I looked around to see if Elena was anywhere nearby. I heard her vacuum running in another room at the far end of the hall, so I took a deep breath and moved a platter over to fill in the space left by the bowl. Then I ran upstairs to my room, wrapped the bowl in one of the red-and-white-striped towels from my bathroom and stuffed it into my backpack.
Ethelberta had told me that she had sold her furniture to an antique store on Yonge Street, so I knew I only needed to go three blocks. The heavy bowl banged against my back as I trudged through the gloomy streets. Rain pattered on the leaves above my head and, even though it was ten o’clock in the morning, the skies were dark.
When I reached Yonge Street, I spotted a shop with a sign that said Rosedale Antiques. There were beautiful old tea sets on silver trays, old-fashioned paintings framed in golden wood and giant china pots in the window. It seemed like a perfect place to sell the silver bowl. I put my hand out to open the door and stopped.
It wasn’t right. Even when I had taken the bowl out of the cabinet, I knew it wasn’t right. A lady came out of the shop, gave me a funny look, opened an umbrella and hurried away. A little dog barked, making me jump. I thought of Amos, whimpering under the stairs, his eye swollen shut.
I squeezed my eyes together until bolts of lightening rocketed across my eyelids. What was I going to do? I couldn’t steal the bowl. My parents would be sad that I had taken something that wasn’t mine.
I had to think of another way. Maybe I could work for the vet to pay for Amos’s treatment. My eye caught on something glinting in the window of another shop that sold nothing but tea. In the very center of the window was a silver samovar.
The solution crashed over my head like a roll of thunder. I would sell my parents’ samovar. It was old. It was silver. It was valuable.
It was as if I heard my mother laughing with delight. Good thinking, Colette, she seemed to say. But first I had to return the silver bowl to my grandparent’s cabinet. I ran all the way, snuck in the front door, made sure Elena was nowhere in sight and then slid the bowl into its rightful place. Then, for the second time that day, I headed back toward Yonge Street, grateful that the subway was right at the end of my grandparents’ street.
I rummaged in my backpack for my emergency money, then ran for the subway.
“How do I get to the corner of King and Dufferin?” I asked the ticket collector.
“Get off at King Street and take the King Street streetcar west to Dufferin,” said the man, pointing at the southbound platform. People jostled closer to the yellow line when the light of the train came down the tunnel. I got a seat by the window and read each subway stop as it whizzed by. I got out at King Street, like the man had told me to do, my stomach churning like a washing machine. There were so many corridors and people rushing along that I didn’t know which way to go.
“You lost?” asked a teenager with dreadlocks and a ring in her nose.
“Can you help me find the streetcar?” I asked.
“Sure. Which way do you want to go?”
I couldn’t remember what the ticket man had told me. Did I want to go east or west? “To Dufferin Street,” I said.
“Follow me,” the girl said. She picked up her backpack and her guitar. “It’s just up here.” She guided me to the streetcar stop and asked me if I’d gotten a transfer.
I shook my head.
“Here.” She handed me a piece of paper. “Take mine. I can walk. I’m only going a few blocks.”
When the streetcar came, she waited until I got on and then gave the driver the transfer. “She wants to get off at Dufferin Street,” she told the driver.
I looked out the window as the streetcar drove away. She was waving.
I watched the streets go by. Things began to look familiar. I had been so worried about Amos and Ethelberta, I’d completely forgotten something very important.
I was going home!