by Shannon Hale
Mike said, “‘Friend’ is a loaded term. Acquaintance. I sit here because it’s usually free from self-important babbling.”
With all the background noise, Doreen wasn’t sure Ana Sofía caught everything he had said, but she shook her head and rolled her eyes, apparently familiar enough with Mike to catch the gist.
“You seem a little down,” said Doreen.
“You seem to have a balloon for a head,” said Mike.
Was that another crack at her full cheeks? “Fuzzmuppets and Beanie Babies,” Doreen cursed again under her breath.
“When you’re blindly and stupidly floating about,” said Mike, “someone like me, with two feet firmly on the ground, might seem ‘down.’ The correct term is ‘well-grounded.’ Try it sometime.”
“Sheesh, is everybody in Shady Oaks pessimistic?” she asked Ana Sofía.
“Again…well-grounded,” said Mike. “But don’t lump me in with the riffraff. This whole neighborhood is a nightmare of unpredictability and inconvenience. No one follows rules. No one does what they’re told.” He shuddered. “I hate it.”
“Alert the news,” said Ana Sofía. “Mike Romanger hates something.”
“Aw, don’t be so glum, Mikearooni—can I call you Mikearooni?” said Doreen.
He said, “No way in—”
“Life is just a great big fat nut hanging on a tree,” Doreen went on, “and all you have to do is leap up and grab it and eat it up! Nomnomnom…”
Mike looked hard at Doreen and then pointedly picked up his tablet and held it in front of his face, blocking her out of his view.
ANA SOFÍA
Don’t pay attention to him
DOREEN
Is he mad
ANA SOFÍA
Grumpy like always. Anyway he’s nobody. The only people you need to worry about at union are the somebodies
She gestured toward a group of guys and girls over by the frozen-yogurt machine. Lucy Tang was among them, and the blonde who’d commented on Doreen’s badonk. They sat around and on top of three tables they’d pushed together, eating frozen yogurt and talking and laughing, as if they were posing for a Cool Kids Magazine photo shoot.25
ANA SOFÍA
Heidi’s mom donated the froyo machine so she and her friends think they own it. Basically unless they acknowledge u ur nobody
DOREEN
But that doesn’t make sense
ANA SOFÍA
That’s just the way it is
Doreen adjusted in her seat. Her tail ached. Her back itched. Even more, her optimistic heart was screaming,26 Nothing is just the way it is! You don’t have to accept bad stuff, Doreen. Change it!
DOREEN
In LA we had bunches of heroes like she-hulk and hellcat they’re always fighting crime and making things better. do the avengers ever come around here?
ANA SOFÍA
LA and NYC are big. Nobody cares about tiny shady oaks why would they?
Doreen stuffed another sandwich into her mouth. She wasn’t sure why anyone would care about Shady Oaks either. Except that she lived here. And so did her mom and dad. And Ana Sofía. And Tippy-Toe. Wasn’t that enough?
DOREEN
“Oh yes, Doreen is very responsible,” her mother was saying on the phone.
“You’re talking about me,” said Doreen, trying to do her math homework at the kitchen table.
“Kids love her. And animals. Plus she is extra-strong”—Maureen’s eyes went wide; she made eye contact with Doreen and mouthed whoops—“strong-willed. So she won’t eat all your snacks. Which makes her an excellent sitter.”27
“Ack, I almost said it!” said Maureen the moment she had hung up the phone. “I want to brag about you to all the other parents, but can you imagine how bad they’d feel about their own children by comparison? I mean, who wouldn’t want their child to be superstrong with a squirrel tail and mad leapin’ skillz? That’s what cool kids say today, right? Skillz? With a z?”
Doreen shrugged. She couldn’t confirm something like that until she was officially invited to be a “cool kid.”
Apparently even without the extra-strength info, Maureen’s recommendation of Doreen had been sufficiently impressive, because the Santinos on Guttersnipe Street hired her to watch their one-year-old boy, Dante. Or maybe the Santinos were just desperate.
Either way, a week and a half after moving to Shady Oaks, Doreen had her first sitting job. She fell in love with Dante Santino immediately. She was particularly enchanted by his preference for climbing up on tables, grabbing stuff, and throwing it on the ground. Also he made a kind of gobbling sound, like a turkey.
“Your parents are going to pay me for hanging out with you,” Doreen said. She was lying on her back, one leg up, balancing Dante on her foot. He squealed with delight. “Suckers! I’d do it for free!”
By the time the Santinos got home, the autumn sky was as black as an underground burrow.
Doreen started to walk home. It was Tuesday, the night before garbage pickup, and the curb was lined with trash cans. Every single one was tipped on its side and barfing its contents all over the street.
Doreen’s phone buzzed. A text message.
ANA SOFÍA
U do ur math homework yet
DOREEN
Yes
Sort of
Started it
ANA SOFÍA
Come on u like interesting stuff. What’s more interesting than equalizing equations28
DOREEN
Ur worried about my schoolwork so def I’m ur bff now yeah?
ANA SOFÍA
I told you yes we’re prob friends but no bff pls. Math homework?
DOREEN
I’ll tackle it when I get home. I just finished sitting at the Santinos
ANA SOFÍA
You’re walking home alone?
Scattered chills ran down Doreen’s back. Why shouldn’t she walk home alone? “With someone” was always better than “alone,” sure, but Ana Sofía’s question reminded her of the real estate agent’s warning. What did Doreen have to be afraid of? Nothing, that’s what. But just yesterday, she and Ana Sofía had spent the afternoon in the tree house in Doreen’s backyard researching Shady Oaks’ local history, trying to solve the mystery of why crime had been increasing. They’d struck out on that, but had randomly discovered something called the Jersey Ghost, which was a totally not real and very silly legend, unless you happened to be walking home alone in the dark, at which point ghosts started to feel kinda possible.29
Doreen heard a bang and some distant laughter. What was that? She hopped up into a tree and was suddenly face-to-face with a gray squirrel sporting a fetching pink ribbon around her neck.
“Oh, hey Tippy-Toe,” she whispered. “Have you been here long?”
“Chikkt,” said the squirrel.
“Well, you could have come in,” she said. “The Santinos were out. It was just me hanging with the baby.”
“Kikichet?”
“Yeah, so cute! I love it how babies get so excited and happy that they start punching and kicking things!”
The breeze shifted, and a bunch of greasy napkins and sticky wrappers blew up into Doreen’s face.
“What the—ugh!” she said, batting away the garbage.
“Chukkichkiikiikkki,” said Tippy-Toe, which basically meant, “Gross. What’s the matter with humans and their garbage? Squirrels do not care for garbage. We’re not common raccoons, thank you very much. Plus all the garbage is feeding that mob of wild dogs, who are harassing my squirrels.30 I’m so frustrated I could bite an acorn in two! ’Course, I can do that even when I’m not frustrated, but STILL!!!”
Doreen nodded thoughtfully. Inside, her optimistic heart was pounding again.31 Was this a way that she could help? Something she could do?
She set the first garbage can back upright and started scurrying around, gathering up spilled trash and dumping it back into the can.
“Chuk?” asked Tippy-Toe.
“Somet
imes you gotta get your paws dirty, Tip,” said Doreen, frowning at the greasy whatever smeared on her palm. She shrugged and kept working. She was quick and strong, and had excellent aim. She tossed an empty juice box from twenty feet away. Nothing but net! Or can, at any rate.
Behind her she heard a tiny squirrel sigh. And then Tippy-Toe was fetching garbage, running up Doreen’s back, and tossing the bits into cans from her shoulder.
In a few minutes they’d cleaned up most of one block and had been joined by a half dozen members of Tippy-Toe’s family.32 They made a game of it, seeing who could bag the most trash.
Doreen’s phone buzzed.
ANA SOFÍA
Text me when you’re home I’m worried bout u. It’s trash night the skunk club might be out
DOREEN
???
ANA SOFÍA
The high schoolers I told u bout
DOREEN
U were serious theres a skunk club for real?
ANA SOFÍA
Yes they like to knock over trash cans and stick anyone smaller than them in trash cans and that’s if ur lucky srsly this town is so weird u don’t even know
DOREEN
You’re worried about me totes something a bff wld do
ANA SOFÍA
Stop
DOREEN
But you don’t have to worry I’m fine just cleaning up some trash
ANA SOFÍA
No u don’t understand those are mean kids u r too trusting. I need u to believe how bad this place is so you’re more careful. Don’t be a hero. Hurry home
Don’t be a hero? Don’t be silly. Cleaning up trash wasn’t what heroes did. Was it?
“Which Avenger do you think would be the best at cleaning up trash?” asked Doreen.
“Chkkt,” said Tippy-Toe.
“Garbage-Can Man?” said Doreen, tossing a bag of dirty diapers over her shoulder. “You’re making that up.”
“Chk chuk chikka.”
“Ooooh. You mean Iron Man. I don’t think that’s actually a garbage can he flies around in.”
“Chika chuk.”
“Ha! No, no. That’s mean! I’m sure Tony Stark is a very nice man who is just confused about facial-hair trends.”
“Chk chikka cht?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe Captain America. He’d be real efficient, I bet, and wouldn’t complain about it being dirty work.”
“Chk chika?”
“Horn-headed guy? Daredevil? Good idea. There’s all those articles about him cleaning up the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Chk chu-chaik.”
“No way. In a fight She-Hulk would totally whoop Daredevil. We’ve been over this.”
In no time Doreen and her furry pals had circled their way around the entire block. As they approached the corner of the Santinos’ street, she spotted a group of teenage boys. They were dressed in black and gray and carrying baseball bats and sticks, as if posing in a photo shoot for Hooligan Magazine.33
“Didn’t we already do this block?” said the one in the lead, a white guy in a black cap.
“Yeah, we did, Antonio. I’d swear it on a skunk.”
Doreen gasped. The Skunk Club! For really real!
At the sound of her gasp, the boys turned to look. At her. Doreen Green, age fourteen, out at night and surrounded by squirrels. She somehow felt more exposed than she’d ever been. And even…yes, a little…afraid. So startled in fact that, completely without her permission, her tail sprang free from her stretchy pants and stuck straight out like a scared cat’s.
Her tail was out! That made her even more alarmed, and she jumped without thinking about it.
Up. Straight up. There was a tree there, and she clonked her head on a branch.
“Ooo,” she moaned, falling back to the ground.
“Whoa!” said the Skunk Club boys, startled again.
“Eeee,” said Doreen, startled again-er. She scrambled to her feet and leaped back up into the tree, managing to grab a branch with her hands this time instead of with the top of her head, which had proven ineffective.
“What the fudge, man?” one whispered.
“What…what was that?” whispered the lead one, who was apparently called Antonio.
They were gripping their bats, shifting weight on their feet as if readying for a fight. Fight her? Doreen had never fought anything except pillows, gingivitis, and the invisible monsters her kickboxing video instructed her to imagine.34 But something inside her was tense and trembling, like a spring ready to spring or a kernel just about to pop, and she thought she wouldn’t mind punching actual bad things, not just throw pillows stitched with uplifting messages.
The boys started toward her tree. All the hair on her tail stood up. What was she thinking? She couldn’t punch people. She wasn’t a Super Hero or anything. And they probably weren’t legit bad, not Super Villain bad. Just naughty kids. She had to get out of there!
“They, uh, they call me the Jersey Ghooooost,” said Doreen in a high-pitched moan.
That seemed to work. The boys stopped in their tracks.
“The Jersey Ghost?” whispered Antonio. “No way. No. Friggin’. Way.”
“The Jersey Ghost isn’t real, man.”
“I saw a documentary about it on the History Channel, no lie. Documentaries be fact.”
“No way. No friggin’ way…”
Antonio gripped his aluminum baseball bat and started toward her tree again, so Doreen blurted out, “I haunt these treeeees, ill at eaaase, when I see litterers I…” She couldn’t think of another word that rhymed, so she just added, “Ooooooo!”
The group shifted, unsure, but the lead one kept moving toward her. And then the rest followed.
Crud! Doreen couldn’t let them see her with her tail out. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. They were close. Almost right beneath her. And she panicked.
She leaped down nearly on top of them, landing with a thud on the pavement. She hissed in what she hoped was an ominous manner, and just as quickly leaped back up into the next tree.
The Skunk Club screamed.
Every one of them opened their mouths as wide as they could and screamed as if they’d just been splashed with hot cheese sauce and weevils.35
Behind Doreen, Tippy-Toe and five other squirrels—all making screeching noises—leaped from the first tree into Doreen’s, right over the boys’ heads.
And that did it. The Skunk Club ran away.
Doreen and five squirrels leaned back in the tree’s branches and laughed so hard they squeaked.
“That synchronized leap-and-scream was honest-to-nuts fantastic, guys. Seriously, high fours,” Doreen said, lifting her hand with thumb tucked in. Tippy-Toe slapped her little four-toed paw onto Doreen’s palm. Timidly, the other squirrels did the same.
Suddenly Doreen smelled something familiar—crackers and homemade soap. “Ana Sofía?” Doreen said aloud.
“Doreen?” said Ana Sofía, walking closer and peering up into the tree. “Doreen, was that you?”
Doreen put her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Ana Sofía was ten feet below her and looking straight up.
“But…but I saw someone jump way higher than anyone should be able to jump,” said Ana Sofía. “How did you—?”
She stopped. She’d spotted the tail. In nervous panic, Doreen’s tail twitched. Ana Sofía gasped.
Doreen sighed. It was useless to try to hide. She’d been spotted. She dropped out of the tree.
“It’s a squirrel tail,” Doreen signed as well as spoke in case the light was too low for Ana Sofía to read her lips. “I was born with it. Nobody else knows. It’s a huge secret, and please don’t hate me?”
But by the look on Ana Sofía’s face as she gazed at Doreen, she might have been posing in a photo shoot for I Think My Friend Is Awesome Magazine.36
“Please don’t tell anyone.”
Ana Sofía shook her head solemnly.
“So we’re friends, right? Like, off
icially?” asked Doreen.
Ana Sofía nodded. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”
“Best friends?” said Doreen.
Ana Sofía shrugged. “My last best friend moved away and hasn’t Skyped in months.”
“Yeah, my last best friend called it quits on me when her other friends told her to. Last best friends stink. Good thing you and I are best friends forever and ever and ever!” Doreen said, because if you’re not all in, why even bother?
Ana Sofía rolled her eyes, but she didn’t say no. And she was still not frowning, which on Ana Sofía’s face was practically a smile.
Doreen blushed. And swooshed her tail. Standing before her new BFFAEAE37 with her tail out and proud, she felt more than a little awesome. And like maybe she could probably kinda do just about anything.
ANA SOFÍA38
Hearing people often assumed that Ana Sofía could use lipreading to eavesdrop on conversations from a distance. Hardly. For one thing, only 30 percent of speech sounds are visible on the lips. Then she had to be fairly close to the person speaking, both so her hearing aid could amplify the words and so she could see their mouth. She had to see the person’s whole face, really. Much of lipreading depended on facial expressions and body language. Not to mention how tricky it was figuring out what someone was saying unless you kinda knew the person, their speaking style, and the context of the conversation.
But the next Monday at school, two girls standing by her locker were having an animated conversation about the “Jersey Ghost.” After that, Ana Sofía kept catching sight of people talking in urgent, whispery ways, sometimes excited, sometimes fearful. She watched their lips and, though she was too far away to hear, she would have bet her top five pairs of socks that they, too, were talking about the Jersey Ghost.39
