Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat (6 page)

E
MMY OPENED HER BACKPACK
behind the hedge. “Climb out—I'm going to be late for school.”

“Is it safe?” The Rat peered up, squinting in the sudden light. “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that—”

“
Meow?
” A furry golden head pushed past Emmy's arm to peer into the backpack. The Rat tumbled over in a dead faint.

“Oh, great, Muffy.” Emmy pushed the cat away with an impatient hand. “Scare him to death, why don't you?”

The cat looked smug.

“Well, I'll have to take him to school now,” said Emmy. “No thanks to you.” She hoisted the pack and took off at a run. She slid into her seat just as the last bell rang, undid the top flap of her backpack, and risked a whisper.

“Rat!”

No answer.

Worried, Emmy got a bathroom pass and took her backpack with her. “Ratty? Speak to me!”

The Rat moaned from the depths of the pack. “Did you have to run the whole way?”

“Oh, Rat, I'm sorry—”

He put a paw to his head. “I felt like cement in a mixer. And my heart is still racing from that … that …
what
did you call that cat?”

“Muffy,” Emmy said miserably.

“Muffy?” the Rat repeated in tones of disbelief. “Not
Fang
? Not
Assassin
?” He shook his head and looked around. “What is this place?”

“The girls' bathroom,” Emmy said. “At school.”

“
School?
” the Rat shrieked. “You take me back to my
prison
?”

“Listen. You can take a nap”—Emmy looked around for inspiration—“in a soft nest,” she finished, crumpling some toilet paper in the bottom of her backpack. “I'll drop in something to eat at lunchtime. Come on, get in.”

The Rat looked sourly at her. “I'm hungry now. Is your lunch in that sack?”

“You can have it. Have anything you want. Just
hurry.
”

The Rat poked his nose into the lunch bag. “Hmm, this looks interesting.” He took a bite, chewed, and stopped, looking distressed. “Great rat droppings, what
is
this slop?”

“Tofu muffin. Sorry. It wasn't my idea.”

“No peanut-butter cups?”

Emmy put her hand in her pocket and hesitated. “First promise me that you'll stay in my backpack all day.”

“Scout's honor,” the Rat said, holding up a paw.

Emmy looked at him. “You're not a Scout.”

“As good as,” the Rat said. “They held Scout meetings in that classroom every week after school for as long as I can remember. I can tie all the knots—”

“All right,” said Emmy, cutting him short. “Get in.”

“Where's my peanut-butter cup?”

Emmy handed one in. “Don't make any noise,” she warned, but the Rat was too busy chewing to answer.

 

Emmy pushed back hot bangs from her sweaty forehead. A smell of cut grass drifted in as a lawn mower droned outside, and Mr. Herbifore looked warm and bored as he lectured on the exports of Asia. The class listened with glazed eyes, half asleep.

Emmy, however, was wide awake. She had to be, to cover up the noise the Rat was making.

There he went, rustling again! Emmy faked a cough, wondering for the seventeenth time why the Rat couldn't just lie still. Weren't rodents supposed to be nocturnal? Why couldn't this one sleep all day?

Emmy tried not to look at the Rat's empty cage. No one had seemed to notice that he was missing, but it was only a matter of time, and the knowledge gave her a horrible sense of impending doom.

A noise of slamming books and banging desktops gave Emmy the cover she needed. She bent over her backpack as if to take out the assignment that Mr. Herbifore had just called for.

“Will you
please
be quiet?” she hissed.

The Rat turned a despairing face upward. “But I'm so hot,” he quavered. “I'm
baking
in here, and no one
cares.
”

“We're all hot,” said Emmy impatiently, “but you're the only one I hear moaning. And what was that ripping sound?”

The Rat waved a pleated bit of white paper. “I only made a fan.”

Emmy felt exasperated. “Out of my homework?”

Two large brown shoes came into view and stopped beside Emmy's desk. “Your poetry assignment?”

“Um …” Emmy didn't look up at Mr. Herbifore as she pulled a sheet of lined paper from her backpack. At the top, neatly written, was her name. A jagged edge was all that was left of the lower right corner.

Mr. Herbifore looked critically at the paper as a shadow passed by the window. Emmy glanced out, half seeing a small, stooped figure duck behind the lilac bushes. Had the school hired a new gardener?

“This is hardly acceptable,” said the teacher. “What's your excuse? The cat chewed it?”

Emmy felt like strangling the Rat.

“Stay after school and copy it over. Five points off for messiness.”

“Thanks a lot,” Emmy whispered bitterly into her backpack when it was safe.

“Would you rather I died of heatstroke?” The Rat sniffed. “At least in my cage I had a water dish and the breeze from the window.”

“Fine,” said Emmy. “I'll put you back in. You've been nothing but trouble ever since I set you free.”

Ignoring the Rat's sudden look of dismay, she set the pack on the floor but relented enough to open the top flap a crack. She glanced up—and caught Joe staring at the backpack with unusual interest.

“… And so poetry is an expression of one's deeper emotions,” the teacher intoned, still shuffling through the papers he had collected. “I'll read a few aloud, and let's see if we can discover what the author was really saying. Here's an interesting one. ‘I always have to practice hard, even out in my back yard—'”

Out in the hall, there was a sound of footsteps, and a shadowy figure paused in the doorway. Emmy looked up.

A small man stepped forward, passed a bony hand over thinning brown hair, and peered into the classroom.

Emmy's heart gave a bump.

It was Professor Vole.

“Yes? May I help you with something?” asked Mr. Herbifore.

Emmy slid down in her seat. How had he known where to find her? And what would he do when he saw
the Rat's cage was empty? Emmy felt a sudden stillness in her middle—and the Rat chose that moment to squeak.

Luckily, Joe dropped a book immediately afterward.

Emmy opened the lid of her desk and lifted her backpack as if to rummage in it. Hidden behind the open desk top, she frowned fiercely.

“Will—you—be—quiet?”

“But … but …” The Rat was shaking. “I heard a voice. It scares me! I remember—”

Emmy watched as the Rat twisted his paws together anxiously. “What do you remember?” She glanced quickly at the doorway, where Mr. Herbifore and Brian's uncle were still talking.

“I was just a little ratling in the nest—me and Sissy together. Our mother was gone—just for a minute, she said—and then I heard that voice! And then the big hand came and scooped us up! I bit it, too—I did—but then it squished me—the big, bony hand!
The big hand!
”

Emmy gave the Rat a little shake.
“Hush!”
she whispered fiercely, slipping the pack to the floor just as Mr. Herbifore turned.

“You're welcome to look at our rat,” he was saying, “but I've had him for years. I found him shivering in the schoolyard and kept him for a class pet.”

“It was years ago that I lost him,” the professor said in his reedy voice, following Mr. Herbifore like a black, musty shadow.

The professor, his thin face eager, never glanced Emmy's way. He walked down the window aisle and stopped, his eyes devouring the cage.

“That's odd,” said Mr. Herbifore. “He's usually active at this time of day. Perhaps he's hiding. I'll check inside his shelter.”

“Stop!” The rat man's voice was anxious. “You mustn't let yourself be bitten! Just give me the cage.”

“My dear sir!” Mr. Herbifore sounded affronted. “I can handle a mere rodent. After all, I'm a
teacher
—”

“And I am a professor, my dear sir, and I'm telling you, you must not be bitten! I will
not
answer for the consequences!”

Emmy's heart had begun a slow, hard pounding. She risked a glance at her backpack and stiffened. The Rat was peeking out. His nose twitched as he sniffed the air—and then he caught sight of Professor Vole.

There was a soft thud as the Rat fell back into the depths of the pack.

Emmy heard a sound like a snarling dog. Only it wasn't a dog at all. It was the rat man, and he was looking straight at her.

“Y
OU LITTLE THIEF,”
Professor Vole rasped, low in his throat. “Where's my rat?”

“Now, just a minute!” The indignant voice of Mr. Herbifore came over the roaring in Emmy's ears.

Professor Vole twisted around. “She was in my shop yesterday, telling me about this rat,” he said, in his thin, reedy voice, now taut with anger. “And now he's gone!”

Mr. Herbifore straightened, frowning. “Why is this one rat so important? Surely you can buy another at any pet store—and you might get one that's better tempered.”

“Another rat?” The rat man stared. “That rat was
irreplaceable.
You have absolutely no
conception
of its value.” He fixed Emmy with his pale eyes.
“What have you done with my rat?”

Emmy lifted her chin and glared right back. A new and unaccustomed spirit of defiance was stinging in her veins. So she had set the Rat free. So what?
The Rat was his own creature—not just a piece of property!

“HEY!” Professor Vole grabbed her desktop and wrenched it open. “Trying to
hide
him, are you?”

Emmy's heart gave a sudden, violent leap. She shrank back against her chair as the man's big, bony hands made a jumble of the papers inside her desk, spilling them onto the floor. She felt, rather than saw, Joe move from his seat to pick up the scattered papers in the aisle.

“Stop this instant!” Mr. Herbifore's voice scaled up. “Leave that girl alone; she wouldn't do anything against the rules, you hardly even know she's there most days—”

The rat man showed his small, white teeth in an alarming grin. “Ah
ha!
You've got him in your
backpack
!”

He made a sudden pounce, pulled the backpack from under Emmy's desk, and tossed out the contents in one violent motion. Papers fluttered as Mr. Herbifore squawked in outrage. Emmy, frozen, could only stare.

But there was no shout of triumph from Professor Vole, no frightened squeak from the Rat. There was
just a blank silence as the rat man stood, staring at the empty pack as if he had been cheated.

“There! Are you satisfied now? Get out of my room this instant!” The teacher grasped the little man firmly by the arm and propelled him toward the door.

Emmy looked down at the mess, dazed. And then her eyes focused on unfamiliar handwriting. These weren't her papers! The name at the top of the pages was “Joe Benson.” It had been
Joe's
backpack the old man had ransacked!

But then where was hers? Emmy looked across the aisle at Joe, who grinned triumphantly, clasping his hands over his head like a victorious boxer.

“I saw that!” The rat man, purple with rage, struggled in Mr. Herbifore's grip. “That boy—
he
stole my rat! Look in
his
backpack! Give back my rat, or I'll sue the whole school!”

Mr. Herbifore looked suddenly nervous. “You'll have to discuss that with the principal. But,” he added, his voice growing a little stronger, “I will
not
tolerate threats or further searches of student property. That behavior is … Inappropriate. It's … Unacceptable! It's … just … plain …”

Mr. Herbifore stopped, his face red. He seemed to be wrestling with himself. “
I'm
tolerant,” he muttered, “
I
never make negative value judgments or verbalize blame.” His voice rose, and he threw back his head. “I haven't used a single banned word since being requalified by the Institute of Nice Educators and Pleasant Teachers. But I don't
care
anymore. I'm going to
say
it. Your behavior is just—plain—”

“Well?” said Professor Vole.

“It's BAD!” Mr. Herbifore burst out passionately. “It's WRONG! And you should be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!”

Professor Vole looked suddenly smaller.

“Oh, the RELIEF!” cried the teacher, jabbing the professor's chest with his finger. “To finally be able to SAY it!”

The professor backed up with each jab, stumbling over his feet. The children watched in fascination as, with one last emphatic shove, Mr. Herbifore pushed the man out the door, slammed it hard, and picked up the phone.

“Take out your workbooks and do page 47,” he said over his shoulder. “Oh, yes. I'd like to speak to the principal immediately,” he said into the phone.

Emmy, stunned—she hadn't known Mr. Herbifore had it in him—sneaked a look at Joe as she reached for her workbook. A warm, grateful feeling bloomed as she saw her backpack safe under his desk. Good old Joe.

She flashed a victory sign and Joe grinned, glancing at the pack. And then his face took on a look of dismay. Seeping out from the bottom of Emmy's pack, and wetting the bottom of Joe's shoes, was a spreading yellow puddle.

The Rat, in his terror, had peed.

 

Meg, the girl who sat in front of Emmy, helped her pick up the scattered papers. “Weren't you scared?” she whispered.

“To death,” Emmy whispered back. It was such a natural exchange that she didn't realize what had just happened until the girl turned back to her desk.

Another kid besides Joe had actually spoken to her!

So maybe Professor Vole's visit hadn't been all bad. At least the other kids could hardly pretend she didn't exist, now that she'd been screamed at by a demented maniac and accused of rodent stealing.

Across the aisle, Joe ripped a page from his notebook and dropped it to the floor, looking hunted. Emmy watched as the crisp white paper turned limp and yellow, blotting up the puddle at the base of her backpack. Joe was going to need more paper; it was amazing how much pee one small Rat could hold. But there was something else amazing about the Rat, and Professor Vole knew what it was. If the Rat were in the back room at the Antique Rat, what would his tag say? “The Talking Rat”?

Emmy grinned a little. That might not be so very valuable. After all, what the Rat said was usually obnoxious.

Still, Brian's uncle could probably sell a talking rat for a lot of money. Even the Endear Mouse, though clearly intelligent, hadn't seemed able to speak.

Or was it something else that made the Rat so special? Something more?

Emmy stared hard at math problem number 59. “A car is traveling at sixty feet per second …”

What
would
Professor Vole put on the Rat's tag?

The other rat, with the white patch behind its right ear, had something written on its tag … “The
Shrinking Rat,” that was it. But what did that mean? That the rat got smaller?
That
wouldn't be much use to anyone.

The bell rang. The classroom was suddenly noisy with banging desktops and voices.

“Hurry up, Joe!”

“C'mon, big game today!”

Emmy shoved Joe's backpack under his desk and grabbed her own in the commotion.

“Hey, maybe he's got the rat, like that crazy old man said.”

“Yeah, Joe—tell us what you did with the rat!”

Emmy shrugged. She could talk to Joe another time.

“Bye, Emmy—see you tomorrow!”

Meg gave a shy wave as she passed Emmy on her way out the door. Emmy managed to wave back in spite of her amazement at being spoken to yet again.

“Emmy?” Mr. Herbifore's voice stopped her. “Did you remember that you were supposed to stay after school and copy your poem over?”

Emmy stared at her teacher. What was this, a new trend? He'd remembered her name twice in a row.

Mr. Herbifore's face softened. “I don't mean to be hard on you, Emmy. Your work has been good in the past. But that's no reason to be slack now, is it?”

Emmy shook her head.

“Good. Oh, and one more thing.” Mr. Herbifore leaned over his desk and looked at her kindly. “I don't for one minute think you took that man's rat—if it
was
his.”

Emmy remained guiltily silent.

“In fact”—Mr. Herbifore paused, his face rather red—“I should have stopped him sooner. And now that I think about it, let's forget about you doing your assignment over. Accidents happen. Just hand it in to me as it is.”

Emmy thought quickly. She had put the poetry assignment in her backpack. It was probably drenched in rat pee.

“No, thank you, Mr. Herbifore,” she said. “I'd rather copy it over. Really.”

 

Emmy worked carefully at her desk. She tried not to look out the window where Joe's team was warming up, or at the playground where lucky children,
free for the day, played on the swings and monkey bars.

“I have to leave for a moment,” Mr. Herbifore said. “Just put the assignment on my desk when you're done.”

Emmy nodded. She was finishing up when the Rat poked his nose cautiously out of the pack.

“Is he gone?” the Rat whispered hoarsely. “Is the bad man gone?”

“All gone,” said Emmy. “Get back in the pack, will you? I've got to go to gymnastics.”

The Rat hesitated, looking behind his tail into the depths of the pack. The skin under his fur flushed pink. “I … I'd rather not, if you don't mind. It's a little damp in there.” He twisted the end of his tail nervously between his paws, lifted his chin, and gazed at a point just beyond Emmy's left shoulder.

“Damp?” said Emmy, keeping a straight face with an effort. She was enjoying this.

“I believe,” said the Rat, his ears turning crimson, “that it's not unusual for rodents to sweat a great deal—especially when they're anxious.” He shot such
a worried glance at Emmy that she didn't have the heart to embarrass him further.

“Of course,” she said quickly. “Ride in the side pocket, then. We have to hurry or I'm going to be late to gymnastics.”

The Rat climbed into the pocket with remarkable haste and hid his head in his paws. He didn't quite fit, and Emmy tucked his tail in tenderly. Poor Rat. He'd had a terrible day.

Holding the backpack at arm's length, she dropped her paper on the teacher's desk. She caught sight of Joe's poem, right on top.

His printing was bold and very clear. Surely it was all right to look at the one that the teacher had already read aloud? It was titled “To Dad.”

Emmy blinked. So she wasn't the only one with parent trouble?

And then she saw the envelope next to Joe's paper.
It was pink, with the address written in an elegant script that she had seen many times before.

Emmy snatched it from the desk and opened the letter. It might be snooping, but finding out what Miss Barmy had written to her teacher was a matter of survival. She scanned it quickly.

“Pssst! Hurry up!” The Rat's paw emerged from the pocket and tapped her wrist with his pointed claws.

Emmy didn't even flinch. She stared at the paper in her hand as footsteps sounded in the hall.

“Teacher's coming,” the Rat sang out. Emmy crammed the letter back in the envelope with shaking
hands. What did it all mean? Not once, as far as Emmy knew, had Miss Barmy
ever
come into the classroom during silent-reading time. And what on earth was
atmostherapy
? There was something very peculiar about Miss Barmy ….