The Elephant's Girl

by Celesta Rimington

  It’s a letter written in tidy but very slanted cursive. Good thing Mrs. Leigh insists I do handwriting worksheets—otherwise this letter would be nearly impossible to read. Even so, the slant of the words makes it a little tricky, and many parts have been crossed out and rewritten.

  Dear Eden,

  I’m not sure how to say this or how to make it truly right, but I have a good deal of your father’s fortune that I didn’t return to him while he was alive. I’m truly sorry to hear of his passing. Since it is now your money, I want to return it the money to you with my deepest apologies and sympathies for your loss.

  The money is here, but it’s hidden away. I’ll retrieve it as soon as I am able

  Please contact me so we can arrange the best way for me to get the box it to you.

  There’s no more to the letter.

  Isabel raises her eyebrows at me. “Strange, no?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You see all those crossed-out words?” Isabel runs her finger over them. “ ‘Since it is now your money.’…‘The money is here, but it’s hidden away.’…”

  My heart is beating fast, and I realize I haven’t swallowed for a while.

  “Are you sure you weren’t looking for buried treasure when you pulled up that floorboard?”

  I don’t want to tell Isabel this. It’s not my story—it’s Miss Amanda’s—and what if Isabel tells Roger, and I’m not allowed to go to the woods anymore?

  Isabel suddenly bursts out laughing. “I’m only teasing you.”

  I nearly choke on my spit, but I laugh, too.

  “So”—I try to keep my voice calm—“where did you find this?”

  Miss Amanda didn’t sign the letter at the bottom, but this has to be her writing. Maybe, if I can show this letter to her, it will help her remember things.

  “In this desk.”

  “Was there anything else?” This isn’t only about finding a lost fortune and finishing Miss Amanda’s unfinished business; it’s also about Nyah. I can almost feel Nyah’s rumbling if I concentrate on the images she showed me. They move through me with my breath and my heartbeat.

  The trees, a younger Miss Amanda, the circus man, the blond girl in the overalls, the elephants—Nyah’s herd. This matters, and I don’t know why, but I have to figure it out for Nyah and for Miss Amanda.

  Miss Amanda was at the Fenn Circus with Nyah and her family. I need her to remember the circus and what happened to Nyah’s herd. I need her to show up at her trailer again and remember.

  Isabel straightens some supply order forms on top of her desk. “Only the paperwork for the gift shop—you know, orders, shipping receipts, employee records—and an old train ticket, which I don’t have anymore.”

  My skin prickles. We see old train tickets all over the zoo. We’re constantly picking them off the ground. They’re as plentiful as the zoo maps and the show schedules, which people rudely leave behind, allowing the wind to scatter them. But I have an old train ticket in my pocket, which I found under the floor, and that’s not far from Isabel’s storeroom. That’s a little weird.

  “What happened to the train ticket?” My voice comes out a little scratchy.

  Isabel shrugs. “I never noticed when it disappeared. It probably blew off the desk when one of my staff let the storeroom door slam. They do that sometimes. It sends papers flying. So now I try not to leave loose papers out on the desk.” As if to demonstrate, Isabel gathers a few papers and files them in the drawer.

  “May I have this letter?” I ask her.

  Isabel hands me the yellow paper. “I haven’t been able to figure out what it means, so…” She holds up a finger at me. “No more digging around in the gift shop, though, okay?”

  “Okay.” I smile at her. I fold up the letter and put it in my pocket with the train ticket. We go back into the store, and Isabel hands me a piece of candy before I leave. I exit the main gate in time to see Fisher in the parking lot.

  “He’s leaving without you again,” the wind says.

  I run the length of the parking lot to catch up to Fisher.

  “How’s it going?” I ask, gasping for breath.

  “Hey, Lex,” Fisher says, smiling and snickering a little, as he’s done every time we’ve seen each other since we vandalized the gift shop. No matter how much Mr. Bixly blusters about it, or how much work Fisher has to do for the keepers, he still thinks the whole thing is hilarious. It’s like seeing me brings it all back, and he starts laughing again. That’s okay with me. I’m very glad he isn’t grumpy that my visit with Miss Amanda resulted in a botched treasure hunt that got him in trouble.

  “What are they having you do today?” I ask.

  “Thomas made me wash the elephant grooming tools. It’s so gross.” He holds up one hand at me. “And before you ask, no, I did not get to see Nyah.”

  “Oh.” Some of those grooming tools are used to shave calluses off the elephants’ foot pads. That is probably gross, but it can’t be much worse than things Fisher has cleaned in the Ape House. “Sorry.”

  Fisher shrugs. “I think everyone is getting tired of finding things I can do without supervision. The AZA is working in my favor. All the rules and regulations limit what I can do, and having me around is starting to drive the keepers crazy.” He hitches his backpack higher up his shoulder by the strap. “Yesterday, my dad kept sending me to Thomas to give me more chores. Thomas rolled his eyes and told me to shake out the entrance rugs and sweep again. But the maintenance crew does that every day, so it was kind of pointless.”

  “Poor Thomas,” I say, thinking of how he let me see Nyah that day. Even against Mr. Leigh’s instructions that Fisher and I go together. He didn’t have to do that. I’ve wanted to go back to the barn and tell him what I see when Nyah communicates in rumbles, but he might have gotten in trouble because of me. I don’t want to make things worse. “We should do something nice for him. Cookies…or something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, did you ask your dad about Miss Amanda? Did he know her?” I already told Fisher what I found on the internet—the pictures and the articles about Amanda Holtz. He said he’d try to get more information. But he warned me to keep his mom out of it.

  “I did ask him.” We reach the bus stop and wait beneath a tree for shade. “He said Amanda was the gift shop manager when he was hired here. He and my mom both knew her. He thought she was good at her job and a little eccentric—you know, she lived by herself in a ham-shaped trailer in the woods. He didn’t know much else. Most of the time Amanda was here, my dad was busy training with the head keeper he replaced. He didn’t have much to do with anyone in the other divisions, even Roger, at first.”

  That makes sense, but it doesn’t help us much.

  “Then,” Fisher continues, “he asked me where I’d heard about Amanda.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said we heard her name at the zoo and wondered who she was.”

  “Good one, Fisher.”

  “He didn’t want to talk about it after that. I think maybe it’s because she died here, and he doesn’t want to upset my mom with talking about the ghost thing.”

  “Yeah, probably. Isabel didn’t want to tell me about her death either. They’re trying to protect us.” I reach into my pocket for the folded letter Miss Amanda never sent. “But I told Isabel I already knew about Miss Amanda, and she showed me something.”

  Just as I pull out the letter, the city bus growls its way down the street to the stop. I wish Fisher didn’t have to go. I don’t want to show him the letter in a hurry. We need more time.

  Fisher looks at the bus and then at me. His eyes sparkle with excitement. “You should come with me today.”

  “What?” He’s crazy. I don’t play baseball.

  “I’m serious. We’re going to play a mock game with the c
oach’s other students. You can watch. You’ve never really seen me play, Lex.”

  “Well, I…I have to meet Roger for lunch….” I don’t want to leave the zoo. At least I have a good excuse.

  “The game won’t be as long as regular practice. We can be back in time.”

  “But what about…?” I’m still holding the letter, and I point toward the woods.

  “We can talk about it on the bus,” he says, “and we can look for Amanda together when we get back. Besides, I have something else I want to tell you.”

  “More secrets,” the wind taunts.

  The bus rumbles and hisses to a stop in front of us. The bus driver opens the folding door. Fisher points at the radio hooked on the waistband of my shorts. “You’ve got your radio. Get a message out to Roger, and you can tell him where you’re going.”

  My feet are stuck to the ground. The zoo is my island, and I don’t leave—except sometimes with Roger to get food or to find supplies for the train shed. And then there were those few days I tried going to school.

  “Are you in or out, kids?” asks the bus driver.

  Fisher has one foot on the bus steps and a hand on the railing, like he’s showing me how to get on a bus. I’m not stupid, Fisher. I just don’t like the feeling I will blow away if I leave.

  As if it knows my thoughts, the wind whispers, “Stay. You’re not strong enough out there.”

  It’s one thing to worry. It’s another to be told you’re not strong.

  “You wanna bet?” I shoot back at the wind. And then, without pausing to think, I leap up the bus steps, grabbing the handrail tight.

  Fisher’s smile goes from here to Omaha. He shows the bus driver his city bus pass, and I dig in my pocket for the five-dollar bill Roger gave me this morning. I hold it out to the driver.

  “Exact change, missy,” says the driver, rolling his eyes. “It’s a dollar twenty-five.”

  I look at Fisher. He turns his pockets inside out. “I’m sorry, Lex. I always use my city pass. I didn’t realize you had to have exact change.”

  A couple of ladies sit together near the front. Their floral perfume reaches all the way to the fare box and tickles my throat. It’s the kind that will bring bees from every direction if someone wears it inside the zoo. I ask them, “Do either of you have change for five dollars?”

  “I do,” says the one with dark red lipstick. She unsnaps the latch on her purse and digs out dollar bills and quarters from her wallet. She reaches across the aisle with four one-dollar bills and four quarters.

  I hand her my five in exchange. “Thank you.”

  I drop $1.25 in the fare box. “I’m strong enough,” I say to the wind. The wind probably didn’t hear me from inside the bus, but it feels good to think the words anyway.

  “Willow to Hostler,” I say into the radio as I follow Fisher down the center of the bus. The radio crackles as I wait for Roger to respond. We walk past a guy hunched over his smartphone, another guy who looks like he’s asleep, and three girls chattering about someone they thought they saw at the mall.

  “Willow to Hostler,” I try again.

  Fisher chooses some empty seats at the rear, and we sit down. The three girls turn around and watch us. One of them looks at me, at my hair, at the radio in my hand, and then at Fisher. She smiles at Fisher and then turns back to her friends. They whisper to each other and start giggling.

  “Hostler here.” Roger’s voice comes through the radio. It’s staticky, but I can make out the steam engine’s metallic heartbeat in the background.

  “I’m going with Slugger to his lessons,” I say. “I’m with him now. On the bus.”

  The bus has whirred to life and pulls away from the curb. Every movable joint in the big, hollow vehicle creaks and complains as the bus turns and picks up speed. I much prefer the train.

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” answers Roger. “Back for lunch?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Hostler to Willow.” Roger’s voice is breaking up. The radios can reach a long way, but sometimes things interfere with the signal. I’ve never tried to use one away from the zoo.

  “Willow here.”

  “Have fun.” Maybe it’s the steam engine interfering with the sound, but Roger’s voice seems more enthusiastic than usual.

  “I will. Willow out.”

  The girls in the middle of the bus keep turning around and watching us. I look away and shift sideways in my seat. In the zoo, I’m sure of myself. I can direct people to any place they want to go, answer questions about the train and show schedules, and talk to anyone without wondering what they’re thinking. The staring and whispering and occasional giggles from the middle of the bus feel very different. I’m not in charge here. It’s unpredictable like the wind. I wedge my shoulder against the seat in front of us, so I don’t feel quite so much like I’m going to go sailing into the bus’s wide-open space when it stops.

  “So—do you want to go first or should I?” I ask Fisher. The air-conditioning clicks on from somewhere in the back, sending condensed, cold air down on us. It smells like a mixture of stale water and tire rubber.

  “You go,” Fisher says.

  I show him the letter. “Isabel found this in Miss Amanda’s old desk in the gift shop.”

  Fisher takes the paper and reads for a minute. “It isn’t signed,” he says.

  “I know. But it has to be from her. Isabel said Miss Amanda used to work for a very rich man, and here she says she has money that belongs to someone else.”

  “It doesn’t say who Eden is, who her father is, or where the money came from. That’s not a lot to go on.”

  Without realizing it, I’ve assumed a lot from these few handwritten lines. I assumed, because Isabel assumed. I still think I’m right, though.

  “True, but it’s definitely something we could ask Miss Amanda about when she shows up again,” I say.

  The girls in the middle of the bus giggle. I think they’re giggling at us, but Fisher ignores them. He looks over the letter again. He runs his fingers over the crossed-out words. “Did you notice this? The money is here, but it’s hidden away,” he reads, and then scans farther down. “And then this: the person changed the box to the word it.”

  “Yeah. I wonder if that’s because the money is no longer in a box, or because she didn’t want Eden to know it was in a box. If that’s true, then this is probably a draft she never planned to send, and she rewrote the letter without the crossed-out words. If this is Miss Amanda’s writing, it would have helped to have this the other night. I didn’t know we might be looking for a box.”

  “Well, this is pretty cool. Maybe your ghost is a thief—or someone at the zoo is.” Fisher combs his fingers into the front of his hair and ruffles it so it sticks up.

  “She’s not my ghost,” I say, wrinkling my nose at him.

  “Well, you’re the only one who’s seen her.”

  “Other than Roger, you mean,” I point out.

  “Well, I meant lately. You’re the only one who’s seen her lately.”

  Miss Amanda did say she needed to discuss something with Mr. Bixly. I wonder if she found him and if he saw her like I did. Maybe I’m not the only one who has seen her lately.

  Fisher looks out the windows to check the bus’s location.

  I have no idea where we are. The bus turns left at a traffic light with a street sign labeled Telegraph Road. This street was mentioned in the newspaper article about the tornado. The street name makes me think of Roger—because telegraphs kind of fit with the railroad and all the old-fashioned things he likes.

  “And that’s what I wanted to tell you,” Fisher continues.

  “Has anyone else seen her?”

  “Last night, when my parents thought I had gone to sleep, I got up to get something to eat. I was pretty hungry.”

 
“You’re always hungry.”

  “I know. I went into the kitchen to get a snack, and my mom and dad were talking in my mom’s office. They didn’t know I was there. I heard your name, and Roger’s, so I stayed quiet and tried not to make any noise.”

  My heart starts pounding a heavy beat, and I lean in closer.

  “My mom was saying something about Roger’s concerns.”

  “Roger is concerned?”

  “I guess. They were talking about a book he’s been reading.”

  Roger has been reading a psychology book lately. I don’t know why. But Roger being concerned about something to do with psychology doesn’t sound very good.

  “And then my mom said she told Roger to just come out and ask you and that you might surprise him. I don’t know what that’s about.”

  “Ask me? Ask me what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I groan at him. “Fisher! This isn’t exactly helpful. None of this means anything if you don’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m just telling you all of it. What I did hear was that my mom saw Amanda’s ghost the night she died, which she said was the night Roger found you asleep next to Nyah. No one knew Amanda had died yet, but my mom was the first to realize it. After the storm, she saw Amanda walking in front of the aviary, along the stretch of tracks that goes to the train shed and the main station.”

  “How did she know Miss Amanda walking along the tracks was a ghost?”

  “Because ghosts aren’t affected by weather. My mom said it was raining, and Amanda wasn’t wet.” Fisher stops for a moment. “Lex, are you okay?”

  I remember the rain. I remember hearing the rain falling around me and Nyah shielding me from it. “Uh, yeah.” My voice sounds scratchy. “I’ve always wanted to know more about that night, but it’s strange to actually hear it. Is there more?”

  Fisher checks out the windows again. A sign up ahead says Allen Sport Park.

  “Yeah,” he says, sounding hurried. “My mom saw Roger follow Amanda’s ghost to the Grasslands. That’s why my dad got there so quickly to help get you out. My mom has always said Roger ‘thought’ he saw a ghost, but I never knew she saw the ghost, too. And while my dad and Roger got you out of Nyah’s enclosure, my mom went looking for Amanda.”