Emmy and the Rats in the Belfry

by Lynne Jonell

  “Not that,” said Mrs. Bunjee, cocking her head.

  In the silence, voices could be heard murmuring in the hall.

  “Get under the blankets!” Mrs. Bunjee ordered. “Hide!”

  Someone knocked, and the doorknob turned. “Sweetheart? Time to get up … oh, Emmy.”

  Emmy sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes for effect, and looked at her mother’s disappointed face. “Mom? What’s wrong?”

  “Just look at your room!” Her father’s voice, normally so kind, was stern as he flicked on the light. “You promised us you’d clean it last night!”

  “But I did …” Emmy’s voice faltered as she looked properly around her for the first time that morning.

  Clothes were everywhere: strewn on the floor, tossed over chairs, and pulled off hangers. Books were tumbled about, pages bent. And papers from last year’s school projects had been pulled out of folders and crumpled in corners.

  Emmy whirled to face her parents. She had cleaned her room, she really had! But they’d never believe her, not with the way it looked now.

  Or had she only dreamed that she had picked everything up?

  But no. Even when she let her room get messy, it was never as bad as this. “I did clean it,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, but it was clean when I went to bed last night.”

  Her mother turned away. In the silence, the metallic hum from the playroom seemed to grow louder.

  The lines in her father’s face grew even more forbidding. “Turn off your electric train. You left it running all night long.”

  Emmy looked at him hopelessly. She could hardly say that two chipmunks were to blame.

  At least with the train, she knew why it was running. But she had no idea how her room had gotten in such a mess.

  “Meeoow?” A golden furry head poked in the door, and the housekeeper’s cat slipped around Mr. Addison’s legs.

  “No, Muffy!” Emmy leaped out of bed, snagged the cat by the hind legs, and imprisoned it in her arms. She wasn’t about to let the cat loose in a room full of her rodent friends.

  She stumbled to her playroom and flicked the train switch. Chippy and Buck were already out of sight.

  “And what smells so strongly of mint?” Her mother’s footsteps sounded on the bathroom tile. “Oh, no.”

  She turned, hands on her hips. “Emmy, we may have a housekeeper and maids now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clean up after yourself when you make a mess.”

  “I didn’t spill it!” said Emmy. “Really, I didn’t!”

  “You had better stop saying things you know aren’t true,” her father said heavily. “You’ve been doing too much of that lately. Now get dressed and clean up your room, Emmy. Immediately.”

  3

  “THERE!” Mrs. Bunjee dusted her paws and looked at Emmy’s bedroom, tidy once more. “That’s better!”

  “Raston didn’t help much,” said Chippy, who had been rolling up socks with Buck.

  The Rat stopped rummaging in Emmy’s desk drawer and poked his head out over the side. “I am too helping. I’m looking for something.”

  Emmy glanced over. “Sorry, Ratty—there aren’t any more peanut-butter cups in there. I ate the last one yesterday.”

  “Ha!” said Chippy.

  Raston’s ears grew pink at the tips. “Listen, I skipped breakfast. And I’m starving.”

  “I offered you acorn pancakes back in Rodent City,” said Mrs. Bunjee tartly. “You said you weren’t hungry.”

  “Er …” said the Rat.

  Mrs. Bunjee turned around. “Come along, Buck-ram and Chipster—we need to get back. Don’t forget to meet the professor at the Antique Rat, Emmy.”

  Emmy nodded. Professor Capybara lived above an antique store that he had turned into a lab for his experiments in rodentology. It wasn’t far, but she would have to have breakfast first.

  “I wasn’t hungry for pancakes made out of acorns,” muttered Raston as the chipmunks bounded to the windowsill and out into the morning. “And I wasn’t interested in seed toast or nut juice, either.”

  “Rasty!” Cecilia looked up from the bathroom tile, where she was scrubbing away at the grout with a toothbrush. “Mrs. Bunjee was very kind—”

  “There’s more to life than whole grains, Sissy!” cried the Rat, flinging out his arms. “There’s a whole world beyond seeds and nuts! There’s chocolate! There’s raspberry cake and lemon meringue pie and crème brûlée and—and Nesselrode pudding!”

  Emmy tried not to laugh. Long ago, someone had papered the Rat’s cage with pages from Nummi Gourmet, and he had never forgotten the recipes he had read. “Listen, Ratty. I’m sorry about the peanut-butter cups. There are more in the kitchen—I’ll bring some up after breakfast.”

  “Can we go downstairs for breakfast, too?” Raston clasped his paws before his chest. “Please please please pleeeeease? You can hide us in your backpack and drop in pieces of bacon!”

  “Bacon does sound good,” Cecilia admitted, putting down the toothbrush. “And my paws are getting a little tired.”

  “Thanks for helping,” said Emmy. “I don’t know how my room got so messed up.” She frowned at the grout, still slightly green. The mouthwash had splashed in droplets all the way across the floor and even into the bedroom. She could see small green spots, almost like a trail, leading all the way to the bed.

  “Maybe you were sleepwalking,” said Raston. “Come on, Sissy, get in the backpack!”

  Emmy zipped the backpack partly shut. From the intercom, she could hear muffled sounds: footsteps, a chair scraping? Her parents must have forgotten to turn it off at their end—or the switch was sticking again. She had her hand on the doorknob when she heard her parents’ voices.

  “What has gotten into her?” Kathy Addison’s voice floated through the intercom, sounding near tears. “She used to be such a trustworthy child, Jim, but lately, I can’t count on her at all!”

  “I know. She left the boat a mess after her sailing lesson yesterday. I found it when I went out for a sail at dawn. Lines tangled, mud everywhere … did she think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “She’s been careless with her clothes, too. Maggie has done more mending in the last two weeks than in the past year. And such odd rips in the fabric, too—as if they had been clawed.”

  “And now these lies,” came her father’s voice. “I want to trust her, but how can I if she doesn’t tell the truth?”

  Up in her room, Emmy’s throat felt thick with words she couldn’t say. She wanted her parents to trust her, too. She wanted it more than anything. And she was responsible—they just didn’t know it.

  She had cleaned up the boat. She hadn’t ripped her clothes. And the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she hadn’t trashed her room while sleepwalking.

  “She never used to be like this, back when we were poor.” Her father’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Do you think all this money we have now is spoiling Emmy?”

  “Maybe. I almost wish your great-uncle William had left everything to those other shirttail relatives of his.”

  “Do you mean Jane Barmy and her parents?” Mr. Addison sounded shocked. “You must be kidding.”

  “No, not them. Remember your aunts? The ones we named Emmy after?”

  “Emmaline and Augusta. Fine old girls. I used to stay at their place in Schenectady in the summers. They didn’t allow any nonsense! They treated me well, and I had a grand time sailing in the Mohawk River, but I had chores, too, every day of the week. And on Sundays I had to go early to church to ring the bells.”

  Emmy scowled. She didn’t want to hear about some old aunts she couldn’t remember meeting, or how many chores they’d once made her father do. What she wanted was to hear her parents say they had some faith in their only daughter.

  Of course she knew how bad everything looked—all the evidence was against her. But still, she couldn’t help wishing they believed in her a little more.

  Ding dong! Dinnnng doonnn
g!

  “Oh, it’s that nice Joe Benson at the door,” said Kathy Addison. “He’s such a responsible boy, don’t you think? He’s in Scouts, and he babysits his brother, too.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Addison grimly. “I just hope some of it rubs off on Emmy.”

  The bedroom door closed behind Emmy with a click, and her footsteps faded away down the hall. Beneath the bed, two rodents stirred, shook themselves, and crawled out from under the bedskirt, dripping green onto the carpet.

  The piebald rat glared. “Happy, Cheswick? Now that you nearly drowned me in mouthwash?”

  “But, Jane, dear,” said the black rat, “you smell so minty fresh!”

  Jane Barmy snorted and dried her fur briskly on the dangling edge of Emmy’s bedspread. “Now, listen. First, we’re going to wreck her room—”

  “Again?” said Cheswick. “Her parents are going to be furious!”

  Miss Barmy gave him a chilly glare. “The concept of revenge seems to be eluding you, Cheswick … but never mind.” She clawed up a bit of Emmy’s carpet, smiling with her thin rodent lips. “Next, we’re going to the Antique Rat. There’s a nice little hole in the ceiling, just right for spying.”

  “Spying?” said Cheswick, his ears alert. “What for?”

  “I want to find out more about those Sissy-patches. I have”—she rubbed her paws together—“an absolutely brilliant idea!”

  Emmy stood at the kitchen counter watching Mrs. Brecksniff flip an egg. “But can’t I just eat in the kitchen?” She glanced at the door to the dining room, from which her father’s voice came faintly. She would rather avoid her parents.

  “Of course not!” The housekeeper lifted bacon from a frying pan and set it to drain on a paper towel. “You’ve got company in there waiting for you.”

  “But I shouldn’t eat in front of company, should I?”

  “Mrraow?”

  Something furry brushed past Emmy’s leg, and she looked down to see Muffy batting at the backpack with a paw. Emmy snatched it up.

  “Joe is eating already,” said Mrs. Brecksniff, dishing up eggs and bacon. “He’s tucking away a second breakfast just as fast as if he hadn’t already had a first. Now, give me your backpack—your mother won’t want it in the dining room—and go on in and sit down. I’ll bring your plate, and then I’ve got to run upstairs.”

  The housekeeper plucked the backpack from Emmy’s hands and tossed it onto the counter with a thump. A faint squeak came from the interior, immediately silenced.

  “Got some squeaky toys in there?” Mrs. Brecksniff picked up Emmy’s plate. “No wonder Muffy seems so interested.”

  Muffy, crouched on the floor, watched the backpack with unblinking yellow eyes. All at once she leaped to the countertop and poked her nose into the half-zippered opening.

  “No! Bad Muffy!” Emmy swept the cat off the counter and shoved the backpack, now squeaking uncontrollably, into a tall cabinet. “I’ll just put it in here, away from the cat, okay?”

  “Fine,” grunted Mrs. Brecksniff as she bumped open the dining room door with her hip and disappeared.

  Emmy grabbed the cat and put it outside. Then she unzipped the backpack and put her face over the top. “Stop squeaking!” she hissed.

  Sissy was trembling in the bottom of the pack. Raston patted her on the back and glared at Emmy. “We’re going to need extra bacon.”

  “You can have it if you keep quiet!” Emmy reached for the last few slices.

  “Crispy, if you don’t mind,” came the Rat’s voice from the cabinet. “Flabby bacon is no good for shock.”

  In the dining room, Emmy’s father was telling Joe a long story about his boyhood. Emmy knew it was long because she had heard it before.

  “Yes, every Sunday when I was there I had to ring those bells. That meant I was responsible to get there early, see—”

  Emmy kept her head down, ate her eggs as quickly as she could without shoveling them in, and ignored her father’s emphasis on the word responsible. At least Professor Capybara thought she was responsible. He had asked for her specially, to help him make the Sissy-patches. And Joe could help, too. He knew as much as she did about the rodents of power.

  “Then up in the belfry, the bats would fly out, and those bells would ring louder than you can imagine,” Jim Addison’s voice continued.

  “The bell-free?” Joe pronounced the unfamiliar word. “What’s a belfry, Mr. Addison?”

  “You know the pointy part of a church steeple?” Mr. Addison went on. “High on top of the roof? The belfry is the little room underneath it, where the bells are.”

  “Does it have those sort of slatted openings?” Joe asked. “Like a big huge air vent or something?”

  “That’s right. The openings were to let the sound of the bells out so they could be heard from miles away. And then down below, I’d be hanging on to the bell rope for dear life. When it went up, I’d be lifted clear off my feet!”

  Emmy stood up and began to clear the table. Maybe her parents would see that she was trying to help out. She was rewarded by a quick smile from her mother and, feeling better, she bumped through the kitchen door.

  She opened the cabinet door to check on the rodents, but they weren’t in the backpack. They had turned on the interior cabinet light and found the cookbooks that were lined in a row. But they were not lined up neatly anymore. Three cookbooks lay on their sides, and Raston was bent over a fourth, open to a page titled “Delicious and Decadent—Desserts to Die For!” Crisscrossing the page were small, smudged pawprints the color of bacon grease.

  Emmy groaned aloud. “Get in the backpack, Ratty!”

  The Rat looked up, his paw resting on a line of type. “Can I take this cookbook with me?”

  “No!”

  “Just this page, then?” he begged. “Look! ‘Whip until frothy’! ‘Whisk in vanilla sugar’!”

  “Crikey,” said Joe, coming up behind and looking over Emmy’s shoulder. “Is that rat drool on the page?”

  “Get—in—with—Sissy!” Emmy pushed the protesting rodent through the backpack opening.

  “Lemon zest!” cried the Rat in ecstasy. “Almond paste! Italian chocolate, Emmy! Oh, I never knew, I never knew!”

  Emmy zipped the pack closed over his head, jammed the cookbooks back on the shelf, and turned just as her mother entered the kitchen.

  “Mom? Is it okay if I go with Joe to the Antique Rat? The professor needs us to help him with something. One of his experiments, I guess.”

  Mrs. Addison nodded slowly. “If it’s to help the professor, you may go. But are you sure your room is clean, this time?”

  “I’m positive,” said Emmy.

  4

  “PROFESSOR CAPYBARA?” Emmy pushed open the door of the Antique Rat, and a bell jingled faintly as she stepped into the dim interior. She looked past the marble-topped tables and carved wooden cabinets to the far side of the store, where two figures hunched over a burning flame.

  “Is that Emmy?” The shorter—and fatter—of the two turned, revealing a beaming face above a white beard. “Are Cecila and Raston with you?”

  “Right here,” Emmy said, unzipping the top of her backpack.

  “I came, too, Professor,” said Joe, clumping after Emmy to the improvised laboratory, a counter full of beakers and microscopes and stacks of yellowing paper.

  The taller, lankier figure straightened, resolving itself into Brian, the professor’s teenage assistant. “There are two of them, Professor—do you still need me?”

  Professor Capybara flapped his hands at his assistant, waving him away. “You go on, Brian. Emmy and Joe will help me.”

  Brian ruffled Emmy’s hair, gave Joe a thump on the back, grabbed a bag off a chair, and strode out the back door.

  “Where’s he going?” asked Emmy, as a sudden grinding roar told her Brian had started the ancient old truck he used for deliveries. She laid her backpack carefully on the counter, and Raston poked his nose out of the opening.

  “Brian’s
gone to the Children’s Home,” said the professor absently, turning down the flame beneath a triangular glass flask, half full of a bubbling golden liquid. “He visits there every week, brings treats and such—all right, Cecilia, are you ready?”

  Cecilia followed her brother onto the counter and smoothed her rumpled whiskers. “Ready, sir.”

  Professor Capybara consulted a piece of paper with a scrawled formula. Then he inserted an eyedropper into a test tube and squeezed the rubber bulb.

  “What’s in the test tube?” Emmy crowded in close to see.

  “Some people,” said the professor, “might call it a catalyst. But this is something a little more special—a ratalyst.”

  “But what does it do?” asked Joe.

  “It helps to store Sissy’s kisses.” Professor Capybara squeezed the eyedropper over the flask. Three silver drops glistened and fell, swirling into the golden liquid and turning it a deep orange.

  “I don’t get it,” said Emmy.

  The professor, red-faced from bending over the hot Bunsen burner, wiped his forehead. “Well, Raston’s bites have some unusual effects, right?”

  Emmy nodded. The first bite from Ratty allowed you to understand rodent speech. The second bite shrank you to rodent size. And the third bite turned you into an actual rat. But they had discovered all that two months ago.

  “And here,” said the professor, reaching for a stoppered vial, “is a supply of Saliva Rodentia Rastonia. Rat spit, to be exact.”

  “Gross,” said Joe.

  “My spit isn’t any grosser than yours!” The Rat poked his nose out of the backpack.

  Professor Capybara cleared his throat. “Gross or not, you must see the benefit of having Raston’s spit in a bottle.”

  Emmy nodded. “It means you don’t have to have Ratty around if you want to shrink. You could scratch your skin and rub a little of the spit on the scratch, and it would be the same as a bite.”

  “Exactly right. Raston’s bites are portable, so to speak. But Sissy’s kisses, which you need to reverse the bites, are not.”

  “We found that out the hard way,” said Joe. “Remember? That time when we were rescuing those little girls.”