“Maybe we can just open later,” he said.
“I thought about that,” I called as I chased down the puck. “I don’t think we can. It says eight on the flyers.”
The flyers weren’t fancy or anything. Josh had just taken a photo of a doughnut and put it next to a photo of Winnie giving a thumbs-up. Underneath it said, “Winnie’s Famous Chocolate Cream Doughnuts at the Doughnut Stop, Main Street, Petersville. Come and Get ’Em! Saturdays and Sundays at 8:00 a.m., starting Saturday, December 20.”
“Oh, yeah. It says so on the bumper stickers too,” he said. “And who knows how many people have seen those by now.”
Honk if you like chocolate cream doughnuts! and I stop for the Doughnut Stop! were everywhere. Winnie was giving them away at the General Store. Clive, her brother, was in the printing business.
We had serious buzz. Changing the time was not an option.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll just go to sleep really early. You know, like seven thirty.”
“Yeah, as long as you get the same amount of sleep, it shouldn’t matter what time you’re getting up, right?”
“Right,” I said.
Wrong.
The problem was, I wasn’t tired at seven thirty. Really, who over the age of five is? It was just too early. Plus, I was too excited and too afraid my alarm wouldn’t go off, or that it would go off and I would just go right back to sleep. What kind of nuddy misses his own grand opening? Even if Josh made it, he wouldn’t have anything to sell, and the book says if you let your customers down once, they won’t give you a second chance.
I know I did finally fall asleep because when the alarm went off, I dreamed the beeping was the kitchen timer and that I couldn’t reach it because I was stuck under a doughnut the size of an elephant. When I eventually woke up enough to realize that I wasn’t actually stuck under an enormous baked good, I leaped out of bed.
Fear of failure must work a lot like caffeine does, but only if you care about the thing you might fail. I definitely never woke up feeling like I’d been sleep-guzzling Coke on days I had tests at school.
I’d left my clothes in a pile next to my bed, and in seconds, I was dressed and climbing down the ladder. Halfway down, I heard something scurrying around just below me.
“Zoe?”
Whoever it was took off down the hall.
“Hey, I don’t care!” I whispered-yelled. I figured I’d caught her creeping into my parents’ room again. Since we’d moved, she preferred sleeping under my parents’ bed than in her own.
I climbed down the next couple of rungs and then jumped to the floor.
That’s when I heard it, the Darth-Vader-phlegm-breathing from the other end of the hall:
“Cchhhhuuuu Whlluuuhhhh Cchhhhuuuu Whlluuuhhhh…”
I froze.
Unlike Darth Vader, whatever it was didn’t sound calm. It sounded crazy angry, like rip-my-arms-and-legs-from-my-body angry.
If I’d been able to move, I would have run, but I was too scared. So I just stood there waiting to be wishboned.
But nothing happened, and suddenly, the noise stopped. When a minute had passed and it hadn’t started again, I ran my hand along the wall till I felt the light switch and flipped it.
Just outside the bathroom was a raccoon the size of a Big Wheel.
I’m not sure what happened next. I may have screamed, but if I did, I don’t think I managed to get much sound out because nobody came running. What I do remember is that for a while, we—me and the raccoon—just stared at each other, and the weird thing was he looked almost as surprised as I was, like this was his house and I had scared him on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
As soon as I could get my legs to move, I ran to my parents’ room at the opposite end of the hall, slammed the door behind me, and jumped onto their bed with both feet.
“Ow, my hair!” my mother screamed.
“Who is that?” Dad grabbed my foot.
“It’s me.” I dropped to my knees.
Dad sat up. “Tris? What is it?”
“A raccoon,” I whispered, though I’m not sure who I was worried about hearing me.
“Where?” Mom said.
“Out there.” I pointed to the door.
“Why?” She wasn’t so awake.
“Really? A raccoon in the house?” I could almost hear Dad smiling in the dark. Of course. This was something different.
“Yes, really!” I said.
“Houses aren’t airtight. It happens,” Dad said like it was no big deal.
“It happens? This isn’t a mouse! It’s a raccoon, and he’s bigger than Zoe!”
“Relax. We’ll get someone to come set some traps,” he said.
“Okay, so what are you waiting for?”
“How about daylight?”
“But I need to go downstairs now.”
“So go.”
“You want me to go out there by myself, unarmed?”
“He’s not going to attack you,” Dad said as he hunkered down under the comforter. “Raccoons are shy.”
“How do you know?”
“I read it…somewhere.”
Ah. I see. In addition to being a master handyman, made-up Petersville dad was also a wildlife expert. “He didn’t look shy! He looked mad, really mad, like I’d invaded his territory. You should have heard this sound he made.”
“You’re bigger than he is,” Mom said.
“Not by much.”
“Stop exaggerating. You’ll be fine,” she said, snuggling up to my father.
“You guys aren’t actually going back to sleep, are you?”
Uh, yeah, they were.
“What if he’s rabid?” I said.
“Highly unlikely,” said the wildlife expert, his eyes already closed.
“Fine! But I’m taking this with me,” I said, grabbing The Art of French Cooking, the thousand-page cookbook Mom keeps on her nightstand.
Mom opened her eyes. “You gonna teach it to make coq au vin?”
“It’s for protection.”
“Sounds good.” Her eyes were closed again. “Have fun.”
“You guys are never going to forgive yourselves if that raccoon attacks me.”
“Good night,” Dad said.
Jeanine would have been able to get them out of bed, and for a second, I thought about waking her up so she could do just that. But then what?
