NO ORDINARY OWL

by Lauraine Snelling

  As soon as the amens faded away—Dad had, Esther noticed, covered Siddy’s mouth during the blessing—the conversation broke out all over the table. Frowning, Esther took this in. She was going to have to be a bit bossy here—for everyone’s good, and especially for the Squad.

  “I found who shot the owls.” Even to her, her voice was louder than usual.

  It did, however, create the desired effect. All conversations ceased. She had every eye upon her. Good.

  “Vee, what have you girls been up to?”

  “Aneta, honey, what’s going on?”

  “Sunny! Did you forget to fill us in on something?”

  The three girls swiveled their gazes to Esther. Sunny drew her lips down in a horrific what-are-you-doing face. Aneta pinked up and began to stammer, “I do not—well—I did not.” Vee gathered the worst Vee Stare ever and shot it full-force at Esther.

  Esther burst out, “It was me who found her. She hurt the owls! She was going to get the Squad in trouble. I saw her in the woods. It’s not the chicken farmer.”

  Parents murmured, “Who’s she?”

  Siddy perked up. “She did it! She did it!” he bellowed, slipping out of his father’s lap like a greased pig at a carnival and running toward Esther. She knelt to grab him, but he eluded her and made a circuit of the table, shouting the phrase in his high-pitched and majorly practiced vocal cords.

  “Siddy!” Esther shouted. “Sit down and be quiet!”

  Siddy didn’t sit and wasn’t quiet.

  “Esther,” her mom said.

  The parents’ murmurs got louder. Beverly looked around from her place at one end of the table. Byron sat in his chair, ramrod straight, the overhead chandelier highlighting his wispy hairs.

  They weren’t getting it.

  “I know who slingshotted our owls. It was Melissa. She’s the one who’s been messing with the cages, too.” She directed this sentence to Byron, who did not respond. “I saw her in the woods.” With a nod toward Bill, whose eyes were wide as he watched Siddy who was continuing to yell, she pronounced, “With your night-vision goggles.”

  Byron cleared his throat. “I think—”

  At the same moment, Esther’s dad said, “Esther, please sit down. Siddy, be quiet!”

  “She did it! She did it!” Siddy was ecstatic. He hadn’t had a phrase like this in a long while. Then, to Esther’s horror, her little brother remembered another favorite phrase: “We’re moving! We’re moving!”

  The girls gasped, turning to their friend who now had no words to say. “What?”

  The table was now a complete mess, people asking her parents about moving, the Squad running up to her and asking questions—mostly, “Why didn’t you tell us?”—and Siddy still shouting, voice shooting higher and shriller. “We’re moving!”

  If only he could stop. Why didn’t her parents just make him stop? His repeating was wrecking everything.

  “Shut up, Siddy!” Esther roared. “You’re ruining everything! You always ruin everything.”

  Siddy stopped running, stopped hollering. He clasped his small hands in front of him and hunched his shoulders, big eyes wide and clear until a tear slipped out of each one.

  Chapter 20

  Regrets

  She would be in eighth grade before she ever got on the Internet again. Two weeks after she’d hurt her brother so terribly, she was still grounded from the computer. Esther rolled right, then left on her bed, then right again. It was only Monday and still two hours till dinner.

  Siddy was staying away from her like he expected her to smack him. Her parents had talked with her about being disappointed and how mean she’d been to her brother and then about Melissa and how you can’t accuse people without proof.

  Yes, she was sorry she’d hurt Siddy. So very sorry. About Melissa? With being grounded and the girls not speaking to her, hard evidence was out of her reach. If that wasn’t bad enough, Byron had shut them out for good this time. She sat up, leaned forward to find her slippers, and, like she was plodding through chocolate pudding, began to pick up her room.

  That night, when her mouth shot off without her brain attached, Byron had stood suddenly and said, “This isn’t going to work. You must all go home and not return. Please.” He didn’t sound mad, but he did sound like he meant it. Then he’d done what he hadn’t since thefirst afternoon the girls had met him. He turned and left the room. The sound of the back door shutting followed soon after.

  The party was over.

  Well.

  So now her secret was out. The Squad knew she was moving. The trouble was, she’d been such a bossy brat, they didn’t care anymore. Not a single one had called to ask if she’d lost her mind. Well, she had lost, lost it all—helping the owls, watching the wild one get launched back, maybe getting to do the launching. And the S.A.V.E. Squad. The tears that had been so hot and burning for fourteen days seared their way out of her eyes again. She was so tired of crying.

  It isn’t fair.

  When she got to this part, the tears dried up and she got mad. It was Melissa’s fault. If Melissa hadn’t hurt the owls, tried to weasel her way into the Squad, and then tried to make them look bad with the sabotage, none of this would have happened.

  Yes.

  It was all Melissa’s fault. The stuck-up rich girl who always got what she wanted.

  “Esther.” Her mom came into Esther’s bedroom, her gaze quickly traveling around the neatly made bed, the clear floor, and the desk without piles. “Your room looks great, honey.”

  Esther shrugged.

  “I’m going to run some errands. I’d like you to come with me.”

  “Who’s going to watch Siddy?” Usually when her mother did errands, Esther got stuck at home babysitting Siddy, since Toby couldn’t make him mind.

  “We’ll leave him with your dad at the church. We’ll just hurry, since your dad has appointments later this afternoon before he can come home for dinner.”

  Now they didn’t trust her to watch her own brother. She sighed and headed for the garage and the minivan. How to get back into the Squad? She didn’t know, and this was nothing the Internet could tell her. If she were allowed on the Internet.

  At the church, they dropped off Siddy. He ran toward her dad’s open arms yelling what her father said to the congregation every Sunday: “This is the day that the Lord has made!” Siddy was sweet, and she had been mean. Double sigh.

  Esther’s mom drove to Snipp’s Super Saver where the two split up the grocery list. While Esther was grabbing items on the list, dumping them in the basket and crossing them off, she was rummaging through her mind. How to get back into the Squad? How to catch Melissa? How to make it right with Siddy? What would Imogene do?

  Yeah right. She must be clean out of ideas if she was wondering what a book character would do.

  Soon the last item on the To Do list was to drop off a bunch of books at the library, leaving Esther no closer to answering the boiling questions in her head. She slumped in her seat. She couldn’t wait to hide in her room again.

  “We’ll have to go in instead of use the book drop,” Mom said, the minivan rolling down Main Street toward the turn for the library. “Siddy needs more Imogene books.”

  That Imogene. Her little brother, odd and exuberant, adored Imogene. He thought she was smart. He trusted her. He thought she was beautiful, although the illustrations of the gap-toothed, wildhaired amateur detective indicated otherwise. Esther found herself wishing she were Imogene.

  “Mom.” An idea rose to the top of the turmoil. “Can I get the Hey, Imogenes? I want to read to Siddy. He likes Imogene. Maybe he’ll like me again if I read to him.”

  “Oh, honey,” her mother said, reaching a hand from the steering wheel to squeeze Esther’s knee. “He loves you so much. He’s just confused now because…well, because of a lot of things.” She sighed a deep sigh like Esther had been doing for two weeks. “It’s not easy being Siddy.” Returning her hand to the steering wheel, she put on her right b
linker. “But that would be great if you could get the next batch. I don’t know what I’m going to do when he gets through the series.”

  With her little brother being the lovey-dovey boy he was, Esther was certain the Hey, Imogene! books would restore their closeness. Now. About the Squad. What can I do to get back into the Squad? What could she do for them to show she was sorry for being so bossy?

  As her mother turned off Main, passing The Sweet Stuff, Esther shot to attention like she’d been pinched. Hard.

  The S.A.V.E. Squad minus one were walking out of the ice cream parlor.

  With Melissa.

  “I feel worse. How could I feel worse? I might as well move now.” Esther, clutching the next four Hey, Imogene! books, regarded Nadine with puppy eyes. She hated it when Siddy drooped puppy eyes at her, but there she was, practically bawling in front of the children’s librarian.

  Nadine brushed her bangs out of her eyes. She smiled. Two things happened when Nadine smiled. Her whole face lifted up like it was happy to have a smile on it, and she didn’t look like a scary librarian who hated kids. “Esther, sometimes things aren’t really what we see.”

  Her parents were forever telling her that. “What does that mean? I don’t get it.” She gulped. “The girls hate me, and Melissa is getting away with hurting owls and taking my place in the Squad.”

  Nadine’s smile stretched farther as she glanced over Esther’s shoulder. “Maybe this will help. What you see is the girls hate you, and you don’t know how to make them not hate you.”

  “Right.”

  Finally. Someone was getting it.

  “I think that maybe what you see is not the truth of the way it really is.”

  Not again! Esther opened her mouth, but Nadine held up an index finger.

  “I see you’re wrong. Turn around.”

  Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Esther obediently turned. Sunny, Aneta, and Vee were charging across the library toward her, arms out, shrieking in whispers, “Esther! You’re here! You’re here!” A breath later, she was swarmed by Squaders and everyone was laughing and crying, including Nadine.

  Chapter 21

  Now What?

  The next day, back to Squad familiar territory, Vee said, “You’re crazy, girl.” Vee crumpled her face into a can’t-believe-it look. “You thought we hated you?”

  “I love you, Esther.” Aneta hugged her for the bazillionth time.

  Even with the four of them sitting in their customary place between two aisles of bookshelves behind Nadine’s chair, Sunny managed to spin on her rear end and throw her arms in the air. “We were investigating what you said about Melissa.”

  Esther blew out a breath. Now she was crying because she was happy. Her cheeks felt stiff with the dried tears. “I’m sorry I was bossy and pushy and—”

  Vee interrupted, and for once Esther didn’t mind. “Now we know why you were. ’Cause you were, you know.”

  With a sheepish grin, Esther nodded. “I was.”

  “You wanted one last perfect Squad mission before you have to move, which I want to tell you I am majorly bummed about,” Sunny said, looking at Esther upside down from where she sprawled.

  “I think I will hide you in my closet,” Aneta said with another hug.

  “What if we each buy a really big suitcase and move with Esther?” Sunny suggested.

  “I’m going to ask my dad for some of his frequent flier miles so we can go see you!” Vee, as always, the practical one.

  An unsteady sigh left Esther. She was still a S.A.V.E. Squad girl.

  “I was afraid once you found out I had to move, you would let Melissa take my place. And then I thought she would get my place before I left!”

  “No way.” Sunny shook her cloud of red curls.

  “But sometimes when I mentioned Melissa, you would look at Vee and then you guys wouldn’t say anything. And then I saw you guys with her yesterday at The Sweet Stuff!” Esther still needed facts.

  Sunny looked at Aneta, who looked at Vee, who leaned forward and glanced at Sunny.

  “You mean the looks when we were walking to the edge of the forest—right before we had to climb trees fast?”

  Esther nodded.

  “Sunny and I had been asking Beverly why you were so grumpy and what had we done. She said we needed to talk to you, but—”

  “I was too grumpy.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell the rest.” Sunny leaned back on her hands. “We didn’t believe you when you first said you saw Melissa through the night-vision goggles.”

  Esther raised her eyebrows.

  “I know.” Sunny leaned on her right hand and waved Esther’s expression away with her left. “Afterward, we talked. None of us wanted to lie and say we believed you if we didn’t.”

  “But you ran out to the van before we could tell you,” Aneta supplied.

  Great.

  Vee walked up and down before them. “We agreed we needed to investigate.”

  “ ’Cept we could never find Melissa until just before we were coming here.” Sunny jumped up and walked behind Vee, imitating her stride. She told Esther that when they saw Melissa and her driver parked at The Sweet Stuff, they knew it might be their only chance, so they followed her in.

  “We were coming to see Nadine to see how to get you to be with us again. We figured you were grounded from the Internet, not us.”

  So. Esther had seen them after their interrogation at The Sweet Stuff.

  “The S.A.V.E. Squad rocks!” Esther clapped her hands. “Did you get her to confess?”

  Another trading of back-and-forth looks. Sunny, nominated by nods, spoke. “Nope.”

  No? Esther’s brows nearly touched each other with her frown. If she’d been there—but wait, bossy had separated her unnecessarily from the Squad already. She wasn’t going there again.

  “She has an alibi.” Aneta pronounced the word carefully.

  “She can’t! I saw her!” Esther wanted to grab her hair and yank. Not Aneta’s long, blond ponytail. Hers. She knew she’d seen her. A tiny doubt prickled her scalp. Hadn’t she?

  Vee shook her head. “Now we are sure. You didn’t see her.”

  “Why didn’t I?”

  They pointed to the large meeting room just off the entrance to the library and said together, “She was there.”

  When Esther still didn’t understand, Sunny told her that Melissa had been giving a PowerPoint presentation—of course—about her horse school in France.

  “On our way in, we checked with the front desk. The lady there said it was supposed to be a picture slideshow of France, but it was all Melissa—of course. Melissa jumping horses, Melissa eating some incredible pastry, Melissa jumping another horse, Melissa standing in her riding gear, Melissa—”

  “Okay!” Esther interrupted. “I get it.” She threw out her hands in a gesture of now what? “I was so sure.” This was not great news. It meant she’d dumped some major drama on a whole lot of people. And been wrong. Esther hated being wrong. As the oldest, she was right more than she was wrong. With the Squad, sometimes they didn’t listen to her enough to know she was right. Boy, she’d been wrong big-time this time. “So now everybody at the dinner thinks Melissa did it. Great. Just great.” A big blast of air burst from her, and she fell flat back on the carpet. “What do I do now?”

  “You mean what do we do now. We’re the Squad, right?”

  “Why the worried faces, my chicks?” The Bird Lady stood over Esther and smiled down at her then around at the group.

  “We’re in Big Trouble.” Sunny leaped to her feet. “We found out Melissa didn’t do the sabotage, and now Beake Man thinks we’re trouble and we’ll never get back to help the owls so we can see them launch back to the wild.”

  Vee jerked her thumb toward redheaded Sunny. “Pretty much what she said.”

  Esther struggled to her feet. “Plus I have to apologize to everyone at your house for yelling that Melissa was the one messing with the fl
ight pens.” Might as well get started with the sorrys. “I’m sorry I ruined your dinner. I’m sorry I was pushy and bossy and said stuff that wasn’t true. I’m sorry Byron now thinks we’re just like all the other kids.” Her voice trailed off with another gusty sigh. All this apologizing was tough.

  Wrapping a skinny arm around Esther, Beverly Beake pulled her to her side. “Oh, child. We will all survive you making a mistake. And you are quite wrong about Byron thinking you’re trouble.”

  “We are?” the Squad said.

  Beverly nodded and waved to Nadine, who was returning to her desk. “Oh yes, indeed. The sabotage and Esther seeing someone on the property that night made him worried for you girls’ safety.”

  “Then why did he get all mad and yell?” Esther wanted to know.

  “I know!” Aneta, who had been listening with brow furrowed, brightened and raised her hand like she was in school. “He was like Esther at dinner!”

  What?

  Her friend turned to her, excited at her understanding of this English language. “Yes! You wanted very much to find who shot the owls. Little brother would not be quiet. You yelled to make us listen because you wanted this very much.”

  Heat crept up Esther’s neck as Sunny and Vee snorted with laughter. Nadine and the Bird Lady pressed their lips together.

  Okay.

  “I get it,” she said, making a hideous face at the floor. “He wanted us to be safe. To make sure we wouldn’t come back. He was mad at the sabotage, not us.” When she looked up, she asked the Bird Lady, “But how do we get back into the estate to help with the birds? How do we find the slingshotter so all Byron’s birds are safe?”

  Beverly’s face lifted in a smile. “I can’t wait to see what you girls come up with for that.”

  The two women waved good-bye and left for their lunch date.

  “Whoa, you guys!” Sunny clutched her hair as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “What?” Vee looked startled at Sunny’s outburst. She’d been looking at her Anti-Trouble Phone, or the ATP, as the girls called it.