“Good.” Oscar hoped Chad was paying attention. You could never be sure with him.
“Ready, Oscar?” Marco rubbed Oscar’s shoulders like he’d seen a boxing manager do on TV once. He wasn’t entirely sure where Oscar’s shoulders were, so he rubbed around the whole lower neck area and then patted Oscar awkwardly on the back. Oscar seemed to appreciate it.
“Ooh! Take this for luck!” Polo said, slipping something over Oscar’s head.
Oscar hardly noticed. He was focused on taking deep cleansing breaths. He couldn’t mess this up. Finally he stood up straight and tall.
“Okay, Chad,” Oscar said. “NOW!”
Chad entered the key code with one tentacle while he pulled on the door handle with another. The door opened just enough for Oscar to squeeze through.
Taking one last deep breath, Oscar stepped outside. Chad let the door swing shut behind him.
“What did you give him?” Marco asked Polo as they watched Oscar go.
“My button,” Polo said. “It’ll bring him good luck.”
“Wait.” Walt turned slowly to Polo, the fur on her neck rising. “Your SPARKLY button?”
“Uh-huh,” Polo said proudly. “It’ll help.”
“Oh no.” Walt looked at the door in horror. But it was too late. The door had shut. Oscar was gone. “Oh no.”
Oscar heard the door click shut behind him. He was on his own.
The scrabbling sounds had stopped as soon as Chad had opened the door, but Oscar knew the raccoons weren’t gone. They were there. Watching him. Waiting.
He cleared his throat and spoke to the empty loading dock.“Ahem. Loading dock raccoons! My name is Oscar, and you may consider me to be a representative of the Strathmore Building. As representative, and as a resident, I request that you vacate the premises immediately.”
He tried to sound as official as possible, but he wasn’t sure he was pulling it off.
He waited for some reaction, but there was none, just silence.
Oscar cleared his throat a second time and took a tentative step forward, careful to avoid the gaps in the metal slats below his feet. He’d only been there a few minutes, but he could already tell that he was not a fan of this loading dock.
“Attention, raccoons!” He tried again. “Raccoon friends!” He thought the “friends” part was a nice touch. “This is your Strathmore Building representative, Oscar, asking you to please find a new gathering place. You are disturbing the residents inside. This is your last warning. Please leave.”
“SHINY.” A soft voice wafted through the air. Oscar looked sharply to the side, but he couldn’t see anyone there.
“Please don’t make me tell you again,” Oscar said, his voice shaking slightly. “You need to leave immediately.”
He took another step forward. Whatever Polo had given him bumped softly against his chest, and he looked down quickly. His eyes widened.
There was one thing all of the raccoon programs on the Television had made perfectly clear. Raccoons couldn’t resist sparkly things. And there was nothing more sparkly than Polo’s button.
“Um, please leave by morning. That is our request.” Oscar tried to cover the button with his feathers, but it was too big to hide. “Thank you for your attention. Best wishes, good luck for the future, that will be all,” Oscar said, scrambling backward toward the door. But before he could reach it, a small thin hand reached out from between the loading dock slats and grabbed his foot.
“URK!” Oscar gurgled, looking down. The hand that gripped his foot was just like the one that had reached out through the insulation in the storage room. And it wasn’t the only one. Dozens of tiny hands were reaching up in between the slats, feeling around the loading dock, and grabbing at whatever they could find. And the only thing to find was Oscar.
“SO SPARKLY.” Another voice drifted up from underneath the loading dock.
“OOOOOhhhhhhhh.” There was a chorus of giggles. “Mine, please.”
“Yes, very sparkly, ha-ha, thank you!” Oscar shook his foot desperately, but as soon as he’d freed one foot, a hand latched onto the other. Panicked, Oscar launched himself into the air, pulling against the raccoon holding him down.
In one huge effort, he jerked his leg free and shot up into the sky. He looked down just in time to see raccoons swarming onto the loading dock from all sides, looking up at him with glowing eyes and outstretched hands.
Oscar swerved around and flew directly into the loading dock door, tapping against it repeatedly.
The door opened a crack. One eye peered out.“Was that three taps? We agreed to three taps.” Chad’s voice came through the crack.
“Yes, that was three! You know it’s me. LET ME IN!” Oscar yelled, beating his wings against the door. He glanced back just as one large raccoon rose up out of the group on the loading dock.
“You don’t make the rules around here, OSCAR,” the raccoon said in a deep, echoing voice. “I don’t like being told what to do. Better fly away while you still can.” He laughed a low, booming laugh, which was immediately accompanied by giggles from the other raccoons half-hidden in the shadows.
Oscar cringed. That was the authoritative voice he’d been trying for earlier. No wonder the raccoons hadn’t listened to him.
He crashed against the door again, just as Chad’s eye disappeared, and the door swung open another inch. Oscar threw himself at the gap, managing to squeeze inside (only losing a feather or two in the process).
He could still hear the big raccoon laughing as the door swung shut behind him.
“So what did they say?” Butterbean asked, sniffing at Oscar’s foot as he collapsed in a heap in front of them. She blinked at him expectantly.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” Walt said, wrapping her tail around her feet.
“You could say that,” Oscar said.
“We heard laughing,” Polo said. “Did they agree to go away?”
“Not exactly,” Oscar said, scrambling to his feet. “I don’t think they’re leaving.”
He ducked his head so that Polo’s button slipped off his neck and onto the floor. “They did like your button, though.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her just how much they’d liked it.
“Well, duh,” Polo said, picking it up and putting it back on. “It’s beautiful.”
Walt raised an eyebrow at Oscar, but he shrugged it off.
“So what do we do now?” Butterbean asked.
“Nothing,” Oscar said. “We do nothing. We go home.”
“I told the rats we were getting the loading dock back for them,” Butterbean said. “They’re kind of our clients now. So we need to do SOMETHING.”
“We’ll see,” Oscar said, climbing tiredly onto Butterbean’s head. He wasn’t worried about disappointing the loading dock rats. He wasn’t worried about Biscuit getting evicted. What he was worried about was that raccoon. Because now it knew his name.
— 8 —
THE WHITE CAT WAS LYING on the couch when they got back.
“Well, that took forever,” she said, stretching full length on the cushions.
“You’re not supposed to be here! You don’t live here!” Polo said in frustration. “Mrs. Food could come out at any minute.” They’d managed to navigate the hallways and elevators all the way back without anyone seeing them. The last thing they needed was to get caught because the white cat didn’t know how to be careful.
“Relax, it’s the middle of the night.” The white cat yawned. “No one is coming out.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Marco said, crossing his arms. “It’s risky.”
“Yeah, yeah. What about him?” The white cat waved a paw at Chad, who had climbed up onto the kitchen counter and was browsing the contents of the refrigerator. (He said all that dangling had made him weak with hunger.) “Or him!” The white cat waved a paw in Wallace’s direction. “He’s not supposed to be here either, and I’d be a lot easier to explain than a rat in a nightgown.”
“It’s a sailor shirt, and I’m taking it off,” Wallace said. Marco and Polo looked at him with horrified expressions. “As soon as I get home, I mean. Sheesh.”