For Your Paws Only (2 page)

“We need to get close, but not too close,” whispered Glory. “Dupont has a nose like a ferret.”

Camouflaging themselves in the shadows, the two mice edged nearer to where the gray rat was squatting on the floor. Dupont had the book in front of him now, and he was turning the pages with his mangy snout. Glory and Bunsen watched, speechless, as he squinted at the words, using his tail as a pointer.

“
G-R-A-N-D,
” he spelled. Then, slowly and laboriously, he sounded out the word: “ ‘Grand.' ” Dupont grunted. He sat back on his haunches, and a look of surprise crept across his hideous face. He chuckled to himself. “Well, what do you know,” he muttered softly.
“The little beggar was right. It's not so hard.”

Glory and Bunsen looked at each other in horror. This was worse than they could possibly have imagined! Dupont didn't just have a book—Dupont was
reading
!

The power of the written word in the paws of a megalomanirat like Roquefort Dupont? Glory's heart clutched in fear. The prospect was terrifying. Books were the mice's secret weapon. Outsized, outclawed, and outfanged by their rat rivals, mice had no choice but to rely on brains rather than brawn when it came to dealing with Dupont and his kind. Reading gave them the power to do just that. It allowed them to retain a small edge over the rats, to stay a whisker's length ahead of their deadliest enemies. If the rats learned to read, it would tip the balance of power forever. Literate rats would be lethal rats. It would spell the end of civilization as they knew it.

“Julius must be told at once,” Glory whispered. She turned to go.

Bunsen motioned her to stop. He slipped off his backpack and pulled out what looked like a small key chain. Slinging it around his pale neck, he held the black rubber key fob up to one pink eye and pointed it at Dupont.

“
C-E-N-T-R-A-L,
” the rat spelled, once again sounding out the word. “ ‘Central.' ” He grinned again, pleased with himself.

Click! Click! Click!
went Bunsen's key chain. He looked
over at Glory. “Right tool for the right job, remember?” he said softly. “Subminiature Tropel camera. CIA issue. No one will believe this unless they see it.”

Glory nodded, and the two mice melted back into the shadows. They retraced their steps, scampering swiftly up the trail of dental floss to the stained-glass window in the library's dome.

“Well?” asked Hank as they emerged into the open air.

“It's bad, Hank,” Glory replied grimly. “Worse than bad—catastrophic. We need to get back to Central Command on the double.”

“What is it? What's wrong?” asked the pigeon.

Glory shivered. This time it wasn't the November wind sending a chill down to the tip of her tail. “Dupont can read.”

DAY ONE • TUESDAY • 0800 HOURS

Several miles across town,
the morning bell rang at Chester B. Arthur Elementary School. Children streamed across the playground in response, heading for the building's back entrance.

“Watch it, Fatboy!” said a gangly sixth grader with a thatch of dark hair. He stepped heavily on the foot of a plump, moonfaced fifth grader whose wire-rimmed glasses partially concealed eyes as warm and brown as a golden retriever's. The moonfaced boy flinched, and his tormentor cackled with delight. “Grab his lunch, Tank,” he ordered. “Bet Oz has something in there he's just dying to share with us.”

“Hey,” protested the fifth grader as the boy called Tank snatched his lunch bag away and started rummaging through it.

“Carrot sticks, an apple . . . wait, what's this? Score!” Tank waved a small plastic bag in the air triumphantly. “Looks like cake.”

Pumpkin chocolate-chip bread, actually,
thought Oz, gazing regretfully at his dessert. He had been looking forward to eating that.

Tank tossed the dessert to his friend, then poked through the lunch bag again. “What's this?” he asked suspiciously, emerging with a neatly wrapped packet. He gave Oz a sharp poke.

“Uh, sushi,” Oz replied.

“Sushi?” Tank stared at it in disbelief. “What kind of a loser brings sushi for lunch? Check it out, Jordan.”

Jordan sniffed the packet. “Disgusting,” he said, then smiled. “But it figures. I hear whales like raw fish.”

Oz stared miserably at his toes. It was starting again. He'd known all along that it would. Oz was a realist, and he'd lived too long with sharks—his name for bottom-feeders who lived to torture younger and weaker students such as himself—not to expect the worst. Jordan Scott and Sherman “Tank” Wilson had stayed off his back for a while following the Halloween incident, but recently they'd begun to rebound. Sharks always did. Oz knew this from bitter experience.

“Hold his arms, Tank,” Jordan ordered.

Tank obediently twisted Oz's arms behind his back and held them as Jordan unwrapped the packet of sushi and held a piece aloft. “Feeding time at Sea World!” he crowed. As a crowd of students gathered to watch, he crammed the sushi into Oz's mouth. Oz coughed and gagged.

“What's the matter, Shamu? Shrimp not fresh enough?” taunted Tank.

“Knock it off, you morons.”

Jordan and Tank swung around. A slender, dark-skinned girl was standing behind them, a scowl on her sharply intelligent face.

“Should have guessed you'd come to the rescue, Dogbones,” Jordan sneered.

Dogbones—whose name was actually Delilah Bean, and who was better known as D. B.—folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

“Ooooh, we are so scared!” squealed Tank in mock fear.

“You will be when Mrs. Busby finds out what you're up to,” snapped D. B. She pointed wordlessly to where their teacher was standing on the school's back steps. Mrs. Busby was in charge of homeroom for their combined class of fifth and sixth graders. Now, she'd spotted the commotion and was craning her neck to get a better view.

The two sixth graders exchanged a glance. “Here, keep your stupid lunch,” growled Jordan, dropping the sushi back into Oz's lunch bag and thrusting it at him. Tank released his arms, and the two boys swaggered off, pushing the younger students out of their way as they went.

“Thanks, D. B.,” said Oz, wiping rice off his face.

“Anytime,” his classmate replied. “But dude, you have got to learn to stick up for yourself.”

Oz sighed. “I know,” he said. “I'm trying. It's hard when they gang up on me.”

Across the playground, a van pulled into the parking lot. “Hey, isn't that your mom's film crew?” he said in surprise.

D. B. blinked, then nodded as Amelia Bean, TV news anchor and one of Washington's most famous faces, emerged from the Channel Twelve van. Spotting her daughter, she blew her a kiss. D. B. waved back reluctantly.

“What's she doing here?” Oz asked.

“Beats me,” D. B. replied.

A limousine pulled up behind the van and the news crew sprang into action. Cameras rolled as the rear door of the limo opened and a man emerged. He was dressed in a black pilgrim suit, complete with a tall black hat and square buckles on his belt and shoes.

“Check out that clown,” said D. B.

Another man got out of the limousine. A tall, bearlike man with a dark, shaggy beard.

“Oh, no,” said Oz weakly.

The man was followed by an equally large woman swathed in a purple caftan. Her hair was the same pale blond color as Oz's.

“Aren't those your parents?” asked D. B.

Oz scrunched down behind her in reply. His father was scanning the crowd of students, looking for him. “Yeah,” he whispered.

Jordan and Tank materialized.
Like sharks scenting blood,
thought Oz, huddling lower. Jordan stared across the playground at Oz's parents, then lifted an eyebrow, causing the pimples on his forehead to scamper for cover in his greasy black bangs. “Chip off the old block, aren't you?” he sniped nastily. “Like mother, like son.”

Oz blushed. His mother was a world-famous opera star, and like many divas, she was amply proportioned. “Larger than life,” his father always said admiringly. “Fat,” said the rest of the world.

Don't react,
Oz told himself sternly. Reacting only fueled the fire where sharks were concerned. He tried to imagine what James Bond would do if he were here. James Bond was Oz's hero. Agent 007 would never let a couple of thugs like Jordan and Tank rattle his cage. The British secret agent never let anything rattle his cage. Only problem was, Agent 007 didn't have parents. At least none that Oz knew about. And Oz knew pretty much everything there was to know about James Bond.

“The name is Levinson. Oz Levinson,” Oz muttered under his breath, trying to bolster his flagging confidence.

Across the playground, Oz's father shrugged, said something to Oz's mother, and then ushered her into the school along with the man in the pilgrim suit. Amelia Bean and her crew followed, cameras still rolling.

D. B. leaned over to Oz. “Something's up,” she whispered.

“No kidding,” Oz whispered back. “I wonder what?”

They didn't have to wait long for an answer. As soon as they had taken their seats in homeroom, Mrs. Busby clapped her hands.

“Students! I have a surprise for you this morning,” she announced.

Here it comes
, thought Oz, suddenly taking a keen interest in the surface of his desk. He scraped at an ink blot with his fingernail and almost—almost!—wished that he were invisible. Before Halloween, Oz had spent a lot of time wishing he were invisible. He still didn't like being on the radar screen at school, and whatever his teacher's surprise was, it was going to involve him. He was sure of it. He glanced over at the desk next to him. D. B. was scowling. She didn't like being on the radar screen any more than he did.

“Ta-da!” trumpeted Mrs. Busby, flinging open the door to her classroom. The man in the pilgrim suit strode in, followed by Oz's parents, Amelia Bean, and the Channel Twelve news crew. All of them were beaming.

“There you are, my little dumpling!” cried Luigi Levinson, waggling his fingers at his son.

A ripple of laughter spread across the classroom. Oz stared down at his desk again, his face burning. He could practically feel the bull's-eye growing on the back of his shirt. Jordan and Tank would lose no time making hay with that one.

“Oz, D. B., would you please come up here?” said Mrs. Busby.

Oz and D. B. exchanged a glance. D. B. lifted one skinny shoulder in a half-shrug, then rose from her seat and marched up to the front of the classroom. His face still red with embarrassment, Oz followed reluctantly.

“Roll 'em,” said Amelia Bean.

The camera's bright lights were hot, and Oz blinked in the glare. He started to sweat. His glasses crept slowly down his perspiring nose, and he prodded at them anxiously.

The man in the pilgrim suit stepped forward. He pulled a scroll of fake parchment paper from inside his coat, unrolled it, cleared his throat, and then announced: “Hear ye, hear ye! A Thanksgiving proclamation for Miss Delilah Bean and Mr. Ozymandias Levinson courtesy of Mayflower Flour. ‘Your ship always comes in when you bake with Mayflower Flour!' ”

He paused to let the brief commercial message sink in, then cleared his throat again and continued. “Insomuch as your recipe for pumpkin chocolate-chip bread has been tested and declared worthy, you are hereby declared finalists in the Twenty-Fifth Annual Mayflower Flour Bake-Off, junior division!”

D. B. glared at Oz. “You didn't tell me you entered us in a contest!” she whispered furiously.

“I didn't!” protested Oz, prodding at his glasses again. “Honest!”

The two children looked at each other.

“Uh-oh,” said Oz.

They turned and looked at Oz's father. Luigi Levinson gave them an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Surprise!” he cried.

“Terrific,” muttered D. B.

Oz's heart sank. What had his dad gone and done now? A few weeks ago, he and D. B. had been messing around in the Levinsons' kitchen after school. Like his father, who managed the Spy City Café at Washington's International Spy Museum, Oz loved to cook. Almost as much as he loved to eat, in fact. He and D. B. had decided to make pumpkin bread to celebrate Oz's mother's return from Australia, where she had been on tour. At the last minute they had dumped in a bag of chocolate chips. Oz was a devoted fan of chocolate chips. He firmly believed that there were few dishes, with the possible exception of lasagna, that couldn't benefit from the addition of chocolate chips.

The experiment had turned out well. So well that Oz's dad had asked for the recipe and promptly added it to the café's autumn menu. But a contest? Not a word had been said about that.

The man in the pilgrim suit continued. “Along with eleven other finalists—a total of six in the adult division and six in the junior—you are hereby invited to the island of Manhattan in the great state of New York to compete in tomorrow's contest. You will be accompanied by parent chaperones and two lucky assistants.”

The classroom erupted in excited cheers. All except for Jordan and Tank, who were doubled over in laughter.

“Bet Pumpkinbutt looks cute in an apron!” jeered Jordan.

“Chef Shamu!” added Tank.

Oz stared miserably at his feet. No doubt about it, he was definitely back on the radar screen again. The sharks smelled blood, and they were beginning to circle. Soon the feeding frenzy would begin.

Amelia Bean thrust a microphone under Oz's nose. “What do you have to say, Oz? Is this a thrill?”

“Uh—”

“Do you know what the grand prize is?”

“Uh—”

Amelia Bean turned to her daughter. “How about you, Delilah?”

“It's D. B.,” said D. B., scowling.

Her mother sighed, then turned and faced the camera. “The grand prize in the Mayflower Flour Bake-Off, junior division, is a five-thousand-dollar college savings bond, a year's supply of Mayflower Flour, and a place of honor on Mayflower Flour's fabulous float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.”