The Elephant's Girl

by Celesta Rimington

  I don’t know how to explain, but I sit on the step next to him.

  I think of Nyah and how when she wanted to tell me something, she just did it.

  And so I start at the beginning. I tell Fisher about my search in the trees and the wind nagging at me and saying I shouldn’t be here, and about the light blue scarf rippling through the trees. I tell him about Miss Amanda—her Southern accent and her fancy clothes, and how she looked like the woman Nyah showed me.

  Fisher is a good listener.

  “And all of this”—he points at the wreck in front of us and the damaged trailer behind us—“this was…”

  “It was perfect,” I say. “It was shiny and new, and the table was set up”—I wade through the blanket of dead leaves to the exact spot—“over here. She had tea—spicy tea in a little fat teapot! I drank her tea and ate her buttery biscuits until I was full!”

  Fisher’s face is surprisingly still. He hardly moves at all except to blink his eyelids. Then he nods very small, as though he’s realizing something, and waits for me to continue.

  I tell him what Miss Amanda said about knowing Frank Bixly, about Roger, about working at the zoo and showing Roger where to find me.

  About the storm.

  About her death.

  Fisher turns very slowly to look at the trailer door behind him. “She died in the storm that brought you here?”

  I swallow my cottony spit and sit next to him again. “Seven years ago.”

  “Wow.” Fisher’s eyes widen. He’s looking at the wreckage.

  “She said she died when the awning fell and hit her on the head,” I almost whisper. I close my eyes, hoping that somehow all this will transform to the way it looked before. Shutting out the sight of Miss Amanda’s broken furniture makes the hum and chatter from beyond the distant zoo fence louder in my ears. The low growl of the howler monkeys isn’t usual for this time of day, yet they howl as if they know something strange is happening. The whooping cranes let loose a bugle call as Fisher taps me on the shoulder.

  My eyelids fly open.

  “I’m surprised at you, Lex,” Fisher says with a mischievous grin.

  “What do you mean?” Does he think I’m making this up?

  Fisher raises his eyebrows. “You brought me here to meet a ghost and didn’t even think to warn me?”

  “Well…”

  Fisher reaches to the ground beneath the step, grabs a handful of wild grass, and tosses it at me. “I’m kidding,” he says, laughing. “Seriously, this is really cool. You met the ghost. The ghost. Roger used to talk about it all the time. The ghost who appeared while he was inspecting the railroad tracks after the storm and told him he needed to rescue a little girl. You met her!”

  The wind rustles the branches, but I don’t fear blowing away anymore. I’m solid. Stuck to the ground. Safe.

  “So you believe me?”

  Fisher pauses, turning over a single blade of grass in his fingers and rolling it into a little ball. “It doesn’t surprise me that you saw a ghost. Just because I haven’t seen a ghost doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”

  I want to hug him. Instead, I elbow him in the ribs, but not hard. “She says she prefers to be called a misplaced spirit.”

  “Oh really?”

  “And she said she’s stuck here because she has something she needs to finish. I told her I’d help her.”

  Fisher flicks away the little blade of grass and looks into my eyes with his deep brown ones. “Help her do what?”

  “She says she hid a treasure and needs help finding it and returning it to the rightful owner. I think it might be stolen or something.”

  Fisher looks as though he may never need to play baseball again to be happy.

  “What else did she say?” He’s leaning forward on the step, like he might launch out of the woods and over the zoo fence to the Ape House.

  “She says her memories are a mess. The longer she’s a ghost, the less of her life she remembers. But she remembers things when I get her talking, and she remembers the treasure because it’s the thing she needs to fix. That’s why she needs my help—our help.” I add that last bit at the end—hopeful that Fisher will take the bait. He’s never turned down a possible adventure as long as I’ve known him.

  Fisher nods, waiting for the rest.

  “She says to try the gift shop.” Miss Amanda recalled a single detail before I left her sipping her tea in the woods. “She remembers she hid the treasure behind a loose board.”

  “In the gift shop,” Fisher repeats. He actually launches off the step, not all the way out of the woods as I imagined, but his pre–baseball-practice energy is definitely back. He clasps his hands together and holds them on top of his head like he’s keeping his thoughts together. “Lex! There is definitely a loose board in the gift shop. At least there was. I don’t know if Mr. Bixly has had it fixed after all these years, but I remember where it was.”

  “You do?”

  Fisher’s enthusiasm changes everything. He believes what I’m telling him without needing any proof. It melts away my disappointment in finding the real, destroyed state of Miss Amanda’s abandoned property. We leave her trailer and the wreckage behind, swatting away rising clouds of gnat swarms as we run, not even caring that afternoon storm clouds with the smell of rain are rolling in from the south.

  We have a treasure to find.

  It’s raining by the time we reach the front gates and slip through the turnstiles with our employee passes. Normally, afternoon rain just means Fisher and I hang out in the treehouse behind the African Grasslands. But today it means we have a crowd of zoo patrons filling the main gift shop, just when we were hoping for a chance to yank up a loose floorboard unnoticed.

  Fisher and I shove our way inside the double doors. The gift shop staff, with their bright turquoise shirts, skillfully herd rain-soaked people to various displays, trying to show kids the polished rocks, the animal figurines, and the wall of science experiments. I notice they try to steer the kids around the piles of plush animals. Rain-soaked kids with muddy shoes aren’t a good combination for the white tiger and polar bear plush toys.

  “There used to be a loose floorboard where they had the puppet stage, remember?” Fisher points to the clothing racks that now occupy the old puppet show space. When we were much younger, Fisher and I used to sit and watch Isabel Acosta, the gift shop manager, put on puppet shows for the kids featuring zoo animal puppets speaking English and Spanish.

  “Oh yeah!” I wriggle between two enormous strollers taking up valuable real estate inside the crowded shop. The rain pattering on the roof and its steady tapping against the windows seems enough to keep all the people inside for a while. However, a small line has formed at the cash registers, and a few people have the yellow Lexington Zoo rain ponchos and umbrellas in their hands.

  Outside the gift shop windows, some people still walk the main path leading to the Wild Kingdom Education Center and Bear Country on the left and the African Grasslands on the right. If more people would dare to get wet, Fisher and I would have room to breathe.

  “Lex,” Fisher calls up to me from the floor. He’s down on his knees, knocking on the floorboards beneath a rack of Lexington Zoo seasonal jackets. So far, no one has noticed, or if they have, they don’t care.

  I dodge a couple of girls looking at gold-dipped animal earrings and join him on the floor, careful to keep my feet out of the path of people.

  “This actually works out better for us,” he says, leaning in close and keeping his voice low. “So long as the gift shop is full of people, and the staff is busy selling rain ponchos, no one is going to notice what we’re doing.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Without all these people around, Isabel and her sales clerks were sure to notice Fisher and me yanking up a piece of the wood floor.

  I kneel a
cross from Fisher. The loose board I remember had a little notch on its edge, and it would make a wooden thunk when I stepped or sat on it.

  “I think it was over here more,” Fisher says, crawling behind a clothing rack.

  A pair of black tennis shoes stops right next to my hands, and I glance up. A blond guy is looking down at me. He’s wearing one of the bright turquoise shirts and a name tag that says Cory. “You need some help?” he asks.

  “Uh, no.” I stand up. Since he clearly doesn’t recognize Fisher and me, he must be one of the new summer employees. “Thought I dropped a quarter, but I can’t find it.”

  “I found it, Lex!” Fisher says a bit too loud. Several people in the store, including the helpful Cory, turn to look at him.

  “You found my quarter?” I say, giving him a wide-eyed look so he’ll play along.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  I turn to Cory and smile. “I guess he found it.”

  Fisher hands me something from the floor. It feels like one of the polished rocks from the big barrel. “We’re good,” I say, waving my other hand at Cory. If he sees I’m holding a polished rock, he’ll think we’re trying to steal. And then we’ll have to explain that we live here and that we weren’t stealing, and then Mr. and Mrs. Leigh and Roger will have to come over and bail us out, and then we’ll never hear the end of it.

  Cory nods. “Okay, well, let me know if you need any help finding what you want.”

  Haha, right. “Sure, thanks.”

  It’s so weird when the new employees think Fisher and I are visitors at the zoo. We know more about this place than almost anyone. I could tell Cory where to find the secret stash of candy Isabel keeps in the back storeroom. He walks away, looking for more people to help.

  When Cory is far enough away from us, I quickly slide the polished rock into the barrel and whisper to Fisher, “Don’t hand me store merchandise like it’s my quarter from the floor. What if he saw it and thought we were trying to steal? We’re acting suspicious enough already.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I just thought I’d better hand you something.” Fisher taps his foot on the board where he stands and smiles. His tapping makes that familiar hollow thunk sound.

  My heart thunks in my chest along with it. All the times Fisher and I sat in here and laughed at Isabel’s puppet shows, all those times I noticed the hollow sound of this board, and there could have been a treasure under here all along.

  I nearly forget that the gift shop is packed with people. I almost don’t care. Fisher and I are going to find Miss Amanda’s missing treasure. Right now.

  “Lexington Willow.” Mrs. Leigh hurries toward us from the other side of the gift shop. Isabel is with her, pointing at Fisher and me. They’re both holding their zoo radios. Mrs. Leigh doesn’t take long to get through the crowd. She reaches us before Fisher and I have time to plan.

  “Hi, Mrs. Leigh,” I say politely, trying to sound calm. I haven’t done anything wrong…yet. It’s not like Fisher and I pried up that floorboard…yet.

  Mrs. Leigh looks relieved to see me, but the smile she usually greets me with is missing. “Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been here. I walked Fisher to the bus and…” I trail off because I’m not sure what I should say. There’s plenty I probably shouldn’t say with all these people here. A few nosy patrons are standing close enough to eavesdrop. They pretend to look at T-shirt sizes.

  “Roger asked me to help him find you,” she says when I don’t finish my sentence. “He’s been so worried. We’ve radioed him to let him know you’re safe, but I think you should go to the station and talk to him yourself.”

  Oh, this is about lunch at Wild Eats—that I didn’t show up. With taking Fisher to see Miss Amanda’s wrecked trailer and then searching for this loose board, I completely forgot.

  “Am I in trouble?” I didn’t expect this. Fisher gets in trouble for not doing his chores sometimes, and he used to get in trouble for fighting mean kids when I went to school with him. But I never get in trouble. I’m a little confused.

  “That’s between you and Roger,” Mrs. Leigh says. “Come on. I’ll drive you down there.” She looks Fisher up and down. He’s filthy. Mrs. Leigh raises an eyebrow and smiles a little. “You look like you had a good practice.”

  Fisher nods and gives me a look that says he’s sorry we can’t look under the loose floorboard right now.

  And with nothing more we can do, we follow Mrs. Leigh past Isabel, who hands me a piece of candy like she always does and gives me an I’m-sorry smile. Isabel has a good imagination. And I’ll bet she can imagine what it’s like to have people report on your whereabouts with radios. We follow Mrs. Leigh through the crowd and into the rain—away from the loose board and Miss Amanda’s lost treasure.

  I just hope someone else hasn’t already found it.

  Fisher and I follow Mrs. Leigh into the rain-soaked plaza, shielding our eyes from the slant of the rain. Mrs. Leigh slides into the driver’s seat of a large covered golf cart parked outside the gift shop. Fisher and I climb into the back.

  The zoo has several of these carts. The keepers use the small ones to speed around the zoo paths from one maintenance building to another. Mrs. Leigh uses the larger ones like this, with the forward-facing back seats, to give tours to the zoo donors. Frank Bixly uses the carts more than anyone, though. He doesn’t really need to speed around to do his job. I think he likes to feel important.

  Despite the small roof over the cart, the seats are wet. My shorts and T-shirt are instantly soaked. A light wind is slanting the downpour, but this still isn’t one of those worrisome storms. The sky is just gray, not black. The air is only misty, not pre-tornado green.

  Mrs. Leigh drives us down the hill to the left, toward Bear Country. Fisher leans over to me and whispers, “We can go to the gift shop tonight, if you aren’t in trouble.”

  “Oh, I’m not in trouble,” I say. I do feel an odd twinge inside that I don’t recognize, but I think it’s because today has been very weird. I saw an elephant’s thoughts, and I had a ghost’s tea and biscuits for lunch. It makes sense my stomach would be a little unsettled.

  “Well, I might be in trouble,” Fisher says. “Who knows.” He doesn’t look worried—he’s just stating the facts. “I’m not sure why, but it probably has to do with taking out some garbage.” He rolls his eyes. His dad grew up on a ranch and gives Fisher chores to teach him to work. I giggle and quickly clap my hand over my mouth to silence it.

  The girl we met earlier, DaLoris, is now working at the hot dog stand in front of Bear Country. We wave at her as the golf cart zips past. DaLoris has a little hut with a decent roof to sit under, so she’s reading a book as the rain pours down around her. She waves back.

  “I hope someone didn’t already find Miss Amanda’s treasure,” I whisper. “The board is still loose after all these years, so that probably means no one has tried to fix it.”

  “And if it’s not there?” Fisher asks.

  “We go back to Miss Amanda’s trailer and hope she shows up again.”

  Fisher’s eyes widen when I say the words Miss Amanda’s trailer, and he puts a finger to his lips, even though I’m already whispering.

  “I hope I don’t miss it if she does,” he whispers, looking sideways at his mom in the front seat and shielding his mouth with his hand. “But don’t tell my mom.”

  I wasn’t planning on telling Mrs. Leigh. I remember a concerned look she gave to Roger when he mentioned the ghost once. Like she thought he was crazy.

  “I won’t,” I say.

  We pass the Birds of Prey Amphitheater on the right. The soggy seats are empty, but a few zoo patrons have clustered together underneath the small pavilion where people stand in line for tickets to the Birds of Prey show. Water runs in small streams off the banner at the entrance. One of the bird handlers, a guy named Javier who wears kha
ki shorts even in winter, is covering some of the platforms and gathering wet props from the set.

  The path turns and we head north, parallel to Miss Amanda’s woods. I stretch to see if I can make out any part of her trailer beyond the boundary fence, but the Ape House and maintenance buildings mostly block my view. Whenever a space opens between the buildings for a moment, all I see are tree branches blurred by slanting rain.

  “Why do you think no one ever cleaned up out there?” I ask Fisher, jerking my head toward Miss Amanda’s woods and watching Mrs. Leigh in the rearview mirror. Her lips are pressed together in a line, not in an angry way, but more like she’s working something out. I don’t think she can hear what we’re saying in the back seat with the rain pelting overhead and the whir of the golf cart’s motor.

  “Maybe no one realized it’s there,” Fisher guesses. “Or maybe they just forgot about it.”

  The weird twinge in my stomach twists a little tighter. Someone should have realized Miss Amanda’s things were out there. She was a person with a life, and she died. That matters. The things she left behind matter. Her memory matters.

  I wonder, as I have a million times, what else happened the night I came to the zoo. And then it hits me.

  “Fisher!” My enthusiastic whisper comes out as a hiss. “I have that old newspaper article from the Lexington Herald about the tornado, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Fisher wipes the rain spray from his face and shields his eyes toward me. The wind is blowing from his side of the cart now. He tucks his backpack on the other side of his legs, protecting it.

  “The article said that several people died and some others were reported missing after the storm. I wonder if someone reported about Miss Amanda.”

  “You mean…” The idea spreads across his face.

  “We could search for her name.”

  “You could see if anyone wrote anything about her and who she was.”

  “It’s perfect,” I say. I’m about to tell him Miss Amanda’s last name again, so he can help me search, but Mrs. Leigh stops the cart and turns around. We’re at the main station, as close as the golf cart can get to the train without driving across the long stretch of grass.