Duke! Amelia wriggled out of his grasp. Duke was big, but she wasn’t going to let him freak her out. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
Duke gave her a long, hard look. “Are you one of those kids who has to blab everything?”
“No! I’m awesome at keeping secrets.”
“Then you’d better come inside.”
Amelia followed Duke into the apartment. “Look who I found,” he said to Gabriella, who was kneeling on the kitchen floor beside a huge blue plastic bin full of water.
“Amelia!” Gabriella said.
Amelia dropped down onto the floor beside Gabriella and peered into the bin. Two round turtles, the size of dinner plates, swam lazily under the water. “Wow! They’re enormous!”
“Romeo and Juliet,” Gabriella said. “They used to be cute and small, but they grew and now nobody wants them.”
“Beaker! Beaker! Beaker!” cried a voice.
Amelia gazed around.
“Beaker! Beaker! Beaker!”
It was coming from a cage at the end of the kitchen counter. Amelia walked over to have a look. She went cold inside with shock. “Oh my god,” she whispered. In the cage was a slim bird with sleek white feathers. His body looked normal. But his shoulders and neck were naked, the skin gray and scaly. He had a tiny bald head, with a few tufts of white down sticking up, and a scraggly white goatee.
“What happened to him?” Amelia said.
“Burned,” Duke said. “He escaped from his cage and got under a hot tub. They’re chemical burns, so he might have got into the filter or something. We don’t know for sure. The person who used to own him wouldn’t say. He just wanted to get rid of him.”
Duke spoke quietly, but Amelia could hear anger simmering in his voice.
“We call him Beaker,” Gabriella said. “Do not worry—he is not suffering. We have had him for five years now.”
“So his feathers won’t grow back?” Amelia said.
“Not on his head and neck,” Duke said. “He didn’t have any feathers at all when we got him, so he’s better off now. But Beaker doesn’t care anyway. He doesn’t know what he looks like.”
“What kind of bird is he?” Amelia said.
“A cockatiel.” Gabriella sighed. “He should have lovely red cheeks and a yellow crest.”
“How did you get him?”
Duke looked at Gabriella. “I guess we better tell you,” Duke said. “We run a kind of shelter for abandoned and sick reptiles, and a few other strays as well. Like Beaker and”—he pointed to a cage resting on the floor by the fridge—“Zak and Lysander.”
Amelia squatted beside the cage. Two fuzzy brown faces with huge round ears stared at her. “They’re brothers,” Duke said. “They’re called Dumbo rats because of their big ears. They were cute when they were babies, and then they got big. Owner didn’t want them anymore. Same old story.”
“Like the turtles,” Amelia said. “Do they bite?”
“Never!” Duke said. “They’re both sweethearts! Zak has lung scarring, and he lets me give him medicine every day and never does a thing.”
Amelia rocked back on her heels, her head spinning. “I want to see everything.”
“Okay,” Duke said slowly. “I’ll show you the reptile room. We’re setting it up in the spare bedroom. But only for a sec. I want to turn their light out. They’re pretty stressed from the move, and they’ll be calmer in the dark.”
Duke took Amelia into the bedroom and shut the door firmly. “I’m trying to warm it up in here. These are desert and tropical animals. They can’t get cold.”
Two heaters glowed in corners of the room. Cages and glass tanks were lined up against the walls. “I’ll be putting up some shelves,” Duke said. “So I can get some of them up higher where it’s warmer. But they’re okay for now.”
Amelia felt like eyes were peering at her from every direction. A prickle of excitement ran up her back.
“A quick tour,” Duke said, “and then we’ll leave them alone. You’ve already met Bill, I think. Through the window. He’s an iguana.”
Bill was draped along a thick branch, his long striped tail hanging down. A row of spikes stood up on his back, and a long flap of green skin dangled under his chin.
“He’s so big,” Amelia said. “He looks strong.”
“Don’t go too close—”
The iguana lunged at the bars and snapped his jaws.
“Yikes!” Amelia leaped back. “What’s his problem?”
“He’s a little cranky now. He thinks he’s supposed to be looking for a mate.”
“A little?” Amelia studied the iguana from a safe distance. His small dark eyes glared at her. “Does he have teeth?”
“Yeah. They’re tiny, but they’re sharp! But don’t worry. He’ll be his happy-go-lucky self again soon. You’ll see—you’ll be able to hold him in your arms.”
Not a chance, Amelia thought.
She walked around the room slowly. She spotted a slim bright-green lizard, a fat yellow-and-black snake coiled up in a ball, a funny little creature with a grinning mouth, and a bright-red frog.
“I’ve never heard of a red frog,” Amelia said.
“That’s Nate. He’s a tomato frog. They come from Madagascar. The red color keeps predators away.”
Amelia peered into three tanks that looked empty except for crumpled-up towels.
“Is there anything under those towels?”
“Snakes.”
Next, Amelia’s eyes darted to a large wooden box that took up a corner of the room. It had low sides and was heaped full of hay. Was there anything in there? She couldn’t be sure.
A pile of hay moved and a humped back poked through, then a small head on the end of a long papery neck.
“Another turtle!” Amelia said, kneeling beside the box.
“A sulcata tortoise,” Duke said. “Not the same thing at all. This is Winston.”
Winston took slow, lumbering steps through the hay and stopped right in front of Amelia.
“He’s looking at me!” Amelia said.
The colors on his shell were beautiful. Yellows, browns and golds. “Is he old?”
“Nope. About four, I think. He could live to a hundred. And he’ll get much bigger.”
Amelia reached out her hand and gently touched his bumpy shell.
“We’ve only had him a couple of weeks. Someone found him in a drainage ditch by a farm in Langley. He’d been abandoned there.”
“Is he okay?”
“Can’t tell yet. We’re keeping an eye on him. It was when it was really rainy and cold out. We’re praying he didn’t pick up some kind of respiratory disease. That can be fatal for a tortoise. And it could take a while to show up.”
“Who would just leave him in a ditch?” Amelia said. “That’s so horrible!”
“You wouldn’t believe what some morons will do. Dogs and cats get shoved out of cars right on the freeway. Or tossed in Dumpsters.”
“Why would people do that?”
“Who knows? I’ve heard so many horror stories. Come on. I’m going to turn the lights off now.”
Amelia thought Winston was amazing. It was hard to take her eyes away from him. “Goodnight,” she said softly. “And hey, please don’t get sick.”
Duke took Amelia to the living room to see Georgia, a soft white-and-brown lop-eared bunny (with epilepsy, Duke said), and Mary, a crested gecko (missing her tail) who peeked at her from behind a green plastic bush. Then they went back to the kitchen, where Gabriella was unpacking plastic baggies from the freezer chest. “Frozen mice,” she said as she popped them into the freezer at the top of the fridge. “To feed the snakes.”
“The thing is,” Duke said, “we weren’t going to tell your mom about the animals. Not just yet.”
“We do not want to lie to her,” Gabriella said quickly. “We will tell her soon. So many landlords have told us no animals. If we wait one or two weeks and then tell your mother, she will know that they will not hurt anybody, and she will let us stay.”
“That’s the plan,” Duke said.
“So you will keep our secret?” Gabriella added.
“Of course I will! But there’s one problem. A mega problem. Mom has this snake phobia.”
“We’ll phase her in slowly,” Duke said. “Introduce them one at a time—”
“I’m talking a serious snake phobia,” Amelia said.
Duke was silent for a moment.
“Like, how serious?”
“Like, try going ballistic if she even sees a picture of one.”