by Robin Yardi
Behind Martín, Aunt Molly’s arms were covered in flecks of gold leaf from the Galaxies—they were the hardest to glaze—but she was all happy and hummy, with her back to the shop. Good. Aunt Molly couldn’t have seen her crossing the road.
“Can we have a sleepover tonight?” Mattie asked, slipping behind the counter. “Me and Sasha and Beanie?”
Aunt Molly wiped her hands on a dishtowel, sending little gold flakes shimmering to the ground. “Are you sure a sleepover is a good idea? What about your bad dreams?”
Mattie snuck a look at Martín, and he turned away, pretending that the milk cartons in the fridge needed reorganizing.
“It wasn’t . . . I’m not . . . I’ll be fine. Please?” Mattie asked.
“All right. Okay. I’ll call Mrs. Little.” Aunt Molly nodded to herself. It was like she had agreed but still didn’t think it was a great idea.
Mattie grinned, forgetting for a second that this wasn’t going to be just any sleepover.
“But before I do,” Aunt Molly said, “can you put this tray in the case?” She pointed to the finished donuts. “And I set your lunch out on the table at home.”
Mattie nodded super-fast. “Got it!”
Aunt Molly gave Mattie one more long look before she hustled off into the back room, mumbling a recipe under her breath.
Mattie picked up the big tray of Golden Galaxies and slid them into the display case. The shiny gold circles flashed in the sunlight coming from the front windows. Mattie thought again about owl eyes flashing from the sycamore tree that morning. But the shiny circles made her think of her mom too. The gold-leaf donuts had been Mom’s idea. She loved fancy things.
Mattie tried to clear that thought from her brain, like she was wiping down a counter. Thinking about Mom in the middle of the day was a recipe for disaster.
“Martín?”
“¿Qué pasa?” he answered.
“How do you say owl in Spanish?”
“In El Salvador, we say ‘tecolote,’” Martín said. “How come?”
Mattie stared at the Galaxies and closed the case nice and slow. A cloud-shaped shadow traveled across the whole shop, making the sunny owl-eye donuts in the display case seem to wink and blink at her.
“I’m not really sure,” she said to Martín. “Not yet.” And then she practiced the new word under her breath. “Tecolote. Tecolote. Tecolote.”
The Donut Hole
Where does the middle of a donut go? Look no further. Here they are. Assorted donut holes are glazed and flavored daily as the mood strikes. Watch out for stray sprinkles!
The lunch that Aunt Molly had left on the table in the trailer was a giant pita sandwich stuffed with fried falafel and crunchy cucumbers. It dripped with homemade hummus and a tangy cumin yogurt sauce. Mattie made a mess when she ate, but only when nobody was looking.
Crunch.
Drip.
Plop.
Yum!
Aunt Molly’s food, not just her donuts, was one of the things that Mattie wasn’t sure she should like so much without her mom around. Aunt Molly cooked lentil soup and coconut rice, salty hot focaccia bread with herbs, and homemade macaroni with bubbly cheese. She had about a million different recipes for quiche too. Mom just used to get a lot of stuff from the takeout deli in Monterey.
Cooking was something that Mom and Aunt Molly had always joked about. When Grandma left the donut shop to both sisters, it was pretty obvious to everybody who the new baker was going to be. Besides, Mattie knew that as much as her mom loved visiting her sister in Big Sur and eating Aunt Molly’s food, she never wanted to live there.
But whenever Mattie and Mom had visited Aunt Molly’s little trailer, Mattie thought it was perfect. The Airstream didn’t ever go anywhere, but it could. That’s what Aunt Molly and Grandma always said. It had everything a person could need. And even though the big wooden deck that Grandpa had built around the trailer was pretty permanent, the idea of freedom had helped Aunt Molly feel at home there.
Mattie liked that her aunt’s trailer was a place you couldn’t lose things in. And she never felt alone there, even when she was by herself. But whenever she started to feel good about that, she felt guilty right afterward.
Mattie crunched the last bite of her falafel sandwich and licked her fingers. Next, she clumped out onto the trailer deck and stared across the road, puzzling out the giant trail of slime they’d found. She couldn’t see it from the deck. Nobody could see it, unless they were looking right into the ditch. The gloop had to have come from that truck. But what was it?
If she could catch those guys in the act and prove to Aunt Molly what was going on, then she’d be able to call the sheriff’s department. Aunt Molly said she shouldn’t bother them, but without any proof like a picture or a license plate number, maybe the sheriff wouldn’t be able to help anyway. They’d never caught the person who ran Mattie’s mom off the road, even though witnesses had seen the other car. Even though there were black tire marks where the driver had crossed the double lines.
Mattie needed to wait for the culprits to come back. When they did, she’d be ready. Patience wasn’t something she had trouble with.
A flutter moved through the cypress trees hanging over the deck. Mattie caught her breath. But it wasn’t an owl. Instead, something blue flashed in the shadows. Mattie unscrewed the Mason jar full of peanuts that was always sitting on the deck rail and balanced one peanut in her palm.
Leaning against the wood, she waited.
Then, swoop, down from the trees, a Steller’s jay landed on the railing. The bright blue bird with a tall crown of feathers cocked its head, giving Mattie the eye. Mattie stared right back and held the peanut perfectly still.
Hop.
The bird bounced closer.
Patient.
Still.
Hop.
It landed right on her fingertips and snatched the peanut up.
The jay zoomed away, and the burst of air from its wings tickled Mattie’s cheeks. The neighborhood birds were smart. By the time the first one had retreated to hide its peanut, three more had perched in the cypress trees. When they looked at Mattie, she could tell they recognized her. But they were still just normal birds. They didn’t drop clues or throw flowerpots.
That owl was different.
Mattie was sure, and she was going to find out why.
The afternoon stretched into evening, and the shadows of trees crept across the parking lot while Mattie watched from the deck. The peanut jar was half empty when she went back inside the trailer.
Were Beanie and Sasha really going to come for the sleepover?
She had everything ready, but she wasn’t so sure about Sasha’s maybe being a yes anymore. Aunt Molly had made the dough for tiny personal pizzas on her afternoon break, which the girls would decorate together with olives and vegetarian pepperonis . . . if Sasha and Beanie came.
Mattie had charged up Aunt Molly’s old phone. She was allowed to use it to play games and listen to audio books, because Aunt Molly had a shiny new one. That old phone couldn’t call anybody. The screen was cracked down the middle, and the battery would barely last an hour. But the phone’s camera could still take pictures and videos—Mattie double-checked. She’d put fresh batteries in her pink flashlight too, and written down everything she could remember about the night before in a little spiral notebook, just like she was a real detective. She’d even transferred the plastic bag of gloop to an old jam jar and put it on her shelf next to the container of pink sand she’d collected at Pfeiffer Beach the summer before.
She was ready for the stakeout.
Even if it was just going to be her.
When the door of the trailer boomed with a series of knocks, bang-bunk-boof, Mattie almost jumped off the couch.
“Coming, Beanie,” Mattie said, leaping for the door.
Mattie flung the door open, and there Beanie was, buried behind two sleeping bags and carrying an overstuffed backpack. She must have used her foot to knock
. Mattie checked the path behind her. “Where’s Sasha?”
Mattie couldn’t understand Beanie’s muffled reply. The sleeping bags were completely covering her mouth.
Mattie giggled and grabbed the bags, tossing them into the trailer. “I said, where’s Sasha?”
“I’m right here, birdbrain,” Sasha said. She walked up the deck steps with her empty arms crossed.
Beanie hustled around Mattie and stretched out face down on the little purple velvet couch, still wearing her overstuffed backpack.
Sasha slid into the trailer like a cat. Mattie was just about to say something about the birdbrain crack—even her patience had limits—when Sasha let this twinkly excited look sneak out of her eyes. So Mattie knew that Sasha had believed her about the whole owl-flowerpot-truck thing. At least a little bit.
“Let’s get this stakeout started,” Sasha said, certain that nothing important could start without her saying so. “I call the couch.”
“Awww,” Beanie groaned. “You always call the couch. I got here first.”
“Don’t worry, Beanie,” Mattie smiled. “You can sleep with me.”
The first part of the sleepover stakeout went perfect. Beanie made a smiley face out of the olives and fake pepperonis on her pizza. Sasha made a perfect grid so that every bite would have just the right amount of tastiness. Mattie kept hers pretty simple. Cheese. Cheese. And more cheese.
Aunt Molly came home on the early side, since it was Martín’s night to lock up. She brought a jumble of donut holes for everybody to share. When it came to Mattie and her friends, Aunt Molly had three rules about donuts: they were for Sunday mornings, birthdays, and sleepovers. Mattie thought donut holes were the happiest kind of donut. Sometimes they were plain, nothing fancy, but it was like they were meant for sleepovers.
Once Aunt Molly went off to her tiny room and closed the curtain, a slimy seriousness settled over the girls. Sort of. There was still plenty of giggling and shining flashlights in each other’s eyes, and Beanie brought out her joke book. But they all took turns at the window. Waiting for that truck to come back. Waiting for that owl to show itself. Waiting for flying flowerpots.
When they got down to the last donut hole, Beanie and Sasha started arguing over who would get it. So Mattie snuck outside and put it on the edge of the flowerbox outside her window.
For the owl.
(It had strawberry icing.)
While Mattie was outside, she saw the donut shop sign flicker off across the parking lot. Martín left through the back door, threw a bag of trash into the dumpster, and drove off in his old blue Civic. Mattie sighed, hoping that Beanie and Sasha were ready to be patient during the long night ahead of them, and slipped back into the trailer.
“Last night it was really late when those people in the truck came,” Mattie told the sisters.
“The gloop truck,” Beanie said, shining a flashlight under her chin and trying to make a scary face.
Sasha pulled her knees closer to her, making a little tent with her sleeping bag. She was still sitting up on the couch, but she already looked tired, red eyed, and annoyed.
“Beanie, read us some jokes to keep us awake,” Mattie suggested, hopping into bed.
Beanie lunged for the dictionary-sized copy of her favorite book and flipped through the pages like an excited puppy.
“There’s a whole section on owl jokes. Ready?”
Beanie didn’t wait for either of the other girls to answer. She barreled into the book using her patented joke voice. “What do you call an owl magician?”
“What?” Mattie asked, even though she knew.
“Whoo-dini,” Sasha said. “Everybody knows that one, Beanie. Find something funny.”
Beanie bounced up on her knees with her hands up. “Okay. Okay . . . Did you hear the one about the owl?”
“No,” Mattie said.
“Yes,” Sasha said, trying to hide her smile.
“It’s a real hoot!” Beanie said the punch line with a little wiggle, and this time even Sasha laughed.
But an hour and a half later, Beanie had made it through all of the owl section, and all of the opossum, porcupine, and peacock sections too. There was no sign of a mysterious truck and definitely no sign of a flowerpot-flinging owl.
Sasha got grouchier and grouchier as the night got longer. She wasn’t the kind of kid who could stay up all night and share jokes.
“See, I told you she was lying,” Sasha said to Beanie. “I’m going to sleep. This stakeout is over. Only regular sleepovers from now on.” She pulled the sleeping bag over her head, rolled onto her side, and clicked off her flashlight.
Mattie stared out her window and across the highway, wishing for something to happen, even though she knew that something could be bad. Beanie gave a sleepy sigh, flipping back to the owl section of her joke book.
“Knock-knock,” she said.
“Who’s there?” whispered Mattie.
“Owls.”
“Owls, who?”
“Why yes they do,” Beanie said a little too loud.
“Beannieeeeeee, knock it off,” Sasha hissed from deep inside her sleeping bag.
“Did you say knock-knock?” Beanie said.
“I mean it, Beanie. Be quiet. That owl isn’t coming.”
Beanie didn’t tell any more jokes. Five minutes later, she was snoring on Mattie’s side of the bed. Mattie leaned her head against her window and clicked off her light. Three cars whooshed past the gloopy bend in the road. One red. Two blue. No white truck. Mattie closed her eyes.
Alfred hopped from foot to foot, digging his claws into the old eagle perch as he watched Mattie fall asleep with her cheek pressed against the window.
Well, really, Alfred thought. The green-eyed girl certainly wasn’t much of a night owl.
He dove in a graceful arc toward the donut shop dumpster. He thought there might be another strawberry donut in its depths and hoped this one wouldn’t have too many sprinkles. But when he landed on the metal lid, he found no clear way to enter the container. The last man to leave the shop had closed everything up too tightly.
There was such a thing, Alfred thought, as a job too well done.
He shivered and took flight, circling above the empty parking lot once more. A dot of pink caught his eye. Alfred swerved and landed rather ungracefully in the flowerbox outside of Mattie’s window.
Among the damp flowers, he discovered the last donut hole.
It had strawberry icing!
Clacking his beak, Alfred gobbled it up. The girl was no night owl, he thought, but she had excellent taste.
Alfred felt the smallest glimmer of guilt. The girl would lose even more sleep after what he was about to do. But hadn’t he been about in broad daylight just that morning? He’d lost hours of rest. And he couldn’t let Mattie drop her guard.
“Whooo-whoo-whoo,” Alfred hooted with his beak directly across from the sleeping girl’s nose. His hooting had the desired effect. It fogged the window nicely, and she opened her green eyes with a start.
Carefully, tottering on one feathery foot, Alfred traced something into the flowerbed with his talon.
Two short, and somewhat crooked, lines.
Mattie rubbed her eyes and stared at the crooked little lines. She pulled Aunt Molly’s old phone from her pajama pocket and took a picture before anything could disturb the dirt.
“Wait there,” she whispered as the owl hopped from the trailer’s window box to the deck railing with its wings outstretched. Before the bird could go any farther, Mattie looked down at the screen of Aunt Molly’s phone.
She frowned. In Mattie’s picture, the owl stood balanced with one foot gripping the wooden edge of the box. Its other foot was a blur of curved talons at the edge of the photo, and the crooked lines in the dirt didn’t show up all that well. Still, even if finding those marks wasn’t the same as catching the gloop truck in the act, she was sure they were another clue.
When she looked back up, the owl took off with a s
ilent swoop toward the cypress trees above the trailer.
Mattie hopped across a sleeping Beanie, landed with a soft thud, and tiptoed to the purple couch. She shook Sasha awake. “The owl’s back,” she whispered. “Come on.”
She snuck to the trailer door, turned the handle slow so it wouldn’t creak, and slipped out onto the deck. The frogs were going wild down in the river, and crickets chirped from the bushes. Mattie didn’t hear any hooting.
Sasha crept out onto the deck with a pretty irritated look on her face. “So, where is it?”
Mattie put her finger to her lips, so Sasha would whisper.
She craned her neck, checking the cypress trees that leaned over the deck. But she didn’t see the owl.
“I think it’s gone,” she said. “But it left another clue, and look! It ate the donut hole I left in the window box.”
“Clue?” Sasha said, with a gravely half-asleep voice. “What clue?”
“It hooted right against the window and then it drew these two lines in the flowerbox dirt,” Mattie said, pointing.
Sasha didn’t look so convinced about those two lines.
And without the owl in the window box, the marks did kind of just look like . . . dirt.
Before Mattie could show Sasha the blurry picture she’d taken, Sasha was back in the trailer, stuffing her sleeping bag into its sack and muttering about everybody keeping her awake for nothing.
“I’m going home. I can’t sleep here. This is stupid.”
Sasha clicked on her flashlight, left the trailer for the last time, and stomped down the steps. Mattie was sure her friend’s cranky footsteps would wake Aunt Molly, but they didn’t.
Mattie wanted to shout at Sasha to come back and stay, shout about her proof, but that would mean waking Aunt Molly up for sure. Sasha’s light bounced off the trees nearby, and Mattie heard the frogs go quiet as Sasha sloshed through the river. She sighed, hoping that Sasha would calm down on her own. She usually did. Mattie could show her the picture in the morning.
She tiptoed over to the window box. The donut really was gone, and when she studied the dirt with her flashlight, she found a few perfect talon prints in the potting soil around the two crooked lines. Beanie was still snoring, sprawled sideways in Mattie’s bed. Mattie tapped on the window from the outside, and Beanie woke with a snort, looking one-hundred-percent awake.
