Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (8 page)

“Wake up,” I said.

“Sleeping,” Zak murmured.

“Wake up, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else I’ll never talk to you again.”
 

Zak opened an eye. “Is that a bad thing?”

I looked away from Zak. Even after he had gotten us into a mess like this, he was still making jokes. I had to admit, even I thought it was almost funny. My eyes wandered around the simple old room, before settling on the floor. There were four giant, muddy paw prints on the bare concrete floor. Zak saw them too.

“Whoa,” Zak said.

Whoa was right. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there looking at the paw prints; two by the door and two on the other side of the bed. They were exactly like my dream. And they weren’t there when we came into the room the night before. I was sure of it. At least I didn’t think they were. But it was dark, so who knew? I pushed the thought from my mind.

“Come on, let’s go,” I said.

We had no luggage to pack except for a plastic bag Zak had picked up somewhere, so we left the key on one of the beds and headed outside. The sun was already high in the morning sky and it felt good on our backs, warming us up even as we sloshed through the brown floodwaters. Though I tried to push the muddy paw prints out of my mind, the thought of them just kept coming back. I told myself that just because the paw prints matched my dream, it didn’t mean anything. There were a lot of explanations. Maybe the guest before us kept a tiger in the room. Stranger things have happened. Whoever owned the place didn’t exactly wash the floors very often. Once again I pushed the image of the paw prints away, concentrating on our surroundings instead. It had rained so much that we are up to our waists in the brown floodwater. A man on a rooftop cast a fishing line. Miraculously, a slimy green catfish with bulging eyes took the bait.
 

“I ask him to slice that up, we’ve got sushi,” Zak said.

“For breakfast?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

A cream-colored cow with long horns splashed toward us. I ignored the cow. “Here’s why not: A — we’re in India, not Japan, and B — We eat that fish raw and we could
 
get really sick. My mom told me we shouldn’t even drink the water.”
 

“We drank it last night in the soup.”

“It was boiled.”

“So?”

“So boiling kills the bacteria.”

“Holy cow!” Zak said.

“You didn’t know that?”

“No, I mean holy cow. Look at the cow.”

The cream-colored cow splashed past us.

“You know that really
is
a holy cow,” I said. “Cows are sacred in India.”

Zak looked at me like I’d said the most profound thing since his third-grade teacher had told him that the moon wasn’t actually made of green cheese.

“No way,” he said.

“Way,” I replied.

“Wow,” Zak said quietly to himself. Then he opened the plastic bag he had been carrying to reveal a scratched tin box. It looked like the kind of box my grandmother used to keep tea in. “Did you see this?” he asked.

“What is it?” I said.

“I took it out of the trunk.”

“Why?” I said.

“Well, I thought we might need it.”

Zak opened the lid of the box. A few brightly colored bills fluttered out, landing in the water.

“Money,” Zak said.

I just looked at Zak. I couldn’t believe it. “You stole Rhino Butt’s money?”

“We didn’t have any.”

“That doesn’t make it any better. This is way worse than just accidentally finding a map. You’re robbing this guy. Why did you steal it? What’s wrong with you?”

“Well, I don’t exactly think it was stealing.”

“Well, you’re wrong. That’s exactly what it was. It was his money and you took it. That’s stealing. Just like the map.”

“The map we took to give back.”

“What about the money?”

“The money I borrowed, because, I don’t know, I thought we might need it.”

“I think I might need a cow to make a milkshake. You don’t see me
borrowing
one.”

“Holy milkshake,” Zak said, cracking himself up. Then he saw how irritated I was. “I guess sometimes I just do stuff,” he said.
 

Another holy cow sloshed by. This one was browner with less-twisted horns. Probably would have made a chocolate milkshake.
Sometimes Zak just did stuff.
You’re telling me. If I gave him the benefit of the doubt, I bet Zak had felt a little weird since his mom and dad had split up. I hadn’t had a dad, but I’m pretty sure something like that would make me feel weird too. So he didn’t know why he had taken the box from the trunk. What did it matter? I thought about it. Who was I kidding? I knew why it mattered. It mattered because it was wrong. Zak looked at me for a long while like he wanted to say something.

“What?” I said.

“I saw you, you know.”

“You saw me what?”

“Crying last night.”

I felt my face turn deep red. It was an automatic reaction and I couldn’t stop it, even though I felt stupid.

“I saw you,” he continued, “and I’m sorry I made you feel like that.”

I lamely pretended like I didn’t understand him. “Feel like what?”

 
“You know, alone.”

I didn’t have a good come back for that one. I was embarrassed that Zak had seen me, but at the same time, I had to admit that I was happy that he had apologized, even if everything that had happened wasn’t, strictly speaking, his fault. His apology made me feel like there was hope for him. Like he wasn’t totally out to lunch.

“Let’s just find the train station and get back to the hotel,” I said.

“Whoa,” Zak said. “I thought we were going to Moon Surrie? That’s what we told the butterfly lady.”

Apparently we weren’t totally on the same page yet. I noticed that a young kid with a smudged face was following us. He was maybe six years old and dressed in tattered clothing. He carefully collected the few fallen bills as they floated closer to him. In the heat of our conversation, I had forgotten to pick the bills back up. Maybe it was a good thing. The kid sure looked like he needed the money more than we did.
 

“Well, I think we should get back before your dad and my mom find out we’re gone.”

“What about the Leopard?” Zak asked.

“You picked the wrong girl, Zak. I've had a subscription to
National Geographic
since I was five. I know what a mastodon is, I know why a jumping bean jumps, and I know that there aren’t any weird creatures out there that haven’t been photographed. Whatever Rhino Butt was talking about is a myth. It's make-believe.”
 

“It’s never had its picture taken.”

“Neither has the Easter Bunny, you know, in the wild.”

“Whatever. This is your big chance. You know how great it would be to get a picture of it? You’d totally win the contest. Your whole class would go on that field trip. You’d get the camera. It would be sweet.”

What it was, was maddening. I was back to feeling exactly like I had before Zak apologized. I couldn’t believe him. It was bad enough that he’d dragged me into that trunk, but now we had no idea where we even were and no way back, and Zak still wanted to keep going on? Ox carts pulled rolls of brightly colored fabric and wooden cases of soda through the flooded street. I looked around in disbelief as a couple more bills fluttered out of Zak's bag. I didn’t pick them up though. I couldn’t help myself. I felt my temper growing shorter and shorter until I snapped.

“The truth is, you were looking for trouble weren’t you, Zak? That’s why you went into his room. You were bored at the hotel and you wanted some excitement. You’re probably glad we’re stuck out here wherever we are.”

“Thums Up,” Zak said, pointing to a wooden sign hanging from a spice shop. “I saw a sign when we left the airport. I’m pretty sure we’re in Thums Up.”

“Thums Up without the ‘b’ is some kind of soda, doofus,” I said, pointing to a guy drinking what looked like cola with a big red thumb on the bottle. “We aren’t in Thums Up. Where we are is a million miles from where we’re supposed to be. Does that make you happy?”

I didn’t know if he was happy or not, but he sure was smiling. Probably thought we were on the adventure of a lifetime or something. I had no idea how he planned to address the rent-a-nanny problem. Even if our parents weren’t at the hotel, at some point the nanny would try to call them, that was if we didn’t get back soon. I pondered the notion as a man pushing his bicycle through the floodwaters said something in Hindi. I didn’t know what it was he said. All the words in Hindi blended together for me like I was listening to some kind of strange song. But I did notice that the ears of about a hundred younger kids seemed to perk up. I followed the man's gaze to the trail of soggy bills. When I think about it, it must have looked like we were dropping money instead of bread crumbs so that we could find our way home.

It happened in an instant. Without warning an army of six and seven year olds descended on the money like a school of piranha. The kids scrambled for the bills getting closer and closer every second.

“Zak?” I said.

“Zoe?” Zak replied.

“I think we need to run.”
 

“Good idea.”
 

 
We broke into a watery run toward a giant building with huge columns. People were coming and going from the place with suitcases on their heads and there were all kinds of strange food carts on the steps out front. We ran right through the open doors to find ourselves in the middle of a railroad station holding a crowd of people that could fill five stadiums. There was a towering ceiling and dirty tile floor, and amidst the litter and filth and people selling tea and cakes, sat a gleaming steam train.
 

I mention the train because it was so out of place next to everything else. The thing was perfect while everything around it was literally falling to pieces. The train wasn’t particularly long, but it was impressive. There was a cherry-red locomotive and eight carriages and a caboose. Each of the polished red carriages had gleaming golden bands on their steel wheels. The same carriages had golden sculpted monkeys peeking out from their rooflines. And there were spikes, almost like claws, curling up around every window. The red locomotive was blowing steam everywhere. Three men descended from a carriage near the front of the train, but I couldn’t really make them out through the crowd. None of these things would matter, of course, if the train wasn’t completely blocking our way.

The thing was, the kids were still behind us, chasing us down. I knew there was probably a way under or over the track, but right now, we just needed to get out of there. I jogged in place, waiting for the train to move out of the way. I didn’t really want to have to fight off the little kids grabbing the money. I just wanted to be left in peace. I’m not sure why I did it, but I stood up on my tip toes and stared into one of the gleaming carriage windows as the train inched slowly past. I don’t know what I was expecting. A king maybe, wearing a crown? But instead of a king I found myself locking eyes with an olive-faced man who had deep-set eyes and jet-black hair. The man held a silver chalice in his hand — the kind of goblet an old-fashioned knight would have drunk from. I couldn’t tell how old the man was. His skin was tight and waxy like he had been around forever, or maybe not long at all. It was really hard to tell. Something about him bothered me though. It was as though I had seen him before, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where.

As I locked eyes with the man, he started for a second, as though he wasn’t expecting to see anyone. That’s when things got strange. The silver goblet actually fell out of the man’s hand, a big splash of whatever red stuff he was drinking going everywhere. But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was that as the goblet fell, the big drops of red liquid slowed their descent, and then just kind of hung there in midair alongside the goblet. Let me repeat: the goblet hung in midair. The drops hung there too. Then the drops actually reversed course, returning to the goblet, which hung there on its side. Everything flowed right back into it. I’d never seen a glass or cup do that; float in midair, then clean itself up after a spill. It was really weird. When the cup was full again, the guy grabbed it between two fingers, and drank, showing me a big toothy smile. His teeth were yellow and long and pointed and when I looked at them I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. I wasn’t sure what freaked me out more, the fact that the goblet had defied gravity, or those gleaming yellow teeth, but it didn’t matter because in another moment he was gone. The train picked up a little more speed and steamed down the track.
 

The street kids crowded around us as I turned to Zak. I was in no mood to talk about how weird what I had just seen was, so I decided to say something normal.
 

“We’re buying tickets back to the hotel,” I said.
 

 
“Come on, we’re more than halfway there. Let’s just say hi to this Mukta guy. See what he has to say.”

“Why do you think he has anything to say at all?”

“Why else would the butterfly lady ask us to go there?”

Zak put on a big fake grin and flashed the picture of Mukta. Did Zak really think a smile was all it would take for me to change my mind? The guy in the photo was completely nuts looking. And Zak wanted to go to his house? We had already rummaged around in a stranger’s hotel room and look where that had gotten us. I decided I needed some space. I took a few steps away from Zak and the kids to try to get a handle on the situation. Which was fine for about two seconds. But then I got a funny feeling and raised my arm into the air, spinning on my heel and turning backward as I did. I don’t know how, but I caught the flying money bag in my hand as I turned. Apparently Zak had tossed it to me.

“Holy crud, Zoe. It’s amazing that you caught that.”

“Why are you throwing stuff at my head?”

“You caught it didn’t you?”

I didn’t put too much thought into how I had caught the bag, or why he had thrown it at me. I guess, he was trying to get it away from the kids, but now he was talking to everybody around him. A crowd had formed.