by Shannon Hale
Penny Dogs are literally demons in fur disguises!
Gladys
This is my last warning. Chester Yard Mall is Hydra for real. I’m telling you do NOT go to that opening day or it will be your last.
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Inna Okay never mind, I don’t want to sound like Gladys the Nutjob. I’m sure Chester Yard Mall isn’t really Hydra. Also, go Team Cat!
Ana Sofía shut her computer and pressed her palms to her tired eyes. Too much screen reading. Not enough evidence finding. And so much nastiness! After a few hours online, Ana Sofía was a hop, skip, and a jump from giving up on humanity entirely and locking herself in the attic Emily Dickinson–style—but with the internet. She could totally do Dickinson as long as she had a laptop with a high-speed connection.
But even offline, the tension kept building. At school that day, by seventh period the teachers had given up and let the students talk through class: about Mistress Meow and Dog-Lord, the contest, and the polling that showed Team Cat was behind. Even the weather seemed to be held tight in the grip of anticipation. No wind, no sun, gray clouds solid as a Vibranium shield, each day holding its breath and waiting, waiting for something to happen. The stillness raised goose bumps on her arms.
Her phone buzzed.
DOREEN
Hey just watched 3 squirrels imitate how humans dance and OMGosh Can hardly breathe. K anyway ur the awesomest Doreen out
Humanity in general might be a lost cause for all she knew, but Doreen Green was not. She was someone worth fighting for. If only Ana Sofía could be certain about this stupid mall. Chester Yard Mall. Again, that name seemed so strange to her.
On a whim, she opened her laptop back up and went to a site that decoded anagrams. She typed:
CHESTER YARD MALL
And got dozens of variations.
THERMALLY SACRED
HYDRATES ARM CELL
ALCHEMY LARD REST
Ugh. Useless. She was about to shut her laptop again when her eye caught one word.
SECRET
Her skin danced with goose bumps. A word pair. She took out a pencil and paper and began to play with the remaining letters. If she left off “Mall” and just rearranged “Chester Yard” she got:
SECRET HARDY
Wait! Rearrange “hardy” into “hydra.”
Chester Yard Mall = Secret Hydra Mall.
“What the crap!” Ana Sofía said aloud, jumping to her feet. “Secret Hydra Mall? ¡No lo puedo creer!”
They were barely even trying to hide. They were toying with everyone, as confident as bullies, as careless as big huge jerks.
Ana Sofía pulled on her battle socks—the thick gray merino wool ones with reinforced heel and toe. She wasn’t going to be able to solve this mystery entirely from a laptop. It was time to go into the field and kick up some dust.
I gathered the team. Word had been getting around the squirrel community that we couldn’t get into the basement of a human building. If we had a mind to enter, nothing should keep out squirrels. Nothing. I heard Pattersnip’s daughter Miggy-Moo ask her mother what would happen if she got locked in a squirrel-proof house. Pattersnip told her there was no such thing as “squirrel-proof,” but Miggy wasn’t convinced. I didn’t think Pattersnip was either.
The family depends on me to keep it safe. Knock me out with goose down if I fail them.
And so it was that Squirrel Team Six was lined up along the border of the empty lot facing the Chester Yard Mall parking lot. We took a moment, posing with tails lifted to the breeze, as if heroic music were playing in the background, like in those war movies I sometimes watch at Doreen’s. I don’t mind a little drama, when there’s opportunity.
I caught wind of a discarded gumdrop on the pavement nearby, but I didn’t even dive for it. I was that committed to holding the pose.
“They sapped over Chomp Style’s gnaw-spot already,” said Fuzz Fountain Cortez, eyeing the freshly cemented spot in the wall where we made our entrance the last time.
Chomp Style grunted, and we all knew he meant it would be no trouble to make another one.
“What is it, boy? What is it?” Speedo Strutfuzz said. Sir Woof was pawing the ground, whining, wagging his tail. Speedo acted like this was language, and maybe it was.
“Sir Woof smells someone,” said Speedo. “A human nearby. Weed-lurking.”
I twitched my tail at the team, and we spread out, Speedo and Sir Woof taking point. The weeds were so high I could barely jump to their tips. Once I could fully smell the human, my tail twitched in recognition.
“Ana Sofía?” Cortez asked.
Nestled between two trees with a blanket over her shoulders and head, Ana Sofía sat on the ground, tapping keys on her computer.
I poked my head up over the back of the computer screen.
“Hey,” I said.
“Eee!” she squeaked. I waved.
“Tippy!” she said. “You totally freaked me out!”
“Sorry,” I said, doing my best to make a sign in the hand language she and Doreen use. It reminded me of Tailspeak, which is also a silent language, unlike Chitterspeak. But like all humans minus one, Ana Sofía can’t understand Chitterspeak. Or Tailspeak. “What are you doing here?”
“Yeah, I got the ‘sorry,’ but the rest I’m going to have to guess is a question about why I’m hiding out here with a computer?”
I nodded.
“Well, see,” she said, “this is just close enough to tap the mall’s administrative Wi-Fi. If I can log onto that locally, I might be able to grant myself access to whatever databases or systems they’re using and get definite proof on how this mall is evil. Except the only thing even on their system is, like, stupid HVAC and property-management tools.”
She pointed to the screen of her computer. I scampered onto her shoulder to get a look.
“That’s a map of the mall,” she said. “But what are you all doing here? I mean, beyond, you know, just being in nature like squirrels do. Is Doreen with you?”
The lines of the map showed what the mall might look like if it had no roof and you were flying over it. I felt dizzy trying to get oriented. Squirrel maps aren’t so flat and bird’s-eye dependent. And they use smell more than sight. But eventually I located where on the map the room with the floor-door probably sat. I tapped a claw on the spot.
“That’s the Victor’s Secret store,” Ana Sofía said.
I tapped again, right on the spot in the back room of the store where the floor-door was.
“What is—” She started pecking at the keys. “Is that—”
I waited. She typed and new things appeared and disappeared on the screen.
“There’s a door in there,” she said. “In the floor. And it has way more security than any other door. You want to get in?”
I nodded.
She tapped and swiped at her computer. “I think…ugh…Just a second…Nope. I thought I could open it for you from here, but it won’t let me.”
I hopped down from the computer. I had hoped finding Ana Sofía here would provide us with a safer way to get in than Squirrel Team Six’s Covert Move Gamma: Wrecking and Entering, but it looked like the door was “human-proof,” too.
“Wait!” Ana Sofía said, her screen flashing. “Someone is going in the door now! Maybe I can—”
She typed so fast, it sounded like a dozen squirrels scampering across glass.
“Mudwhistles!” she said, balling her hands into fists. “I thought I had it, but the best I could do was redefine the closing parameters to one-point-seven-seven meters instead of one-point-eight.”
I twitched a whisker in confusion.
“I can’t open or close it,” she said. “All I could do was make the door think it’s all the way closed when it isn’t. They might not even notice, the gap is so small. Just a crack.”
I laughed, and I think Ana Sofía recognized the way my tail moved as something we do when we’re happy.
“Oh,” she said.
“Is that good?”
I patted a bit of the sock that covered her calf and gave her a claws-up.
“A crack is all we need,” I said.
True to her word, when we broke back into the mall and arrived at the floor-door, it was open. Or open enough, anyway. It was a tight fit for Big Sissy Hotlegs, but she’s used to scamper holes made for more petite squeaks.
A narrow set of stairs led down from the floor-door to a hallway lined with human-size lockers. At the end of the hall, an archway opened into a darkness my squirrel eyes couldn’t pierce.
A draft blew in through high wall vents. I glanced at Chive Alpha, who had already seen it. I nodded, and the little squirrel scampered up the wall like a spider. Or a squirrel. A spider-squirrel.57 In a moment, she was through the metal grating and into the ductwork.
Chomp Style started biting locks off lockers, and Big Sissy Hotlegs popped the doors open.
“Nice weather for a break-in,” said Fuzz Fountain Cortez.
“Like a cool autumn night atop a full hoard,” I said.
As Cortez, Chomps, and Sissy tossed the contents of the lockers, I scampered past to the dark end of the hallway. Narrow beams of light crisscrossed in the threshold. Lasers? Like the ones in the floor? I picked up a fallen scrap of paper and tossed it through. Nothing happened. No burning or alarms or anything. Carefully, I put my paw through.
“ORGANISM DETECTED,” a robotic voice declared from a speaker on the wall.
I looked back at my team, who had frozen in their tasks and stared at me, wide-eyed.
“WORKER UNKNOWN,” the voice continued. “STATE YOUR SECURITY-AUTHORIZED NAME.”
Something mechanical within the walls made a clunking noise, and a panel slid open. A weapon-looking thing extended through the hole.
“PROVIDE YOUR SECURITY-AUTHORIZED NAME WITHIN FIVE SECONDS OR BE DESTROYED,” the voice commanded.
My teeth clenched. I do not take kindly to threats of destruction.
“My name is Tippy-Toe,” I said. I scampered up the wall to perch on the barrels. “And my authorization is JUSTICE!”
I bit through the housing at the base of the barrel and tore it from the wall.
“‘CHK-CHKKA-CHT’ IS NOT A SECURITY-AUTHORIZED NAME,” the voice continued. “YOU WILL NOW BE DESTROYED.”
Three more panels opened, revealing new weapons. I zigged and zagged out of there as beams of burning light erupted around me. My team was already waiting for me at the top of the stairs, their mouths full of stuff they grabbed before they ran. Cortez glanced up at a vent, and I knew she was telling me that Chive Alpha was still in there.
A ball of fire bursted from inside a vent.
“HOT HOT HOT HOT,” Chive Alpha shouted as she ran past us and through the gap in the door. Cortez and I followed, locker-room lasers firing at our tails with a fzzzzzz fzzzzz.
We fled Victor’s Secret and darted through the mall. Men’s voices were shouting. We didn’t turn to look.
We scurried so fast through the passage Chomp Style made in the mall wall that our faces were in the bums of the squirrels in front. Like we practiced, we scattered in the parking lot, no straight line to follow, each of us disappearing into adjoining lots.
We met up again at Ana Sofía’s camp. Chive Alpha was steaming in a puddle, and she sighed.
“I hope she’s okay,” Ana Sofía said. “She didn’t seem to want my help.”
“Chive Alpha?” I asked. “You okay?”
“Peaches and nuts,” she said. “But that thingie burned off some of my bum fur. If Chomp Style has any spare underpants, I’ll take them.”
“Earned your ham-pants today, I think,” said Big Sissy Hotlegs through a full mouth, her cheeks stuffed round.
“Maybe I’ll change my name to Little Sissy Hotbum,” said Chive Alpha.
“NO!” we all said.
Not that it wasn’t a right decent squirrel name, but we couldn’t take another change. I patted her tiny head. She moaned, but her tail flicked a smile. The rest of the team emptied the loot from their cheeks, piling it up at Ana Sofía’s feet. She sorted through it, seemingly unconcerned by squirrel spit. Doreen chose her BHFF wisely.
“Ooh,” she said. “This looks incriminating. And this—wow, Tippy. No smoking gun, but enough that I think I’m ready to tell Squirrel Girl that we’ve officially got ourselves a Hydra problem.”
WHAT SQUIRREL TEAM SIX STOLE:
• tin of Red Skull–brand brand chewing tobacco
• pamphlet titled Obedience & Hatred: The Foundations of Success
• two sticks of Barnyard Chicken–flavor chewing gum
• a burned sock
• Food Heap Cafe rewards card, two punches remaining
• one signed photograph of a donkey or small horse named Fig
• a dead beetle (possibly was already in Chomp Style’s cheeks before the raid)
• a receipt for twenty-five pounds of lard and a cowboy hat
• cheddar-flavored mouthwash (travel size)
• one “No Evil” kit containing noseplug, earplugs, and a mouthplug (eyeplugs missing)
• gardenia seeds
• Serpent-B-Gone–brand snake repellent
• a piece of blueberry waffle (also possibly previously in Chomp Style’s cheeks)
• one baggie of Chafe Master–brand rubber-suit powder
• and a flyer for a suspicious party
ANA SOFÍA
I’m in the tree house
Ana Sofía turned on the tree house lantern to shove away the heavy, ominous feeling of that night, a night she now was certain lurked with Hydra agents. She sat on the weather-worn boards with her back to the thin wall and waited. And tried to ignore the buzzing in her belly and that generally sick feeling that assured her she should just run away from any social encounter and wouldn’t it be nicer to not have any friends whatsoever and move into that sequestered attic she’d been dreaming about?
Yes, she believed Hydra was right in her own neighborhood. And yes, she was more worried about having a conversation with a friend.
She even started to get up, but Tippy-Toe chose just that moment to hop onto her lap. A squirrel was so much lighter than a dog or a cat, but she felt that familiar comfort of a pet—a small, fuzzy, warm, alive thing that chooses to be near you. It felt like an honor. She lightly petted her back, the fur tickling her fingertips. Tippy-Toe’s five squirrel friends from the mall break-in gathered around, too. One of them set to arranging their treasures on the tree house floor, the flyer in the center.
It didn’t take long. Within moments of receiving the text, Doreen leaped out of her second-story bedroom window and hopped across her backyard lawn and up through the tree house window.
“Hey—oh, hi, everybody! Wow, is this a party?” she said.
Or at least, Ana Sofía thought that was what she said. Doreen had signed some of the words. Ana Sofía adjusted the tree house’s battery-powered lantern to more fully hit Doreen’s face.
“Doreen,” said Ana Sofía, steeling her nerves, “I think the new mall really is being built by the real Hydra, and my reasons are—”
“Oh no!” said Doreen. “And you said that Hydra is the evilest of evil. That means we’ve got to stop them like A-SAP!”
“Wait, say that again?” Ana Sofía said in case she’d misunderstood.
Doreen repeated herself.
“So you believe me?” said Ana Sofía.
“Of course I do!” said Doreen. “If you say it’s Hydra, then it must be Hydra. Oh wait, I interrupted you, didn’t I? Sorry! I think I’m always doing stuff like that. Interrupting. Being difficult. Crap, sorry. You probably wanted to show me how you figured it out, and I really do want to know.”
“Oh! Okay.” Ana Sofía had imagined it might take some convincing. She’d prepared herself for the chance of laughter. She hadn’t once run through in her mind what to do if Doreen just believed her outright. But she presented her discovery of the anagram as well as the evidence
the squirrels found in the mall basement and her reasons why each item pointed to Hydra.
“So…that’s what I think.” Ana Sofía paused.
“You’re the awesomest detective friend I ever had,” said Doreen, signing, her expression glowing, her signs big and empathic and full of emotion.
Ana Sofía blushed. “I guess.”
“So why does Hydra want to build a mall anyway?” asked Doreen. “Like, what is their evil plan?”
“Honestly I have no idea,” said Ana Sofía. “I guess we should tell the Avengers and they should come take care of it, right? Now that this is legit evil mastermind-y Hydra?”
“Yes. Totally. I’ll do that.”
Ana Sofía nodded. They were both quiet for a time. The squirrels seemed to communicate with each other and then began gathering up the evidence to store in whatever way squirrels do.
“So here’s a funny thing,” Doreen said when the squirrels were gone. “I thought my English teacher was a Super Villain, but turns out she’s just easily annoyed with me.”
“Schweinbein?” said Ana Sofía. “Yeah, I looked into her when she transferred mid-semester and figured out she came here because she’s a huge Squirrel Girl fan.”
“I should have told you my weird suspicions! It would have saved me so much time!”
“Me too,” said Ana Sofía, and then, though she hadn’t once pre-run through this conversation in her head, she dared to say, “But you laughed at me.”
“I did?”
Ana Sofía nodded. “I told you I thought maybe the mall really was Hydra and you laughed. That’s a thing for me. I really, really don’t like it when people laugh at me.”
“Dude, I’m so sorry. For real. I don’t even remember. I probably thought you were kidding. But clearly you were right.”
“It’s okay. Also, when I didn’t understand you and you said ‘Never mind’—I know you didn’t mean it like a big deal, but just thought you should know, that’s a thing that…hurts me. It’s like you’re saying that repeating something I wasn’t able to hear the first time isn’t worth the trouble. That because I’m deaf, I’m not worth the trouble.”
