The Mouse Watch, Volume 1 Page 3

  And she also wasn’t much of an inventor like her heroine, Gadget.

  But when it came to numbers, Bernie had inherited both her dad’s love of equations and her mother’s artistic creativity. The combination was rare and also very potent. She was one of those few individuals for whom numbers and art were virtually inseparable.

  As long as she could remember, Bernie had visualized numbers as if they were imaginary friends. In her mind, each one had a different personality. For example, when she pictured the number twelve—her favorite number—she saw a stick of peppermint candy standing next to a twisting blue worm she’d named Freddie. When she was little, she made up all kinds of stories about Freddie and the letters he would write to the Candy King, hoping to be invited to the Sugar Castle. The castle was made of candy, and the candy was shaped like numbers, too.

  Math was a creative, fun place to play.

  Her incredible brain was equally split between logic and art, and that made her one of the greatest puzzle-solving geniuses that had ever been born.

  At least, Bernie thought so. And she hoped that the Mouse Watch did, too. Maybe that was why she’d been chosen.

  Inside her brain, a rainbow cornucopia of shapes and symbols, numbers and letters superimposed themselves on top of each other as she considered all the possible solutions to the code. Her mind swirled with brilliant colors, abstract shapes, and beautiful number combinations. The integers were spinning like bright pinwheels and whispering solutions in her mind as she sorted and carefully filed them into hidden mental compartments. This was the fun part.

  After a few minutes of sorting through numbers and making connections, she took a final glance at the golden invitation and noticed something unusual, something she hadn’t seen at first.

  Her grin widened.

  “Gadget, you’re brilliant!” she shouted. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

  She glanced up at the posters of Gadget that lined her walls. They were the size of human postage stamps (actually, they were postage stamps) and most of them had inspirational sayings written on the bottom:

  DON’T GET MOUSE-TRAPPED BY MEDIOCRITY! GIVE 100%!

  BEING SMART ISN’T CHEESE-Y! STAY IN SCHOOL!

  But all of them had one thing in common: Gadget’s autograph.

  Gadget had an unusual, one-of-a-kind signature that was famous for being hard to read. Up until that moment, Bernie had believed that it was just the inventor’s quirk—even geniuses could have bad handwriting.

  But now she realized nothing could be further from the truth. She gazed down at the signature on the gear.

  As she stared, the letters morphed into colorful numbers in her mind.

  The “G” in Gadget was really a number “8.”

  The “A” was a “2.”

  The “D” was a “5.”

  The next “G” was also an “8.”

  The “E” was a “6.”

  The “T,” of course, was a “7.”

  Feeling confident, Bernie plugged the numbers into the code—but the result was still gibberish!

  Then, before her eyes, the bottom part of the 7 morphed into something she recognized: Freddie, the blue 2! It wasn’t a 7 at all, but actually two numbers on top of each other: a “2” and a “1.”

  The “T” was a “21.”

  And that’s when her whiskers twitched in triumph.

  She had it.

  She had the key to the code.

  She felt it in her bones before she even plugged in the numbers. That feeling of knowing—that was the best part.

  The first code Bernie ever learned was a basic “substitution code”: A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on. The first letters corresponded with their matching number.

  Easy peasy.

  When she first saw the numbers etched into the gear, her instinct was to substitute them with their corresponding letters to spell out some kind of message. But all she came up with were nonsense words.

  However, when she realized that the letters in Gadget’s magical signature were really numbers, everything became clear. Gadget’s name was actually telling her which letters corresponded with which numbers in the substitution code! G was the seventh letter in the alphabet, but in Gadget’s signature, it was actually, literally, an 8. That meant if you plugged it into the substitution code, G was one number off from its order in the alphabet. The A in Gadget’s name was a 2, which meant that the substitution code would start with 2 instead of 1. Then B would be 3, C would be 4, and so on.

  In other words, the alphabet would look like this:

  A=2 B=3 C=4 D=5 E=6 F=7 G=8 H=9 I=10 J=11 K=12 L=13 M=14 N=15 O=16 P=17 Q=18 R=19 S=20 T=21 U=22 V=23 W=24 X=25 Y=26 Z=1

  The solution was both simple and complex at the same time. Most people would have wasted a long time trying to figure out why the numbers didn’t line up.

  Bernie’s whiskers twitched with pride.

  After she looked at the numbers etched on the gear again, the message quickly became clear.

  This: 10 7 26 16 22 4 2 15 19 6 2 5 21 9 10 20 19 6 17 16 19 21 21 16 22 15 10 16 15 20 21 2 21 10 16 15 16 15 16 4 21 16 3 6 19 20 6 23 6 15 21 9 2 21 20 6 23 6 15

  Became this: IF YOU CAN READ THIS REPORT TO UNION STATION ON OCTOBER SEVENTH AT SEVEN.

  “October seventh!” Bernie exclaimed. She glanced at the calendar on her wall. It was the size of a human credit card and had the words Farm and County Insurance printed at the top.

  October seventh is tomorrow!

  “Mom, Dad! Come here, quick!” Bernie shouted.

  After a scuffling noise in the other room, her harried-looking parents appeared at the door. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Bernie held up the gear and, smiling broadly, announced: “You’ll never believe it,” she said. Then, after pausing to let the enormity of the incredible news have its full impact, she gazed at their expectant faces with sparkling eyes and added, “I’ve been recruited for the Mouse Watch!”

  “Um…the What-watch?” asked Bernie’s mom, looking puzzled.

  “The Mouse Watch! The most secret, cool, impressive group of mice ever assembled!” She leveled a stare at her parents. “I need to be at Union Station tomorrow! I’ve gotta pack!”

  They stared back, dumbfounded.

  “Pack?” her father said. “For what?”

  “Wait. You guys really haven’t been listening to me, have you? I’ve been talking about the Mouse Watch since I was six,” Bernie said.

  “I…I thought it was some kind of alarm clock,” admitted her dad with a shrug.

  “I thought it was a game you made up,” said her mom. “And you have a broken leg,” she added.

  “It’s totally healed by now! See?” She hobbled around the room, trying to show that she could put weight on her leg without squeaking in pain. Her mom crossed her arms and looked unconvinced. So Bernie grabbed the nearest thing she saw, a doll-size plastic wrench on her matchbox nightstand, and tried to pry the cast from her tiny leg. “I’m fine, Mom, really. Watch!”

  “Stop!” shouted her mom, panicking. “Just…stop! You might still be healing! Dr. Finetail should decide if your cast is ready to come off or not.”

  Bernie didn’t look up. She just kept prying away at her cast.

  “Bernie,” her mom said.

  Slivers began to make their way down the plaster.

  “BERNIE!”

  Craaaaack.

  “BERNADETTE APRIL SKAMPERSKY!”

  Bernie finally looked up at the sound of her full name. Her mother never yelled like that.

  “Mom, please, I don’t have time! I have to be there at seven in the morning!”

  Of course, Bernie realized, the message hadn’t said whether she was supposed to be at Union Station at seven o’clock in the morning or at night. Getting there early seemed like the safest bet.

  “We don’t know anything about this Mouse Watch,” Bernie’s father said.

  “Where is it?” added her mother. “Who will you be staying with? How do we reac
h you?”

  “What will you be doing?” her father asked. “More stunts like the one that broke your leg?”

  “I’ll be saving the world!” Bernie cried. “Haven’t you heard of the Rescue Rangers?”

  Her parents stared at her with confused expressions.

  “Okay, so they used to be this really famous detective agency started by these two chipmunks named Chip and Dale, right?” Bernie grew excited, gesturing wildly as she described her heroes. “And they had this incredible female mouse on the team named Gadget Hackwrench, who was, like, their inventor and mechanic. Gadget left to start her own spin-off group—it’s basically like the MI-6 of mice! It’s this small group of elite agents who travel the world solving crimes using mouse-size tech that Gadget invents herself! And best of all, they’re not in it for the glory. They’re in it to be heroes! To totally help anyone in need! And I’m going to be one of them!”

  Her parents shared a look.

  “You’re not doing this, Bernie,” said her father quietly.

  “What?” squeaked Bernie, aghast.

  “What your father is trying to say,” said Bernie’s mom, sharing her husband’s worried glance, “is you’ve been acting very irresponsibly lately, and we think it’s time for you to settle down. You’re twelve now. You have to start thinking responsibly.”

  “I do think responsibly!” Bernie retorted. Her tail was stiff as a board and her whiskers were twitching with emotion.

  “But you don’t,” said her father sternly. He pointed at her leg. “That isn’t thinking responsibly. And what about before that, when we caught you taunting the human neighbor’s cat with a laser pointer?”

  “I was testing my reflexes! Every Mouse Watch agent has to have lightning-fast reflexes!” Bernie argued.

  “Wearing a laser pointer tied to your own tail and trying to get an animal ten times your size to chase you is not okay. You could have been killed!”

  “The Big World is dangerous for such a small mouse,” her mother said. “There are bigger threats out there than house cats.”

  “I know,” Bernie said, her voice cracking. Angry tears were welling in her eyes. “That’s why the Mouse Watch needs me!”

  How could this be happening? Why couldn’t her parents understand? This was the most important moment in her whole life, the thing she’d wanted for as long as she could remember.

  And all they could see was how much of a failure she was.

  “Bernie,” her dad said, “all we’ve tried to do, ever since…” He paused and started again. “All we’ve ever tried to do is protect you, so you can have a good life. Isn’t there anything else you want to do, anything that’s closer to home? Something fit for a mouse?”

  “We think you should focus more on other things,” Beatrice said gently. “Like making friends. We never see you doing things with anybody your own age. Maybe you could—”

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” interrupted Bernie. “I’m not like them. I don’t even understand what half of them are talking about! All they care about is whose parents have pilfered the newest smartphone, or the latest Summertime Nancy collection. I don’t care about that stuff!”

  “And just what, may I ask, is wrong with clothes?” asked Beatrice, bristling. “It might do you good to wear something other than those…those…army things. You might even feel better about yourself.” She brightened with an idea. “You know, I’ve got a new pair of pink plastic pumps that would be adorable if you’d just let me—”

  “NO!” shouted Bernie. “That stuff is good for you, Mom, but it’s not me! How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Watch your tone, young lady,” said Clarence sternly. “Your mother is just trying to help.”

  “Sorry,” Bernie mumbled. A tear slipped down her furry cheek and caught in her whiskers.

  Her dad’s expression softened. He could see how upset his daughter was.

  “You’re really good with numbers,” he said. “How about coming to work with me? Maybe I can get you an internship? How does that sound? I could train you to be an accountant.”

  Bernie sniffed and swiped at her pink nose. “Dad, thanks, but I don’t want to be an accountant. Being part of the Mouse Watch is all I’ve ever wanted. Ever. And if I don’t do this now, I’ll have missed my chance forever. They don’t ask you twice. I’ll never be able to…to…”

  She didn’t finish her sentence. But it seemed, from their somber expressions, that her parents knew what she’d been about to say. They knew that she wanted to honor Brody’s memory by dedicating her life to helping others. For Bernie, it meant that all the things Brody stood for still mattered. That her brother hadn’t died in vain.

  Bernie stared down at the golden gear, hating the sight of her sad reflection in the shiny surface. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. She’d never been so close to her dream, and now it was slipping away.

  Clarence and Beatrice stared at each other for a long moment, each reading the other’s thoughts. Finally, Clarence cleared his throat.

  “You’ll call as soon as you get there?”

  “And give us this Gadget Hackwrench’s direct phone number?” her mother said sternly.

  “And take your vitamins every day.”

  “And absolutely no stunts!”

  Bernie’s heart swelled.

  “Yes! I’ll e-mail you every day! And I won’t do anything reckless. And I’ll get stronger, I promise!”

  Her father sighed.

  “I’ll go contact Dr. Finetail.”

  As her dad left the room, her mother moved to the side of the bed. She laid a gentle paw on her daughter’s shoulder and sighed.

  “Let’s get you packed. If we’re going to get you to the train station, we have to leave now. It’ll take hours for us to get there in the Jeep.”

  Bernie didn’t know what to say. All she could do was throw her arms around her mother and squeeze as tightly as she could.

  The Moorpark train station was, according to the internet, twenty minutes away from Thousand Acorns by gas-powered human car. By remote control toy Jeep, however, it took several hours. Not only did mouse drivers have to be on the constant lookout for speeding full-size human cars, but they also had to be on special guard against other predators. Hawks and vultures that flew along the highway were always hungry, and legend had it that monstrous beasts called raccoons lived in the brush that lined the roads. Bernie had never seen one, but a mouse in her class swore he spotted one near the dumpster outside the supermarket.

  And you always had to look where you were going, or else you would end up as something horrifyingly called “roadkill,” which was exactly what it sounded like, her mother told her with wide eyes.

  As a precaution, Clarence had consulted the tiny map at the back of their wall calendar to find as many back roads as possible. Now, as they bounced along in the plastic Jeep, Clarence had both paws gripping the remote control in the front seat while also peering into the gathering darkness and watching carefully for any dangerous obstacles. Since the toy Jeep had stickers where headlights should be, Beatrice held up a small flashlight that had once hung from a human key chain to illuminate the road ahead.

  Tonight, the air smelled of eucalyptus and dry grass. In October, the California weather could be unpredictable, alternating between warm Santa Ana breezes and cold days that hinted at the winter to come.

  Bernie loved autumn and would usually have paid more attention to a nighttime drive filled with seasonal smells and long moonlit shadows. But her mind was elsewhere at the moment.

  She absently felt up and down her leg through the outside of her camo pants. It felt strange to have her cast gone after wearing it for so many weeks. Luckily, Dr. Finetail had been available at such short notice. So far, it seemed that there were so many ways her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity could have gone wrong. Even now, as they rumbled along in the toy car, listening to the battery-driven whine as it bumped down the side of the road, she hoped nothi
ng would interrupt her destined meeting with the Watch.

  “Dad?”

  “Hmm?” replied Clarence, deep in concentration.

  “You checked the batteries right? Are they fresh?” asked Bernie worriedly.

  “Yep. And I put an extra four-pack of double As in the trunk. Stop worrying.”

  But it was impossible not to. Bernie kept running the decoded message over and over in her mind. She had to be there by seven in the morning. Had to. Everything had to go just right.

  In the backseat, she stared over the top of the doll-size suitcase her mom had lent her. It was part of a vintage Flight Attendant Nancy ensemble from the 1990s and was a bright, glittery pink. Her mom had bestowed it on her as if it were the holy grail of luggage, beaming with pride.

  “It’s a collectible,” she’d said proudly.

  Bernie hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings, so she accepted it with a forced smile. She glanced at the empty spot in the backseat next to her and wished, for the millionth time, that her brother was sitting with her. She could imagine him rolling his eyes at the sparkly suitcase, understanding completely what she was feeling.

  Bernie examined the round suitcase with its glittery, bright pink plastic surface complete with a rainbow cloud sticker and winced. It really didn’t look like secret-agent material, and she hoped that she wouldn’t be laughed at by the other recruits.

  I wonder if there ARE other recruits? Bernie thought. Maybe I’m the only one. Maybe I’ll get special, one-on-one training from Gadget herself.

  There were so many questions she had no answers for. She couldn’t help the steady stream of “what-if”s that trickled through her mind like a leaky faucet. For the first time in a long time she was filled with hope. She felt convinced that the mice of the Mouse Watch would be like her. It would be, finally, a place where she would be understood.

  Where she would belong.

  It had to be.

  Nowhere else seemed to fit.

  Because of careful planning (and more than a little luck), Clarence pulled into the ramshackle Moorpark train station at three a.m. The toy Jeep was black and blended in nicely with the shadows, ensuring that it could stay well hidden. As she climbed out of the backseat, Bernie glanced at the familiar sticker license plate that read JUNGLE J. The remote-controlled Jeep was part of the line of Jungle Jay action-figure accessories. Her mom had created Bernie’s military-style outfits from those toys, which was a challenge because of the bulky action figures they’d been originally created for.