A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  “Pearl won’t,” said Pearl. “Pearl has other ideas.”

  “None as good!” said Francine.

  Pearl shinnied up a tree, peering higher in hope of spotting a nest. From there she saw—what was that? A white card rested in Vincent’s palm, folded small so it wouldn’t blow off, and tucked into the crack so it couldn’t be seen from the ground.

  She scrambled back down the tree and up the statue.

  Come down again, the note said in demanding, thick Sharpie letters.

  Pearl knew exactly who it was from and where she had to go.

  She left Francine to her dancing and sprinted toward the basement—and ran into Nichols coming out of the bathroom and into the back hall, wearing that dark green flannel shirt from the box.

  Oh! Right in the middle of everything! She would go “down again” to the library basement. But this collision called for a momentary detour. She matched Nichols’s pace back to their spot by the atlas.

  “You’re sort of nocturnal, aren’t you?” Pearl asked him. “Like a raccoon?”

  “What about raccoons, now?” He leaned back in his chair, waiting for her to feed him some nonfiction.

  “Did you know,” she began, channeling Mom, “that there’s a whole bunch of raccoons who read the paper every night and they live right around here?”

  “Peculiar!” mused Nichols, just like always. He seemed unsurprised, unimpressed, with a similar air to the one Mom had when she told her stories: not as if anything had been made up. As if everybody knew, and Pearl was the one who was just figuring things out.

  Pearl matched his casual tone. “So. They have a sort of city alongside our city,” she said. “They mostly sleep in the daytime, like you,” she added.

  “Why do you keep bringing me into it?”

  “You’re out in the nighttime,” said Pearl. He nodded. “And you sleep in the day. Nocturnal, the same as them.”

  “Who are these raccoons?” he asked.

  “They’re journalists. There’s a night edition of the Moon that’s for raccoons, and Mrs. Mallomar is the editor. I’m just learning about the rest of them—her daughter, Matilda, and Matilda’s kids, Mary Ann and Arak.”

  Nichols had to smile. “Reading raccoons? Publishing their own newspaper? What kind of news would they have?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Pearl. “I’m trying to find out how good their reporters are at digging up news.”

  “Well, when you get some answers from them, you come and tell me what you learn,” Nichols said. His glasses were on his nose, the paper open in his hands. He looked a little sleepy. He smelled outside-ish, the way you’d smell if you’d slept in Central Park all night and hadn’t had a chance to change all your clothes.

  A Sidebar About Nonfiction

  It can be as good a source for raccoon names as made-up fiction stories.

  Besides, where else are you going to learn what humans really expect of you?

  Take a look in the 599.74s if you want to read something sobering about expectations. Use your imagination. Imagine that you’re reading it as a raccoon.

  —M.A.M.

  Pearl looked at his flannel shirt and thought about where it had come from. “Mr. Nichols, would you just tell me—don’t be embarrassed—” His gray eyes peered over the glasses at her. He was very still. “Are you comfortable enough at night?”

  He smiled. “Comfortable enough for now.”

  She wanted to ask him a lot of things, including some questions about raccoons, but none of them seemed important against the idea of him—not only raccoons—out in the dark.

  That night, homework done, Pearl lay on the pale green plaid quilt on her chair-bed, hanging her knees over the side, her toes grazing the floor, thinking about school, thinking about Nichols, and waiting. She waited for the moment she knew would come.

  Then it did: Mom called from the bathroom. “Pearl? I’m going to henna my hair, let it rest, and take a shower, okay? Get the phone if it rings.”

  Pearl calculated: shower, five minutes. Henna, five minutes. Letting the henna “rest” while sitting on the closed lid of the toilet reading the New Yorker, half an hour. Shower, ten minutes. Plenty of time. The opportunity was now.

  She was out the doors like a shot, flip-flops wedged, pounding down the sidewalk to the beat of a blasting car radio, barging past a flow of people getting off the bus. The library loomed up before her, its front windows dark. It was dark in the alley, and it only got darker as she entered the garden, a note folded tight and clutched in her fist.

  Tonight was a test—a test of the raccoons, and a test of Mr. Nichols. None of them knew what she was up to, but they soon would. Pearl wanted to know if Nichols spent nights in the garden sometimes.

  The library’s side and back lights were out except for the ones in Bruce’s office that were left on at night to give the impression that someone was up there working. Pearl pulled the cheapo flashlight from her pocket and shone its weak beam along the garden path. If she hadn’t already known the place like the back of her hand, she’d have fallen on her face at least twice.

  Finally, the weak beam of Pearl’s flashlight showed the wood of the box. She slid some snacks and the note into the box and let the lid down stealthily. She would have tiptoed out of there if only a spiderweb hadn’t fallen right across her forehead, and she went crashing out of the bushes.

  “Who’s there?” came a deep voice.

  20: IN THE GARDEN AT NIGHT

  A SECOND LATER, SEP 28

  Pearl dived behind the pedestal of the statue and shined her little light into the dark. “Mr. Nichols,” she said. “It’s me.”

  Silence. Then, “Pearl?”

  “Of course!”

  “What are you doing here, Pearl girl?”

  She told an elaborate tale so he wouldn’t know she’d been looking for him. “Just checking on . . . Vincent, because Francine and I were making up scary stories, and she wants to make hers into a dance, and I’ll write mine down and then she’ll translate it and tell it in Portuguese, so we can tell Vincent’s story in two languages, plus dance, the universal language, not just English, since so many people speak so many languages around here—like Danesh speaks Hindi and Ramón speaks Spanish and Oleg said he speaks Ukrainian. So I thought I would see if coming here at night would give me a clue about her missing head. Because if I could find it, then I’d be a hero—and we wouldn’t have to do any of that new stuff, and things could just go back to the way they were.”

  “Things never do,” said Nichols from the dark. “Besides, maybe the new stuff will be good. And who says you’re not a hero?”

  But Pearl felt she hadn’t done anything to be a hero, and she wanted to quite badly.

  “Is this your sleeping place?” Pearl said, unable to keep herself from asking. She wanted so very much for Francine to be wrong about who slept behind the umbrella on the loading dock.

  “I don’t want to answer that.” He gave her his hand, and pulled her out from behind the statue. “I don’t want you to know that,” he said. He was looking up at the back of the library. “Pearl, where does your mother think you are?”

  “In bed.”

  “Then I’m walking you back,” he said. “But first I want to show you something.”

  Avoiding the rectangles of light from Bruce’s window, Nichols tiptoed to the door that led from the garden and into the back hall. Across the hall, a low light glowed from the reading room. “Here,” said Nichols. He cupped his hands so Pearl could step into them and gave her a boost. “Quiet,” he whispered. “Don’t let them hear you.”

  Pearl shaded her eyes with her hands pressing lightly on the old glass of the reading room door, and saw three small spots of pale-blue light—desk lamps along the narrow length of the reading table. Who was in there? Three raccoons with books open before them: The largest had a thick red book; the middle- sized one with a chapter book (Pearl could see it was Bud, Not Buddy1); and the littlest one with
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, not a huge picture book, but still way too big for him—the very book that had been missing from the children’s room for weeks. Pearl herself, the librarian’s child, could not help being impressed that such a young raccoon could read independently. But, of course, Arak lived in the library, too.

  A Sidebar About Brothers

  Start simple if you want to try to tell your brother anything. There will be a certain amount of resistance, and it’s usually better to show instead of tell. Keep in mind that if you try to tell your brother to do anything, he is likely to do the opposite. For instance, if you want him to leave you alone, he will tag along. If you want him to live his own life, he will hang on you like he’s stuck there. If you want him to be an individual, he will copy you until you’re ready to kill him.

  Use this brother tendency to achieve your goals. How? Act all bossy like you want him to follow you around, stick by your side, and do what you say. What do you think he’s going to do? Finally leave you alone!

  —M.A.M.

  Nichols shifted; Pearl stepped down silently.

  “I knew it!” she said.

  “You’re not surprised?” asked Nichols.

  “I guess not!” she said, only partly a lie. She did a little skip and added, “Mrs. Mallomar has her own newspaper.”

  “As you said,” Mr. Nichols answered. “But that’s Matilda and her two children in there. Mrs. Mallomar’s daughter and grandchildren.”

  “They’re the ones who live in the basement,” Pearl said. “That’s why they can read. That little one is Arak. I saved him from getting hit by a car!”

  (As if that wasn’t heroic!)

  She was beaming. She folded her arms across her stomach, holding on to her elbows as if her arms might rise up and she might fly away. She tried very hard to stay on the ground, but she almost could have flown.

  “Be careful who you tell,” said Nichols. “People might think you’re bonkers. Now come on.” He led her down the alley.

  (Could it be heroic if nobody knew?)

  The sidewalk under the pinkish streetlights was glowing. A train must have just come through the subway station: A swarm of people trooped toward them along the sidewalk. Automatically, without a thought, Pearl reached over and took Nichols’s hand. Nichols barely reacted; he held her hand calmly, firmly. Neither of them made a sound, but a silent sigh passed between them as the pedestrians went around.

  But then Nichols’s grip tightened. Pearl recognized Gully coming along and realized Nichols was squeezing her hand because he was afraid of Gully.

  And what did Gully think of seeing Pearl, the used-to-be-adorable-but-lately-kind-of-obnoxious librarian’s child, and Nichols, the nuisance homeless bum, out walking hand in hand at nearly ten o’clock at night? He merely let out a sharp breath of surprise and filed away what he’d seen for future use.

  Pearl wanted to giggle. What if Gully knew there were raccoons reading in the reading room, right now while he was plodding along the sidewalk as if there was no magic in the world whatsoever?

  Nichols swung Pearl around the corner of Beep Street to her building. She wanted to ask him a thousand things, but she just opened the door and picked up her flip-flop. Nichols put his fingers to his lips. She waved and climbed the stairs.

  A damp, showery, soapy, clean-mother smell met her at the apartment door, but Mom was still in her room. The stove clock said 9:58. Pearl had been out 28 minutes, but it seemed like hours. It was unbelievable what a sneaky person could get away with.

  “Mom?” called Pearl. “Do you want tea?”

  “Sure,” answered Mom.

  Pearl turned on the kettle. She hit the shower, got into her pajamas, and returned to the kitchen in time to pour the hot water into two mugs. She took Mom her tea and got into bed with her own, finally free to think about this amazing thing she had just seen—a fantasy become fact.

  Reading raccoons who could also write. Writing raccoons who could publish their own newspaper. Raccoons who strolled to the corner newsstand to get the midnight edition. Pearl laughed to herself. Who would ever believe it? Did Mom know that it was really so, and not just an urban legend, that it had more than a grain of truth?

  Nichols knew.

  Pearl set her mug on the floor and snuggled on her side in bed, her back to the window. She reached under her pillow for the catalog card and read it in the light from the streetlamp outside:

  Come down again.

  She would, tomorrow. After all, she had to get Mike Mulligan back for Francine.

  1 Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (Delacorte, 1999).

  21: A FAVOR FROM A FRIEND

  SEP 29

  A chilly morning told Pearl it had been a cold night. Half awake, she was glad to think of the little raccoon family in the library, cozy and warm. But then had Nichols slept in the garden, in the cold? After walking her home, had he gone back where she had found him?

  Pearl’s shoulders sagged. She was disgusted with herself. The whole point of her nighttime trip last night was to confirm where Nichols slept, but all she’d thought about was the magic of the scene in the reading room.

  She could fix it now. “Mom?” she called. “We have to leave a little early this morning, okay?”

  “Fine, put the kettle on, and—”

  “Mom, can you make tea at work?” Before Mom could respond, she added, “I’m drinking milk right now.” She opened the refrigerator, knowing Mom could hear. “And I’m getting out a yogurt and a granola bar, okay?”

  “Pearl, I’ve got errands to run before—”

  “No, Ma, this is important. You’ve got to come.” Pearl was sure that Mom was going to argue. She thought of the man in question, of how he listened, of how he helped her figure out things about the raccoons, of how he kept on coming to the library each morning, of how he kept on walking off into the darkness each night. What could she do for him?

  Mom opened the bathroom door with her mascara in her hand, her eyebrows raised.

  “I want to show you where I saw Mr. Nichols sleeping one time,” Pearl said.

  “Pearl, that’s his business,” said Mom.

  “Just come.”

  Mom looked reluctant, embarrassed, but she followed Pearl to the shadowy street near the river. A tent was pitched on the loading dock, and a couple of cardboard boxes could be seen there, too. But no umbrellas. No Nichols.

  “At least sometimes,” said Pearl, “he comes here, and sleeps behind Alice’s giant umbrella.”

  Mom sighed.

  “And then I’m also pretty sure he stays in a sleeping bag in the library garden,” Pearl said. “I think that might be where he slept when he first got here, because he hid some clothes in the box in the garden, but he didn’t sleep there for a while after the so-called break-in.” She paused and looked at Mom pointedly. “If I was an adult with an apartment of my own, I’d invite Mr. Nichols to stay with me.”

  Mom said, “Oh, Pearl. He wouldn’t come. I know that for a fact.”

  Pearl thought about what that meant. She knew Mom cared about Nichols. But she hadn’t considered that Mom might have already offered to help him. “You asked him?” What else had Mom done that she hadn’t told Pearl about? “Why are you only telling me this now?” she demanded.

  Mom put her hand on Pearl’s shoulder. “Because it seems like you understand better now?” she suggested. “Because you’re looking for solutions, too? Because the complexity of the situation is not lost on you?”

  Pearl thought about those words, deciphering them. “There are things I don’t get about him,” she said.

  Mom smiled, sighed. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I mean. Knowing what you don’t know is a big part of growing up.”

  “Aren’t you going to explain to me the stuff I don’t understand?”

  “There is nothing to explain. That’s the thing.”

  Pearl rubbed at her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she said stormily.

/>   “What I mean is we’re equals on this one, Pearl. We’re together in only knowing part of what matters when it comes to Mr. Christopher Nichols.”

  “Christopher?”

  “That’s his name. You didn’t know?”

  “I never thought about him having a first name.”

  “Well,” said Mom. “Now we’re equals.”

  Second things second. If only school wasn’t a factor in her life—but it was! She had no choice but to head down the library basement steps well before opening, even if eight in the morning was most certainly too late to wake a raccoon up.

  She tiptoed into the gloom behind the stairs, turned on the flashlight to avoid stepping on anybody, and rudely shined its beam right into the bigger raccoon’s face. The little kit squeaked and turned his face away, sticking his head under an old piece of carpet that formed part of their nest.

  “Sorry, Arak,” she said. He stuck his head out and met her eyes for a beat, then hid himself again. The other raccoon—Mary Ann—reached up a paw and pushed the flashlight aside.

  “I saw you in the reading room,” Pearl whispered.

  Mary Ann shook her whiskers and glared. Was this an answer? It sure looked like a “no,” but maybe it was just a random raccoon gesture.

  “Can you talk?” whispered Pearl. Mary Ann shook her head again.

  “Can you write?” Pearl pulled out her Sharpie and some catalog cards and laid them on the floor. Easily, as if she’d done it a million times, the raccoon curved the claws of her right front paw around the pen. Her grip looked awkward, but the writing came steady and even and quick. It was the same writing as on the two notes—Ask Mrs. M. and Come down again—but not the Arak Lancaster writing from the raccoon book.

  We speak, but it’s usually just phrases like “Come on” or “Let’s go” or “Hurry up.”

  “Those all mean the same thing,” said Pearl. It was an automatic response, but she could scarcely suppress her amazement. She tried to stop beaming. She was trying to hide that she was astonished that a raccoon could communicate at all—never mind with other raccoons, but with humans. Never mind communicate, but write!