Emmy and the Home For Troubled Girls

by Lynne Jonell

  The rising chord changes quivered and died. The drummer began a slow but steadily accelerating drumroll.

  “And the winner is—”

  The squirrel to Emmy’s right was breathing in short, gasping pants. On the other side, Miss Barmy was clenching and unclenching her paws.

  “Miss Jaaaane Barmy!”

  The drumroll stopped with a flourish. The trumpets blared. The audience of rodents began to clap as Miss Barmy shrieked girlishly, fluttering her paws.

  Emmy glanced worriedly at Buck. Should she say something? Would anyone believe her if she grabbed the mike and told them what Miss Barmy was really like?

  Cheswick advanced with the crown, a mesmerizing glitter of silver and blue in his glossy black paws. He lifted it up. Miss Barmy’s eyes flashed triumphantly around the room. She smiled like a conquistador.

  “Stop!” cried Chippy. “Those jewels are stolen!”

  CHESWICK’S ARMS FROZE in midair.

  Chippy looked at Miss Barmy with bleak condemnation. His paw rested on the Endear Mouse’s shoulder.

  Miss Barmy’s lips stretched thinly over her polished teeth. “What an absurd thing to say, Chipster!” Her tinkling laugh sounded like ice crystals falling. “They are Addison family heirlooms. My mother was born an Addison. Therefore, they are mine.”

  “So why did you make us steal them?” challenged a young voice from the back.

  Emmy strained her eyes past the spotlights to the dim figures beyond. Footsteps pattered down the central aisle, and suddenly there they were—five little girls, their faces pale and determined, staring up accusingly at Miss Barmy and Cheswick Vole.

  Five. They were all there, Merry and Ana included. True, Merry looked paler than the rest, and Ana was coughing a little. But they were looking much better, they were going to be all right, and Emmy’s heart gave a skip of joy.

  Miss Barmy’s eyes darted from face to face. She spoke into the microphone. “Do you feel you have to lie to get attention, girls? Haven’t I done enough for you, giving you all a home?”

  “No,” said Merry, taking her thumb out of her mouth.

  “You see why I call them troubled?” Miss Barmy shrugged prettily and looked out over the crowd. “I have given them food, a home, the clothes on their backs—”

  “Handkerchiefs!” interjected Ana.

  “Of the finest Egyptian cotton. And now they lie about me.” She gave an affecting sob, dabbed at her eyes with the tip of her tail, and bent forward with a smile like a razor’s edge. “You’re just little girls,” she hissed. “Who’s going to believe you?”

  “I, for one.” Professor Capybara stepped forward into the light, tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat, and beamed at the audience.

  Emmy glanced at him, startled, and then at the Rat, who was behind her, waiting to sing. How had the professor shrunk without the Rat to bite him?

  “Dear friends,” Professor Capybara said, and his amplified voice echoed in the empty spaces of Rodent City, “I am sorry to tell you that Miss Barmy is not the rodent you think she is. The jewels in this crown were stolen, and she forced four of these girls to steal them, while she kept the fifth hostage.”

  Miss Barmy sucked in her breath through her teeth. All at once she looked very ratty. “I didn’t do it! It was Cheswick!” She whirled to point at the stricken black rat. “He took them to the jewelry store. I was here the whole time—tell them, Chipster!”

  Chippy looked at her stonily.

  “Besides, I’m still the winner! I’m Princess Pretty, so crown me!” She clutched the sparkling tiara. “Hold up an applause sign!” she hissed to Cheswick. “Tell the band to play the theme song!” She set the flashing blue-and-silver circlet on her head with her own hands, and pasted on a false, brilliant smile.

  The Swinging Gerbils stirred uneasily. Gerry raised his trumpet, puffed out his furry cheeks, and blew a great blaaaatt. It sounded remarkably rude.

  The audience erupted in laughter. Miss Barmy’s smile took on the frozen, rigid look of a cramp.

  Behind her, Buck lifted the crown from her head with one swift movement. He leaned in to the microphone. “Actually,” he said with calm authority, “Miss Barmy did not win. These are not the ballots that the judges marked.”

  The audience gasped. The rejected contestants, sitting off to the side in a mass of brightly colored dresses, rustled indignantly.

  Cheswick looked sick, but he managed to sound outraged. “Explain yourself, sir!” He turned to the crowd. “You all watched the ballots being put in the slot. The padlocked box never left the stage. I unlocked it in front of everyone, and Buckram himself watched me add the scores. How dare you!”

  Buck shrugged. “Look here.” He held up his chocolate-smudged palms to the spotlight. “I cut up peanut-butter cups and passed them out. And I didn’t wash my paws before I gave the ballots to the judges. Hold those ballots up, Chippy.”

  The paper ballots reflected the light as Chippy held them up, one by one.

  “See?” said Buck. “Every one is clean. Now, the ballots I handed to the judges each had a chocolate paw print in one corner. I made sure of it.”

  Cheswick snarled. “And just where are these mythical ballots?” He opened the ballot box and showed an empty interior to the crowd.

  Chippy touched the Endear Mouse again. “Do you know? Did you see him put them in?”

  The little mouse looked at Chippy with great concentration. Chippy nodded, reached into the box, and pressed a hidden panel. A false bottom sprang open. A sheaf of paper spilled out.

  Chippy held them up. Plainly marked in one corner of each ballot was a chocolate paw print, smudged but obvious even to the back row of chairs.

  Miss Barmy, for once, had no retort. Her paws hung. Her mouth twisted sharply.

  But the other contestants had a great deal to say.

  “You mean this pageant was rigged?” A mole rat, dressed in frothy orange, stood up and squinted her tiny eyes accusingly.

  “I spent a whole week’s seeds to get my fur done,” squeaked a tuco-tuco, tawny and beautifully fluffed. “It’s not fair.”

  “You had no right!” A flying squirrel flapped her pale-green sleeves as if about to take off.

  A gundi, looking like a fierce powder puff, whistled the rodent signal for attack. “Get ’em, girls!”

  The rejected contestants rushed the stage in a pack, their silks and satins whipping behind them. They descended upon Miss Barmy and Cheswick in a frenzy of glitter and sequins and feather boas, squealing and clawing in fury.

  Miss Barmy yelped, picked up her skirts, and ran. Cheswick, after a moment’s hesitation that cost him dear, scampered after, hanging on to what remained of his shirt. The crowd of enraged would-be beauty queens chased them up the steps to the second level, then the third. Round and round they ran, Miss Barmy and Cheswick in the lead, the rats in Barbie dresses stampeding behind. A last mad dash up to the fourth-level walkway, a frenzied burst of speed, and Miss Barmy and her faithful sidekick tore past the Bunjee loft to the exit tunnel, their shrieks and imprecations fading with distance.

  The professor straightened the flower in his buttonhole and dusted glitter off his lapel. “That’s the last we’ll see of them,” he said with deep satisfaction.

  Emmy, a little shaken, hoped so with all her heart.

  The crowd of rodents on the main floor, craning their necks upward, burst into cheers. The disheveled contestants helped one another straighten sashes and pat ruffled fur into place. Then they filed down the winding staircase, level by level, waving to the audience as if each one wore a tiara.

  “Let’s see who really won!” Buck and Chippy bent over the chocolate-smeared ballots and began to count. The band, recovering from their astonishment, picked up their instruments again.

  There was a second drumroll. Buck straightened. “Ladies and gentlerats,” he announced, “we have a winner. I give you Princess Pretty of Rodent City— Molivia!”

  Emmy blinked. This was all happening
too fast. Someone led her forward, and someone else put the crown on her head. It felt strangely heavy.

  The band swung into a lush, sweeping intro, and Raston stepped up to the microphone, his ears pink from excitement. “Heeere she is, Princess Pretty,” he began. “Here she is, your ideeeel …”

  Emmy flushed. She wasn’t anyone’s ideal. She wasn’t even a citizen of Rodent City. And if these rodents knew who she truly was, they’d never let her wear the crown.

  Of course, she could just pretend to be Molivia. If she had to stay a rat, it might be better to start with a new identity.

  Except that she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be a fake like Miss Barmy, pretending that she was someone she wasn’t. She wanted to be real.

  And if they hated her for who she really was? Emmy tried not to let that matter. She stepped forward and took the microphone from Ratty’s paw. The band fumbled and faltered into silence.

  “I’m sorry,” wavered Emmy. “I can’t be your Princess Pretty.” She waited a moment, trying to calm the hammering in her rib cage. “I’m not even a rodent. My real name is Emmy Addison, and before I turned into a rat, I was the one who didn’t stop my friends from throwing rocks at Sissy.”

  She looked out at the audience. She saw shock and horror and revulsion on their faces. She was not surprised.

  The microphone was wobbling in her paw. She fit it back in its socket and held on to the stand to keep herself steady. “I did try to stop them, but only after it was too late. I didn’t mean to abandon her,” Emmy went on in a rush. “I thought she’d go straight to Rodent City. I didn’t realize she would get lost. And then I kept thinking that I should tell someone about her, or go back to check on her, but things kept happening and I just … never did.”

  Her voice cracked on the final word. She waited a moment, until she could speak again. “I’m really sorry,” she whispered.

  Her words fell like a hesitant rain into a listening, waiting pond. Soft furry movements in the crowd circled out and out, and then something stirred on its own in the back of the room and came forward. All eyes followed the gray rat in a royal-blue bathrobe as she walked slowly up the center aisle.

  It was Sissy.

  Emmy found it hard to breathe. A surge of emotion welled up inside her, almost too big to contain. She wanted to leap and shout for joy and relief. She wanted to run and throw herself in Sissy’s arms and cry. She wanted to drop to her knees and say a prayer.

  She did none of these things. She leaped, and cried, and said thanks in her heart, overwhelmed with gratitude. Now the little troubled girls could grow and be reunited with those who loved them. Now Joe could stop being a rat and turn into his old self once more.

  She knew that she would likely remain a rat. The horror and disapproval on the faces in the crowd had convinced her. But she could still be happy for others, and most of all for Sissy, who was mounting the steps to the platform, who was looking at her kindly, who was drawing her into a furry embrace.

  “Don’t,” said Emmy, pulling back. She stared out at the audience, now a blur to her. “They know I don’t deserve it.”

  Sissy shook her head. “Does it matter what the crowd thinks? They don’t know what’s inside of you.”

  Emmy shrugged painfully, looking away.

  “Listen, Emmy,” Sissy said earnestly. “The crowd thought Miss Barmy was wonderful, but they were wrong. And they thought you were terrible, but the whole time you were taking brave risks and rescuing little girls. It was just a mistake, that you didn’t stop those humans from throwing rocks at me. You just froze—it could have happened to anyone—”

  Emmy shook her head. “It was more than that,” she said miserably. “It was a betrayal. I didn’t protect you because I was afraid the other girls would laugh at me.”

  “Oh,” said Sissy. She looked at her paws.

  “I wasn’t a very good friend to you,” said Emmy humbly.

  Sissy smiled. “But you’re my friend now.” She threw her short arms around Emmy, and squeezed. “I forgive you,” she whispered in Emmy’s ear, and then somehow her nose bumped into Emmy’s cheek, and her whiskers tickled Emmy under the chin, and Emmy started to laugh. The last grim vestiges of the frozen, tight-fisted, stone-hard thing inside her softened, and melted, and ran dribbling away. She blinked away the blurriness, and lifted a hand to wipe her eyes.

  A hand.

  And her cheek was smooth. Emmy stretched out her arm—her human arm—and wiggled her five fingers.

  Sissy was beaming. “Kisses go with hugs,” she said, and then there was a roar of cheering, and a batting sound of paws clapping, and suddenly the crowd surged forward and the ballot box spilled and everyone was hugging, Buck and Chippy and the professor and the little girls and Sissy and Mrs. Bunjee, and then all at once Joe was there, too, telling Emmy that he was the one who had brought the girls and Sissy to the pageant.

  “As soon as I saw that Sissy was awake, and Ana and Merry were doing better, I got the professor to let them come,” Joe explained, his pale fur rumpled every which way.

  “I wouldn’t allow it at first,” said the professor.

  “But I said, what if he went with them? He was their doctor, after all—”

  “And then I remembered that I had a little of Raston’s saliva left in a vial,” finished the professor. “So I poked myself with a needle and shrank, and Brian brought us to the front door. That boy is a treasure, I must say.”

  Flushed and happy, Emmy remembered to ask Joe about the others. “Where are Meg and Thomas? Did they stay with Brian?”

  “Meg had to go home, and Thomas is covering for me with Peter Peebles. But he can’t do it for long—my parents are coming back tomorrow.”

  “We still have to choose a Princess Pretty,” Emmy said. She caught sight of Mrs. Bunjee in the crowd, and waved, her silk sleeves falling back to her shoulders. The dress was a terrible fit, now that she was no longer a rat.

  Buck and Joe and Ratty—the Underminers—crowded around. “But you’re Princess Pretty,” said Buck.

  “I can’t be Princess Pretty. I’m not a rodent.” Emmy took off the tiara and tilted it back and forth, watching the sparkles reflecting on the surrounding faces. “Chippy can put the jewels back tomorrow. But we still have a crown for tonight.”

  “Well, then, who can we pick? The ballots are all torn and mixed up on the floor.”

  Emmy looked around for inspiration. Her eyes fell on Sissy, standing straight and tall in her royal-blue robe.

  “Sissy,” she said. “Sissy is the one who deserves it.”

  The Underminers looked at one another with raised eyebrows, considering this.

  “But she’s not just a pretty princess,” said Buck thoughtfully. “She stands for something different.”

  Joe nodded. “She was wounded and cold and wet for fifteen hours, and she still came out fighting to live. She’s got guts. She’s got grit.”

  “She’s … Princess Gritty of Rodent City!” said the Rat.

  “That’s it!” cried everyone at once.

  “Except I haven’t written a song,” Raston said worriedly.

  Emmy threw an arm around his shoulders. “Just sing from your heart, Ratty, and make it up as you go.”

  The audience were back in their seats. Mrs. Bunjee was seated in the front row with Sissy, Endear, and the five troubled girls, who were not at all troubled anymore. And now, when Emmy looked at the rodent faces in the crowd, their expressions seemed kinder, too.

  “It’s because you were so brave,” said the professor, standing beside Emmy on the stage. “Your friends have been telling everyone what you’ve done.”

  “It wasn’t so much,” Emmy mumbled, embarrassed.

  “Nonsense.” Professor Capybara fixed her with a penetrating eye. “You rescued four little girls, and stopped a robbery. You saved Merry from almost certain death, and you returned to face the terrifying Mrs. B in order to free Joe and Buck and Raston. After all that, no one can say that you
don’t care about your friends.”

  Professor Capybara nodded approval as Buck and Chippy, arm in arm, announced the new princess. He winked at Raston, who stood nervously in the wings, scribbling last-minute changes to his song. And he smiled as the Swinging Gerbils swelled into the theme song of the evening.

  “Go ahead,” he said to Emmy.

  She walked slowly toward Sissy, carrying the precious tiara on its golden pillow. The professor was right behind, and when they reached the gray rat with the gentle expression, he raised the glittering crown and set it carefully on Sissy’s head.

  The vivid sapphire blue and the wink of diamonds were all reflected in Sissy’s bright eyes. With her silky gray fur and regal blue robe, she didn’t look like a rat who had no education and couldn’t read. She looked like a queen.

  Emmy stepped back, filled with the kind of happiness that comes when you have come through great dangers with good friends, and been forgiven, too. And the Rat stepped up, handsome in his tuxedo, and sang:

  There she is, Princess Gritty—

  There she is, your ideal

  Her dream isn’t for the whole

  World to call her pretty

  Or to act like a victim, soaking up lots of pity

  No, she’d much rather be

  Known for her tenacity.

  There she is, Princess Gritty—

  There she is, your ideal

  For though she was lost and hurt,

  She kept right on trying

  Refused to give up, and stoutly avoided dying …

  And saved, she is!

  Everyone’s fave, she is!

  Worthy of rave, she is!

  Princess Gritty!

  The applause rang, echoing among the rafters. Gerry, with a nod and a grin to the Rat, launched the Swinging Gerbils into “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Rodent”; and within three bars a striped gopher appeared at Emmy’s side.

  “May I have this dance?” asked Gus.

  THE MORNING SUN LINGERED just below the horizon, then popped up, big and pink, and patted the rooftops of Grayson Lake with melon-colored light. It fanned across the triangular green and shone a ray into the window of the Antique Rat, touching seven small boxes laid end to end on a counter.