Finding Elmo Read online

  Finding Elmo

  Monique Polak

  orca currents

  Copyright © Monique Polak 2007

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Polak, Monique

  Finding Elmo / written by Monique Polak.

  (Orca currents)

  ISBN 978-1-55143-688-3 (bound)

  ISBN 978-1-55143-686-9 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8631.O43F55 2007 jC813’.6 C2007-900247-1

  Summary: Tim loves his job at the family pet store but he questions his father’s leadership when a bird is stolen at a public event.

  First published in the United States, 2007

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007920326

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design: Doug McCaffry

  Cover photography: Getty Images

  Orca Book Publishers Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B PO Box 468

  Victoria, Bc Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

  010 09 08 07 • 5 4 3 2 1

  For Julia Lighter, who’s smart as can be.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Rina and Angad Singh, Deena Sacks, Evadne Anderson and Claire Holden Rothman, all of whom read an early version of the story that eventually became Finding Elmo. Thanks to my dad Maximilien Polak for his careful reading of a later draft.

  Thanks also to my friends in Australia, Vanessa Barratt and David Bock of the Australian Museum, and Trish Mooney of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo Recovery Program.

  Thanks, as usual, to Viva Singer, who knows about everything, especially animals, and who always listened when I needed to talk about my story.

  Special thanks to my husband Michael Shenker, for his love and support, and to my daughter, Alicia, who listens—and occasionally makes remarks—when I read my work out loud.

  Finally, a big thank-you to the terrific team at Orca Book Publishers: publisher Bob Tyrrell who responded to an early version of this book; Andrew Wooldridge, who encouraged me to get back to it; Melanie Jeffs, whose careful, insightful editing helped me tell a better story; and Maureen Colgan, who gets me invited to all the good parties.

  chapter one

  I hadn’t even unlocked the front door, and already I could hear them screeching. Would those two ever learn to get along?

  “Get off the couch!” Winifred cried, her high-pitched voice carrying through the plate glass windows.

  “Birdbrain!” Hubert screeched back.

  “Quit your squawking!” I called, on my way to the aviary, where the birdcages are. “Breakfast is on!”

  “Birdbrain!” Hubert screeched again. This time I laughed.

  I love Saturday mornings. Most fifteen-year-olds would probably rather be sleeping in, but not me. On Saturday mornings—at least till Dad shows up—I run Four Feet and Feathers. Now that we’ve moved to our new location in Lasalle, it’s Montreal’s biggest pet center. If I sound proud, that’s because I am. Dad basically started Four Feet and Feathers from nothing.

  As I pressed my palm on the aviary door, I inhaled the store’s familiar scent: hay, birdseed and ammonia, with a little fresh paint on the side.

  Winifred crossed back and forth on her wooden perch, keeping a close eye on my fingers as I unlatched her cage door and reached for her food dish. “Get off the couch!” she shrieked.

  “Winifred,” I said, shaking my head and trying not to laugh. Winifred gets insulted if you laugh at her. “We don’t even have a couch in here!” Her black eyes shone. You could tell she didn’t believe me.

  We’d inherited Winifred. That happens in the pet business since big birds like parrots, cockatoos and macaws—Winifred is a macaw—often outlive their owners. Winifred’s last owner was an old lady with many pets, including a dog that shed a lot. Which explains how Winifred picked up the expression, “Get off the couch!”

  Hubert, a gray parrot, was climbing the bars of his cage, watching as I filled Winifred’s food dish. He knew his turn was next, and he wanted to make sure he was getting exactly what I’d given Winifred.

  “Saturday morning special,” I told him as I opened the fridge and took out a plastic tub of pineapple chunks. I added one to his food dish and another to Winifred’s. Hubert stretched out his gray wings and for a second it looked like he was wearing a gray cape.

  “Good morning,” I whispered as I removed the old sheet draped over the next cage.

  Elmo likes sleeping in the dark. He’d picked up the habit when he was living with his old owner, a sailor who’d brought Elmo home from one of his trips around the world. We’d inherited Elmo too.

  As I stashed the sheet under the counter, Elmo stepped closer to the bars at the front of his cage. Then he lowered the top of his head so I could pet the soft tuft of black feathers there. Elmo is brownish black, except for a panel of bright red feathers on his tail. From the front, he looks kind of plain. But when Elmo spreads his tail feathers, there’s no question about it, he’s awesome. Though I had tons to do—the store opened in less than an hour—I gave Elmo a good scratch, reaching right for where his feathers met the skin.

  Elmo’s not a talker. Most cockatoos aren’t, though when Elmo’s excited, he squawks so much you’d think he was trying to make sentences. I knew he was enjoying the scratch because when I took my finger away, he followed my hand, pressing his forehead against the bars.

  “Never forget the first rule of owning a pet store.” Dad was at home, probably helping Mom deal with the latest disaster— yesterday the twins had caught pink eye. But I could hear Dad’s voice as clearly as if he was standing behind me. “Don’t get too attached to any of the animals, Tim. Remember, they’re all for sale. Each and every one of them. As long as they wind up in good homes, we’re doing our job.”

  The thing was, I was already too attached to Elmo. We’d had him since I was five. And though it might sound weird—especially if you’ve never gotten to know a bird—I was as close to Elmo as I was to Philippe, who’d been my friend since preschool.

  I’d hardly seen Philippe since we’d moved to Lasalle. During the week he worked at a day camp near our old house; on weekends I was busy at the store. And so far I hadn’t made any new friends in Lasalle. Mom and Dad said things would get easier for me once school started. I hoped they were right.

  Thank goodness I still had Elmo. I just hoped his hefty price tag—two thousand dollars—would keep anyone from buying him.

  It takes longer to feed Elmo than the other birds because of the padlocks. Elmo’s an escape artist. Opening latches and padlocks is his hobby, the way some people collect coins or play computer games. Elmo will spend weeks using his beak to play with a lock, until he finally pries it open. Dad keeps adding more locks. Right now there are three on Elmo’s cage.

  A soft warm body rubbed up against my shins as I closed the aviary door. I reached down to pet Ginger, the store cat. Someone had abandoned her at our old store.

  A marmalade cat, she spent most of her days in the front window, soaking up the sun in
a giant cat condominium that was dotted with bits of her orange fur.

  “Hey, Ginger. I’ll be back when I’m done with the turtles.”

  Ginger purred.

  Animals are easy. All you have to do is feed them and pet them and clean their cages and they’ll be friends with you forever. Human beings are another story. Human beings are way more complicated.

  chapter two

  Dad usually sings when he walks into the store. Dumb songs mostly, like “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” He also stops to say hi to everyone—even strangers— and to pet the animals. He’s often got dog biscuits or cat treats in his pockets.

  Not today.

  Today Dad rushed by all of us and headed straight to his office at the back of the store. I was cleaning out the rabbit pen, but I saw him go by. When he slammed the door behind him, Cottontail went to hide underneath a log. All I could see of her was the end of one brown floppy ear.

  I reached under a clump of hay until I found a small red wool ball. When I rolled it in Cottontail’s direction, she peeked out from under the hay, her nostrils quivering. Cottontail’s obsessed with cat toys.

  “Everything okay this morning?” a soft voice behind me asked.

  “Hey, Amy,” I said, turning around. Amy’s our bird girl. She looks like a punk rocker, but she’s actually studying to be a vet tech.

  “Birds fed?” Amy asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Elmo still here? Nobody stole him?”

  “Still here.” Amy made the same joke every morning. She knew how much I loved Elmo.

  “We’re expecting a shipment of fledgling lovebirds. I could use a little help when they get here.”

  After Amy left for the aviary, I finished changing the hay. Rabbits don’t just sleep in hay, they eat it. It would be like us eating our sheets.

  Once I’d finished in the rabbit pen, I walked over to Dad’s office. On the way, I passed the fish department. Trout, our aquarium guy, was skimming the deads, using a gauzy strainer to remove the fish that had died overnight. Dead fish are part of aquarium life, but they don’t make a good impression.

  I knocked.

  When Dad didn’t say anything, I knocked again.

  “Who is it?” Dad sounded tense.

  “It’s me, Tim.”

  “Come on in.” Though he’d invited me in, I had the feeling he didn’t really want me hanging around.

  Dad was hunched over his computer. There was a spreadsheet on the screen. That meant he was working on the budget. Realco—the real estate company that owns the Lasalle Mall—had offered us six months’ free rent as incentive to move Four Feet and Feathers.

  I knew Dad was worried about what would happen next month when we had to start paying rent. It was going to be way more expensive than the old location, and it didn’t take an accountant to know that sales this summer had been kind of slow.

  Dad hadn’t asked my opinion about the move. It was his store, and I was just a kid. If he had asked, I’d have told him I wasn’t worried about money. I was worried about the animals. A bigger store meant Dad had brought in more animals, but he hadn’t hired extra staff to take care of them. That meant more work for all of us and less attention for the animals.

  “Everything okay, Dad?” I didn’t know what else to say. For the first time I noticed Dad’s hair—it’s the same brown as mine— had some silver in it.

  “Uh-huh,” Dad said, without lifting his eyes from the computer screen.

  “Want anything from the food court? Coffee? Blueberry muffin?”

  “Nah.” Dad waved me out of his office. “Just trying to balance these books,” he muttered. It sounded more like he was talking to himself than to me.

  When I let myself out of Dad’s office, I practically tripped on a piece of shiny black material.

  “Rodney! You’ve gotta be more careful with that cape.”

  Rodney looked up at me with sad brown eyes. I’d hurt his feelings.

  “Er...Phantom of Doom, I should say.”

  Rodney lips curled up a little at the sides. He loved it when people called him Phantom of Doom.

  “Whatcha doin’ here, Phantom?”

  Rodney’s eyes dropped to the tile floor. “My mom needed cereal. So she left me here. Said she’d be back in half an hour.”

  I’d never met Rodney’s mom. But she must have bought groceries one item at a time, because she was always leaving Rodney at Four Feet and Feathers. I guess she hadn’t read the sign posted out front: All children under age ten must be accompanied by an adult.

  “Okay then, Rod—er...Phantom,” I said, “let’s go see how the Red Ears are doing.”

  As Rodney followed me to the terrarium where the Red Ear turtles live, his cape dragging on the floor, I thought he was kind of like a puppy. And if Rodney had a tail, he’d be wagging it.

  chapter three

  “What can I get for you today, Baba?” Mr. Singh asked. He leaned over his counter, his orange turban perched on his head like a flying saucer. Tandoori Palace was the busiest counter at the food court. Some people came all the way from downtown for Mr. Singh’s homemade chai tea and creamy butter chicken. It was only 11:30AM, but customers were already snacking on samosas or using their nan bread to scoop up Mr. Singh’s famous chicken.

  “The usual, please. An order of butter chicken with basmati rice on the side.”

  Mr. Singh dipped his ladle into one of the copper vats on the stove behind him. “That will be four ninety-five,” he called out when he turned back toward me. His words came out like a song, his voice starting off high, and then dropping down a note at a time.

  Mr. Singh pointed to a stool near his cash register. “Why not keep me company, Baba?” Baba, he’d explained to me, was Indian for dear.

  Mr. Singh poured himself a cup of chai tea. It smelled of cinnamon and cloves. “Did I mention my great-niece Sapna arrives this weekend?” he asked after he took his first sip.

  I took a bite of butter chicken. “From India?”

  Mr. Singh nodded. “She’s coming to help out at Tandoori Palace. It’s hard for an old man like me to manage on my own. I told Sapna’s mother I needed an extra pair of hands, and she told me Sapna’s were available.”

  “Well, that’s good news.”

  “You’ll like Sapna. She’s your age.”

  After Mr. Singh finished serving the next customer, he poured me a cup of chai tea. “My treat,” he said. “Drink up.”

  Mr. Singh watched as I tasted his tea. “It’s good. For tea.”

  Someone tapped their fingers on the counter. “I need three orders of vegetable curry to go. With rice and nan bread.”

  It was Mr. Morgan, the general manager of Realco. Whenever he came by Four Feet and Feathers, he had this way of acting like he owned it—running his fingers along the shelves to check for dust and commenting if service was slow.

  He was our landlord, so I had to be polite. I put down my fork and said hello. Mr. Morgan was wearing a suit and tie and his silver hair was so perfectly blow-dried it looked like a helmet. Even his fingernails were buffed and polished. If he were a dog, he’d have just come from the groomer.

  Mr. Morgan nodded. You could tell he didn’t think I was important enough to remember.

  Mr. Singh was quiet as he packed the order in a paper bag and stapled it across the top. “Thank you, sir,” he said when Mr. Morgan paid his bill.

  After Mr. Morgan left, Mr. Singh turned to stir one of his pots. “That man enjoys Indian food,” I heard him say under his breath. “Almost as much as he enjoys collecting rent.”

  Mr. Singh’s next customers were a couple dressed in matching leather jackets, each carrying a motorcycle helmet. “Hey, you’re the kid from the pet store, right?” the guy asked me. His hair, which was dyed green and yellow, reminded me of a parrot.

  “Yup.”

  He put his helmet on the counter and looked me up and down. “I need a guard dog to watch my Harley.”

  “You better tal
k to my dad,” I said. “He likes to interview everyone who buys a dog from Four Feet and Feathers.”

  “He interviews everyone who buys a dog? There’s gotta be something wrong with the dude.” When the guy laughed, it came out like a snort.

  I took a deep breath. “There’s n-nothing wrong with my dad.” I hoped he didn’t notice how I’d stammered. “He cares about animals is all. He wants to make sure they go to good homes.”

  “Don’t give the kid a hard time,” the guy’s girlfriend said, smacking him on the butt.

  The guy snorted again.

  The girlfriend’s eyebrows were pierced. “How’d your dad get into the pet business, anyhow?” she asked. I couldn’t tell if she was being nice or if she was really interested.

  The guy took the trays Mr. Singh handed him. It looked like they were planning to sit at the counter too.

  I relaxed a little on my stool. The girl was still watching me, which made me think she really was interested in hearing about the store. Besides, if there was one story I liked telling, this was it.

  “When my dad was a kid,” I said, “he hung out at this pet store near his house. It was the kind of pet store they had in those days. The cages were cramped, the animals didn’t get much exercise, and people would poke at the dogs and cats through the bars of their cages.”

  “That’s disgusting,” the girl said.

  “Well, my dad dreamt of opening a different kind of pet store. So when he finished university, he used all his savings to buy that old pet store and turn it into the first Four Feet and Feathers.”

  Mr. Singh whistled.

  The guy wiped the side of his mouth with a napkin. “That’s pretty cool!” he said.

  Mr. Singh added some sugar to his tea. What he said next took me by surprise. I expected it to be something about my father, but it wasn’t. It was about me.

  “It’s delightful,” Mr. Singh said as he sipped at his tea, “to meet a young man who truly admires his father.”