Owl's Outstanding Donuts

by Robin Yardi

  She decided on a Cardamom Classic.

  And she quietly added the man to the list of people she would bring a donut to if he could help save the shop. Janelle would get a cruller. The photography man would get the green donut with mysterious, delicate spices. She hoped she was right. She hoped he was able to help.

  “I think this may call for matte paper then, ducklings. Come back in precisely one hour.” He wobbled his eyebrows at Sasha, who made a sort of soft snorting sound, an almost-laugh, but kept her arms crossed.

  “Thank you, sir!” Mattie said. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

  The girls tumbled out of the jingly door again.

  “Why’d he call us ducklings?” Beanie asked, all confused.

  Mattie shrugged. “I think because he’s old.”

  “I think because he’s creepy,” Sasha said.

  “Well, creepy or not, he’s our only hope. Quick—we’ve got to send a picture from the aquarium before we lose any more time. Otherwise your mom will get suspicious.”

  The sisters ran after Mattie, down the pretty streets, all the way to Cannery Row. They tugged Beanie past candy shops, loud restaurants, and packed T-shirt stores until they bumped into the end of the line for the aquarium.

  Mattie slipped the four-person pass into the hand of the attendant just a whisper of a second after the woman ahead of them handed over her ticket. The skinny teenage boy punched a hole in their pass and handed them a map. He didn’t even look at them. Or count.

  A family of impatient boys pushed them from behind.

  And the girls were inside!

  The great blue hall echoed with excited shouts and crying babies. An orca whale statue hung from the ceiling above them, quiet and massive. It sucked in all the extra noise. Beanie pointed and hopped.

  “Jelly-fish, jelly-fish!” she chanted. Mattie and Sasha grinned, each grabbing one of Beanie’s hands.

  Mattie didn’t need the map.

  She knew the way to the jellyfish. She knew the way to everything.

  Mattie hustled the girls up the escalator and into the jellyfish exhibit. They took selfies and slow-motion videos of the ghostly jellies to send to Mrs. Little. But those pictures made Mattie more nervous about the disposable camera. She was counting on there being something important in the photos Sasha snapped. She’d decided to believe and not to worry, but that was a hard thing to really do.

  What if? Those words bubbled up in Mattie’s brain every time she stared into the dark water of a tank for too long. What if those pictures don’t help?

  She looked into the eye of an octopus, its skin shifting from white to red. What if Aunt Molly can’t reopen the shop? The octopus crept toward the upper corner of its tank. What if Aunt Molly has to sell the shop to pay to clean the ditch? The octopus closed its eye.

  What if.

  Mattie tried to have fun. Told herself that the strange old man with bushy owl eyebrows would help, just like Alfred had. He was developing the pictures right then. She closed her eyes for a second, trying to believe that everything would be okay. Watching Beanie bouncing and pointing at everything made it seem easy. But it wasn’t.

  They went to the touch tank next, to hold all the sea stars and let the gooey sea cucumbers mush through their hands. They stood in the glass tunnel while the wave machine crashed over them. Shhhhh . . . whoosh! The thud of the water matched Mattie’s nervous heart. Mattie could tell that even Sasha was impressed with the aquarium, though Sasha tried not to show it.

  So Mattie knew where she wanted to take them next.

  Even Sasha wouldn’t be able to pretend not to love it.

  They didn’t have as much time as she’d thought, because of their mess-up at the drugstore. They’d need to hurry. But no way could they miss it.

  Beanie and Sasha trailed behind Mattie through the long hallway that opened into a huge dark room. So dark it could have been nighttime. The blue wall in front of them wasn’t the sky, but it felt almost as big. It twinkled with schools of fish that shimmered in and out of sight. It was empty. Then . . . it wasn’t. A giant stingray swirled past. People whispered and gasped.

  When the stingray was gone, a hammerhead shark appeared, a gray smudge becoming slowly sharper.

  Mattie led the girls closer and closer to the glass wall.

  Beanie squealed.

  Sasha’s mouth flopped open. “Whoa.”

  Sometimes little kids would get scared at the open ocean exhibit, but Mattie had never felt that way. Not before. This spot in the aquarium had always been Mattie’s favorite. Her mom’s too. When Mattie pressed her nose against the glass, the exhibit seemed to have no edges. No bottom or top. It was all empty blueberry-colored water one second and a swirling kaleidoscope of fish the next. You never knew.

  Mattie looked behind her, into the carpeted bleachers that lined the room. She couldn’t see the faces of the adults all lined up there in the dark.

  Mom used to sit in the back of the exhibit and work, reading briefs on her phone or answering emails. She would let Mattie watch the open ocean exhibit as long as she wanted. Then, sometimes, Mom would walk over and whisper silly things in Mattie’s ear.

  They had giggled.

  Mattie turned away from the shadowy parents dotting the benches. Beanie and Sasha’s skin looked blue in front of all that glass. Their eyes were bugged out and happy-excited. Mattie smiled and leaned close when a green sea turtle flapped toward them. She pressed her ear to the glass, like she was listening for something.

  Beanie put her ear to the glass too.

  “What are you doing?” Sasha said, laughing.

  “Me and Mom used to hear the sea turtle say things,” Mattie said. “You just have to listen. It’s like a hundred years old and it can talk.” This wasn’t exactly true, but it was a story her Mom had liked to tell.

  “Really?” Beanie squeaked.

  “Shhhhh . . .” Mattie said, closing her eyes.

  “Come on, Beanie,” Sasha said. “Mattie’s just telling a story.”

  “But what about the owl?” Beanie asked. “That’s real, right?”

  “That’s just . . . I don’t know. That’s just different.”

  Beanie looked from Sasha to Mattie, like she was trying to decide who to believe, like it was a tough call. And this time, it really was.

  So Beanie scrunched her eyes closed and pushed her ear as close to the glass as she could, listening for the turtle.

  Mattie knew the sea turtle thing was just a story. She’d listened with her ear pressed against that glass for hours and never even heard a whisper. But now she felt like she could hear Mom—the whispering and the giggling. So it wasn’t hard to keep her eyes closed and believe.

  That believing wasn’t real, but it was true. It was like a good dream with Mom in it. She didn’t want to wake up or open her eyes. She’d been so afraid of riding back to Monterey, because she knew Mom wouldn’t be there waiting for her like before. But here Mom was. In the dark. In the background. In the blue water at the edges of Mattie’s mind.

  And all her what-ifs went quiet and believing felt easier. If the photos didn’t help, if Aunt Molly did have to sell the donut shop, Mattie thought they’d still be okay. Somehow. They’d figure it out.

  Mattie didn’t know how to explain it, but it was something she just understood.

  Her eyes flicked open. The sea turtle floated closer, coming straight toward Mattie.

  Sasha rolled her eyes, waiting for Mattie and Beanie to finish up.

  And she waited a little longer.

  And then she leaned forward and put her ear against the glass too. Just for a second.

  Mattie smiled. Her hands left hot prints on the cool glass. She saw that, for the tiniest crumb of a second, both Sasha and Beanie closed their eyes.

  For the tiniest second, Sasha believed too.

  Beanie leaned back first. “I think I heard it!”

  Mattie laughed and stepped back from the glass, looking for a bench nearby. She caught si
ght of the clock on some mom’s phone. And her heart whooshed. “Come on! The pictures will be ready.”

  The sea turtle turned away, its outline blurring, but Mattie didn’t wait for it to disappear.

  “I really heard it, swear!” Beanie said, nodding a bazillion times.

  “Me too,” Mattie said, tugging at Beanie’s hand. “It was wishing us luck!”

  Sasha huffed, but she followed Mattie down the dark hall toward the entrance, and she didn’t call Mattie a liar.

  Not this time.

  The Tart Turnover

  A flaky sugar-crusted pastry stuffed with tart crystalized lemon and chunky apples

  Just after three o’clock, with around an hour left before the girls needed to board the bus back to Big Sur, the three of them bunched up in front of the photography shop door. Mattie took a deep breath, ready for whatever the pictures had in them. But Sasha tapped the glass pointing at the closed sign. It said Sunday: 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

  “No way,” Mattie said, pressing her nose to the glass. “This can’t be happening.”

  “Sea turtles can talk, but this can’t be happening. Okay. Sure.”

  Sasha rolled her eyes, but it was a show.

  She was just as worried as Mattie.

  “That guy wouldn’t leave—he knew we were coming back,” Mattie said, certain it was true. Peering into the dark shop, Mattie saw the old man with bushy eyebrows perched at his counter, nose in his book again.

  She tap-tap-tapped on the door, and he turned his head, set down his book, and waved the girls in. Mattie pushed at the door.

  The bells jingled.

  It was open—he’d been waiting for them.

  The man put the back of his hand against his waist and waggled his bushy eyebrows at them. “You, young ladies, are late.”

  Mattie smiled. “Sorry. We were at the aquarium and lost track of time.”

  The man waved his hand toward the counter. “Your photographs are, of course, finished. They’ll be $14.49. With tax.”

  Mattie led the way to the counter. Sasha, still somewhat uncertain, pulled eleven one-dollar bills and fourteen quarters from her jacket pocket. When Beanie saw all the money, her eyes went big. “Do we have enough for more jelly beans?” she asked.

  The man’s eyebrows quivered again. “This is not the kind of establishment that specializes in sundries, odds, or ends.”

  “Beanie, knock it off,” Sasha said, pushing the money forward.

  The man sighed and sorted through Sasha’s hard-earned allowance. Mattie peeked at Sasha, who let the tiniest smile flicker at the side of her mouth before she turned back to face the stuffy cashier.

  The register shuddered and spit out a small receipt. The man slid an envelope across the counter and pointed to the door. “I’m afraid we’ve been officially closed for”—he checked his simple silver wristwatch—“seven minutes.”

  “Thanks for not locking the door,” Mattie said, grabbing the envelope.

  She pressed it against her chest and sped out to the sidewalk. As soon as the door jingled shut behind them, Mattie heard the lock click. Right there, in the middle of the sidewalk with her heart thumping, Mattie pulled the photos from the envelope, one at a time.

  The first was black as a hunk of beach tar. Nothing.

  The second showed the fuzzy outline of a white truck in the darkness and two shapes that Mattie guessed were the gloopers. But the gloopers were fuzzy too. Both pictures were useless.

  “Come on,” Sasha said. “Look at the last one.” She prodded Mattie in the side. “I took three pictures.”

  Mattie pulled out the last photograph.

  A line of reflectors glinted in the foreground. The highway was shiny and black. The gloopers were blurs again, but the white truck and the drippy hose were in perfect focus. Mattie could even read the numbers on the license plate. Her heart sped up.

  “5-2-1-5-1-9-N,” Mattie said, tracing the photograph with her finger. “We got the license plate! This is it. This is proof. We can catch those gloopers. We can show this to Deputy Nuñez.”

  She felt like she was swimming in the ocean and a swell had just lifted her up.

  Then she saw something else. Something familiar. Something Mattie hadn’t noticed during the gloop attack. There was an emblem on the door of the truck. A logo. And she recognized it.

  “You guys.”

  Mattie pointed.

  Sasha looked closer.

  Beanie wobbled on her tiptoes to see.

  The logo on the side of the gloop truck had a big swirling capital A on it. She couldn’t read the rest of the letters, but she knew what they said: Ace’s Excellent Donuts. Mattie looked down both sides of the street, squinting.

  “That gloop was from a donut shop, but not Aunt Molly’s. I know where it is. I remember it. It’s that way. Come on!”

  Mattie stubbed the toe of her sneaker on a sidewalk crack, caught her balance, and hustled down the block, tugging at the edge of Sasha’s jacket.

  Two blocks later, the three girls slowed down.

  The same logo was hanging above a little storefront. It was a donut shop for sure. Mattie could see the display case from across the street.

  The girls grabbed hands, looked both ways, and zipped across the street. They peeked into the window, all in a line. The display case was smudged and mostly empty, but a few of the day’s donuts were still lined up. The shop lights were off.

  Closed.

  Sasha poked at a flyer in the window. “Look. They’ve got turkey talons.” But Ace’s called them Otter Paws. The flyer had a picture of a sea otter floating in the bay next to a bear claw.

  Mattie glared at the flyer. “Rip-offs.”

  “Are they good?” Beanie asked. “I’m hungry.”

  “I don’t know,” Mattie said. “Mom never let us get donuts here. She said . . . I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Did she say that the owners were stupid criminals who deserved to go to jail and pay a bunch of fines? Because that would be a good reason not to buy their donuts,” Sasha said, crossing her arms.

  Mattie didn’t answer, even though she agreed.

  She walked down the sidewalk and poked her head into the alleyway at the edge of the shop. Over the sharp, salty smell of the bay, a tinge of garbage wafted out of a big brown dumpster. The afternoon was still warm and bright, but Mattie shivered.

  At the end of the alley, a truck was parked halfway into an open garage.

  A white truck.

  The girls crept forward, hugging the side of the dirty wall and skirting the dumpster. They peeked around the edge of the building. The numbers on the license plate matched Sasha’s photograph. The small garage was filled with teetering cardboard boxes. Through the cluttered mess, Mattie could see a silver door with the Ace’s logo. “This is it,” she whispered. “It’s the gloop truck.”

  “Come on, Matt,” Sasha said, tugging at her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Just then, the silver back door of Ace’s Excellent Donuts clanged open. The girls scurried behind the dumpster. A door on the truck opened and closed a moment later, and the engine coughed itself alive. The truck backed into the alley and shuddered away, toward the street on the opposite end. When it stopped, Mattie saw the driver reach up toward the driver’s-side visor and push something.

  The garage door chug-chug-chugged to life, moving downward.

  “Quick, they’re gone,” Mattie said, already heading for the garage.

  “Mattie?” Sasha whispered. “What are you . . .”

  Mattie ducked under the closing door. It squealed, and so did Sasha, who grabbed Beanie’s hand, tugging her sister into the garage. Two seconds later, the huge door slammed against the concrete floor.

  “Come on,” Mattie said, slipping around a stack of boxes. She paused to twist the handle of the silver back door. It wasn’t locked. With her shoulder pushing at the door, she slipped into the dark donut shop. Sasha huffed and then dragged Beanie in with her before the door clang
ed shut again.

  The girls found themselves in a long hallway lined with three more doors. There must have been one for the kitchen, probably a supply closet, and maybe an office. At the end of the hallway, the front windows of the shop let in a dim stream of late afternoon light. The small white tiles on the floor were dusty, with streaks of black grease. The lights hanging from the ceiling didn’t have covers on them. The whole place smelled slightly of rats, a smell that Mattie knew because a family of rodents had once lived in her old hideout under the trailer deck.

  “What a dump,” Mattie muttered under her breath.

  “Mattie,” whispered Sasha. “We’ve got to get out of here. We don’t need any more evidence.”

  “When we go to the sheriff’s department, I have to be able to convince the deputies. That means more than just a picture in the dark. What if that truck only belongs to one of the gloopers? We need to bust them both. If I can find a picture of their faces, we could use that too. Besides, that slob’s not coming back. I just . . . I just need to look around.”

  What Mattie needed was to understand.

  Why would Ace’s Excellent Donuts be dumping cooking oil into a ditch thirty miles down the road? Mattie knew she wouldn’t find answers in the shop’s display case, but there would have to be an office or a file cabinet somewhere.

  She opened a door.

  Cleaning supplies. Cleaning supplies that probably hadn’t ever been opened.

  Mattie opened the hall’s next door and peeked in. Sasha and Beanie bumped up behind her. Inside there was a bulky desk covered in unopened mail and crumpled food wrappers. Empty coffee cups and a beat-up radio. An old leather armchair slumped behind the desk, and two folding chairs were arranged in front. Mattie wondered who on Earth would sit in them. A tall filing cabinet stood in the corner. Piles of old magazines littered the floor. But the room had no picture frames on the desk or up on its walls.

  Mattie slid a file cabinet drawer open as quietly as she could.

  She flip-flapped through folders and papers, not sure if anybody would keep photos in a file cabinet, but maybe she could find something else incriminating.