Mouse Mission

by Prudence Breitrose

  “I guess,” said Emily, in not much more than a whisper.

  In Megan’s room, Trey was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone underground, as he called it, lurking behind the walls or beneath furniture as he spied on human happenings. But Julia was on duty as pet mouse, dozing in the cage Megan had bought when Julia begged for her own exercise wheel.

  The sight of Julia did seem to push a button in Emily, cranking her up to produce a few words.

  “Can it do tricks on that computer?” she asked in a voice that was still almost a whisper, pointing at the Thumbtop on Megan’s desk. “Your mouse?”

  “Oh, you saw the show?” asked Megan.

  Emily nodded because who hadn’t seen the clips of Trey pretending to operate a Thumbtop on national television? That television show had been part of the Big Cheese’s scheme to get Uncle Fred to New York, of course, part of the Nation’s nice soft trap for him and Jake, luring them into a meeting with the Wall Street branch of the Mouse Nation to make a deal. But it had also meant instant fame.

  “Let’s see if he can remember those tricks,” said Megan as she reached into the old cage, thinking how useful it was that it’s almost impossible to tell male mice from females. Julia went into full WWAPMD, scrabbling around like a pet mouse to avoid the reaching hand, until she allowed herself to be cornered over by the exercise wheel.

  Megan put her down next to the Thumbtop on her desk, her arms making a circle as if to keep a mouse from running away. After spinning around a couple of times in a display of her best WWAPMD, Julia turned to look blankly at the two girls as she backed up until she accidentally sat on the keyboard of the tiny computer. Then she turned and clicked on a couple of keys with her nose, to show that she could.

  Megan laughed, but Emily didn’t seem to do laughter. All she said was, “Can I try it?”

  Megan thought fast. This was the Thumbtop her mice used, and she had no clue what it had been doing. Who’d been on it last? Was it Trey, chatting with old friends at the Talking Academy in San Francisco? Julia, e-mailing relatives from her original clan, the one in Uncle Fred’s house? Had the last mouse signed off properly, leaving the Mouse Nation’s site protected?

  “Sorry,” she said, crossing her fingers to cover the lie. “This Thumbtop has actually crashed—I’ll have to get my uncle to fix it. You can try my laptop if you like. It’s fairly new, and I’m still finding out what it can do.”

  She put the Thumbtop in her pocket and carried Julia back to the cage while Emily sat in front of the shiny new laptop on Megan’s desk. Which was safe, wasn’t it? The last thing Megan had done on it was to check out Creaturebook, the social network site for endangered animals that the Humans Who Knew had launched in partnership with Daisy Dakota, who was probably the most famous teenage star on the planet.

  Yes, Creaturebook. That was safe. Megan leaned over Emily’s shoulder and clicked to bring it up, navigating to the page that showed Megan’s own friend-animal, an endangered mouse from an island just off the coast of Africa.

  “See?” she explained. “You can click on your animal’s friends. Animals with the same sort of problem.”

  Emily obediently clicked and came to a picture of an endangered three-toed sloth. “This guy’s in really bad shape,” Megan began, and pointed to the other “friends” on her mouse’s page. “Look, there’s a flying squirrel from North Carolina and a mountain beaver, and…” Her voice trailed off because Emily wasn’t looking at the Creaturebook page, but gazing up at Megan with an expression that seemed to mean, “Why are you hovering like that?”

  To be polite, Megan backed away. But as she did so, she made a sign to Julia in the cage. It was a sign Julia had taught Megan only last week—the right paw (or hand) touching the forehead just above the right eye. “Keep watch.”

  Megan picked up a book and sat on her bed, pretending not to be suspicious, pretending to read for all of three minutes before she felt a slight tug on the bedspread that meant a mouse was climbing up. Trey.

  He squirmed up to her ear and whispered, “Come with me. Big bedroom.”

  “Be right back,” she said, but Emily barely looked up as Megan carried Trey out to her parents’ bedroom, the one that overlooked the backyard, and beyond it the yard at Planet Mouse, and the three-car garage that housed the factory.

  There was Ryan, trundling a garbage can over toward the factory’s high window. They watched as he clambered onto the can so he could peer through the window where he’d see…well, absolutely nothing, because Jake had blocked off the view, just in case.

  Originally, Jake had covered the window completely, but the worker mice complained—politely, which is the way of mice. They had loved the glimpse of leaves and sky that had come through that window. So Jake compromised, putting up just enough of a baffle to block human eyes while leaving a bit of view for the mice inside.

  “Do you think he has a clue what’s in there?” Megan whispered anxiously. “Do you think he can hear the machinery?”

  “Hope not,” said Trey. “But I’ll tell Mr. Fred to get him out of there, just in case.” He hopped off Megan’s shoulder and sprinted downstairs for the mouse-tunnel.

  Megan stayed at the window of the master bedroom until Trey must have arrived at Planet Mouse, because she saw Uncle Fred saunter out, with Emily’s dad in tow. They couldn’t miss Ryan, still perched on his garbage can.

  Megan saw Uncle Fred laugh, then wave at the side door of the garage as if inviting both Jeff and his son to take a look. And he unlocked the door to display—well, nothing. Nothing but a wall of cardboard boxes all stamped THUMBTOPS FOR DELIVERY. Just a warehouse full of computers that could have been made in China. Or Malaysia. Maybe Ecuador. Wherever.

  Of course Uncle Fred wouldn’t have shown them the secret button on the wall that caused a column of boxes to swing inward, revealing what went on behind them: seven hundred mice busy on the assembly lines.

  “Sorry I took so long,” lied Megan, getting back to her room. “I thought I heard someone at the front door. And then, of all things—”

  But Emily didn’t look as if she’d missed her. All her attention was on the computer. Megan glanced at the screen and felt as if little electric shocks were sprinting up and down her body. Emily was looking at a report about the effects of melting icebergs on the currents of the North Atlantic—a site Megan’s mom had urged her to check out, what, two days ago? Three? Was Emily working her way backward through Megan’s whole history, all the sites she had looked at recently? Might she find one that hinted at the evolution of mice? Hinted at the truth?

  A movement in the cage caught Megan’s eye. Julia was frantically making the sign for “End it,” the paw drawn quickly across the throat. But how? Should Megan just grab the computer? Knock Emily off her chair? Make up some lie? How did people handle this sort of situation?

  Through luck, as it turned out. The luck of having Susie Fisher come home at just the right moment, so Megan could say, “Hey, let’s go downstairs and you can meet my mom.”

  Emily closed the laptop and the danger was over.

  he two girls sat in the kitchen at The Fishery for about twenty minutes while Susie tried to keep a conversation going, asking Emily about school (okay) and her brother (sometimes a jerk) and her dad (working on some great apps that he hoped he could sell).

  True, Susie’s first instinct (as she told Megan later) was to give the girls cookies and send them off to bond. But Megan’s plea was unmistakable: the MSL sign for “Help.” (It’s the tail, or a braid, held straight up.)

  After Jeff Crumline finally rang the front doorbell to collect his kid, Megan told her mom what had happened. She had just begun to describe Emily’s search through her computer when Uncle Fred arrived, puffing from his quick run through the backyards. He told Susie about Ryan’s attempts to peer into the garage.

  “So both kids were spying?” squeaked Susie. She sat down, hard.

  “Looks like it,” said Uncle Fred. “Spying and maybe getting r
eady for some hacking. Jeff knows how to hack, that’s for sure. When he was working at the computer shop, he used to boast about how he could get into any system. Like newspaper offices. Big banks. Said he was teaching Ryan and it had paid off, because how else could he get that A in history? Can you imagine? Proud of his kid for hacking into the school computers?”

  “So close to home,” said Susie, in a small voice. “Hackers. Do you think your Jeff is connected with Faceless? Is that what’s going on?”

  “Could be,” said Uncle Fred, his face grim.

  “Do you think they’ve guessed something about mice?” asked Megan. “Or just rain forests?”

  “Not about mice,” said Uncle Fred. “When Jeff asked where the Thumbtops are made, I said they are assembled by mice, just like it says on our sign. He laughed, or came as close to laughing as he ever does. Didn’t believe it for a second.”

  Which left the rain forest.

  There had to be a meeting with the Big Cheese, of course, and it began like none other, with an apology. Well, maybe it wasn’t a full-throated apology, but at least his signs looked a little humble as he faced the humans.

  “I am sorry that some of you spent a difficult afternoon,” he began, but he had to stop because Megan’s mom was determined to have her say.

  “Surely we should have been warned,” she said. “I mean, you have this database you’re so proud of, but you let Megan entertain someone who hunted through her computer. You let that boy run loose all over Planet Mouse.”

  It’s hard for a mammal whose speech is silent to interrupt, but the Big Cheese found a way, grasping the open door of the cage and banging it back against the bars.

  “Your afternoon may have been uncomfortable,” he said, his eyes fixed unblinking on Susie, “but it was extremely useful to us. As I said two days ago, it was my hope that we could drive your enemies into the open. And it appears that we were successful.”

  “But you didn’t even raise a paw to warn us!” said Susie.

  The Big Cheese ignored her. “We suspect that the adult male and the immature male are allied with Faceless,” he said. “But we cannot be sure. There is an excellent reason for our uncertainty. Our database on humans is, alas, incomplete. It cannot include households that are infested.”

  “Cat there, huh?” said Uncle Fred. “At the Crumlines’?”

  “A veritable herd of cats,” said the Big Cheese with a shudder. “According to the clan in a neighboring house, there are more than a half dozen, and two of them are pregnant, so the situation will only become worse.”

  “So what do you suggest?” asked Jake. “Should we play along with the Crumlines? See where that leads us?”

  “An excellent word choice, if I may say so,” said the Big Cheese. “Because I propose that one of you should continue to ‘play along.’ Our first step should be to arrange another of those occasions that you humans call ‘playdates.’”

  “You don’t mean—” Megan began. “Oh please! Sir!”

  The Big Cheese looked right at her now. “I understand that your afternoon with the young female was not to your liking,” he said. “But given the excess of cats at the Crumline residence, our only hope for access is through human intervention.”

  “You mean Megan goes in as a spy?” asked Joey.

  “Not exactly,” said the Big Cheese. “Mice will do the spying. Miss Megan will provide transportation, leaving a couple of our operatives in the house. It will be a slam dunk, as you humans say.”

  “But it’s not that easy,” squeaked Megan. “It’s not like we’re friends. Not like we’ll ever be friends. Couldn’t Joey—”

  “I’d do it,” said Joey, “but you know Emily better than I know Ryan.”

  “He’s right,” said her mom. “And hey, look on the bright side. It will be good for you. Good practice in social skills.”

  And that’s how Megan found herself calling Emily that night after dinner, under the eyes of the other four Humans Who Knew, with her fingers crossed to cover her lies.

  “That was fun today,” the other humans heard. “Want to hang out tomorrow, after school? Yes, your place would be great. See ya.”

  When she put the phone down, Megan noticed that Joey was grinning at her and clapping his hands silently.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just—just, you did good.”

  “Huh?”

  He looked exasperated. “Can’t you take a compliment?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Thanks. But the next time—”

  “Of course,” he said. “Next time it’s my turn.”

  Megan smiled, but inside she felt a bit of a secret “Grrr.” As well as being better than her at almost everything else, was Joey now better at being nice?

  Emily was waiting after school as Megan unlocked her bike, and they walked more or less in silence the five blocks to Emily’s house. There was an old truck parked on what had once been grass, and the house had brown patches showing through its dirty white paint. A rusty basketball hoop clung to the eaves of the garage.

  This kept on happening to Megan. Ever since she’d met mice, she’d found herself going into buildings that made her nervous. Like the time Trey had led her into Headquarters in Silicon Valley—or worse, that empty house they’d broken into in Oregon to use its webcam.

  This time at least her adults knew where she was and could send out a search party if necessary. And hey, this was just a good old-fashioned playdate, right? If you had playdates in sixth grade. The fact that Emily was weird didn’t mean she was dangerous. Did it?

  She wished Trey had come with her, but he really, really didn’t want to, and she couldn’t blame him. How many cats were there in the house? Seven? Eight? Yes, he’d be safe in her pocket, or tucked into the backpack, but as Megan knew, the smell of even one cat is enough to make a mouse feel sick.

  “Besides, you’ll already have two guys in the caboose,” he’d said. “Not much room for more.”

  The caboose. That’s what he called the pocket of her backpack, where he often rode to school, peering out through the pinhole she’d punched through the fabric. And true, the caboose was bulging now with two mice from the IT department and their supplies. They’d been chosen, Trey had told her, not just for their great eyesight but for their bravery. These guys didn’t tremble. And nothing would have given the mission away more quickly than a trembling backpack.

  Megan was glad to see that Emily let herself into the house, because the fewer Crumlines who were around, the better. Fewer cats would have been better too: at least five ran toward Emily purring and rubbing against her legs.

  Normally if you take a backpack full of mice into the neighborhood of a cat, the cat will leap for it. To short-circuit this response, Susie had gone online to find a list of herbs that can block other smells and had made an herbal sachet from one of Jake’s old handkerchiefs.

  True, a couple of the cats seemed to sniff the air, but only, it seemed, out of mild curiosity, not from bloodlust. So Megan felt it was safe to leave her backpack on a table near the front door.

  Emily led her to the kitchen and picked up a stack of dirty plates from the table. The sink was full already, so she pushed some empty pizza boxes along the counter to clear a space for the plates, then turned to look at Megan.

  “Sorry about the mess,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” said Megan. “You should see my uncle’s place.”

  Then Emily did the worst thing she could have done. She grinned at Megan, and said, “Yeah, those nerds.”

  Megan couldn’t help grinning back, as if this girl was all right, which was not the way it should happen. Why couldn’t Emily have kept up that weird sort of distance so Megan could have disliked her? So she could have gotten on with her job without any second thoughts—the job of spying on Emily’s family.

  Emily was still grinning.

  “This is so cool,” she said. “Like yesterday I was mad at my dad for saying, you know, that I wanted to hang out
with you, because I didn’t. Well, I did, but I never said that, and I could tell that you…well, I thought that you…”

  Her voice trailed off, and Megan heard herself say, “I was a bit mad at my uncle too for setting it up without asking, but hey, it’s good to have someone to hang out with.”

  She kept her fingers crossed as she’d said it, because she didn’t mean it was good, at least not yet, though actually hanging out with Emily turned out to be not too bad after all. Better than yesterday, certainly. As they ate leftover pizza, Emily asked a lot of questions, and Megan found that she liked telling her about her mom’s research into the effect of climate change on animals, and what it was like spending a couple of years on a remote island in the Atlantic, and how glad she was, basically, that her mom had got married again, because Jake was the coolest stepdad you could hope for.

  By the time they finished eating, Megan was beginning to feel that she knew Emily well enough to ask her some questions. To do some research, though she approached it sideways.

  “You seem really interested in computers,” she said. “Like when you were looking at mine.”

  Emily laughed. “Sorry about that,” she said. “It must have seemed a bit weird. My dad asked me to see what sort of sites you’d been looking at. He says it helps him design games, knowing what kids do on their computers. They’re great, some of his games. There’s one he’s just finished that’s really cool. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Emily led the way into her bedroom.

  “Here’s the game,” she said, sitting down at a desk made of an old door. “It’s called Hackety-Hack.”

  “It’s called what?” squeaked Megan.

  Emily laughed. “It’s a hacking game. Watch. You pretend you’re hacking into the White House. Or the Pentagon. See, I’ll show you.”

  She made some clicks on her computer and worked her way past pages labeled Top Secret and Classified and War Room, a slight smile on her face, and yes, the game did look cool.