“Oh.” Cass stifled a smile.
“I, um, made the poster myself.”
Yo-Yoji took the news about Cass and the Tuning Fork with considerably more calm and equanimity than Max-Ernest had taken it.
“So, then, that means we’re all good,” said Yo-Yoji.
“What do you mean?” asked Cass, confused.
“You lied to me and Max-Ernest, just like I lied to you guys…”
“You mean about not being in Terces? That was completely different.”
“Why? We were both following instructions. At least my instructions really came from Pietro.”
“Yeah, but you should have trusted us,” said Cass.
Yo-Yoji and Max-Ernest both looked at her.
“OK, fine. I should have trusted you guys, too. We’re all three even,” said Cass. “Can we get started finding my mom now?”
“Wait, but I never lied to anybody!” said Max-Ernest.
“I’m sure you’ll get your chance, yo,” said Yo-Yoji.
Max-Ernest furrowed his brow. He might not have been sure how he was feeling, but if I had to describe his emotional state I might say it was confused, dissatisfied, and slightly resentful.
Within minutes, Yo-Yoji had scanned all the pictures from We and they were examining pixels on his laptop computer.
Apart from the cover photo showing the Skelton Sisters holding a baby, and the two-page picture of them with Ms. Mauvais and the “orphans,” there was one other picture. It showed three grinning boys in gray cloaks holding a long green snake as if it were a pet.
Here is the caption:
Orphans playing with the orphanage’s very own West African Green Mamba. A venomous snake known for its fast speed, the Green Mamba is normally very dangerous. But, according to orphanage officials, this one is quite tame, having been rescued as a baby in the rainforest and raised at the orphanage. *
“Do you think you can really tame a snake like that?” asked Max-Ernest skeptically. “They have really small brains.”
“I don’t know,” said Yo-Yoji. “But I know this: if there’s a West African snake, then they’re in West Africa, right? That leaves out East Africa. We narrowed it down to half the continent!”
“Actually, we already knew the plantation was in the Cote d’Ivoire, which is in West Africa, so that’s not really that helpful,” said Cass.
“Oh, right,” said Yo-Yoji, deflated. “Well, what about the rainforest part—does that help?”
“Maybe,” said Max-Ernest. “We could start by figuring out what parts of Cote d’Ivoire have rainforest and go from there. How ’bout that?”
An online search revealed that most of Cote d’Ivoire’s rainforest was in the southeastern parts of the country. However, the rainforest was so large they couldn’t use that information alone to pinpoint the plantation.
“What about the bird in the other picture?” said Max-Ernest. “Maybe it’s like the Northwest Southeast African Go Five Blocks and Turn left Rainforest Parrot or something?”
Yo-Yoji laughed. “That was kind of funny, dude.”
“Really?” Max-Ernest smiled, gratified.
“The bird’s not identified the way the snake was,” said Cass, who was feeling a creeping sense of despair again.
“So maybe we can identify him,” said Yo-Yoji. “My parents have a lot of bird books. They’re into bird-watching and stuff. They call it birding.”
“Birding? That’s weird,” said Max-Ernest. “Like if you collect stamps, you’re stamping. Or if you collect tennis shoes, like you, you’re shoeing—?”
Not bothering to answer, Yo-Yoji zeroed in on the image of the green bird and enlarged it until the bird almost filled the screen.
“His back is to us,” said Cass. “How are we going to identify him from his back?”
“At least we can see he has that really long tail. And look, there’s that yellow Mohawk on the top of his head. That could help.”
“Sure, if he wants to join your band.”
“Ha ha,” said Yo-Yoji, who clearly did not find her joke funny. “Now just a second—”
Yo-Yoji left the room for a minute and returned with a stack of books with names like The Avian Encyclopedia and Hello Birdie and Fine Feathered Friends.
“You weren’t kidding—that’s a lot of bird books,” said Cass.
“Maybe if we just look for African birds in the indexes that would narrow it down,” said Max-Ernest. “How ’bout that?”
This approach made sense to the others, and for over half an hour, they pored over pictures of ostriches and albatrosses, falcons and flamingoes, pelicans and loons. Alas, there were many green birds, but not one with a long tail and a yellow Mohawk.
Getting frustrated, Cass started looking through a book that Max-Ernest had discarded because it was called Birds of the Americas (and thus unlikely to help them identify an African bird).
She froze after flipping only a few pages.
“Hey, guys,” she said slowly. “What if they’re not in Africa at all?”
“What do you mean?” asked Max-Ernest.
“Well, do you think it’s possible Ms. Mauvais would just pretend they were in Africa?”
“You mean like in order to confuse the Terces Society and send us on a wild-goose chase all over the world? Yes. Definitely,” said Yo-Yoji.
“Well, look at this—”
Cass turned the book around so they could see the photograph of the big-eyed bird she’d been staring at. The bird had a red chest and had a yellow crest atop its head. The rest of the bird was bright green. Next to the photo, there was a smaller picture of the bird from behind—showing its exceptionally long tail.
There was no mistaking it: this bird was the bird in We magazine.
“It’s called a quetzal. It’s the national bird of Guatemala,” said Cass, turning the book around to face her again.
“So then they’re in Guatemala?!” Max-Ernest shook his head, thinking about all the time they’d just wasted on African birds.
Cass scanned the rest of the entry on the quetzal. “It says the bird could be anywhere in Central America.”
Yoji typed on the computer, pulling up information on Central America. “So that means they’re in…,” he started reading aloud, “Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, or Panama.”
“Great. Now we’re worse off!” Cass groaned. “It was easier when it was just the Cote d’Ivoire.”
“Wait—what about the snake? Why’s there the African snake if they’re in Central America? That doesn’t make any sense,” said Max-Ernest.
The three friends looked at each other in consternation. So much for Central America.
“Hey guys, you see that—?” Yo-Yoji pointed to the computer screen.
He’d just enlarged another section of the snake photo. Faded words were now visible—stenciled on the stucco wall behind the kids holding the snake:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED ANIMALS
And:
MONKEY CAGES
“They must be at a zoo!” said Yo-Yoji. “Or at least a place that used to be one.”
Max-Ernest nodded, excited. “That would explain how there could be a Guatemalan bird and an African snake.”
“Yeah, but we still don’t know where the zoo is,” said Cass. “It could be in Africa or Central America or anywhere.”
“Actually, we know it’s neither of those places,” said Max-Ernest.
Cass looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“First of all, the signs are in English. Not French or Spanish. And you know what else—see how it says mile, not kilometer? Most countries use metric—besides ours.”
“So they’re not even in Central America, they’re like in… North America?” Cass couldn’t quite absorb the rapid change of locations.
“How ’bout that?”
Yo-Yoji smiled. “Pretty smart.”
Max-Ernest grinned. “Now all we have to do is figure out which zoos are bi
g enough to hide a chocolate plantation.”
“So I guess we might get to go find your mom after all, Cass,” said Yo-Yoji.
Cass nodded, beginning to tear up again—but this time from gratitude, not despair. “Thanks, you guys,” she whispered, feeling in a rush just how lucky she was to have such great friends.
Just then, Yo-Yoji’s little brother walked into Yo-Yoji’s room unannounced. He was balancing three bowls on a tray, and his face was streaked with tears.
“Mom made me make more pudding for everybody, but there wasn’t any more chocolate, so we made vanilla,” he said. “It’s kind of lumpy.”
“Uh, I’m not really hungry,” said Cass, backing away from unappetizing bowls of gelatinous gray gop.
“Me neither, dude,” said Yo-Yoji. “Sorry.”
“Max-Ernest will eat it. He’s not allergic to vanilla,” said Cass.
“Yeah, but what if I don’t… like it?” Max-Ernest protested.
“I told Mom you wouldn’t want it if I made it!”
Starting to cry, Gajin dropped the tray to the floor and ran out of the room. Bowls of pudding splattered on the wall—and all over the shelf of pristine sneakers.
~A Clarification~
I’m not anti-vanilla, just pro-chocolate. I wanted to make that clear for all the villains, oops! I’m sorry, I mean vanillains, out there.
You know who you are.
Even with the combined Internet searching talents of three exceptionally smart young investigators, it took several hours to identify every zoo in North America. But only a few zoos were so big they might conceivably hide a chocolate plantation. By the time Max-Ernest’s parents arrived to collect him and Cass, the kids had settled upon the likeliest candidate: Wild World Wild Animal Park.
Wild World was known for its “eco-hoods”: mini artificial ecosystems that recreated various climate zones and animal habitats from all over the planet. The largest eco-hood in Wild World was their rainforest (at least they called it a rainforest), and it was there our friends hoped to find the Midnight Sun—and Cass’s mother.
The question was logistical: how to get there?
THE PARENT PART
was easy.
Yo-Yoji’s parents gave him a lot of freedom—especially in summertime. The next morning, when he said he was going to the beach with his friends, his parents were just glad he was going to be outside rather than spending the day on his computer.
“I think I’m going to crash at Max-Ernest’s,” he said. “But if you want to talk to his parents, you should call on my phone. ’Cause I don’t know whether we’ll be at his mom’s or his dad’s—it’s so confusing.” (Yo-Yoji was especially pleased with this last detail—it seemed so plausible.)
The only glitch was that he had to leave wearing his bathing suit. He changed behind the trash cans in back of his house, trading board shorts and beach towel for a pair of jeans and his new favorite T-shirt. (The shirt was decorated with a Japanese character written graffiti style—the kanji, he’d been told, for samurai.)
Max-Ernest’s parents normally fought over every second of his time. But they’d become so preoccupied with each other (that morning found them having coffee at Max-Ernest’s mother’s half-house; later they’d be having an afternoon snack at his father’s) that they didn’t offer a single objection when Max-Ernest said he and Cass and Yo-Yoji were going to the movies and that he wouldn’t be home for a long, long time because they were going to a “triple feature.”
“A triple feature? That sounds triple-icious!” said his mom, smiling at his dad.
“Triple-dipple-duper!” said his dad, smiling at his mom.
Max-Ernest stared at his parents: were his eyes deceiving him or were they holding hands? Catching his glance, they quickly let go of each other.
Max-Ernest left them with an uneasy sense that his parents’ bodies had been taken over by another couple—an alien couple.
Cass’s mother: well, that was the point, wasn’t it? The upside of her having been kidnapped was that she wasn’t around to forbid Cass from running off to save her.
THE HARD PART
was money.
When they pooled their resources they had only enough for the train tickets; there was no money left over for admission to the wild animal park, not to mention the trip home.
Then Cass remembered the credit card her mother kept in the drawer in the kitchen. It was for emergencies only, her mother had told her. But if her mother’s very own personal kidnapping didn’t qualify as an emergency, what did?
Perhaps money wasn’t the hard part, after all.
THE TRAIN PART
was easy in one way, hard in another.
Destination: Xxx Xxxxx
Estimated time of arrival: X:00
Naturally, I can’t tell you where their train was going, or how long the ride was supposed to be. To be more precise, I can tell you—that is, I am able to tell you if I choose—but I won’t tell you. For reasons with which you are by now all too familiar.
However, I feel I should tell you about a minor, very minor, episode that occurred as they boarded the train. Only because it caused Cass so much consternation:
“After you,” said Yo-Yoji.
“After me what?” asked Cass, confused.
“Um, for you to get on the train first…”
“Oh, right… You mean ’cause I’m a girl or something? That’s dumb!”
“Whatever.” Yo-Yoji shrugged and stepped onto the train.
Cass let Max-Ernest board before following her friends into the train car. Yo-Yoji’s politeness was so weird and out of character that it had caught her off guard. But she shouldn’t have snapped at him like that. He probably thought she was still angry at him. Was she still angry at him? she wondered.
Automatically, Max-Ernest slid over to the window, making room for Cass—just as he did on the bus every day during the school year. Cass was about to sit down next to him—just as she did every day during the school year—when she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Yo-Yoji had also slid over for her. Or started to.
Cass’s ears tingled with panic. If she sat down with Max-Ernest, Yo-Yoji would definitely think she was still angry at him and he might even get angry at her. But if she sat down with Yo-Yoji, she would be making a big statement—after all, she sat next to Max-Ernest on the bus every day during the school year—and she knew from experience that Max-Ernest would be very hurt. She’d learned the hard way that he was more sensitive than he seemed; he might not be good at feelings, but he definitely had feelings nonetheless. Not to mention the fact that he was already sore about her lying to him about Pietro.
All things considered, she decided that sitting next to Max-Ernest was the less risky of her two options. (Of course, when I recount her thought process, it seems like she took a long time coming to this decision, but in reality it only took a second.)
If Yo-Yoji was in any way hurt or angry he didn’t show it. However, let the record show that when Yo-Yoji again had the chance to offer Cass a seat—on the tram at Wild World—he didn’t even glance her way.
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…You can tell he’s an African Elephant and not an Asian Elephant by looking at his ear—see how it’s shaped just like the continent of Africa?”
The woman who said these words wore a khaki jacket and matching pith helmet. Mosquito netting hung over her face. She looked as though she were on safari.
That is, aside from the microphone in her hand. And the fact that she was standing at the front of a tram.
She gestured to the tall gray animal standing about twenty feet away. The elephant flapped its ears obligingly—then spit water out its trunk, as if disgusted with the show.
“The African Elephant is officially listed as endangered. Does anyone know the difference between a vulnerable species and an endangered species?”
The tram was silent—no one, apparently, was able to answer the tour guide’s question.
Then, in the very back, a girl with pointy ears piped up: “Vulnerable means a ten percent chance of extinction in the next hundred years. Endangered means—”
The short, spiky-haired boy sitting next to her interrupted: “Endangered means there’s a twenty percent chance of extinction in twenty years.”
Their taller, Asian friend, sitting across the aisle, shook his head. “I thought we said we weren’t going to call attention to ourselves,” he whispered. “You guys are such know-it-alls.”
“Nobody can see us,” said Cass defensively.
“Yeah, nobody can see us,” said Max-Ernest. *
The tram had two sections hooked together like train cars; and from their vantage point the three young adventurers could see not only the elephants standing on the side of the road, but also the tram riders up front, gawking at the elephants.
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