Mouse Mission

by Prudence Breitrose

  It was almost dark now, and Megan was glad of the warmth of her mom next to her. Although she knew it was crazy, she couldn’t help imagining people without faces sliding into this safe world. And she nearly screamed when the door burst open and a blurry figure stood there in the dim evening light.

  But it was only Joey who’d just come from soccer practice in the rain, covered with mud, bringing everyone back to earth with his normal question of “What’s for dinner?” He looked very surprised when his stepmother jumped up to give him a hug, in spite of the mud.

  There was little rest at Headquarters that night. The Big Cheese had given the signal for “Code Six,” an emergency code that was seldom used. It meant “all paws on deck.” All two thousand adult mice, and a few of the teenagers, would have one mission: to track down the humans behind Faceless, especially those humans who were working with Loggocorp.

  And yes, “all paws on deck” did indeed include the paws of camera mice and director mice and even performing mice. Until further notice, all work on the Megan Day Gala show would cease.

  hen Megan came home from school the next day she was glad to see her mom’s car in the driveway. She’d had a hard time keeping faceless people out of her mind, and the thought of an empty house was not great.

  “Any news?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said her mom. “I feel so helpless, stuck over here.”

  “So why don’t you go talk to Sir Brian yourself?” said Megan. “I’d have to come too, of course, because you promised, remember, when you went to that conference in Rome? That you’d take me along the next time you went to Europe?”

  At least that made her mom laugh.

  Megan did her homework in the kitchen that day, while Trey helped with algebra and Julia leaned comfortingly against her neck. No way faceless people could slide under the door into this warm, bright room where her mom was thawing dinner because in her distracted state, she said, getting a meal ready from scratch wasn’t going to happen.

  The smell of meatloaf in the microwave was filling the kitchen when a bell rang in the corner, low down.

  Megan sang out “Incoming!” and ran to the flap that closed off the mouse-tunnel, a long drainpipe that Uncle Fred had installed so that mice could run here from Planet Mouse with no danger from hawks or passing cats. The bell was a later addition, and a necessary one, because the first couple of times that a mouse skidded into view, Susie Fisher’s reflexes acted faster than her scientific brain and she came out with some fearful EEEEKs, as if something about a mouse popping up at her feet pushed some deep evolutionary button. So Uncle Fred had set up a trigger inside the pipe that rang a warning bell when someone was about to appear.

  This time, four mice shot into the room. First came a mouse with two dots on her ear—Julia—followed by her clan-mates Curly and Larry, their ears marked with one dot and three, respectively, so humans could tell them apart.

  After them came Savannah. She didn’t need dots, of course, because her hats did a much better job of identifying her. Today she’d chosen a big red one, its brim slightly bent from contact with the walls of the mouse-tunnel. And she was wearing a necklace that worked fine when she was sashaying on her hind legs—not so great when she had to run through a tunnel, and it kept getting tangled up with her front paws.

  “It’s not fair!” she said now, leaping onto the table to face Susie. “It’s so not fair to me or my little Larrykins. Right, Larrykins?”

  The humans were somewhat puzzled by the strong friendship that had grown between Larry and Savannah, because the two mice were absolute opposites. Larry was strong and silent (literally silent, since he hadn’t been born with Talkmouth, the slightly floppy mouth that can be trained to make human sounds). Savannah was almost never silent, a mouse who loved the finer things in life—clothes, jewels, the glitter of Hollywood.

  “What’s not fair?” asked Susie, with only a ghost of the smile she usually wore when she was dealing with Savannah.

  “My show!” wailed Savannah. “They’ve dropped my show! My gala! After all our work! I heard it was Sir Quentin’s fault. That old…And my poor, poor Larrykins, his sports report all wasted!”

  “Oh, come on,” said Susie. “It’s not that bad, is it? There’ll be other galas!”

  “But nothing like this! It was our big chance! My pathway to fame and fortune!”

  Not for the first time, Megan marveled at the way Savannah could somehow forget she was a mouse. Fame? Yes, but only among mice. Fortune? No way she could make any money from the show, or spend money if she had it.

  In his unhappiness, Larry had climbed up to the tabletop and was leaning against Megan’s hand while Julia pressed herself against his other side to provide an all-over comfort wrap. But Megan could see from the way Larry gazed around the room that he really wanted Joey, wanted his boy. They had bonded because Joey was Larry’s link to the sports he loved to follow, in the basketball season, the baseball season, and now the soccer season.

  But where was Joey? Couldn’t he somehow guess when he was needed? Couldn’t he get his butt home once in a while, for his mouse?

  It was almost dark. Jake had come home from Planet Mouse through the gate in the back fence and was setting the table when there was a clatter outside, the human equivalent of “incoming,” the familiar sound of a bike being parked on its side.

  Megan waited for Joey to burst into the kitchen, to sing out “Hi, Mom” to her mom, then to grab some crackers because his growth spurt couldn’t wait for meatloaf.

  But no. Instead, Megan heard the sound of a basketball. She ran to a window for a view of the driveway. Basketball now? In the dark? Then she saw why Joey hadn’t come in, and she felt madder than ever. He’d actually invited a friend over. Someone who might even be coming in for a snack as Joey’s seventh-grade friends often did, all of them growing, all of them able to eat a packet of cookies in one gulp.

  “A Snuggle,” Megan said as she turned back to the kitchen. “He’s actually brought home a Snuggle.”

  Snuggle? Yes, that was the word that came out of one of the regular Tuesday meetings with the Big Cheese. Joey had referred to the humans who didn’t Know as Muggles, which is what they’d be in Harry Potter’s world, of course. The Big Cheese had tapped his mouth with his paw in the gesture that means “Laughing out loud.”

  “I see no necessity,” he had said, while Sir Quentin translated his gestures, “to adapt a circumlocution previously tooled for humanoids of a fictional persuasion. It is surely preferable for the fertile brains of our inestimable band to develop a personalized nomenclature appropriate to our particular circumstances.”

  As he often did, Trey whispered a translation of the translation. “Don’t want to imitate Harry Potter. Better think of something that works for us.”

  And Snuggle was the name they chose, because (as Susie pointed out) it made the rest of humanity sound warm and cuddly, which was fine because neither the five Humans Who Knew nor the Mouse Nation bore the rest of humanity any ill will.

  Except right now. This was so not the time for a Snuggle invasion. With a Snuggle on the premises, the mice had to be ready to sprint for hiding places, or jump into the cage in the corner and follow the rules for WWAPMD, or “What Would a Pet Mouse Do”—taking turns on the exercise wheel while the Snuggle said, “Cool,” or “EEEEK,” or whatever.

  Susie Fisher sighed. “Any way we can get rid of him?” she asked.

  “I’ll try,” said Megan, and she headed outside.

  This Snuggle didn’t look like Joey’s other friends, who were mostly jocks. This one was pale and pudgy with thick glasses, standing as if he had no clue what to do with the basketball in his hands. As he gave it a sort of little-kid heave that sent it about halfway to the rim, Joey turned to Megan, and his expression was unmistakable. “Help!”

  Megan took the hint.

  “Are you ever in trouble,” she said, making herself scowl, which wasn’t hard. “You’re so late. Mom wants you inside
—right now!”

  “Okay,” said Joey, and headed for the door. “Sorry, Ryan. Another time.”

  The boy reached out toward Joey as if he wanted to make him stay. Then he let his arms dangle, his face blank, before he turned to head out toward the street. That’s when Megan saw the girl sitting cross-legged on the cold grass beside the driveway, shivering in a jacket that looked way too thin for this fall evening. She had the same pale look as the boy, as if she seldom went outside, and she looked vaguely familiar from school.

  “Hi, Megan,” said the girl. “Can you play?”

  It wasn’t hard to say, “Sorry, my mom needs me too,” and to run back inside and shut the door, though not before she’d seen the man standing out in the street, watching.

  “I was at Caden’s house,” Joey was explaining. “We’re working on a project for social studies. This Ryan guy was waiting for me in the street, for some reason.”

  “He’s a friend of yours?” asked Jake.

  “No way, Dad! I don’t think he has any friends. He said he wanted a favor and he’d tell me about it when we got to my house. Weird.”

  “So what was the favor?” asked Jake.

  “I dunno. He never told me,” said Joey. “Hey, what’s the problem? What’s going on?”

  Larry had rushed up his arm and settled on his shoulder, leaning against his neck. Mice can’t cry, of course, but they do go into an all-over tremble when they’re exceptionally sad, and now the mouse-vibrations were hard to ignore.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” said Savannah. “I’ll speak up for my poor Larrykins. Something happened with that rain forest or coconuts or something. Big deal. Well, okay, I know that’s serious, but what’s it got to do with galas? Tell me that!”

  “Huh?” asked Joey.

  “The Big Cheese stopped our gala! He said we might have to save it for next year! Next Megan Day! After all our work, me and Larrykins. We were both going to be famous and…”

  “Hush, Savannah, hush,” said Susie. “I’m sure it’s just until the mice find those hackers. Megan Day’s not for a couple of weeks, right? Maybe you’ll get your show back.”

  There was a knock at the front door. It was Uncle Fred, though he usually came to The Fishery by way of the gate between the two backyards.

  “I’d just locked up the office,” he said. “I was heading back to my house when I ran into my old pal Jeff Crumline. He used to work with me at the computer shop, until they fired him because he was really bad with people. He wanted to know if we had any work for him.”

  “And you said no,” said Jake.

  “You kidding?” said Uncle Fred. “Course I said no.”

  “And?” asked Susie, who could tell when her brother was holding something back. “And, and, and?”

  “He had his kids with him, Ryan and Emily. Said they’d like to come over and play. That was the word he used. Play.”

  “And you said?” prompted Jake.

  “Well, I said it was up to Megan and Joey, obviously. Oh, and I told him you were both very busy. All the time,” he added, with a grin at Megan.

  It was a gift to Megan’s mom, and here it came. Back to the topic Megan had been expecting yesterday, before the rain forest grabbed everyone’s attention.

  “Megan really isn’t busy after school, are you, my love?” she said. “Emily might be very nice. And you could use some new friends. Right?”

  “Mom, I don’t need new friends!” said Megan. “I have plenty of friends.”

  Jake laughed.

  “Maybe at least one of them should be human?” he said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.

  When Megan came home from school the next day, Joey was doing homework in the kitchen, while Curly and Larry cruised for crumbs from the cookies he’d been eating.

  “Any Snuggles follow you home?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said, his mouth full of the peanut butter sandwich he was using to wash down the cookies.

  She reached for the cookie packet, which was suspiciously light.

  “You’ve finished them all? Again?”

  “Left a couple for you,” he said. “Or maybe just one.”

  “Grrr,” said Megan. But at least having Joey in the kitchen gave her some protection against anything faceless that might try to sidle into The Fishery, so she took the cookie upstairs to her room, where Julia was waiting to give her the day’s lesson in MSL.

  Megan loved her lessons with Julia. She was brilliant at finding ways to adapt MSL for humans, so that braids and fingers made the signs normally assigned to ears and tails.

  They’d reached a series of signs describing the weather, and Julia was demonstrating the rather violent gestures that mean “Thunderstorm” (it’s the sign for rain—a pitter-pattering of paws—combined with sharp jumps) when Megan’s phone rang. It was Uncle Fred, with the sort of bounce in his voice that meant people were listening at his end. His good old friend Jeff was at Planet Mouse, with his kids. Could she come over? And bring Joey?

  So soon? Now? This was so much what Megan didn’t want to do, for so many reasons. There was a scuttling under her dresser, and Trey appeared just as she clicked off the phone.

  “You heard?” he said, a little out of breath. “I came over to warn you. Those are two strange kids.”

  “Do I have to go over?” she asked.

  “By human rules, I guess you do,” he said. “Besides, who knows?”

  “You mean who knows if this might be my big chance for a real human friend?”

  “That too,” said Trey.

  “What else? What do mice know about Emily?”

  “Nothing,” said Trey quickly. “If our guys have been checking up on her, I haven’t heard about it.”

  It was something that mice often mentioned—the fact that they had access to information about almost every human on the planet. It was a huge database made up of reports from hundreds of millions of mouse clans on their host families. A month ago, the five Humans Who Knew had asked the Big Cheese if they could have access to the database too. Wouldn’t it be useful (for example) to know the truth about that strange guy Susie worked with at Cleveland State? Or about a big customer for solar belt-buckles who might not be able to pay? Or the teacher at Lakeview Middle School who seemed exceptionally mean?

  “In our view,” the Big Cheese had said, “access to such knowledge would be unhelpful. It would distort relationships that otherwise might prove fruitful and satisfying.”

  Trey was allowed to drop hints that helped Megan stay out of trouble with, say, an English teacher who hated rodents so much that she’d give a bad grade to any story involving mice. But he had heard nothing about Emily.

  “Maybe she’s what she seems,” he said. “Maybe she just needs a friend.”

  Megan sighed, because did Emily’s friend have to be her? She ran down to the kitchen to collect Joey, who was stuffing books into his backpack. “Good luck,” he said. “I saw them arriving.”

  “So we both have to go over,” she said.

  “Dang! Wish I could, but I just remembered my soccer practice. Or band practice. Or chess club. Or something,” said Joey. “Come on, guys.”

  He scooped up Larry and Curly and shot out of the house, leaving Megan to walk over to Planet Mouse by herself and pretend to be a normal kid, maybe even one who might be in need of a normal human friend.

  n the bright light of Planet Mouse, the three humans looked no less strange than they had last night. A skinny man, whose hair was even shaggier than Uncle Fred’s. His son, peering through thick glasses, his T-shirt barely making it over his belly to his jeans. And the pale, skinny girl blinking behind the same sort of glasses as her brother.

  They stood as if they were beings from another planet, unsure about the rules down here on Earth, not knowing whether they should sit, or stand, or smile, or hold out a hand in greeting.

  Megan remembered the girl now. She’d noticed her at recess, always walking, keeping as far away from othe
r kids as she could get. That had been Megan’s own technique to get through recess in the many new schools that had been inflicted on her recently. Keep walking as if you’re going somewhere. But for a kid who wasn’t new, who’d probably lived in this part of Cleveland for years, it was indeed weird. Or sad.

  Over the top of the girl’s head, Uncle Fred looked at Megan with what could have been an apology. “Sorry about this.”

  “Joey had to go off somewhere,” Megan said.

  “Okay,” said Uncle Fred. “So Ryan can stay with us and take the tour while you and Emily hang out. Check?”

  “Check,” she said, giving Uncle Fred the look that means, “You owe me one,” which he acknowledged with a sort of half smile.

  Emily allowed herself to be led past the garage where seven hundred mice toiled secretly at the assembly lines of the mouse factory, and through the backyard to The Fishery.

  “What would you like to do?” Megan asked, when they reached the kitchen.

  For once she wished she’d done what her mom wanted—hung out with girls after school. Then at least she’d be more used to this. There hadn’t been any girls her age on the island where she’d spent her third- and fourth-grade years, living in a cabin on the mountainside while her mom did research on wild sheep. When she came back to America—was it only last year?—she’d forgotten how to make friends with humans. It took months to get to know just one girl at her school in Oregon.

  Caitlin. And Caitlin was the opposite of this…this lump of girl, this girl-shaped hole in the universe who followed Megan obediently without showing much interest in anything. Caitlin would be bubbling with ideas for things to do, like checking out Web sites, or playing basketball, or trying out a candy recipe.

  But when Megan asked Emily, “What would you like to do?” all she got back was a shrug.

  Megan was so not enjoying this. “Want to see my room?” she asked finally, dimly remembering what kids on television said in situations like this one.