“I went to the trees, Nyah.” I think the words the way I talk to the wind. “I found Amanda Holtz. I found a train ticket from the day of the tornado. I don’t know what that means.”
Nyah grabs a clump of dirt with the two fingers on the end of her trunk and tosses the dirt in a cloud of dust over her massive shoulders, something she does to protect her skin from insects and the sun. She sways a little, bobbing her head and swinging her trunk from left to right. It looks like she’s dancing to the rhythmic African music playing from the Grasslands’ speakers, or else she understands me. But this is actually a rocking habit she developed because there wasn’t enough space for her to roam at the circus. I’ve heard Mr. Leigh talk about the behavior and how elephants have to move. He says her swaying has lessened since coming to the zoo, because now she has more space.
I try to think the way Nyah does—in pictures. I think hard about the woods, about Miss Amanda and her trailer in the trees, about the gift shop and what I found there. I focus on Nyah and the scenes in my mind, hoping that somehow she will know what I want to tell her.
Nyah stops bobbing and swinging her trunk. Another slow, calm rumble comes through the earth and the air and into me. And I see another image.
Three elephants standing together with trainers beside them, and since I see this through Nyah’s eyes, Nyah makes four.
Elephants with circus adornments on their heads and backs.
One looks like Tendai.
But Nyah’s mother has died, so that leaves Nyah plus two.
These pictures in my head come with feelings so familiar that they might as well be my own. Nyah wants me to find her family.
“Lex,” Thomas says, breaking the silence. I realize he’s been leaning against the barrier fence—watching me and Nyah. I completely forgot Nyah and I weren’t alone.
I blink, feeling a little like I just woke up, like I can’t remember how I got into the elephant barn for a few seconds. And then my brain defrosts, and Thomas is waving at me with a frantic expression.
“Frank and Gordon are coming,” Thomas says.
He means Mr. Bixly and Mr. Leigh.
“You’ve got to go. You’re not supposed to be here. Go out the side door.” He points around the corner from the supply shelf and walks that direction with me a few paces. “That was interesting to watch,” he says quickly under his breath, “and I’ve seen a lot of things and a lot of elephants. Please come back tomorrow and explain to me what’s going on with you and Nyah. I’d really like to know.”
I nod and head out the side door before Mr. Bixly and Mr. Leigh find me breaking the rule about elephant training. I wouldn’t want Thomas to get in trouble or lose his job because of me. He’s very good with the elephants—especially Nyah.
The side door puts me out onto a smaller walkway—one of many that lead to the Wild Kingdom Education Center. I make sure the door latches completely; then I spin around and run right into Roger.
“Whoa there,” Roger says.
He’s usually preparing the steam train in the morning before the zoo opens.
“Roger, what…?”
“I’ve just been talking with Mr. Bixly,” Roger says. He looks really uncomfortable—not angry, but not happy either.
I know where this is going, even though I hope it’s nothing.
But it’s not nothing for Roger to leave the train thirty minutes before the zoo opens. It’s not nothing for him to be waiting at the barn doors to catch me coming out of them.
“Lexington, did you know Frank Bixly installed security cameras in the gift shop?”
My heartbeat is like a hummingbird in my chest. I stare at him, waiting to find out what else he knows.
Roger rests his hands on his waist like he can’t decide whether to fold his arms or what. “Did you know the alarms went off at the gift shop last night, and Frank watched those security tapes?”
The air feels heavy and prickly.
“Too bad,” whispers the wind.
I think of how I tried to cover up what Fisher and I did in the gift shop by calling Roger on the radio, like we’d been in the treehouse all along. Like a lie. A lie in the treehouse Roger built for me.
“He knows what you and Fisher did in the gift shop last night.”
Roger never frowns at me like this. He never fidgets—folding his arms, unfolding them, putting his hands back at his waist—like he doesn’t know what to do. I don’t like it. I want Roger and me to be back to normal.
“I’ve decided that you will help Isabel do chores in the gift shop until she says you’ve worked enough to make up for the damage.”
That’s okay. I like Isabel. I did damage the gift shop floor. I can do chores for Isabel.
“And Mr. Bixly has decided that no employees’ kids are allowed inside the maintenance buildings”—he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his overalls—“including the elephant barn.”
“What? Because of the gift shop floor?” The words are launched from my mouth like rockets, and they keep coming. “That doesn’t have anything to do with Nyah. I haven’t done anything to the elephant barn or to Nyah. And when he says ‘employees’ kids,’ he really just means Fisher and me. Why is Mr. Bixly so—”
“Shhh,” Roger hushes me with unaffected calm. “We both know how Mr. Bixly can be. He wants to show you he’s in charge, and he’s serious about the zoo. The zoo is—well, I guess it’s like his property. That’s the way he thinks of it, anyway, and anything like what you and Fisher did he takes very personally.”
The cicadas rev up their vibrating buzz in the trees. The sound makes me feel itchy and angry. Hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Mr. Bixly’s precious gift shop floor is nothing compared to my friendship with Nyah. It’s not fair for him to keep me from visiting her. I think of Nyah coming to the training gates to look for me. And I won’t be there.
“The Leighs and I are paying to have the floor repaired, and we think you and Fisher can work off the cost of the damage—you working with Isabel, and Fisher with his dad. I will talk to Mr. Bixly in a few days when he’s had a chance to cool off.”
“Okay,” I say quietly. “You’ll talk to him?”
“Yes.” Roger puts an arm around my shoulders, and it holds me together. I’m suddenly very sorry for Fisher. I hope Mr. Leigh will let me help him with his chores.
“Lexington, I just want you to tell me one thing.”
“Yes?”
“What in the world set that idea in motion?” Roger’s deep voice stays smooth and steady, but he still sounds very serious. “Why would you break into the gift shop and do that to the floor?”
This just got tricky. I don’t lie to Roger. I’ve never had a reason to. But if I tell him that the ghost of Amanda Holtz started all this, or that it was Nyah who sent me into the woods in the first place, I’m risking a whole lot here. What if Roger tells me I can’t go see Miss Amanda either? I can’t lose Nyah and Miss Amanda all at once, and Miss Amanda may know something about Nyah’s family.
So I take a page from Fisher’s book. And I tell Roger just enough of something true.
“Fisher and I knew that floorboard had been loose for a long time, and we thought it might be a place people could have been hiding things.”
A tiny smile starts at the corner of Roger’s mouth. “Buried treasure, huh?” He sounds amused.
“Yeah.”
“Did you find anything good?”
“Not really. Just a bunch of stuff that would fall through a crack.” I pull the ticket out of my pocket. “Except for this. Look at the date.”
Roger takes the ticket and turns it over in his hands. He finds the date and stares at it for longer than it takes to read it. “You found this beneath the floorboard, huh?”
“Yeah. It was for the day that…” I don’t need to finish. Roger knows what da
y it was.
He takes a deep breath and hands the ticket back to me. “That’s a weird coincidence,” he says, raising his eyebrows.
He pats me on the shoulder and points out a monarch butterfly about to land on the purple flowers of a butterfly bush. We watch it flit about until it chooses one.
“I want you to start helping Isabel this morning, meet me for lunch at noon, and take the radio with you,” Roger says when the monarch flies away. “Do you have it?”
I unhook the cumbersome thing from the waistband of my shorts. “Right here. Fully charged.”
“Good.” Roger turns and starts toward the main path. His engine needs attention or it won’t be ready for the first run of the day. It takes more than one skilled person to get a steam train going, and I’m guessing Roger has left J. P. Felt alone at the station.
As we part ways, me going uphill to the gift shop and Roger going downhill, he says, “No more destroying zoo property looking for buried treasure.”
And from the look in his eyes, I think Roger knows there is more going on here than what I’ve told him.
I spray another mist of glass cleaner over the sawdust-covered display shelf and wipe it with a microfiber cloth. Isabel assigned me to polish all the surfaces after the wood-floor guy finished sanding. We covered everything with plastic before he started, and we did it before the zoo opened. But even with the plastic, the sanding left a layer of powdery-soft wood dust all over the place.
It’s been four days since Fisher and I triggered the gift shop alarm. The shop’s new security camera recorded everything Fisher and I did to the floor. I used to think Fisher and I knew everything about the zoo and the way it runs, but Mr. Bixly has been installing security cameras, and we didn’t even know about it.
I’ve helped Isabel move display tables, refold T-shirts, and find new places to shelve the books and games while the damaged section of floor has been blocked off with orange cones and yellow caution tape. I’ve always liked helping Isabel, so I don’t mind this part of my consequence. It’s not being allowed to be close to Nyah that’s driving me crazy. I haven’t dared to ask Thomas to sneak me in again, not after he had a visit from Mr. Bixly and Mr. Leigh. But Roger says he’s going to talk to Mr. Bixly after the floor is fixed, and it’s nearly done.
Fisher hasn’t gotten off so easy. As he predicted, his parents told him he could still go to his baseball lessons and his camp, but the minute he gets home from baseball, he’s stuck helping his dad with everything from sweeping floors to chopping the orangutans’ vegetables. Fisher hasn’t been able to go anywhere or do anything else. So he still hasn’t been to the woods with me to find Miss Amanda.
I’ve searched the woods twice but found only the old wreckage and no Miss Amanda. I’m starting to worry she’s lost all her memory and has wandered away and can’t find her trailer. I don’t know how ghosts keep track of anything if their memories disappear.
“Lexita,” Isabel calls from the jewelry counter. She means me. “Come over here.”
I gather up the cleaner and the dirty cloths and join her behind the cash register.
“Look at these,” she says, showing me the box of turquoise-and-silver rings from her recent shipment. “¿Son bellos, no?”
I’m pretty sure she means these are pretty. Isabel speaks Spanish to Fisher and me sometimes, hoping we’ll learn it. I like that.
“Want to help me set these out?”
“Sure,” I say, smiling at her. Isabel has never seemed the slightest bit upset with me for breaking into the gift shop. I start unwrapping rings from their plastic bags and set them one at a time into the foam trays, organizing them by price and size.
Isabel leans closer and whispers, “You know, Lexita, you really did me a favor getting Mr. Bixly to fix that floorboard. Garbage was getting dropped down there, and the floor is going to look so much nicer now.”
“Oh,” I say, a little surprised. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“I have a rather strange question for you,” she continues, rubbing a small cleaning cloth around a ring until the sterling silver shines.
“Yes?”
“What did you find under that board?”
I turn sharply to look at her. Could she possibly know something? Then I realize she probably saw the security tape. She would’ve noticed that I reached into the hole several times before Fisher and I replaced the board and left.
“Just an odd bunch of…well, garbage…as you said.” I try not to sound like I expected anything else. “The kinds of things people would drop down a little space. Some polished rocks—which I can definitely return to you—some loose change, pebbles…um…an old train ticket.”
Isabel nods, her face flat and her eyes distant. I wonder what she expected.
“Why?” I ask.
She sets the finished tray of rings into the case under the glass counter and tucks a brunette curl behind her ear. “People have said some interesting things about the woman who ran this shop before me.” Isabel opens her mouth as though she’s going to say something else, but she pauses and takes a breath. “I just wondered. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
Isabel starts to walk me to the front doors, her way of letting me know I don’t have to work for her anymore today. “Just promise me that if you want to come in here looking for something, or digging for something, again, you’ll talk to me first. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The big hand on the giant zoo clock outside points to the rhino, and the little hand points to the sea lion. It’s nine a.m. The public is starting through the front gates and curving around the lion pride statue. Most hurry down the hill to the right or the left, but some trickle straight ahead into the gift shop. This probably isn’t the best time for me to ask this question, but I can’t help it.
“Is there something I should be looking for—or digging for—that you know of?”
“Well…maybe.” Isabel shakes her head like she shouldn’t have said that. “But I don’t want you getting into more trouble!”
“I promise I’ll be careful,” I say. “Please tell me.”
Isabel has a young face, but if you look closely, she has some wrinkles that give her away as someone old enough to have grown kids. She smiles at a family walking into the shop.
“¡Buenos días! Welcome!” she calls to them. Her retail clerks in their turquoise shirts fan out to talk to the customers. When it seems she is satisfied the customers are taken care of, Isabel says to me, “I found a letter when I came to work here, and I think it was written by her. The woman who used to run this shop.”
“Miss Amanda Holtz?” I ask.
“You know who she is?” Isabel looks surprised. She shouldn’t be that surprised.
“I know a lot of things about the zoo.”
“Well”—she nods like I’m not quite correct—“there are some things I’m not going to tell you. I mean, Roger should…”
“I know that she died the night of the tornado,” I say. “Amanda Holtz died in the woods outside the zoo.”
Isabel looks around like she’s worried someone could have heard me. She leans in closer and whispers, “You know about that?”
“Yes.”
Adults sometimes think they must keep secrets from me. It’s a pain. I have a lot of questions, and it doesn’t do me any good when they make me work extra hard for information.
“Oh.” She nods to tell me I’m right. “I didn’t think I should be the one to tell you about that, but since you already know something about her, do you want to read the letter? It’s rather…well, I know you like a bit of adventure…”
“Yes, please, Isabel!”
She holds up a finger at me. “¡Ah! En español.”
She knows I can do this much. “¡Sí, por favor!” I give her a look that says that’s all I’ve got. “
Please may I see the letter?” It’s too good to be true. I’m dying for more information about Miss Amanda.
“Come with me,” she says.
Isabel leads me to the back of the store, past the Employees Only sign, and through the doors where Fisher and I went during our “break-in.” I follow her to the desk opposite the supply closet. Isabel has pictures of her family in frames on the desk. She has a husband, three grown kids, and a little terrier. I look at the photos as she opens the bottom desk drawer, and I realize I sort of invaded Isabel’s privacy coming in here the other night. It sometimes just feels like the whole zoo is, well…mine. And I didn’t think about this storeroom as Isabel’s space.
“I’m sorry I came in here without your permission,” I say. Fisher and I already returned the screwdriver and the feather duster we took, and I said sorry then, but I feel like I need to say it again.
“I know you are.” Isabel stops digging in her files and looks at me. She tries to give me a serious expression, but it’s not convincing, and a smile breaks through. “And you won’t do it again, right?”
“Not without asking you.”
“Muy bien.” Isabel looks in her drawer again, fingering through some loose papers in a file. “That’s what I told Mr. Bixly. I told him you wouldn’t do it again. Do you know he wanted to ban you from the gift shop? You and Fisher? I’m not allowing it.”
Angry heat boils in my stomach at Frank Bixly, General Manager. He’s banned me from visiting Nyah at the training gates, and he tried to ban me from the one place everyone goes in the zoo. That’s like telling someone they can’t go into their own living room. I’m grateful to Isabel for standing up to him.
I’m about to tell her so when she says, “Miss Holtz worked for a very rich man. Did you know that? She left working for him and came here—from a traveling circus to a zoo. I think maybe there’s a story about that rich man and why she left.”
She holds out a small, yellow piece of paper in front of my face. “And here it is.” She lays the paper faceup on the desk between us so we can both have a look. I lean in.
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