Monkey Business

by Anna Wilson

  ‘Ah,’ she said. And then she said, ‘Is that exactly, word for word, what that crazy brother of mine has told you?’

  Felix gave a hard sniff to try and keep the tears at bay while he thought for a moment and then he said, ‘Well, no. Not exactly word for word. But he has said that it would be cool to adopt me an orang-utan for my birthday. And when you adopt a child it comes to live in your house, doesn’t it? So obviously that is what is going to happen with Reggie – he is going to come and live here. Otherwise what would be the point in doing the adoption thing?’

  Mum grimaced. ‘I think we need to get Zed over tonight to explain things,’ was all she would say.

  Unfortunately by the time Zed and Silver made it round, Mum had had a few more words to say on the topic of her ‘crazy brother’s ridiculous ideas’. The second Zed walked through the door, Felix launched himself into the hallway at his uncle, throwing his arms round his legs. Colin had been sitting in the middle of the floor, watching a spider, so he nearly got trampled on. He shrieked and streaked out of the front door, seconds before it closed, narrowly missing his tail.

  ‘Mum says Reggie won’t really come to live with us because that’s not what animal adoption means, and I didn’t believe her so she made me look it up on the Internet and read all the tiny, small words about what happens when you pay your money, and it says that Reggie will stay in Africa and it’s just the charity that gets your money and all I get is the letters, but you said he was adopted and I thought—!’

  Zed took a step back and held up both his hands in his ‘cool it’ gesture. ‘Whoa, take a chill pill, man!’ he cried. ‘You’ve gone, like, bright red.’

  Dyson came in and jumped up on Zed, and set to enthusiastically licking him all over his face.

  ‘I am NOT going to COOL IT!’ Felix was yelling. He didn’t care if he had gone multicoloured rainbow: how could his uncle do this to him? He had never been this angry with Zed, ever. ‘I thought you were the person who got it! No one else in my family ever understands how much I love animals. And you PROMISED I could have an animal for my birthday! YOU PROMISED!’

  Zed brushed Dyson off him and shook his head in bewilderment, his mouth opening and closing just like Jonah the goldfish did that time Merv tipped him out of the tank to see what people meant by the expression ‘a fish out of water’.

  Silver put a hand on Zed’s arm and gave him a look that said, ‘I’ll take things from here.’

  ‘Felix,’ she said gently. She crouched down until she was at the right height to talk to him face to face. ‘Zed knows he’s mucked up. And he’s really sorry . . .’

  Felix didn’t care that Zed was sorry. He didn’t care that Mum was looking at him from the doorway of the kitchen. He didn’t care that Merv had just mooched his way downstairs to lean against the wall and enjoy the spectacle, smirking. Felix didn’t care about anything.

  ‘Zed?’ Silver prompted.

  Zed took Felix into his long gangly arms and squeezed him into a bear hug. ‘Aw, don’t cry, little dude,’ he mumbled into Felix’s hair. ‘Silvs is so right. I’m totally sorry. I didn’t realize you thought this adoption was, like, for real.’

  Silver said, ‘What say we go out for pizza and we talk about it, hey?’

  Zed held Felix away from him and chucked him under his chin, using a thumb to wipe away a couple of stray tears. ‘Silvs always knows how to make things right – what do you say, man?’

  Felix looked up at his uncle. He felt watery and weak from all his shouting and crying. He knew deep down that Zed had not meant things to turn out this way. And he still had enough faith in his uncle to hope that he had a solution to the situation. Felix managed a smudged smile and nodded.

  ‘Marge! We’re off out to Veggie Heaven for pizza. I’ll sort this, no worries!’ Zed yelled in the direction of the kitchen.

  Silver winked at Felix and grinned.

  At least that was one good thing that had come out of the evening, thought Felix. He wouldn’t have to eat the stew Mum was cooking, which was beginning to smell a bit like Dyson’s food would if you tried to heat it up.

  ‘Wow, Veggie Heaven, what a blast – for nerds,’ sneered Merv, slouching his way back up to his room and slamming the door. Seconds later music was pounding through the floorboards and making the pictures on the wall shake in their frames.

  ‘MERVIN!’ Mum wailed.

  ‘Come on,’ said Zed, throwing Felix a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘Let’s split while the going’s good.’

  12

  PLANS

  CHANGE

  The thing about being with Zed and Silver was that the minute you were around them life immediately looked and felt a whole lot warmer and glowier. Even going to Veggie Heaven was fun, and Felix wasn’t exactly what you would call Keen On Vegetables. But Veggie Heaven wasn’t all nut roasts and bean burgers and tofu Bolognese. They did the most amazing pizzas on the planet with such a rich gloopy tomatoey sauce (with No Bits) and so much stringy chewy cheese and such a mountain of tangy black olives (which are too delicious to count as vegetables), that really it didn’t feel like you were eating anything remotely healthy. Felix was soon stuffing his mouth full of steaming pizza, sauce dripping down his chin, and his brain in complete and utter Neutral. Silver prodded Zed, and Zed shuffled awkwardly.

  ‘The thing is, right, there’s adoption and then there’s adoption,’ Zed began, rather vaguely.

  ‘Good start,’ muttered Silver.

  Zed shot her a helpless look and strummed his long fingers on the table as if he would be able to extract some words from the shiny metal surface. ‘OK,’ he started again. ‘Like, there’s adopting a kid cos you really want one of your own but you can’t . . . and then of course you get to take the kid home with you, else what’d be the point? And then there’s adopting, like, a kitten or a puppy from the RSPCA cos someone’s abandoned it? And then you get to take that home too, cos puppies and kittens are normal pets that loads of people have in their houses. And then there’s these adoption schemes like the ones we were looking at on the Net where you pay money every month to a charity who looks after animals, often in other countries, and the animal gets to stay in its own home and be looked after properly with all the money that you are kindly sending it.’

  Felix was struggling with an extra-long stringy piece of cheese and frowning as he tried to fit it into his mouth. His fingers were covered in tomato sauce by now, and the front of his hoody wasn’t much better off.

  Zed interpreted the confused expression on Felix’s face to mean that he had not explained the whole adoption thing clearly enough. As it turned out, he had. But Felix was enjoying the pizza so much that he had not been listening very carefully.

  Silver bit her lip. ‘Do you get what Zed is saying, Feels?’

  Felix wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, ‘What?’

  Zed sighed and put his head in his hands. He rubbed his head for a moment and then looked up and said wearily, ‘We didn’t know you thought Reggie was coming to live with you. Thing is, he’d hate it here. It’s too cold and he’d miss his natural habitat. At least you know with the adoption money that we’ve sent that he’ll be well looked after. You’ll see that from the emails and photos the charity sends every month.’

  Felix pulled an I-suppose-so face. ‘But what about monkeys in zoos?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Or in those safari park places, like Shortfleet where we’re going for my birthday treat? They have monkeys there. Isn’t it too cold there? Why don’t those monkeys get sent back to Africa or Asia where they are supposed to live?’

  Zed nodded seriously. ‘You’re right there, man. But it’s complicated, y’know: some of those monkeys were born right here in the UK, so they don’t know any different.’

  ‘Are you saying that the animals at Shortfleet are Born In Captivation?’ Felix asked, outrage filling every word.

  Zed winced and said, ‘Yeah. But, man, it’s not a bad thing,’ he added hastily. ‘For instance, would
n’t you prefer for the animals to be born in captivity in this country where people can look after them well and feed them good food and protect them rather than have them be born in another country where they might be shot or maltreated like Reggie has been? Lord Basin set up Shortfleet for that very reason. It’s like I told you: he’s a well-respected dude in the conservation world.’

  Felix puffed out his cheeks in disgust. A splodge of pizza escaped from the corner of his mouth. ‘First you say that it’s better that when you adopt an animal it stays in its own country because it would be too cold here, and now you are telling me that being Born In Captivation is better because the animal will not be maltreated! You are not making an actual word of sense,’ he complained.

  Zed’s face was a picture of confusion and panic. ‘Er . . .’ he said.

  ‘Hey, I know,’ Silver chirruped. ‘Let’s have the toffee-fudge ice cream, yeah?’

  Felix pursed his lips and thought for a moment. ‘OK,’ he said. It was quite clear that Zed had no idea what he was talking about, so there was not much point in continuing the conversation. ‘Can I have chocolate sprinkles?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure you can,’ said Silver.

  Zed made a big show of calling over the waitress and ordering just about every kind of ice cream accessory he could think of:

  ‘Chocolate sprinkles, right? And do you have those awesome little paper umbrella dudes to stick in the top? And maybe like a sparkler too? And marshmallows – we have to have marshmallows – it’s like compulsory . . .’

  And while he was doing that Felix chewed over the conversation he had just had with his uncle and Silver. So, he thought, this is what has happened so far: Number One, I cannot have an elephant as a pet as it is too big and Mum would Never Allow It. Number Two, I cannot adopt an orang-utan as it is too cold in this country and the charity people would Never Allow It. Number Three: it is, however, possible to let wild animals live in this country if they are Born In Captivation by a Responsible Breeder like Lord Basin. He knew there was the beginning of a solution to his pet problem here, but he couldn’t quite see how it all fitted together just yet.

  ‘Da-daaaaah!’ Zed said with an enthusiastic flourish of a long gangly arm.

  Felix blinked at the ginormous knickerbocker glory that had just been put in front of him.

  ‘One mammoth ice cream with everything I could think of on top!’ Zed announced goofily. ‘For my favourite nephew – to say sorry,’ he added quietly. ‘Are we cool now, man? I’ll still pay for the adoption and you’ll get the newsletters and info pack and stuff . . .’

  ‘Maybe we can look into another treat for you when we visit Shortfleet?’ Silver said, as Felix tucked into his dessert. ‘You know, like sometimes they let people be keeper for the day where you get to help out with the animals. They have so many animals in that place, I’m sure they could do with someone to take them off their hands once in a while,’ she added.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Felix, feeling a little brighter suddenly. He took hold of the long-handled spoon that had come with his ice cream and dug it deep into the dessert mountain in front of him. Silver’s words echoed glitteringly in his mind as he shovelled a large portion of ice cream and chocolate sprinkles into his mouth. ‘You know, Silver, you have actually given me a mega-fantastic idea.’

  Silver frowned and started to say something, but Zed shook his head at her and said cheerily, ‘Here’s to the coolest birthday ever, dude!’

  ‘It’s all over,’ Felix announced dramatically to Flo the next day in the playground. They had not gone to school together that morning as Mrs Small had called to say Flo was ‘being difficult’ and so they were ‘running late’.

  ‘What is all over?’ Flo asked stroppily. ‘The world? The game you were playing with Harris over there when you wouldn’t let me in? The snack you were eating, which you wouldn’t—’

  ‘If you will just stop talking for one tiny micro-nanosecond and actually listen for a change, I will tell you,’ Felix interrupted crossly. Then he took a deep breath and plunged in quickly: ‘I am not getting a real live orang-utan for my birthday after all.’ And he proceeded to tell Flo what had happened the night before.

  To her credit, Flo did at least wait until Felix had finished before sinking her head into her hands and wailing: ‘Oh no!’ Her bouncy curls flopped over the top of her head and made her look like a floor mop of blonde fluff.

  Felix grimaced. She wasn’t going to start crying, was she? He didn’t like it when girls cried. Should he pat her on the back? Should he go and get a teacher or one of Flo’s girly friends? But then the curls were tossed back into place and Flo looked up at him with a steely flash of anger in her eye.

  ‘Just answer me one question, Felix Stowe,’ she said venomously.

  ‘Oh-Kay . . .’ Felix faltered.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now with all those bananas? And all those EXTRA Brussels sprouts Dad has planted – how am I going to get out of eating them? Because Dad really believes I’m going to, you know. I lied to him, all for YOUR sake, and told him that I had decided I loved them! This is a total disaster. Are YOU going to come to my house and eat Brussels sprouts for tea for months? I think you should, actually. As a punishment for getting me into this in the first place,’ she finished.

  Felix was going to respond by saying, ‘That is not really just one question.’ He also thought of pointing out how interesting it was that, now that everything had gone so disastrously wrong, Flo was back to saying that adopting Reggie had been his idea. But he thought better of saying both those things, especially as Flo had folded her arms across her chest in her most fearsome pose and was glaring at him.

  Felix trembled a bit, but he told himself he wasn’t going to let Flo intimidate him this time. He had already thought up a plan to solve his lack-of-exotic-pet-ness that was so unbelievably marvellous and daring that even Flo Small would not be able to think of a single contradictory thing to say about it. A smile slowly spread across his face as he prepared to announce it.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you think the idea of eating twelve million tonnes of Brussels sprouts is so utterly hilarious,’ Flo barked.

  But Felix’s plan was so brilliant that he found himself laughing in Flo’s face. ‘I will not have to eat all those sprouts,’ he announced defiantly. ‘And nor will you,’ he put in hastily before Flo could start on him again. ‘Just listen to my plan.’

  And as Flo listened her eyes grew wider and wider and her cheeks grew pinker and pinker, until finally she said, ‘Felix Stowe, you are a genius!’

  13

  BIRTHDAY

  BOY

  The next few days dragged so Impossibly Slowly that Felix was convinced someone had got hold of time and shaken it around and then dropped it on the floor so that it had stopped working properly. In fact, there were occasions where he could have sworn that it had actually started going backwards. But at last, by some huge miracle, time made up its mind to start working again and the morning of the birthday arrived.

  Felix awoke with Colin sitting on his head.

  ‘Hey, get off, you overgrown fur hat!’ he mumbled, swatting at his cat as he sat up in bed.

  Colin stretched, his claws twanging out one by one in a rather dangerous fashion. Then he gave Felix one of his looks.

  Felix ignored him and glanced around his room, trying to work out why he had woken up with a bubbly, fizzy feeling inside him. It was the kind of feeling he got when he was really excited about something, but today he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was he had to feel excited about.

  He looked at the poster of the kingfisher, which was one of his favourites, as it was a close-up of the bird with a silvery fish in its beak. He had always wanted to get that close to a kingfisher in real life.

  Then he found himself looking at his ultimate, best and most favouritest poster of all: the one of the orang-utan hanging from a branch with one hairy arm, its feet clamped together like two human hands clapping. And then he r
emembered what he had to feel so excited and fizzy and bubbly and poppy about.

  ‘Yippeeeeeeeeee!’ he yelled, leaping from his duvet and sending Colin shooting under the bed. ‘It’s my BIRTHDAY!’ And he did a Victorious Dance of Glory around the room, hopping from one foot to the other and making monkey noises in between singing various versions of ‘Happy Birthday’ including the one about going to the zoo and seeing a fat monkey. As he danced and sang, he pulled off his pyjama bottoms and threw them around the room, adding to the scene of general Mayhem and Devastation that already surrounded him.

  Mum poked her head round the door at one point and mumbled something about it being five o’clock and could he please ‘put a sock in it’. But Felix would not have known where to find a sock in the war zone that was his room, even if he had wanted to, so he just ignored Mum and carried on dancing and whooping and oo-oo-ooing until eventually Dad came in and shouted: ‘Felix, it is FIVE THIRTY and if you think I’m going to drive you to Shortfleet for the day on limited sleep, you’ve got another think coming, young man, birthday or no birthday. So GO BACK TO BED!’

  Felix did stop the rumpus then. The last thing he wanted was for his trip to Shortfleet to be cancelled, especially when his Marvellous Plan depended on going there.

  I should get ready, he thought, looking at his alarm clock. I’ve only got three hours.

  He pushed all his wildlife magazines into a sort of tidy-ish pile under his bed, then he found some clothes that kind of matched from various places around the room and got dressed standing on the free patch of floor. Then he fished around under his bed again and pulled out a secret box of stuff that he had been saving. Colin was still under there, sulking.

  Then Felix sat down on the edge of the bed and ran through the plan in his head.

  He looked at the alarm clock again.

  ‘Only a quarter to six!’ he groaned. ‘No one will be up for AGES yet.’ He sighed. It was always like this on his birthday. He was not allowed to wake up Mum and Dad until seven o’clock to open his presents, but he woke up at least two hours before this.