Shout Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts

by Esta Spalding

  When they arrived at the parking lot, Kim expertly maneuvered the limo into a space. Then she rolled up the windows, closed the sunroof, and turned the engine off. She took off Leon’s hat and left it on the seat.

  As the sun slid behind the mountain, they took their first steps onto the trail that led to the Castle. Kim thought about how only weeks before, they’d been nervous to hike up the mountain in darkness. Now they were sure-footed and unafraid. They knew exactly where they were going. And they knew for certain that at the end of the trail, their home awaited them. But even this thought did not make her feel content. There was a Penny-sized hole in their family, and until they got the baby back, everything they did together would be robbed of happiness.

  Kimo switched on the flashlight and trained the beam at their feet so everyone could see the contours of the trail. There was no singing as they walked, just the steady clomp of bare feet on ground. When they got to the mound of hardened lava, they marched up and over it, and Kim thought again of their first trek up the mountain and the night they’d spent at the mouth of the cave, cooking hot dogs. She remembered burning the page with the words about Captain Baker’s ghost. As this memory rose in her mind, so did a terrifying thought: The scythe-footed ghost-monster was still out there. She turned and touched Pippa on the shoulder, quietly saying, “Ah, Pips? Maybe we shouldn’t go back to the Castle.”

  “Why not?” Toby had overheard.

  Pippa knew exactly what Kim meant. “Let it eat us,” the little girl said morosely.

  “Don’t say that.” Kimo stabbed the darkness with the flashlight. “If we’re going to rescue Penny tomorrow, we can’t be eaten by a monster tonight.”

  Toby didn’t like the sound of this. “What are you talking about?” he asked, but no one answered. They arrived at the edge of the forest and in the deep blue of twilight, they could see the great dark hulk of the Castle across the open field.

  “We may as well keep going.” This was Pippa. “We’ve slept there a lot and it hasn’t eaten us yet.”

  “What hasn’t eaten us? What? What?” Toby couldn’t stand it anymore. “Tell me what you’re talking about.” So Kim, Pippa, and Kimo quickly explained to Toby about the scythe-shaped prints and their theory that they belonged to a rustling ghost-monster.

  “Great,” said Toby. “Terrific.”

  “So what should we—” Kim was about to say “do” but was stopped by a sound from across the field. A long, high-pitched, hair-raising wail, the wail of something not at all human. “It’s coming from inside the Castle,” Kim said as terror flooded her body.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Kimo switched off the flashlight and pulled the others so close that their knees were touching. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “I don’t like this,” whispered Toby even as they heard the sound of the cry again.

  But Pippa broke free of the tangle of arms. Something about the sound made her picture the whale on the piece of scrimshaw. “It’s in pain,” she said. “We have to help.”

  “Help a monster?” Kimo yelped.

  “It’s our duty,” said Pippa.

  Just then, Toby gave a shout. “Goldie!” The boy had remembered his goldfish, left in its jar in the Castle. He dashed out into the field. He wasn’t going to let the ghost-monster mess with his pet. Pippa grabbed the flashlight from Kimo and took off after him.

  A moment later, Toby flew through the door of the Castle and saw that something enormous was on the floor, writhing in the darkness. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he rushed blindly around the edges of the room, heading for the hint of moonlight that glinted off Goldie’s jar. When he got there, he lifted the jar off the fireplace and gave a great sigh of relief as he held the fish close to his heart.

  But what was on the floor? Standing on the other side of the room, Pippa trained the flashlight on the struggling mass, and now they saw that whatever it was, it was trapped in a web of ropes and sails.

  “The hammocks, the canopies,” said Pippa. “It’s tangled.”

  But what was it? What was the rustling, scythe-footed ghost-monster that made such a terrible keening sound? It was too covered in sails and hammocks for Pippa to see exactly what it was. Still, Pippa thought it sounded more hurt than it did dangerous. She screwed up her courage and padded across the moss till she was kneeling beside it. With a sudden yank, she pulled a sail away from where she thought its face might be.

  What she saw made her laugh.

  She looked up at the others, her eyes opened wide in disbelief. “It’s not a monster at all,” she said. “It’s a giraffe.”

  And so it was. A giraffe that had escaped from the Wildlife Safari Park when all the fences were knocked down by the flooding. A giraffe who, Kim now pointed out, had hooves shaped like two scythes.

  Pippa held the giraffe’s head in her lap as she explained. “Bronco Bragg said he and some other cowboys rode all over the mountain trying to track the animals down and round them up.” She was stroking the giraffe and whispering to it sweetly as the others slowly and carefully untangled the ropes and sails from around its body. The animal’s frightening wail had turned into a whimper. Pippa read the tag on the giraffe’s collar. “Zephyr,” she said. “What a good name.” Almost as if in answer to that, the giraffe stopped whimpering and licked Pippa’s cheek with his long purple tongue, a tongue as rough as sandpaper. It made the girl giggle.

  “He’s only a year old,” said Kim. “The tag’s got his birthday stamped right on it.”

  “He must have been scared, all by himself, without his family,” Kimo mused.

  Toby clutched his goldfish even more tightly to his chest.

  As the last sail was being untangled from the giraffe, Kimo discovered Pippa’s knickknack shelf in the mess. The giraffe had knocked it down when he was stumbling around the Castle caught in the web, but the shelf was so well-constructed that it was still in one piece. Kimo handed it to Pippa, who brushed the dirt off it and placed it on the mantel above the cooking fireplace. Then she put the two pieces of scrimshaw on it. “I’d feel better if we all shared them,” she said.

  “They’re awesome,” said Kim. “But they’re yours. You should put them wherever you want.” There was something about the baby being missing that made them all want to be extra kind to each other.

  Perhaps the baby giraffe sensed this too, because when he had shrugged off the last of the sails and risen up on his four unexpectedly long legs, he did not bolt out the door but bent his long neck down and licked each one of the children on the forehead with that purple tongue. Then he slowly crossed the mossy floor and reached up his head toward one of the trees that grew into the Castle. He began to eat the leaves.

  Now the children heard the rustle and the slurp that they had heard that terrifying night a few weeks before. The slurping was the sound his hooves made in the mud and moss. The rustle was the sound his mouth made chewing the leaves.

  “Some monster,” said Kimo.

  “I bet we scared him as much as he scared us.” Pippa laughed.

  “I hope he’ll stay,” said Kim. The Penny-sized hole in their family wouldn’t be any smaller with the creature there, but Kim was comforted by the thought of taking care of another baby—even if it was a giraffe.

  They spent the rest of the night eating macaroni and cheese (made in a pot over the campfire) and coming up with a plan to rescue Penny the following day. They all agreed that they should descend on the Royal Palm hotel first thing in the morning—before they’d even eaten breakfast—when the employees were still sleepy and wouldn’t pay as much attention to them. Kim had Leon’s hat (it was on the seat of the limousine), so she would be in costume as a limo driver and would be able to go downstairs to the room in the hotel where the employees and drivers watched television. Toby remembered hearing about this room and was certain that as long as Kim had the
hat on, everyone would think that she belonged there. Meanwhile Toby, Kimo, and Pippa would go to the hotel lobby. Toby thought he remembered a phone on the wall, and he was pretty sure it could be used to order room service.

  That so much of this plan hinged on Toby’s memory of his one afternoon in the hotel made the older Fitzgerald-Trouts nervous. Since most of the boy’s clearest memories seemed to focus on the room service menu, Pippa made a case for using room service as a way to get into Clarice’s office. Her idea was that once Kim was downstairs in the employee television room, she should find her way to the kitchen. Pippa, Toby, and Kimo would use the phone in the lobby to order room service for Clarice. Just before the order was supposed to be ready, Kim would pretend she was one of the bellhops and volunteer to deliver the order to Clarice’s penthouse. Toby told Kim that if she could find a bright green bellhop’s jacket and put it on, the plan would go off without a hitch.

  Pippa guessed that once Kim was given the room service cart, she would also be given the little plastic key thingy to unlock the elevator button to Clarice’s floor. On her way up from the kitchen, in the elevator, Kim could stop at the lobby and let the others—Toby, Kimo, and Pippa—onto the elevator.

  They would ride together to Clarice’s penthouse and when the elevator door opened, they would be in the foyer of Baby Loves. If Penny was there, they would take her. If not, they would try the office of Baby Loves, which Toby thought he remembered was through the doors on the left.

  They stayed up late that night reviewing the plan, talking through every possible complication. As they talked, they curled up beside the baby giraffe, who, after his satisfying meal of leaves, had fallen asleep on the moss.

  “It’s not a flawless plan,” said Pippa.

  “Few plans are.” Kimo was trying to be hopeful.

  “How close is the TV break room to the kitchen?” Kim asked Toby.

  “It’s right next door,” said Toby.

  “How do you know?” asked Pippa. “You were only ever upstairs.”

  “Goldie was down there with Leon and he told me,” Toby answered matter-of-factly.

  “Goldie told you?” The older three rolled over and looked at Toby.

  “Wait a second,” said Pippa. “Are you telling us that this plan we’ve come up with is based upon telepathic communication with a fish?”

  “Yeah,” said Toby. “So?”

  Kim poked Pippa in the shoulder as if to say be nice. “Well,” said Pippa, “if anybody can read a fish’s mind, it’s you.” What else was there to say? If there was one thing they were learning from the Family Monster Calamity, it was to rely on each other’s strengths and to always give each other the benefit of the doubt.

  Through all of this planning, Zephyr was a comforting presence. His warm back rose and fell with his breath; Kimo was reminded of their nights sleeping on the boat. Maybe we’ll never get that boat, he thought. Doesn’t matter. As long as we’re all together again.

  As if Kim had read his mind, she said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to get Penny back.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  High up in the penthouse of the Royal Palm hotel, the baby lay on her back in a Baby Loves designer crib listening to a Baby Loves mobile play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as four little plastic stars rotated in the air above her.

  Those aren’t real stars, Penny thought to herself (even as she realized for the first time that she knew the word for stars). Those aren’t like stars at all. The baby thought about how the sky looked when she lay in her hammock in the Castle and stared at it through the gaps in the sailcloth roof. She thought about the sounds of her brothers and sisters sleeping nearby. Those sounds were much more comforting than the mobile churning out its mechanical tune. And where were they now, her brothers and sisters? What had happened?

  She knew that they had tried to come and get her when she’d been in that loud room with all the instruments. She’d been so happy when they had suddenly rushed through the door and charged toward her. They’d made a lot of noise—shouting and banging on drums—and the grown-ups had been confused and upset. For a little while, it had seemed that Penny would go home with her brothers and sisters. But then, just as suddenly as they had arrived, the older children had been taken away.

  When were they coming back? And what if they didn’t come back? What if they couldn’t get to her?

  It was clear to the baby just exactly what she had to do.

  Grabbing hold of the crib’s railing, she pulled herself to her feet and began to rock from side to side, just as she had done in the recording studio. The mobile and its stars swung back and forth; the base of the crib lifted off the floor, and just as it lifted, Penny threw herself against the opposite side, tipping the crib over.

  Hurrah! She had done it. The crib was toppled and she had fallen out and was sitting on the floor, staring at her own two feet. But what needed to happen next was the hard part. She had to get across the room to the kitchen. Which meant that she had to move across the floor on her own. But the baby wasn’t sure she knew how to do that.

  She sat on the floor holding onto her toes and thinking about this for so long that by the time she had an answer, there was a pool of drool in front of her. She had to do what Toby had done when he’d been on the ground, in the moss, saying, “Crawl, crawl, crawl.” She remembered that he had wiggled himself: one arm and the opposite leg working and then the other arm and the other leg working.

  “Quall,” she said out loud, and then she tried it. Wiggling one arm and the opposite leg. The other arm, the other leg. It worked. “Quall!” she shouted, and then she heard the song in her head—“Give a loud shout, ’cause we’re Fitzgerald-Trouts…”—and she sang it to herself as she began to make her way forward.

  She was very pleased with her progress as she found herself moving across the floor to the kitchen cupboards, where she knew that she would find the pots and pans that Clarice used to heat up baby food. She would get her hands on those pots and pans. She would use them to make noise just like the older kids had done when they had upset and confused the adults. If she could do this, if she could make a terrible racket, she was sure that she could rescue herself.

  We don’t give up and we don’t give in, she sang to herself as she reached the kitchen cupboards.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Despite the warmth of the giraffe beside them and the soft moss beneath them, the eldest four Fitzgerald-Trouts slept very badly, tossing and turning so much that small twigs tangled in their hair and leaves pressed into their skin. Each of them had some version of a nightmare in which he or she was trying to rescue Penny but could not get to her in time. One by one, they woke from these awful dreams and lay in the clammy darkness, talking quietly to each other as they waited for the first hint of sunlight that meant they could hike down the mountain and put their rescue plan into action.

  But they never got this chance, because as those first streaks of light broke through the branches overhead, they heard a startling scream. They were on their feet instantly. Pippa thought something had happened to Zephyr, but then she realized that he was beside her on his feet, also surprised by the noise. She rubbed her eyes and followed the others, who were stumbling out of the Castle.

  As they emerged into the field, the children saw something so amazing that they clung to each other, wondering if it was a dream. Wearing her ridiculous high heels and her snakeskin jumpsuit, Clarice was charging out of the woods toward them. In her arms she held Penny, who was screeching at the top of her lungs and pulling on the woman’s hair.

  Halfway across the clearing, Clarice stopped to catch her breath and to untangle the baby’s fists from her curly locks. She looked up and saw the four older Fitzgerald-Trouts standing there, staring at her. “How am I supposed to deal with this?” she shouted as she lowered the baby into the field of purple orchids.

&n
bsp; The older children were still blinking awake and trying to understand what was happening, but they all saw that the baby had an enormous smile on her face. What had she done?

  “I wanted a baby,” Clarice said. “A cute baby. I didn’t want a child who wakes me up banging pots and pans and when I try to calm her down with a bottle of milk spits it up all over me. Snakeskin is very hard to clean.” She gestured to a large milky stain on her pantsuit. “Then when I put her down, she goes everywhere…”

  And that’s when Kim, Kimo, Pippa, and Toby saw that it was true; still smiling her enormous smile, Penny was also moving toward them on all fours. The baby was crawling, and Clarice was fuming. “She doesn’t stay still for a second. How am I supposed to use her for a photo shoot if she won’t stay still?” Clarice lifted her foot and scraped the mud off her high heels on a nearby stump. “You have to take her back.” The four older Fitzgerald-Trouts took in this new development with amazement; there would be no rescue at the Royal Palm hotel because Penny had rescued herself.

  “I’ve got a business to run,” Clarice said, turning and starting back down the hill.

  “I hope you learned your lesson,” Kim called out. “A business has no business adopting a baby.” They all looked across the field at Penny, who was still moving on all fours toward them. Toby felt his heart surge with joy. He knelt down in the moss, watching as Penny got closer. He knew he had to resist the urge to run to her and scoop her up. Penny had earned the right to arrive under her own steam.