CHAPTER 2

It didn’t take long for me to grow hungry. I looked down the shore. There were plenty of houses and even some restaurants to eat from. I glanced back at Olivia’s beach house and considered my options. Restaurants were smorgasbords of delight, but they were also usually on the lookout for what they called “vermin.” I shuddered as I mouthed the word.

The beach house was a familiar place—it was where I grew up. I knew the kitchen, and more importantly, knew there were no traps to snap me in half. Sighing, I turned and trotted back. Besides, I had promised my family that this was just a vacation. I knew if I spent much time in the town, I might not return.

I was in the pantry, chewing a hole in a bag of peanuts, when I heard the girls’ voices. I peeked through a slit in the doorframe.

“OMG, Olivia, that Leo guy is a creeper,” Brina said. She was short and slender with long, straight black hair. All the other girls thought she was beautiful.

She wasn’t as pretty as a mouse, so I’m no judge.

“Ugh,” Olivia said. “I told Daddy to fire him last year, but Daddy said something about knowing him in college and he needs a job, blah-blah-blah.”

“Did he break any of your stuff?” Ashley asked. She was the baby of the group, a twenty-one year-old blonde who described herself as fluffy.

“My special edition Dior shadow and my Fenti powder, both opened and spilled everywhere,” Olivia said. “You?”

“My Niacinamide serum,” Claire said, running her hand through her burgundy highlights. “Everything is drenched and now I’m down to just my Vitamin C.”

“Well, that does it,” Olivia told them. “Maybe Daddy doesn’t care when Leo messes with our family, but not our guests.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and pressed some buttons.

These humans, and the peanuts, were beginning to bore me, so I moved further down the shelf, where I found snack-sized packages of chocolate-iced donuts. They were hidden behind a canister of flour, so I assumed they were guilty pleasures.

I helped myself to a package.

When I could not stuff one more yeasty morsel into my mouth, I went back to Olivia’s room. I wanted to find the crevice in the wall that my family had lived in before the big move. We hadn’t planned to move at all that winter, but when the homeowners packed up, my youngest brother got trapped in one of the suitcases and in trying to free him, we all ended up hitching a ride to Riverside, a desert of no redemption.

Now I searched my old home, hoping no other mouse family had moved in. I wouldn’t begrudge another family from finding shelter, but I found my special gift for human speech had rendered other mice boring. Even when I immersed myself in mouse-speak, I was aware of my difference and felt like the odd mouse out.

I remembered the corner and was scurrying along the wall when I heard Olivia’s familiar shriek. I looked up but she wasn’t staring at me, she was looking to the right, pointing dramatically. I followed her hand and saw another mouse, running along the baseboard like me. Only he wasn’t like me, he was white with pink eyes. For a moment, I stopped and stared. Olivia’s feet shook the floor as she ran out of the room.

“I can’t sleep in there, it has mice!” she wailed.

Shaking myself out of my stupor, I ran after the white mouse. He disappeared into the crevice—my family’s old home. I slipped in after him and stopped to introduce myself. He glared at me, his pink eyes glowing, before slipping into the drywall and running away.

I chased after him, scampering through the dark corridors until I cornered him against a wooden beam. He scrambled up the wood, so I followed.

“Squeak!” I called out to make him stop. “Squeak-squeakers-squee!”

That made him run faster. I watched as he reached the top of the wall and disappeared. Climbing after him, I launched myself over the beam and saw daylight—we had reached the eaves of the roof.

The white mouse perched on a section of framing, gazing down with a stricken expression in his pink eyes. I looked down and saw Olivia and her friends, coming out on the porch with drinks and snacks.

While jumping into the middle of their fun sounded like a good game, I decided to pause and listen to them nattering about their lives. It was always nice to know things about humans, things I could use later.

“Can you believe it?” Olivia asked. “Daddy said he’s not going to fire Leo.”

“How rude!” Ashley reached for a pita chip. “I can’t believe he’d choose that creep over you.”

“He said he’d have a ‘talk’ with him.” Olivia poured more drink from a pitcher into her glass. I didn’t know what kind of drink it was, except it was green and smelled like it would burn my throat.

“A talk. Pfft,” Brina scoffed. “Like my mom used to have with me. ‘Brina, dear, we mustn’t be rude to our guests.’ As if that made me more polite.”

“What I want to know,” Claire leaned forward, “is what the caretaker has on your dad.”

Olivia paused her drinking. “What do you mean?”

Her friend tucked a strand of burgundy hair behind one ear, then gestured. “Anyone could take care of this place. Your dad could replace Leo tomorrow—probably sooner than that. I know he told you he and Leo are pals from college, but I can think of another reason he wouldn’t fire him—Leo knows a secret and won’t tell as long as he’s paid off.”

Even from my perch under the roof, I could see Olivia frowning.

“I’ll take it up with Mums,” Olivia said, shaking her head. “In the meantime, we’ve been invited to a party at the pier. I told them we’d bring a pitcher of margaritas and a bag of chips.”

“What time?” Brina asked. “I gotta do my hair.”

“Do what with it?” Ashley took another sip of her drink. “Make it sleeker and shinier? It’s already gorgeous.”

“Aw, Ash, you’re sweet,” Brina said. “It just feels a little flat on my head. I’d like to foof it out a bit.”

Olivia looked at her watch. “I said we’d be over in an hour, so let’s all go foof something and meet in the kitchen by seven. I’ll mix up another pitcher.”

They strolled inside the house, and I sat back against the eave. Where did that white mouse go? I crawled toward the last place I’d seen him, but he was gone. Following the roofing beams inward, I came upon a small attic, barely as large as the one bathroom in the three-bedroom bungalow.

The last time I’d been in this space, it was full of dust and cobwebs and boxes of people stuff—photos and papers and doodads. Now I barely recognized it. Curiosity overwhelmed my caution, and I snuck down the beam to have a look around. There was an old, bare mattress on the floor, covered with a frayed blanket. The only other thing that would count as furnishings was a television on the opposite wall.

Several plastic grocery bags were scattered on the floor, requiring investigation. They were all filled with fast food wrappers. I found an empty burger wrapper and nibbled on the cheese that had melted to the paper. I was looking for more scraps when I heard heavy footsteps and the scrape of flooring being pushed aside.

Quickly scampering out of sight, I saw a square of floor shifting, allowing someone to heft himself through the hole. It was Leo, who had apparently created his own mancave by cutting a hole in the ceiling over the garage. He crawled over to the mattress, dragging a paper bag. Reaching under the blanket, he pulled out a remote control and held it toward the TV. One click and the monitor lit up.

I had just begun to feel bad about getting Leo in trouble with Olivia. He wasn’t the nicest of men and was no doubt thinking what I muttered. But at least he had the smarts to keep his mouth shut.

“Just in time for the floor show,” he said, and dug into his paper bag, pulling out a bottle and popping the top.

I looked at the TV that had his attention and my whiskers stiffened. The screen was split into four sections, each section displaying one of the three bedrooms and the last section showing the bathroom interior. Leo had planted cameras to spy on the occupants.