Shout Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts Read online

  Also by Esta Spalding

  Text copyright © 2019 by Esta Spalding

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Lee Gatlin

  Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young

  Readers, a Penguin Random House Company

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Spalding, Esta, author

  Shout out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts / Esta Spalding; illustrated by Lee Gatlin.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 9780735264519 (hardcover).—ISBN 9780735264526 (EPUB)

  I. Gatlin, Lee, illustrator II. Title.

  PS8587.P214S56 2019 jC813’.54 C2018-903334-7

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Tundra

  Books of Northern New York, an imprint of Penguin Random House

  Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946083

  Edited by Lynne Missen

  The artwork in this book was created with traditional and digital media.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v5.3.2

  a

  For Kristin

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Esta Spalding

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Thank-Yous

  PROLOGUE

  We had had a swim and we had eaten ginker cake and we were sitting on the rocks beside the Fitzgerald-Trout siblings’ favorite fishing stream when they began to tell me their story. Kim, the oldest, spoke first. “Kimo and I think what happened to us should be called ‘The Family Calamity,’” she said.

  “Family because it had happened to the five of us,” Kimo chimed in. “And calamity because that’s a word for when things go really wrong.”

  “Did things really go that wrong?” I asked.

  The childrens’ five sets of eyes in their five brown faces looked at me like my question was absurd.

  “Um, yes,” said Kim in a voice that exposed just how hard she and her siblings found it trying to make a grown-up understand anything important. “We’re only telling you this because we want to make sure that what happened to us doesn’t happen to any other family, ever.”

  “Write that part down,” said Toby, the youngest boy, pointing to my notebook. He was holding his baby sister, Penny, in his lap and she seemed to be nodding in agreement.

  I was about to put pen to paper when Pippa added, “You should put the word monster in the name too, because a monster was definitely part of the problem.”

  “Yeah. Plus, it sounds way cooler.” Toby grinned at his sister.

  “Okay,” I said. “‘The Family Monster Calamity.’” I wrote it in big letters at the top of the first page of my notebook. “Tell me how it started.”

  That’s when they all began to talk at once. Kimo said something about their boat being taken and Kim said, “It was all the secrets.” I couldn’t make out what Toby or Pippa were saying, but it didn’t matter because as soon as the baby spoke, they all stopped talking.

  “What did Penny say?” I asked them.

  The baby herself answered, saying, “Wimo.”

  “She’s talking about the limousine,” Toby explained. He looked more than a little sheepish.

  Kim stared at me gravely. “Penny’s right. The limo was the first secret between us.”

  Pippa wiped her glasses on her T-shirt and said matter-of-factly, “The limo, yes, the limo. That’s where you should start our story.”

  CHAPTER

  1

  Toby was sitting in the grass with the baby, watching her play with a stick, when a car, bigger than any car he’d ever seen, pulled into the parking lot next to them. It was as long as two cars put end-to-end and as black and shiny as the mask worn by the villain in the movie he and his sisters and brother had seen at the drive-in a few nights before. Thinking of that villain, Toby instinctively reached for the baby and pulled her closer.

  But the baby had her own ideas. “No,” she said, wriggling away from him. “My do it.” She hated when any of her brothers or sisters tried to take control of her, especially when she was doing something as important as stirring her drool into the grass with a stick. Toby let her go and turned his attention back to the car. A woman climbed out of the back. She wore bright green high heels and a matching green jumpsuit made of something that looked like snakeskin. Toby thought about how snakes shed their skin and it occurred to him that perhaps the woman had collected some snake skins and sewed them together. Then he thought that was silly; a woman with a car this fancy wouldn’t sew her own snake skins together. She would hire someone else to do it.

  “You must be Toby,” the woman said. “And this must be Penny. And this…” the woman pointed to the jar that sat beside Toby in the sand, “must be the famous goldfish, Goldie.”

  “You know us,” Toby said. He didn’t make it sound like a question because he didn’t want to hurt the woman’s feelings if she was some adult he was supposed to recognize. Like the other Fitzgerald-Trout children, Toby had very little interest in grown-ups and didn’t always keep track of the ones he was supposed to know.

  “I have never seen a more handsome goldfish in my life,” the woman continued, then she smiled. It was a snake’s smile, showing no teeth at all. “I’m Clarice,” she said, holding out her hand. “Clarice McGuffin.”

  Toby wiped his hand on his T-shirt the way his sister had taught him, then shook the woman’s hand. “Toby,” he said. “But you know that.”

  “I’ll tell you what I don’t know,” said Clarice. “I don’t know if Goldie has ever been in a limousine.”

  “Not with me,” said Toby. “But he might have before. He hasn’t always been mine.”

  “How about we show him?” asked Clarice. “Just in case. Would he like to take a look?”

  Toby was absolutely sure that Goldie would like to take a look, because Goldie always wanted to do what Toby wanted to do, and Toby wanted to take a look. After all, Toby was interested in cars because he and his brother and sisters lived in one. Sure, there had been a short time once when they’d lived in a cabin at the edge of the ocean, and just this past summer, they’d lived for a few months on a fishing boat on the ocean, but they didn’t have that boat anymore. Their little green car was thei
r home and gave them the freedom to go anywhere they wanted.

  At night, they parked at a campsite beside Pea Tree Beach, where they slept under the stars and swam in the morning, cooking their oatmeal breakfast over a familiar campfire. Toby was very happy with this arrangement, but he knew that his sister Kim was not, that she wanted some place bigger and more permanent to live. She had a to-do list and at the top of it was written Find a house. She spent a lot of time dreaming up crazy ways of finding one and Toby—like his brother, Kimo, and his sister Pippa—would be very happy if Kim were finally able to tick that item off her list.

  Now, looking at the limo, Toby thought what a terrific home it would make. If the little green car was a house, then this limo was a mansion. I really should take a look inside, Toby thought. Then he remembered the baby. “What about Penny?”

  “She can look too,” Clarice said. “I know for a fact that babies love limousines.”

  “Hey, Penny.” Toby got to his feet. “Let’s check it out.”

  “My do it,” said Penny, but she held up her arms to say that she wanted Toby to carry her. With one hand, Toby swung her onto his hip. With the other, he grabbed Goldie’s jar. A second later, he was peering into the open door of the enormous car. It had a comfy, plush seat at the very back, but it also had a long soft seat that ran from the rear of the car up to the front, ending just behind the glass that divided the passengers from the driver, who was wearing a little black hat and staring out the front windshield. He turned to look at Toby, and Toby’s first thought when he saw the man’s face was of the full moon in the night sky, and how if you looked at it just right you saw the man in the moon peering down at you with big, round, liquid eyes and an open, surprised mouth. The man in the moon smiled at Toby and the boy smiled back. Then he turned to study the rest of the car.

  Facing the long seat was a small counter with a sink full of ice. Poking out of the ice were cold cans of Uncle Ozo’s soda pop and little cans of baby formula. Next to the sink was a plate of cookies and a package of teething biscuits. Toby knew about these because Penny—who had two new teeth—loved them. Above the counter a television set was playing something, but Toby couldn’t quite tell what it was because he was still outside the car, looking in through the open door.

  “Go ahead,” said Clarice. “You can climb inside if you want.”

  Most children are taught by their parents never, ever to get into a stranger’s car. But the Fitzgerald-Trouts did not live with their parents and so they had never been taught this important lesson. The three older children—Kim, who was twelve, and Kimo, who was only a few months younger, and even nine-year-old Pippa—had learned this rule from movies and stories, but Toby (who was not yet seven) did not know it. Still, something in him hesitated. He glanced back toward the ocean where Kim, Kimo, and Pippa were swimming. He could see them far off in the distance, though they looked more like buoys than people, their heads bobbing on the surface of the water as they rode up and over the waves that rolled into shore.

  But then he saw that the TV was playing an animated cartoon, so he leaned further into the car to see what the show was about. It seemed to tell the story of a rabbit which had lost its ears. Toby set Goldie’s jar down on the floor of the limo and watched the TV, hoping to find out what had happened to the rabbit’s ears. He noticed that there was a car seat for a baby. Just at that moment Penny, who was still in Toby’s arms, began to cry, and Toby saw that she was pointing at the teething biscuits. “Can Penny have one of those?” Toby asked.

  “I’ll open a package,” offered Clarice, sliding past them into the car. “You try that.” She pointed to a button beside Toby. He pushed it and heard a whooshing sound as the roof of the car began to slide back, opening an enormous window. Toby could see the tops of the palm trees that arched over the parking lot and beyond them the deep blue of a sky that went on forever.

  “Cool,” Toby said. “Our car doesn’t do that.” He watched as a flock of puk-puk geese flew over the car honking at each other, making him wish that he could stick his head out of the window and try to touch the feathers on their bellies.

  “Go ahead,” Clarice said, gesturing that it was okay for him to fully enter the limousine. But some part of Toby held back. He did not want to get all the way inside that car. There was a rustling of plastic. Clarice was opening a package of teething biscuits for the baby, who clapped her hands.

  “Do you want to go for a ride?” Clarice asked.

  Toby looked down at Penny. For most of his life, Toby had been the youngest Fitzgerald-Trout, the one who had always been babysat by the others. Now that he was older and had a little sister, he was enjoying being the babysitter for the first time. And something in him wondered whether a good babysitter would take the baby for a ride in the limousine. He wished his older siblings were there to answer this question. He looked at the spot where his brother and sisters were swimming and saw that they were on their way back to shore. “Maybe another time,” the boy said, scooping up the goldfish jar and stepping away from the vehicle.

  “Nice to meet you,” the woman said.

  Toby stood with Penny on his hip and Goldie’s jar in his hand. The driver gave a wave as he backed the car out of its spot. Then he drove away. What a car! thought Toby. I wish we had one. Kim could finally cross out those words on her to-do list.

  Later that week, on Friday, Kim was sitting in her seventh grade classroom staring at this very to-do list. She was supposed to be listening to her teacher, Mr. Petty, who was standing at the chalkboard talking about island history, but instead Kim was studying the words Find a house.

  “Kim? Kim? Are you paying attention?”

  “Yes,” she answered, before she even realized Mr. Petty was glaring at her.

  “If you’re paying attention, Kim, then stand up and tell me what I just said,” Mr. Petty challenged.

  “Ummm,” Kim said. She thought that they had been talking about the explorer Captain Baker, but she wasn’t entirely sure. As she rose to her feet, a cloud of birds flew through the classroom. (Because the Fitzgerald-Trouts lived on a tropical island, most of the classrooms at their school had no walls.) A few of the birds dropped mushimush berries on the floor, causing an eruption of giggles from the students. The birds and the laughter did nothing to distract Mr. Petty. He just shook his head and frowned.

  He was a no-nonsense teacher who, despite the warm tropical weather, managed to have crisply pressed shirts and pants at all times. The kind of teacher who ironed his socks and always had a starched handkerchief in his pocket. On the first day of school, he’d told the class that he believed seventh grade should be very difficult. “I like to give pop quizzes and to make sure every student is comfortable with public speaking,” he’d said. “I also assign mountains of homework every night. So prepare yourself.” Kim, who always got straight As, wanted nothing more than to please her new teacher, but so far—four months into the school year—she had not succeeded. Because when you lived in a small car and were responsible for your four brothers and sisters, it was not easy to do mountains of homework every night or to practice public speaking or to study for pop quizzes.

  Kim felt the eyes of the entire class focus on her. “Ummm,” she said again. She wanted to say the name “Captain Baker,” but the words weren’t coming out.

  “What? Speak clearly, Kim. Enunciate.”

  Kim’s throat was dry. She felt the eyes of her classmates on her. She looked at the chalkboard, hoping that if she didn’t look at her classmates, the words might emerge. Seated at the desk next to Kim’s, Violet Cringle raised her delicate hand. “Can I help, Mr. Petty?”

  “Yes, Violet, thank you.”

  Kim sat back down as Violet chirped, “We were talking about exploration. We were talking about the first Europeans who arrived on the island two hundred years ago.”

  Captain Baker, Kim said again in her head. Kim had stayed up later
than her brothers and sisters, reading with her textbook on island history propped on the steering wheel and a flashlight between her teeth.

  “That’s right, Violet,” Mr. Petty was saying. “We were talking about Captain Baker, who arrived on the island in his ship, the Billy Goat. He loved the island so much he decided to stay here. In 1785, Captain Baker built a house on the slopes of Mount Muldoon. Turn to page one-forty-six in your textbook.”

  And that’s when a wonderful thing happened, a thing that the Fitzgerald-Trout children later told me completely changed their lives: Mr. Petty asked the class to read the description of the house that Captain Baker had built.

  Kim flipped open her worn textbook. On page 146, there was a large brown crust of chocolate left by a former seventh grader. Beneath it, Kim could just barely make out the following words: “Captain Baker wanted his house to be as tall as the tallest ship he had ever sailed, so he made it three stories high and built it out of volcanic stone. There were thirty-three rooms (all of them had large fireplaces) and that included a living room, a dining room, an observatory, and a kitchen.” As the class read aloud, Kim began to picture the Captain’s magnificent house.

  He built a library with bookshelves from floor to ceiling and an enormous bay window that looked out over the island. From that window, the Captain could watch the fishing canoes sail in and out of the Bay of Hanalee; across the ravine he could see the waterfall at Makapepe; and he could observe the taro farmers, knee-deep in mud, planting and picking their crops that grew in the marshes on the edge of the Sakahatchi.