Shout Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts Read online

  “We’re just glad you’re okay,” Kimo said, throwing his arm around Toby and pulling him close. “We thought you’d been snatched by a monster.”

  “No,” Toby said. “Not me, but—” And even before he could speak, the older siblings knew what he was going to say, because they were looking around, realizing that the baby wasn’t there. “She’s got Penny.”

  “The rustling scythe-footed ghost-monster?” asked Pippa.

  “No,” said Toby. “Clarice McGuffin. She’s got a lawyer. She’s signing legal papers. If we don’t stop her, she’s going to become Penny’s mother.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  Grrrg, grrrg, grrrrg, clunk. The engine of the little green car would not start. Sitting in the driver’s seat, feeling helpless, Kim turned the key once more. Grrrg, grrrg, grrrrg, clunk. No luck. She banged her fist on the steering wheel in frustration. She needed to get the engine going so they could rescue Penny, who was somehow now being held by the CEO of Baby Loves. Kim didn’t understand what had happened. All Toby had managed to explain as they’d run down the mountain to the car was that Clarice had offered money to fix the Castle up if he and Penny went with her to photograph something.

  “Wait,” Kimo said. “How does Clarice even know Penny? Or you? Or where we live?” Toby backed up his story and hurriedly admitted that he’d met Clarice before and that he’d accidentally told her where they were living. Then he confessed, “One time, after school, while you guys were busy, I went with Penny to Clarice’s office at the Royal Palm hotel. Penny had her picture taken for Baby Loves Magazine while I ate room service.” On a normal day Pippa and Kimo would have asked what room service was, but this wasn’t a normal day.

  Toby groaned, then explained the rest of what he knew. “Clarice doesn’t care about Penny. She’s trying to adopt her so she can take her picture anytime she wants and use it for advertisements.”

  Hearing this, Kim began to beg the little green car. “Start, please, start. Please!” She twisted the key, and her wish was answered. The engine sputtered to life.

  “Yes!” they all yelped in chorus. The car didn’t sound energetic, but it was running. Kim threw it into reverse and backed out of the parking space, turning to Toby to ask, “Where exactly are we going?”

  “Island Record Studios.”

  “Where’s that?” Kimo asked as Kim pulled out onto the main road.

  “It’s a giant warehouse,” said Toby, “in the middle of that bamboo grove near Barber Street.”

  “Wait,” Pippa interjected. “I thought you said Clarice’s place was at the Royal Palm hotel.”

  “That’s the thing,” said Toby. “This time we didn’t go to her office. This time we went to Tina’s office.”

  The name struck the Fitzgerald-Trout siblings like a dart. “Tina!” Pippa howled in fury. “Our mother Tina?” Toby’s head tucked between his shoulders like a turtle disappearing into its shell. Pippa was ranting now. “Tina who sings jingles about Baby Loves but doesn’t love her own baby? That Tina?”

  Toby had never been so miserable. “I heard Clarice asking Tina to sign the papers so that Baby Loves could adopt Penny.”

  “Baby Loves? The corporation?” asked Kimo.

  Kim wailed loudly and pushed the gas pedal, but it was already to the floor. The little green car was going as fast as it possibly could (which was not very fast at all).

  Toby’s face twisted into a grimace. “Tina said, ‘Sure, why not? Baby Loves can have her.’” Pippa’s jaw dropped open and Kimo clutched his heart while Kim’s hands began to shake; it was all that she could do to keep the car pointing straight.

  “And what about Clive?” Kimo asked. He knew of course that Clive had always been a terrible father, but the boy held out hope that Clive might at least not want a corporation to own his baby.

  Toby shook his head. “Clarice asked about Clive, and Tina told her that Clive’s already signed over full custody because he’s ‘allergic’ to Penny.” Toby made the air- quotes with his hands and the other Fitzgerald-Trouts all shook their heads in disbelief, not over the fact that Clive was a terrible parent—that they knew—but over the fact that he could ever think Penny gave him allergies. It was ridiculous.

  For a long moment none of them said anything. Kim slowed the car as a cloud of coral-colored flamingos, awkward as a flock of umbrellas, flew past. When the flamingos were gone, Toby said, “I snuck out. I told Leon, he’s Clarice’s limo driver, what had happened and I asked him for a ride back to Mount Muldoon so I could get you guys.”

  “Why did you do that?” Kim couldn’t help herself. She was yelling at Toby. “Why not get the limo driver to help you take Penny back?”

  “I asked him,” wailed Toby. “I did. But he said he couldn’t help me take Penny. No grown-up could help. That would be kidnapping.”

  “They’re the ones who are kidnapping,” Pippa said, her freckles flaring. She felt a surge of anger at Tina and then a surprising anger at Toby. She should have known better than to trust him with the baby. He was an irresponsible daydreamer. Then she felt a deep blush of shame; at least Toby had been with the baby. She couldn’t say the same for herself. She took her glasses off and rubbed them on her ratty T-shirt as calmly as she could. “So let me get this straight. Tina is filling out papers so that Clarice’s corporation can adopt Penny. And Clarice is probably paying Tina a lot of money. Is that what’s happening?”

  “Yup,” said Toby. “When I left, Clarice was calling her lawyer to come over.” He was anxiously picking the stuffing from a hole in the seat next to him.

  “How can a corporation take care of a baby? A corporation isn’t a person.” In his distress, Kimo started opening and closing the glove compartment as if he might find an answer there.

  Kim’s question was different. “How can Tina give Penny away? She’s not Tina’s baby. She’s our baby.” Even as she said this, Kim was realizing how little attention she’d paid to the baby lately. And earlier this afternoon she hadn’t known where Pippa was and that was partly because Kimo hadn’t wanted them all at the track meet. Their little family unit had come apart, blown in different directions like the seeds of a dandelion. Only we did it to ourselves, Kim thought. It wasn’t the wind that scattered us.

  “We know she’s our baby,” Pippa said. “But do they know it?”

  “We’re gonna go there and tell them.” Kim slapped her palm against the steering wheel, a gesture of angry resolve. “We’re going to get our sister back. Simple as that.”

  * * *

  —

  They drove as quickly as they could to Island Record Studios, but when they got there, things were not as simple as Kim had hoped. For one thing, the large metal doors to the windowless warehouse were locked. Kimo yanked on them with all his might, but they seemed to be bolted from the inside. “Is this how you got in before?” he asked Toby.

  “It’s how I got out too.”

  Pippa was clenching and unclenching her fists, preparing for some kind of battle. “I bet they noticed you’d left and they figured you were going for help and they locked the doors up tight.”

  Kim stared up at the impenetrable warehouse. There were no other doors, no open windows, and the building was flanked on both sides by tall, tangled groves of bamboo. “How are we ever going to get inside?”

  Pippa stepped back several yards and squinted up at the building. It had occurred to her that if she could find a way for all of them to get into it, she would in some small way make up for the mistake of having left Toby and the baby alone. Her eyes scanned the structure for evidence of entry points. There were the doors, bolted from the inside, and several high windows that looked permanently sealed. What about the roof? She walked a few paces back to get a better look and that’s when she saw a large metal hatch that could only be one thing. “There’s an air-conditioning unit up there,” she said, pointing to th
e rooftop.

  “So?” Kimo was impatient.

  “If it breaks, somebody has to be able to get up there to fix it,” said Pippa. “Which means there’s got to be an opening on the roof—a door or something—that leads into the building.”

  “But there’s no way to get up there.” Toby groaned. “It’s way too high.”

  “Maybe we could climb the bamboo,” said Pippa. But when they reached the edge of the bamboo that grew densely beside the building, they saw that the distance from the top of the bamboo to the roof was much too great.

  A frightening thought occurred to Kim. “Maybe Tina and Clarice aren’t even in there. Maybe they saw that Toby was gone and they took Penny to meet the lawyer somewhere else.”

  But a quick survey of the cars in the parking lot revealed Tina’s blue convertible parked across from Clarice’s limo. So the two women had to still be inside the building. “Where’s that limousine driver you were telling us about?” Pippa turned to Toby. “Maybe he knows a way in.”

  “Leon,” said Toby. “He gave me a ride to the mountain. Dunno where he is now. I guess he could be inside. Sometimes when he’s not driving, he watches TV.”

  “So he’s no help.” Kim was pacing and blowing air out of her cheeks in furious puffs. “How long does it take to draw up adoption papers? Maybe the lawyer’s not here yet. Maybe when she gets here—”

  “Why do you think she’s a she?” asked Toby. “Boys can be lawyers too.”

  This was the kind of unnecessary digression from Toby that drove Kim crazy, but instead of snapping at her little brother, she reminded herself that he was the one who had been paying the most attention to the baby lately. He had been taking care of Penny when Kim had been too busy with her own pursuits. “You’re right,” said Kim, correcting herself. “Maybe when she—or he—gets here, we can slip into the building with her—or him.”

  “He’s a he,” said Pippa. “And he’s already here.” She had been studying the cars in the parking lot and was pointing to one with the personalized license plate MR LAWMAN. “That’s gotta be his car—which means the papers could already be signed.”

  Kim’s blood ran cold. “We’ve got to get in there now and tear those papers up or burn them or at least snatch them away.”

  “They’ll just write up another set,” wailed Toby.

  Kimo was not going to hear this kind of hopeless talk. “We have to think of a way to get in because when we get in, we’ll know just what to do, because we have to know what to do or we’ll lose Penny for good.”

  Pippa was not going to be defeated. “If we can cut a path through the bamboo, we can get around to the back and see if there’s a door there on the other side. Do we still have that ax in the trunk?” They found it, and a moment later, Kimo was charging toward the bamboo grove.

  But as he charged toward it, Kimo heard a familiar sound. It was a sound that made his palms sweat and his heart race. It was a sound that made him itch all over. It was the sound of wizzleroaches—or, more specifically, wizzleroach feet. Because all of the wizzleroaches that fled Mount Muldoon when the lava had come had found a new home in the bamboo grove on Barber Street. And now Kimo was charging straight into them. But to the great surprise of Kimo’s siblings—and of Kimo himself—he did not stop. His fear of losing Penny was much greater than his fear of the insects, and so he ran right into their midst, swinging the ax at the bamboo stalks as if his life depended upon it. The other children watched in awestruck silence. Clouds of the wizzleroaches flew past Kimo, but he kept swinging, he kept moving, deeper and deeper into the bamboo grove. He didn’t miss a stroke.

  Still, as strong as he was and as great as his effort was, he made slow progress. After several restless minutes Pippa said, “I can’t just stand here doing nothing. I’m going to watch the door to the building and make sure no one’s going in or out. It would be ridiculous if someone happened to open the door and we weren’t there.”

  “Good plan,” said Kim.

  “Do it,” Kimo huffed between strokes of the ax.

  Pippa took off and Toby and Kim resumed watching Kimo work. After a minute, Kim noticed that Kimo had only cut a small fraction of the trail that would need to be thirty or forty feet long before it cleared the side of the building. “This could take all day.” She shook her head, then offered, “Let me have a turn.”

  “No,” said Kimo.

  “You’re slowing down,” said Kim. “I’m not slowing down.”

  “Yes, you are,” said Toby gravely.

  Kimo heard the boy’s tone and gave in, stepping aside and handing the ax off to Kim, who immediately raised it over her shoulder and began to hew away the next few feet of bamboo.

  Kimo bent to clear the stalks that he had already cut. He picked up a few and carried them out of the grove into the parking lot. As he emerged, Pippa, who was standing near the front door, had a view of him from a distance. It looked to her like he was carrying a couple of pole-vaulting poles and this made her realize she didn’t even know if he’d broken the island record or not. “Hey,” she shouted. “How did it go at the track meet?”

  “Not good,” said Kimo.

  “Well,” said Pippa, “you tried.” And even as these words were coming out of her mouth, an extraordinary idea was forming in her head. “Do you want to try again?”

  “Of course I do,” said Kimo.

  “I mean, right now,” said Pippa.

  “Right now we’ve got more important things to do,” said Kimo. “We have to rescue Penny, remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” said Pippa. “I’m saying, what if by breaking the island record you could rescue Penny?”

  “Then I would break the island record.” Kimo didn’t miss a beat.

  And that was when Pippa nodded toward the roof of the building and asked, “How high do you think that roof is?”

  Practicing the pole vault had got Kimo used to judging heights. He sized up the roof. “Sixteen feet, five inches,” he said. “Give or take a couple of inches.”

  “So if you used that bamboo pole to vault up onto that roof…” Pippa didn’t even have to finish her sentence. Kimo knew exactly what she meant. If he vaulted a foot higher than he had ever vaulted before, he would land on the roof of the warehouse. And maybe once he was up there he would find a way into the building and they would have a chance to get to Penny before the adoption papers were signed.

  “I’ll do it,” the boy said.

  And so for the second time that day, Kimo faced a pole vault higher than the island pole vaulting record. This time he was in an asphalt parking lot with a bamboo pole instead of a proper pole-vaulting pole and with no real pit to plant the pole in at the end of his run. The odds were against him. Doesn’t matter, the boy thought as he walked away from the building, measuring his strides. I’ve got to do it this time, for Penny.

  He found the spot seventeen strides from where he would jump and he took his position, facing the building. Pippa had told Kim and Toby what was happening and they had stopped cutting bamboo long enough to come over and watch. They stood behind Kimo, too nervous to shout or chant his name. Instead they softly spoke their encouragement. “You got this,” said Kim.

  “Do it for Penny,” said Toby.

  Then Pippa offered, “You know what Penny would say.”

  “My do it,” they all said at once.

  Kimo closed his eyes and imagined his jump. Swish, swish, pop, zow-wee, he thought. Then he corrected himself: Swish, swish, pop, Penny! If I get up there, I might find a door and maybe we can get inside and rescue her. He lifted the front of his pole into place.

  He began to run. Swish, swish, pop, Penny! Swish, swish, pop, Penny! Swish, swish, pop, Penny! He could feel the power in his legs as he counted his strides: one, two, three, four, five…before he knew it, he was at seventeen, and he was planting the pole on the ground and shov
ing his right arm forward while he yanked his left arm back.

  He felt himself launched up into the air, legs first, and then his whole body was traveling in an arc up and up…

  With a soft thud, he landed on the roof.

  He had done it. He had broken the island pole vaulting record. But he wasn’t thinking about that now. He was focused on his little sister. How could he get her back?

  He walked over to the edge of the roof and peered down at Kim, Pippa, and Toby, who were jumping up and down, hugging each other with glee. “Is there a door?” Pippa called up at him.

  “Not sure,” said Kimo.

  “Go look behind the air-conditioning unit,” said Pippa. “That’s where it would be.” Kimo padded across the roof to the unit, which was as tall as he was, and ducked behind it. Sure enough, just as Pippa had predicted, there was a trapdoor. He grabbed the handle and swung it open. It was dark, but he could just barely make out a set of stairs. If he went down them, he might find his way through the building to the front door, where he could let the others in.

  He peered down into the stairwell. He had no idea where the stairs led, but he stepped down into the darkness anyway, and lowered the door back over his head.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Moments later, Kimo was sliding back the bolt on the front door and swinging it open so that light from outside spilled into the front hallway of the recording studio, where gold and silver records hung on all of the walls. “Shh.” He put a finger to his lips as the others hurried past him into the dark building.