by Robin Yardi
Or invisible.
Christian hadn’t done anything wrong, Mattie reminded herself. He’d never been mean to her. In fact, he and his parents had been super nice in the months after Mattie lost her mom. They let her hang out at the hotel restaurant, nibble on cherries and peanuts from the bar, and watch TV on the smooth leather couch in the afternoons anytime Aunt Molly had to take a trip up to Monterey.
A thing Mattie wasn’t willing to do anymore.
She’d been sitting on that hotel couch when Aunt Molly came back with Mom’s ashes in an urn. Christian never said anything about it. But still, she hated him just a little bit. Mattie wasn’t sure if the hating him was because he was Sasha’s Big Sur best friend or if he’d seen her cry. Both, probably.
Beanie zoomed over to the hay bale and crammed herself right between Sasha and Christian. Mattie knew she could go sit down on the hay too. There was room. Sort of. Christian even looked over and smiled. Mattie could squeeze herself into the leftover space.
But Mattie didn’t want leftover space.
Especially not after being ditched.
Sasha didn’t even look like she wanted Mattie to come over. She always had this weird frozen expression on her face when she was around Christian and Mattie at the same time. Like they weren’t supposed to both exist. Like Mattie was butting in just by being alive.
So Mattie stood there.
Arms crossed.
Trying not to glare.
Why couldn’t Sasha just believe her? Sasha should have been helping, not sitting around and listening to music. Beanie started whispering into Sasha’s ear, and something Beanie said made Sasha glare right back at Mattie.
Now what’s she got to be grouchy about? Mattie wondered.
She didn’t have to wait very long to find out. Sasha marched over, tugging Beanie by the arm. Sasha’s skin was all blotchy at the neck, which was never a great sign.
“You think my dad is a suspect? You think he would dump that stupid goo into the river?”
“It’s gloo . . .”
Sasha didn’t let Mattie finish. Didn’t let Mattie explain that it was just some silly idea of Beanie’s, and of course she didn’t suspect Mr. Little. “You can’t even get into a car and now you have this weird story about an owl.”
Beanie looked back and forth between her older sister and Mattie, like she was trying to figure out who to believe.
“Cut it out or we’re not friends,” Sasha said.
Beanie’s eyes went round as soap bubbles.
Mattie turned around, walked for a few steps, and then ran. She stumbled down the riverbank, hurried over slippery moss-covered rocks with her sneakers still on, splashing water everywhere and not caring. She didn’t decide where to go. She just went, until her wet shoes slopped across the black asphalt at Owl’s. She went straight for the back door of the donut shop and slammed her shoulder into it, wrenching the handle.
The door swung open, banging against the wall of the shop’s back room. Aunt Molly was standing with a tray full of freshly arranged Jelly Hearts.
“What in the . . .”
Aunt Molly whirled to look at Mattie. The tray tilted and donuts went flying. Little sugar-dusted donut hearts plopped all around Mattie’s feet.
Without looking up, Mattie lifted her soggy sneaker and stomped. She stomped so hard that a Jelly Heart burst and spurt red rockets of filling halfway across the room.
She stomped until all the Jelly Hearts were squished, their insides oozing out of the edges.
The Squirrel Special
A petite peanut-encrusted éclair filled with fluffy salted caramel cream
After Aunt Molly had cleaned up all the broken Jelly Hearts, she plunked Mattie on a stool and took her soppy shoes off. Next, she wiped the sticky cherry spurts from the black-and-white tiled floor and thumped the crushed donuts into the trash.
She didn’t get mad.
But she did give Mattie that same worried look from the day before. Worried that Mattie wasn’t ready to go back to school. Worried that Mattie wasn’t ready to ride the bus.
Once Mattie was done feeling queasy and mad and was just feeling embarrassed and guilty, she tried to explain.
“Me and Sasha had a fight.”
She knew it wasn’t any excuse for the stomped donut mess and that her explanation wasn’t every bit of the truth, but Aunt Molly looked relieved.
“What was it about this time?” Aunt Molly asked, almost smiling.
Mattie tried to think of a way to explain without mentioning the owl, the truck, or the gloop. Which was basically impossible. She shrugged and eyed the trash bin full of donuts. Mattie wanted to complain about Sasha not believing her and about Sasha not taking the investigation seriously, but the explanation that came out of her didn’t really have anything to do with owls or investigations or being believed.
“She went off to Christian’s and just left me,” Mattie said.
Maybe that’s what the fight was about.
For Mattie, anyway.
Aunt Molly leaned in and hugged Mattie. She said stuff about how Big Sur was so small that everybody mostly worked these things out. Mattie had fought with Sasha before, and they always made up, so blah-blah-blah. Mattie didn’t really listen. She just let herself be hugged while sneaky tears dribbled down her nose and fell one at a time onto Aunt Molly’s apron. Mattie was just old enough to know that grown-ups never fix anything with the things they say, so you don’t really have to listen.
You just have to let yourself be hugged.
From the back room, Mattie could hear Martín’s favorite radio station playing low under the jingle of customers coming and going, and she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Molly made Mattie help out at Owl’s for about an hour. Not as a punishment, just to keep an eye on her. They made a batch of tiny Squirrel Specials: itty-bitty peanut-encrusted éclairs that Aunt Molly sometimes told kids she left out for the neighborhood squirrels (a thing Mattie knew wasn’t true). Aunt Molly stuffed the éclairs with fluffy white caramel cream, and Mattie dipped them in icing and crushed peanuts.
Making donuts with Aunt Molly always evened out Mattie’s feelings. No matter what they were. The two of them didn’t talk much. It was more like dancing to music that wasn’t always playing. Mattie did this. Molly did that. Until they had a perfect batch of treats lined up on a tray.
Mattie didn’t actually like the little éclairs. The Squirrel Specials had too much going on, too many tastes. She thought the peanuts were too crunchy and the caramel cream was too sweet. But squirrels still clambered around in her mind while she and Aunt Molly worked. And that gave her an idea.
There was only one person who could possibly help her figure out what was going on, and it wasn’t exactly a person.
She needed to find that owl.
And she was tired of waiting for it to show up again.
That’s where her squirrel thinking came in.
By the time Aunt Molly placed the last Squirrel Special on the tray, Mattie was calm. She promised Molly she felt fine and she was sorry about all the squished donuts and she was going to go play with Beanie. Which was close to the truth.
Mattie picked up her soppy shoes and quick-stepped her way across the hot parking lot to the trailer. She’d nearly made it to the deck steps when Beanie came huffing and puffing up the path from the river. Beanie ran right into Mattie, because she was looking down and mumbling something under her breath like she was practicing for a spelling test.
“Ooof!” Beanie said, bouncing off Mattie’s butt. “You made me forget my lines.”
Mattie thunked her soggy sneakers onto the bottom deck step. “What lines?” she asked.
“Sasha said to say . . . that she’s sorry about what she said, but you have to stop investigating Dad and that rid-rid . . .”
“Ridiculous?” Mattie asked.
“Yeah, that ridiculous owl. If you want to hang out.”
Mattie didn’t bother to explain that the
y never had been investigating Mr. Little. That would just confuse Beanie. “No dice,” said Mattie, folding her arms across her shirt.
“What’s that mean?”
“No dice means no way. I can’t stop investigating. That gloop could be dangerous. It could be bad for the well or the creek or the river or the campsite or the donut shop.”
Mattie glanced back toward Owl’s, looking for Aunt Molly’s outline through the shiny windows, feeling more worried than ever.
“I can’t tell Sasha no dice,” Beanie complained.
Something inside Mattie was still feeling squished, even after Aunt Molly’s hugging and baking. She turned back to Beanie.
“You don’t have to tell her,” Mattie said. “Just hang around with me instead. I’m going to go talk to that owl. It’s the most important part of the investigation. And you get to help.”
Beanie’s brown eyes went big, and this time there was nobody else to believe, so she for sure believed Mattie. “I get to help?”
“Yup.”
“Hoot-hoot,” said Beanie, bouncing.
A few minutes later, Mattie and Beanie were standing in front of the Little family toolshed. The padlock gleamed in the summer sunlight.
“I don’t know,” Beanie said, shaking her head.
“Come on. You do it for your dad, so you can for sure do it for me. Remember, he let you hold the rope when I came down last time.”
And it was true. Mr. Little had let Beanie belay Mattie when he’d given them all a climbing lesson. That time, the tree was in the middle of the campground and was covered with colorful plastic handholds and ledges. But still, it had happened.
Lessons like that were important to Mr. Little. He also did all the tree trimming around the cabins. He even did it for Aunt Molly when trees near the trailer or the donut shop started to look raggedy or got too close to the power lines. Thinking about squirrels had gotten Mattie thinking about him, because Mrs. Little joked that he must have been a squirrel in another life.
Mr. Little had ropes, carabiners, helmets, clips, and pulleys, plus fancy spikes that he wore on his shoes and a little sling he could sit in that went around the tree. And most of the big trees in the campground already had climbing pins attached. Most importantly, Mr. Little had taught Beanie to tie all the special knots, which was a responsibility Sasha didn’t want. Beanie and Sasha would even belay him down sometimes.
If Beanie could belay the tall and lanky Mr. Little, for sure she could give Mattie a hand, even without her dad’s help.
“I bet I know where that owl lives,” Mattie said. “You know the big redwood at the edge of the donut shop parking lot? The one with that old eagle’s nest? I think your dad already put pins in the tree. I just need you to tie the knots and stuff. And hold the rope. And open the shed.”
Mattie stared at Beanie.
Beanie stared right back, nibbling on her bottom lip.
Then she turned to the shed, lifted the padlock, and entered the code. Clunk. The padlock fell open, and little Beanie rolled the squeaky door back. Beams of light pierced the dusty darkness, shining up the rows of metal tools. Rakes, shovels, a gas-powered blower, wheelbarrows, boxes of light bulbs, and stacks of scrap lumber—each tool had a space. If Mr. Little had been a squirrel in another life, then his stash of nuts must have been perfectly organized.
“Beanie, let’s grab the stuff and lock up.”
Beanie piled carefully wound ropes and spiky shoe clips and clanky carabiners into a giant canvas bag. “We’re gonna get caught,” Beanie said, shoving the bag into Mattie’s hands before sliding the creaky shed door closed.
Clink.
She locked it up, and the girls ran back to the donut shop.
The redwood tree stood at the edge of Aunt Molly’s lot, about halfway between the trailer and the shop but a little closer to the ocean than both. Someone had built a square wooden platform onto a branch about halfway up the trunk. Mattie couldn’t see the old eagle’s nest from the ground, but standing on the deck around the trailer, she would sometimes notice a suspicious silhouette. An owlish shape there in the shadows. Only sometimes. It hadn’t seemed important before, but it seemed very important now.
The base of the tree was tucked behind a few smaller pines and a load of fluffy ferns. The perfect cover, Mattie thought. She dropped the bag of equipment at the far side of the redwood, then peeked around. She and Beanie would be basically invisible.
“We’re not getting caught,” Mattie said.
On the ground a few feet from the redwood tree, Mattie found a pile of old gray owl pellets. “Look,” she whispered.
Beanie and Mattie both leaned in close. “Gross-gross-gross,” said Beanie. “I can see bones.”
“Owls barf them up,” Mattie told her.
Beanie didn’t really look that grossed out, and for a second Mattie was glad that Sasha wasn’t around. Peeking a little closer, Mattie noticed that some of the owl pellets had little colorful specs peeking through the matted gray fur and bones. Sprinkles! Mostly pink ones.
“See, told you it likes Aunt Molly’s strawberry donuts,” Mattie said.
Beanie looked so excited she might explode. She hopped and hooted. “Hoot-hoot, hoot-hoot!”
“Shhhhh,” Mattie said. “I don’t want to scare the owl away.”
Beanie gave Mattie a thumbs-up and shoved her head into the canvas tote bag. She lined up the ropes and the tree sling and two helmets and all the clips and spikes. Each piece, one at a time, on the ground, until everything was super organized.
Everybody thought Sasha was the responsible sister, the tidy sister, the organized sister. Mattie knew that wasn’t exactly the truth. And it wasn’t just that Sasha didn’t want the responsibility of tying Mr. Little’s climbing knots. Beanie tied them better. And anything Beanie was better at, Sasha pretended not to like.
Mattie tilted her neck up. The little climbing anchors were all there, shining silver against the red bark of the tree. She would only have to climb a few feet at a time, with the help of the skinny sling, before she hooked into another pin. Through the branches of the redwood, Mattie could faintly make out the owl platform.
She took a jiggety breath.
She had to do it.
Mattie thought for a wild second that maybe she should send Beanie up in the tree instead. They’d brought an extra helmet and everything. But Beanie was so little, and the tree was so high. Mattie was bigger, so she had to do it. Besides, Beanie hadn’t met the owl before.
That seemed important.
Whatever the owl had tried to tell Mattie last night wasn’t enough. She couldn’t call the sheriff’s department and tell them to look for two of something. Aunt Molly would say she was letting herself get all worked up, and the other grown-ups would probably laugh. But the more Mattie thought about that gloop, the more afraid she was that it could hurt the donut shop somehow.
“Hook me up,” Mattie said. And Beanie went to work.
Clink.
Clank.
Tug.
Yank.
Beanie’s tiny hands scuttled around like baby squirrels. She put Mattie’s butt into the climbing sling and gave it a good smack. Then Beanie clicked the rope into the first climbing pin, which was only a few feet off the ground. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach it. Then she grabbed the belay rope and gave Mattie another thumbs-up, a super serious one.
Everything was ready.
Mattie put one slightly shaking foot on the tree trunk and wedged in the little spikes of her shoe clip. She leaned against the climbing sling and lifted her other foot off the ground. The spikes rattled, clinkety-clinkety. She shoved those spikes into the soft redwood bark too and let out a long breath.
She was on the tree.
Mattie was six inches off the ground, but she was on the tree.
Just about ninety-nine more feet to go.
It was a little scary, but not the way cars were. She had the open air all around her, and she could be slow and calm and
totally in control. Mattie leaned back and took one more step up and then she carefully pulled the tree sling up too. With her arms out wide, it was almost like she was hugging the tree. Its bark was soft and feathery against her cheek.
Clinkety.
Clinkety.
Shimmy.
Mattie made her way up, clipping the belay rope into a new climbing pin every six feet or so. She could feel the resistance of little Beanie on the rope below. It was working! She glanced down at Beanie once, said a tiny swear, and decided never to look down again. She was going way higher than she had on the climbing tree at the campground.
The owl platform got closer and closer as Mattie inched upward. She was sticky with sweat, and little black ants tickled her skin, but she didn’t wipe them away.
“Don’t look down, just go up. Don’t look down, just go up.”
Mattie mumbled her way so high up into the tree that she could see the shushing ocean off in the distance. She was at least forty feet above ground. Her heart pounded faster than the waves, but she couldn’t help thinking the view was pretty.
Mattie clipped into the last pin and flicked an ant off her cheek. Then she peeked her nose over the edge of the owl platform. She didn’t even want to breathe too loud in case she scared that owl away.
“You better be in there,” she whispered.
All Mattie could see was a tangled pile of sticks.
She heaved her belly over the edge, trying not to let her metal spikes get too jingly. Otherwise she might scare the owl away before she got to ask anything. Once Mattie’s body was pressed against the wooden platform next to the old nest, all the empty space between her and the ground made her heart beat like a drum. She crept closer to the nest and lifted her head over the edge.
The owl was there!
It had its back to her—probably sleeping—and when the wind blew from off the ocean below, the salty air ruffled the feathers along the bird’s back.