Emmy and the Home For Troubled Girls Read online

  She flopped over the edge. “Here. It won’t break unless you really whack it.”

  Joe shook the bottle violently. “So what do you want to name the ship?”

  Emmy looked around. The sun shone through layers of green, and the platform was tiled with a shifting mosaic of gold. “Let’s call it Golden Fortress!”

  Joe shook his head firmly. “Nah, too sappy. How about Good Fort?”

  “Too boring.” Emmy wrinkled her nose.

  Joe shrugged. “Then let’s call it G.F., and it can stand for both.”

  There was a sudden scurry in the branches overhead. “It could also stand for Gophers are Fabulous,” said a voice, “except they’re not.”

  “Ratty!” cried Emmy and Joe together.

  Raston Rat’s pointed gray face grinned at them through a cluster of leaves. “Or maybe Gerbils Forever, except I can’t stand gerbils. They’re twitchy little rodents.” The Rat gripped a green twig, swung through the air in a swashbuckling manner, and landed with a thump on the overhanging branch.

  Emmy gazed at him with pleasure. She might not want to be seen with rodents, but the Rat was special. His gray fur was glossy, his whiskers neatly trimmed, and on his head, tilted jauntily to one side, was a little black beret. “You’re looking good, Ratty!”

  The Rat smoothed his whiskers, tipping his head in a modest manner. The beret slipped farther to one side, and he made an undignified lurch in an attempt to tip it back the other way.

  “You might need a bobby pin, though,” said Emmy, as the beret fell off entirely.

  “Or some Super Glue.” Joe picked up the small felt cap. “Where did you get this? Emmy’s Barbie collection?”

  “It is not Barbie’s,” said the Rat in a chilling tone. “It’s G.I. Joe’s, and it goes with his paratrooper uniform.”

  Joe nodded seriously. “So where’s your ’chute, then? And your plane?”

  The Rat’s ears turned a faint pink. “Just because you have no style,” he muttered, “no sartorial instinct—” He snatched the beret from Joe’s hand with a scathing look.

  “Sartorial?” said Joe, grinning.

  “Why, Raston!” said Emmy, as she cast a warning look at Joe. “You’re improving your vocabulary!”

  “I do not wish to wallow in ignorance,” said the Rat, settling the beret on his head with an airy flick. “Unlike some I could mention.” He glowered at Joe.

  “I’m not—”

  “Be that as it may,” the Rat interrupted, holding up a paw as Joe began to speak, “I have come for a Purpose.” He reached into his satchel, pulled out a creamy-white envelope the size of a matchbook, and handed it to Emmy with a deep bow.

  The envelope bore a small paw print in the upper left-hand corner, and the names “Emmaline Addison and Joseph Benson” were written in a cramped but even script. Emmy opened it cautiously and saw it was an invitation.

  Mrs. Roseleaf Bunjee

  requests the pleasure of your company

  at a reception in honor of Professor Maxwell Capybara

  in grateful acknowledgment of his many contributions

  to the welfare and comfort of our community

  Saturday at 7 p.m., Rodent City

  Semi-formal attire requested

  Shrinking required

  Dinner music by the Swinging Gerbils

  R.V.R.P.

  Emmy tried to ignore the hollow feeling in her chest. Of course it was fine to honor the professor—after all, he’d helped many rodents escape from Cheswick Vole, and then helped them build Rodent City. “R.V.R.P.,” she read aloud. “What does that mean?”

  “Respond Via Rodent, Please,” said the Rat. “That’s me. So—are you coming?”

  “Of course we’re coming,” said Joe, reading over Emmy’s shoulder. “Only what’s ‘semi-formal’? No shorts?”

  Emmy was amused. “It means we’re supposed to dress up. You’ll have to wear a suit—or at least a jacket and tie.”

  “What?” Joe’s voice was high with alarm. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Emmy shook her head.

  “But it says semi-formal. That means partly dressed up. Like good jeans and tennis shoes, right?”

  “Wrong,” Emmy said firmly. “Listen, I know about this stuff; my mom and dad are always dressing up. Formal means you wear a tux—”

  “A tuxedo?” Joe’s voice scaled up.

  “And there are different degrees of formal—white tie, black tie—”

  “No one,” said Joe fervently, “is getting me into a tuxedo.”

  “Calm down—that’s only if it’s formal. Semi-formal is a suit and tie, or you can get away with a sports jacket sometimes.”

  “A sports jacket?” Joe sounded interested. “I’ve got a soccer jacket. It’s pretty nice, has the team logo—”

  “Not that kind of sports jacket. A sports jacket looks almost like a regular suit coat, only it doesn’t have matching pants.”

  Joe stared at her in disbelief.

  Emmy tried not to laugh.

  “Wear something of Ken’s,” the Rat suggested helpfully. “You’re going to have to shrink anyway. Just go through the Barbie clothes and find something snappy.”

  The hollow sensation in Emmy’s chest increased. “I don’t know if I can come.”

  “But they’re all counting on you,” the Rat protested.

  Emmy reached for the ginger ale and pretended to read the label. She could hardly say she didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of rodents—not to the Rat’s face.

  Joe looked at her keenly. “Does the biting bother you?” He turned on the Rat. “Listen, when you bite to shrink us, you don’t have to chomp so hard. A little nip is all it takes.”

  “I,” said the Rat with dignity, “do not chomp. I bite with a minimum of fuss and near-perfect control.”

  Joe hooted. “Near-perfect is right, you carnivore—”

  “It’s not the bite I mind,” Emmy muttered.

  She had been bitten several times by the Rat; it hadn’t hurt much. And although it had taken her (and Joe) a long time to figure it out, eventually they had realized what Raston’s bites could do.

  The first bite allowed a person to understand rodent speech. Emmy had discovered this last year, on the first day of school, when she’d reached into the Rat’s cage to fill his water dish.

  The second bite was not so pleasant, for it caused the person receiving it to shrink to rat size. Emmy still remembered how small and helpless she had felt at four inches tall, the terror of looking up at a cat’s sharp teeth, and how she’d had to nerve herself to go through the crack in the steps that led to the underground Rodent City.

  She had done it because she had to. And later, after a kiss from Raston’s twin sister, Cecilia, had caused her to grow back to full size, Emmy had even told the Rat to shrink her again, when she needed to escape from Miss Barmy.

  So Emmy was no stranger to shrinking. And some of it had even been fun. But she’d had time to think since then, and to realize how lucky she’d been.

  For instance, she’d been fortunate that nothing had happened to Cecilia—or Sissy, as she was called. If the Rat’s twin hadn’t been there to reverse the effects of his bite, Emmy would have remained four inches tall forever.

  She had been lucky, too, that Raston had not bitten her again, once she was already shrunken. That had happened to Miss Barmy, and she had turned into a rat. Worse yet, Sissy’s kiss had failed to turn the nanny back into a human, the way the professor thought it should.

  Which meant that Miss Barmy was still around somewhere—only now she had sharp claws and teeth.

  Emmy sighed. She owed too much to Professor Capybara to skip his party. But even wearing one of Barbie’s gowns wasn’t going to make up for having to spend a whole evening with a bunch of rats.

  The tree house dipped and creaked, almost like a real ship. Joe and the Rat were still arguing.

  Emmy picked at a scab on her knee. “Listen, I’m going already. Stop fighting,
will you?”

  The Rat looked offended. “We weren’t fighting.”

  “We were discussing,” said Joe.

  “If we were fighting, you’d see claws.”

  “You’d see punching.”

  “You’d see blood,” said the Rat cheerfully.

  Emmy rolled her eyes.

  “Hey,” said Joe, looking again at the invitation in Emmy’s hands, “who are the Swinging Gerbils? Are they any good?”

  The Rat snorted. “That depends on your standards.”

  “Well, I don’t exactly know what kind of music gerbils play—”

  “Squeaky,” said the Rat. “Listen, are you going to christen this tree fort anytime soon?”

  Joe shook the bottle once more and took a firm stance. “Okay, whether it’s Golden Fortress or Good Fort—”

  “Or Gophers are Fabulous, or Gerbils Forever,” added Emmy—

  “Or Glabrous Ferrets with Glandular Fistulas,” suggested the Rat—

  “I hereby christen thee—G.F.!” Joe struck the bottle against the thick edge of the platform, but the plastic bounced off. “One more time,” he said, and bashed it hard against the cleat where the rope ladder was attached.

  The soda sprayed. There was a yelp from below. Two chunky hands gripped the platform, and a round head with dripping blond hair popped up over the side.

  “Mouse Droppings,” said Joe’s little brother.

  Joe dropped the bottle and glared. “Get lost, Thomas. Go bother someone your own size.”

  “I know the password,” Thomas said sturdily.

  “So what? You were spying, and we don’t want you!”

  “But I know the password,” Thomas repeated patiently. “You have to let somebody up if they know the password. That’s the rule.”

  “Oh, for crying—” Joe gripped his hair in exasperation.

  “He does know the password,” said the Rat, enjoying the scene from his branch.

  Thomas raised a damp face and fixed his round blue eyes on Raston. “Oh, hi, Rat.”

  “Hey, old buddy. Did you bring me any peanut butter?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I didn’t know you’d be here. Why are you wearing that funny hat?”

  Joe and Emmy looked at each other in dismay. Thomas could understand the Rat!

  “Don’t,” said Joe hollowly, “don’t tell me you bit him, Ratty.”

  Thomas climbed over the edge and sat on the platform, listening with interest.

  “Of course I did,” the Rat answered, sounding aggrieved. “Months ago. When I was the class pet and it was your turn to take me home for the weekend.”

  Joe glared at Thomas. “I suppose you opened the cage and tried to pet him.”

  Thomas nodded. “He talked to me. And I talked back. And then I got him some peanut butter, like he wanted.”

  “Skippy,” said the Rat with a dreamy look on his face. “Super Chunk.”

  Joe put his head in his hands.

  “Thomas,” said Emmy urgently, “did you tell anyone that the Rat could talk?”

  Thomas nodded. “I told everyone. And they all said, ‘There goes Thomas, making up stories again.’ So I stopped telling.”

  “That’s good, Thomas,” said Emmy. “Just keep that up, okay? Don’t say anything about the Rat.”

  Thomas looked at her solemnly. “Do I get to play with you guys? And come up in the tree fort and you won’t yell at me?”

  Joe picked moodily at his thumb.

  “Yes,” said Emmy recklessly. “But you have to promise, on your honor—”

  “I’m a Cub Scout,” said Thomas.

  “Okay, Scout’s honor, then—”

  Thomas held up two fingers for the Scout pledge.

  “Repeat after me,” said Emmy sternly. “I, Thomas Benson, do solemnly swear—”

  “I, Thomas Benson, do solemnly—I’m not supposed to swear, you know.”

  “Oh, for—” Emmy shut her eyes. “Okay, just promise. If we let you play with us, you have to promise, Scout’s honor, that you won’t ever tell about the Rat.”

  Joe lifted his head. “And you have to do everything we say, no questions asked.” He paced the deck. “You’re the cabin boy, and if the captain gives an order, you obey.”

  “Who’s the captain?”

  “I’m the captain today,” said Joe, “because I thought of it.”

  “And I’m the captain tomorrow,” said Emmy, “because it’s my tree fort.”

  “We will switch off,” Joe announced, “but you will always be the cabin boy.”

  “Or the lookout,” Emmy added.

  “You have to do the rowing when we go ashore—”

  “You have to bury any pirates that we kill—”

  “And you only get a tenth of any treasure we find,” Joe finished sternly. “Agreed?”

  “Scout’s honor,” Thomas said, his round face shining. He undid a cord tied to his belt loop and began to steadily raise something from below. “I found a cool thing for the fort. I thought it could be like that lady thing they put in front of ships.”

  “You mean the figurehead?” Emmy asked.

  Thomas nodded, pulling the cord hand over hand. “We could nail it to the front.”

  “Not the front, you landlubber,” said Joe, “the bow. And you have to ask the captain’s permission to bring something on deck.”

  “Can I?” Thomas asked, grunting a little as the thing he was towing caught.

  “You don’t say it like that. You say, ‘Permission to bring cargo aboard,’ and then you say ‘captain’ or ‘sir.’”

  “Permission to bring cargo aboard, sir?”

  “Permission granted,” said Joe, helping Thomas yank the object free. It came over the edge with a clatter of wood on wood, rolled to Emmy’s feet, and stopped, its small carved faces staring sightlessly.

  “Wow! Remember this, Emmy?” Joe untied the cord from Miss Barmy’s cane. “It’ll be a perfect figurehead!”

  Emmy stared at the little faces. Up here in the tree fort, as the sun moved over the carved surfaces with light and shadow, the cane looked different, somehow. The entwined hair looked more elaborately carved than she had ever noticed—almost like some kind of curving script—

  “Hey!” Emmy leaned closer, tracing the wooden strands with her finger. “These are letters … There’s a ‘P,’ and an ‘R’…”

  “I … S … C …” said Joe, moving along the wooden strands with his finger. “I … L … It’s a name! Priscilla.”

  Emmy looked up. “That’s old William Addison’s daughter,” she said slowly. “The one who died, or drowned, or something …”

  Joe nodded soberly. “This one’s Ana,” he said, tracing the hair of another tiny face. “And … Berit. And Lisa.”

  “The one next to her is Lee,” said Emmy, turning the cane gently. “And this one—the littlest—is Merry.”

  Thomas and the Rat moved in closer. There was a long silence.

  “I wonder where they all are now,” said Thomas.

  THE AFTERNOON SUN SLANTED through the dusty air of the attic room. The window was dirty, but the rays stamped the wooden floor with gold, and a long trapezoid of light stretched out to touch a small girl with her back to the wall.

  She was very small—about four inches high—with long brown hair and watchful eyes. Her name was Ana, and as the sun warmed her bare legs, she looked up and quickly pushed a bundle of knotted shoelaces under one of the long shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling. “Almost time,” she called, clapping her hands twice.

  Light footfalls stirred the dust as three tiny girls, clothed like Ana in handkerchief dresses of ragged white, came running from various parts of the vast room. Ana reached up to unhook a shoelace ladder from the shelf above, and the girls began to climb.

  “Into the box with you,” said Ana, giving an encouraging smile to the youngest, who hung back. “Where’s Berit?”

  “I dunno.” The child put a ragged piece of cloth to her cheek and s
moothed it with her thumb. “Ana, I don’t like the box.”

  “No one likes the box, Merry.” Ana gave the child a boost up the knotted ladder. “But Miss Barmy moved into our old house, and you wouldn’t want to live with her, would you?”

  Merry shook her head vigorously.

  “All right, then. You try to be brave, and I’ll tell you a story tonight.”

  “We’re usually brave,” said a voice from within the box. “Right, Lee?”

  “Right, Lisa,” said another voice, sounding identical to the first.

  The floor vibrated slightly. Ana turned, listening, and the voices fell silent.

  There was another vibration, and another, as if a giant were stepping heavily somewhere outside the room. Ana cupped her hands around her mouth. “Berit!” she called, her voice anxious. “He’s early!”

  There was a flurry of activity in a dim, far corner, and a small white figure ducked out from beneath a pile of clutter.

  “Run!” cried Ana as the floor shook again.

  The tiny girl pelted across the floor. Her arms and legs pumped strongly, her shapeless dress flew out behind her like a flag, and with a last burst of speed Berit crossed the patch of sunlight, skidded against the shelf, and leaped for the ladder.

  There was a shuffling at the door and the metallic sound of a key scraping in a lock. Ana hastily climbed to the second shelf, hooked the shoestring ladder safely out of sight, and flung a leg over the side of a box marked “Wingtips, Black Leather, Size 11B.”

  The doorknob turned. The door to the attic room creaked open. Ana scrambled inside the cardboard box and pulled the lid over their heads with a paper-clip hook.

  All was suddenly dark. There was a smell of shoes. Berit’s gasps were loud in the space as she tried to catch her breath.

  “All right, everyone,” Ana said. “Time to be brave. And don’t forget to act stupid.”

  The girls fell back as the box slid out with a jerk. There was a horrible swaying sensation as it was carried through the air, then downward in a series of bumps.

  “Is h-he g-going to dr-drop us?” Merry clutched Ana’s arm.

  “H-he has-n’t dropped u-us yet,” whispered Ana, “s-so don’t w-worry.”

  “I-I’m n-not worried,” said Lisa. “Are y-you w-worried, L-Lee?”

  “Hush!” said Ana, as the bumping stopped.