night, so you don’t have to worry about going home!” Meg looked justifiably proud of this detail, but broke off as a small tan mouse bounced out of a patch of long grass, sat up on its haunches, and nodded briskly. “That’s two,” it said, dusting its forepaws together.

  “Wait!” Emmy’s heart picked up a beat as she saw the white star-shaped patch on the back of its head. “Aren’t you the wishing rodent?” She turned to Meg, delighted. “This is the mouse that turned Thomas into a kicking machine, and then Joe broke his ankle when he wished for it, and it got me invited—” Emmy stopped, embarrassed. She didn’t really want to tell Meg how much she had longed to be invited to her pool party.

  “Anyway,” she said hurriedly, addressing the mouse, “what do you mean, that’s two? We didn’t make any wishes.”

  “Yes, you did. For a jelly sandwich, and for a fly to go away.”

  “But we wished for peanut butter and jelly,” protested Meg. “And there were two flies.”

  “Don’t complain,” said Emmy hurriedly, as the mouse showed signs of bouncing off in a huff. “We’ve got one more wish. Let’s wish for Sissy to be all right!”

  “Or for the troubled girls to be rescued,” suggested Meg.

  Emmy hesitated. “Joe and Ratty and Buck might have rescued the girls already—and if they haven’t yet, they will soon. I think we should help Sissy first.”

  “Don’t bother deciding,” snapped the wishing mouse. “Only two wishes today.”

  “But we got three yesterday—”

  “Just like a human,” said the mouse in disgust. “Are they grateful? No, they are not. Do they say, ‘Thank you, dear wishing mouse’—my name is Sunny, by the way, not that you bothered to ask—”

  “Thank you—”

  “Thank you—”

  “—dear, dear wishing mouse!” said Emmy and Meg together, tumbling over their words.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Sunny grumpily, and dived back into the patch of grass.

  Meg looked blankly at Emmy. “What’s the good of a wishing mouse,” she said, “if it doesn’t even get the wishes right?”

  “Or give us some warning that it was listening,” said Emmy.

  “Here’s a warning,” said Thomas, ducking his head under the slide. “Look who’s hanging around the art-gallery steps.”

  Emmy scrambled out and shaded her eyes. Even from this distance, she recognized the dumpling posture and fuzzy white hair of Mr. B. But why was he dressed in a workman’s overalls, and what was he doing with a lunch pail?

  Meg, carrying a brown lunch bag, strolled casually across Main Street, glanced at the art gallery, and paused by a concrete planter filled with petunias and trailing vines. A white-haired man with a gentle, worried face saw her and suddenly closed his lunch pail.

  “Gee, mister! What are you doing with those pipes?”

  Inside the paper bag, Emmy stifled a snort of amusement. No one could beat Thomas for artless innocence, but Meg was making an excellent try.

  “Oh … I’m just … checking.” Mr. B sat back on his heels and patted one of the copper pipes several times, as if it were a long metallic dog.

  “Do you mind if I watch?” Meg set the lunch sack carefully in the planter.

  “Yes!” said a small, emphatic voice from somewhere near the ground.

  “I do?” The old man seemed befuddled.

  “Tell her to go away!”

  Mr. B looked unhappy. “Please, go away, little girl. I’m sorry, but …”

  “I’m really very busy!” finished the commanding voice.

  The scrape of Meg’s sandals faded as Emmy pressed her eye to a small hole in the pa
per bag. She couldn’t see much—a few petunia leaves, the back of Mr. B’s overalls—but she could hear quite well. Was someone coughing?

  “Now, then, Mr. B,” ordered the voice. “Step one—fit the pipe into the wall.”

  Emmy poked her finger into the hole and made it bigger. Now she could see a glossy black rat pacing importantly back and forth, consulting a clipboard. A few steps away, where the sidewalk had been broken to bits, pipes were lying on the ground. Mr. B, his overalls sagging in back, pulled a large pipe off the pile with a clank and lifted the temporary flap that covered the hole in the jewelry-store wall.

  “That’s right—shove it in,” said Cheswick, looking up from his notes. “Step two—description.”

  Mr. B’s massive hand reached into his back pocket and dug out a folded piece of newspaper. As he opened it up, Emmy caught sight of a familiar-looking picture.

  Mr. B read in a dutiful voice, “‘Originally bought by William Addison as a gift for his bride, these spectacular Kashmir sapphires were worn by his daughter Priscilla when she entered the Miss Grayson Lake beauty contest, shortly before her untimely death—’”

  “No, no.” Cheswick glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Read farther down.”

  “‘The jewelry will be passed on to his daughter Emmy on her eighteenth birthday, according to James Addison, great-nephew of William and heir to the Addison fortune …’”

  “Come on, get to the description! We can’t stay here all day, it’s dangerous!”

  “‘The cornflower-blue gems, of exceptional quality, are valued at over one hundred thousand dollars, according to Carnegie Peters, local jeweler extraordinaire.’”

  There was a creaking sound, as of small metal hinges. “Are you listening to this, girls?” demanded Cheswick.

  The black rat had moved so close to the planter that Emmy could no longer see him. Carefully, slowly, she tore the brown paper all the way down until she could step out of the bag. The earth between the petunias was soft and lumpy. A rich smell of potting soil filled her nose.

  “‘The necklace, a heart-shaped trio of three-carat sapphires surrounded by small diamonds, is suspended from a sterling silver chain—’”

  Emmy pushed between the petunia stalks and peered over the edge of the planter. The lunch pail, open now, was just below. Four tiny girls looked up at her, startled.

  “Who’s that?” blurted one, and was immediately muffled.

  “It’s me, you nitwit,” Cheswick Vole snapped. “Shut up and repeat after me. ‘Necklace, silver chain, three blue stones set in diamonds, shaped like a heart.’ Got it? That is what Miss Barmy wants you to take.”

  “Take?” said one of the smaller girls.

  “For Miss Barmy?” said her twin.

  “He means ‘steal,’” said the middle-sized one. “Right, Ana?”

  The oldest girl said nothing. She coughed again, her cheeks vividly colored.

  “It’s not stealing,” said Cheswick sharply, “if you’re taking something that should have been hers in the first place. Now, step three. Go into the pipe, and drag the equipment behind you.”

  “Why don’t you do it?” muttered the middle girl, but the oldest shushed her. Mr. B lifted them out of the lunch box. The doll-sized figures crawled into the copper pipe that led to the hole in the wall, dragging a piece of string behind them.

  Cheswick Vole tied the other end of the string to a small, lumpy cloth bag—and soon, jerkily, it was pulled into the pipe with a faint clanking.

  Mr. B made an apologetic noise in his throat. “So … I’m just wondering. Why aren’t you and Jane doing this yourself?”

  Cheswick drew himself up rigidly. “You can’t seriously imagine that I’d allow Jane to run such risks?”

  “Er—”

  “Besides, we can’t leave our scent inside. What if the Rodent Police got suspicious?” Cheswick glanced at the store window with its shuttered blinds. “They might not understand that we were only taking what was really Jane’s all along.”

  Emmy, behind a large pink petunia, narrowed her eyes.

  Cheswick tucked his clipboard into the lunch pail, and climbed in. “Now for step four. Look busy.”

  “How?” Mr. B sounded apprehensive. “I don’t know anything about plumbing.”

  Cheswick shrugged. “Fit pipes together, bang around a bit, that kind of thing. I’m going to take a nap. Close the lid, would you? The sun’s in my eyes.”

  His last words echoed hollowly inside the metal box as Emmy stared down at the rounded black lid, fury building inside her. She had never really cared about the sapphires before. But now her family was being robbed.

  Mr. B put the society clipping in his pocket. Emmy backed up, out of his field of vision, and tripped over the paper bag. There was a loud crinkling.

  Mr. B grabbed the bag out of the planter and crumpled it in his meaty hands. “Must’ve been the wind,” he said to himself, tossing it aside.

  Across the street, Meg leaped up and came running.

  “Excuse me, mister, but I think I forgot my lunch!” She snatched up the crumpled bag, her face pale. “Was—” She swallowed, and tried again. “Wasn’t there anything in it?”

  Mr. B shook his head. “If there was, it’s squashed now.”

  Meg stared in horror at the bag in her hands—and then came to her senses. It was far too light to contain even a very small body. She looked about her wildly, and began to dig among the petunias. “Maybe my lunch fell—ulp!”

  Emmy, hanging from a vine off the side of the planter, was tickling her ankle with the trailing end.

  Meg’s face sagged in relief. She shielded Emmy from view and picked her up gently. “Thanks anyway,” she said, and headed for the kiddie slide, where Thomas waited with his ever-present soccer ball.

  Emmy had time to think on the way to the playground. And by the time Meg set her down in the long cool grass, she had a plan.

  First, of course, she told Meg and Thomas that the girls whose names were on Miss Barmy’s cane had been found.

  “All of them?” Thomas’s round face was polished with joy.

  “Well, actually—”

  “Are they okay?” Meg interrupted, just as excited as Thomas.

  “One of them has a cough. But listen, we’ve got to hurry—they’re in the jewelry store right now. Here’s what I think we should do.”

  MR. B TRIED TO LOOK BUSY. He picked up one pipe and tapped it against another. He fit two together, and took them apart again. He rolled a pipe over to see if any slugs were attached to the bottom, and picked them off. Then he scratched his head.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. He turned with an air of relief.

  “You look very busy,” said Meg.

  “What are you doing?” asked Thomas. “Can I see?” He squatted next to Mr. B, blocking the man’s view of the transit pipe that led to the jewelry-store wall.

  Meg bent swiftly behind him, lifting something from her pocket onto the ground. Then in one smooth motion she patted Thomas’s head. “He likes to see how things work,” she said to Mr. B with an apologetic smile.

  Behind Meg’s feet a small figure in pajamas dived into the mouth of the pipe. Meg spoke to mask the sound of tiny echoing footsteps. “Look, Thomas. See how they fit together?” She grabbed two pipes with a clatter, hauled them in place with a clank, and bumped the pieces together a few more times for good measure. “Let’s put them end to end and see how far they go!”

  Mr. B looked unsure. “Well, I don’t know,” he began, glancing back at the transit pipe, now abutting another copper tube at right angles.

  Thomas, ignoring this, lined up more pipes with great enthusiasm, while Meg knelt by the planter, pretending to sniff the flowers. She reached stealthily behind her and latched the buckles on the lunch pail, taking great care not to jostle the sleeping rat inside. She eased her fingers away just as Mr. B turned.

  “Now, children, that’s enough.” Mr. B made a valiant attempt to sound firm.

  M
eg rose promptly. “Okay, Mister. Come on, Thomas—let’s play soccer.”

  Emmy lay just inside the open end of the pipe and gazed into the jewelry store. The blinds were shut, and the interior was dim, but cracks of sunshine leaked around the edges, running along the floor and up the display cases in a series of bright, angled lines.

  A small bow and arrow lay discarded on the floor. Emmy could see the fishing line still attached to the arrow, and then the knotted shoelaces attached to that …. Someone must have shot the arrow all the way over the display case, and then they had all pulled the ladder up from the other side. It was ingenious, she had to admit.

  She could see the girls now, busily hauling a lumpy bag up the side of a glass display case. The girl named Ana seemed to be giving the orders, in between fits of coughing, but as the others pulled out metal and wood and worked to fit the pieces together, Emmy couldn’t help noticing that they seemed terribly practiced and efficient, as if they had done the same thing many times before.

  An odd grating noise came to Emmy’s ears. Two girls went round and round in a circle, pushing a crossbar, while two stood on top of a little platform, adding weight.

  Were they truly troubled girls, after all? Emmy hadn’t expected a gang of thieves. How could they do such a thing? And so young, too …

  Emmy felt suddenly ashamed. Those very words had been whispered about her, just hours ago. She had judged the girls without hearing their side of the story—the same thing she had hated when it was done to her. And—it occurred to her now—if they were happy to be stealing for Miss Barmy, why had they sent a note begging to be rescued?

  No. She would give them a chance. She would rescue the girls, troubled or not. But in the meantime, they had already cut a hole in the glass countertop with the circular metal piece. A hole saw, that’s what Chippy had called it—

  There was a sudden coldness in Emmy’s chest, as if her heart had been plunged into ice water. The night of the party, she and Joe had overheard Chippy talking with Miss Barmy about this very thing. Had Chippy known how his invention would be used?

  The tiny girls lowered a bent paper clip into the display case, and pulled up something that glittered blue and silver and ice. Emmy watched them narrowly.