Scarlett

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Synopsis

Author's Notes

This first-season tale begins immediately after the conclusion of “The Lab Brat,” covering the period through “Pinch Sitter” and “Too Cute” and concluding with events in “The Big House.” (“Road Worrier” and “The Teachings of Don Jake” are here assumed to take place in the summer between Scarlett and Daria’s sophomore and junior high-school years.) The timeframe is in the late 1990s, Lawndale being a suburb of an east-coast mid-Atlantic city, probably Baltimore.

The original story was begun in late August 2004. It was then interrupted by a computer crash only a week or two later, and was further interrupted when the original plot was tossed out while the story was in progress and a new plot was sought. (I discovered that many of the elements of what I had planned for the tale had already appeared in a Marvel Comics graphic novel called 1602—Virginia Dare and all that. Damn!) After two years of research, a new plot was located and the story was able to continue on to the end. The story is posted in HTML with different typefaces and modified screen captures from the show. Because the story is occasionally updated and corrected, it helps to refresh the screen each time a webpage for this tale is accessed.

The idea of doing an illustrated fanfic was very appealing. I actually got the idea from reading the illustrated versions of Diane Long’s famous Daria fanfics, “The Last Stupor” and “Undone.” When I began writing “Scarlett,” however, I did not have an illustrated fanfic in mind. The story was going to be purely text-based. Then I decided to teach myself HTML, bought a book on it, and began constructing the “Scarlett” webpages as an experiment. The problems in using screen captures are obvious: unclear shots, the need to modify certain shots, trouble with over-modifying JPG shots, a lack of pictures on certain things the story calls for, an excess of pictures on things having nothing at all to do with the story, the tendency to let certain interesting pictures dominate sections of the storytelling, etc. Plus, I had to offer the option of reading the story in chapters or all at once, there were issues with my tinkering with different type fonts and layouts to get different effects, etc. By the way, all the pictures in this story will reveal their origins if you place the cursor over them in IE7.

Despite the story’s use of the screen names of certain members of Daria fandom’s Infamous Unserious Five (Scarlett, Tananda, Angelinhel, Taryn, Beth Ann, Mahna Mahna, Woot, etc.), and the names of other Daria fanfic writers and fans (e.g., Guy, E. A. Smith, etc.), real-life IUF members and other fans are not meant to be the subjects of this story. Their screen names simply seemed right for the characters featured herein who had no given names in the TV series. Anyone who knows nothing about the glorious heyday of the IUF in Daria fandom should consult their collected legends in “The Cave” at Thea Zara’s Sh33p’s Fluff. This explains little and leaves the investigator more confused than before, but thus it serves its purpose.

Acknowledgments

On her first day at Lawndale High School, she decided to get everything out in the open, so she wore her ankh. Forever after that, students who didn’t remember her name called her the Ankh Girl, which she didn’t mind too much, or various rude nicknames revolving around the word witch, which she didn’t like at all. She preferred being called Scarlett, her real name, but few bothered and almost no one ever spelled it right (two t’s, not one).

Her aunt dropped her off in front of Lawndale High School at 7:20 a.m. on a Tuesday in September, reminding her with a smile that the word “sophomore” was Greek for “wise fool.” After checking in at the main office (and correcting the spelling of her name on almost every school official document in her file), Scarlett was put in a group with five other new students and taken on a tour by the principal, Angela Li, a talkative Asian woman with an excess of school spirit that indicated Ms. Li actually believed what she was ranting on about. This was potentially bad, but Scarlett decided she could live with it. She wanted little more at this point than to fade into the background to study her new environment and its inhabitants in peace.

In minutes, she had categorized all five of her fellow new students: a self-centered Cuteness Queen with long orange-red hair, a brunette Self-Outcast Brain who was clearly the Cuteness Queen’s dour older sister, a tall Anal Retentive Manager fond of propriety and drab clothing, a shaggy-haired Extreme Skateboarder in baggy pants and sunglasses, and a pleasant but unexciting Closet Trekkie. The Brain and the Extreme Skateboarder seemed to have issues with fitting in. Scarlett soon lost interest in all of them, though she suspected the polar-opposite sisters would provide colorful entertainment in the future. In this, she was quickly proven correct. (The temptation to call the Brain’s sister “Pinky” was terrible.)

She also suspected the principal, the living embodiment of George Orwell’s Big Brother, would lock horns with the Brain and Extreme Skateboarder, and again she was proven correct as both were deposited into a self-esteem class in less than a week’s time. The Brain figured a way out of it, of course, aided by another outcast, a leggy Art Chick who took nothing seriously. Scarlett could tell the Brain and the Art Chick would be a dyad for life, each half of a whole, and counted them lucky.

For her part, Scarlett went to classes, went to lunch, went to more classes, and so on, falling into the rhythm of her new life. It was not so different from her old life back in the western suburbs of Chicago, before her aunt was downsized and decided, as did Scarlett, that a move to the east coast was called for. Her aunt was gainfully employed in online sales again, working on her laptop at all hours anyplace in the apartment, even on the toilet. For her part, Scarlett did her homework, listened to every sort of music, made a tiny circle of semi-close friends, played with her hair when she thought no one else was looking, and stayed out of the limelight.

She was asked a lot of questions, of course, which she always answered in her soft, Midwestern voice. Yes, she was a pagan, a Wiccan to be specific, but no, she wasn’t a Satanist, it wasn’t like that at all. Yes, she knew spells, but no, she couldn’t make people fall in love or put hexes on teachers, sorry about that. Yes, she knew about Goths, but no, she didn’t think of herself as a Goth, though she dressed almost entirely in dark tones from her long black V-neck sweater to her high-heeled, narrow-toed boots, with a gray tee and brown ankle-length skirt to round out her ensemble. Yes, she was named Scarlett because of her hair, which was a shoulder-length waterfall of the reddest blood-red anyone ever remembered seeing, parted in the middle with one long thin strand swinging over her face. No, her parents were no longer alive; her unmarried paternal aunt was her sole guardian.

Everything went well until the October day Scarlett walked into the high-school science classroom between periods, hoping to get a clarification on a literature assignment from another student. The student she sought was talking with someone else, and while waiting Scarlett idly looked into the glass tank full of white mice newly returned from a student research project. One of them caught her attention: a mouse curled into a ball in a corner, shivering despite the warmth of the room.

A girl standing near Scarlett noticed the object of her gaze and walked over. It was the Brain.

“That one looks ill,” said Scarlett, pointing.

“I almost wish it were,” said the Brain. “It was conditioned to fear everything in its environment.”

Scarlett’s face crinkled into a look of disgust. “That’s awful.”

“That’s what happens when a cheerleader kidnaps your lab mouse in the belief that you’re trying to steal her boyfriend, then gives the mouse to her psychopathic little brother for a few days before you can bribe her to give the mouse back,” said the Brain. “Long story.”

“A little kid tortured it?”

“To put it kindly.”

Scarlett stared at the shivering ball of white fur. “What’ll happen to it?” she finally asked—but the Brain had already left class to find the Art Chick. Her literature assignment forgotten, Scarlett steeled herself and went to the science teacher, a divorced and bitter middle-aged woman named Janet Barch.

“Oh, he’s useless for research now,” snapped Ms. Barch, fists on her hips as she surveyed the mouse tank. “Just like a man. No spine at all. If I had a hungry boa constrictor, I’d solve two problems at once, but I don’t, so I’ll have to—”

“Can I have him?”

“Can you have him?” Barch repeated in astonishment. “Why would you want a worthless thing like that?”

“Why would you?” Scarlett replied.

Ten minutes later and late for her next class, Scarlett tucked the mouse into her locker. The mouse now shivered on a pile of shredded tissues inside a Tupperware container with holes punched in the lid. A selection of food pellets lay against his back in the event he recovered from his trauma sufficiently to eat. At days’ end, Scarlett took the mouse home to her aunt’s apartment and badgered her aunt into driving her to a pet store to get a proper cage for it. The cage and all its crawl-tube accessories cost $74.89, but her aunt had just made a major online sale and was in the mood to splurge.

Fresh wood shavings and a colorful plastic cage did not seem to improve the mouse’s demeanor. Scarlett forgot about her homework and tried for hours to get the mouse to stop shivering and respond instead to its surroundings. She began to wonder if it had been poisoned or suffered internal injuries. As she checked the Internet on her laptop for possible cures, she thought bad thoughts about rotten kids who tormented helpless creatures. When the Internet proved unhelpful, she tried a couple of spells to no avail, and she even tried prayer with the same result.

At 11 p.m. and feeling desperate, Scarlett went into her closet where her altar was hidden (but only from company, as her aunt didn’t mind if she was a Wiccan), and she took down her boxes and bags of herbs. She was out of her depth here and knew it, but something had to be done. After sorting through what she had, she picked out five herbs in particular and dropped them into the cage in front of the mouse’s nose.

The mouse immediately uncurled and sneezed violently, emitting tiny squeaks as it did. When it stopped, it looked around with a dazed air.

“Is that better?” Scarlett said.

“What an awful dream I’ve had,” said the mouse in a thin, clear voice. “It was horrible, just horrible.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Scarlett. She knew immediately that reality had changed, but she was flexible about the boundaries of reality and went with the flow. “Hope this is better.”

“There was this grinning blond kid,” the mouse went on, “and he . . . whoa.” The mouse looked directly up at Scarlett, its nose and whiskers twitching. “Oh, man,” he groaned. “I blew it.”

“Guess so,” said Scarlett in her soft voice, as if she had talked with mice every day of her life. “Why don’t you have some dinner? You look starved.”

The mouse stared at her a moment longer. “This doesn’t smell or sound like a house I’ve been in before,” it said.

“It isn’t. You’re at my aunt’s apartment, in my room.” She pointed to the nearby water bottle and dish of pellets. “Go drink and eat. We’ll talk later.” She had wanted to keep talking, but the mouse was in bad shape and she wasn’t willing to see it die just for the thrill of an interspecies chat. After a last long look, the mouse did as it was told. Scarlett watched it lick at the water nozzle, turning its head to peer at her now and then, while she in turn pondered on what exactly was going on and what she should do about it.

She contained herself until the mouse had eaten its second food pellet. “So,” she said, “are you supposed to be my familiar?”

“Your familiar?” The mouse snorted lightly. “I don’t think we’re that familiar yet.” After a moment, it added in a contrite voice, “Just kidding. No, I’m not a familiar, if you mean like a magical animal for a wizard or something.” After another moment, it said, “Thank you. I really am grateful for . . . well, everything.”

“You’re welcome. I was thinking that I knew a few people who said they had familiars and talked with them, but I always figured they were exaggerating. Sort of like people who live alone say they can talk with their miniature dogs and understand everything they say, but they really don’t.”

The mouse finished off another pellet and licked its pink nose with a tiny pink tongue. “I’m inclined to agree,” it said. “As far as I know, I’m the only real-life talking animal around here. Humans excluded.” It gave her a concerned look. “Maybe we should talk about this. I’d not like to be put on television or anything, if you don’t mind. I know there’s a lot of money to be made, but I’m not very good with travel, and crowds make me nervous. Plus, I’m more than a little concerned that someone will want to take me apart to see how I work, sort of like those frogs that got dissected in science lab a few weeks ago, and—”

“No,” she said. “That won’t happen.”

“Easy for you to say. I bet every one of those frogs said the same thing, too.”

“It won’t,” said Scarlett.

The mouse subsided and ate one more food pellet.

“I’m Scarlett,” she said.

“I can tell,” said the mouse, looking up. “What’s your name, though?”

She smiled through her red bangs. “Cute. Rude, but cute.”

“I shouldn’t do that,” said the mouse in a lower tone. “All I need is to tick you off to win a one-way trip down the toilet bowl.”

“Say what you want. I don’t mind. What’s your name?”

“Uh, let me get back to you on that, if that’s okay. I’m a little careful with my name. Everyone should be.” The mouse picked up another food pellet and nibbled at it. “It’s not Algernon, I can tell you that,” it added between nibbles. “And don’t say Stuart Little or Reepicheep, either. Ugh.”

Why it wouldn’t give its name was certainly queer. It was just a mouse. A talking mouse with an unusual amount of literary knowledge, yes, but still a mouse. Maybe it was afraid of being cursed. She shrugged, still smiling though the unreality of the situation was beginning to tug at her. “So, where are you from? If you’re not from around here, that is.”

“I’m not, in a way, but in a—” The mouse put down the food pellet, appearing to think and chew at the same time. “Look,” it said after it swallowed, “I’d like nothing more than to pretend this whole conversation never happened. It’s just that I woke up from this awful dream and was so disoriented that—”

“It wasn’t a dream,” she said. “I rescued you today from a classroom where you got used in an experiment. Someone told me a mean kid kidnapped and tortured you. You were rolled up in a ball doing nothing but shaking. The science teacher was going to get rid of you, I think.”

“Oh,” said the mouse after an appropriate pause. “Oh. So, that wasn’t a drea—” The mouse shivered all over and rubbed its eyes. “Oh, man. Wish you hadn’t told me. Oh, man.”

“Finish your food,” she said gently. “You need your strength.”

“Right.” The mouse looked down, appearing weary. “Scarlett,” it said, “I’m rather tense, and I owe you a tremendous apology. I’m not myself lately—ha, ha.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, no, I am worried about it. I’m not usually like this.” It rubbed its eyes again. “Perhaps I should get some sleep, and with any luck you’ll wake up tomorrow and forget this ever happened.”

“Sleep would do you good. I need to do my homework, anyway.”

“What time is it?” The mouse peered at a radio/CD clock-alarm near the cage. “Hey, you’d better hurry. It’s late.”

“I’ll be fine.” On impulse, Scarlett started to reach for the trapdoor on top of the cage, meaning to open it and pet the mouse. She stopped herself almost immediately, though it took all her willpower to do so. It might not like to be petted if it was this intelligent. “You get some sleep. We’ll talk later.”

“Perhaps,” said the mouse. It yawned and began to wash itself with its tongue and paws.

She watched for a few moments, then said on impulse, “You weren’t always a mouse, were you?”

The mouse started, looking up at her with wide, shocked eyes. It then regained its composure and looked away, continuing to wash itself but more slowly. “I’m very tired,” it said, as if to itself, then crawled off inside an opaque hutch in the cage and did not come out again for the rest of that night.

Scarlett hit the alarm at six a.m. the following morning, bleary eyed from staying up past midnight with her homework and trying to get over the idea that she had a talking mouse for a pet. She quickly got out of bed in her red, knee-length nightshirt, turned on the light in her closet, padded over to the mouse cage in sock feet (phew—she’d forgotten that mice did tend to stink after a while), and peered inside. The cage appeared empty at first glance, and she was afraid for a moment that it had escaped. It was a smart mouse, for sure. Where could it have gone?

Her fears were laid to rest when she spotted the mouse inside the gray plastic hutch, near a back wall. However, the mouse lay on its back without moving, its eyes closed and tiny feet in the air. Her breath again caught in her throat. Was it dead already? It must have been in worse shape than she’d thought when she’d gotten it, and it had finally succumbed to its injuries.

Oblivious to her dread, the mouse suddenly scratched its nose with a forepaw. It then snuggled down into the wood shavings, still on its back, with its head turned to one side and mouth open a bit. Scarlett leaned closer and heard the mouse softly snore. Not dead—just dead tired. She sat down on the floor, weak-kneed with relief.

Had it all been a dream, then, that the mouse had talked to her? It didn’t seem like it, which was incredibly exciting, up to a point. If the mouse could talk, other fantastic things were possible—practically anything was possible, in fact, which was the frightening part. It was a grave threat to her life, the world, and the cosmos, not that that was a bad thing. Normality was boring. She had the idea that anyone else would have screamed and run out of the room when the mouse spoke, but that was so lame. Doing what other people did was not Scarlett’s idea of a good time.

If not a dream, then, was the talking mouse a practical joke? Was a microphone hidden in its fur? Was it a robot? Hiding a microphone on a mouse seemed like a stupid thing to do, even as an elaborate prank. The way the mouse acted as it spoke eliminated the possibility of it being a robot; a special effect that good appeared only in the movies and cost loads of money, more than any joke was worth. The talking mouse was the real thing, then.

Other things bugged her. Sleeping mice always curled up on their stomachs or sides, and did not stretch out on their backs with their feet off the ground—and they never snored. This mouse must also have a marvelous set of lungs and vocal cords to make itself heard so clearly in relatively normal vocal registers. How could that be?

The weirdness ran deep, and part of Scarlett’s sleep-fogged mind had trouble accepting what had happened. She drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees to consider the situation. It really was a talking mouse, but given the way it spoke and acted, and how it reacted to her last question, it had likely not always been a mouse. It had strong “guy” overtones in voice and behavior, and its knowledge was the sort only a human would have. The conclusion was obvious.

But how could a thing like that happen? Magic seemed as reasonable as any other cause. Could the mouse be bewitched, like in fairy tales, or had it been genetically engineered to be super-smart, like in science-fiction movies? Had it escaped from a lab, like the mice and rats in that movie about NIMH? It knew about Flowers for Algernon and other mouse-related books, so it was well read on talking mice and brainy mice. Curiouser and curiouser.

With school starting at eight, there was little time for further musings. Scarlett would have faked an illness and stayed home if a major test hadn’t been scheduled for ten o’clock in English the following day. She grabbed clean clothing and headed out of her room for the hall bathroom, which was hers in the apartment as her aunt’s bedroom had its own attached bathroom. She briefly considered showering and then changing in her room, as she usually did, but the mouse . . . if it had a guy mind, it would probably stare at her with its little pink eyes if she changed in front of it, which would be just too weird, sorry. Anyway, she didn’t need to give it something to blab about to everyone else. Certain trust issues had to be resolved, and soon.

She got ready for school, grabbed a handful of granola bars and threw them into her gray hiker’s backpack, then peeked in on her aunt, who was still sleeping. Must be nice to have a job where you could work from home, she thought. She also checked on the mouse, but it was out cold. After quietly refilling its food dish and water bottle, she locked the door to her room, checked the thermostat, and headed for the door.

And stopped. She hurried back to her room, unlocked the door, and quietly went inside. Finding a blank index card on her computer desk, she got a pen and wrote out a message.

HI THERE! I’M AT SCHOOL UNTIL 3. MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE UNTIL I GET BACK. DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAGE, MY AUNT THROWS STUFF AT CRAWLY THINGS. NO OFFENSE.

—SCARLETT

After a moment, she added:

P.S. DO YOU LIKE MUFFINS? WE HAVE BLUEBERRY AND APPLE. WE HAVE GRANOLA BARS, TOO. ALSO, WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED? I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO GET YOU. WE’LL TALK LATER. BYE!

She leaned the index card against the side of the cage, the words facing inward. That done, she fled.

School dragged on for far too long. Scarlett guessed she had checked the clocks and her watch over six thousand times before lunch, amazed at how slow time could go when you desperately wanted to be somewhere else. On her way into the huge, brightly lit cafeteria, she saw Lawndale High’s most gothic Goth student, Andrea, eating lunch by herself. Scarlett gave a little wave and smile, deciding not to tell Andrea or anyone else about the mouse, at least for now.

Andrea saw Scarlett and waved her over, calling “C’mere!” with some urgency.

“What’s up?” Scarlett said.

“Did you get a mouse from Ms. Barch yesterday?” Andrea asked. “A sick mouse?”

Scarlett felt her throat go dry. Uh-oh. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s kind of sick, yeah.”

“Brittany was asking about it last period,” Andrea said. “I think she wants to get it back from you.”

Scarlett had heard through the rumor mill that Brittany Taylor, one of the high school’s cheerleaders, was the girl who had kidnapped the mouse, then given it to her sadistic little brother. “Why?” she gasped.

“I dunno. Thought you should know before she sees you.”

“Okay. Um . . . thanks.” Andrea waved and went back to her lunch as Scarlett left.

Being on a different class schedule, Scarlett had little contact with many of the other sophomores. However, she did have the same general math class that Brittany and the Art Chick shared, and that class was next period. She did not eat much of her lunch, wondering what she would say to Brittany on the matter. The cheerleaders could be intimidating, but there was no sense in running from trouble. She got rid of her tray, went to her locker, got her things, and headed for math.

Brittany was waiting for her at the door. A cheery natural blonde with pigtails and a stunning pair of breasts that caused boys to run into walls and doors instead of watching where they were going, Brittany always wore a too-tight Lawndale cheerleader’s uniform, “to give the school more spirit.”

“Hey!” Brittany called, seeing Scarlett approach. “I forgot your name, but can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” said Scarlett, swallowing.

“See,” said Brittany, “my little brother had this mouse that I sort of like borrowed from another student in science, you know? I had to give it back in exchange for my boyfriend—it’s kind of a long story—but now my brother’s all mad and he wants to buy the mouse back from anyone who has it, and he said he’d give me five dollars if I got it back for him, and he’d pay almost as much to whoever I got it from. Do you have the mouse? I was going to make him pay me twenty for it if you did. I could use the money for new pom-poms, ‘cause mine are sort of worn out.”

Scarlett took a deep breath. “That mouse is very sick,” she said. “I . . . I don’t think it has long to live, and I just want to make it comfortable before it . . . goes.” This was technically true. Nothing on earth lived for very long, relatively speaking, and she did want to make it comfortable.

“Oh, no!” squealed Brittany. “That’s terrible! On the other hand, it did bite me once, so . . . oh, well! Are you sure you don’t want to sell it if it’s going to die anyway?”

“If it’s sick,” said Scarlett, “it might make you sick, too, if you touched it or breathed the air around it.”

“Oh, that’s right! Forget it then. Or you can give it right to my little brother so he can get sick instead. That’s okay with me.” Brittany turned to go back inside the classroom.

“Wait,” said Scarlett, hoping it wasn’t a mistake to ask. “Why did your brother want that mouse in particular, and not another one?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know. He said he really needed it for a special experiment. Kids, huh?”

A special experiment? Well, he could forget setting eyes on that mouse again, Scarlett decided as she made a face. The crisis averted, she went into class and got her homework ready for review—and discovered she’d done the wrong page in her confusion the night before, after the mouse went to sleep.

She ran almost the whole way home after school, unable to find a ride with anyone. Coming in the apartment door, she slammed and locked the door behind her, dumped her backpack on the floor by the kitchen table, and staggered down the hall to her room, huffing and sweating like a fountain.

“Hi, sweetie,” called her aunt from the bathroom. “How was school today?”

“Sucked!” Scarlett called, fumbling with the keys to her door.

“That’s nice,” said her aunt. “I might make a big sale tonight. Want to order out Chinese? There’s a place in town that delivers.”

“Yeah, sure!” She got into her room, locked the door behind her, and went to the mouse’s cage.

The mouse was crawling through one of the colorful plastic tubes leading out of the main cage. She saw it stop and eye her for a moment, then continue walking through the tube as if nothing was wrong. When it came out into the cage again, it washed its face.

“How was your day?” Scarlett asked.

The mouse ignored her, acting exactly like a normal mouse.

“Did you get enough sleep?” she said.

Same response.

“Is the food and water okay? You want some granola? We have muffins and I think crackers, too. Did you see my note? I hurried back from school so we could talk.”

The mouse yawned.

She began to worry that she had perhaps hallucinated or dreamed the whole thing after all. “Would you like to go for a swim?” she said, playing hardball. “We have a lovely toilet, and I can make the water go round and round and round, and I can even make a little high dive for you and—”

“All right, all right!” cried the mouse, looking panicked. “Stop it! Don’t even joke about that!”

Scarlett took a deep breath, held it, then let it out. “Okay,” she said, “so I wasn’t on drugs or anything last night. Good.”

“I wish I were on drugs,” said the mouse. “At least I wouldn’t be so bored, plus I ache all over, thanks to that damn kid. Pardon my French. Nice place you got here, though. Uh, you don’t have a cat or dog, do you? I can smell them around.”

“The people who had the apartment before us had cats.” Scarlett pulled the chair from her computer desk over and sat by the cage. “There’s a little dog in the apartment below us, but it never goes out. We don’t have anything.”

“Are we still in Lawndale? I meant to ask the other night, but—”

“Lawndale, the north side. I thought you said you weren’t from around here.”

“Not originally, no. Thanks for the note, by the way. You know, a granola bar or muffin might hit the spot. These oblong green pellets are pretty bland.”

“Sure. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

“Where the hell am I going to go?” called the mouse. “Excuse my French.”

“Hell is not French,” Scarlett retorted. “And neither is damn.”

“Okay, okay, whatever. Granola bar?”

When Scarlett returned, the mouse was standing on its hind feet, its face pressed against the bars of the cage. “I can’t read the titles of those books over there,” it said, squinting. “I love to read, but mouse eyes aren’t made for long distance vision. Guess contacts are out of the question.”

“Here,” she said, dropping some crumbled bits of granola bar into the cage. The mouse went over, sniffed, and picked up on, nibbling away rapidly. “Do you mind a little conversation?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair.

The mouse shrugged. She was positive it was a shrug, given the way its arms and shoulders rose and fell as it ate.

“Okay,” she said, “so, like, do you talk to anyone else besides me?”

The mouse shook its head, chewing away with its cheeks bulging with granola.

“Do you speak any other languages, like hamster, rat, rabbit, anything like that?”

The mouse looked up at her with a tilted head, still eating, then swallowed its food and cleared its throat. “No, I’m afraid not. A little French—ha, ha—but that’s about it. I’m terrible with languages, even English. Can we have some yes-no questions, so I don’t have to open my mouth? I’m really getting into this nut bar here. Tasty.”

Scarlett nodded, rocking in her seat. “Did you talk to that girl that had you for her maze experiment? Auburn hair, glasses, kind of sarcastic?”

A shake of the head no.

“You just pretended you were a mouse, and she never caught on?”

The mouse nodded, then cleared its throat again. “I am a mouse,” it said stiffly.

“But you weren’t always a mouse, right?”

The chewing stopped for a moment. When the mouse resumed eating, it turned away to look at something besides Scarlett.

“I didn’t get a yes-no on that one.”

The mouse ignored her.

“You used to be human, but you’re really upset about being a mouse now?”

Putting down the lump of granola it was eating, the mouse sat back in a despondent posture. “Do we really have to talk about this? Are you going to throw me down the toilet if I don’t answer?”

“Of course not! How can you say such a thing?”

“Because people do that!” the mouse yelled—not in a terribly loud voice, but loud enough. He subsided and waved a forepaw around. “Because I saw a kid do that once, a long time ago! I keep thinking about it.”

“Was the kid who did that you?”

The mouse lowered his head. “No, but I didn’t stop him. Can we talk about anything else at all, please?”

“Uh, sure. Why is it you’ll talk to me, but not to anyone else? Or am I assuming too much there?”

“No, just to you,” said the mouse with a sigh. “I wasn’t going to talk to anyone at all, if I could help it. I had the mouse thing down cold until you caught me off-guard the other night. Now . . . well, you know what I am, you haven’t done anything horrible to me—yet—and frankly it’s been so long since I talked to anyone, it’s sort of a relief. I was kind of going crazy. Maybe talking is better.”

“How did you get to be a mouse anyway? Were you cursed? Are you an alien or a robot? Are you from the future? Or is it sort of complicated?”

“It’s . . . look, if we talk about now, can I go back to eating granola afterward? I mean, I still want to talk, but that topic sort of disturbs me.”

“Hmm. I guess. So, once upon a time, you were a guy. An older guy, I’d guess.”

The mouse looked at her with wide eyes. “How’d you know that?” it fairly shouted.

“It made sense.” Scarlett gave herself a secret high five. Right again! “So, start at the beginning. Who are you, and how’d you get to be a mouse?”

The mouse looked around its cage, then picked up a crumb of granola and ate it. It wiped its paws on its fur and settled back again, sitting upright with its forepaws at its sides.

“Well,” it began, “to tell the truth, I don’t know why I’m a mouse. I was human, yeah, and I was a lot older than you. You’re what, fifteen, sixteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Yeah. I was three times older than you, almost.”

“Three times older than me.” She guessed around fifty. “Before what happened?”

“I was a skydiving instructor.” The mouse became increasingly uneasy as it continued. “I worked at a little county airport west of here, near Leeville. One day about a year ago, I was on a jump with a few buddies, and—” The mouse hugged itself with its forearms and shivered “—something went wrong.”

“Went wrong?” repeated Scarlett, but she immediately knew what the mouse meant.

“The chutes were sabotaged, all three of them. Someone got into them and cut through the straps that make the chutes come open.” The mouse’s gaze drifted and it looked into the distance, still hugging itself. “I was tumbling, I remember that. There was a pasture below me, and some cows, and then—” It shivered again and rubbed its eyes “—then I woke up, and I was like this. Reincarnation or something, I guess. I don’t know what happened to my buddies. I saw some newspapers later, and I know we were all supposed to have been, you know, killed in the accident, but I don’t know if they came back like I did, or what. I just don’t know.”

Scarlett remembered to close her mouth. Reincarnation was a possibility she had not even considered, which surprised her as she often thought about what would happen to her in the afterlife, and she had wanted to come back as some kind of bird. “So, you died,” she said.

“Uh, I don’t know. In a way, maybe, but in a way not, obviously. I’ve been thinking about this for a year now, getting into the library here and trying to research anything at all that might tell me what happened. I was able to read some books and use the computers until the library people figured someone was using the system at night, so I sneaked over to the high school to use the computers there. They knew someone was using them, but I learned the passwords the principal uses, and her computer use doesn’t show up on the system. She’s got something going on in that school, for sure, but I don’t know what.” The mouse’s voice hardened. “Then, two weeks ago, I got careless, and this dumb jock who was making out with his cheerleader girlfriend after school caught me in a box and put me in with the other lab mice in the science classroom. I thought I was a goner then, but the girl who got me for research was pretty good. I was going to escape, but then that bimbo cheerleader got me. I bit her, but it didn’t help. She gave me to—” The mouse took a nervous breath and finished in a rush “—her demonic kid brother, and I don’t remember too much about what happened after that, until you came along.”

Scarlett mulled the story over. “You have no idea why you came back as a mouse,” she said.

“None. Not a clue.”

“But someone murd—uh, fixed your parachute so it wouldn’t open, right?”

A nod. “Yeah,” it said in a low voice. “Did a professional job of it, too. I think whoever it was knew exactly what to do. The newspapers said it was an accident, that we’d accidentally used parachutes that were supposed to be sent out for repairs. That doesn’t make any sense to me. We each packed our own parachutes, I know that for a fact, and there was nothing wrong with them. We hardly left them alone for a moment. This city must have the most incompetent detectives in the world. I don’t know.”

“Do you think you came back because you want revenge on the person who, uh, did all that to you with the parachute?”

“What?” The mouse shook its head. “As mad as I get thinking about it, I really haven’t thought too much about revenge, at least not right now. I’ve been pretty busy just trying to stay alive. Being a mouse is the pits. And why would I come back as a mouse if I wanted revenge? Man, I’d come back as a B-52 bomber, atom-bomb that son of a bitch. Pardon my French.”

“Bitch isn’t French, either.”

“Kid, look, it’s just a saying, all right?” The mouse looked down at the granola crumbs around it. “Are we done here?”

“I have one more question. Two more, actually. If you came down in a cow pasture over in Leeville, which is sort of a long drive from here, how’d you get to Lawndale?”

The mouse was reaching for a granola crumb but stopped. “That part, I don’t know. When I came to, I was already here in town, under a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. I have no clue how that came about, no clue at all. I ran around like a madman for days, being chased by damn kids on their bikes and dogs and cats and God knows what, even an owl, just every evil thing in the world before I sorted out what to do and got into the library. That was a trick, I’ll tell you.” It sighed again. “One more question?”

“Okay. I need to start my homework, anyway, if you don’t mind me working on the desk next to you.”

“Hey, it’s your room.” The mouse looked uneasy again. “You know, I was going to say, I don’t know what to tell you about your changing clothes in here, you know? I mean, you’re a kid and this is your room, and I’m a mouse, yeah, but I—”

“Already taken care of. I’ll change in the bathroom from now on. Last question: What can I call you? ‘Mouse’ is a little simpleminded.”

“Ah. You can call me Roger. No point in mentioning any last names, I guess. I’m not big enough for one, ha ha.” The mouse coughed. “We done for now? Granola time?”

“Sure.” Feeling like she was having an out-of-body experience, Scarlett got up from her chair to get her backpack from the kitchen.

“Oh, hey, kid?” called the mouse.

“Scarlett,” said Scarlett.

“Scarlett, right. Sorry. By any chance, do you know anyone named Barksdale from Leeville?”

“Uh, no, I don’t.”

“Rats.” The mouse winced. “I hate saying that. Just curious. I was dating this hot babe named Rita who lived over there. Kinda curious how she was doing, if she was still around, you know?”

“What? You want to see her?”

“No, no. She hates mice.” The mouse shook its head, looking sad. “This is one messed-up life, let me tell you.”

Scarlett nodded and left. She had a feeling that having this mouse around was going to make her life quite messed up as well.

Doing her homework was difficult with a talking mouse only two feet away, but Scarlett was able to focus her attention with superhuman effort, restricting herself to occasional comments about her classes or teachers while the mouse ate. When the apartment doorbell rang, she rushed out to get the Chinese food order, then brought back her share of the chicken fried rice and sweet-and-sour soup to eat at her desk, again locking the door behind her. She spotted the mouse—Roger, she reminded herself, his name is Roger—trying to read her math homework through the cage bars. He retreated to pick up more granola as she sat down again and arranged the food on her desk with her schoolbooks and papers. The mouse cage still had a bit of a sharp odor—mouse pee, she knew, but tried not to think about it so she could eat.

“You know anything about math?” she asked. “I’m having problems with number twelve.”

“Uh,” said Roger, but Scarlett had already propped up her math book beside the cage. “Number twelve, right there,” she added. “I hate word problems.”

“I . . . oh, what the hell.” The mouse went to the bars and peered out, squinting. After a pause, Scarlett noticed the mouse was moving its lips as it read.

“Did you ever have any kids?” she asked. “I mean, not when you were a mouse, but when you were a guy.”

Roger glanced at her, then looked back at the book. “Uh, no. Not that I know of. Divorced twice, but no kids.”

“What do you mean, not that you know of?”

“I meant no. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any surprises out there for me. Someone would have mentioned it, otherwise, I’m sure.”

She stared down at the mouse, marveling at how calm she sounded as she talked to it. “Why’d you get divorced? Two times?”

Roger groaned and eyed her. “Look, do you want help or not? I can’t do everything at once, unlike a teenager.”

“Oh, okay. The math first, then.”

“All right.” The mouse read the problem aloud, then told her how to solve it. Scarlett scribbled the information down. “How about number fourteen?” she asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to do this by yourself? How are you going to learn anything otherwise?”

“I hate math.”

“Everybody hates math. So what? You still have to know math in real life.”

“Just help me with number fourteen, and that will be it.”

Roger groaned again, then went back to reading the book.

“Do you want me to look up stuff about you in the school computers tomorrow?” she asked, continuing to speak even when the mouse gave her an annoyed look. “Like, about the, uh, skydiving thing, or anything else? I can print it off and bring it back so you can read it.”

“Let me think about that. I looked up a lot of stuff when I was in the school in the last few months. Good thing kids are messy, I’ll tell you that. I ate pretty well right off the floor, every night.”

“Eww.”

“A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

“If I come back in the next life, it won’t be as a mouse.”

“This wasn’t my first choice, either, but I got stuck with it anyway. Let me finish reading this, okay?” Scarlett subsided, and soon Roger recited the formula for finding the answer. She had just finished copying the information down when the phone rang again. “Bet it’s Tan,” she said to Roger. “One of my friends.” She picked up the handset and said, “Scarlett, hi.”

“Hello?” said a boy on the other end. He sounded young, maybe fifth or sixth grade. “Scarlett?”

She frowned, not recognizing the voice. “Yeah?”

“My name is Brian. Brian Taylor. I’m Brittany’s brother. You know her? The cheerleader?”

Scarlett’s eyes grew large. She glanced at Roger. “Who?” she said, stalling.

“Brian Taylor!” the boy repeated in irritation. “Hey, I called because I wanted to ask you something. Do you have a white mouse that you got from a science teacher? One that my sister took away from me? It’s my mouse, you know. She gave it to me.”

“Uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said—and hung up. “Crap,” she whispered, looking at Roger with concern. “And that’s not French.”

“Obscene phone call?” Roger asked. He looked away from the math book.

“No.” She debated over whether to say anything, then decided to come clean. “It was that kid who was messing with you, the cheerleader’s brother. I think he wants to get you back. He must have gotten my phone number from someone.”

Roger looked at Scarlett in horror. His pink mouth fell open. “Oh, no!”

“It’s okay, I didn’t say—”

“Scarlett, listen to me! I’ll do anything you want, but don’t let that kid get me! Please, don’t do it!”

“He won’t, all right?” she said. “He tried to get his sister to buy you from me today at school, but I said no.”

“He did? Man, this is really bad!” Anxious and agitated, Roger began to walk on all fours in a circle inside his cage. “This is really bad! I can’t go back there! That kid is sick! He’s a monster! I can’t go back there!”

The phone rang again. Scarlett let it ring twice, then picked it up and listened.

“Hello?” said Brian Taylor.

“Stop calling here, okay?” she snapped, then hung up again. After a moment of thought, she unplugged the phone from the wall to prevent further interruptions. Getting back in her chair, she noticed Roger was not in view in his cage. Leaning to once side, she saw him hunched up in a far corner of the hutch. “Hey,” she said softly, “it’s okay. He’s not—”

“It’s not okay, damn it!”

“He won’t get you, I promise. He won’t.” She swallowed. Whatever that damn kid had done to Roger, she didn’t want to know about it. “Listen, hey, let’s talk about something else.” When he didn’t respond, she called, “Roger?”

A pause. “What?” he said in a faint voice.

“You haven’t asked me any questions, you know. I’ve been asking you everything, so ask me something, okay?”

With a little more coaxing, Roger came out of the hutch again. “Sorry,” he said. “That kid really gets to me. I can’t believe I’m such a chicken.”

“Chicken?” said Scarlett, forcing a smile. “You don’t look like a chicken.” He glared at her, but she refused to be upset. “Hey, it’s a joke! You’re safe here.”

Roger didn’t look as if he felt any better, but he muttered, “Okay, okay.”

“Ask me a question. Ask me anything.”

“Anything?” Roger looked up at Scarlett, then his gaze dropped to a spot below her chin. He squinted. “All right. Lean a little closer,” he said.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, suspicious, but she leaned closer anyway.

“That crosslike thing you’re wearing on that necklace,” he said. “I can see it now. What is that?”

“Oh! This is an ankh. It’s made of silver. My aunt got it for me online from a company in Egypt last Christmas. I mean, last Yule. Winter solstice. Whatever.”

“An ankh? That’s one of those things you see in old tombs, right?”

“It’s a symbol,” she said, warming to the subject. “The ancients used it to stand for eternal life and a bunch of other things. I wear it because of my . . . uh, my beliefs.”

“Your beliefs? Is this some kind of Christian thing?”

“Uh, no. It’s—okay, this is going to come out funny, but I’m serious, okay? I’m a Wiccan.”

Roger tilted his head as he eyed her. “You’re a what?”

“A Wiccan. I’m a witch.”

Roger sat stock-still for a moment. Not even his nose twitched. “A witch,” he said flatly.

“Yes, but not like on the movies, okay? And I’m not into Satan or drugs or anything like that. This is a real religion. Some people call it New Age or whatever, but it’s more than that. I guess I don’t want you to make fun of it. Some people do, and I’m a little sensitive about it. Anyway, that’s what I am: a witch.”

“I see,” said the mouse, who clearly did not see. “A witch.” He took a breath and shrugged. “Well, I’m a mouse, so I guess I’m in no position to make fun of anything. Wait—you asked me something yesterday, about me being your familiar. Was that, uh, some kind of witch thing?”

“Yeah, but a familiar is a whole different thing, and I don’t think you’re one. You’re something else. Forget about it.”

“This is almost funny,” said Roger. “I jump out of an airplane only to find out my chute’s been sabotaged, and I land on a cow and die, and then I come back to life as a mouse and almost get killed two hundred times until I hide in a school and get captured and used in lab experiments and tortured by a little hoodlum, and now I’m living with a teenage witch.” He thought about it. “Yeah, I think I’ve got it right. Does that sound right to you?”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with me being a witch, okay?”

“I didn’t say that! I just said . . . look, Scarlett, I’m sort of overwhelmed with life at the moment, okay? Really. Look at it from my perspective. I don’t mean anything by it, all right?”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Me, too. Okay, more questions. Uh, what grade are you in? You go to Lawndale High, right?”

“Yeah. Tenth grade.”

“And you live with your aunt, right? Where are your parents?”

“My dad died of cancer when I was two, and my mom was killed in a car accident right after that. My dad’s older sister, Elaine, she’s my guardian. We sort of hang out together, I guess.”

“Sorry to hear about your parents.”

Scarlett shrugged. “I really don’t remember them. My aunt’s always been there for me, though. She’s pretty cool.”

Roger’s nose twitched. “She doesn’t make you pick up your room. I bet that’s what you mean by cool.”

Scarlett frowned and looked around. “What’s wrong with my room?”

“You’ve got underwear and socks and everything all over the floor, even sticking out from under your bed, and—” Roger broke off, peering at Scarlett’s face. “Is that purple lipstick you’re wearing?”

“Yeah, it is. And my room looks fine. I know where everything is, okay? I don’t need to pick it up all the time. You’re not like my guardian or anything, so give me a break.”

“I know, I know. I was just . . . anyway, uh, are you dating? Got a boyfriend?”

“A boyfriend?” She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “No. I go on dates once in a while. Usually a bunch of us go together and hang out, see what’s up.” She paused, looking glum. “No one wants to go out with a witch in this high school, I guess. I don’t know what guys think of me, really. I don’t know much what anyone thinks of me.” Nervous, she began to play with her hair.

“You’re more likely to go on a date than I am, that’s for sure.”

“Do you wish you weren’t a mouse?”

“Yeah, I do. Love to see that Rita again, for sure. I can’t figure out how I’m going to be anything else but this, but if I changed once, I guess it could happen again—only I don’t feel like testing the Great Wheel of Karma to see if I get reincarnated one more time. I’ll stay alive as a mouse as long as I can, thanks.”

“That’s funny,” said Scarlett after a moment. “I was just thinking that talking to you feels sort of natural now. It’s weird.”

“I get the feeling you don’t go out a lot. I don’t mean anything bad by that, just that here you are with me, and you even did your homework. I was afraid at first you’d talk my ears off, or call all your friends and invite them over to meet me.”

She thought about that. “My aunt gets on me a lot if I don’t do my homework, so I’m just used to doing it, no matter what happens. We had a tornado warning once when we lived back in the Chicago area, and I just kept on working on homework because there wasn’t anything else to do. And I don’t have many friends here, just a few. They’re pretty cool, but . . . I don’t know if I’d surprise them with you just now. I like it that you’re my secret, you know?”

Scarlett stopped talking. The mouse wasn’t looking at her. It was staring hard at the carton of chicken fried rice on the table near it. “Hey, are you hungry?” she asked.

“What?” Roger appeared distracted. “Oh, no. It’s just—can you move that box there closer? The one with the red stripes going up.”

Puzzled, she did as asked. Roger stood up on his hind legs and peered at the box. “Good Time Chinese Restaurant,” he said, reading the label on the carton. “That’s the place I woke up next to when I turned into a mouse,” he said in wonder. “After the skydiving thing, I mean. How strange.”

“Really? My aunt said they deliver.”

Roger snorted. “I guess they do, in a manner of speaking.”

Scarlett pointed at the carton. “Do you think we should go by there, you and me? Maybe see if, I don’t know, anyone knows anything unusual?”

Roger looked at her with big eyes. “You mean about what happened to me? Who’s going to know anything about that? I mean, seriously. It’s probably just a restaurant, and some angel with a lousy sense of humor is up there having a good laugh at my expense. That’s all.” The mouse shook his head. “And, to tell the truth, I really don’t want to get out much myself. I had just a hell of a time before trying to keep from getting eaten, and being an albino didn’t help when I was trying to hide, either. If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather just stay in here. It’s safe and warm and there’s food and water, and you’re sort of looking out for me on top of it. I could get to be a real bum. Beats running around out there in the real world. At least like this.”

“Aw, no joy rides on my shoulder or anything?”

“I’d rather you didn’t even try to pick me up,” said Roger with concern. “That cheerleader did, and then she dropped me when I bit her. Frankly, heights scare me to death after my little, uh, escapade with the parachute and—” The mouse sighed. “You know what I mean.” It coughed, then said, “I need a rest, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s okay. Sorry if this bothered you, talking about stuff.”

“You don’t bother me. That Brian kid bothers me. Just make sure he doesn’t know I’m here and that no one lets him into your room. That’s all I ask.” Roger hesitated. “He’s a little too fond of electrical things, if you get my drift. And dropping things out of high windows into buckets of water.”

Scarlett frowned. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he stays out.”

“Great. That’s all from me, then. Just want to rest.” Roger ambled off into the hutch, but he stopped before going in and sat up—and waved a forepaw. “See you later,” he said. “And thanks for the granola.”

“Sure. Goodnight.” Scarlett watched him go, then reconsidered her idea for visiting the Chinese place. She could look the location up later on, and then go by and see if she could find out if it was unusual in any way. It couldn’t hurt. After all, it was only a Chinese restaurant. What could possibly be unusual about a Chinese restaurant?

“. . . and then Krissie hit the ball in the air like a baseball and it bounced off Krissy’s head, and Krissy hit Chrissy because—”

“You’re doing it again,” said Scarlett, her head stuck in her school locker.

“Wha—oh, right.” Tananda backtracked. “Okay, so, Krissie with an ‘i-e’ hit the ball in the air like a baseball, and it bounced off Krissy with a ‘y’s head and so she turned and hit Chrissy with a ‘c-h’ and a ‘y’ because she thought she’d done it, but Chrissee with a ‘c-h’ and an ‘e-e’ got mad and hit Krissie with an ‘i-e’ because it was her fault, and everybody started hitting each other and that was great until Miz Morris came charging out on the field waving her clipboard and screaming, ‘God bleeping damn it, this isn’t bleeping rollerball, this is bleeping girls’ field hockey, and if you bleeping bitches can’t keep out of the bleeping emergency room and send the other team to the bleeping emergency room instead, then I’ll send you back to bleeping Economics class and you can draw bleeping diagrams on the bleeping chalkboard with Mrs. Bennett until you get bleeping menopause,’ and that sort of got us calmed down.” Tananda shook her head with admiration. “Miz Morris is a hard ass, but she’s got a great command voice.”

Tananda paused as Scarlett shut and locked her school locker, then struggled to lift her overstuffed gray backpack. Tan pushed her chewing gum to one side of her mouth and pointed. “Need a hand with that?”

“No,” gasped Scarlett, heaving the backpack straps over her shoulders and hopping to get the weight properly seated on her back. “I’m—oof!—fine!”

“You should get on the team,” said Tananda, chewing her gum again. “Then you won’t have to carry so many books.”

Scarlett eyed her friend. Tananda was a tall, willowy teen with pale blonde hair and a fondness for conservative, one-piece pastel dresses that gave the fatal illusion that she was on the meek side. Her blonde, shoulder-length bangs had a greenish sheen from an attempt to dye her hair several months ago. Today she had her blue-and-gold field hockey bag slung over one shoulder—and no books in sight.

“I like books,” said Scarlett.

Tananda shrugged. “Whatever. You get tired of it, come join the Leopards and you’ll get a by on some of your tests. Plus, you get to fight a lot. It’s cool.”

“That doesn’t seem—” Scarlett gave up. “Never mind. I’m ready. Thanks for going with me.”

“No prob. Practice isn’t until five, so I got time.” Tananda snapped her gum as they walked toward the exit doors. “Why the Chinese place?”

“Just curious about something.”

“Were you expecting trouble?” The eagerness in Tananda’s voice could not be missed.

“I don’t know,” said Scarlett. “I just . . . wanted to be careful.”

“Careful. Got it.” Tananda grinned, revealing chipped teeth. She tugged the hockey stick bag farther up on her shoulder. “Hey, how’s that mouse doing? The one you got the other day from Bitch? I mean, Barch?”

Scarlett looked around hastily, half expecting the science teacher to be right behind them. “He—uh—it’s fine, just fine.”

“Looked like it was sick either or in withdrawal. That Daria give it heroin or something?”

“No, it, uh, had a bad cold. It’s better now. Um, don’t tell Brittany anything about it, please. Her little brother’s trying to get the mouse from me, and I don’t want him to have it.”

“Boobzilla has a brother?” Tananda hit the exit doors and held one open for Scarlett. “Does he got mental problems like his big sis?”

“He’s a mean kid,” said Scarlett glumly. “He likes to torture animals.”

Tananda looked down at Scarlett with narrow eyes. “Torture animals? How?”

Scarlett felt her stomach churn. She hated talking about stuff like this. “He just likes to hurt them any way he can.”

“That’s just sick, hurting little animals,” said Tananda. Her voice was hard and cold. “Freaking little bastard. I’ll kick his freaking little bastard ass next time I see him.”

“Don’t start a fight!”

“Oh,” said Tananda, her voice becoming eager again. “I won’t. Promise. I won’t start a fight.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. She had no idea why a sports fiend like Tananda had picked her to be a friend, but she knew better than to question her luck. “Are you playing in a game Saturday?”

“Yeah.” Tananda became even more animated. “We meet the Oakwood Ho’s at nine in the morning on Field B behind the school. You ought to come see it. First game of the season. Can’t wait.”

“You’re playing the Oakwood Knotholes?”

“That’s what I said.”

Scarlett made a dubious face as they walked toward downtown Lawndale. “Don’t you think that high school girls’ field hockey is getting sort of . . . uh . . . out of, uh, control?”

“Out of control?” Tananda sounded genuinely puzzled. “How?”

“Well . . . I can hear your team screaming, ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’ on the practice field all the way out to my aunt’s apartment, five blocks away.”

Tananda nodded, still puzzled. “So?”

Scarlett sighed. “Good luck on Saturday. I’ll try to make it. I’ve never been to any athletic game before.”

“You ought to go. Beats the living crap out of that wussy-ass football that Chairman Li likes.”

“You shouldn’t call her that.”

“Why?” Tananda gave a half smile and looked around. “You see her following us?”

“Well, one day she might, and she might get mad and give you detention.”

Tananda came to a stop and clapped a hand to her forehead, uttering a string of swear words that Scarlett had never even considered saying aloud. “I forgot I had detention today,” Tananda said when she finished. She shrugged and continued walking. “Screw it. I’ll stay after school tomorrow. Morris runs detention and she knows me. I’ll tell her I had stuff to do. She won’t care.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Scarlett carefully, “and I’m sorry if this sounds like that, but how come you get into trouble so often?”

Tananda shrugged again. “It’s a gift.”

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll send you to the school psychologist, Dr. Manson?”

“Heh. Manson.” A knowing grin came over Tananda’s face. “She’s the reason I got detention. She asked me last week how I got such a bad attitude, and I said it was both nature and nurture. Then I asked her how Squeaky Fromme was doing. I think it pissed her off. Fascist know-it-all.”

“Were you the one who wrote ‘Eat the rich!’ on Manson’s door in green spray paint, sometime Monday?”

“Huh.” Tananda tried to suppress her smile. “Don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

Scarlett exhaled. It was impossible not to like Tananda, even if you dreaded that you might one day get on her bad side. They chatted about homework and classes for a few minutes as they crossed streets and passed businesses. Traffic began to pick up as the early part of rush hour began.

“There it is,” Scarlett said, pointing. “The Good Time Chinese Restaurant.”

Tananda surveyed it and snapped her gum. “Still haven’t told me why you had to come here.”

“To be honest,” said Scarlett slowly, “I’m not sure myself. I have to look around for something.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. It sounds stupid, I know, but . . . I just have to look around.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Tananda scanned their surroundings. “And I’ll just . . . be careful, like you asked.”

“Don’t kill anyone.”

Tananda smiled and popped her gum again, still scanning the street ahead.

Scarlett came to a stop beside the restaurant, huffing and sweating under the load from her backpack. Her shoulders and lower back ached. After a moment to adjust the backpack’s straps, she led the way down a side alley to the back of the restaurant, where a small parking lot was. The only way out of the artificial box canyon, excluding the door into the restaurant, was an alleyway across the parking lot. An overflowing gray dumpster with “GOOD TIME” written in red Chinese-like letters on its side was the only large object present, other than three small, unoccupied delivery trucks and a stack of mashed cardboard boxes. Scarlett swallowed, fearing that something worse than a mouse might lurk in the immediate area. She wondered if she could take her backpack off and use it as a club if muggers appeared, then decided she couldn’t. The backpack would have to come off in order for her to run away, however, which sounded like a good plan if it came to that.

Something in the air was not quite right. “It’s quiet back here,” Scarlett murmured, trying to steady her nerves.

Tananda said nothing. Looking to the left and right, she reached up and unzipped the side of her long shoulder bag. She pulled out her field hockey stick, which was chipped and scarred in numerous places along its length, and began to take casual swipes at bits of trash on the ground with it, her face expressionless but alert.

Scarlett recalled that Roger the mouse had regained consciousness after his accident—well, non-accident—at this spot. She shivered and studied the ground. It was filthy with dirt, oil spills, wads of gum, and everything else imaginable—and some things that were not imaginable. The asphalt near the dumpster was grooved from the wheels rolling back and forth, probably when the trash truck came by. Scarlett frowned. It occurred to her that the alleyway was just broad enough for a car to pass through, but a big truck would have a hard time getting back here. How did they get rid of all their garbage, then?

Taking a deep breath, she walked forward and stood on tiptoes to peer into the dumpster, which had both lids open from an excess of trash. She didn’t dare touch the corroded rim of the dumpster. Everything looked like the sort of stuff you’d find in a dumpster—used Chinese food cartons, broken glasses, soiled napkins, a newspaper, wadded paper towels, the works. At least it didn’t smell bad.

She frowned, then sniffed deeply.

It didn’t smell at all. The dumpster was clearly full of rotting food, but it didn’t stink.

Scarlett stepped back, then looked around again. A gleam of light from the ground caught her eye. She bent down and picked up a silvery dime, standing up only with an effort under the weight on her back. As she did, pocketing the coin, she noticed Tananda had straightened and now held her hockey stick at the ready with both hands. Scarlett turned to see what Tananda was staring at.

“Hey, lookie here,” said a deep feminine voice. Six teenage girls in jeans, shorts, and slacks now blocked the alleyway, all wearing red T-shirts—and the words “OAKWOOD HIGH KNOTHOLES FIELD HOCKEY” printed across the front in bold gold letters. They stood only twenty-five feet away, grinning at the two girls. Tananda stepped between Scarlett and the newcomers.

“Looks like a couple of local hookers,” said another girl in the group. “Pretty skanky pair if you ask me.”

“You want to see skanky hookers,” said Tananda in a calm, clear voice, “you can go home and look in your mommas’ bedrooms.”

The grins on the Oakwood girls’ faces froze. Scarlett felt the blood run out of her face. It was just about time to run away.

“You’ve got a big mouth for a skinny ho,” said the girl who first spoke, a tall beefy blonde with a pixie cut. Her huge forearms were the sort one only gets from prolonged weightlifting.

“And you’ve got a big ho to go with your big mouth, bitch,” Tananda replied. “Must come from using your hockey stick as a boyfriend.”

The Oakwood girls’ smiles vanished.

“Tan,” whispered Scarlett, now really frightened.

“Nice stick you have,” said the beefy blonde, her face a wall of granite. “How would you like to have it for dinner about now?”

“I’ll feed it to you for dessert,” said Tananda. “You look like you’ve already eaten.” She paused one second, then added in an undertone, “Each other.”

The eyes of the six girls facing them opened very wide.

Fighting panic, Scarlett tried to slip the overweight backpack off her shoulders, but one of the straps snagged a button on her black sweater and she couldn’t undo it. Cold panic shot through her veins right up to her brain.

“Bye-bye, baby,” whispered the blonde, her big hands balled into fists. Tananda raised her hockey stick, knees bent and turning her left side to the newcomers. The blonde took a step forward, the other five following and spreading out to the sides to flank and surround the two Lawndale girls.

Someone behind the Oakwood girls coughed. A girl in the rear turned around and gasped, “Oh, Jesus!” At that point, all the girls turned around, even the blonde.

“Kindergarten must be out,” said a girl’s voice, somewhere from the middle of the alley. Scarlett could not see the speaker. “Aren’t you kids a little far from home?”

“Butt out of this!” snapped the tall blonde—who then grunted with a loud “UNH!” as the curved head of Tananda’s hockey stick slammed into her lower back. The tall blonde sank to her knees, her eyes squeezed shut against the intense pain, and she cursed unintelligibly through her teeth.

“Freeze or eat this,” said Tananda evenly as the other five girls made moves to run. The girls obediently froze in place, looking from Tan to the other girl who kept them hemmed in. Tananda studied her opponents, then called out, “Hi, Angel,” without taking her eyes from them.

“Hey,” said the other girl. “Pickup game with your little friends back here?”

“Yeah, until you showed up and ruined everything.”

“That’s the story of my life,” said the unseen girl. “I’m never where I’m wanted.”

“Where’re you heading?”

“Nowhere. I saw these sweet young things following you and wanted to see if I could party, too.”

“Party’s over,” said Tananda. “Their mommas are calling.” She swung her hockey stick to one side, in the direction of the only alleyway out, on the other side of the little parking lot. “Run,” she said, “and take the boss ho with you.”

“Go to hell,” hissed the Oakwood blonde at Tananda as the other girls helped her to her feet. “You go straight to hell.”

Tananda smiled broadly. “You,” she said, jabbing her hockey stick in the direction of the blonde. “I’m going to pick my teeth with you on Saturday.”

The blonde glared and growled, but the other five girls hustled her away toward the distant alley and escape. When they were gone, Scarlett swallowed, overcome with a giddy wave of relief. Her knees were about to collapse, and she felt like she had to pee in the next thirty seconds or else explode. Her backpack strap was still snagged on her sweater, but she didn’t care anymore.

A tall teen girl with short golden hair brushed back in a retro-‘70s style walked out from the alley that Scarlett and Tananda had taken earlier. Wearing tight baby-blue jeans and a sleeveless white blouse and gray vest, she looked like any other teenager with “PLAY OR DIE” tattooed on her bare left shoulder and a gold winged skull with rubies for eyes on her necklace. A blue-and-gold Leopards hockey-stick bag was slung over her right shoulder. “Practice doesn’t start until five,” she told Tananda. “Don’t wear yourself out early.”

“I wouldn’t have,” grumbled Tananda. “It would’ve been fun.”

“Hmmm.” Angel eyed Scarlett, who was crossing her legs next to the dumpster. “Hey,” she called. “You’re that ankh girl, right?”

“Yeah!” Scarlett squeaked. “Do you mind if I go into the restaurant for a moment? I need to use the bathroom. I’m kind of in a hurry.”

Angel and Tananda exchanged looks. “Sure,” said Angel. “We can’t eat before practice, but maybe you can fill me in on what just happened when we head back to the field.”

“I didn’t start it this time!” Tananda began, looking irritated. “I swear, they came up—”

“I saw it, I saw it, don’t get your thong in a knot. What were you doing back here, anyway?”

Tananda pointed at Scarlett, who was hurrying ahead with fast, small steps to get into the restaurant. Scarlett heard them talk just before she hit the door going in. “She wanted me to go with her,” Tananda said. “Dunno why. Looking for something, I think.”

“She lose something around here?”

“I dunno, ask her.”

“Didn’t you ask her?”

“Hey, I can’t do everything!”

A frigid blast of air conditioning washed over Scarlett as she entered the Good Time restaurant. The smell of spicy Chinese dishes and loud dance music berated her senses next. No one was at the cashier’s station; the walls were hung with watercolors of various mundane landscapes and city scenes, giving the restaurant a very un-Chinese look. Under considerable pressure to find a bathroom, Scarlett scurried toward the back where she thought her goal might lie.

“Can I help you, hon?” called a woman behind her.

Scarlett flinched and turned around. Coming through a black-painted doorway was a tall, semi-attractive blonde dressed in a red tank top and matching miniskirt. With her elaborate tattoos and vacant smile, the overall effect was as trashy as anything The Jerry Springer Show could cough up.

“I need to use the restroom!” Scarlett hissed.

“Well, sure!” said the blonde, pointing. “It’s down that hall on the right! Can’t miss it!”

Scarlett finished her business in a more relaxed frame of mind. Her relaxed state vanished when she opened the restroom door and discovered a full-grown German shepherd sitting immediately outside the bathroom in the hall, growling at her. She froze in the doorway, too frightened to scream or shut the door.

“Hermione!” cried the blonde. She walked over and shook a finger at the wolflike dog. “Shame on you! She’s a customer!” The blonde rubbed the dog’s head with a careless hand, smiling at the now-silent beast. “Don’t be scared of her, hon. Hermione’s just a big ol’ sweetie-pie. Aren’t you a sweetie-pie, you big silly dog?”

Hermione accepted the petting with half-closed eyes that never looked away from Scarlett. The dog’s lips parted to reveal huge pointed teeth.

“I have to go!” Scarlett said in a high voice. “Can I get past her?”

“Oh, sure.” The blonde turned her head in Scarlett’s direction, their faces close together. “Were you looking for anything, hon?”

“Was I what?” asked Scarlett, eyeing the dog that was still eyeing her.

“Behind the restaurant. Were you looking for anything back there?”

Scarlett’s head snapped up. The blonde was smiling at her, but the smile wasn’t real. Though she appeared young, perhaps in her early thirties, something in the blonde’s face made her look much older and distinctly unfriendly.

She was watching us! She must have seen us on a security camera! “N-n-no!” Scarlett gasped. “We were just messing around! We didn’t do anything!”

“No problem. Just wanted to make sure you were going to spray-paint stuff on our walls or get into gang fights.”

“We weren’t, I promise! Those other girls started it!”

“Well, okay.” The blonde grinned and looked back at her dog, who was enjoying a scratch behind the ears. “Hermione and I like a quiet neighborhood with no trouble. Don’t we, girl? Yes, we do.” She stopped scratching the dog and straightened up. “You’d better be running along. We’re going to open for dinner soon.”

Scarlett nodded quick agreement and hurried outside. Tananda and Angel were waiting for her. “Heading back to school?” asked Angel.

“I have to,” said Scarlett, nervously glancing back at the restaurant. “I live on the other side of it.”

“We’ll walk together then,” said Angel, “in case we meet some strays.”

“That would be cool,” said Tananda. “Wish Taryn had been here with Kevo.”

“Kevo?” asked Scarlett, who already knew Taryn was the goaltender for the Leopards.

“Her stick,” said Tananda.

“‘Cause it’s made out of Kevlar,” said Angel.

“It’s a nickname,” said Tananda.

“It’s got a smiley face on the head,” said Angel.

“She knocked out Louise Johnson’s two front teeth with it in ninth grade,” said Tananda. She sighed at the memory. “Damn, that was a great game.”

“Good times,” agreed Angel. “Hey, you wanna watch us practice?”

“I have to go home and feed my mouse,” said Scarlett, who felt she had almost recovered from her experience. “No, seriously, I do. But I’d like to see your game Saturday.”

“That’s cool,” said Tananda. “Say hi to your rat for me.”

“This that mouse that Brittany’s been looking for ‘cause her brother’s supposed to pay her twenty bucks for it or something?” asked Angel.

“Yeah,” said Scarlett, and filled her in on the rest of the story, except for the parts about Roger actually talking.

“Brian Taylor,” said Angel. She gave a long slow sigh and shook her head. “I know that kid.”

“We should have Heidi Ross drop by his place and show him her arm lock,” said Tananda. “She can pop a soda can by squeezing it on the inside of her elbow. She could try it on Brian.”

“She would do it,” said Angel. “She would love to do it.”

The talk drifted to the special abilities of the other Lawndale Leopard girls’ field hockey team, which included belching, towel-snapping, larceny, forgery, auto theft, and certain other talents that caused Scarlett to think she should wash out her ears when she got home. There was no possible way she would ever join the Leopards, even in her wildest dreams. Being friends with them was another matter entirely. It never hurt to have partner-defenders like these.

“See you tomorrow!” the girls called to Scarlett when she left them at the hockey field. She waved goodbye, pleased that she had their promise to look out for her if any Oakwood girls came by again. However, the possibility that the Oakwood field hockey team might come looking for her later, blaming her in part for their humiliation behind the Chinese restaurant, made her stomach turn over. If the Oakwood Knotholes were anything like the Lawndale Leopards, she was a goner.

It wasn’t until she got within sight of the apartment complex she called home that Scarlett remembered the dime she’d picked up behind the Chinese restaurant. She pulled it from her pocket and looked at it closely in the fading light from sunset. It looked like a typical dime of an old type. The date on it was 1949. One side had the head of an ancient god on it, Roman or Greek she assumed, with wings coming from its ears. “LIBERTY” was written around the edge. The backside had “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” around the edge, with a large V behind what looked like the planet Earth in the center. She wondered if the coin was worth anything, then dropped it back in her pocket.

It wasn’t much, but the dime was her only souvenir of her failed expedition to find anything unusual at the Good Time Chinese restaurant, other than the fact that the owner let her dog run around inside the place, probably against health department regulations. If nothing else, she had a good story to tell Roger that evening when she did her homework with him.

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.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.

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.

To Scarlett’s infinite frustration, the police were only mildly interested in the break-in. The only thing reported missing was a white mouse, and the apartment was otherwise undamaged and intact. The officers were even skeptical of Scarlett’s claim that she had not left the cage on the floor with the lid off, but her aunt swore the front door had been locked. The scratch marks (said the officers) matched those typically found when someone was trying to open a key lock with a wire or similar device, but was having trouble doing it. The officers took notes, promised to drive by the apartment building more often at night, then left. Scarlett hardly slept the rest of the evening from worry.

“They didn’t even take fingerprints!” she complained to Tananda the following day at school over lunch. “I can’t believe it! They thought it was a joke that someone stole my mouse! Isn’t that like kidnapping or pet-napping or something? Wouldn’t fingerprints help find out who did it?”

“From their point of view, solving a missing mouse case probably doesn’t have the fame potential of solving a triple murder,” said Tananda. She pointed at Scarlett’s tray with her fork. “You gonna eat that brownie?”

“What if Brian did it?” Scarlett moaned, feeling sick. “What if he took my mouse home and did something awful to it? Tan, what am I going to do?”

Tananda eyed the brownie and sighed. “That little bastard Brian must have wanted that mouse pretty bad to do breaking and entering.” She looked thoughtful. “Hmm. If he could break into your place and kidnap your mouse, I wonder if we could break into his house and kidnap him. I bet Beth Ann could do it. She knows a lot about stalking. There was this guy she liked in ninth grade, and she put on this black ninja suit and waited until he was in the shower in phys-ed, and then she—”

“I see Brittany,” Scarlett interrupted, glaring over Tananda’s shoulder. “Maybe she knows if Brian took Roge—my mouse, I mean. Maybe she knows if Brian stole my mouse.”

Tananda gave her red-haired friend an odd look before she turned around. Brittany the buxom blonde had just entered the cafeteria and was heading for the tray line, while tearfully relating a story to a cluster of sympathetic female friends. All of them wore identical cheerleading outfits in Lawndale’s school colors. Before Scarlett could object, Tananda got up and walked over to intercept the blue-and-gold clique. “Hey, Brittany!” Tan called. “Did Brian get that mouse back?”

Brittany sniffed as she looked around. Mascara ran down her face; even her pigtails drooped. “What?” she called back.

“Did Brian get his mouse back last night?” Tananda repeated.

“Oh, who cares about him?” Brittany shouted. “My Kevvy is all gross and ugly because he’s in this stupid science experiment, and Ms. Barch won’t let him be handsome and not-gross again until the experiment is over!” She burst into a new spate of weeping, and the other cheerleaders crowded in to comfort her. The group left without another word.

“Jeez Louise,” Tananda muttered as she went back to the table. She picked up her lunch tray and took the uneaten brownie that Scarlett glumly offered. “I have to go, but I’ll find out what I can,” she promised. “I’ll call you later.”

Scarlett nodded, grateful for the help. She pushed her tray away. “I’m not hungry.”

Tananda left with Scarlett’s tray on top of her own. Scarlett sat alone in the emptying cafeteria, trying to imagine what she could do next—assuming that attempts to save Roger weren’t already too late. She found her hands clasped together in front of her mouth, and it occurred to her that prayer was really all she had left. Prayer it would be, then.

Scarlett felt she had a personal relationship with the Goddess, but it wasn’t the sort of thing where she expected the Goddess would ever do much more for her than send her comfort or make her stronger in dealing with life’s many downturns. This time, things were different. Trying not to look too obvious about it, Scarlett closed her eyes and mouthed the words of her request. If it’s not too much to ask for, please send me a little help, anything You can, so I can save my mouse. A talking mouse has to be special to someone in the world, maybe even to You, and if he is special then give me a clue about where he is, anything at all, so I can—

“Excuse me,” said a voice to her right. Startled, Scarlett opened her eyes and looked up.

“Sorry if I’m butting in,” said the Brain, Daria Morgendorffer herself. “I was eating lunch behind you and thought I heard you say you were looking for a mouse. Is it that mouse from science lab, the one Brittany’s been trying to get for her little brother?”

“Yes,” said Scarlett, too stunned to say more.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” said Daria, “my sister’s been trying to get the local village idiots to contribute to a fund so she can get a nose job—don’t ask—and as a result, someone who uses colored pencils stuck a note to our front door last night saying he was going to contribute lots of money to her nose-job fund as soon as he picked up his reward for getting a mouse for a friend of his. The note was from a younger brother of a friend of my sister’s. You know Sandi Griffin?”

This can’t be true! I don’t believe it! Thank you, Goddess! “The Sandi who’s in that fashion bunch?”

“That’s her. Her brother Chris left the note. I think he’s planning to marry my sister, which is fine with me as long as he gets her out of the house by the end of the month.”

“Did he say who was giving him the reward?” Scarlett asked, her words running together in her excitement.

“No, but I’ve overheard Sandi say that Chris goes to Lawndale Elementary, which is where Brian Taylor goes, I believe. I hope that’s of some help.”

“Yes! Oh, yes, thank you!” Scarlett jumped to her feet and cried “Thank you!” again to Daria (and the Goddess) before she ran out of the lunchroom—and stopped right outside the door in the hallway. Whatever was she going to do next? She could call the Griffins’ house—but no one was probably home, and if she got Chris . . . no, that wouldn’t work. She would have to go there in person, right after school. But who would let her in to get the mouse? Certainly not Chris, if he was out to collect the reward—unless he’d already collected it after taking the mouse to Brian earlier that day!

Heartsick, Scarlett wandered the corridors until the bell rang for the next period. She went through the motions for the next two periods, becoming steadily more depressed about her chances to save Roger—until, on her way to her last-period study hall, she spotted Sandi Griffin walking alone. Sandi’s face was still puffy from cosmetic nasal surgery, but at least the nose splits were off. A desperate plan came to Scarlett, and she headed for Sandi at once.

The beautiful brunette freshman saw her coming. “I’m sorry,” she said with a disdainful glance at Scarlett’s outfit, “but we have no more openings for membership in the Fashion Club. Perhaps next year.”

“No,” said Scarlett as Sandi was turning away, “it’s not about that. Do you know if your brother Chris got a mouse last night?”

“Oh!” Sandi snapped, coming to a stop. Her face filled with sudden fury. “That little retard! I’d strangle him if I could only find someone to do it for me. Last night he said he brought home a mouse he’d found, but then it bit him and he dropped it and it got away and who knows where the little beast went. I could just—”

“I’m a part-time animal-catcher!” Scarlett interrupted, saying whatever came into her head. “I’m really good with animals, all kinds of animals! I can get rid of mice in no time!”

“So can my cat Fluffy,” said Sandi, starting to turn away again. “The problem has doubtless already been solved.”

Oh, Goddess, no! “Wait! If the mouse hasn’t been caught, can I try to catch it? Please? I need the practice!”

Sandi frowned as she stared at the silver ankh on Scarlett’s necklace. “Aren’t you like some kind of witch or Halloween thing or whatever?”

“Trust me, the stuff I know works,” said Scarlett. “You don’t want to take the chance there’s a live mouse in your room tonight, right?”

Sandi hesitated, a look of anxiety crossing her face before she regained her composure. “You have a point. How much do you charge, and how long will it take?”

“The first time’s for free, and it shouldn’t take more than five minutes!”

“We have a deal. Meet me outside the gym doors at two thirty-five sharp, near the parking lot. My date will drive us over.”

Scarlett promised to be there and hurried off to study hall, filled with elation. The minutes crawled by until the final bell rang and she was out of the room and down the hall like a bolt. She skipped going to her locker in her haste to get to the parking-lot door in the back of the gymnasium, where she discovered she was early. Most of the home-bound crowd of students and teachers were already gone by the time Sandi showed up, walking with a guy Scarlett recognized as a junior classman.

“Guy,” said Sandi, “this person is my hired help for the evening. Let her off at my house first, then take me to the mall.”

“Sure thing,” said her date, who then looked Scarlett over. “Hey, aren’t you that ankh girl I’ve heard about?”

“She is,” growled Sandi, “and if you wish the continued pleasure of my company, you’ll keep the rest of your remarks addressed to me alone.” Sandi handed Scarlett a single key. “This is for the front door. The alarm will be off, so let yourself in, do whatever it is you witches do to get rid of mice, and leave the key on the stand with the vase by the front door.” She shivered. “And if you’re too late and Fluffy’s found the mouse first, please clean everything up before I get home.”

Scarlett’s heart sank again. She got into the back of the junior’s Trans-Am, shoving aside piles of library books on dinosaurs and fossils, and buckled in for the ride.

“I had a cool day today,” said Guy, starting the car. “I was in science class giving my report on Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis, and Miz Barch said—”

“Guy,” Sandi interrupted in a loud voice, “what exactly did you agree to do in order to have a date with me?”

“Uh, um . . . no dinosaur talk.”

“And?“

“And, uh, no talking about anything having to do with science or math or history or anything else like that, for the rest of the date, and anytime afterward if you’re around, or you’ll never date me again, ever, period.”

“Precisely. Now, be a good chauffeur and shut up and drive.”

“Okay.” Guy looked in the rear-view mirror at Scarlett. “Hey,” he began, “do you—”

Sandi loudly cleared her throat and gave Guy a killing glare.

“—uh, never mind,” he finished quickly, and he shut up and drove the rest of the way to Sandi’s home, which lay in a large upscale subdivision west of the high school.

Guy pulled over when he reached the Griffins’ two-story, beige-brick home and let Scarlett out on the sidewalk. “If you see either of my two loser brothers,” said Sandi, “tell them you have my permission to be there, and they’d better not bother you or I’ll deal with them when I get home. Good luck finding that damn mouse—and remember to clean up!” Sandi signaled to Guy, and he pulled away from the curb with tires squealing. “Not so fast, damn it!” Scarlett heard Sandi cry as the car roared away.

There was no time to lose. Scarlett ran across the yard and up the front steps, reached the door, and fumbled trying to get the key into the lock. She noticed the keyhole had numerous scratches over it. Perhaps Chris Griffin had been practicing his lock-picking skills on his own home. The key went in and the door opened.

The Griffin residence was posh by any standard, but it also showed signs of being well used by aggressive boys. The walls were smudged, the carpet bore dirty sneaker-prints, and the wooden railing to the stairs going to the second floor was scratched and nicked in dozens of places. Several pictures hung at angles on the walls, and someone had stuck a pencil point-first into the ceiling of the entry foyer.

“Roger!” Scarlett yelled. She hurried to the right into the huge family room. “Roger! It’s me, Scarlett! Where are you? Roger!” Passing through the family room, she passed an open door to the garage and entered a solarium—no Roger—and continued around in a large circle to the left, entering the oversized kitchen next. Though there was no sign of anyone home, the boys had obviously been there, judging from the open cans of soda and half-empty jars of food left out on the kitchen counters. Some of the jars were still cool to the touch. Scarlett resisted the urge to put the food away and moved on—until she saw the pet food dish on the floor by a row of cabinets. Sandi’s cat! “Roger!” she yelled. “Say something!”

“Where the hell have you been?” cried a shrill voice above her. “Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, get me out of this frickin’ madhouse!”

Scarlett looked up. Four feet above her, clutching a crossbar on a rack made for holding pots and pans, was a small white mouse with panic-filled pink eyes. “Roger!” she shrieked.

“The frickin’ cat’s on top of the refrigerator!” Roger yelled back. “The son-of-a-bitch’s been trying to jump over and knock me off of here for the last hour! Shoot it or something, already!”

Scarlett looked. A large white Persian cat was crouched on top of the refrigerator, just as Roger said, trying to keep tabs on both Scarlett and the mouse at the same time.

“Chase it off!” Roger screamed. “Hurry! This thing is slippery, I can’t hold on forever! And I’m scared spitless of heights!”

A quick look around the kitchen revealed numerous things that Scarlett could throw at the cat, but she balked at physically harming another creature unless there was no other possible option. Then she spotted the spice rack. She darted over, snatched out a bottle, opened the cap, and flung some of the contents at the Persian.

The effect was dramatic. The cat jumped to its feet, hissed loudly—then it sneezed violently, sneezed again even harder, then leapt down from the fridge and raced off through the house, wailing all the while.

“What did you throw at it?” shouted Roger, nose twitching.

“Cayenne pepper!” she said.

“Oh! Oh, no! Ohmigod!” Roger flinched on his perch. “It’s—it’s—I—” The white mouse drew back its head and, as Scarlett watched in horror, gave a mighty sneeze of its own.

And flew backwards off the stainless-steel rack like a tiny white missile.

Scarlett lunged even as she watched it happen and thrust her cupped hands out, but she was a tad short and as she tried to catch Roger her feet tangled and she went off balance and fell forward but she went on tiptoe and stretched on her way down to gain a few extra inches and the mouse landed in her hands but she kept falling and WHOOF!—she was sprawled over the kitchen floor with the wind knocked out of her and a white mouse sneezing up a storm in her hands. She tried to take a breath, but her lungs were full of needles and all she could do was gasp like a fish out of water. Her nose was twitching by now, too, but one cannot sneeze without air in her lungs.

The cat! Dazed, she groaned and got to her knees. It was impossible to speak, but she had Roger and that was all she cared about. There was no time to check him for injuries, so she tucked him in a pocket of her sweater and staggered out of the kitchen for the front door. She remembered only at the last moment to leave the key behind.

The way home was long. As she was crossing the outer limits of the Lawndale Mall’s vast parking-lot system, she found herself too tired to go on. She sat down on a grass-covered island dividing two overflow lots, carefully removed Roger from her pocket, and sat his limp form on her sweater-covered lap. For a frightening moment she thought he was dead, but he stirred, shook himself, and looked up. They gazed at each other in silence.

“‘Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick’?” Scarlett said at last. “Where the heck did you get that?”

“Don’t ever leave me again,” said the mouse. “I mean it.”

“Okay,” she promised, “but that means you’ll have to come to school with me.”

“Maybe somewhere in your backpack,” he said. “Maybe you could fix up a box or something. You could leave me in your locker between classes.”

“This’ll be tough.”

“I don’t care. I’ll do all your homework.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Just don’t leave me behind.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

He fell asleep in her pocket on the way home. She heard him snoring as she walked.

“Did you go out with some friends?” asked her aunt when she got in.

“No. Just went by the mall.”

“That’s nice. I had two more locks put on the front door with a special alarm. No one’s going to break in here now! Want me to order out pizza for supper? What do you want on it?”

“Sure. Anything, I don’t care.”

She put Roger in the cage and watched him crawl into his hutch and fall over, sound asleep again. It was Friday evening. There was nothing to do. She put down her gray backpack and took off her sweater, took a bathroom break, then came out and looked at the mouse cage for a while, thinking.

She was thinking about what he must have been like as a human. If he had been about fifty when he died in the skydiving accident, he would have been as old as her father would have been, had he lived, too. Her father had been a wonderful “little” brother, her aunt always said, a big man but just wonderful.

Her gaze drifted over to her computer. After a moment, she turned it on, waited for it to boot up, then got online. She found a search engine she liked, thought for a couple of minutes, then typed in a few words and hit the return key. She read the results, hit the return key again, then hit it again. She then tried a different combination of words.

Bingo. She clicked on one entry and read the webpage that appeared next, from the website of the local newspaper, the Lawndale Sun-Herald. The article was archived from just over a year ago.

It really happened, thought Scarlett in shock. I kind of believed him before, but he really was telling me the truth. He did get killed! He really is reincarnated!

The private detective’s name was Roger LaSouris. He had been investigating organized crime activity in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and was said to have been closing in on the leaders of an extortion and arson ring. Skydiving was his hobby, though he was a part-time instructor as well. (Why didn't he tell me he was a detective, too? Scarlett wondered.) An investigation was being conducted, but nothing worse than negligence was suspected. The damaged chutes were said to have been packed by personnel at a small county airport just for practice, then were set aside to be taken out for repairs, as the mouse had said. Someone had mistaken the damaged parachutes for normal ones and, without checking them, had put them in a spot where the group of three skydivers had taken and used them.

We each packed our own parachutes, I know that for a fact, Roger had said, and there was nothing wrong with them.

Scarlett read the rest of the article, then did a few more searches. Another article appeared that showed the case had been closed, no charges filed. The skydivers should not have used parachutes they had not packed, said the investigators.

But that wasn’t what Roger had said, and she believed him. It was pretty obvious what had happened. Detective Roger LaSouris—now Roger the mouse—really had been murdered. One or more people in the police investigation must have known the truth but covered it up. It had been an inside job. Maybe the leader of the extortion ring had ordered LaSouris taken out before he got too close. She could find no further mention of the extortion and arson ring he was supposed to have been investigating.

Now Scarlett was the only person who knew the whole truth, other than Roger. She had no one she could talk to about it. Everything was over and done with, and the world had moved on.

She printed off the articles and hid them away. She then looked up the longevity of the average mouse. If it was lucky, a mouse could live to see its third birthday. If Roger had been a mouse for a year now, he had about a year or two left.

She shut down her laptop, thoroughly depressed. Life wasn’t just unfair; at times, it positively sucked out loud.

At least she would be with Roger for a little while. It would be fun to have someone to talk to at school, when time allowed. She had always wanted a friend more than a pet.

When she fell asleep later that night with her headphones on, music playing in her ears and her stomach full of pepperoni pizza, she had an odd dream that she was suddenly as small as Roger the mouse. Someone was chasing them, however, and Roger was trying to protect her as they ran. Then something reached down and snatched Roger away, but this time he was really gone, gone forever.

And then that something came down for her, and as it did she looked up and saw it—a cosmic entity of wickedness that filled the night above her, a thing of absolute evil and infinite size. As it reached down and caught her, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

The dawn found Scarlett already up, unable to sleep past seven. She wandered into the kitchen, got a blueberry muffin from the refrigerator, then wandered back to the bedroom. Roger was up by then, too, yawning in the tiny doorway of his hutch.

“Wanna muffin?” Scarlett said.

He blinked groggily at her. “Sure, thanks.”

She unlocked the top of the cage, lifted it away, broke off a small piece of her muffin, and carefully set it in front of the mouse. She hesitated, her hand still in the cage, then gently stroked his back with a fingertip. Roger didn’t object; in fact, he closed his eyes and lay down in the wood shavings, letting the massage continue. “So glad to be alive,” he mumbled.

Scarlett withdrew her hand a few moments later and ate the rest of her muffin. “I’m glad you’re alive, too.”

Roger raised his head and sniffed at the muffin chunk before him. “Aren’t you going to school?”

“It’s Saturday. Oh, I was invited to go see a game this morning at school. It starts at nine.”

The mouse looked up in concern. “This will sound stupid on top of everything that’s happened, but could you take me with you? I don’t want to be here alone anymore.”

“I thought you didn’t want to go outdoors.”

“I don’t,” Roger sighed, “but if I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go, so I may as well be outside with you instead of home by myself when it happens.”

Scarlett recalled her nightmare. She frowned, disturbed at the memory. “Don’t be morbid.”

“Waiting here for another monster kid to kidnap me is morbid. Can I go with you?”

“I guess. We’ll have to find some way to keep you safe.”

“We’ll work it out. What kind of game is it, by the way?”

“Field hockey. Some friends of mine are playing in a big game against Oakwood High. It might be a little rough.”

“Rough, ha. Bring it on.” Roger got up on all fours and began to nibble at the muffin.

“Scarlett?” called her aunt from her bedroom down the hall. “Scarlett, who are you talking to?”

Scarlett froze in shock, then put a finger to her lips and shushed the mouse. “Nobody!” she called back.

“It sounds like you’re talking to a guy. Is there a guy in your room?”

“No, it’s just me! I’m trying a ventriloquist thing with my mouse!”

Someone got out of bed and came down the hall. Her aunt appeared a moment later in her bathrobe, her hair a mess, and looked around. “Oh,” she said in embarrassment. “I thought I heard someone else in here. Sorry!”

“No problem,” said Scarlett in a very deep voice, trying to sound like Roger. “I’ll keep it down.”

“Are you going out today?”

Scarlett nodded and resumed her usual voice. “I was going to the field hockey game at school. I wanna take off about eight or so. I might go somewhere afterward with some friends.”

“Okay. Listen, can you get some air freshener for this room? That mouse smells awful.”

Roger turned, cheeks bulging with muffin crumbs, and gave Scarlett’s aunt an insulted look.

“I’ll take care of it, promise!” said Scarlett. When her aunt left, she shut and locked her bedroom door. “Crap, sorry about that. I’ll have to be more careful when we talk.”

“Some nerve, saying I stink,” Roger grumbled. “Like people don’t stink when they go to the bathroom. Yeah, right.”

“Oh, get over it. It does smell a little in here.” Scarlett picked up her school backpack, unzipped it, and looked inside. “‘Bout time we did something about it.”

“If you’re going to get air freshener,” Roger said, giving in, “get something that smells like fresh baked bread. I like that smell. Or maybe a scented candle with a flowery odor like rose or lilac, but not too strong. Don’t get any ammonia or anything really powerful, please. That’ll choke me right off. And don’t spray it right at me, either.”

“Yes, your majesty. We can wait until after the game to go to Food Lord, then you can pick out what you want. The pet department there might have something, too.”

“Great,” said Roger. “So, how’re we going to get to this game so that I don’t get eaten?”

Scarlett emptied her backpack’s messy contents onto her bed. “If I could find a small cage, I could stuff it in here so you’d have some protection and some air, too. I think we have a big Tupperware container that might work, though. I’ll just leave the lid off.”

Twenty minutes of experimentation passed with moderate