Not For Sale Read online

  Sara Cassidy

  illustrated by Helen Flook

  O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S

  Text copyright © 2015 Sara Cassidy

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 Helen Flook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Cassidy, Sara, author

  Not for sale / Sara Cassidy; illustrator: Helen Flook.

  (Orca echoes)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0719-8 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0720-4 (pdf).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0721-1 (epub)

  I. Flook, Helen, illustrator II. Title. III. Series: Orca echoes

  PS8555.A7812N67 2015 jC813'.54 C2014-906691-0

  C2014-906692-9

  First published in the United States, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952070

  Summary: When Cyrus’s adoptive parents tell him they are selling their house, he devises a plan to sabotage the move.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork and interior illustrations by Helen Flook

  Author photo by Amaya Tarasoff

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4 ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  18 17 16 15 • 4 3 2 1

  For Ezra

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  Ancient potatoes lurk in our bedroom closets. Under beds with dust bunnies. In the toes of rubber boots no one has worn since spring. When Mom finds one of the withered gray tubers, she waves it in our faces.

  “Do your homework, Rudy!” she says. “Cyrus, clean your room! Or I’ll touch you with this putrid thing. I’ll cook it in your soup without you knowing!”

  A slimy tornado of fear whirls in my throat at the thought of wrinkly-potato soup. I try not to gag.

  I expect the potato to clink and clack when Mom shakes it in my face, but of course it doesn’t. It’s not a baby’s rattle, it’s a potato. A potato that looks like it’s had a fight with a hole punch. The shriveled spud is the leftover ammo from a potato-gun battle between my brother Rudy and me. Rudy’s eight, and I’m nine.

  A potato gun looks like a water pistol, but instead of water, you fill it with potato. First, you find a big potato in the stinky kitchen drawer. Then you shove the gun’s short barrel in past the peel to load it with potato flesh. A potato pellet is shaped like a pencil eraser, only it’s crunchy and white, not rubbery and pink.

  It doesn’t exactly hurt when you get shot with a potato pellet, but it can sting. Sometimes, if Mom’s out of potatoes, Rudy and I battle with apples. Once, when Mom was at work, we tried a banana. It was disgusting. Banana pellets don’t sting—they just mush and dribble.

  Eventually, Rudy and I tire of shooting each other with bits of spud. We get distracted by the TV or LEGO. Or by Wigglechin, our cat, who is old and often clinging to things she’s trying not to fall from. Like the living room curtains or the dining-room chandelier.

  We drop our guns and leave our hole-pocked potatoes to fester where they fall. A month or two later, Mom discovers one and shakes it at us. I sure wish I wasn’t so frightened of a withered potato.

  Chapter Two

  Rudy is not my brother’s full name. I’m not allowed to say his full name because it upsets him. But sometimes, late at night, I crawl deep under my covers and say it very softly. Just to hear it out loud.

  You can probably figure out what it is. Think what Rudy might be short for. Want a clue? Red-nosed reindeer.

  Got it?

  But why would my mother pick a name that no one is allowed to say?

  Mom says when Rudy was born, he came out howling like a wolf. Guess what R___ means? Brave wolf. So even though a magical Christmas reindeer is the first thing people think of when they hear that name, Mom felt it was meant to be.

  Rudy? A brave wolf? More like a scaredy-cat. Rudy gets stomachaches when it’s time to go to school. If we’re heading to a party, he hides under his blankets. When a waiter asks for his order, he goes mute. When Rudy gets anxious, Mom reminds him to take long, deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  Most of the time, though, Rudy is lots of fun. He and I love to perch in high places. We play marbles up on closet shelves, eat our snacks squatting on the mantelpiece or even on top of the fridge. I once saw Rudy sit on a door, while it was open, and read up there. I don’t know how he did it. I would try, but it looks very uncomfortable.

  Mom thinks our desire to be up high comes from our great-grandmother, who was a trapeze artist. “That’s the most dangerous occupation in the world,” Mom always says. “The second most dangerous job is West Coast logger.”

  We go silent when Mom says that, because Dad is a West Coast logger. He’s often away in the woods, where he operates a feller buncher. A feller buncher is a big vehicle that cuts down—or fells—trees, then gathers them in a bunch. Dad lives in a logging camp with other big, strong, hungry people like him. Loggers eat a lot. There’s a place in camp called the dessert shack. It’s a shed that’s open all day and night, and it’s filled with pies, cakes, brownies, Jell-O—anything you want. Hot chocolate too. But Dad still misses us. He says he’d choose us over hot chocolate any day. I’m glad Dad eats a lot and is so big. That way, if a tree falls on him, he won’t be smushed.

  “Yes, your great-grandma liked being up high,” Mom tells us. “It was in her genes, and now it’s in yours. Maybe you’ll end up building skyscrapers or being astronauts or champion bungee jumpers.”

  “I miss Great-Grandma,” Rudy sniffs.

  “I know, honey,” Mom says.

  “You never even met Great-Grandma!” I say.

  “So?”

  “He wishes he had,” Mom says.

  “Yeah,” Rudy blubbers.

  That’s Rudy for you.

  We’re eating supper. It’s our first time having what Mom calls “Q salad.” It’s made with quinoa and kumquat. Every time Mom runs to the kitchen to get more napkins or milk, Rudy dumps a handful from his plate onto mine. Now I’ve got twice as much as he has. I haven’t tried any yet. Rudy keeps crossing his eyes and sticking his finger down his throat to show me how delicious it is.

  Finally, I take a bite. Q salad is delicious! It’s sweet and nutty. Rudy stares as I load up spoonful after spoonful. He makes a face at me like I’ve got a problem, but I can tell he’s kind of jealous. I think it’s hard for him not liking many foods.

  Mom puts her fork down. She looks at me, then at Rudy. “Kids,” she says. “I’ve got serious news. I want you to listen carefully and not freak out.”

  Rudy drops his fork and leaps onto the counter.

  “We’ve got to move,” Mom announces. “This house is too big for us.”

  “But I’m growing,” I say.


  “Me too,” says Rudy. “And Dad’s huge.”

  “I know,” Mom says. “And that’s great. But I’ve got fewer hours of work, so I’m making less money, and Dad has less work too, because the forest needs a chance to grow right now. We can’t afford to heat this big house anymore.”

  “Could we have a lemonade stand?” I offer.

  “I’ll give you my paper-route money,” Rudy says.

  “Thanks, sweethearts,” Mom says. “I’ve thought of all that, but it won’t be enough. We’ll be cozier in a small house. We’ll play lots of board games. Okay?”

  Rudy looks terrified.

  “Breathe, Rudy,” Mom says. “We’ll still have a roof over our heads, and our stuff will come with us. Just the floors and walls will be different.”

  “And the view outside my window.” Rudy pouts.

  “The new view could be better,” Mom says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Besides, what’s your view now? Old Jacob in his kitchen, putting his teeth in?”

  It’s true. Rudy’s bedroom window looks right into Old Jacob’s place next door. One day, we watched as he shoved his false teeth into his mouth with one hand, then a piece of buttered toast with the other. I imitate Old Jacob’s teeth-and-toast routine. Rudy laughs and the fear seems to drain from his face.

  Something streaks past the window, like a clump of snow sliding off the roof in winter. I run to the window in time to see Wigglechin squirming in the tulip bed below. She has probably been dangling from the rain gutter for the past hour. She struggles to stand, then tiptoes away with her nose in the air as if nothing happened. Her fur is caked with dirt.

  Chapter Three

  I may have made Rudy laugh about Old Jacob. But the whole time, my heart was falling through my rib cage faster than Wigglechin shot past the kitchen window.

  Our house holds me the way my body holds me. I’ve lived at 637 Petunia Boulevard ever since I came to live with Mom and Dad. I was two months old when we first met. I don’t know much about my life before then. Who remembers the first two months of their life? I could have been at the top of a volcano in a wet diaper or falling through space from another planet.

  Mom says I was looked after those first two months by Kimmy, my birth mom. Mom says Kimmy loved me very much, but she was too young to look after me. If I ever want to meet her, Mom says I can. Maybe one day I will.

  I pull a chair up to the fish tank and watch Einstein swim back and forth. We named him Einstein because his head is really big. We pretend he’s super intelligent.

  “We’re moving,” I whisper to him. “Isn’t that the stupidest thing you ever heard?”

  Einstein stops swimming. He looks right at me. I nod. He waggles his head back and forth. He usually does this when he’s hungry, but I think he can’t believe we’re moving either. Still, I give him a pinch of food. He swims to the top for the flecks, but I swear he moves more slowly than usual.

  “You’re lucky,” I say. I tap lightly on the side of Einstein’s aquarium. “You get to take your house with you.”

  I climb up on the piano and try to read for a while before bed, but I keep losing my place on the page.

  I read the same sentence over four times, and I still don’t know what it says. I’m thinking about where we’re moving to, but I can’t picture anything. I look around at our house and see it as I’ve never seen it before. I mean, I see the walls and the ceilings and the floors. But for the first time ever, they’re apart from me. It’s like they’ve loosened their grip.

  Chapter Four

  There’s a new kid in my gymnastics class. His hair sticks up and he never stops hopping from one foot to the other like he has to pee.

  “This is Rudy,” says Coach Alex, who’s from Russia. “Please welcome him warmly.”

  “I know your real name,” I whisper to “Rudy” when we’re in line for the tumble track.

  “Yeah,” the boy says, slightly out of breath from jumping foot to foot. “Rudy.”

  “I mean your full name.” I raise my eyebrows.

  The boy slows his bouncing. “Rudy Walker?”

  “Come on,” I say. The boy stops bouncing and looks at me as if I’m crazy. “My brother has the same name. I know all about it.”

  “Your brother’s name is Rudy Walker?”

  “It’s more than that. You know it.”

  “Well, with my middle name, it’s Rudy James Walker.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’ll prove it. Okay?”

  “Rudy!” the coach calls. “Tumble.”

  Rudy runs down the tumble track, stopping to somersault every few steps. Then he hurls himself off the end of the track into the foam pit. The foam pit is like an aquarium. Only instead of water, it’s filled with giant blocks of foam. Finally, it’s my turn to run. I pretend I’m a bowling ball rolling down the alley. I imagine five bowling pins planted in the air above the foam pit, like phantoms with little heads and wide hips. I knock them all down.

  “I’ll bring my birth certificate next week,” Rudy tells me when we’re back in line. “You’ll see.”

  I start humming the Christmas song under my breath. But I’ve got to say, the kid is pretty good at pretending he has no idea what I’m talking about.

  When I get home from gymnastics, I get a shock. A For Sale sign is plunged into our front yard. On the sign is a photo of a smiling woman. Moving? Let Marsha Plannet Help You Plan It! Marsha Plannet has big white teeth and Playmobil hair. As if all the hairs are fused into one solid lump.

  “Who’s she?” I ask Mom.

  “She’s our real-estate agent.”

  “She’s real?”

  “Well, sometimes people overwork their photos. They photoshop out the wrinkles and the blotches and whatnot.”

  “You mean she’s actually wrinkly and blotchy?”

  “She’s real, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “I hate her.”

  “You haven’t even met her.”

  “So once I meet her, then I can hate her?”

  “Cyrus.”

  Rudy is in his room, playing with LEGO. His curtains are drawn.

  “I don’t want to see that stupid sign,” he mutters.

  I peek through the curtains. “You might want to see it now.”

  I point to Wigglechin, who is dangling by her paws from the bottom of the sign. Rudy and I laugh, but then I notice something. As Wigglechin struggles, the For Sale sign wobbles back and forth.

  That’s when I get my awesome idea.

  Chapter Five

  Mom is on her knees scrubbing the hall floor. She reaches under the black dresser and pulls out a shriveled potato. “Add it to the pile, will you?”

  I don’t move. I’m sitting up high, on a windowsill. Mom throws the withered ball at my head.

  “Ow!”

  Mom has been cleaning the house for three days. She’s also been paying Rudy and me nickels to lug boxes of thrift-shop donations to the lawn. She’s getting the house ready for “buyers.”

  “You need to get your hair cut,” she tells me.

  “That will help sell the house?”

  “Maybe. But also, Dad’s coming home tomorrow.”

  We always get our hair cut before Dad comes home. We take long baths with hot water, fresh bars of soap and fluffy facecloths too. I think Mom wants it to look like she’s been taking extra good care of us.

  “Rudy!” I call. “Dad’s coming home. We’re going to Burt’s.”

  “No!” Rudy dives into his closet.

  “Come on. We’ll get a lollipop!”

  Burt the barber always gives us a lollipop after he has brushed the backs of our necks with his tickly miniature broom. I check my lollipop carefully for hairs before licking.

  “I don’t care.” Rudy pouts.

  Mom rolls her eyes. “Rudy, you need to take ten deep breaths. Come on now. Dad will want to see you with a nice fresh haircut.”

>   “You gave away my push doggie.”

  “Rudy, you haven’t played with Push-Push since you were four.”

  “And you gave away my Pokemon cards!”

  “I won’t donate any more of your toys unless you okay it.”

  “Promise?”

  “If you get your hair cut.”

  So Rudy and I walk to Burt’s and get our necks tickled and a lollipop each. Walking home, the back of Rudy’s neck looks so naked I want to wrap a scarf around it. My earlobes feel every breeze. It’s nice, though, being freshly trimmed for Dad. I feel brand-new. Like the world is starting over. But there’s something frightening in the breeze too. It’s like the sidewalk could disappear in front of me. One step and I’d be falling through space.

  At home, we climb into the cherry tree to eat our lollipops. While we’re perched in the branches, the thrift-shop truck pulls up and two women remove the boxes of donations from the lawn. They don’t notice Rudy and me dangling our feet above them. When they leave, there’s just one stupid thing left in the yard—the stupid For Sale sign with the stupid photo of stupid Martian Planet.

  But hey, Dad will be home tomorrow. And he snores really loudly. Loud snores are just what I need if I’m going to stop us from losing this house.

  Chapter Six

  Not only do we get new haircuts, but Mom comes home with a brand-new pair of jeans for each of us. They’re the stiffest, darkest jeans I’ve ever seen. Mine are huge. I have to cinch up the waist until they’re all puckered. I rub against the trunk of the cherry tree, hoping to fade them.

  Mom leans out a window. “What are you doing to that tree?”

  I look down at my jeans. They’re as dark as ever. I look at the tree. The trunk is worn smooth.

  “Just an experiment,” I mumble.