Duke's Den Read online

  “No!” Amelia said. “I’ll take it!”

  “I want to look at the apartment. Make sure everything’s okay.”

  “You can’t. I mean, it’s fine! Everything’s fine. I’m going to see Gabriella anyway. There’s something I want to ask her in my French homework—”

  “You’re babbling, Amelia Jane.”

  Amelia sealed her lips.

  “Okay. You go,” her mother said. “But tell her if she doesn’t want the blender my feelings won’t be hurt. It can go to the thrift store.”

  “Right.” Amelia fled with the blender. Keeping this secret was turning out to be a nightmare.

  SIX

  The apartment door was propped open with a sandal. Amelia stuck her head in. Gabriella was sitting at the small kitchen table, clipping something with a pair of scissors. Little pieces of paper were scattered across the table, and more papers were crammed into a shoe box.

  Gabriella’s red hair was tied in a messy bun on top of her head, and her eyes were rimmed with black. “Salut, Amelia. Entrez.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be here,” Amelia said. “I thought you had to work at the salon today.”

  “Me too. But there were no clients booked for this afternoon, so they sent me home. That happened last week too.”

  Amelia walked over to the table. The pieces of paper turned out to be store coupons. Gabriella had hundreds of them.

  “That’s a ton of coupons,” Amelia said. “What are you doing?”

  “Sorting.” Gabriella picked up a small stack and stuck it in the shoe box, behind a piece of cardboard sticking up that said Cleaning.

  “What are you going to do with them all?”

  “Save money! Doesn’t your mother coupon?”

  “No. She’s too tired when we get to the store. Or in a rush. But she usually looks for sales in the flyers.”

  “There was a woman on TV who coupons,” Gabriella said. “She saved $30,000 in one year.”

  “Wow!”

  “She is…what do you call it…an extreme couponer. She has inspired me. I want to be an extreme couponer too. Duke and I are always needing more money. And now things are dead at the salon. I really can not afford to have afternoons off.” She cut out a coupon for Crest toothpaste and slid it into the shoe box behind Bathroom.

  Amelia picked up one of the coupons and read out loud, “Save 75 cents on BIG G CEREALS when you buy ONE BOX of Honey Nut Cheerios. That’s a good deal.”

  “Of course. Duke adores Cheerios. We will file that under Breakfast.”

  “Where do you get them all?”

  “I pick them up at stores. In newspapers. Mostly off the Internet—dealcatcher.com and savealoonie.com. Here is a good one—two dollars off any Revlon beauty tool.” She tucked it into the shoe box behind Gabriella.

  Amelia read some of the other categories out loud. Animals, Health, Entertainment, Clothes.

  “Sometimes it is hard to know where to put it.” Gabriella picked up a coupon. “As seen on TV. Ab Rocket Twister. With dvd workouts. $129.99. That could go in Health or Entertainment. Or Gabriella. Duke would never use it.”

  Amelia watched Gabriella clip and sort. Three more coupons for toothpaste. “You’re going to have a lot of toothpaste,” she said.

  She wandered over to Beaker’s cage. She felt sick when she saw his scrawny neck and bald head. “Hey, Beaker, how are you doing? You’re awfully quiet today.”

  “He will be noisy again at night when it starts to get dark.”

  “Where’s Duke?”

  “He has gone to pick up some ferrets. Some kids found them in a box in an alley. I am thinking they will be very hungry. And maybe sick. But Duke will know what to do.”

  Amelia wasn’t exactly sure what a ferret was. But it sounded interesting.

  The bin with the turtles had been moved into the hallway. Amelia remembered their names. Romeo and Juliet. They were nibbling on little brown pellets floating on the surface of the water. One of the turtles clambered onto a plastic platform that bobbed up and down. Did it feel the same as floating on an air mattress, like she had done last summer for hours and hours when they rented a cabin at Cultus Lake for a week?

  That was what she remembered about that week—lying on the air mattress, even though it was cool and rainy most days, thinking about how much she hated Dad. Mom had been mostly on her cell phone—setting up an appointment with a lawyer and making arrangements to have Great-Aunt Mildred’s house cleaned so they could move in.

  Amelia sighed. Why was she thinking about that now?

  She slipped into the reptile room. It was hot, like a sauna. A small red light glowed on each of the heaters. Round lightbulbs, shining brightly, hung from the sides of some of the cages.

  Amelia went right to Winston’s pen. “Hey, Winston,” she said.

  The tortoise was chewing on a wispy piece of hay. He didn’t look sick. But how could you tell with a tortoise? She wanted to touch his wrinkly neck, just to see what it felt like, but he might not like that.

  Winston’s jaws moved up and down slowly. His black eyes blinked at Amelia.

  What was he thinking about? He’d been dumped in a cold, wet drainage ditch. Did he worry about that? Was he paranoid that someone would abandon him again?

  “You must have freaked out,” Amelia said. “But don’t worry. Duke and Gabriella will look after you. I promise.”

  Duke had said that the animals were desert and tropical animals. She didn’t know which one Winston was. He was a special kind of tortoise—Duke had told her the name, but she couldn’t remember it.

  She stood up. “I’m just going to say hi to everyone else. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The iguana, Bill, looked like he was asleep, but Amelia stayed well back just in case. The yellow-and-black snake was still curled up in a ball, each coil as thick as her arm. She peered into the tanks with the towels. One snake, skinny with black and white stripes like a zebra, had slithered out, but the other two snakes were still hidden.

  She felt like someone was watching her and glanced up at the brown creature with the grinning mouth. “Who are you?” she said, smiling.

  Amelia opened the door of the reptile room. “What’s that little brown guy called?”

  “Apollo,” Gabriella said. “He is a bearded dragon. And the green lizard is Kilo. She is a Chinese water dragon.”

  Dragons! Such big names for such little creatures.

  “The ferrets are here!” Gabriella said.

  There were three ferrets. Duke said they were related to weasels and let Amelia reach into the box and pick them up, one at a time. They were long and skinny, with thick fur. One was almost all white, with a dusting of black, and the other two were brown and white with black around their eyes.

  “A group of ferrets is called a business,” Duke said. “You know, like a herd of cows? Well, it’s a business of ferrets. So I thought we’d call these guys The Secretary, The Accountant and The President.”

  Amelia grinned. She held up the white ferret by its middle. Its head and tail dangled down. “Which one is this?”

  “The Accountant,” Duke said.

  “He’s so bendy,” Amelia said.

  “Their spines have to be flexible so they can wiggle into holes in the ground.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “I think so. Maybe a little skinny, and I’m going to check for eye infections.”

  Amelia helped Duke set up the ferrets’ cage in the living room, next to Georgia the rabbit and the crested gecko Mary. They strung a blue hammock from one side of the cage to the other. The ferrets clambered into the hammock and settled in a furry heap.

  “They’ll sleep now,” Duke said. “Ferrets spend most of their lives sleeping. About twenty hours a day. I’m not kidding. And now I’ve got something to show you. Have you ever held a snake before?”

  “No,” Amelia said.

  “Come with me.”

  Amelia followed Duke into the reptile room. He reached i
nto a tank and lifted up the black-and-white-striped snake.

  He handed him to Amelia. “This is a California king-snake. His name is Zebra.”

  Zebra was squirmy, slithering partway up her arm. But he wasn’t slimy. His skin felt dry and cool.

  “Look at his eyes,” Duke said. “What do they look like to you?”

  “Kind of bluish?”

  “They turned that way this morning. It means he’s getting ready to shed. His eyes will go clear again in a few days, and then he’ll get rid of his skin.”

  “Is he sick or something?”

  “Nope. All snakes shed their skins. It’s because they’re growing, and their skin doesn’t stretch like a human’s.”

  “I’d love to see him do that.”

  “I’ll come and get you. If you’re not at school.”

  “Thanks!”

  Duke and Gabriella were the best thing that had happened since Amelia and her mom had moved here. But how was she supposed to keep all of this a secret? A rat, ferrets, lizards, snakes. If her mom found out, she’d freak. She’d never let Gabriella and Duke stay.

  Never.

  SEVEN

  “This is interesting,” Liam said.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the grass in Roshni’s backyard, surrounded by a sea of newspaper. Roshni and Amelia lay on towels in their bikinis. They were supposed to be working on their tans, but Roshni’s skin was brown anyway, and Amelia thought it was unfair to compare her tan to Roshni’s.

  Roshni had parked herself for the day. She had a stack of Star and People magazines, a water bottle and a bag of chocolate-chip cookies. Amelia tried to sneak peeks at her watch. The backs of her knees were burning, and she really wanted to go home.

  Zebra was probably shedding his skin right now, and she was missing it. His eyes had turned blue on Friday, and today was Sunday. And Duke had said she could help clean cages today. She’d only come over to Roshni’s because she couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough when Roshni phoned her that morning. Roshni was bossy, and Amelia had been half asleep. She’d promised herself she’d just stay for a little while.

  Liam had showed up on his bike half an hour ago, with today’s Vancouver Sun under his rat trap. Great. She had only two friends, and one of them read junk celebrity magazines, while the other read newspapers. She was the only normal one. She rolled over on her back and watched a puffy white cloud drift across the blue sky.

  “Very interesting,” Liam repeated from behind the newspaper.

  “Okay, what is it?” Amelia propped herself up on her elbow. There was no point hoping Liam would go away. He could be as persistent as a mosquito.

  “This is an article about lying,” Liam said. “Famous liars in history, like ex-president Clinton, and how to tell if someone is lying and stuff like that. Here’s a picture of Lance Armstrong. The slime.”

  “Who’s Lance Armstrong?” Roshni said from the depths of her magazine.

  “Roshni,” Liam said, “where have you been? Do you live under a rock or something? You really need to watch the news once in a while. And I don’t mean Entertainment Tonight. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times, and he’s admitted he used drugs. He’s been lying about it forever.”

  “Oh,” Roshni said.

  “On average, people tell at least two lies a day, every day of their lives,” Liam read.

  “I don’t,” Roshni said.

  “Ha! That’s probably a lie right there!” Liam kept reading. “Daily life deception, on the little-white-lies scale, is necessary for good social relationships. Imagine a world where everyone told the truth. It would soon spiral into chaos—”

  Roshni groaned.

  “Do you want to hear the rest?” Liam said a bit huffily.

  “Keep going,” Amelia said. Was keeping a secret the same as lying? “Read the part about how you tell if someone is lying.”

  “Okay. Liars stare too long and too hard. They blink twice as frequently as truth-tellers. They are more likely to raise their eyebrows. They smirk when they’re trying to look sad. They use increased speech hesitations like ums and ers—”

  “We get the picture.” Roshni pulled her bikini strap down on her shoulder to check her tan. “Amelia, will you come with me to the Lougheed Mall after school tomorrow? I’m allowed to get some new jeans.”

  “Tomorrow?” Amelia had already missed most of the day with the animals.

  She almost blurted out her secret, but then she changed her mind. Liam wouldn’t give it away, but Roshni would probably spill the beans accidentally to Amelia’s mom. That’s what Roshni was like.

  Roshni was staring at her.

  “I’m going to the dentist tomorrow,” Amelia said.

  A lie. It just popped out.

  “I thought you said your appointment was on Tuesday.”

  “I have two appointments.” Second lie. She’d also lied to her mom that morning. When Diane said she was going to go downstairs to ask Duke if he knew anything about fixing lawn mowers, Amelia had told her Duke had a headache and was resting. So she was up to three lies already. Above the average. What kind of person did that make her?

  Amelia displayed her jagged tooth to Roshni. “It’s going to take at least two appointments to fix.” She paused. “Maybe more.”

  She tried not to blink, and she forced her eyebrows to behave themselves. Had she said um or er? She wasn’t sure. Her cheeks felt on fire.

  Roshni turned back to her magazine. “If you say so.”

  “Roshni’s mad at me,” Amelia said, kneeling beside Winston’s pen. “And I really miss Starla.” Tears pushed against the backs of her eyes, and her nose stuffed up. It caught her off guard. She usually tried hard not to think about her old best friend. At least, she had since their last phone call, when Starla had only talked for two minutes and then said she was going to a movie with Amber. Amber, who had been their sworn enemy all through grades four and five.

  Amelia swiped at her eyes. “Roshni ignored me all day. It sucks.” She sighed. “Let’s change the subject. Do you know you’re a sulcata tortoise? I asked Duke. I googled it last night. It’s pretty neat, really.”

  Winston waded through the hay, heading toward a shallow bowl of water. Amelia loved watching his stubby legs move in and out of his shell.

  “You come from the edge of the Sahara Desert. Well, not you, but maybe your mother or your grandmother. You came from a pet store, I guess.”

  Amelia didn’t want to make Winston feel sad. “But hey, deserts aren’t all that great. There are lots of prickly cactuses. And Duke said that if it’s hot again tomorrow and not too breezy, I can take you outside on the grass for a while.”

  Winston opened and closed his eyes.

  Amelia remembered something else the article she’d found online had said. Sulcata tortoises cannot be allowed to get chilled and wet.

  There’d been a lot about respiratory illness. It sounded really bad. Did Winston look the same as yesterday? What was she supposed to even look for? Amelia got up carefully. She’d scorched the back of her knees at Roshni’s yesterday, and it hurt to move quickly. She’d ask Duke.

  Duke was lying on the couch in the living room with a laptop on his stomach, talking on his phone. “Yeah, we’re getting low. Just some mice left…Okay, ten fuzzies, ten pups, a dozen hoppers and fifteen jumbos…Next week. Great.”

  “What’s that all about?” Amelia said.

  “An order for frozen rats. They come in different sizes.”

  Was Duke kidding? “Fuzzies?”

  “They’re the smallest. Like your pinkie. They’re just babies.”

  “For the snakes, right?”

  “Right.”

  Amelia sighed. Was she really feeling sorry for dead rats? It was a bit confusing when just last night Zak had been sitting on her shoulder, nibbling her ear.

  “Do you think Winston’s okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure. I just chec
ked him a little while ago.”

  Amelia lowered herself into a saggy armchair. Duke passed her his laptop so she could see the photos he was uploading to his website. She thought the name of the website, Duke’s Den, was perfect. There was a great photo of the ferrets piled in their hammock, one of the bearded dragon, Apollo, grinning at the camera and one of Bill scowling through the bars of his cage.

  She heard the shower in the bathroom shut off. A few minutes later Gabriella came out, wearing shorts and a tank top, her hair wrapped in a white towel. “Hey, Amelia. I have Rocky Road ice cream. Two-for-one coupon. You can get everybody some while I comb my hair.”

  Amelia chatted to Beaker while she got out three bowls and spoons. The carton of ice cream was near the front of the freezer, surrounded by the baggies of frozen mice.

  She carried the bowls into the living room. Duke balanced his bowl in front of his laptop and took bites while he typed.

  Amelia could hear Gabriella in the bedroom, talking to someone on her phone. She was taking a long time. Her bowl of ice cream was melting into a puddle, and Amelia was wondering if she should stick it in the fridge when Gabriella came into the living room.

  “That was the salon! They are cutting me back. They only want me three days a week.”

  “What?” Duke stopped typing. “Crap! They can’t do that!”

  “They just did.” Gabriella pushed Duke’s feet off the end of the couch and sank down. “Now what are we going to do?”

  She buried her face in her hands. “Merde!”

  She looked up. “Oops. That is not a good word for you to hear, Amelia. Promise me you won’t say it.”

  “I promise.”

  Amelia took the ice-cream bowls into the kitchen and poured Gabriella’s soupy ice cream down the sink.

  “Beaker. Beaker. Beaker,” Beaker said softly.

  “I’m going now,” Amelia called out, but no one answered her. She let herself out the door. She could hear Duke and Gabriella fighting about what vet bill they should pay first. Gabriella was crying.

  EIGHT