Commander in Cheese #1

by Lindsey Leavitt

  “The people look smaller than us from here,” Gregory said.

  “Everyone is smaller than Gregory,” Dean whispered.

  Ava laughed.

  The mice of the White House gathered on the southeast side. There were human bodyguards on the roof too, but their job was to make sure the president was safe. They didn’t worry about animals.

  The mice couldn’t see the actual ceremony. A very long street called Pennsylvania Avenue connected the White House and the Capitol Building. There were people on the street and big movie screens, but mice could see only so far. Watching the ceremony would have been neat, but they had to listen on the radio. Which was…boring. No offense.

  There had been dinners and galas and concerts for days. Tonight there would be many inaugural balls. President Abbey would start her first day of work in the morning.

  The presidential motorcade left. Groups of people cheered and waved as the cars moved down the street. The white moving trucks of the new president drove in right away. The staff had only a few hours to unpack.

  “Where is your scarf?” Mr. Squeakerton asked Dean.

  Dean tried not to shiver. “Inside.”

  “I guess you shouldn’t make fun of the scarf collection,” Ava said.

  Mr. Squeakerton squinted at the morning sun. “Can you run inside and get some warmer clothes? This will go for a long time.”

  “I’ll run in with him!” Ava said. “Don’t worry about us. With all the movers, everyone will be busy.”

  Mr. Squeakerton smiled. “I wish our mini camera worked. Ask Aunt Agnes about that.”

  “Ask Aunt Agnes what?” Their aunt scurried over. She worked near the Situation Room in the West Wing and fixed all the technology and wiring for the mice. She also found new uses for things in the Treasure Rooms. Once, she made a mini radio out of a walnut shell.

  “How can we get that video camera to work again?” Mr. Squeakerton asked. “I want to give it to the kids when they go somewhere, so we can watch what they’re doing.”

  “Something isn’t working. I’ll look at it today.” Agnes zipped up her hoodie. “I just fixed a laptop yesterday. I’ve been busy.”

  Ava wanted to be clever like her aunt someday. Aunt Agnes could probably think of thirty things to do with a Lego.

  “Thank you for all you do, Agnes.” Mr. Squeakerton hugged his sister. “The kids are just running inside for a little bit. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

  “Yep!” Dean said. “We will be smart little mice.”

  Aunt Agnes smiled. “Do you need Gregory to go with you?”

  Gregory grunted. He didn’t want to miss the ceremony. Gregory knew more White House facts than any mouse there.

  “Don’t worry, Gregory. If this speech is as long as President William Henry Harrison’s, you might get to stay up here all day,” Mr. Squeakerton said.

  Dean and Ava were already running down the stairs. They would never have a chance to explore like this again, not ever! That Lego was going to look so cool in the Treasure Rooms.

  Mice don’t have laws like humans do. This is because mice pretty much follow the rules. Rules are there to help you. Laws are there because someone breaks them and then goes to jail.

  There are no mice jails.

  Mice understand that rules are there to protect them. Here are some very smart mice rules:

  1. Do not drink water from the toilet. Humans do things in those toilets.

  2. When you place droppings, try to do it where people can’t see. Humans get really upset when they find mice droppings. Droppings mean there was a mouse around, and humans don’t always like mice or mice droppings. We should probably stop talking about droppings.

  3. If there is more green than yellow on the cheese, don’t eat it.

  3½. Especially if that cheese is on a mouse trap. Okay. So some mice aren’t smart.

  4. The Oval Office is the best place to run for exercise. One lap is exactly one mouse mile.

  5. Follow the mouse schedule. Early morning or late at night is the best time if you have to leave the tunnels.

  6. And seriously. DO NOT run around the White House in the middle of the day. Especially in the middle of MOVING day. (Okay. This isn’t an actual mouse rule. But it should be!)

  Dean and Ava were usually smart mice. But today they weren’t. Today they left their smartness on that roof! Because there weren’t tunnels to get to the kids’ rooms. That meant they had to cross four rooms to get there.

  Four.

  Four chances to get stomped on by movers wearing boots. Big, heavy, stompy boots. Or boxes! What if a box was dropped on them, or a mirror, or that antique chair that Martin Van Buren used to sit on?

  Ava and Dean ran across the Lincoln Sitting Room. This room used to be part of the president’s office. Now it was just fancy chairs and sofas. There are a lot of fancy chairs in the White House.

  “Mouse!” shouted a mover carrying a very expensive vase.

  The boots stomped and hopped. Ava and Dean rolled behind a table with a hidden mousehole.

  “Ava!” Dean yelled. “You can’t run across like that! You know the saying, ‘A mouse against the wall is the best mouse of all.’ ”

  “We’re on the second floor, Dean.” Ava twirled her tail nervously. “We have to cross because the tunnels stopped.”

  “Maybe we should go back,” Dean said.

  “This was your idea.”

  “Sometimes I have bad ideas,” Dean said.

  “That’s true.”

  “What if Legos aren’t real?” Dean asked.

  Ava shook her head. “No. They are. We are almost there. Three more rooms. We can do this.”

  The brother and sister zipped through the Lincoln bathroom. Whoosh!

  They just barely missed a rug being rolled across the floor in the East Sitting Hall. Rugs were heavy!

  Ava and Dean stopped behind Woodrow Wilson’s favorite urn.

  “Take a deep breath.” Dean slid his foot across the floor.

  Ava yanked Dean’s tail and pulled him back. Dean had almost run in front of a mover!

  They waited for the mover to turn the corner, then vroom! The mice bolted through the Center Hall and into the next room.

  The next room was the boy’s room. Ava and Dean had gone where no mouse had gone before. Or if another mouse had, they never came back to tell anyone about it.

  “You ready?” Dean whispered.

  Ava nodded. Together, the two siblings slid through the small crack in the doorway.

  There were boxes behind the door of the kid’s bedroom. Just…boxes.

  “What were we thinking?” Dean asked. “If there are toys, they’re still packed!”

  “Dean, calm down. It’s fine,” Ava said.

  Dean flopped onto the floor. He could be a little floppy when he got upset. “No! We are missing the ceremony. We almost got stepped on. And now…boxes! Boxes! Boxes!”

  “Please stop saying boxes,” Ava said.

  A mover pushed into the room, and Ava and Dean hurried under the bed.

  “Let’s just get a scarf and go back to the roof.” Dean sighed. He also did some big sighs. He was a dramatic one, that mouse.

  Ava watched the movers as they stacked box after box. “It’s not like that stuff is staying in the boxes for long. The whole house has to be unpacked before the kids come home from the inaugural balls tonight!”

  “But Gregory is going to come looking for us if we don’t hurry.”

  “Fine.” Ava was getting annoyed. “Then let’s go back.”

  “Unless…we climb through the boxes?”

  “Yes!” Ava said.

  Dean poked his head out. The boxes were taped shut. He would have to nibble through the packaging and find a way to open the flaps. He didn’t know how long it would take to go through each box. Usually he was a better planner than this. The Legos just made him so excited. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

  Ava grabbed her brother’s claw. “What if the grea
t Amelia Earhart had decided flying across the Atlantic was a bad idea? She never would have come to the White House to meet President Coolidge. And we wouldn’t have a piece of her chewing gum in the Treasure Rooms.”

  “What’s the point?”

  Ava peeked out from under the bed. “Squeakertons don’t quit.”

  Dean sighed his last sigh. He was older, but sometimes his sister was smarter. Or maybe not smarter…bolder. Either way, they could not turn back. “You’re right. Let’s get through those boxes.”

  A mover grunted. “That’s all of it. Let’s go finish the library boxes. We’ll unpack this room after the special package arrives.”

  “Special package?” Ava whispered to Dean.

  The movers shuffled out of the room. But just when Ava and Dean were about to burrow into the first box, they heard the very worst sound a mouse could hear.

  The door closed.

  And then there was a click.

  Ava and Dean were locked in a room that had no windows and no mouseholes. No tunnels.

  In case you are not smart like a mouse is smart (although not these mice at this moment):

  Ava and Dean were STUCK!

  This wasn’t the first time a mouse had been stuck in a White House room. It happened all the time. Ava and Dean’s twenty-sixth great-grandmother was locked in the Map Room during World War II. She was always scared of pushpins after that day. And poor Seventh-Uncle Otis drowned in President William Taft’s extra-large bathtub. We probably shouldn’t bring that up right now, though. Not with Ava and Dean about to cry.

  But really. It was a big bathtub. You should have seen it.

  “I take it back,” Ava said. “This was a bad idea.”

  Dean paced. “It’s not like we’re locked in forever. Just…just a few hours.”

  “Dad is probably calling every mouse in the house to look for us,” Ava cried. “And Gregory. We are going to have to listen to so many speeches from Gregory. I hope Aunt Agnes has this room wired so we can yell and they can come find us.”

  Dean was already climbing into a box. “Shoes. Ugh, it’s a box of shoes. Wow, the boy human has stinky feet. Stinkier than most humans’ feet.”

  “What are you doing?” Ava asked.

  “Trying to solve a problem. Get into a box. Let’s see if we can find something to help us.”

  “Why don’t you just read the boxes?” Ava asked. Dean had already nibbled his way into a box of books.

  Mice can read human letters. Do you know WHY they are able to do this? Because they are a word that rhymes with dart. (It also rhymes with a gross word that we will not mention here.)

  “This one is school supplies.” Ava bounced to another box. “This one is l-e-o-t-a-r-d-s? What is a leotard?”

  “Maybe it is a kind of c-a-t,” Dean whispered.

  “That’s a leopard,” Ava said. “Not a leotard.”

  “Close enough.”

  Ava let out a squeak and tore through the cardboard. “Air…air…it’s an air…” She jumped down and pushed the box with all her might until it toppled over. Like I said, mice are very strong. “It’s an airplane!”

  It was a beautiful model airplane with a remote control! Ava had seen airplanes in books. She’d seen the presidential helicopter. But this airplane was just her size! She scrambled inside. Her tail hung out a little bit, but that was even better. Her tail could blow in the wind.

  “Dean! Dean! Push those buttons. Make me fly.”

  Dean hopped down from his box. He didn’t say anything. He knew his sister, and he knew this was a dream come true for her. She had wanted to fly as long as he knew her. The Legos could wait.

  Dean pushed a button. Nothing happened. He pushed another. Still nothing. He jiggled the remote and played with the stick.

  Ava shook the steering wheel. “Make it go!”

  Dean flipped the remote over and opened the back. “There’s no battery. It needs a small, round one.”

  Ava frowned. This was the closest she had ever been to flying. It was like this airplane was made for her. “I bet there are some in the boxes. Maybe another toy?”

  They dug through five more boxes. Ava wasn’t very careful about keeping things neat. In fact, in fifteen minutes, the whole room was a disaster! She was no longer thinking about Legos. She didn’t care that she and Dean were locked in a room. She didn’t care that their parents were probably looking for them.

  None of this mattered. There were only two words in Ava Squeakerton’s head.

  Battery and flight.

  Finally, after what seemed like an hour, they found a box under the other boxes. It was big and heavy and hard to open. On the cardboard was a magical word.

  Toys.

  They found a collection of plastic zoo animals. They found an art kit with half of the paint gone. They found a sword, a doll, and a toy mouse.

  There was some sort of black case that had buttons on it. Maybe another remote control. Ava didn’t know or care. She ripped open the back. A battery fell out. But it was a rectangle and not right for the airplane. She knew it the second she saw it. She wanted to cry.

  “Ava. Ava. Look!”

  Ava hung her head. She had been so close to flying. So close. She would never have this chance ever again. She would have to sit on that roof of the great, big White House and watch the planes overhead and dream her days away. She was, after all, only a mouse. Mice are small and they probably shouldn’t dream so big.

  “What,” Ava said. It wasn’t really a question.

  “A Lego!” Dean screamed.

  And there it was. The object they had never been sure existed. A whole bin filled with Legos in a rainbow of colors. There were boxes with pictures of castles and spaceships too. Dean could build every day for the rest of his life and still not use all those Legos.

  The door clicked again. Dean and Ava gasped and hurried under a box.

  They could see feet. HUMAN FEET.

  Ava and Dean stayed very quiet as the human feet walked across the room.

  “What happened to my room?” a boy’s voice asked.

  “Looks like the movers already started unpacking for you. Be glad, Banks,” a girl said.

  It was the president’s children. Which meant…the inauguration was over! How long had Ava and Dean been in that room? Gregory had probably organized a search party for them already.

  But there were Legos right in front of Ava and Dean. And a model airplane. The two greatest toys ever invented were just within their reach.

  The boy, Banks, picked up the model airplane and placed it on a dresser. “They weren’t very organized about it. Good thing they didn’t lose any of my Legos! Macey, did you know I have three thousand eight hundred and seventy-two?”

  “You know exactly how many Legos you have?” Macey asked.

  “Of course. I count them all the time. They’re my favorite toy.”

  “You’re weird,” Macey said. Ava strongly agreed.

  “Maybe. But I’m weird with almost four thousand Legos,” Banks said. “Come on. Let’s find the hat.”

  “I can’t believe Mom made such a big deal about you wearing that hat,” Macey said.

  “It was her great-grandpa’s. He wore it when he was governor. It means a lot to Mom that I wear it tonight,” Banks replied.

  “Here it is!” Macey called from the closet. “Good thing the movers already brought in our clothes.”

  She stuck the gray hat on her brother’s head. Ava wanted a piece of fabric from that hat. It seemed like very warm wool. They needed more wool in the Fabric Collection.

  “Can you believe we’re actually living in the White House?” Banks asked. “It doesn’t seem real.”

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep the first week!” Macey said. “Just knowing all the people who have lived here before us…it’s like a movie.”

  “The inauguration was cool. Did you see Mom’s hand shaking when she got sworn in?” Banks asked.

  “Well, it was really cold out. She l
ooked relieved when it was over.”

  “We better hurry.” Banks looked at the door. “We need to get ready for the balls. They’re making me wear a suit.”

  “Get used to it. We’ll have to dress up all the time now.” Macey circled the room and stopped by the white fireplace. “Clover will LOVE it here.”

  “Where is Clover, anyway?” Banks asked.

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t leave out that airplane if she’s coming. She loves airplanes.”

  Dean whispered to Ava, “I think I heard they have a pet guinea pig. That would be fun. You two can hop in the airplane together.”

  “Maybe,” Ava said. The door was open. This was probably the best chance for them to sneak out. They had to get back to their family before everyone tried to find them. It wasn’t safe for all those mice to run around the house looking for them. Dean and Ava loved the whole Squeakerton family and wouldn’t want anything to happen to anybody. All they had wanted was one Lego. Was that too much to ask?

  “We need a plan,” Dean whispered.

  Dean looked at Ava. Ava looked at Dean. And then it was like the plan came together without anyone saying anything. That’s the good thing about having a sibling. Sometimes you don’t need to say anything. You just know what the other one is thinking. And that was good. Because they both had a really, really crazy idea.

  Ava and Dean had to get out of the boy’s room. This was the situation:

  There were six boxes between Ava and Dean and the Legos.

  Then a whole empty floor.

  Then, of course, all those rooms.

  Did I mention how big the rooms are in the White House? Answer: very big.

  Ava zigged right. Dean zagged left. Dean was spotted. Ava was not.

  “It’s a mouse!” Banks squealed. “Ew!”

  “Cool, catch it!” Macey exclaimed. “We can make it a pet.”

  Ava ran to the middle of a box. She hoped the children would spot her and stop chasing Dean. But they didn’t even see her! Mean-while, Dean ran into a box. Was he getting a Lego?