by Eliza Teoh
“What a brave mouse you are!” Ellie said. “What does your family eat?
“Er… we like plants and seeds. But we also like the crumbs you children leave everywhere!”
“How about this?” Ellie said, fishing out a carrot stick from her lunch box. Ellie’s mother loved giving Ellie healthy snacks, not knowing that Ellie always gave them away to her friends.
“Yummy!” the mouse said, snatching it up in its paws and gnawing at one end.
“Good! I have many of them. Should we take them to your family now?” Ellie said.
“Yes!” the mouse said, still munching away.
“Let’s go, then!” Ellie said.
Chapter 5
Ellie and Cammy ran to the indoor sports hall. The entry to the hall was wide open, but there was a rope that ran across the opening. On the rope was pasted a sign that read: Do not enter.
“What do we do now?” Ellie asked. She remembered all the times she had gotten into trouble and really didn’t want to get into trouble again.
“I don’t know,” Cammy said, hesitating.
The mouse, who was sitting in Cammy’s pocket, poked his head out.
“I can hear them! I’m here, Mama!
I’m here, Papa! I brought Ellie Belly! And Cammy!”
From deep inside the hall, Ellie heard a chorus of squeaky voices.
“Yay!”
“I knew she would come!”
“We are saved!”
“Ellie Belly is here!”
Ellie looked at Cammy. “They are calling me!”
Cammy peeked inside the hall. She looked around her. “There’s no one around. Why don’t you go in? I will stand guard here.”
Ellie hesitated for one second, then ducked under the rope and went into the big new hall. It smelt very strongly of fresh paint.
“Hey, what about me?” the little mouse said.
Cammy took the mouse out of her pocket and placed him on the floor. He scampered after Ellie.
Ellie followed the sound of the mousey voices until she reached the opposite end of the hall. She knelt down by a hole in the wall.
“Hey, it’s me, Ellie Belly! Are you all okay?” Ellie called down the hole.
“Hello, Ellie!” came a voice. “We are hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”
“Yes! I’m going to push some carrot sticks into the hole. Watch out for them!” Ellie gleefully pulled out the carrot sticks from her lunchbox – all eight of them – and pushed them one by one down the hole.
After a few seconds, she heard rustling sounds. Then munching.
“Yummy!” said a mouse. “We’ve met before, you know!”
“We’ve met before?” Ellie asked. Then, remembering the four mice that had helped her deal with the mean and horrible Mrs Batt, she said, “Are you one of the four mice that crawled up Mrs Batt’s leg?”
“Ha ha ha! Yes, yes! That was me! We are all here! Are you going to help us out now?” the mouse asked.
“Of course I will help! But what should I do now? How am I going to get you out?” Ellie said. She glanced nervously back towards the entrance of the hall. Cammy was still there, keeping a lookout.
“Can you find a stick or something? Something long that we can climb on?” said a voice.
“That’s Papa,” the little mouse told Ellie. “Hello, Papa! I did it! I found Ellie!”
“Good job, Henry,” Papa said.
“Henry? Your name is Henry?” Ellie said, giggling. “That’s not a very mousey name.”
From inside the hole came younger-sounding mousey voices. “Henry, Henry! We are coming up too!”
Then, much to Ellie’s surprise, out popped one baby mouse after another, squeezing out from the end of a tiny pipe that stuck out of the hole.
“Hetty! Hoppy! Harry! Higgie! Hipster!” Henry squeaked as they appeared.
“We decided to come out!” Hoppy said. Or maybe it was Higgie, Ellie couldn’t tell. They all looked the same. And they were all so cute!
“Ellie,” Papa mouse called out. “Can you find something for us to climb out on?”
Ellie looked around. There was a pile of poles nearby, next to some giant tins of paint. She ran over and tried to lift one up. It was too heavy. She tugged and pulled. The six baby mice tugged and pulled with her. It didn’t budge.
What else could she use? Ellie looked desperately around the hall. It was empty! The workers cleaning up the hall had done a really good job. There was nothing she could use. She ran back to the hole, six baby mice trailing behind her.
“Papa mouse, I can’t find anything! Can I come back later?” Ellie asked.
“It’s okay, Ellie. We are safe here. And we are not hungry anymore. You can come back tomorrow,” Papa mouse said.
“What about your babies?” Ellie said, looking at the six baby mice. “Should I send them back down to you?”
“No! Noooo!” squeaked Hetty.
“It’s dark and smelly down there,” said Hoppy.
“I don’t want to go back down!” said Harry.
“Can we stay with Ellie, please?” said Higgie.
“Please?” said Hipster.
“Please?” repeated Henry. “Ellie can take care of us!”
From down the hole, Ellie heard a very loud and very mousey sigh. “Ellie, do you think you can take care of them?”
“Of course I can,” Ellie said, already imagining herself playing with the six mice.
“Okay, then. Behave yourselves!” Papa mouse called out.
“We will!” the mice replied. “Bye, Papa. Bye, Mama! See you soon!”
From the entrance of the hall, Cammy hissed urgently. “Psst! Psst! Ellie! Hurry up! Someone is coming!”
Oh no! What to do? What to do? How was she going to carry all six mice?
“Ellie! Hide!” Cammy called softly.
In her panic, Ellie picked up one baby mouse after another and stuffed them all into her messy hair. She ran over to Cammy, who was flattening herself against the wall, just inside the entrance of the hall. Ellie copied her and flattened herself against the wall too. They waited until the footsteps passed. Cammy peeped out.
“It’s only the cleaning lady,” Cammy said. “Phew! I thought it was Miss Lau!”
The bell rang. They had to get back to class!
“Let’s go!” Cammy said, grabbing Ellie’s hand as they ran. “What happened in there anyway? Are the mice okay? Where is the baby mouse?”
“Here we are!” The baby mice — all six of them — stuck their little heads out of Ellie’s hair.
“Argh! Oh my goodness!” Cammy cried out. “There are six mice in your hair!”
“Yup,” Ellie said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “There are six mice in my hair.”
Chapter 6
As the day progressed, Ellie realised something. One mouse in your hair was okay. Six mice in your hair was not okay. They felt heavy and their little paws kept digging into her head. She reached out to scratch her head for the hundredth time. She was feeling itchy all over and the heat wasn’t helping one bit. She was thankful it was the last period of the day.
“Mrs Goh, Ellie’s blocking my view. Can you tell her to stop scratching?” Megan said.
Mrs Goh stopped writing the Math problem on the whiteboard and turned around. She saw Ellie squirming at her desk looking uncomfortable. She was scratching her head.
“Are you okay, Ellie?” Mrs Goh asked.
“Yes, Mrs Goh. I’m feeling so hot,” Ellie said. She stopped scratching.
“Yes, we are all feeling hot today,” Mrs Goh said. “Let’s try to bear with it, okay? School is almost over.”
“Maybe she has head lice,” Megan suggested helpfully. “My brother had head lice last year and they made his head very itchy too.”
Ellie turned around to glare at Megan. “I do not have headlights.”
“Not headlights, dummy. Head lice,” Megan said. “Ellie has head lice!”
“Megan, do not use
the word dummy! That’s not nice,” Mrs Goh said.
“Okay, sorry. But she has head lice. I am sure of it. You should check,” Megan said.
“No!” Ellie said, alarmed. Mrs Goh would find the mice in her hair. What would she do if she found out?
Mrs Goh looked worried. Head lice in her class? That would be a very big problem! They would have to disinfect the whole classroom and every girl would have to be checked! She remembered the last case of head lice two years ago. She had had to use a fine-toothed comb to look through every girl’s hair. She shuddered at the thought. She took a step towards Ellie.
Cammy, in a desperate attempt to distract Mrs Goh, blurted out, “What are head lice, Mrs Goh?”
“Hmm? What? Head lice? They are insects that can live in your hair and make you itch,” she explained. Then, ever on the lookout for the chance to teach the girls something, she added, “Did you know that the singular of lice is louse?”
“Louse!” Cammy said. “So, one louse, many lice?”
“Excellent! That’s right, Cammy!” Mrs Goh replied, pleased. Even though it was Math period, there was no harm giving the girls some extra English tips.
“Like one mouse, many mice?” Ellie said. She realised what Cammy had been trying to do. And now, she was joining in to distract Mrs Goh. Hopefully, their teacher would forget all about checking her head.
“Yes, excellent example, Ellie,” Mrs Goh said, smiling.
To Ellie’s dismay, Mrs Goh’s smile faded when she looked at Ellie. Oops! She was scratching again! The mice seemed to be having a party in her hair and it was driving her crazy. Her stomach did a little flip of anxiety when Mrs Goh started walking towards her.
“Mrs Goh,” Cammy said again, coming to the rescue. “So, if the plural of mouse is mice, then the plural of house must be hice!”
The class giggled.
“And the plural of blouse is blice?” Ariel said from the back of the class.
“Those blice are nice!” Sophie joined in.
The class burst out laughing.
“No, no! That’s not right!” Mrs Goh said. What was wrong with 1J today? Maybe the heat was driving them all crazy! “The blice are not nice! I mean the blouses. Blouses! Not blice!”
Mrs Goh sighed. The bell rang. Just in time! I am so glad this day is over, she thought. I’ve never had such a crazy day in my life!
“Class dismissed! I will email all your parents today and tell them to check your hair for lice. Just in case,” Mrs Goh said.
Ellie and Cammy ran to their school bus and flopped into their seats. They were thankful for the air-conditioning.
“So, what’s the plan?” Cammy asked Ellie.
“We have to make something that they can use to climb out. But it must be small enough to fit into the hole. Can you think of something?”
“Maybe a rope ladder?” Cammy suggested.
“Can you make one?”
“Okay, I will try.”
“I will try to think of something else,” Ellie said.
And from the top of her head came six tiny voices, “Yay!”
Chapter 7
The minute she got home, Ellie dashed into her room. She was desperate to get the mice out of her hair. She slammed the door shut, ignoring Snowy, her pet dog.
Snowy sat outside her door, puzzling over why Ellie didn’t pat his head or scratch his ears today. Also, what was that smell? It was the smell of small animals! He whimpered and scratched at the door.
“Wait, Snowy!” Ellie yelled.
From her hair came voices.
“Who’s Snowy?”
“What’s a Snowy?”
“Where are we?”
“I’m hungry!”
“Shhh!” Ellie whispered. “I can’t think!”
What was she going to do with the mice? She spotted a shoebox under her bed. She opened it and poured out all the little plastic toys inside, making a huge mess on the floor.
“How about this?” Ellie showed the mice. “Can this be your bed?”
“Yes!” said Henry, poking his head out.
“No! Why can’t we sleep on the real bed?” Hipster said, pointing at Ellie’s bed.
“’Cos that’s my bed, that’s why. I might squash you.”
“Stop being so fussy,” Henry scolded Hipster.
Ellie tried to look up. It felt funny to be able to hear a conversation taking place on her head.
“Look, I will put some dolls’ clothes inside so it will be nice and comfortable, okay?” Ellie said.
Suddenly, Gabby barged into the room and Ellie felt all the mice shrink back into her hair in fear.
“What is that?” Henry asked, shivering.
“M-m-m-monster!” Hetty wailed.
“It’s a human,” Harry said.
Ellie stood very still, trying her best not to reach up and scratch her head.
“Who are you talking to?” Gabby asked, hands on her hips.
“Nobody,” Ellie said.
“Only crazy people talk to themselves,” Gabby said.
“So?”
“So you must be crazy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“YES, you are!”
“If I’m crazy, you are crazier, because you are my sister,” Ellie said, much to Gabby’s irritation.
“Argh. I don’t even know why I bother talking to you,” Gabby said huffily. She spotted the toys scattered all over the floor and the shoebox in Ellie’s hands.
“What are you up to now?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. This had better not be another one of Ellie Belly’s crazy ideas. Her younger sister seemed to be getting crazier by the day.
Last month, Ellie did something that was really quite strange even by Ellie’s standards. Mama had just come home from delivering flowers to one of her regular customers when she happened to look up. The living room ceiling had little multicoloured lumps stuck on it. What on earth?
“Ellie and Gabby! Come here now!” Mama hollered in her I-am-not-messing-around voice.
They both rushed out of their rooms.
“Who did this?” Mama said, pointing up.
Ellie giggled. “Oh, that,” she said. “Nice?”
Gabby just stared open-mouthed at the ceiling. There must have been about 30 little colourful lumps up there. Stuck on the ceiling.
“I should have known it was you. What on earth is that??” Mama asked.
“Play-Doh!” Ellie replied in her usual I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-know tone. “Duh.”
“Don’t you dare ‘duh’ me. Don’t be rude,” Mama said. Then, dreading the answer, she added, “Why, Ellie, why?”
Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see if the Play-Doh would stick on the ceiling.”
“How did you get it up there?”
“I rolled little balls and flung them as hard as I could!” Ellie said excitedly, swinging her arms around wildly to show her mother.
Mama put her palm to her forehead and sighed.
“And after the first one stuck, why did you do it again and again?”
“Er… because it was fun?” Ellie said sheepishly.
“Can you tell me how to get it off?”
“Oh oh,” Ellie said. “I didn’t think about that.”
“You never do, do you?” Mama said, sighing again. “Now, I will have to deal with it.”
The thing was, Mama never found the time to deal with it, and the bits of multicoloured Play-Doh remained stuck to the living room ceiling.
Then, two weeks ago, their parents had taken them for a sumptuous dinner at a nice Italian restaurant and Ellie had surprised everyone by opening her bag and shouting, “Look!”
They looked, then gasped in shock. It was Taffy! What was their little brown rabbit doing in Ellie’s bag? In a restaurant! Their mother quickly rushed over to Ellie’s seat, grabbed her bag, and gently stuffed Taffy back inside.
“Is everything alright?” the snooty head waiter asked, noticing the commotion at the tab
le.
“Er-er-erm. Y-yes. Everything is f-f-fine,” their father stammered in embarrassment. Thankfully, no one else noticed, and Taffy seemed quite happy to curl up at the bottom of Ellie’s bag for the rest of the meal.
So, when Gabby saw Ellie with a shoebox in her hand and a strange excited look in her eyes, she felt that it was her responsibility to find out just what Ellie was up to this time.
Chapter 8
Gabby marched over to Ellie. Even though she was only four years older than her sister, Gabby sometimes felt like Ellie’s babysitter!
“Give me that box,” Gabby said, pointing at the shoebox in Ellie’s hand.
“Here,” Ellie said. She chucked it at Gabby. “There’s nothing inside. I’m not doing anything! REALLY!”
Gabby carefully inspected the box. It was empty. The mice were still cowering away in Ellie’s hair.
“Fine! But I’m watching you, so you’d better not try anything funny!” she said. She stomped out of the room.
Ellie ran to close the door. “Quick,” she whispered urgently to the mice. “Into the box now!”
One by one, the little mice hopped onto Ellie’s shoulders, down her arm and into the shoebox.
“Whee!” said Higgie, sliding down Ellie’s arm.
“That was close!” said Hetty
“She is scary!” said Hoppy.
“So scary,” repeated Harry.
“What’s for lunch?” asked Hipster.
“Stop being greedy!” scolded Henry. He was the last to settle inside the box. To Ellie, he said, “Thank you, Ellie. We are safe and comfortable. You can leave us here.”
“Okay, but I need to hide you somewhere.” Ellie looked around the room. Where could she hide the box? Somewhere where Gabby would never think to look. “I know! My underwear drawer!”
She rushed to her wardrobe, opened the door and slid open her underwear drawer. She pulled out all her underwear and stuffed the box right at the back of the drawer. She was careful to leave the shoebox cover slightly open, so that the mice could breathe.
“Is that alright?” she asked as she put all her underwear back into the drawer, stuffing them around the box.
