Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat

by Lynne Jonell

  Emmy grinned.

  “I got stock tips from the New York Drone, and I was very interested in Psychology Piffle. But my favorite was Nummi Gourmet. Those pictures of chocolate mousse—mmmm—and toast points …

  “Speaking of which—” The Rat’s tone sharpened. “What was it you said about sausages?”

  “I’ll see what I can bring back from breakfast. But I’ve got to hurry. And you’d better keep out of sight.”

  The Rat sat on Emmy’s dresser and licked the last bit of breakfast sausage off his paws. “Excellent flavor,” he remarked. “But a little heavy on the lint. Did you have to put them in your pocket?”

  “Yes,” said Emmy briefly, stuffing her homework into her backpack. It hadn’t been easy, sneaking them off her plate under the watchful eye of Mrs. Brecksniff—not to mention the cat, Muffy, who had a strong liking for sausages and a very persistent meow.

  “Weren’t there any peanut-butter cups?”

  “For breakfast?”

  “Why not?” The Rat skipped nimbly onto Emmy’s arm and ran over her shoulder. Emmy felt a little thump and a rummaging sort of feeling inside the pack on her back. “Just drop me off outside, will you?”

  Emmy shut the bedroom door behind her. “You think you’ll have better luck with the squirrels in my yard?”

  “I couldn’t have worse,” the Rat said grumpily. “That squirrel yesterday was an absolute moron. And the chipmunks weren’t much better. I could barely understand them, and they certainly didn’t understand me.” A little worry crept into the Rat’s voice. “Perhaps I haven’t been educated properly. Maybe Teacher’s Tattle was right—American schools should offer more languages.”

  Emmy started down the stairs as the Rat burst out again, fretfully. “How can I be a star, a high-achieving rat, when I’ve never even studied Rodentese?”

  Emmy shrugged. “Nobody expects you to be anything more than an ordinary rat, as far as I know.”

  The Rat gave an incredulous snort. “And are you content to be just an ordinary girl?”

  Emmy trailed her hand along the smooth wood of the banister, wishing she dared slide down it. If she were an ordinary girl, she would. If she were an ordinary girl, she’d have parents at home and cake on her birthday.

  “I wouldn’t mind being ordinary,” Emmy said.

  “And that,” said the Rat darkly, “is yet another flaw in the American school system. Low expectations. Leading—yourself as a prime example—to drab, ordinary children. Oh, the shame …”

  Emmy took the last four steps in one leap and landed in the kitchen with a bounce that shook the Rat into silence.

  “Is this my lunch, Maggie? Are there any peanut-butter cups?”

  “Peanut-butter cups?” Miss Barmy appeared in the doorway, abruptly reaching for the bag. “I’ve told you before, I won’t have this child poisoning herself with sugar! Now, what happened to those tofu muffins?” She rummaged in the refrigerator as she spoke, pulling out bran bars. “This is the food a growing child needs.”

  Maggie glanced pityingly at Emmy as Miss Barmy repacked the lunch bag with a great noise of crinkling paper. The Rat poked his head out to see the commotion, uttered a distressed squeak, and fell back in again.

  Emmy felt something brush against her leg. It was the cat.

  “Oh, go away, you,” Emmy muttered. Muffy, staring earnestly at the backpack, began to meow.

  “There!” Miss Barmy held out the lunch sack. “Why, whatever is the matter with that cat? It seems to be staring at your—”

  “Miss Barmy!” Emmy interrupted hurriedly. “Did you have a nice day out yesterday? Where did you go?” She opened her eyes wide.

  A little muscle jumped at the corner of Miss Barmy’s eye. “Nowhere in particular,” she said vaguely. “Dear me, we mustn’t forget our herbal scent on the pulse points.” She took a small bottle from her sleeve, shaking it fussily.

  Emmy smiled with secret joy. She had just discovered something: the way to keep the nanny from being too nosy about Emmy’s business was to ask questions about things Miss Barmy would rather keep hidden!

  The nanny dabbed a little liquid behind Emmy’s ears. “The lovely scent will linger all day, providing a pleasant respite from the rigors of study.”

  Emmy, by a wrenching effort, managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Of all Miss Barmy’s weird herbal remedies, this was the most pointless. The scent that she dabbed on didn’t even smell particularly nice—and after the first few minutes, Emmy didn’t notice it at all.

  Miss Barmy sipped her prune juice, humming a little under her breath. “Don’t forget, Emmaline—tonight is quality time with your parents. It’s on the schedule—fifteen minutes, or perhaps more if you’re good.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Emmy, turning to go. Fifteen minutes’ quality time—she’d get a lot more than that. Just the ride from the airport was thirty minutes, at least!

  Maggie held the back door open and winked. And as Emmy passed outside, she felt something being dropped quietly into her pocket.

  Two peanut-butter cups.

  EMMY OPENED HER BACKPACK behind the hedge. “Climb out—I’m going to be late for school.”

  “Is it safe?” The Rat peered up, squinting in the sudden light. “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that—”

  “Meow?” A furry golden head pushed past Emmy’s arm to peer into the backpack. The Rat tumbled over in a dead faint.

  “Oh, great, Muffy.” Emmy pushed the cat away with an impatient hand. “Scare him to death, why don’t you?”

  The cat looked smug.

  “Well, I’ll have to take him to school now,” said Emmy. “No thanks to you.” She hoisted the pack and took off at a run. She slid into her seat just as the last bell rang, undid the top flap of her backpack, and risked a whisper.

  “Rat!”

  No answer.

  Worried, Emmy got a bathroom pass and took her backpack with her. “Ratty? Speak to me!”

  The Rat moaned from the depths of the pack. “Did you have to run the whole way?”

  “Oh, Rat, I’m sorry—”

  He put a paw to his head. “I felt like cement in a mixer. And my heart is still racing from that … that … what did you call that cat?”

  “Muffy,” Emmy said miserably.

  “Muffy?” the Rat repeated in tones of disbelief. “Not Fang? Not Assassin?” He shook his head and looked around. “What is this place?”

  “The girls’ bathroom,” Emmy said. “At school.”

  “School?” the Rat shrieked. “You take me back to my prison?”

  “Listen. You can take a nap”—Emmy looked around for inspiration—“in a soft nest,” she finished, crumpling some toilet paper in the bottom of her backpack. “I’ll drop in something to eat at lunchtime. Come on, get in.”

  The Rat looked sourly at her. “I’m hungry now. Is your lunch in that sack?”

  “You can have it. Have anything you want. Just hurry.”

  The Rat poked his nose into the lunch bag. “Hmm, this looks interesting.” He took a bite, chewed, and stopped, looking distressed. “Great rat droppings, what is this slop?”

  “Tofu muffin. Sorry. It wasn’t my idea.”

  “No peanut-butter cups?”

  Emmy put her hand in her pocket and hesitated. “First promise me that you’ll stay in my backpack all day.”

  “Scout’s honor,” the Rat said, holding up a paw.

  Emmy looked at him. “You’re not a Scout.”

  “As good as,” the Rat said. “They held Scout meetings in that classroom every week after school for as long as I can remember. I can tie all the knots—”

  “All right,” said Emmy, cutting him short. “Get in.”

  “Where’s my peanut-butter cup?”

  Emmy handed one in. “Don’t make any noise,” she warned, but the Rat was too busy chewing to answer.

  Emmy pushed back hot bangs from her sweaty forehead. A smell of cut grass drifted in as a lawn mower droned outside,
and Mr. Herbifore looked warm and bored as he lectured on the exports of Asia. The class listened with glazed eyes, half asleep.

  Emmy, however, was wide awake. She had to be, to cover up the noise the Rat was making.

  There he went, rustling again! Emmy faked a cough, wondering for the seventeenth time why the Rat couldn’t just lie still. Weren’t rodents supposed to be nocturnal? Why couldn’t this one sleep all day?

  Emmy tried not to look at the Rat’s empty cage. No one had seemed to notice that he was missing, but it was only a matter of time, and the knowledge gave her a horrible sense of impending doom.

  A noise of slamming books and banging desktops gave Emmy the cover she needed. She bent over her backpack as if to take out the assignment that Mr. Herbifore had just called for.

  “Will you please be quiet?” she hissed.

  The Rat turned a despairing face upward. “But I’m so hot,” he quavered. “I’m baking in here, and no one cares.”

  “We’re all hot,” said Emmy impatiently, “but you’re the only one I hear moaning. And what was that ripping sound?”

  The Rat waved a pleated bit of white paper. “I only made a fan.”

  Emmy felt exasperated. “Out of my homework?”

  Two large brown shoes came into view and stopped beside Emmy’s desk. “Your poetry assignment?”

  “Um …” Emmy didn’t look up at Mr. Herbifore as she pulled a sheet of lined paper from her backpack. At the top, neatly written, was her name. A jagged edge was all that was left of the lower right corner.

  Mr. Herbifore looked critically at the paper as a shadow passed by the window. Emmy glanced out, half seeing a small, stooped figure duck behind the lilac bushes. Had the school hired a new gardener?

  “This is hardly acceptable,” said the teacher. “What’s your excuse? The cat chewed it?”

  Emmy felt like strangling the Rat.

  “Stay after school and copy it over. Five points off for messiness.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Emmy whispered bitterly into her backpack when it was safe.

  “Would you rather I died of heatstroke?” The Rat sniffed. “At least in my cage I had a water dish and the breeze from the window.”

  “Fine,” said Emmy. “I’ll put you back in. You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since I set you free.”

  Ignoring the Rat’s sudden look of dismay, she set the pack on the floor but relented enough to open the top flap a crack. She glanced up—and caught Joe staring at the backpack with unusual interest.

  “… And so poetry is an expression of one’s deeper emotions,” the teacher intoned, still shuffling through the papers he had collected. “I’ll read a few aloud, and let’s see if we can discover what the author was really saying. Here’s an interesting one. ‘I always have to practice hard, even out in my back yard—’”

  Out in the hall, there was a sound of footsteps, and a shadowy figure paused in the doorway. Emmy looked up.

  A small man stepped forward, passed a bony hand over thinning brown hair, and peered into the classroom.

  Emmy’s heart gave a bump.

  It was Professor Vole.

  “Yes? May I help you with something?” asked Mr. Herbifore.

  Emmy slid down in her seat. How had he known where to find her? And what would he do when he saw the Rat’s cage was empty? Emmy felt a sudden stillness in her middle—and the Rat chose that moment to squeak.

  Luckily, Joe dropped a book immediately afterward.

  Emmy opened the lid of her desk and lifted her backpack as if to rummage in it. Hidden behind the open desk top, she frowned fiercely.

  “Will—you—be—quiet?”

  “But … but …” The Rat was shaking. “I heard a voice. It scares me! I remember—”

  Emmy watched as the Rat twisted his paws together anxiously. “What do you remember?” She glanced quickly at the doorway, where Mr. Herbifore and Brian’s uncle were still talking.

  “I was just a little ratling in the nest—me and Sissy together. Our mother was gone—just for a minute, she said—and then I heard that voice! And then the big hand came and scooped us up! I bit it, too—I did—but then it squished me—the big, bony hand! The big hand!”

  Emmy gave the Rat a little shake. “Hush!” she whispered fiercely, slipping the pack to the floor just as Mr. Herbifore turned.

  “You’re welcome to look at our rat,” he was saying, “but I’ve had him for years. I found him shivering in the schoolyard and kept him for a class pet.”

  “It was years ago that I lost him,” the professor said in his reedy voice, following Mr. Herbifore like a black, musty shadow.

  The professor, his thin face eager, never glanced Emmy’s way. He walked down the window aisle and stopped, his eyes devouring the cage.

  “That’s odd,” said Mr. Herbifore. “He’s usually active at this time of day. Perhaps he’s hiding. I’ll check inside his shelter.”

  “Stop!” The rat man’s voice was anxious. “You mustn’t let yourself be bitten! Just give me the cage.”

  “My dear sir!” Mr. Herbifore sounded affronted. “I can handle a mere rodent. After all, I’m a teacher—”

  “And I am a professor, my dear sir, and I’m telling you, you must not be bitten! I will not answer for the consequences!”

  Emmy’s heart had begun a slow, hard pounding. She risked a glance at her backpack and stiffened. The Rat was peeking out. His nose twitched as he sniffed the air—and then he caught sight of Professor Vole.

  There was a soft thud as the Rat fell back into the depths of the pack.

  Emmy heard a sound like a snarling dog. Only it wasn’t a dog at all. It was the rat man, and he was looking straight at her.

  “YOU LITTLE THIEF,” Professor Vole rasped, low in his throat. “Where’s my rat?”

  “Now, just a minute!” The indignant voice of Mr. Herbifore came over the roaring in Emmy’s ears.

  Professor Vole twisted around. “She was in my shop yesterday, telling me about this rat,” he said, in his thin, reedy voice, now taut with anger. “And now he’s gone!”

  Mr. Herbifore straightened, frowning. “Why is this one rat so important? Surely you can buy another at any pet store—and you might get one that’s better tempered.”

  “Another rat?” The rat man stared. “That rat was irreplaceable. You have absolutely no conception of its value.” He fixed Emmy with his pale eyes. “What have you done with my rat?”

  Emmy lifted her chin and glared right back. A new and unaccustomed spirit of defiance was stinging in her veins. So she had set the Rat free. So what? The Rat was his own creature—not just a piece of property!

  “HEY!” Professor Vole grabbed her desktop and wrenched it open. “Trying to hide him, are you?”

  Emmy’s heart gave a sudden, violent leap. She shrank back against her chair as the man’s big, bony hands made a jumble of the papers inside her desk, spilling them onto the floor. She felt, rather than saw, Joe move from his seat to pick up the scattered papers in the aisle.

  “Stop this instant!” Mr. Herbifore’s voice scaled up. “Leave that girl alone; she wouldn’t do anything against the rules, you hardly even know she’s there most days—”

  The rat man showed his small, white teeth in an alarming grin. “Ah ha! You’ve got him in your backpack!”

  He made a sudden pounce, pulled the backpack from under Emmy’s desk, and tossed out the contents in one violent motion. Papers fluttered as Mr. Herbifore squawked in outrage. Emmy, frozen, could only stare.

  But there was no shout of triumph from Professor Vole, no frightened squeak from the Rat. There was just a blank silence as the rat man stood, staring at the empty pack as if he had been cheated.

  “There! Are you satisfied now? Get out of my room this instant!” The teacher grasped the little man firmly by the arm and propelled him toward the door.

  Emmy looked down at the mess, dazed. And then her eyes focused on unfamiliar handwriting. These weren’t her papers! The name at
the top of the pages was “Joe Benson.” It had been Joe’s backpack the old man had ransacked!

  But then where was hers? Emmy looked across the aisle at Joe, who grinned triumphantly, clasping his hands over his head like a victorious boxer.

  “I saw that!” The rat man, purple with rage, struggled in Mr. Herbifore’s grip. “That boy—he stole my rat! Look in his backpack! Give back my rat, or I’ll sue the whole school!”

  Mr. Herbifore looked suddenly nervous. “You’ll have to discuss that with the principal. But,” he added, his voice growing a little stronger, “I will not tolerate threats or further searches of student property. That behavior is … Inappropriate. It’s … Unacceptable! It’s … just … plain …”

  Mr. Herbifore stopped, his face red. He seemed to be wrestling with himself. “I’m tolerant,” he muttered, “I never make negative value judgments or verbalize blame.” His voice rose, and he threw back his head. “I haven’t used a single banned word since being requalified by the Institute of Nice Educators and Pleasant Teachers. But I don’t care anymore. I’m going to say it. Your behavior is just—plain—”

  “Well?” said Professor Vole.

  “It’s BAD!” Mr. Herbifore burst out passionately. “It’s WRONG! And you should be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!”

  Professor Vole looked suddenly smaller.

  “Oh, the RELIEF!” cried the teacher, jabbing the professor’s chest with his finger. “To finally be able to SAY it!”

  The professor backed up with each jab, stumbling over his feet. The children watched in fascination as, with one last emphatic shove, Mr. Herbifore pushed the man out the door, slammed it hard, and picked up the phone.

  “Take out your workbooks and do page 47,” he said over his shoulder. “Oh, yes. I’d like to speak to the principal immediately,” he said into the phone.

  Emmy, stunned—she hadn’t known Mr. Herbifore had it in him—sneaked a look at Joe as she reached for her workbook. A warm, grateful feeling bloomed as she saw her backpack safe under his desk. Good old Joe.

  She flashed a victory sign and Joe grinned, glancing at the pack. And then his face took on a look of dismay. Seeping out from the bottom of Emmy’s pack, and wetting the bottom of Joe’s shoes, was a spreading yellow puddle.