All weekend, the new wave of kids from Lancaster Avenue Public School kept washing up at the library to sign up for cards and get books.
“Thanks to us, they all want to see Vincent,” said Francine, and Pearl couldn’t argue.
“The kids all call her Vinny,” said Oleg.
“I’m never calling her that,” said Pearl.
“But it’s great,” said Simon. “People want books now. They’re not coming just to see her head.”
“Good thing,” said Francine, and Pearl laughed.
The last place Pearl expected to find herself was in Gully’s store, after everything he’d done, but some things had to be faced if you were going to move forward in this life. Maybe Mom was right: Diplomacy was required.
Or money. She laid on the counter the yellow baseball cap Francine had bought the day before. “I have a business proposal, Mr. Gulliver,” she said. “What kind of price can you get me on these?”
He turned to his computer to look it up.
Pearl added, “We’ll need a lot of black eye masks, too, like these Halloween ones.” She picked one up from a box on the counter—Gully loved the impulse buys for Halloween—and positioned it above the bill of the yellow cap to show him what she meant: the eye mask on the hat, making raccoon eyes. “We’ll take care of the gluing-on part.”
A Sidebar About Bulk Sales
The more caps Pearl bought from Gully, the cheaper they would be. The caps were a way to do two things:
Get people on the same team with each other.
Get people on the same team with the library.
If she couldn’t sell them, she’d be stuck paying for the caps herself. If she couldn’t sell them, it meant people were too separated; they wouldn’t come together for the sake of the neighborhood, or the library.
—M.A.M.
“How many do you want?” asked Gully. “Price goes down with quantity.”
“If all goes well?” said Pearl. “Hundreds, maybe thousands.”
Gully lifted the cap and put it on Pearl’s head, studying it. “Looks like one of those so-called masked bandits that gets into my garbage cans.”
Pearl made herself laugh. “Reading Raccoons,” she said. “The library’s new mascot.”
Pearl sat on the basement steps and told Mary Ann about the idea for the caps—and what Gully had said about raccoons.
You see what people are like. They believe in the “raccoon invasion.”
“This is why we need to publish our piece as soon as possible!”
“Pearl!” Mom’s voice came shouting from above. “Are you down there?”
“Yes, coming,” called Pearl. She ran up.
Mom was peering at her.
“It’s a good place to write, that’s all,” said Pearl.
“Who’s writing what?” asked Mom.
“Mary Ann and I,” said Pearl. “We’re telling our story.”
Mom looked as if Pearl had told her she’d sprouted wings and taken off from the roof. She could see Mom thought she was being strictly fictional.
“It may be strange,” she told her mother. “But it’s also the truth.”
Then Mom laid two massive envelopes across the desk, addressed to:
CIRCULATION LIBRARIAN
LANCASTER AVENUE BRANCH,
NEW YORK CITY LIBRARY
“Hey, they’re from Ms. Judge!” said Pearl.
Mom opened one envelope. “Good grief,” she said. “She’s got applications from three hundred and sixteen students requesting library cards.” She grinned at Pearl. “Better print out some more tickets to the Howl.”
36: INVITATIONS
OCT 16
It all depended on the district vote on Election Day, November 7. The whole neighborhood would vote on whether the library should stay or go—whether it would keep loaning out books or become apartments that would bring Gully more regular shoppers than he had now. NOV 7, said the return stamp now. By that date, the library’s fate would be decided. There would be nowhere for the returns to return.
Today was a warm October afternoon, borrowed from late summer. Every day that week, over her school uniform, Pearl had worn the heavy sweatshirt Bruce had given her for her birthday that said THE BOOK WAS BETTER. But now it was warm enough that Pearl took her sweatshirt off. She dropped two granola bars and an apple into the little shed box, along with one of her Halloween posters.
Then she saw a movement under a yew bush.
“What are you doing out here in the middle of the day, Arak?” Pearl asked. “You’re going to be in so much trouble.”
The little kit walked right up to Pearl (very brave!), and put a front paw on the knee of her jeans. Inside the other paw was a rolled-up catalog card with Mary Ann’s writing on it.
Mama is gone.
“Matilda? Where?” said Pearl.
Arak couldn’t read very well yet. Did he know his mama was gone? He made a scrabbling, scrappy, squawking sound. Mary Ann must have been desperate for Pearl to know, to send her little brother back here alone to wait for Pearl to get home from school, in what was practically the middle of the night for him. Pearl wanted to scoop him up, cuddle him, protect him, but—
There was a noise from the alleyway, a cantankerous cackling. Here came Mrs. Mallomar, with Mary Ann behind her.
At the sight of Mrs. Mallomar, Arak dashed across the garden path and disappeared into a dark shadowy space under the drainpipe at record speed. Mary Ann and Mrs. Mallomar sat back on their haunches in the grass.
“Matilda’s gone?” Pearl said to Mary Ann.
Mary Ann was making a motion with her paws—curling them, then spreading them forward, like she was rolling something. Arak re-emerged from the basement, bringing a rolled-up newspaper to Mrs. Mallomar. Then Mrs. Mallomar, the editor in chief of the midnight Moon, came toward Pearl and pushed the newspaper at her.
“For me?” asked Pearl. But the big raccoon just moved off, loping down the driveway, keeping close to the base of the library, until she was out of sight.
Pearl examined the paper.
MOON MARKETER FOLLOWS NIECE
ON FACT-FINDING JOURNEY
Pearl read:
Matilda Mallomar, assistant marketing director of this paper, is taking a leave of absence, as she has targeted the possible location of her niece, Eloise, relocated two weeks ago. Apart from the obvious objective of assuring Eloise’s well-being, Ms. Mallomar has hoped to gather clues about a local theft. Eloise’s mother, Eilonwy Wanderer, commented, “Eloise loves an adventure, but that’s no reason to leave her brothers and sisters without a babysitter. I’d go myself if I weren’t so tied to the whole kaboodle of kits.” Ms. Mallomar hastened to add that her niece is not a reader, and therefore unlikely to find her own way back to the Lancaster Avenue neighborhood. Needless to say, this is a situation that lends new weight to the paper’s campaign to increase raccoon literacy.
Pearl glanced up to catch Mary Ann’s eye, but instead saw her friend’s tail disappear into the dark space beside the drainpipe.
The story was impeccably written as always, but what was so important about it that they’d left her to read it on her own?
And then she got to the end of the story. After the last line was a small paw-written message.
page 27
On page 27 was an editorial circled in Sharpie.
NEUTRALIZING THE NEGATIVE
The attitude toward the raccoon race around Lancaster Avenue—and certain other areas of the city—has lately become negative. This has already resulted in one of our dearest members taking a journey to an unknown destination. This disappearance has in turn caused another member to pursue her, with the outcome unknown at this writing.
This brave citizen inspires us all, and reminds us of the importance of educating the illiterate raccoons in new areas of the city and helping create harmony—as well as self-sufficiency. The relocation of an illiterate young raccoon drives home the point that city raccoons must assimilate to the ci
ty—a city that is built on words.
Let there be an end to traps. Let us, instead, tell our story, and use our story to bring new attention—a new identity, maybe even tourism—to our neighborhood. Let everyone come to join the Reading Raccoons, and stay for the beautiful library, for the statue of Edna St. Vincent Millay, for the magic of stories chosen just for you.
—Mrs. Mallomar, Editor in Chief
A Sidebar About the Great Masking
The Great Masking is the last party before the Great Sleep. No, raccoons don’t hibernate, especially in the wild. But they do slow down, as certain humans do when they get out their cozy socks and turn up the heat. Here in the library, we move from the unheated summer nest of old doormats, recycled paper, and lost-and-found hats into the chimney, long out of use, but which nevertheless contains a pipe that vents the furnace. It’s toasty.
—M.A.M.
Pearl read the editorial aloud twice, thinking back to what Mary Ann had said long ago about the raccoons having their own plan. Was it happening now? Were the raccoons leaving the library to go teach other city raccoons how to read?
It was right here, in black letters stamped on white paper, right here in Pearl’s lap: The raccoons were not willing to give up their literacy. Instead they wanted to preserve it by spreading it far and wide. Here, on Lancaster Avenue, they were willing to stick their necks out: They were making the statement that they were real reading raccoons, and asking their readers to help them get the word out. They did this for the sake of their family, and the sake of their stories—the two things were connected. Without reading, they wouldn’t be the Mallomars.
Pearl knew that fighting for their literacy, fighting for staying at the library, was dangerous for them. You didn’t have to look any farther than across the street to see how it could backfire, with Gully getting people like the X-terminator hired, and Mr. Bull and Mr. Dozer making the place unfriendly to wild animals. People had thought of animals as ignorant and illiterate—and therefore not worthy of respect—for a long time, and it would take some doing, and some proof, to make anyone change their thinking.
Pearl left the garden and went back into the library, which was bustling more than usual for a darkening October afternoon. The children’s room was full of children for once, and the room was not the least bit restful or quiet. Pearl couldn’t help feeling proud. This festive noise was her doing! But what was about to happen next—a raccoon campaign that was supposed to look like it was just a big marketing campaign but was actually real life—had her jangling with worry.
“Oh, Pearl!” said Alice. “Did you hear Danesh’s great idea for my costume for the Halloween parade? I’m going to be Humpty Dumpty.”1
Pearl started laughing, thinking of the very pregnant Alice, quite egglike so close to her due date.
“Where’s the parade going to be?” Khadija asked.
Khadija was here?
“Khadija?” said Pearl. A returning patron! And someone from her class!
“In the library garden,” said Alice. “Around and around the statue and down the street if we have big-enough attendance, and who knows where after that. What’s your costume?”
Francine came tapping over like it was no big deal that Khadija, a totally normal, totally cool girl from school, was choosing to hang out in the library.
“I could be Madeline2,” said Khadija, thinking it over. “My sister has a blue coat. I could get a hat from the thrift store, and Gully’s has ribbon. It was my favorite book when I lived in Paris.”
Francine said, “I can help you attach the ribbon to the hat.” She added, “You lived in Paris?”
“Thanks.” Khadija flipped back her shining dark hair as if Paris wasn’t any big deal. “Not everyone in Paris goes to school in two straight lines.”
That was a reference to Madeline! Pearl grinned, and told Francine, “Khadija moved here in third grade.”
Khadija looked surprised that Pearl would remember. She smiled at Pearl.
Then Elsa appeared, too. “Khadija,” she said, “come help me get Millie out of the books about machines. She’s having a total geek attack.”
Khadija flapped her hand. “Let her,” she said.
“Geek attack about what?” said Pearl.
“Her STEM special interest topic,” said Elsa. “Naturally she’s doing T for tech.” She said it as if she expected them to roll their eyes about Millie. But Pearl was just curious. What kinds of machines would Millie want to read about?
“What’s your costume, Pearl?” Khadija asked, turning away from Elsa.
“I haven’t decided yet,” said Pearl. It was kind of a lie.
“I bet I know what you’re wearing,” Khadija told Francine.
“You bet,” said Francine. “Rock Lady is going to be the best costume there.”
Khadija smirked as if she liked a challenge. “We’ll see!” she said. And she gave a little salute and went off with Elsa.
Pearl let Francine tag along with the other girls and sneaked off to the book elevator, sending herself to the third floor. Time to investigate her own costume idea.
The lights were off in Bruce’s office. The room felt gloomy, gray.
Feeling sneaky for being there when Bruce was out, Pearl shoved a pile of stuff out of his easy chair and curled up there, gazed tiredly at the teeth of the molding that edged the ceiling, and met the veiled, vacant eyes of the raccoon head on top of the file cabinet.
The raccoon costume was hung up like always, with the head on top of the filing cabinet like a moose head on the wall of a hunting lodge. The first time she’d seen it, when she was five and Bruce came, she had taken one look at its empty eyes and its masked-bandit face and given a little shiver. When Bruce, who didn’t even know her yet, had said, “That’s not to be touched,” he hadn’t had to tell Pearl twice.
Now suddenly everything was different. Now suddenly she felt bigger. Now suddenly she wanted to take another look.
Just then, Bruce appeared at the door. “What are you thinking, Pearl girl?”
“I was thinking that if I don’t go into library science, I could fall back on acting.”
“What have you ever acted in?” Bruce asked. She thought that he, too, had come upstairs seeking solitude.
“I acted on the auditorium stage,” she said. “It’s me who sets the mood, you know, so that Francine seems super scary.” She got up, creeping toward Bruce. “I’m good. You should see me. I can tell a story.”
“I know you can, Pearlie,” he said. “I’ve heard it! Now—”
“So, can I—” She arched her eyebrows, pointing behind him at the raccoon body on its hanger in the corner.
“My costume?” Gone was Bruce’s casual attitude. “No way, Pearl! You’ve got to stop asking this. You don’t understand. What you’re asking, it’s like asking a general to borrow his uniform. Ranger Rick himself gave me the A-okay to wear this.”
“Well, take off the bandana and it’s just a regular raccoon. And then it’s a Reading Raccoon!”
“No can do, Pearlie. If you want a costume, I can help you make one,” he offered.
She didn’t get a chance to argue. Suddenly, Mom was shrieking Bruce’s name from downstairs, and a rabble of voices—Ramón’s, Simon’s, Alice’s—added to the chaos.
“Get down here!”
“Where’s Pearl?”
“Take the straight stairs!”
“The spiral staircase! It’s falling apart!”
1 Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, usually handed down orally, but first appearing in print around 1800. He also appears in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll (Macmillan, 1872), the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
2 Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (Simon & Schuster, 1939).
37: THE WORST CASE
OCT 17–18
Too many had climbed up; too many had come down. Now there was an actual crack in the iron that held the spiral stairs in place
. Ramón was quick to rope off the top and bottom of the staircase with lengths of line, and Pearl was dispatched to Gully’s to buy CAUTION tape.
“Problem across the street?” Gully asked, eyes glittering.
“Nothing we can’t fix,” said Pearl, knowing it was a lie.
Upon her return, she saw that Bruce had taken action. Two-by-four pieces of wood, hammered in an X, kept everyone from going up the spiral stairs and blocked them from entering the glass-floored area from the reading room to nonfiction.
“To be safe—and legal—you’d better shut off the whole reading room,” Nichols said, his face grave.
Of course Jonathan Yoiks chose that day to return the books about Vincent.
“What happened here?” he asked.
Next came Gully—he couldn’t resist that CAUTION tape tip-off, Pearl thought—and he was soon followed by Mr. Bull and Mr. Dozer. It was as if the crack in the stairs was a disturbance in some force that brought onlookers to the scene of a potential crisis, and builders to a crumbling place that needed their particular steel and concrete.
Pearl felt as though her heart was barely beating. Still and shocked, she forced herself to go and stand by the reference desk, so she wouldn’t miss anything. Nichols was nearby in his chair with the paper held up in front of his face.
Yoiks had his writing pad out. “Surely,” he said, “if there’s someone in the city who can shape a rock into a head, there’s someone who can fix a cast-iron staircase.”
“Not to code,” said Mr. Bull—and Mr. Nichols, at the same moment. They looked at each other.
“Wasn’t it to code before?” asked Yoiks.
“Well, it would have been grandfathered in,” said Mr. Dozer. “Old stuff that’s still in decent condition can stay until it fails. But once it fails? It has to be repaired to code—but there’s no code for cast iron and glass.”
A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon Page 23
