Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (2 page)

“Is this where we’re staying?” I asked my mom.

“It sure is, Zo,” my mother answered. She called me Zo, without the “e,” a lot of the time. I guess sometimes one syllable is better than two. “There are two pools and a garden too,” she said. “The conference is four days, but we have eight days here, so like I said, for the second half of the trip we’ll be able to go sightseeing. Sound good?”

Sound good? It sounded great. I could already tell without even going in the front door that this place was going to be amazing. “Sounds cool, Mom,” I said.

“Good. Just do me a favor. Listen to me carefully while we’re here, and don’t run off. Do you understand?”

“I get it, Mom.”

Before we go any further, let me tell you a little more about my mom. My mom has long chestnut hair and brown eyes that twinkle when she talks. Her name is Alexa and I think she looks pretty good for someone that old, you know in their mid-thirties. She’s about five feet ten inches tall and exactly the weight she should be, and she has a really cool sense of humor. I smiled and snapped her picture. She had a real glow about her just then, and I wanted a record of it. I was like that. I liked to record moments. You know, to make them last. I hit the shutter one more time for good measure.
 

“Now, let’s check this place out,” I said.

I jumped out of the auto-rickshaw while my mom paid the driver. There was a beat-up meter that told how much we owed, but I think there might have been some kind of problem with it because there was a lot of back and forth. My mother had gotten some Indian money at the airport, and it took quite a few of the brightly colored bills to settle the fare. The money was called rupees. I didn’t have any of my own yet, but my mom had promised me she'd change my allowance into them once we were settled in.

I pulled my suitcase out of the rickshaw while my mother finished up paying. A big doorman in a red jacket and red turban came to help me, but I politely declined. I prefer to carry my own bag. I don’t like to owe anyone anything. I did, however, after a little bit of sign language to make sure it was OK, take the doorman’s picture. He stared sternly at me, his back stiff and his arms at his sides.

I should tell you that the other part of the reason for all this picture taking was that my school back in Washington DC, along with a bunch of other schools, was participating in
Shutter Shooter
magazine’s photography contest. The first-place prize was a field trip to New York City for the whole class, plus a really cool new camera for the lucky winner, and I was pretty sure that I could win it if I tried hard enough. I had already won an art contest last year, but since photography was my new thing, my mom had given me her old camera. It wasn’t new, but it was waterproof, and it had a good strap and lens, and could easily fit in a pack around my waist. Fanny packs were kind of stupid looking, but surprisingly useful if you wanted to carry a camera around with you. The camera took pretty good pictures too, so I knew I would be able to get some good shots. I was already pretty sure that if the rest of my trip to India was half as good as the ride from the airport, I'd win the thing hands down. There were just so many great photos to take.

I waited for my mom to catch up and led the way inside the giant glass hotel. I guess, given the stone gate, I had expected the place to be old, but it looked brand new. The doorman opened the door for me and I thanked him with a smile. I would have just said thank you, but I wasn’t sure that he spoke English. I knew that some people spoke English here, but not everybody. There are a lot of different languages in India and I was still a little shy to try out the few words of Hindi I had read up on. The correct thing to say, if the doorman had spoken Hindi, was probably,
namaste
.
Namaste
was kind of like
aloha
. It was a greeting you could say when you met someone, and when you left them. Still, like I said, I was feeling a bit shy and I had just gotten there, so instead of saying anything, I just smiled.
 

The hotel was called the Grand Delhi Palace and as soon as I entered the lobby, I couldn’t believe how crazily fancy it was. The place really was like a palace. Outside on the road, things had been chaotic and dusty and dirty, but in here, the marble and gold floor gleamed. There was a huge atrium. It looked like the ceiling was maybe ten or twelve stories high, with shiny brass elevators going up the walls. The lobby was so big and tall that there were trees inside, growing in giant porcelain pots. There was even an echo in the air because the space was so large. I saw people in all different kinds of clothes walking back and forth. There were people in regular suits like I would see back home in America, but there were also people in Arabian head dresses, and people in African clothing. There were even monks in saffron robes. It was like the United Nations in there. There was a restaurant in one corner of the atrium and a long marble front desk on the far wall.
 

I waited under a tall tree that was planted in a big porcelain pot while my mother lined up at the reception desk. Turned out that waiting under that tree was my first mistake. It kind of set the tone for the rest of the trip, but hey, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I couldn’t resist snapping a few shots while I stood there. I wasn’t as tired now. I guess I’d gotten my second wind or something. I took pictures of the crowd and, when I was done with that, of the beautiful mosaic on the floor. It was going to be a lot of fun being here, I thought to myself, even if I was going to be at the hotel most of the time.
 

I took another shot of the intricate mosaic on the floor. I was into stuff like that, patterns and colors. I guess that was another reason I liked photography so much. It let you make a souvenir out of everyday life, something you could bring with you, though, when I think about it now, I have to admit that my feelings about photography in general and souvenirs in particular, have evolved. But at the time, the blue and green glass embedded in the marble in the shape of a rustling palm was something I wanted a snapshot of. It was so pretty that when I put the viewfinder to my eye, I could swear I actually heard the rustling of the breeze. Of course, I came to my senses. The rustling sound couldn’t be the mosaic, it had to be the tree above me. But, I was inside. There was no wind.

“Zoe…” I thought I heard a whispering voice say.

I stood ramrod straight. I could have sworn I had just heard my name. I looked from left to right, but there was nobody standing anywhere near me. Just the tree, and trees didn’t talk.

“Zoe Guire….”

I heard it again. My full name this time. It sounded like the Ghost of Christmas Past, from that old movie,
A Christmas Carol
. I should probably tell you that I like old movies a lot too, not just YouTube clips but full-on movies. I watch them with my mom. But this was no movie. Whatever was happening, was happening to me. I turned right around, but there was no one there. Just my mother at the reception desk and some bald monks in orange robes, maybe fifty feet away. Oh well, it had been a long flight. I probably still had that feeling in my ears from the altitude adjustment, when you can’t hear quite right, but don’t really know it yet. Besides, I was in India. Who here knew my name? My nearest friend was back home, ten thousand miles away. I snapped a picture of my mom who waved back to me from reception. But then I heard it again: the same rustling in the tree.

“Zoe Guire, I speak to you.”

Had I gone crazy? I was starting to feel uncomfortable. I knew I was tired, but still, I couldn’t be hearing things. Could I? I looked at the tree. It was normal looking. A gray trunk and a lot of leaves. But the voice had come from somewhere around it. Was the tree talking to me? No. That was nuts. Trees didn’t talk. But its trunk was moving ever so slightly. I could see it sway. Maybe there was an earthquake? I didn’t know if they had earthquakes in India. Of course, that wouldn’t account for the talking either.

“I’m pleased to see you here, Zoe.”

I jumped backward, the color draining from my face. To be clear, I didn’t actually see my face, but I’m sure it was pale because I was totally shocked. The leafy, green tree was talking to me. Then it started to move. Its big branches bent, green leaves falling to the floor, and bam! I ducked out of the way as something or someone fell out of the top of the tree, nearly landing on top of me. I couldn’t believe it.

“Zak!” I screamed.

My voice echoed through the lobby. My mom looked at me. The doorman looked at me. Even the bald monks in the orange robes looked at me. And Zak, who had somehow landed on his feet, bent over, literally rolling on the floor in laughter. I kid you not, he did two full barrel rolls on the floor.

“I got you, I totally got you,” he said laughing. “You thought I was ghost or something.”

“I did not.”

“You did. You should have seen the look on your face. It was hilarious.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what am
I
doing here? What are
you
doing here?”

“My mother,” I said succinctly, “is attending the conference.”

“So is my dad,” Zak said.

“Oh.”

“Oh, is right,” Zak said. “Are we going to have fun or what?”

OK, time to fill you in. Zak Merril was a boy I knew from my school back home. In the interest of honesty, and since nobody else is reading this, except myself, and maybe you, I should rephrase that. Zak Merril was a super-mega majorly annoying boy I knew from my school back home. Zak was maybe an inch shorter than me with longish, scraggly blonde hair and blue eyes. He was lean and pretty athletic looking, or maybe he only seemed that way because he was always jumping around all over the place like some kind of hyperactive monkey. He was in the sixth grade, but he wasn’t in the same class as me because it was a fairly big school. I knew that Zak's dad sometimes worked with my mom. I had seen them talk together a couple of times before at school functions, but Zak and I had never spent that much time together ourselves. Sure we’d been at the same school for quite awhile now and each of us knew who the other one was, but that was about it.
 

There were reasons we didn’t know each other that well. For one thing, Zak was a boy and I had too many girlfriends to bother hanging out with boys. For another thing, as should be obvious, I thought Zak was a class-A jerk. He was always a bit of a troublemaker and I didn’t like to make trouble or get into trouble. All in all, we just weren’t two people who hung out. I realized in that moment, however, that this was all about to change in a big way. Zak was here and we were a long way from home, which meant that Zak was going to want to hang out with me whether I liked it or not. I could hope he wouldn’t, but if this incident with the tree was any indication, I doubted that he was going to leave me alone. So much for relaxing, I thought. Things were about to get complicated.

“When I saw you coming in the door, I couldn't believe it,” Zak said. “I ran and climbed this tree first thing.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Because I wanted to freak you out!”

“How did you know I’d be stopping under the tree?”

“I don’t know, people always stand under trees. I just got lucky I guess. You should have seen the look in your eyes. It was so worth it.”

Let me be clear here. I’m a nice person. Even though we weren’t exactly friends, I wanted to be happy to see Zak. I was, after all, a long way from home and it was normal to be happy to see people you knew when you were a long way from home. But I wasn’t happy. I was annoyed. Annoyed that Zak was making an idiot of himself hiding in a tree. Annoyed that he had scared me. Annoyed that I had let myself get scared. Mostly I was annoyed that here we were, in another country, and instead of being just a little bit mature, Zak was rolling around on the floor of this nice hotel. What was the guy’s problem? I was about to ask him as much when my mother stepped over. She walked alongside a man in a blue suit. He was about her age, but a little taller with dirty blonde hair and a strong chin. He was fairly broad in the shoulders, but a little gangly, kind of like a grown-up Zak. He wasn’t bad looking, I guess. I recognized him right away.

“Zoe, I have a surprise for you. You’ll never guess who — ” My mom turned and saw Zak. “Maybe you will guess. Mr. Merril, my colleague, brought his son Zak along at the last minute. You guys will be able to keep each other company.”

“Great,” I said with a big fake smile on my face.

“Nice to see you, Zoe,” Mr. Merril said.

“Now, let’s go to our room,” my mom said. “You guys can catch up in a little bit.”

I smiled at Zak and said, “Bye.” Then I pulled my roller bag after my mother to the big brass elevator. It was only when I saw the dorky forced smile on my face in the elevator’s shiny brass doors that I finally exhaled. It was going to be a long eight days.

Our hotel room was huge and luxurious with a view of the dusty, dirty city beyond a row of towering palms. Normally I’d be all over the place, checking everything out, but I was preoccupied. I wasn’t looking in the little fridge, or examining the soaps and shampoos, or even trying out the giant bath tub. I was thinking about Zak. Why did he have to show up? Everything was going to be different now.

“It’s going to be fun for you with Zak here,” my mother said. “Now I’m not going to have to worry about you getting bored while I’m in the conference all day.”

I nodded to my mother. She was always a little worried about me, whether it was me getting bored, or me getting home safely on the bus. Overprotective I think they call it. That and she made me work really hard at school. But I guess I thought that, in the end, those were good things. Really, I loved my mom and wouldn’t change a thing about her, except maybe the fact that she worked too much.

As far as my dad went, I had never known him. I just knew that my mom had adopted me when I was a baby, and so far, these twelve or so years we’d had together had been great. There had been some stuff lately, stuff that I knew my mom wanted to discuss with me and that I wanted to discuss with her. Some important stuff about my adoption, but all in all, little bumps in the road aside, things had always been good between us. I worked hard at school and I tried not to bother my mom with too much kid stuff, like problems I was having with my friends and things like that. In return, as long as I was safe about it, my mom pretty well let me do the things I liked. In regard to Zak, however, I had to say something. Zak was here in India with us and that was what it was. But I didn’t think that meant that we had to be together the whole time. It was one thing not to be rude, but totally another to hang out constantly. On this particular point, I thought I had better set my mother straight.