Mikayla pops up from her hiding place.
Hailey just said the magic words.
CHAPTER 41
“Words have no muscles, but they are strong enough to break a heart.”
—Isaiah
While Mikayla feasts on her midnight snack, Hailey and I chat.
I suspect that Mikayla finds my keyboard dancing to be further proof of my peculiarity. After all, she can’t read the words I am typing on the screen. Then again, she may not even be watching me. She has an entire cream horn to devour and has buried her face inside its frosting.
“how’s school?” I ask.
“Better, I guess. Whenever Melissa calls me Zit, I just laugh at her.”
“good for you.”
“And I have a pretty cool English teacher, Mr. Randall. He likes reading books almost as much as I do. How about you, Isaiah? If you can write, I’m guessing you can read. Either that or you’re just a very talented tap dancer who has no idea what all this gobbledygook on the screen says!”
That makes me laugh. So my next sentence is gobbledygook. I quickly compose myself, however, and compose a quick verse:
“i like books, i really do. books with stories and pictures, too. books of mice and things that grow. books about hailey, who I am happy to know!”
I do another split to hit that exclamation point, but it’s worth it.
When Mikayla finishes as much of her cream horn as she can stuff into her stomach, Hailey packs up the rest in a clear plastic bag. She also gives us an entire package of something called string cheese.
“Be sure you guys peel off the plastic before you eat it,” she advises.
“and this cheese is made from string instead of milk?” I ask.
“No, it’s just stringy, but they couldn’t call it stringy cheese or people might think it’s made out of boogers.”
“what’s a booger?”
“Never mind. Come on. I’ll give you two a ride home so you don’t have to worry about bumping into Lucifer again.”
She stows our goody bags in the front pocket of her hoody. Then she bends down to the table so Mikayla and I can hop into the hood. The soft cotton lining makes for a very cozy carriage ride.
“She’s very nice,” says Mikayla, as gravity causes us to snuggle together down in the peak of the hood. “The nicest human person I’ve ever met.”
“I concur. She’s different from most of her species.”
We lean back and bask in the moonlight as we gently sway back and forth. It’s like riding home in a comfy hammock.
Mikayla sighs contentedly. She is very happy, I can tell. We’re snug and warm and safe.
“Mikayla?” I say. “Would you mind if I sang to you? After all, it is customary for boys to sing to girls, especially girls they’ve developed a certain fondness for…”
Maybe I really have become Isaiah the Brave. I can’t believe I just said that.
“I’d love to hear you sing,” says Mikayla, her breath as sweet as apple pie.
And so I sing my very best mouse song.
One thing I forgot to mention: all those talents I possess may have crowded out some of the other talents I might have if I were a typical, normal mouse. For instance, singing. I’m pretty bad at it.
“Enough,” she says, laughing, after a few sour notes. “My turn!”
Then, right there in Hailey’s hoody, Mikayla sings for me!
It’s ultrasonic, so Hailey can’t hear it, but I sure can—it’s loud and resonating, but sweet and emotional at the same time. The lyrics are simple. All about the moonlight and how it makes young mice under its spell fall in love, and how love is all that really matters.
It’s heavenly.
Even better than warm apple pie.
CHAPTER 42
“Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”
—Isaiah
The very next night, we’re both singing a different tune.
Lucifer is chasing after us again, this time inside the house.
Mikayla, Gabriel, Gulliver, and I make up one scavenging squad on the nightly food hunt.
And, of course, Mikayla and I are the ones Lucifer is gunning for. I think he remembers my blue fur from the previous evening. And perhaps he memorized her curly tail because, after all, he was behind us during that mad dash around and around the house.
There are ten other four-mouse teams racing around inside the Brophy home this evening because, earlier in the day, our spies discovered that the family would be going out to dinner at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. That meant their cupboards, pantry, and secret stashes of bedroom food would be left unguarded.
James the Wise ordered a full-scale home invasion. We were anticipating coming back to the burrow with enough food to last a month. After Gwindell’s encounter with the mousetrap, a lot of mice were afraid of going on food runs every night, so tonight’s haul was important for our mischief.
We were not anticipating running into Lucifer again. Or that he would be so extremely clever.
By chasing us into a bathroom, he has us cornered. The sides of the bathtub are too slippery for us to climb, so we can’t tunnel out through the drainpipe. The cat is near the sink, close to the door. In that position, he’s blocking the exit and our access to the sink’s escape pipe.
We have no choice but to hide behind the toilet.
Lucifer hunkers down and grins. I can read the thoughts behind his grim yellow eyes: “I can wait all night.”
“This is it,” says Gulliver. “We’re goners!”
“Take it easy, soldier,” says Gabriel.
“How can I take it easy? He has us trapped! Trapped, I tell you!”
Gulliver might be correct.
The nefarious Lucifer is laying siege to us. A siege is a military strategy where your enemy surrounds you, cuts off your avenue of retreat, and blocks your supply routes. It leaves you without essentials, such as food and water, eventually forcing you to surrender.
Unless, of course, you’ve also studied military tactics!
As it happens, I once read a book about the strategies of the famous French warrior Napoléon Bonaparte, who led thirty-four battles between 1792 and 1815, of which he lost only six, an excellent record. Napoléon’s battle strategy was all about rapid movement by an overwhelming number of troops.
Mice are fast.
And there were already forty-four of us in the house.
Soon, there could be more. An army large enough to scare off even the most monstrous cat.
I turn to Mikayla. “We need you to sing the Battle Call of the Mice! Sing it as loudly as you did last night—we need every able-bodied member of the mischief to come storming into this bathroom!”
“But I’ve already told you, Isaiah,” says Gabriel. “Mikayla can’t sing. She’s a girl.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” Mikayla says firmly. “Better than any boy.”
I nod, agreeing. She was more suited for this job than any male mouse I’ve ever heard sing.
“Impossible,” says Gulliver.
“Nothing’s impossible,” says Mikayla. “Some of us are just, well, different. Stand back, boys!”
Mikayla takes in a deep breath, and when she lets it out, her voice soars far and wide. The battle call is a song that every mouse knows, whether they grew up in a burrow or a Horrible Place. It isn’t sung very often, but it has an immense, incredible effect.
Lucifer’s eyes get as big as Oreos. His ears are pretty big and pointy. He’s definitely picking up on Mikayla’s energetic ultrasonic vibrations.
“Wow!” says Gabriel. “You sing the battle call better than any mouse I’ve ever heard.”
“Louder, too,” says Gulliver, covering his ears. “They could probably hear you all the way down in the basement—of the house next door.”
“That was the plan,” I say, tucking my paw under some belly fur so I can sort of look like Napoléon.
And guess what? Napoléon was right.
Very soon, terrified by
our overwhelming number of troops, Lucifer does what all those armies who lost to Napoléon did.
He runs and hides.
CHAPTER 43
“A cat bitten by a snake dreads even rope.”
—Isaiah
“You should have seen that mean cat scat,” I type on the laptop computer in Hailey’s bedroom.
Mikayla and I are back for another visit and, hopefully, another hoody ride home.
Red Boy, Hailey’s cat, hops up into Hailey’s lap and raises its hindquarters, commanding Hailey to rub the magic spot in front of his tail.
Mikayla gasps when the cat makes its entrance.
“Don’t worry,” says Hailey. “Red Boy just needs a little loving. He’s not interested in eating you. He likes salmon and tuna and those cat treats shaped like fish.”
Mikayla turns to me. “Everything in this house is so different, including the cat.”
“Yes,” I say to her. “Isn’t different wonderful?”
“What are you two gabbing about?” asks Hailey, because she can’t hear our words.
I start typing again.
“we were discussing how lucifer has been defeated… at least for now. maybe he won’t mess with our mischief anymore. no one wants to fight when the odds are 1,000 to 1 against you.”
“You’re something else, Isaiah,” says Hailey. “Who knew you were such a great field commander? Tomorrow, to celebrate, I’ll bring you a napoleon.”
“is napoleon still alive?” I had to ask.
“Nope. A napoleon is a pastry. Sort of like the cream horn, only with custard in the middle and chocolate on top.”
Mikayla is beaming. She is also drooling.
“mikayla deserves a reward like that,” I type. “she is the one who belted out the battle call so brilliantly. we had mice joining us from houses up and down the block. even the ones from your cellar.”
“We have mice?”
“if you have a cellar, hailey, you have mice.”
She shrugs. “I don’t mind. Maybe one of them will be heroic like you. Mice have been famous throughout history, you know.”
“you mean human history? because mouse history has nothing in it but mice…”
Hailey laughs. “Yes. Human history. Do you know that the Greek god Apollo was called Lord of Mice? And then there’s the mouse that the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha rides—at least in pictures.”
She shows me a picture of an elephant person riding a mouse, and all I can think is, That poor mouse.
Hailey keeps going with her list of famous mice.
“There’s Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Jerry, Speedy Gonzales, and Stuart Little. And of course, in my opinion, the most heroic mice are the ones who’ve saved so many lives in research laboratories—”
Yipes!
The mere mention of the L-word sends me into a panic. I jump off the laptop, race across the computer desk, and run as fast as I can.
Right out Hailey’s window.
CHAPTER 44
“Rocks need no protection from the rain. I wish I were a rock.”
—Isaiah
From the window, I slide down the drainpipe.
Dash across the yard.
Crash into the woods.
I keep running until I find a snug nook in the roots of a towering tree, where I curl up into a ball.
And then I let myself do something I’ve been holding back from doing ever since I lost my original mischief.
I cry.
I let the tears empty out all the pain and loneliness I’ve been keeping bottled up inside.
Have you ever lost your whole family?
All in one fell swoop?
I certainly hope not.
If you had, you would know how much it hurts. And why I just need to hug myself and cry.
“Oh, poor Abe, poor Winnie, poor Benji, Hezekiah, Maria, Rudolpho, and Zeke,” I sob. “I got out, but you’re still trapped in the Horrible Place. Being tortured in the… the lab!”
I say the L-word.
I say it out loud.
It makes my limbs shiver and my tail shake. Oh, the nightmares I could tell you about what goes on in the lab. What they do to us mice should be illegal. Perhaps it is illegal, but the Long Coats at the lab don’t care—they do it anyway.
Uh-oh. I hear noises.
Rustling in the underbrush.
This can’t be good. It might be Lucifer, seeking revenge.
Worse, it might be Mr. Brophy, come to take me back to the lab, where he works as a Mop Man and Key Keeper.
I curl up tighter, close my eyes. I’ve never felt more lost or alone.
“Isaiah? Are you okay?”
I open one eye. It’s Gabriel. Gwindell, Gilligan, and Godfrey are with him.
A new voice calls, “Isaiah, where are you?”
It’s Hailey.
In a flash, the other mice scurry under leaf piles to hide. Gabriel helps Gwindell crouch behind a pinecone.
“It’s okay, you guys,” says Mikayla, climbing out of Hailey’s hoody to stand on her shoulder. “This human is different.”
The other mice are shocked into a momentary silence.
“Wow,” says Gabriel, finally. “Her fur is white as snow. The good kind of snow. Before the dogs get to it.”
“Isn’t she beautiful?” says Mikayla. “She’s as nice as she is pretty.”
“Stunning,” says Gwindell. “Her eyes are amazing. They blaze with icy fire!”
Hailey, of course, can’t hear all of the mouse chatter. She kneels down in the dirt to talk to me. I notice that she’s brought along her laptop.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I nod to let her know that, physically, I’m fine. A tear trickles down my cheek. I must confess, I am quite touched that all these creatures genuinely care about me. They’d risk the danger of the yard at night to rescue me? Maybe I’m not as alone in this world as I thought.
“I did some quick research,” says Hailey. She opens up her computer. Shows me the screen. “Is this where you used to live, Isaiah?”
“It’s where Mr. Brophy works,” Hailey continues. “And it’s not very far from here…”
I look into her crystal-blue eyes. I look at my friends. I look at Mikayla.
It’s time.
I take a deep breath.
And then I tell them my story.
CHAPTER 45
“When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else dance on the keyboard.”
—Isaiah
I step up on the laptop so I can tell my tale to everybody, Hailey included.
While I type, I also recite what I’m writing.
“yes. the lamina research lab was the only home i had ever known until mikayla so graciously invited me into the brophy mischief.”
“We love having you with us, Isaiah,” says Gabriel.
“None of us has ever eaten so well!” adds Gwindell.
“Or scared off Lucifer, the devil cat,” says Mikayla.
“thank you. i have enjoyed my time with you all. you, too, hailey. especially when i compare my new life to my old. at the lab, the horrible place, they conducted countless experiments on me and my family. they did this to us because they could. they were big, we were small. in the human world, might makes right. the strong oppress the weak.”
“Same thing’s true in middle school,” says Hailey. “But some of us try to be different.”
“you, hailey, are the most remarkably different human i have ever met. if only there were more like you.”
“Maybe there are, and we just haven’t met them yet,” says Hailey.
“we can hope. anyway, at the lab, they made me to be very, very different. i think they gave me a bigger brain. superior intelligence. i suspect that is why i can read and learn big words and do all the other things i can do. they also made me blue so i’d be easy to identify. same with my brothers and sisters. they gave us all very distinctive colors. because they could. they never asked our permission for
anything they wanted to do. they just did it. because they could.”
“How long did this go on?” asks Hailey.
“my whole life. finally, one day, we decided enough was enough. my big brother, benji, who is ten times braver than i could ever be, came up with an escape plan. you see, mr. brophy likes to prop open the rear door when he mops. the breeze dries the floor so he doesn’t have to. mr. brophy is extremely lazy. benji said we should make a run for it the next time mr. brophy mopped the floor.”
“Were you in cages?” asks Hailey.
“yes, but not the kind with bars. our jail cells were more like plastic boxes. very similar to the sealed containers the brophys use for storing leftovers in their refrigerator.”
“Those are easy enough to chew through,” says Gabriel. “If you have time.”
“exactly.”
“Exactly what?” asks Hailey, who couldn’t hear Gabriel’s question.
“we could chew through the plastic walls of our prison cells. benji said, first thing in the morning, we should all nibble a hole in the floor and then cover it up with cedar shavings. and since the long coats had made us all so very special…”
“You have very sharp teeth,” says Hailey.
I nod. “like razors. what would take an ordinary mouse several days, we could chew through in an hour. we did it on the morning of the jailbreak.”
“So, Mr. Brophy propped open the back door, you guys chewed holes in your plastic cages, and you hightailed it out of there?”
“yes. we ran out the back door. we scattered in ninety-seven different directions so the long coats couldn’t catch us all. i hid in a sewer drain and tightroped my way on a power line over an alley strewn with rusty barrels that smelled like rotten eggs.”
“This is so awesome,” says Hailey. “You guys did it. You escaped!”