Owl's Outstanding Donuts

by Robin Yardi

  She shook her head and hurried after the sisters.

  Back at the entrance kiosk, a couple of cars were lined up behind the striped brown-and-white gate. Mattie, Sasha, and Beanie hopped up onto the bench outside the kiosk window and poked their heads inside for their next assignment. Every surface inside the tiny building burst with trail maps, chips, granola bars, lip balm, sunscreen, disposable cameras, marshmallow roasters, fire starters, and water shoes. Basically everything campers might need and would probably pay double for just so they didn’t have to drive to a store.

  Mr. Little was chatting with a man leaning out of his car window when Adelaide Sharpe’s shiny red car pulled into a visitor parking space. Mr. Little leaned back into the kiosk. “Sharpe’s here again,” he said to Mrs. Little.

  “Make sure she buys something,” Mrs. Little called back. “Just not the campsite.”

  Mattie giggled. The real estate agent must have been pestering everyone with a driveway off Highway One.

  Mrs. Little was tucked away in the corner, looking up reservations on the computer and calling out campsite numbers. She stopped typing every few seconds to take a nibble from a Turkey Talon donut. Turkey Talons were Mrs. Little’s favorite, which was one of the reasons that Mattie knew Mrs. Little wasn’t as tough as she pretended to be.

  “We finished with site twenty-seven,” Sasha shouted, interrupting her dad.

  Mr. Little passed a form to the guy in the car, not answering. When the visitor signed the paper and handed it back, Mr. Little ripped off the top sheet and passed it to Sasha, who added it to her clipboard. Then he gave another little pink parking pass to Mattie and a high five to Beanie just because she was so cute.

  “These three turkeys of mine will show you where to park!” Mr. Little said.

  Mattie was relieved to have a job to do instead of watching Adelaide Sharpe teeter her way across the potholed driveway. But she did wonder what Mr. Little would convince Sharpe to buy from the crammed-full camp shop.

  Mattie and the sisters scuttled down off the bench and stood in front of the automatic gate. The girls had a three-part job when they helped Mr. and Mrs. Little. Taking the campers to the right spot, making sure they used their parking pass, and answering questions.

  “This way to site thirty-two,” Mattie said, as the gate squeaked up into the air.

  Two check-ins later, the girls were hustling their way back to the kiosk when Mattie saw Mrs. Mantooth speed-walking down one of the campground lanes.

  “Great,” she grumbled.

  Even though Mrs. Mantooth hated it when people backed their cars two feet into her gravel driveway, she seemed to think the whole county belonged to her. Mattie wished that Mrs. Little would tell her to stop using the campground for her power walks, but Mrs. Little was too smart to get on Mrs. Mantooth’s bad side.

  Most days, Mrs. Mantooth at least kept to herself. But that day, she swish-walked right up to the girls.

  “Morning, Mrs. Mantooth,” Mattie said.

  Mrs. Mantooth started straight in. “Mattie, tell your aunt that the well water’s been tasting funny. It has a definite odor. Sulfurous. She needs to be more watchful about contaminants, especially with a young girl like you around. You’re growing!”

  She poked at Mattie’s shoulder with one finger.

  It kind of hurt.

  “Okay, Mrs. Mantooth,” Mattie said. “I’ll tell her, but I haven’t noticed anything.”

  Satisfied, Mrs. Mantooth executed a perfect turn and speed-walked back where she came from. Mrs. Mantooth was relentless about wanting improvements on the well, but her reason for wanting them was always a little different. There was sulfur, there was salt, the pump was creaky, the pump was slow, the well should be deeper, or the pipes were too old. So Mattie was one-hundred-percent not going to tell Aunt Molly about Mrs. Mantooth’s latest complaint.

  “Can we get back on track?” Sasha said.

  “Yes, please,” said Mattie.

  Beanie giggled.

  Three campsites later and twelve away from beating their record, Mattie couldn’t shake the feeling that something was following her around. Something besides pesky neighbors or lurchy cars lined up to check in. But every time she turned her head, there wasn’t anything to see. Until a funny shadow snuck over her arm. When she looked up this time, she spotted it.

  That owl!

  It was almost perfectly camouflaged against the bark of a big sycamore, all gray and speckled white. Although its beak wasn’t smeared with pink icing anymore.

  The owl blinked its big orange eyes at her. It didn’t hoot, but Mattie was pretty sure it was waiting for something. And one-hundred-percent sure it was watching her.

  “Sasha,” she whispered. “Look!”

  Mattie pointed at the owl, and the bird closed its eyes, which made it almost disappear against the tree.

  “What? Where? What?” Beanie said, hopping up and down.

  “It’s an owl,” Mattie said.

  Beanie stared up into the tree. “I don’t see it.”

  Sasha looked too, wrinkling her nose. “There’s nothing there. It probably just flew off or something. And no way was it an owl—they only come out at night. Maybe a hawk. Come on—let’s go!”

  But Mattie didn’t move. She could still see the outline of the owl if she squinted just right. And once Sasha and Beanie started heading back to the kiosk, the owl opened its eyes again, giving the sycamore two little gold polka dots halfway up its trunk.

  Mattie sucked in a breath.

  She kind of wanted to say hi.

  But before she could, the owl lifted its talons off the branch and dropped something. A dark clump landed in the dirt at the edge of the gravel road with a squelchy little thump.

  Mattie muttered Aunt Molly’s favorite exclamation: “What in the donut hole?”

  Beanie and Sasha were already halfway back to the entrance kiosk, so she ran across the campground lane by herself. But when she looked up, the owl was gone.

  Mattie bent over the dark gloppy mass of . . . what? She slid to one knee and peeked closer. The clump had bits of damp gravel and dirt, held together by something slimy and dark.

  Mattie sniffed.

  Whatever that sticky goop was, it sure didn’t smell very nice. She didn’t want to touch it. But she couldn’t ignore it either. She peeked into a campground trashcan and pulled out a mostly clean-looking plastic bag.

  She turned the bag inside out, shook out what she was pretty sure were old graham cracker crumbs, and picked up the clump of goop. Carefully, without touching it even once.

  What the heck was it?

  And why did that owl keep following her around?

  Mattie was supposed to understand something or do something. She knew that. But what? Asking Aunt Molly was out of bounds. No way was she risking school over an owl and some mysterious goo. So she ran to catch up with Sasha and Beanie. She’d changed her mind again.

  The Golden Galaxy

  A cinnamon and toasted cardamom infused cake donut, iced with a decadent dark chocolate glaze, and topped with glittery gold leaf

  “Wait!” Mattie called to the girls.

  They stopped by the camping grounds’ empty basketball court so Mattie could catch up. Sasha folded her arms and tapped her foot. Beanie picked up a battered hula-hoop and swung it around her waist. It swish-rattle-swished while Mattie tried to explain.

  “We’ve got to go check something out,” Mattie said, peeking around to see if anyone else was close enough to hear. “Something weird happened last night and—”

  “I knew you had a secret!” Beanie scowled, but she never let the hula-hoop stop its orbit. Swish-rattle-swish.

  Sasha shook her head. “No way, Mattie. We’re on track to beat my record today. No more distractions!”

  “Just listen,” Mattie said.

  Sasha sighed, but it sounded more like a mad cat hiss. “Fine. What?”

  “So . . . last night, an owl—”

  “What kind?�
� Sasha asked.

  “I don’t know. The big hooty kind.”

  “Great horned,” said Sasha.

  “Okay, so last night, this great horned owl basically knocked on my window and woke me up and maybe smashed a flowerpot to get my attention.”

  Beanie’s hula-hoop clattered to the asphalt. Sasha just rolled her eyes. But both she and Beanie listened while Mattie told the whole story about the owl, the truck, the flying flowerpot, and the clue. That’s what Mattie called the bag of goopy gravel, because that’s what she thought it was. She handed it over to Beanie, and Beanie’s eyes went all shiny like glazed donuts.

  “Gloop!” Beanie said, holding the bag inches from her eyeballs.

  At least Beanie believed her, Mattie thought, sneaking a sideways look at Sasha.

  Sasha pushed her short blond hair behind her ears. “That is the weirdest thing I have ever heard,” said Sasha. “Owls don’t come out during the day. She’s just kidding, Beanie.” She glared at Mattie. “We’re wasting too much time.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Mattie said. “Super-honest swear. This isn’t a story. Come on, we have to at least check out the scene. I think that truck was up to something last night.”

  Beanie bounced up and down, flopping the bag of gloop around. “Check it out, check it out, check it out!”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Sasha said.

  Mattie smiled. Just a little. Convincing Sasha to change her plan for the day wasn’t something anybody else could do. Except for maybe Mrs. Little, who said that she had executive authority, which meant that she was the boss of everyone. Even Sasha.

  Mattie grabbed the clue from Beanie and hid it in the pocket of her shorts. Then the girls told Mr. Little they were taking their lunch break early. They splunked up the river to Mattie’s place. All the way there, under the rope bridge, up the stone steps in the bank, down the path that curved around the trailer, and across the donut shop parking lot, Sasha led the way.

  “Where was it?” Sasha asked.

  Mattie pointed to where she’d seen the mystery truck parked: the gravel shoulder on the far side of the highway. “There,” she said, feeling serious and queasy.

  As the three of them reached the nearest edge of the black road, Mattie hesitated. Her nightmares might have stopped, but just being near the highway and all its whooshing cars made Mattie feel like she’d just woken up after the dream’s final crunch. Sweaty-cold and scared. She’d told herself for weeks that riding the school bus in September was going to be okay, but being so close to cars speeding down the highway made that feel like a lie.

  Sasha looked left and right. All three of them listened for the echoing swoosh of another car on the way. Mattie’s heart did a butterfly flip-flop.

  “Ready?” Sasha said when the coast was clear.

  “Let’s go!” Beanie said.

  Mattie didn’t answer and she definitely didn’t go. Sasha grabbed her hand.

  “Hold on to Mattie’s other one, Beanie,” Sasha said, like she was worried that Beanie would wander off like a baby turkey as they crossed the highway. Pretending like she was doing it because she was Beanie’s big sister and not to help Mattie.

  Then the three of them darted across the road, which no way were they ever supposed to do, and jumped into a ditch beyond the gravel shoulder. Mattie’s heart was still doing its wild butterfly flop, but she’d made it.

  “Beanie, get off my foot,” Sasha said, giving her sister a little push.

  Beanie hopped off Sasha’s water shoe and slipped on something gooey. “Ewww,” Beanie squealed, wiping the bottom of her own shoe on a rock until a plop of something came off, like a giant black booger.

  “Don’t touch it,” Sasha told her.

  “I wasn’t gonna,” Beanie said.

  “Look, there’s more,” Mattie said. “This must be the gloop!”

  The ditch ran along the highway like a little creek that only filled up on rainy days. But it hadn’t rained all month, maybe even all summer, and the ditch was dry except for the mysterious gloop. The stuff shimmered against the gravel like the fuzzy head of a dead fly. Mattie followed a trail of stinky black slime down the ditch, past a sloppy puddle, and all the way to a pipe with a grate over it.

  “I bet most of it went down here,” Mattie said. Her voice echoed in the metal tunnel, and her heart thudded like thunder.

  She knew where that pipe went.

  It ran straight under the highway, with water flowing from the ditch into the Big Sur River, just upstream from the donut shop. Right where a little creek forked off from the river. And that creek dumped straight into the ocean. Mattie had followed it down to the pink sands of Pfeiffer Beach last summer. So in a way, everything that flowed out of the ditch didn’t just go into river, it went straight into the ocean too. Though late in the summer, Sycamore Creek wasn’t more than a trickle, so not much from the ditch would actually reach the Pacific Ocean.

  Mattie sniffed.

  The gloop had a sourness almost like barf. She coughed. It could be anything. Old milk? A pesticide? A poison?

  Some of the slime looked older. Some was all fresh and slippery. Whoever was dumping it had been around more than once.

  “This is so bad,” Mattie said.

  “Gross,” Beanie said, sticking her tongue out.

  “This is what you dragged me across the highway for?” Sasha said. “It just looks like some jerk from the city emptied out their sludgy cooler water at the side of the road. Dad keeps telling them not to do it in the camp.”

  Beanie looked up at Mattie, waiting to see what she thought.

  “This doesn’t look like cooler sludge to me,” Mattie said. “There’s way too much for that. It’s all over the place. And it stinks. And it looks like it went into that pipe! That flows into the river and the creek and the ocean. We’re lucky it hasn’t rained, or the stuff would have made it there already. What if they come back again and dump some more?”

  “Why would they come back?” Sasha said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Those LA jerks are long gone.”

  “I don’t think so. Look, some of the gloop is all dried and crusty. Some of it is still super slimy. It’s like there are two trails. Maybe even three. I don’t think those guys are finished. And . . . that owl doesn’t think so either. I know it. Why else would he leave me a clue?”

  Sasha shook her head. “An owl didn’t leave you a clue, Matt. That’s impossible.”

  Mattie pulled the plastic bag of gloopy gravel out of her pocket again. “But . . . look. It’s a perfect match. Same color. Same gravel. Same smell. When I found it, there were even talon marks in the gloop.”

  “Even if that’s true—if you saw an owl in the middle of the day, and some gunk fell off its feet—it didn’t do that on purpose,” Sasha said.

  Mattie held the gloop bag up between them. It swung in the air. “It absolutely, totally, one-hundred-percent did.”

  Beanie’s eyes bugged out at all the amazing mysteriousness.

  “Let’s be detectives,” she said, bouncing a little.

  Mattie nodded. “Good idea, Beanie. You know what we need to do? We need to do a stakeout.”

  “Yessss!” Beanie said, bouncing higher.

  “A sleepover stakeout,” Mattie said, peeking at Sasha.

  Mattie could tell Sasha wasn’t convinced, but she was pretty sure even Sasha wouldn’t say no to a sleepover. Sasha huffed, which meant maybe, and maybe probably meant yes.

  “Come on, Beanie,” Sasha said, grabbing her sister’s hand. “We’ve got to have lunch and get back to work or Mom will be suspicious.”

  She tugged Beanie up to the road, looked both ways, listened, and ran for it with Beanie bouncing at the end of her arm.

  Mattie just stood there in the ditch.

  By herself.

  That trail of shiny ooze looked like something an enormous mutant banana slug had left in the ditch after slithering its way into the pipe. Mattie was tempted to follow the ooze through the p
ipe and toward the creek, but what if that took her all the way down to the beach? That would mean she’d be gone almost the whole day. And she still didn’t want Aunt Molly getting suspicious.

  A gust of wind sent the forest of redwood trees shivering. Mattie shoved the bag of gloop back into her pocket and scrambled up the steep ditch. She flinched at the edge of the road. Sasha and Beanie were already on the far end of the parking lot. She held her breath, listening. No cars in sight. No whoosh of one coming through the trees. She zipped across the highway with her heart thudding.

  That gloop was suddenly scarier than her old dream.

  What if it did get all the way down to the ocean? What if it seeped down into the well they shared with Mrs. Mantooth? The well barely went down thirty feet and was super close to the riverbank. What if the gloop was in their water already?

  That was something Mattie didn’t even want to think about. Mrs. Mantooth would go berserk for sure. She wouldn’t just want a new pump. She’d want a new everything. Which no way could Aunt Molly afford.

  Mattie had to keep the gloop a secret . . . until she caught those guys in the act. She needed proof that it was someone else’s fault. Otherwise, Mrs. Mantooth was guaranteed to make trouble for Aunt Molly. Then what would happen to the donut shop and their trailer?

  “Sleepover?” Mattie yelled, her heart still thudding.

  “Maybe,” Sasha said over her shoulder. “After work.” And she tugged Beanie out of sight.

  Mattie ran off to Owl’s, her brain buzzing with a plan, listing off all the things she’d need to do if she wanted to bust the gloop culprits. She’d find out what was going on.

  Aunt Molly was at the back counter, putting the finishing touches on a tray of Golden Galaxies. Martín was manning the cash register.

  He winked and Mattie smiled.

  Martín didn’t really like donuts. Not that Mattie could tell. He would get a couple dozen when his nephew had a birthday or when he had a family party to go to. Mattie liked watching him smile while he loaded Chocolate Rainbows or Slug Bars into pink boxes. He was the kind of person who liked to bring other people donuts, and that was one of Mattie’s favorite kinds of people.