A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  Pearl would have loved a disco ball in the Memorial Room and a karaoke stage and a mini door just for kids. But she couldn’t do those things, or any of the things on Bruce’s pie-in-the-sky fairy-tale plan. Luckily, she had a project of her own.

  Pearl sneaked Francine’s hot-glue gun into the Memorial Room and glued Reading Raccoon caps on the glass of the founders’ portraits. Then she made Simon help her carry them downstairs and hang them behind the circ desk, where they could remind new patrons of the library’s illustrious past and inspire them with a promise of its bright and long future. And she invited Khadija to the library, thinking of her love of dollhouses, and showed her the special raccoon entrance outside that she and Francine had cobbled together.

  Pearl had used some bathroom tiles to make the raccoon path. Granny had cut a piece of old awning into a raccoon-sized awning to make the entrance fancy. All by herself, Francine had sawed a mostly rectangular door from an old board she found in a demolition dumpster. On a shingle, Pearl had carefully inscribed HEADQUARTERS: READING RACCOONS, along with a small arrow scavenged from some knocked-down street sign.

  Khadija knelt over it, charmed. “Is it real?” she asked. “The raccoons really use a door?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Elsa, because of course she and Millie had come, too.

  But Millie said, “Wait, aren’t raccoons nocturnal? So how will they find the entrance in the dark?”

  Before Pearl could say anything, Khadija said eagerly, “I could make a pretend street lamp. I’d just need an old coat hanger or some pipe and a—hmm—”

  Millie said, “Find some pipe we can bend, and I’ll wire it so it really lights.”

  Pearl straightened up. “You can do that?” she asked Millie.

  “My mom builds robots,” said Millie. “She’ll help if I have trouble.”

  In a flash, Millie and Khadija dashed off to Granny’s with Francine to look for something they could use.

  Pearl was shy, wondering what to say to Elsa. But Elsa spoke first.

  “I’m not sure if you’re just the world’s biggest liar,” she began, “or—” She was on her knees peering into Pearl’s raccoon doorway.

  Pearl felt how everything could fall apart if Elsa decided she was nothing but a liar. “OR WHAT?” she said.

  Elsa stared at Pearl as if she truly thought she was crazy. “Or some kind of genius, that’s what I was going to say, geez, take it easy.”

  Pearl huffed. For a second, her fear of Elsa felt enormous. A big gold leaf came flying out of the trees and whapped her right on the side of the head as if someone had flung it. It stuck against her cheek, pressed there by the wind.

  Elsa laughed. In a nice way. “I’m coming to your party,” she said. “I’m going to be Harriet the Spy. Have you read that book?”

  “Of course I have,” said Pearl. “What do you think, I was born yesterday?”

  “Actually,” said Elsa. “That pregnant librarian who gave me Harriet said you were born here.”

  “Yeah,” said Pearl. She wasn’t sure if she should say more. She wished the others would hurry up and get back.

  “That’s lucky,” said Elsa.

  “Really?”

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes,” said Pearl. “Yes, I think I am lucky. Or at least unique.”

  Elsa smiled.

  The other girls came back. They worked for another two hours—until there was an actual raccoon entrance with electric light. Because it was drizzling, they did their construction in the Memorial Room, inadvertently making it into a workshop. It was as good a use as any for that big empty space that was just waiting to be filled by whatever activity each of them got into.

  Look at Millie, with her decent wiring skills. That was geeky. Here was Khadija, the dollhouse geek who knew how to envision how things would be made in a miniature world. Here was Francine, the truest friend of all (that’s what she was, Pearl realized) her geeky tap shoes on her feet. Here was Pearl herself, practically eleven and she couldn’t stop thinking about communicating with raccoons! Now she was a geek about books and woodland creatures. And Elsa—well, what was she a geek about? Friends, maybe, thought Pearl. Maybe Elsa was a friend geek. There she was, roped into holding things while everyone glued and wired and dug and painted. The others were talking, and Francine was singing and tapping the whole time she did anything, as usual, but Elsa had grown quiet in this group of geeks. Maybe for once she was afraid of saying the wrong thing—because then she might find herself alone.

  “Elsa?” said Pearl. “What’s your favorite animal?”

  “I don’t have one,” said Elsa. But she didn’t say it meanly, she said it like she’d never thought about it before, and was glad to be asked. Then she said, “A dolphin?”

  Maybe it was a start.

  1 From Holes by Louis Sachar (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999).

  2 The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman was first published in the U.K. as Northern Lights (Scholastic, 1995).

  3 This refers to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (published in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman, 1820). The story is fiction, but Sleepy Hollow is a nonfiction town.

  42: HOLIDAY MOOD

  OCT 30

  Mary Ann wrote,

  Are you nervous, Pearl?

  Pearl lied and said no, but Mary Ann surely knew better.

  So much depended on Halloween, and on Election Day the week after, that if Pearl was sane, she had to be nervous, and so did Mary Ann. Nobody talked about what they really were scared about: the library, the library, the library. Pearl built a mental wall inside her head and focused her worry about smaller things on this side of the wall. The raccoon costume, for one thing, and how she could get ahold of it, and what the evening would be like if she had to wear that crummy Headless Horseman getup.

  The Halloween Howl, for another thing. Would there be enough people there to impress the mayor? Would the mayor even come?

  When Yoiks appeared in the garden, where Pearl and her mother were carving pumpkins, Pearl forced herself to push away her nervousness. She needed this reporter, with his thin frame, his wire glasses, his notebook, his boots, his intense frown. So she didn’t confront him about not putting a column about her in the paper yet.

  “You’re going to cover the Howl, right?” she demanded, handing him a free ticket.

  (The fact was, all the tickets were free, although in exchange for attendance. Not a bad marketing ploy in itself.)

  “We need the press,” Pearl said, to encourage Yoiks. Let him bring up the Unique New Yorker piece.

  But he didn’t. He flopped on the library’s back step as though he’d been stabbed through the heart. “If only I could do everything on my personal agenda! First things first, Pearl. Christopher Nichols. Nichols Construction. A builder whose building fell down. Now, why is a certain young girl interested in him?”

  “She’s not the only one interested,” said Mom. “He’s a regular here, but we haven’t seen him in three or four days.”

  Pearl knew exactly how long. “Five,” she said. Since Gully had told her he had something on Mr. Nichols, he’d disappeared into thin air. He wasn’t in the garden, and neither was his stuff, other than the wad of papers she wondered about but didn’t touch. He wasn’t on the loading dock behind the umbrella, and the umbrella wasn’t there, either.

  Yoiks tipped his head to one side, then went on. “This Christopher, or do you call him Chris?”

  “Mr. Nichols,” Pearl said.

  “Is he the same guy who broke in?”

  “He got locked in,” said Pearl. She dug out some slime from inside her pumpkin while Yoiks said nothing, but Pearl could feel him regrouping.

  “So, what do you know about the William E. Quayle Birdcraft Museum case?” Yoiks said.

  Case? That made it sound like there was a crime involved. Pearl sucked in her breath. “Okay, if it’s something bad about him that you’re working up to telling us, I’d
rather not know. I changed my mind. I’d rather not have anyone know.” She dug harder in the pumpkin with her spoon.

  An Anonymous Sidebar

  Anonymous is a word some people use instead of their name, because they don’t want the credit (or blame) for what they write or draw or do.

  Anonymous nouns—alligators, teenage punks, homeless—are scary in their namelessness.

  Anonymous verbs—reading, gentrifying, governing—are flat and seem like phenomenons, not just actions.

  Pearl and I, we prefer individuals to stand for anonymous things:

  Not just anyone governing, but the actual mayor, known as Her Honor.

  Not just some some fancy chain furniture store like Eastern Pine, but Gully’s Buck-a-Buy.

  Not just books, but The Jumbies1 or El Deafo.2

  Not homeless people in general, but Mr. Christopher Nichols in particular.

  Not teenage punks, but Simon Lo.

  As for alligators, well, we don’t know any particular alligators. I don’t mind if they just stay anonymous.

  Signed, the not-anonymous . . .

  —M.A.M.

  “Let’s listen, Pearl,” said Mom. “Was there a court decision?”

  “It sounds like you folks are on his side,” said Yoiks gently. “So am I. So, after the Birdcraft Museum’s disastrous collapse”—he read from his notebook—“‘it was never determined whether a design problem or an error of communication doomed the construction. The court ruled there was no clear-cut decision assigning responsibility.’”

  Pearl thought hard. “Nobody was responsible?” she said.

  “Right, and that’s good,” said Yoiks. “And it’s lucky for Mr. Nichols, because Nichols Construction would have had to appear in court if there was a possibility that they were to blame. And then Mr. Nichols would be in trouble for not showing up.”

  Mom said, “I guess he thought it was his fault, and he ran. I suppose he’d rather disappear than have his name associated with a building that fell down.”

  “Then why wouldn’t he lie about his name?” asked Pearl.

  “Well, who knows it, other than you folks?”

  Gully knew, that was who. Pearl understood, suddenly, the risk Mr. Nichols had taken by buying those hats, giving away his true identity to someone who might do bad things with the knowledge. “So he’s innocent. The people dying wasn’t his fault. Thank you for finding that out.”

  Yoiks put his hand on her shoulder. “I know that. You know that. Does he know that?”

  Mom said, “If Mr. Nichols was guilty of some criminal act, then he would know it by now. He wouldn’t be sticking around here.”

  “How would he know it?” Pearl asked.

  Yoiks said, “Newspapers! Every time I see him, he’s got his face in one.”

  Pearl couldn’t help being impressed at Yoiks’s observation skills. “Then why is he still—”

  “Hiding? Homeless?” Yoiks said.

  “Maybe he just feels bad about it anyway,” said Pearl.

  “Maybe he doesn’t know how to make a new start,” said Mom.

  All Pearl could think about was that if the library closed, Mr. Nichols would spend every day out in the cold. Which was where he was now. Wherever he was.

  1 The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste (Algonquin, 2016).

  2 El Deafo by Cece Bell (Harry N. Abrams, 2014).

  PART FOUR: THE PLOT TWISTS

  “The courage that my mother had

  Went with her, and is with her still;

  Rock from New England quarried;

  Now granite in a granite hill.”

  —“THE COURAGE THAT MY MOTHER HAD”

  BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY1

  1 From the poem “The courage that my mother had,” from Mine the Harvest by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Harper, 1954).

  43: BEHIND THE MASK

  OCT 31 (SEVEN DAYS TO ELECTION DAY)

  It was four in the afternoon on October 31. The portable stage Ms. Judge had lent the library stood beside the statue. Already people had brought jack-o’-lanterns, enough to line the side of the driveway and the paths through the garden to Vincent. Pearl looked down at them from Bruce’s office and felt optimistic.

  Bruce did not.

  “Pearl,” he began carefully, “I don’t want you to be disappointed. A party like this might make for higher circ, and it might even get us enough donations to buy a couple of computer terminals, but it won’t change anything unless the library was already the heart and soul of the neighborhood.”

  “It’s supposed to help people see what they’d be missing if they let the library close,” said Pearl. “So they will vote for it.”

  It was as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’ve just spoken with the mayor’s office. She’s appearing at some fundraiser for the fire department, and she’s running late. I doubt she’s even coming.”

  Since it was the first Pearl had heard that Her Honor was even considering coming, this seemed like decent news. “How will you know if she’s not?”

  “If she doesn’t come,” said Bruce. “Then I’ll know.”

  He seemed dejected, so Pearl pulled him to the window. “Look at all the pumpkins.” The jack-o’-lanterns, even unlit, seemed to pump out their own orange energy into the green, dusky garden. More people were arriving as they watched—kids and grown-ups carrying pumpkins and placing them in a line along the sidewalk, more and more.

  “That’s a lot of jack-o’-lanterns,” was all Bruce said.

  And now here came Gully, carrying a big cardboard box. From the way he was walking you could tell he was pleased with what he was about to do. Uh-oh.

  “Ew, what’s he up to?” asked Pearl.

  Then Ramón emerged behind Gully, beaming. Gully set the box on the ground, gesturing to Ramón, who lifted a jack-o’- lantern and held it up so Gully could put something inside.

  “Oh, it’s candles!” said Pearl. “Little candles for the jack-o’-lanterns.”

  “Oh,” Bruce said. “Well, that’s generous of him. I thought Gully hoped the library would go down in flames.”

  That reminded Pearl how much she missed Nichols—still absent.

  “You could be generous, too, Bruce Goose,” she said. “The raccoon costume . . . ?”

  “Not a chance, Pearlie girlie. I’m going to need that when—”

  When? Not if? So Bruce was already counting on having to leave, having to go back to being a park ranger? Pearl talked right over the end of his sentence, so she wouldn’t have to hear it.

  “I used to wish you were my father,” she said all at once, before she lost her nerve.

  “Not anymore?” he said. He blinked and turned his face away. “I see.”

  Pearl leaned on the doorjamb, feeling weak. She had meant for what she said to make Bruce feel good, because she thought he was feeling bad. But all he had heard was that she didn’t wish he was her father anymore. She wanted to hear him say that he wished she was his daughter, that he wasn’t leaving. She was scared of what it meant that he didn’t. After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry, Brucie, but I really need the raccoon costume.”

  Unfortunately right then Mom appeared from the hallway. How long had she been there?

  “Pearl, go downstairs,” she said. “I’ve asked you not to nag Bruce about that costume.”

  “Fine!” said Pearl. She picked up the bag with the awful Headless Horseman costume. But she didn’t move. She stood glaring at both of them, but nothing she could think of seemed worth saying. She wanted them to fix things.

  She went pounding down the stairs to the children’s room.

  “Pearl, where’s your costume?” asked Alice.

  “Right here,” Pearl lied. She flapped past Alice, dropped the bag on the floor, and hurried to the front window to see what all the honking was about. A white van had pulled up. The honking got louder as Simon, Joey, and three teen girls opened the doors and jumped out. They all wore black shirts with a full moon and a dog on the back. A howling dog. />
  “Alice! Do you know what that is?”

  Alice went over to the window, her hands cradling her belly.

  “Simon’s nameless band?” said Alice.

  “Look at the shirts!” said Pearl. Simon’s nameless band was nameless no more—and they even had swag with their names on it! She called up to Mom and Bruce, “Lo’s Coyotes are here!” They all ran outside.

  The five band members stood in the driveway, holding guitars, drumsticks, a violin in its case.

  “Lo’s Coyotes,” said Joey. “He’s Lo. Simon Lo.”

  “Get it?” said Simon, grinning. “The band of coyotes.”

  “So you finally chose a name!” said Bruce.

  “And Pearl’s our emcee,” said Simon.

  “What’s an emcee?” said Pearl.

  “It’s what she’s been doing for weeks, isn’t it, Bruce? Prepping audiences, telling ’em tales. Francine’s the illustrator, the performer. Pearl’s the storyteller, she’s got the words to deliver.”

  “But they’re coming about Vincent,” protested Pearl. “They’re coming for the costume contest, and the raccoons. They’re coming for Lo’s Coyotes. Not for me!” And yet Pearl felt her confidence gathering together under her heart so that she stood taller, like a building, wanting to do whatever was needed.

  “Pearl, you’re the reason they care about any of those things in the first place. You can talk anybody into loving this place.”

  “But what do I have to do?” said Pearl.

  “Emcee means Master of Ceremonies,” said Bruce. “It’s what you’ve been working up to all this time, Pearlie.” He took her by the shoulders and spoke softly, just to her. “Go ahead and tell your story, Pearl. Put in all the pieces you’ve experimented with, and all the ones you’ve been working on for so long. Make it the best telling ever.” He raised his voice, looking around. “And get Francine in that Rock Lady costume to do her bit.” Even louder, “And if I’m not back in time, you guys need to get onstage without me.” He nodded to Lo’s Coyotes.

  “Where are you going?”