Traps and Specters

by Bryan Chick

Ella jumped to her feet and dusted off her pajamas. “Just my feelings.” She turned and retrieved her slipper from the kitchen. As she sank her foot back into its fuzzy warmth, her mother started patting her down.

  “What happened?”

  “I was walking to open the door and my slippers tripped me up. No biggie.” Scanning the kitchen again for P-Dog, Ella quickly switched the subject: “How was your card game?”

  Instead of answering, Ms. Jones continued to study her daughter for signs of something wrong. Suspicion curled up one of her eyebrows.

  “Ma?”

  Finally, her mother let down her guard. “Not bad, I guess.” She walked over to the fridge and rummaged inside it. “You’ll never guess what happened to Mrs. Carson last week!”

  “What’s that?” Ella said, feigning interest as best she could.

  Her mother pushed aside the ketchup, the mayonnaise, a clear container full of goop which might have been days-old stew. “She bowls, you know … with Mrs. Anderson and a couple other ladies. Well … last week …”

  Her voice became a murmur as Ella divided her attention between it and the whereabouts of P-Dog. As Ella searched from the corners of her eyes, she caught occasional words: “… Mrs. Baker, that new lady down the street …” and “… decided to come along …” and “Ella! Are you listening?” Ella nodded and curled the ends of her lips up.

  Ms. Jones closed the fridge, a few slips of lunch meat drooping over her fingers, and headed to the bread basket. Ella took the opportunity to hurry into the connecting great room. She began checking behind the furniture, mouthing P-Dog! over and over. After a minute or two, Ms. Jones poked her head into the room and Ella jerked upright and fixed her attention back on her mother, who was waving a spoon in the air, saying something about Mrs. Baker dropping a bowling ball on someone’s foot. Her mother laughed, then her head retreated into the kitchen as she returned to her work on her sandwich.

  Ella peered under the couch. The only thing beneath it was the pink headband she’d lost about a year ago. It lay there covered in dust like a half-buried treasure in an archeological dig.

  Her mother stepped into the dining room, this time carrying a plate and a glass of juice. She was talking about someone’s swollen toe—a toe that the bowling ball had undoubtedly landed on. She took a seat facing Ella at the dining room table, lifted the sandwich, and tore off a bite. She chewed for a few seconds, then returned to her story. Ella smiled and nodded in the places she guessed appropriate.

  From the same doorway that Ms. Jones had just stepped through, P-Dog suddenly poked his head into the room, his twitching nose pulling scents out of the air. Ella went rigid with fear. Her mother, sensing something wrong, followed Ella’s gaze, but before she could spot P-Dog, the wounded prairie dog hobbled forward and disappeared beneath the table, right in front of her feet.

  Ms. Jones turned back to Ella. Through a mouthful of food, she asked again if Ella was sure she hadn’t hurt herself. Ella nodded. The way her mother waited to chew her food made Ella nervous. Finally, Ms. Jones snapped her jaws back into action. After a swallow, she continued her story, in which the big toe was now swollen to the size of a mature walnut.

  Ella pretended to listen, a forced expression of interest on her face. Her gaze repeatedly dropped down to where P-Dog was now sitting, bug-eyed and jittery. After a few seconds, the unthinkable happened. Ms. Jones stretched out her legs and accidentally bumped P-Dog with her foot. When she dropped her head to peek beneath the table, she discovered the prairie dog lying completely still.

  Ella gasped. She took a step forward and stopped. There was nothing she could do. They’d been caught, and now the Secret Zoo would be discovered.

  After what seemed a long time, Ms. Jones sat upright and casually returned to the business of chewing her food. She swallowed and said, “All these stuffed animals—when are you ever going to get rid of them?” She sipped her juice. “Can’t you at least pick them up?”

  Ella smiled weakly. “Sorry, Mom.”

  Ms. Jones took the last bite of her sandwich. “Isn’t that funny?”

  Ella thought that her mom was referring to P-Dog, then realized she was talking about her story. With a nod, she smiled her big, fake, rubbery smile again.

  Ms. Jones rose from the table and carried her empty plate back into the kitchen, saying, “C’mon—pick that up. I don’t want to see those things lying around.”

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  From the kitchen, Ms. Jones craned her neck back into the dining room. “And since when are you so polite? Stop—it’s making me nervous.”

  Careful not to speak and invite more conversation, Ella simply continued to hold up her smile.

  Ms. Jones grunted and slipped back into the kitchen. When her plate banged into the sink and the faucet spilled its noisy water, Ella reached beneath the dining room table and swept up P-Dog. She fled the room and dashed up the stairs, her fluffy slippers two pink blurs over the carpet.

  Just after midnight, at least an hour after Ms. Jones had fallen asleep, Ella was in her room, sitting on her bed in front of the window, staring out into the night. As usual, she couldn’t see any tarsiers posted in the trees. She wondered if DeGraff had been captured—if Solana and the zoo guards had managed to get to him. Hope surged through her. The thing the Secret Society feared most—the Shadowist getting back to the magic of the Secret Zoo—might have ended tonight.

  Ella turned to P-Dog, who was perched on his hind legs beside her. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, but his side was swollen and he was having trouble walking. “P … I don’t want to let you go—not tonight, not the way you are. The last thing I need to find on my way to school tomorrow is you squashed on the road, tire tracks across your face. In the morning … we’ll get you back then.”

  The prairie dog looked up at Ella, his eyes gleaming like black marbles, and sniffed the air near her face.

  Ella already had a plan. It involved the prairie dog tunnels that extended from the Grottoes and ran through her neighborhood—the ones the prairie dogs had emerged from to attack DeGraff tonight. She had no idea where the tunnels came out into her yard, so she couldn’t risk having P-Dog roam around her property in plain view of her mother or anyone else. But she did know where they opened into a hidden spot in Noah’s backyard. Every morning, Ella walked to school with the other scouts. If she could release P-Dog by the tunnel in Noah’s yard, he could trek the short distance back to the zoo, even with his injuries. She just needed to figure out how to get P-Dog across the neighborhood without him being seen.

  Thinking about this, Ella stared into her closet and spotted her backpack. She pointed to it and said, “What do you think, P?”

  P-Dog followed her stare. After a few seconds he turned back to Ella, his eyes wide with concern. He yipped once, a bit defiantly, Ella thought.

  “If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”

  Seeming to consider this, he tipped his head one way, then another. After a few seconds, he looked away.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Ella turned back to the dark streets. Her mind replayed the incident on her front porch. She kept imagining DeGraff, the wide brim of his hat, his upturned collar, his long trench coat. Why had he come to her door? She wondered again if he had been caught. If not, would he be back again tonight? The thought sent waves of terror through her. An hour passed. Then another. Near two o’clock in the morning, she finally dropped the blinds and fell into bed, lying on her side. P-Dog curled up against her stomach, and she rested her palm on him.

  “Thanks, P … for being there tonight, I mean.”

  P-Dog sniffed her hand, his puny nose dotting moisture on her skin.

  Believing she’d never relax, Ella closed her eyes and immediately drifted off. The world of reality became the world of her dreams, two places divided by a line that seemed to be thinning more each day.

  CHAPTER 4

  PACKING P-DOG

  Ella woke to her ala
rm clock. Grumbling, she rolled over, pinching something between her stomach and the mattress—a something that gave a squeaky yip! She threw herself to the edge of the bed and saw a small animal lying in her pink sheets. P-Dog. It looked like he was resting in a pink pasture. Memories of the previous night swarmed into her head.

  A muffled voice came from out in the hall: “Ella?” Then knuckles rapped the bedroom door. “You okay in there?”

  Ella flung the blankets over P-Dog and jumped to the floor. “Don’t move,” she warned the pink bump on her bed.

  Her bedroom door swung open and in walked her mother. “I made waffles. Hurry up and get them before they get cold.”

  “Thanks, Ma.”

  Her mother backed out of the room, and once her footsteps had faded away, Ella softly closed the door and hurried back to her bed, where P-Dog was squirming around. She threw off the blankets, scooped him up in one arm, then gently placed him into the closet on a pile of half-folded sweaters. He peered out from the colorful cotton and yipped again.

  “Sorry, P. But you have to stay here till I’m done eating.”

  Ella shut the closet door, left her room, and hurried down the hall. In the dining room, she dropped into her seat and scarfed up her waffles, her mother grimacing more than once at Ella’s overloaded cheeks.

  Back upstairs, she eased open her closet. P-Dog shot her a scornful look and waded out from the spill he’d made of the sweaters. She wriggled into her clothes, grabbed her backpack, and pried it open like the mouth of an alligator. She stuffed her zoo uniform inside, then held the opening toward P-Dog. “Here.”

  The prairie dog sniffed curiously at the bag, then backed away.

  “C’mon—what’s the matter?” She poked her face into the opening. “Okay, so it stinks a little. It doubles as my soccer bag, you know.”

  P-Dog took another step back.

  “Look, it’s only for a few minutes. Just until we get to Noah’s.”

  P-Dog inched forward and sniffed the air a second time. As he did, Ella lifted him by his belly, carried him into the bag, and zipped it shut. P-Dog yipped once and turned in circles, his body making a lump under the nylon.

  “Sorry, P,” Ella said as she stood and eased one strap over her shoulder. “It’ll just be a few minutes, I promise.”

  P-Dog wriggled into a comfortable position and became still. Ella stomped down the stairs, set the backpack onto a chair near the front door, and put on her jacket and earmuffs. After hoisting P-Dog onto her back again, she called, “Bye, Mom!” and pushed out onto the porch. It was pouring rain.

  “Great.”

  The door creaked open and her mother’s hand appeared, clutching an umbrella. “Here.” Then she stated the obvious: “It’s raining.”

  Ella took the umbrella, sprang it open, and headed out, a scowl on her face. As she crossed her yard, wet leaves clung to her shoes like giant leeches. P-Dog kept squirming around in her pack, forcing the straps off her shoulders. “Knock it off, dork,” she kept saying.

  As she headed down Jenkins Street toward Noah’s house, a car approached, its headlights causing the raindrops to sparkle. It slowed to a crawl beside her and the driver’s window dropped, revealing Mrs. Nowicki, Noah and Megan’s mom. The wind tossed her curly, uncombed hair.

  “C’mon,” Mrs. Nowicki said. She tipped her head toward the backseat. “Hop in.”

  Ella’s heart sank. “Huh?”

  “I’m not about to let you kids walk to school in the middle of a hurricane.”

  The back door swung open to reveal Richie, the cold, moist air fogging his giant glasses. He scooted his skinny rear end over, making room for Ella. Beside him sat Megan. In the front passenger seat was Noah.

  “I …” Ella said. “I don’t know. I kind of … I kind of feel like walking.”

  “You mean swimming?” Richie said.

  Feeling P-Dog shifting in her backpack, Ella lowered her eyebrows and tried to communicate her concern to Richie. “It’s just … today’s a really, really bad day for a ride.”

  “Ella,” Mrs. Nowicki said, “if I let you walk in this rain while driving all your friends, your mother will never speak to me again. Now get in.”

  Ella waited. She wanted to walk away but knew Mrs. Nowicki would come after her.

  Richie patted the open seat beside him.

  She slumped her shoulders and let the backpack slip down her arms. She plopped onto the seat, cradled the bag in her lap, and closed the door. Mrs. Nowicki sped off, her wipers groaning.

  Richie looked at Ella’s full bag. “Man—what do you have in that thing?”

  Ella shot him a wry look. “A prairie dog.”

  Believing it was a joke, Mrs. Nowicki chuckled.

  But she was the only one.

  CHAPTER 5

  P-DOG GETS SCHOOLED

  “You’re kidding, right?” Richie said as the scouts headed up one of the long, winding paths of the concrete courtyard before their school’s front entrance. Clarksville Elementary had a main building with three wings. Each wing housed two grade levels. Ten years ago, the old school building had been demolished to make room for a larger one, parts of which—the gym, the cafeteria, the media center—were over two stories high.

  “Tell me you’re not serious,” Richie pleaded. “Tell me P-Dog’s not really in your backpack right now.”

  Ella shifted the backpack on her shoulders. “Nope, no joke.”

  Richie touched Ella’s backpack, and when something wriggled, he pulled his hand back.

  “She’s not kidding, guys. I just felt P-Dog’s head. Or his butt. It was something round, anyway. And it was moving.”

  The friends pushed through the front doors of Clarksville Elementary, leaving behind the rain and a lineup of buses. They moved down one of the wings and stopped at Megan’s locker. As Megan spun through her combination, Ella briefed them on the previous night. When she mentioned her confrontation with DeGraff, everyone’s mouths dropped open.

  “DeGraff!” Megan gasped. She peered over both her shoulders to make certain no one could hear them. “In your front yard … DeGraff! I can’t … I can’t believe this.”

  “Well, believe it, sister,” Ella said as she shifted her backpack again. “He was knocking on my front door like a Girl Scout with cookies.”

  Ella quickly told them the rest of the story: DeGraff, the prairie dogs, Solana and the zoo guards, P-Dog and how he’d wound up getting a ride in her backpack.

  “Not good,” Richie said, shaking his head. “And I’m talking in a really major way.”

  Megan shut her door and they walked the short way to Noah’s locker. As Noah hung up his jacket, he said, “Okay, don’t freak out. We have crosstraining after school. We just need to make it through the day—that shouldn’t be too hard, right?” As he banged the steel door shut, the morning bell rang, scattering kids toward their classrooms. The scouts headed to Richie’s locker.

  “What am I supposed to do with P-Dog?” Ella asked. “Put him in my locker?”

  “Not a good idea,” Richie said. “You can hardly breathe in those things—trust me, I know.” Richie was referring to how Wide Walt, the school bully, would sometimes squeeze him into his locker and shut the door when teachers weren’t around.

  Megan gasped. “He’d suffocate!”

  Richie opened his locker. The inside walls bulged outward in the general shape of his body. When trapped in the steely confines, Richie knew how to wriggle into a comfortable position until someone, usually one of the scouts, set him free. Closing his door, Richie said, “Take your backpack with you. Keep it close—under your desk or something.”

  “Are you nuts!” Ella said. “How am I supposed—”

  But Richie and Noah were already walking away. As the boys turned to their open classroom door, Noah looked back to Ella and shrugged, saying, “What else are we supposed to do?”

  “Great …” Ella said. She led Megan down the hall, opened her locker, and fed her belongings inside—every
thing but her backpack. Then the two girls squirmed through the thinning crowd of students and walked into Room 112, their split-grade class.

  Mrs. Simons was rambling on about decimals and place values, scrawling large numbers across the whiteboard and dropping dots at their feet. Ella couldn’t have cared less. All she could think about was the backpack beneath her chair. She kept touching it with her feet, each time breathing a sigh of relief. Though she knew Megan was watching the bag from across the room, she couldn’t help but fear P-Dog would find a way to manipulate the zipper open and sneak out for a stroll.

  Trying to think of something other than P-Dog, Ella looked over at the bulletin board beside the Word Wall. There were announcements about different things: a lost jacket, a lost necklace, the school play tryouts. Two posters were tacked to it. One promoted a reading campaign called “Reading Is Your Key,” and the other advertised the school Halloween party, a green-faced witch with a hooked nose saying, “Come to Clarksville Elementary’s Halloween Bash! You’ll have a ghoul time!”

  The Halloween poster reminded Ella of DeGraff again, the way he had stood among the swirl of leaves in her front yard, his body a silhouette against the night, his fingers curled into half-fists, the wind beating his trench coat against his boots. The fright of Halloween had come early to Ella’s household—and this year that fright was real.

  Ella turned away from the bulletin board and watched the second hand of the clock sweep around in its slow, endless circle. Mrs. Simons changed subjects. History, maybe. Or government. When you were worried about a live zoo animal in your backpack, all the subjects seemed the same.

  About an hour into the school day, Peter Wilkins approached the front of the room and accidentally hooked his foot in the strap of Ella’s backpack, slinging it across the aisle. It came to a stop against the leg of Mackenzie McCarthy’s chair, and everyone stared at it for what it was: something-that-did-not-belong. The only sound became that of Tana Quinn wetly chomping her gum.

  Flushed with embarrassment and fear, Ella reached out into the aisle with her foot and snagged back the pack. She tucked it neatly beneath her chair and did her best to ignore Peter’s dirty look.