Duke's Den Page 5

  “Duke and Gabriella rescue animals, Mom. Mostly reptiles. Duke says you wouldn’t believe the terrible things that people do. And they don’t keep them all—they find homes for them. It’s like adopting, only it’s animals. And they were going to tell you, honestly they were.”

  Diane stuck her head in the doorway of the bedroom closest to the living room.

  “No time to make the bed.” Gabriella sighed. “And Duke, he is not remembering to pick up his clothes. Men! They are impossible…”

  “Mom, are you listening? These animals would die if Duke and Gabriella didn’t take them! Duke says—”

  “Open that door,” Diane said.

  “What door?” Amelia said. “The bathroom door? King Kong—”

  “I do know where the bathroom is in this apartment, Amelia. I seem to recall that I own this apartment. I also recall that there is another bedroom, behind that door, and I want to know what is in there.”

  “Bien sûr,” Gabriella whispered. “Of course.”

  Gabriella opened the door. Amelia waited for her mother to explode.

  But Diane didn’t say a word. Her lips grew even tighter as her eyes swept the room.

  Amelia quickly assessed the situation. Bill was asleep, and all the snakes were hidden away under their towels. Kilo was splashing happily in her pool, Apollo was grinning at them, and even her mom would have to like a red frog. “Mom, look at Winston—he’s that tortoise, see? He’s looking at you! He’s so cool, and—”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  Gabriella sent Amelia a desperate look and closed the door.

  “It is not as bad as it looks,” Amelia said quickly.

  “You’re right. It’s worse. You do know you’re breaking every bylaw in the city, Gabriella.”

  “Pardon?” Gabriella frowned. “I do not understand.”

  “There’s no way it can be legal to do this in the basement of someone’s house. This is a residential neighborhood. We’ll have the police here before you know it. Arresting all of us.”

  Gabriella’s face brightened. “Oh, no. You must not worry about that. We have a—a paper that says we can do this.”

  “I suppose you mean a license. I can’t imagine how you managed to get one. If you even did.”

  “That’s a really mean thing to say,” Amelia said. “Gabriella wouldn’t lie. And a license means that this is okay, right?”

  “No, it is absolutely not okay. Do you really think I’ll be able to sleep a wink with all these creatures in the same house? You can hardly expect to keep a snake locked up in a bathroom. It’ll be crawling up the pipes into our toilet. And you can close your mouth, Amelia. I’ve heard of that happening to someone.”

  “Who?” Amelia demanded.

  “Someone. That snake has got to go. All of these animals have got to go.”

  “That is impossible,” Gabriella said quietly. “They are our family.”

  Diane stared at her. “Then you and Duke will have to go.”

  “What?” Amelia cried. “That’s not fair!”

  “I’ll tell you what’s fair. I’ll give you one week, Gabriella, one week, to find another place. That’s more than fair. Anyone in their right mind would make you go tonight. July 1, you’re gone! Then maybe I can get some proper tenants in here.”

  “Nobody else wants to live here, Mom!” Amelia shouted. “Did you forget that?”

  “Amelia, I want you upstairs now.”

  Diane stormed through to the kitchen.

  “Beaker. Beaker. Beaker,” Beaker said from his cage in the corner.

  Diane stopped.

  “Beaker. Beaker. Beaker.”

  Diane walked over to the cage and pulled back a pink hand towel draped over the front. “Good Lord! What is that?”

  “It’s a bird, Mom. It’s Beaker. He’s a cockatiel. He can’t help the way he looks. He got burned. He got under a hot tub.”

  “He looks bizarre. My god. Why hasn’t someone put that poor thing out of his misery?”

  “He is not miserable,” Gabriella said stiffly. “He is just… Beaker. He has courage.”

  “Courage?” Diane said. “A bird?” She stared at Beaker without saying anything. Then she turned and headed to the door. “One week. That’s final.”

  Amelia heard voices in the night. Her mom and Duke. They were by the front door, and Duke was doing most of the talking.

  She had been on her way to the bathroom. She sidled down the hallway and parked herself just out of sight.

  “So you see,” Duke said, “I know my rights as a tenant. I’ve read the BC Residential Tenancy Act.”

  “Very impressive,” Diane said. “This has obviously happened to you before. Why am I not surprised?”

  “You have to give us a month’s notice. It’s required by law.”

  “Is there a section in this act on tenants misrepresenting themselves?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Or how about a section on tenants harboring dangerous animals? I won’t allow it, Duke. Not in my house. I don’t care how many acts you’ve read.”

  “The law is the law,” Duke said. “We’re not going next week. We’re entitled to a month’s notice. I didn’t want to say this, but there are penalties for landlords who break the rules. I looked it up. You could go to court. You could get fined even.”

  “Good one, Duke,” Amelia whispered.

  Silence.

  She held her breath.

  “I can print you a copy of the Act off the Internet if you want,” Duke said.

  Amelia heard her mother sigh. “Don’t bother. Oh, all right. You’re persistent, if nothing else.”

  “That’s settled then? We have a month?”

  “July 23. Not one day longer. And the deal’s off if even one of those animals gets out.”

  “I’ll tell Gabriella. She’s been crying her eyes out. She’s so emotional. And thank you, Diane. I really appreciate it.”

  “Good night, Duke.”

  The front door closed, and Amelia scooted back to bed.

  One whole month to make her mother change her mind.

  TWELVE

  “Duke’s mowing the lawn,” Amelia said. She stood by the kitchen window, holding a bowl of Cheerios.

  “I know,” Diane said. “He’s been at it since six o’clock this morning. It’s a miracle he got the lawn mower to work. He said he fixed it with some wire he had lying around.”

  “This is so, so nice of him. Like, really helpful and considerate.”

  “Yes. Well. I offered to bring him out a coffee, but he didn’t want it.”

  Amelia watched Duke mow a neat strip along the side of the walkway. He was wearing baggy orange shorts, a T-shirt with the sleeves torn out and a blue bandanna around his head. When he got near the house, he glanced up and waved. Amelia waved back.

  “I wish you would sit down to eat your breakfast,” Diane said.

  “Can’t. Gotta go.” Amelia put her cereal bowl in the sink and grabbed her backpack.

  “Amelia?”

  “What?”

  “I decided I was a bit…hasty yesterday. With Gabriella. The whole situation caught me by surprise. I’ve decided to give them a month to find somewhere else.”

  Amelia held back a grin. “What made you change your mind?”

  “Nothing made me change my mind. For heaven’s sake. I changed it myself. I reconsidered, that’s all. Weighed all the facts.”

  “Oh.”

  “I do pride myself on keeping an open mind. No one could ever accuse me of being unbending.”

  “Then can you unbend a little more? And let them stay as long as they want?”

  “No, I can’t. I want them out by July 23. I’ll be putting an ad on Craigslist for the apartment, available August 1. That’ll give me a week to get the animal smell out. I’m sure we’ll get someone…normal. And that’s the end of it. Now off you go.”

  Amelia looked for Duke when she got outside, but he had disappeared around the side of the house. She heard the lawn mower sputter, roar to life, burp twice and then die. Uh-oh. She admired their tidy lawn and headed down the street.

  Mom was wrong. The apartment smelled like vanilla. Like Gabriella.

  As Amelia walked to school, she thought, Now our yard looks like everyone else’s. It’s not so humiliating.

  Well, maybe not like the woman next door’s, whose garden was a blaze of yellow, purple and pink blooms.

  Amelia always stopped at the blue house near the end of their block. It was where all the cats lived. There was a low white picket fence around it and a gate in the middle. She stopped now and peered over the gate.

  A tortoiseshell cat sat on the front step, washing its foot. Two black cats were sprawled across the concrete walk, sunning themselves, and a gray cat with one white front paw (Amelia’s favorite) jumped up on the fence and walked toward her, purring. She rubbed it under its chin and looked up at the house. One, two, three, four cats peering out of the windows. Some days she’d counted as many as seven.

  A man’s face appeared behind one of the cats. He was black and had a shaved head. He watched her for a moment and then vanished.

  Amelia gave the gray cat one last pat and broke into a jog. She didn’t have to hurry, as there were only two days of school left and no one would care if she was late. But she wanted to get to school because she couldn’t wait to tell Liam and Roshni what had happened.

  At the end of the block, a girl with frizzy blond hair and long, skinny white legs in skimpy shorts was struggling to push a stroller down the sidewalk and talk on her phone at the same time. The stroller had three seats, and Amelia had never seen anything like it before. Triplets, she guessed. She smiled at the girl, but the girl was arguing with someone and kept going without even noticing her.

  It wasn’t the same as their old neighborhood, where everyone was friendly. Nothing in her life was the same. She made a list in her head—their poky little house, her mom tired all the time from working at Miss Jane’s, hardly ever seeing Dad (not that she wanted to). And she was positive Starla was hanging out with Amber all the time now and had forgotten all about her.

  She blinked back sudden tears that surprised her (she refused to cry anymore, for sure not about stuff like this) and ran the rest of the way to school.

  “I love doing this,” Roshni said. “Here goes!”

  She tipped her desk sideways, and an avalanche of crumpled papers, magazines, pencil shavings, pens and rulers crashed onto the floor.

  “My April copy of Star!” Roshni grabbed a magazine out of the heap at her feet. She flopped down and started flipping pages. “I’ve been looking everywhere for this! There’s the best-ever picture of Justin Bieber in here.”

  Amelia sat cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the commotion around her. She pulled things out of her desk and sorted them into two piles, throwaways and keepers. Most went into the throwaway pile. She had got as far as a crumpled art project of a sunset when Mr. Howard said, “Less noise in here, people. Two minutes and your desks should be emptied. Then we’re all going to the gym to set up the chairs for Awards Day tomorrow.”

  She tossed the sunset picture onto her throwaway pile, scooped everything up and dumped it on top of an already overflowing garbage can.

  “So are you guys coming to my place or not?” she said to Roshni and Liam as they headed down the hallway to the gym.

  Liam was supposed to be going to his Mandarin lesson. His parents had decided it would be helpful if he could speak to his grandparents when they came from China at Christmas. Roshni still hadn’t forgiven her for the science poster. And she had decided to be mad all over again when Amelia told her about Duke and Gabriella’s animals. I knew you were hiding something. I thought we were supposed to be best friends, Roshni had said.

  In her head, Amelia still gave Starla best-friend status, but she had kept her mouth shut.

  Liam texted something on his phone and then said cheerfully, “My Mandarin teacher’s sick. I’m coming.”

  “Me too.” Roshni shrugged. “There’s nothing else to do.”

  THIRTEEN

  “This is very, very cool,” Liam said. He was kneeling beside Amelia in front of Zebra’s aquarium, watching the snake twist and coil in slow circles. “He’s going to do it now? For sure?”

  “Yup,” Duke said. “Good timing, huh? Okay. There he goes. See his head starting to come out?”

  “Roshni better get in here, or she’s going to miss it,” Liam said.

  “It won’t happen that fast,” Duke said.

  When they’d first arrived, Roshni had wandered around the reptile room, looking at everything. Her first favorite, she’d declared, was the frog, Nate, who she insisted really did look like a ripe red tomato. Her second favorite was the little bearded dragon, Apollo. Then, before Amelia could warn her, she’d walked right up to Bill’s cage. The iguana crashed against the bars with a ferocious snap of his jaws. Roshni had screamed and leaped backward. Thanks for the warning, Amelia, she’d said, as if it were Amelia’s fault.

  She had scooted back to the living room, where Amelia could hear her talking to Gabriella. Now Amelia opened the door and shouted, “He’s doing it, Roshni!”

  “Can I bring the bunny?” Roshni called back.

  “No,” Duke said. “It’s way too hot in here.”

  When Roshni came into the room, Liam glanced up. “I hope you’re not going to talk the whole time.”

  “Who’s talking now?” Roshni said.

  Amelia ignored them. Zebra was slipping out of his old grayish-white skin. It’s like he’s sliding out of a sleeping bag in slow motion, she thought. A sleeping bag made out of delicate cobwebs.

  They watched in silence as the snake coiled around and around the aquarium, his whole head and then his body emerging until finally he had left the old skin behind.

  “He’s done,” Liam said. “Wow. That was fantastic.”

  “One of these days I’m going to make a video of that and put it on YouTube,” Duke said. He reached into the aquarium and carefully picked up the discarded skin. “One of you guys want this?”

  Liam looked at Amelia. “Go ahead,” she said. She would have liked it, but she could tell Liam wanted it even more.

  “Oh boy, thanks,” Liam said. “This is great.”

  “I’ll get you an old margarine tub to put it in,” Duke said. “This is a good one. You don’t always get it in one piece.”

  Amelia admired Zebra’s gleaming new black-and-white skin and then went in search of Roshni, who had disappeared again.

  She found Roshni curled up at one end of the couch, cradling Georgia, and Gabriella at the other end, clipping coupons from a printed sheet.

  “Omigod, Georgia is so cute,” Roshni said. “I’m going to ask my mom if I can adopt her.” She stroked the bunny’s soft ears. “Hey, Georgia, would you like to come and live with me?”

  Liam came into the living room, holding the margarine container carefully. “I gotta go now. Are you coming, Roshni?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Roshni nestled the bunny beside Gabriella and stood up.

  “Gabriella’s going to give us a free pedicure tomorrow,” she said to Amelia. “To celebrate school being over.”

  “Really?” Amelia had painted her fingernails once (it had all chipped off in a few days, and the color had been way too orange), but she had never done her toes. A real pedicure sounded amazing.

  Gabriella shrugged. “I have no work tomorrow. Again. So it is something for me to do. You can have one too, Liam, if you want.”

  Liam went red. “No way. Come on, Roshni. I’ve got to get home.”

  “Okay, okay.” Roshni paused. “Purple. With gold sparkles. Can you do that, Gabriella?”

  Liam shoved her out the door.

  When they had gone, Amelia crouched beside the gecko’s tank. Mary had a smiley face like Apollo’s, but her eyes were different. They were big and round, like two marbles. “So what happened to Mary’s tail exactly?”

  “It fell off,” Duke said. “Stress. She got out of her cage and hid under a couch for a week before someone found her.”

  “Will it grow back again?”

  “Nope.”

  Mary’s pink tongue darted out and swiped the surface of one of her eyes. “Hey,” Amelia said. “What’s she doing? She just licked her eye!”

  “That’s an eyeball kiss,” Duke said. “She doesn’t have any eyelids, so that’s how she keeps them clean and hydrated. You can give her a drink if you want.”

  Mary didn’t drink out of a bowl but licked droplets off leaves instead. Amelia got the spray bottle from the kitchen and lifted the wire-mesh lid of the tank. She carefully sprayed the plastic foliage.

  Mary didn’t move.

  “I don’t think she’s thirsty.”

  “She’ll drink later, when you’re not watching her,” Duke said. “Why don’t you take Winston outside for a while?”

  “Can I? Really?”

  “Sure. Just take him out on the grass and let him walk around. It’s good for him.”

  Duke trusted her. Amelia glowed.

  FOURTEEN

  “It’s me, Winston. We’re going on an adventure!”

  Amelia slipped her hands under the tortoise and lifted him up. His legs and head disappeared into his shell, and she whispered, “Don’t be scared.”

  He was heavier than he looked and awkward to hold, like a bulky package. She concentrated as she carried him into the kitchen. It would be awful if she dropped him.

  Gabriella was picking bright-red strawberries out of a cardboard container and washing them in the sink in a colander. If Amelia’s arms hadn’t been full of tortoise, she would have grabbed one.

  “Strawberries from a client at the salon,” Gabriella said. “Winston adores them. He can have one after his walk.” She reached out and pushed the door open for Amelia.

  Amelia carried Winston around to the front of the house and set him down gently in the grass. She plunked down cross-legged beside him. “Are you still in there?” she said. “Come on out. It’s nice and sunny out here.”

  She saw the tip of Winston’s head first. Slowly it poked out of his shell, his tiny eyes blinking, followed by his stubby legs.