Chapter 18
Catching Snowflakes

Ella and Richie hunkered down and headed across the Millers’ backyard. The property backed against a wooded area between two sides of the neighborhood. In the thick of the trees, the scouts dodged trunks and fallen branches. They stopped in a clearing and stared out in different directions. A few houses were barely visible, their lights off. Confident they couldn’t be seen, the scouts moved their attention to the treetops.

“I don’t see any,” Ella said.

“Me either,” Richie said. He adjusted his glasses, which Ella had given back to him on their walk over.

Around them, a few snowflakes fell.

“Are they even out here?”

Richie shrugged. “Tameron said ten o’clock, right?”

She nodded. Hearing Tameron’s name made her think of the Descenders. She wondered if they could see them from their zoo posts and decided there was no way.

They strolled around a bit, their gazes held toward the heights. The web of branches was perfectly still. Richie crouched beside a hollow of a trunk and shined his penlight in. He straightened up and shrugged his shoulders. Nothing.

“We need to go up,” said Ella.

“Up where?”

Ella pointed into the heights. “There.”

“I don’t think—”

“C’mon! It’ll just take a second. I want to see these little furbies. ”

“You know how I climb.”

Ella grabbed his wrist and pulled him over to a tree. She knelt and cupped her hands out in front of her—a step for Richie’s foot. “Here. The first limb’s always the toughest.”

“And the second. And the third. And—”

“Richie!”

He mumbled something under his breath and then planted his foot in her hands. He pushed up and landed his other foot in the crook of a limb. As he tried to lift himself, he lost his balance and fell to one side, his rear end touching down on Ella’s head.

“Gross!” Ella groaned. “Your butt is totally on me!”

Richie found his balance and climbed into the tree. As Ella stood straight, she scrunched up her face and shook out her hands. “Ew,” she said. “Just way, way ew.”

She hurried to the neighboring tree, jumped into it, and ascended with the grace of a gymnast, her movements long and sweeping and exact. Richie battled his way up, cinching branches and clutching the trunk. At about twenty feet, Ella stopped and waited for Richie. In quite a few minutes, he joined her in the heights.

“See anything?” Ella asked.

“Nuh-uh. But my eyes are closed.”

Ella looked over and realized he was serious. “Richie!”

He forced his eyes open. Then he stared all around. “Nope, no tarsiers. I don’t think they’re even out here.”

Ella considered this. It didn’t make sense. This was probably the most wooded area in their neighborhood. Wouldn’t the Secret Society want to pay close attention here?

A snowflake landed in her eye and blotted out the world. She wiped it away and peered up. The once-thin snowflakes were now plump. They fell from the sky like silvery coins. As they touched down on Ella, they briefly kept their shapes before melting away.

“It looks like—”

She cut herself short and listened. She’d heard something. A soft squeak.

“What’s wrong?” Richie asked. “Did you—”

Ella held up a pink glove, stopping him. Then she quietly slid over to a new branch, her ears perked up.

Eep! The noise again.

She ducked her head for a new angle and spotted something along a vertical branch. Was it a bump? No. She swung her head around and saw a small, furry body with two upturned ears and round, bulging eyes. A tarsier. It was looking straight at her.

Eep!

Ella slowly moved to a new branch. “Hey, buddy.”

The tarsier crawled to a spot just inches in front of Ella’s nose. The critter was tiny—barely the size of a hamster. Being so close, Ella could make out its details. It had long, thin fingers with tips that looked like suction cups. Its rear, kangaroolike legs were tucked against the sides of its body.

Without warning, the tarsier sprang from the branch and landed on her shoulder, just beside her cheek. Then, as if from nowhere, a second one touched down on her other shoulder. The animals traded eep!’s and settled into stable positions, their fingers stuck to her jacket.

“You guys are way cool.”

“Ella!” Richie called. “You see anything yet?”

“You could say that.” She swung around the tree trunk to show her discovery.

“Oh my gosh!” His eyes had swelled to twice their normal size. “You found them! Are they friendly?”

“Seem to be. You haven’t seen any?”

“Nope. I think my tree’s empty. I’m going back down.”

As Richie started to descend, Ella saw that his back had three very peculiar bumps along it.

“Richie, you’re covered in tarsiers!”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Your back—you got three on it.”

He became deathly still and seemed to consider this. “What should I do?”

“Not what you’d normally do, which is scream and fall from the tree. I don’t care so much about you, but the tarsiers . . . they’re kind of cute.”

Richie glanced over his shoulders and tried to see down his back. “What are they doing?”

“It looks like they’re getting ready to chew off your cheeks.”

Richie’s expression opened with fear.

Ella shook her head. “You dork. Meet me on the ground.”

She climbed down and waited beneath Richie’s tree. On her shoulders, the tarsiers craned their necks to watch the action. Richie successfully navigated to a new branch, then another. When he tried to go to a third, he slipped, almost fell, then released a mild profanity into the night. The tarsiers turned to Ella, their bulbous eyes seeming ripe with concern.

“Don’t worry,” Ella advised. “He’s actually doing pretty good. I thought he’d be dead by now.”

Richie touched down to the ground and swung his back toward Ella. “What are they doing now?” he asked, concern blending his syllables.

“Sitting there. Looking cute.” She reached out her arm, and a tarsier jumped to it like a parrot. She shoved the animal toward Richie. “Check him out.”

“Last time I did that I almost had my head swallowed.”

“Well, this one doesn’t look hungry. Now, hold out your arm.” When Richie did, Ella shook her arm a bit. “Go get him, Gizmo.”

The tarsier kicked out its hind legs and hopped through the air like a frog. It touched down on Richie’s forearm and shot its wild-eyed gaze up at him. It eeped once. As Richie nervously looked it over, Ella reached behind him for another tarsier.

“It is sort of cute,” Richie said. “If you can see beyond the terror of the experience, I mean.”

Ella pitched her arm in front of Richie again. “Here,” she said. “Have another.”

The tarsier lunged onto the front of Richie’s jacket, climbed into one of his pockets, and poked its head out. The two scouts started laughing, Richie a bit tensely.

“How funny!” Ella said. “He looks like—”

She stopped short as the tarsier on her left shoulder sprang several feet into air. It chomped down on a fat snowflake, then landed on her shoulder again, its eyes wider than ever from the shock of the cold.

As the scouts broke out laughing again, the tarsier on Richie’s back leaped off, snagged a snowflake out of the air, and landed on Ella’s arm.

“Too cool!” Ella said. She stepped into the clearing for a place where the snowflakes could have an unobstructed fall. She looked up and saw them streaming down from the night’s nothingness. They were bigger than quarters. “Richie! Over here!”

In the clearing, Richie faced Ella, about ten steps dividing them. A tarsier kicked off Ella’s arm and shot forward. It gulped a snowflake in mid-flight, then grabbed on to Richie’s leg. The tarsier on Richie’s shoulder went next. It soared through the air, its long legs dangling behind it, and caught a snowflake before landing on Ella, where another pushed off and flew across the distance back to Richie.

Ella said, “They’re so strong!”

The strange little animals continued like that, one after another streaking through the open area between Ella and Richie. They pulled snowflakes out of the air and gobbled them down. Ella didn’t know if they thought the icy crystals were bugs, or if they were just having fun. Maybe both. Or maybe they were just happy to be playing with the scouts.

A tarsier landed on Richie’s head, plowed over his pom-pom, then fell down to his back. Ella went into a fit of laughter. Seconds later, another tarsier missed Ella and passed over her head. It grabbed onto a nearby branch and quickly sprang back, striking down on one side of Ella’s fluffy earmuffs, knocking them askew.

A cloud emptied a fresh load of snowflakes. Big and white and patient, they floated down into the clearing, dotting out the scenery. To Ella, parts of Richie kept disappearing. Sounds softened. The crunch of leaves beneath Ella’s feet, the eep!’s of the animals, Richie’s laughter—the noises dulled as they passed through the filter of the falling snow.

Excited by all this, the tarsiers jumped back and forth with new energy. They ping-ponged off Ella and Richie, speeding past one another in the air. Each time one landed on Ella, she watched its big eyes blink away the snow. Snowflakes melted on their bodies and matted their fur.

Within minutes, the storm slowed down. And with it, so did the tarsiers. They settled on the scouts, three on Ella, and two on Richie. Ella felt their slight shudders as their tiny chests heaved.

“We better go,” Ella said. “We should have been home a long time ago.”

Richie nodded, and the two of them hurried over to a tree. The tarsiers climbed onto the branches and stayed perched in low spots. They suddenly seemed exhausted.

“Later, dudes,” Ella said. Then she turned and led Richie out of the woods.

By the time they reached the street, the snow had already died down. Most of what was on the ground probably wouldn’t survive the night. As they walked, Ella turned again to the treetops. Somewhere in them, hundreds of tarsiers were perched on branches, perfectly still and hidden. She imagined their bulging eyes staring down. Right now, they could see her and Richie. They even knew what the two of them had just done.

“We’ve been watched,” Ella said. “Our whole lives. Every night.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. “And maybe not just by the tarsiers.”

She turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

Richie lifted his eyebrows. “DeGraff.”

With all their concern on the sasquatches lately, Ella had almost forgot about the Shadowist. She swept her stare across the nearby yards. Bushes, sheds, corners. Was he somewhere out there? Was he watching them right now?

Ella shuddered.

“C’mon, Richie. Let’s get the heck out of here.”

The two of them bolted up the street, away from the hiding spots in the yards, and beneath the watchful stares of the tarsiers.