The girls studied each other’s soldiers. Then Isabel said, “Let’s dig up some more and have a battle!”
They brushed off the soldiers’ pink, sandy faces, slipped them in their pockets, then dug again.
And the boys stomped back to the school.
After school, when Mom came to pick up Jasper and Ori, she told Jasper she had a surprise for him at home.
“He needs a surprise,” Ori said, giving Jasper a pat on the back.
Jasper’s shoulders slumped. His head hung low.
“What’s wrong, Jasper?” Mom asked.
Jasper groaned and clutched his tummy where Marcel Mouse would be hanging if he hadn’t flushed him down the toilet.
“First he lost Marcel. Now he lost all his pink soldiers,” Ori explained.
“All of them?” Mom asked. “There were so many. How did that happen?”
“We said the girls could keep what they dug up,” Ori told her. “They dug up all of them.”
“I loved those pink soldiers!” Jasper wailed.
“The thing is, the girls love them, too.”
“Won’t they give any of them back?” Mom asked.
The boys shook their heads.
“I know,” Mom said. “Why don’t we sing the Marcel Mouse song? I’m singing it all day long anyway.”
“Marcel is gone,” Jasper sniffed. “All that’s left of him is his song!”
“Singing the song will cheer you up. So will the surprise at home.”
Mom was right. Singing cheered Jasper up. All three of them waved high and low and turned in a circle on the sidewalk and crashed into each other and almost fell down. When they crashed, a bleep! came from Ori’s backpack.
“Can Jasper come over?” Ori asked Mom.
“Yes, but he has to come home for his surprise first. Remember?”
“Yeah!” Jasper said. He was ready for the surprise now.
When they got home, Jasper tore all through the house looking for the surprise. “It’s here,” Mom said, pointing to her computer.
She opened her email. Jasper saw the message right away. The heading was: HELLO, JASPER!
A picture of a ship popped up on the screen. The ship was so big it looked like an apartment building lying on its side. Except it was white and it floated.
“That’s the same ship Nan went away on,” Jasper said.
“Similar,” Mom said. “Read the letter.”
Dear Jasper,
Sorry for jumping ship so fast! I saw an opportunity, and I didn’t want to miss it. That’s the kind of mouse I am. Tricky! I’m having a great time on the cruise. Ten different restaurants! All of them have cheese on the menu. Great for fighting sharks. I’ll keep in touch and let you know where I end up next.
Your friend, MM
“MM?” Jasper said. “Is this from Marcel Mouse?”
“Look at the address.”
Jasper read: [email protected].
He jumped up and shouted, “Hurray! We found Marcel!”
Chapter 10
After Jasper read Marcel Mouse’s message and ate his snack, he went across the alley and one house down. Ori answered the door and Jasper burst in with his news.
“Marcel Mouse sent me an email! He isn’t lost anymore!”
Ori’s mom popped her head out of the Watermelon’s room. “Jasper,” she whispered, “I just got Rachel to sleep. How about you two play outside?”
“I was just going to ask if we could do that,” Ori said.
Ori and Jasper went out the back door. Jasper said, “Marcel’s on a cruise to Alaska, just like Nan.”
“I wonder if he’ll see icebergs,” Ori said.
Jasper followed Ori into the garage. That was where Ori had hidden the game that bleeped.
“Do you think a mouse really could send an email?” Jasper asked.
“If it jumped hard on the keys it could,” Ori said.
“A plastic mouse, I mean,” Jasper said.
Ori turned on the game. It chimed its tune and bleeped and Ori quickly turned it off. “If my mom comes out to check on us, she’ll hear it.”
Jasper said, “I’ll sing the Marcel Mouse song. Then she won’t hear the game.”
He stood in the garage doorway and sang at the top of his lungs while Ori played the game inside. The whole time he was singing, Jasper was wishing that the email from Marcel was real. Then Ori’s mom opened the back door and told Jasper he was singing too loudly.
“Maybe we’ll go over to my house,” Jasper said to her.
“That’s a great idea,” Ori’s mom said.
Ori came out of the garage. Ori’s mom didn’t notice the lump under his shirt that could have been a small, rectangular watermelon, but wasn’t. She waved good-bye to them.
“Let’s go the long way,” Jasper said.
“Why?” Ori asked.
“I’m not allowed to play games that bleep either. Also, have you ever seen inside our garage? There is so much stuff in there.”
They set off walking the long way around the block. Ori pulled the game out of his shirt.
Ori was good at the game now, much better than he was at swinging Marcel Mouse on the so so long string. Thinking about Marcel swinging made Jasper feel all watery again. Then he remembered Marcel was on a cruise. He’d be back, just like Nan had come back from her cruise.
If it really was Marcel writing, and not Mom pretending to be Marcel.
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!” went the game.
At the end of the block, they turned the corner. Jasper asked to play.
“I thought you didn’t want to play,” Ori said.
“I didn’t want to when I had a mouse to play with. But Marcel’s on a cruise now.”
Ori wanted to finish his game first.
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!” went the game.
Ori was so good at playing now that finishing a game took a long time. He could even walk and turn corners while he played. When they needed to cross the street, Jasper tapped his shoulder. Ori stopped walking, but didn’t stop playing, while Jasper looked both ways.
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!”
Finally, Ori finished and handed it over. Jasper asked, “So how do I play?”
They walked along, Ori teaching Jasper. “Press this button.”
“Bleep!”
“Now pick the game you want.”
Jasper picked AstroBunny. The game went “Bleep!”
Jasper couldn’t walk and play as well as Ori. He lost the first game right away. He asked for another turn and Ori let him play again.
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!”
When he lost the second game and asked for another turn, Ori stopped walking.
“Where are we?” he asked.
Jasper looked around where they were standing. None of the houses were familiar. In one front yard, a swing hung from a tree. He was pretty sure if he had ever seen that house, he would have remembered it. He would have wanted to sneak a ride on the swing.
They walked to the corner and read the street sign.
“I’ve never heard of Larch Street,” Ori said.
“Me neither,” said Jasper.
Ori’s eyes filled with tears. “We’re lost!” he wailed. “We’re lost!”
Jasper felt watery, too, and his heart sped up in his chest.
Lost! Lost!
The game interrupted his panic. “Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!” it said. It wanted Jasper to keep playing. When Jasper turned it off, his heart slowed down.
He patted Ori on the back to calm him. “What does your mom tell you to do if you ever get lost?”
Ori sniffed. “She says to wait where I am until she finds me.”
“That’s what my mom told me, too. So that’s what we should do,” Jas
per said.
“But she’s never going to find me! She thinks I’m at your house!”
Jasper thought of Marcel Mouse getting flushed down the toilet. Marcel Mouse whooshing through sewer pipes. Wheee! Marcel Mouse arriving at the sewage treatment plant, that so so big concrete building. Marcel had never been there before, but he wasn’t afraid.
“Every day Marcel Mouse gets in trouble,” Jasper told Ori. “Every day he gets out again.”
Ori stopped wailing. He wiped his tears on his sleeve. “How?”
“Like this,” Jasper said.
Jasper got down on the grass with his arms folded behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, his toes tapping the air. He looked just like he was sunning himself in a lawn chair. Ori did the same. They both began humming the Marcel Mouse song.
For a long time they lay there, tapping the air with their toes and humming. Jasper waited for some ideas. If he waited long enough, one or two usually came along.
Some clouds floated across the sky. “They look like icebergs,” Ori said.
“Marcel’s in Alaska,” Jasper said. “At least, I think he is.”
“The thing is, I already know that,” Ori said.
A few minutes later, a big brown dog came along. It loped over and sniffed Jasper and Ori. They sat up in the grass before it could lick their faces.
“No kisses, Baxter,” said the man who was walking the dog.
Now Jasper knew the dog’s name. If he knew his name, the dog wasn’t a stranger anymore. Jasper wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but nobody had ever told him not to talk to dogs.
“Are you going for a walk, Baxter?” Jasper asked.
“Yes,” Baxter’s owner said. “Every day we walk to the school and back.”
Jasper was starting to feel more confident, just like Marcel. “What school?” he asked Baxter.
The man named the school.
“That’s our school!” Ori said.
“The one four blocks that way?” the man asked, pointing.
Jasper and Ori leapt to their feet. They sang the Marcel Mouse song and did the dance, waving high and low and turning in a circle. They weren’t lost anymore! Jasper lived the closest to the school, one block away. Ori lived the second closest, across the alley and one house down from Jasper. Hurray!
Baxter barked and danced with them.
Chapter 11
Dear Jasper,
I caught a ride on an iceberg partway to Japan. Then I rode a current the rest of the way. Tricky! But don’t you try it. I can do it because I float. I hope you’re having fun!
Your friend, MM
This time, Marcel Mouse had sent a picture of himself standing under a pink cherry tree.
“I wonder if Marcel has seen any of those funny toilets,” Jasper asked Mom and Dad at supper that night.
Mom and Dad’s mouths got small like they were sucking on a peppermint. They glanced at each other and smiled.
“I bet he did see those toilets,” Dad said.
“Hmm,” Jasper said, looking from Mom to Dad.
Their faces got very straight and serious then, like they’d ironed them. They both looked down at their plates.
“Then why doesn’t he hop in the toilet and get flushed back into the ocean? Why doesn’t he come home?” Jasper asked.
“That’s probably what he’s going to do,” Dad said.
Mom frowned at Dad. “But he might not come home.”
“Why not?” Jasper asked.
“Well …” Mom said.
She scooped some more mashed potatoes onto her plate even though she hadn’t finished the potatoes that were already there. She scooped more onto Dad’s plate, too. It seemed to Jasper that she was waiting for some ideas to come along.
“Marcel is a traveling mouse. After being stuck in that box for so many years, he just wants to roam.”
Dad nodded.
“Where’s Marcel going next?” Jasper asked.
Dad said, “If he rides the ocean currents? Australia, I think.”
“Why can’t he find Uncle Tom and come back for Nan’s birthday party? Just for a visit.”
Mom and Dad glanced at each other, but they didn’t smile.
After supper, Jasper wrote back to Marcel.
Dear Marcel,
My Uncle Tom lives in Australea. He is coming hear for Nans surprise birthday party next week. Can you come home for a visit in Toms sootcase? Then if you want I’ll flush you back down the toilet.
At the bottom of the message, Jasper copied out Uncle Tom’s address that Mom had given him.
Mom read his message. “Now, Jasper,” she said, “maybe Marcel Mouse won’t come back with Uncle Tom.”
“I know,” Jasper said. “But I hope he does.”
“But if he doesn’t? If he can’t? You won’t be too disappointed?”
“I’ll be so so so so disappointed,” Jasper said.
Chapter 12
At school, Ori, Leon, Jasper and Paul C. gave up on hide-and-seek and treasure hunters. It was boring now that they had the so so fun game that bleeped. At recess and lunch they sat in a circle behind the bushes at the back of the schoolyard where the playground monitor couldn’t see them. They didn’t worry about the girls. The girls were busy with the toy soldiers. They had brought different-colored nail polish and were painting them.
Ori was the best player. He had the highest score. At first they had a rule that you played until you lost a game. Soon that became boring for everybody except Ori because Ori never lost. So they changed the rule. You could only play for five minutes.
“Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep!”
“Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep!”
The monitor was too far away to hear the game bleep for every point Ori scored. But somebody else heard the game. A Grade Six kid in a black hoodie heard and popped up on the other side of the bushes.
“Hey!” he roared. “Who stole my game?”
The game was in Ori’s hand. Even if he hadn’t been taking his turn, the Grade Six kid would have known Ori had taken it. He would have known because Leon pointed right at Ori and said, “He stole it!”
The Grade Six kid snatched the game out of Ori’s hands. Ori said in a tiny, terrified voice, “I-I-I didn’t steal it. I was only borrowing it.”
The bell rang. The Grade Six kid in the black hoodie told Ori, “I’ll see you at lunch.”
Leon and Paul C. waited until he had swaggered off. Then they ran back into the school so they wouldn’t get the lates.
Ori didn’t run. He was shaking with fear. Jasper walked slowly beside him.
“I’m in trouble,” Ori said.
“Every day Marcel Mouse gets in trouble. Every day he gets out again,” Jasper reminded him.
“The thing is?” Ori said. “Marcel Mouse is just a toy. I’ll probably go to jail.”
Jasper stopped walking and stared at Ori, his good friend and neighbor who lived across the alley and one house down.
He said, “I won’t let them take you.”
When the bell rang for lunch, Ori was afraid to leave the classroom. Ms. Tosh had to shoo him and Jasper out. They got their lunch boxes. Ori dragged his feet down the hall toward the lunchroom. His shoulders slumped and his head hung low.
They didn’t speak. Jasper watched for the Grade Six kid in the black hoodie. Then, as they passed the Lost and Found box, both of them looked at it.
Jasper said, “Get in.”
Nobody paid any attention to Jasper sitting on the Lost and Found box, swinging his legs and humming the Marcel Mouse song while he ate his lunch. Nobody noticed that he seemed to be talking to himself.
“Everything okay in there?” Jasper said to nobody. “If I see him, I’ll kick the box three times.”
Mrs. Jamil an
d Mrs. Kinoshita must have been in a meeting. Nobody told him to go outside and play.
After Jasper finished eating, he lay on the box with his arms folded behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, his toes tapping the air.
“Still nobody around,” he said.
He waited for an idea to come along, an idea about what Ori should do. While he waited, he watched for the Grade Six kid in the black hoodie.
“And the police,” Ori said from inside the box.
“Tell me if you see the police.”
“What if I do see the police?” Jasper asked.
“I’m going to turn myself in. I’m not very comfortable in here. Jail is probably better.”
“Marcel Mouse was in Nan’s storage room for years and years,” Jasper said.
Ori groaned.
By the time the after-lunch bell rang, Jasper had a plan. He sat up on the Lost and Found box.
“Dress up in the Lost clothes!”
“What?” said Ori, inside the box. “Why?”
“For a disguise!”
“Won’t he remember my face?”
“Borrow Paul C.’s glasses.”
Just then the Grade Six kid came strolling down the hall. Jasper kicked the side of the box three times.
The kid came right over. “I didn’t see your friend at lunch.”
“He went home,” Jasper lied.
“Move,” he said.
Jasper sat tight on the Lost and Found box, clutching the lid.
“Move it.” The Grade Six kid pulled the game that bleeped out of the pocket of his hoodie. “I have to put this back.”
“Isn’t it yours?” Jasper asked.
“Not exactly. Tell your friend to put it back after he’s used it. We have to take turns, right?”
“Right,” Jasper said.
The kid handed over the game that bleeped. “Stick it all the way down at the bottom or everybody will be using it.”
“Okay,” Jasper said.
Jasper John Dooley, Lost and Found Page 4
