Scarlett arrived home at the apartment to find her aunt working on her laptop on the kitchen table. “Hi, sweetie!” her aunt called, waving. “Want to go check out the mall tonight? I need a new outfit for meeting clients over lunch. Assuming I can ever get them to meet me, that is.”
“Sure, uh, a little later. I need some things, too. I’ll be in my room.”
“I have to finish up here. Do your homework first, and then we’ll go.”
“Okay, great!” Scarlett hurried off. Soon, she had related the story of her day to Roger the mouse while preparing to have him help her with her homework. She skipped mention of the encounter with the Oakwood field-hockey bullies (no sense in worrying him) and stuck to the brief investigation behind the Good Time restaurant. “It was kind of dull, really,” Scarlett finished. “We came, we saw, we left, no problem.”
“Didn’t find anything? Figures.” Roger again did that strange-looking shoulder shrug (strange to see done by a mouse, that is) and nibbled at the granola crumb Scarlett had dropped into his cage. “Don’t know why I expected anything different. Can you move your book closer? It would be easier to read that way. Damn rodent myopia.”
“Sure.” Scarlett scooted the math book over. It was propped up on a cookbook stand with the pages held open by a metal bar. “I just need the five odd-numbered ones on page thirty-nine.”
“I still think you should be doing your own homework instead of having someone else figure it out for you.”
“You told me last night you liked doing it because at least you weren’t bored.”
Roger sighed. “That’s true. I hope all this brainwork doesn’t shorten my lifespan. Just kidding. I’d charge for this, if I had anywhere to spend my earnings.”
Scarlett reached into her sweater pocket and brought out the dime she’d found. “Here,” she said, pushing it between the bars of the bars to fall into the wood shavings. “There’s your first month’s paycheck.” She tried not to smirk, but failed.
Roger eyed the silvery coin, then gave Scarlett a woebegone look. “Thaaanks. What, I’m starting a bank account with this?”
“Come on, you’re a mouse. You’re supposed to like shiny things. Or maybe that was pack rats that do that, I forget.”
Roger put down the granola crumb and walked over on all fours to examine and sniff the coin. He stared hard at the profile of the deity on the front side. “A Mercury dime,” he said. “Don’t see those anymore. Smells like whoever had it last likes eating spicy beef sticks. I used to love those things, but now they turn my stomach and you don’t want to see a mouse throw up.”
“Can’t be any worse than watching you poop.”
Roger looked at Scarlett in undisguised horror. “You do not do that! No way! No! Absolutely not! Tell me you haven’t!”
Roger was pretty easy to spoof. “Just kidding,” she said with a grin. “Wow, you’re really tightly wired, as my aunt would say.” And you really were a guy in your former life. No mouse would give a rat’s ass about pooping in public. The thought made her laugh.
After glaring at her, Roger continued examining the dime. “Damn, I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. Pardon my French.” He reached down with a pink forepaw and flipped the coin over. “Hey,” he said in surprise, “where’s that thingamajig that’s supposed to be on the back?”
“What thing?” Scarlett rose up in her seat and peered down over Roger’s head at the coin. “It’s got a V on it, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but Mercury dimes didn’t have that. They had like some kind of, uh, like a bundle of sticks on the back, I forget what it was called, and some branches on the sides. It was an old symbol of something from Roman times.”
Scarlett frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The government never made any dimes like this.” He looked at the front of the coin again. “And this was made in nineteen forty-nine. I thought they were making Roosevelt dimes then. Hey, do you have a dime? A regular dime, I mean, in your purse or somewhere?”
“Just a minute.” Scarlett found a dime in a desk drawer and dropped it in Roger’s cage. The white mouse picked up the dime and hauled it over next to the Mercury dime, then laid it down, face up.
“See,” said Roger, pointing at the newer dime with his right forepaw, “That’s Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president of the United States during World War Two. On the back . . . oh, who cares. My point was, I thought they started making Roosevelt dimes after he died. He had a brain hemorrhage near the end of the war, in nineteen forty-five. I forget what year it was the Roosevelt dimes came out, but before then, they made only Mercury dimes. That’s the head of the god Mercury, with the wings over his ears. He was Roman, but I don’t remember what he did. Anyway—” Roger flipped the Mercury dime over again and studied the small globe superimposed over the background V “—this just doesn’t look right. I bet somebody stamped their own coins just for fun. Maybe it’s a commemorative issue. This dime can’t be a real one.”
“Why not?”
“Well, like I just said, because the year is wrong, and that thing on the back isn’t what Mercury dimes had on their backsides.”
She snorted. “Maybe they did, and you didn’t know it.”
Roger managed to look wounded. “Hey, I had lots of dimes like this when I was a kid, Scarlett. I had a big coin collection. Wonder where it is now. Boy, that takes me back.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Look, I need to get my homework done at some point here.”
“Listen, do me a favor first, okay? Oh, don’t give me that look! This will just take a minute. Please? For me, your favorite little mouse? I knew you would. Okay, can you turn on your computer and bring up a search engine? Get something that looks for pictures on the Internet.”
Scarlett moved over to her computer desk and did as she was asked. “Okay, now what?”
“Type in, uh, ‘Mercury’ and ‘dime,’ then see what you get. See if you can get pictures of this coin.”
A few moments passed as Scarlett’s fingers clicked over the keys. “Okay . . . oh.” She maneuvered the computer’s mouse, then clicked a key and studied the screen—and frowned. “Yeah, there’s some kind of thing on the back . . . it looks like a big stick or bundle of sticks, with little branches or leaves around it. No V.”
“Yeah, there you go. See? This dime is counterfeit. Or someone just made it for a joke.”
Scarlett kept reading the computer screen, and her frowned deepened. “It says here that they stopped making Mercury dimes after nineteen forty-five, the year the president died. They started making Roosevelt dimes the next year.”
“Ah ha! I knew it! This coin’s a fake.” Roger studied the back of the dime. “It does have the ‘V for Victory’ symbol, which is sort of funny. They used that in World War Two, the allies did. And that little planet Earth with North and South America on it. Maybe someone who hated Roosevelt had it stamped. Republicans hated him. Maybe this is some Republican’s coin, who knows.”
“Is it worth anything?”
“Nah, probably not. Just a curio, except it’s made from pure silver. They used to do that before they went to clad coins with copper in the middle. You want it back?”
“Uh, sure.”
Roger appeared to smile. “Good, ‘cause whoever was handling this coin last also liked scratching his butt. Phew, stinks.”
Scarlett recoiled. “Eww! No, I think you should have it. Keep it in your cage.”
The mouse’s smile widened into a grin. “I’ll put it in the corner over here, then, away from my mansion.” Roger dragged the coin as far from his hutch as he could. “I tell you,” he said, “having a nose as sensitive as a mouse is sort of a curse.”
Her urge to get her homework done was starting to fade, despite the need to get more underwear and clothes at the mall. A new pair of boots wouldn’t hurt, either. “What sorts of things can you smell?”
“Anything. I can tell what you had for lunch—spaghetti and garlic bread, I think—and what sort of soap you used this morning, which books you were using all day, if you were hanging around kids who smoked, what—”
“I don’t smoke.”
“I know. You’d really stink if you did, but you do walk around kids who do. Some of them smoke pot, too. The odor clings to your clothes and hair. And I can smell air freshener and underarm deodorants and perfumes and colognes and all that, just everything. I know you don’t use perfume. Not yet, anyway. Wait till you get a boyfriend.”
A mild flush passed over Scarlett’s face. “How do you know I don’t?”
“I’d smell guy smells all over you if you did.”
“Well, maybe I’ve got a boyfriend but he doesn’t smell.”
“What, you mean he doesn’t have a nose?”
Scarlett made a face at the mouse, then pulled a lock of hair in front of her nose and sniffed. “I don’t smell anything in my hair.”
“Human noses aren’t that great, but mine is. I can tell you don’t drink alcohol, either, thank God. Anyway, don’t worry about it. Don’t eat any bean burritos, and everything will be fine.”
“You’re gross.” She pointed at her math book. “Do my homework!”
Roger stuck out his tongue at her, wiggling his ears very fast. Scarlett burst into laughter. “Entertainments costs a quarter,” he said when he returned to normal.
“Come on, help me with my math!”
“Make me.”
“Fine. I guess I will have a bean burrito for dinner.” Scarlett started to get up from her chair.
“Hold it!” cried Roger. He rushed to the side of the cage facing the math book. “The way you solve the first problem on page thirty-nine goes like this.”
Math, social studies, and English passed quickly. Roger was running through his plastic-tube maze when he stopped and came out into the open. “I was just thinking,” he said. “You smelled the garbage dumpster and it didn’t have an odor?”
“No. Maybe they’ve got clean garbage.”
“Or maybe it’s not garbage. I don’t remember much from when I woke up as a mouse, so I’m no help. It might be worth going back and poking around in the dumpster, see what else is in there.”
“Eww, no. If you want to poke around in the dumpster, I’ll be glad to take you over there.”
“No, thanks. Too many cats and dogs in the neighborhood. I’d never make it back alive.”
“Oh, right.” Scarlett paused and turned her head, hearing footsteps in the hallway outside her room.
A knock sounded on the door. “Scarlett, you ready to go?” her aunt called.
“Yeah, just a minute!” Scarlett leaned down to Roger and whispered, “We’re going to the mall. You want anything?”
“Rita Barksdale, if you see her,” said the mouse. “Just kidding. She was one hot babe. Damn everything.”
“Pardon your French,” Scarlett said quickly.
“Ah, yeah,” said Roger, giving her the eye. “Other than that, maybe you could bring me something fattening, like a granola bar. Make sure it doesn’t have chocolate in it. Chocolate doesn’t agree with my system anymore.”
“No girlfriend, no chocolate,” said Scarlett. “What do you do for fun?”
“Your homework.” The mouse paused, trying to look unconcerned. “Don’t be gone too long. It’s awfully quiet and boring around here without you.”
She smiled. “Aww. I can turn on the radio or my mini-TV while I’m out. How about that?”
“TV would be great, thanks. A news channel, if it can get one.”
“We have cable, no problem.” Scarlett set up her six-inch television set next to the cage, close enough for Roger to see. “You sure you don’t want to go shopping with us?”
“No, no. I’m . . . still a little shaky about heights and carnivores and so on. Have a good time.”
“You, too.”
Scarlett made sure that the doors to her room and the apartment were locked when she and her aunt went out into the cool autumn air. Traffic was light by the time they arrived at Lawndale Mall, west of their apartment complex. The mall itself, its modern interior badly painted in gray and yellow, was busy but not overly crowded as evening fell over the suburb. Having completely different ideas about what was stylish and necessary in the clothing department, Scarlett and her aunt agreed to split up and head for different stores, meeting back an hour later at the Yogurts of the World shop near the main entrance. Scarlett set out at a quick pace for Cashman’s, motivated to get what she needed and get back to see the mouse.
Too bad that a Books by the Ton outlet was right in the way. Slowing as she passed the store entrance, Scarlett gave in and walked back to browse the volumes for a few moments. New fiction, new nonfiction, bargain books, next year’s calendars, New Age books, a Halloween table for the kiddies . . . Scarlett forgot what time it was as she drifted through the shop, looking and reading. So much to see, so little time to see it.
On impulse, she paused before the Halloween table and reached down to flip open a pop-up book of monsters. An ugly witch clad in black arose from the first two pages, stirring a caldron and grinning up at Scarlett. She turned her head to read the words printed around the witch’s feet. It sounded like Shakespeare.
It was not the kiddieland rhyme she had expected. She let the book fall shut and stepped back, feeling eerie.
Something in the air was not quite right. Scarlett tilted her head, let her gaze become unfocused, and listened. She was having a premonition, just like the one earlier in the alley with Tananda before the Oakwood girls found them. Like the one she had when her aunt came home early from work back in Chicago to say she’d been laid off. Like any of a number of other premonitions she’d had since childhood, all of them accurate and with a lead time of less than a minute before—
Soft, heavy footsteps could be heard from the wide walkway of the mall. A large shape passed by the windows at the front of Books by the Ton. Scarlett turned her head toward it but did not look directly at it. It was a man, quite tall and broad, moving with quickness and ease. She had the impression that he wore a trench coat and hat, his hands shoved into coat pockets, overdressed for the weather. The man had a confident stride and went by as if nothing were important except for him.
Then, just as he was passing by, the man slowed, distracted by something, and almost came to a stop in view of the last window before he would walk out of sight. He turned his head to look into the store.
He was looking right at her.
Don’t look at him, whispered a voice inside her. She pretended to study the Halloween table’s offerings, then turned and walked off toward the calendars as if she had an interest in them, which she did not. She felt the large man’s eyes on her, staring, taking her in.
And then he moved on and was out of sight.
All her interest in buying a book had vanished. Scarlett checked her watch. Only fifteen minutes were left to finish shopping before she was to meet her aunt. With a groan, she headed for the bookstore’s open doors to reach the main concourse . . . and slowed, glancing nervously left and right before she went out. No sign of any giant around. Relieved, she walked quickly to Cashman’s, grabbed two packs of new underwear, some socks, and a new belt, paid for her purchases, then left with her bag and headed for Yogurts of the World. New blouses, boots, and sweaters would have to wait. She kept up a rapid pace as she walked by an electronics store, an athletic shoe store, a perfume-and-bath-oils store—
Again, something in the air was not quite right.
Her pace slowed as she looked about. She was approaching a side corridor that led to lockers and restrooms. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary among the crowd of shoppers around her.
Stop, said the soundless voice. She came to a halt and got out of the way of those around her, pressing against the window of a fashion store. She let her awareness expand.
Someone was waiting for her in the side corridor just ahead. It was the giant. She was positive of it. Be still, don’t panic, said the voice of her judgment. Her gaze lowered and she opened her Cashman’s bag, pretending to check her purchases.
A hand fell on her shoulder.
“Goodness, you act like I scared you or something, sweetie!” said her aunt gaily. “I’ve never seen you jump like that!”
“Let’s go back this way!” said Scarlett quickly, taking her aunt by the arm and turning her around to walk back the way they’d come. “I have to show you something!”
“Can it wait for tomorrow?”
“No, you have to see this!” Scarlett tried to get her aunt to walk faster. She could tell without looking that the giant had stepped out from the corridor and was watching them. “There’s this neat pair of boots at Cashman’s. You have to see them!”
“Well, all right,” said her aunt, who was carrying two shopping bags in one hand. “Let’s make it fast. Do you need more money?”
“No, no, I’m fine. You have to see them.”
“Why didn’t you just buy them to begin with?”
“I wanted you to see them first!” Scarlett snapped. She was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, it’s—they’re just cool boots!”
They wasted ten minutes in Cashman’s looking at boots before Scarlet decided it was safe to leave. She had no further sense of danger. The giant must have left the mall.
“I don’t know what it is with teenagers and clothing,” murmured her aunt as she drove the two of them home. “Boots. Well, I admit I liked shoes when I was your age, but not boots, really. Certainly not knee-high black-leather boots. Maybe a little on the kinky side. What do you think?”
“What?” Scarlett blinked and looked at her aunt. “I’m sorry, I was thinking. What were you saying?”
“Never mind.”
It was only as she climbed the stairway to the second floor where their apartment was that Scarlett remembered she had promised Roger she would bring home a special granola bar. She muttered a curse under her breath and shrugged. Nothing she could do about it now. She stopped outside the door to the apartment, all the shopping bags in her hands, waiting for her aunt to climb the stairs up—
—and saw with a start that the door was ajar. The keyhole for the deadbolt was scratched up.
Roger.
She dropped the bags and shoved hard on the door as she went in. The door banged into the doorstop against the wall and rebounded, but she was already inside. Nothing in the foyer, kitchen, or living room had been disturbed.
But her bedroom door at the end of the hallway was wide open, the light on.
“No!” she screamed. She ran in, half-fearing someone would leap out at her with a knife, half-afraid she would be grabbed and kidnapped, but nothing stopped her all the way through the apartment to her room.
The central cage of the mouse enclosure was on the floor, the top removed. Roger, of course, was gone.
Last updated 12/23/06