Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter One

The first I ever heard of the Blind Mice was from my 14-year-old son Zach. I was scrambling to get him and his sister ready for school, tripping over dolls and magazines, hunting sock matches, thinking ahead to this new job I was supposed to be starting in less than an hour.

"Turn around," I told Zach, inspecting his T-shirt. "Let's see the back."

He scowled but did comply. The clothing check was mandatory after that awful vomiting-skull sweatshirt he'd slipped out the door in last month.

Okay. No drugs or profanity, or bodily fluids being expelled.

But there was something. A kind of symbol. Abstract, computer-ish. A mouse? Possibly the nose, eyes, whiskers of a mouse?

And printed underneath: Nibble, nibble. Until the whole sick scam rots through.

I checked the clock. 7:38. Seven minutes before we absolutely had to be out the door and I still hadn't cleaned up the grape-juice spill, dealt with my Frizz City hair, or checked the furnace. I had been hearing ker-klacks for the last twenty minutes; my heart said it was construction up the block, but my head was betting on the failing heater.

How badly did I want to let Zach's shirt slide?

Badly.

"Is that supposed to be a mouse?" I said. "Like an angry mouse?"

"The Blind Mice. Maybe you've heard, they're overthrowing the corporatocracy?"

Underneath those bangs he refused to get snipped, his eyes bulged teenage sarcasm.

"Wait, those attacks on big companies' websites and factories?"

"Government too." He pulled his face back—knowing, ominous. "Anyone who's part of the scam."

"And you're wearing their shirt?"

He shrugged.

Though I would've loved to engage Zach in a serious discussion of socioeconomic justice (my Master's thesis concerned the mechanisms by which labor disenfranchisement reinforces adverse conceptions of class), I needed to be at First Mutual in 56 minutes. The grape juice wasn't mopping itself up; the ker-klacks hadn't stopped; and my daughter Karen's pigtails were on the verge of unraveling as she leaned precariously from the table offering Eggo waffle to the cat.

"What if Principal Broadhead sees that? Go change."

"No."

"Zach, it's domestic terrorism. Wanna get kicked out of school?"

"Like half my friends wear it, Mom." He thrust his hands into his pockets.

Ugh. I had stepped in parenting quicksand. I'd issued a rash order and Zach had refused, and now I could either insist he change, starting a blow-out fight and virtually guaranteeing I would be late my first day on the job; or back down, eroding my own authority.

"Wear a jacket," I said, hoping the concession might limit said erosion. "And don't let your great-grandmother see that shirt."

Speaking of, I could hear Granny's slippers padding about upstairs. She undoubtedly did know about the Blind Mice—cable news was her lifeblood. Now a shrill wail bellowed down about her sink, which drained slow, which I had zero money to hire a plumber for. Things had been tight since my private investigator business tanked.

Karen, who had finished feeding the cat and was trying to make her baby doll eat, announced, "Mommy I get to ride to school with you today!"

The doll's lips were sticky with OJ. I wiped them with a frusty dish rag. "Pooh Bear, weren't you going to ride the bus?"

Karen wagged her head side-to-side, shaking loose the last remnants of pigtails. "Bus isn't running. I get to ride in the Prius! In Mommy's Prius!"

I felt simultaneous joy that Karen loved our new car (well, new to us: 120K miles as a rental, but it was a hybrid) and despair because I really couldn't take her. School was in the opposite direction from the station. Even if I took the turnpike, which I loathed, I would miss my train.

Struggling to address her calmly in such a time crunch, I said, "Are you sure the bus isn't running?"

She nodded. Tall and sunny.

I asked how she knew.

"Bus Driver said, 'If the stoplights are blinking again in the morning, I ain't taking you.'" She walked to the window and pointed outside. "See? Blinky."

I joined her at the window, ignoring the driver's grammatical example. Up and down my street, traffic lights flashed yellow.

"Blind Mice, playa!" Zach puffed his chest. "Nibble, nibble."

The lights had gone out every morning this week at rush hour. On Monday the news had reported a bald eagle flew into a substation. On Tuesday they'd said the outages were lingering for unknown reasons. I hadn't seen the news yesterday.

Did Zach know the Blind Mice were involved? Or was he just being obnoxious?

"Great," I muttered. "Bus won't run because stoplights are out, but I'm free to risk our lives driving to school."

Karen gazed up at me, her eyes green like mine and trembling. A mirror of my stress.

Pull it together, I scolded myself.

"Don't worry, I'll take you. I will. Just let me figure out a few things."

Trying not to visualize the scene of me walking into First Mutual 45 minutes late, I breathed. I patted through my purse for keys, sifting through rumpled Kleenex and receipts and granola-bar halves. Granny had made it downstairs and was reading aloud from a bill-collection notice. Zach was texting, undoubtedly to friends about his lame mom. I felt air on my toes and looked down: a hole in my hose. Fantastic. I'd picked out my cutest work sandals, but somehow I doubted how the look would hold up with toes poking out like mini-wieners.

You've had these mornings, right? When you just want to shut your eyes, whisper a spell, and wake up in a different universe? Someplace where all your choices worked, where that hero deep inside you—the one who battles and eats dirt every day of your life—actually gets to shine?

Then the doorbell rang.