Chasing Butterfree Read online

  As he looked over his shoulder and met her eyes, he shrugged.

  “I guess we’re getting on the train.”

  He felt another push from behind and stumbled forward.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sitting in that train, Carlo looked like a gorilla riding in a clown car. He ducked his head low to avoid hitting it against the roof of the train car—or maybe to make sure he didn’t mess up his hair. And he had his knees tucked way up under his chin.

  “Don’t laugh,” he warned Ethan. “This is so not funny. And Devin, don’t you dare take a picture.”

  But Ethan’s chest started shaking with laughter. And Devin had a full-blown case of the giggles.

  “Hey, he’s right!” grumbled Gianna, who had her own head stuck out the window. “This isn’t funny. Some girl stole my cap, and her train is faster than ours!”

  Ethan tried to stop laughing. But looking at his friends—any one of them—didn’t help matters. Carlo looked ridiculous. Gia practically had steam coming out of her ears, she was so mad. And Devin’s giggles were contagious.

  So he pulled out his phone to look for Pokémon. What else was he supposed to do? And there, right in front of his eyes, was a Mankey!

  The monkeylike Pokémon was round and brown, with angry eyes. And it was sitting on Carlo’s shoulder.

  When Ethan raised his phone, Carlo put his hand up. “Do not take a picture!” he said. “I told you!”

  “I’m not,” said Ethan, holding the phone and his voice steady. “There’s a Mankey in here. And I’m about to make it mine.” He waited until the Pokémon did its dodge move. Then Ethan flung a Poké Ball directly at the Mankey.

  It was a great shot—straight and high!

  But it froze in midair.

  “No!” Ethan shouted, shaking his phone.

  He’d lost the signal.

  “No!”

  He restarted the app, but the Mankey was long gone. And as the train headed around a bend in the tracks, Ethan’s screen froze up again. He sighed and dropped the phone in his lap.

  “Man, we really are having bad luck,” he muttered.

  Gianna pulled her head back into the train and gave him The Look—the one that pretty much said, “Really? Do you think so? Are you just figuring that out now?”

  So he zipped his lips and kept quiet for the rest of the train ride. He hoped they’d catch up with the first train eventually, but that one chugged steadily along the track and only seemed to be getting farther ahead.

  The two trains passed by a fenced-in prairie filled with huge bison. They crossed a rickety bridge over a sparkling stream. Then, finally, they seemed to be curving back around to where they started from. Only a short stone tunnel lay between the trains and the station.

  Ethan watched as the train up ahead chugged into the tunnel, popped back out of the other side, and then came to a stop at the station. As kids spilled out of the train, he spotted the green bug cap. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on it as the blonde girl stepped back into the crowd of kids.

  But then Ethan’s own train entered the tunnel, and everything went black.

  “Maybe we should tell someone,” said Devin after they’d gotten off the train. “Like at an information booth. Can’t the zoo people track down the thief and make her give your hat back?”

  Gianna shrugged. “They probably won’t believe us.”

  “Sure they will!” said Devin.

  While Carlo stretched out his legs, Ethan stood on tiptoe, hoping he could spot the green cap in the crowd of people ahead. But the blonde girl was long gone.

  “We might as well tell someone,” he said. “What do we have to lose?”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized something. Since Gianna had lost her cap, they’d lost a lot of other things, too: a phone signal, a Mankey, and even a Morpho butterfly. So at this rate, our luck could get a whole lot worse before it gets better, he reminded himself.

  But Carlo was already on his way to the nearest information booth. By the time Ethan got there, Carlo was telling the zoo guide what had happened. The man in the orange polo wrote down all of the information, and Gianna even drew a picture of the cap for him on the back of a zoo map.

  “Anything else you can think of that might be helpful?” the man asked.

  When they shook their heads, he reached for his phone and made a few calls. Every time Ethan heard him say the words “We have a lost cap,” he wanted to correct the man. It’s not lost. It was stolen!

  Gianna looked as if she were biting her tongue, too.

  Then the zoo guide said something that caught everyone’s attention.

  “You see the cap?” he said into the phone. “Really? Okay, we’ll be right there!”

  He propped up a CLOSED sign on his booth and stepped out the side doorway. “C’mon, kids,” he said. “We may have found your cap.”

  They followed him past the Rainforest Center, past the Butterfly House, past the Polar Passage, and toward the zoo playground. A giant giraffe slide towered over the other playground equipment. There, beside a blue teeter-totter shaped like a seal, Ethan saw another zoo guide dressed in orange. She waved to them and hurried over.

  “Which one of you lost the cap?” she asked.

  Gianna raised her hand. “Me. I did.”

  “Okay,” said the guide, crouching beside Gianna. “Is that your cap?” She pointed toward a girl leaning against the playground fence.

  Sure enough, it was the girl with the long blonde braid—and she was still wearing Gia’s cap!

  Gianna shaded her eyes against the sun. “Yeah, that’s mine!” She chewed nervously on her fingernail. “Can you get it back for me?”

  The zoo guide nodded. “I think so. We can have a chat with the girl, at least, and see what’s what.”

  As she crossed the playground, Ethan’s heart raced. He couldn’t believe they were confronting the thief. She was so busted! Part of him wanted to look the other way, he was so nervous. The other part of him wished he had a pair of handcuffs to slap on her wrists himself.

  As the guide started talking to the girl, Ethan saw her face crumple. She shook her head no and grabbed the cap. Was she going to make a run for it?

  Nope. She followed the guide back across the playground.

  As they got closer, he could see that the girl’s cheeks were splotchy with embarrassment.

  “She says she got the cap at the gift shop,” said the zoo guide.

  “But she didn’t!” said Ethan, his voice rising. “We were already at the gift shop. They don’t sell caps like that.” What a liar! he wanted to add.

  But Gianna held up her hand to stop him. “Maybe they do,” she said in a small voice.

  Huh?

  “That’s not my cap,” said Gianna sadly. “The antennae are the wrong color.”

  Ethan took a closer look at the cap—and swallowed hard. Instead of yellow antennae, this one had orange antennae. It looked even more like a Caterpie.

  So that meant that the girl they’d chased halfway around the zoo was no thief.

  And now she was starting to cry.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’m really sorry,” said Gianna to the girl with the blonde braid. “Your cap looks so much like mine, but … it’s not. I should have looked closer before I accused you of taking it. I’m sorry.”

  The girl sniffled and nodded.

  Ethan stepped forward to apologize, too. But the girl was already hurrying back toward her friends. She had one hand pressed tightly against her cap so that it wouldn’t fall off.

  Or get taken away by a bunch of crazy strangers, thought Ethan sadly. His own cheeks burned hot with embarrassment now.

  “Do you want to check the Lost and Found for your cap?” the zoo guide asked Gianna.

  She shrugged. She didn’t look too hopeful, Ethan noticed. And he couldn’t blame her. Things were going from bad to worse.

  “There’s a Lost and Found bin at the gift shop,” the guide said. “If you can’t fi
nd your old one there, maybe you can buy yourself a new one.” He winked at Gianna.

  Ethan knew the guide was trying to be nice. He also knew that Gia wasn’t having any of it. She grumbled all the way to the gift shop.

  “Seriously? He thinks I can just replace my lucky cap?” She shook her head. “Grown-ups.” She said that last part as if it were a swear word.

  When they reached the gift shop, Carlo asked the cashier about the Lost and Found. He nodded and slid a big plastic bin out from under the counter.

  As Gia picked and poked through the lost items, Ethan held his breath. The bin was full of hats, backpacks, stuffed animals, and shoes.

  How do you lose a shoe and not know it? he wondered.

  But he could tell pretty quickly that the cap wasn’t in the bin. So he started scavenging the store, looking for the Caterpie cap that the blonde girl insisted she’d bought here.

  Maybe I can buy one for Gia, he thought, even though he wasn’t sure she’d want it.

  Ethan scanned aisles full of T-shirts, stuffed animals, and animal puppets. He poked through animal purses, jewelry, and key chains. He even passed a bin full of tiny plastic animals, making a mental note to keep Devin away from that. A collector like her would want one of each of them!

  As Ethan finished searching the very last aisle, he scratched his head. No Caterpie caps. So the blonde girl wasn’t a thief … but was she a liar?

  He wondered whether he should tell Team Mystic about this latest development. But Gianna looked miserable enough, and Carlo was already waving them out of the gift shop.

  “We’d better let Mom know where we are,” he said, pulling out his phone. After sending a quick text, he asked, “Now what? Any ideas for where to look next?”

  “I guess we just have to start all over,” said Gianna, dragging her feet as they walked.

  Or we look for Pokémon, thought Ethan. His phone had just buzzed, and he had a strong signal! It was only a Weedle that had popped up on his screen—one of his least-favorite Pokémon. But at least it was something.

  “Ethan!” Devin whispered. “You shouldn’t be playing when Gianna is upset. We need to make her feel better.” Then she caught up to Gianna and took her by the arm. “Look, Gia, do you see the ostrich?”

  I’m just going to catch this real quick. Then I’ll stop, Ethan told himself. But there was nothing quick about capturing the Weedle.

  It sprang out of the first Poké Ball like a jack-in-the-box. “Seriously, Larry?” he said, capturing it again.

  “Larry” was the nickname his dad had given a Weedle once. So now Ethan and Devin called every Weedle they caught Larry.

  This particular Larry bounced out of the second Poké Ball, too—and promptly disappeared with a poof!

  “Man, why does everything feel so hard now?” Ethan said out loud, sliding his phone back into his pocket. When all three of his friends gave him the same familiar look, he raised his hand. “I know, I know: it’s because Gianna lost her lucky cap. So let’s find it.”

  He glanced around, looking for fresh ideas. That’s when his eyes fell on the ostrich.

  “Where’s the other half of the Doduo?” he joked, pretending to look for a second ostrich. When no one laughed, he tried to explain it. “You know, like in the photo booth, remember?” But his voice kind of trailed off. Jokes weren’t all that funny if you had to actually explain them.

  He could usually count on Devin to laugh, but she wasn’t even listening. She had stopped walking and was staring off into the distance, a faraway look on her face.

  “What?” Ethan asked her. “Was my joke that bad? Did it send you into a trance or something?” He snapped his fingers in front of her face.

  She blinked and said, “No, I was just thinking about the photo booth. Did Gia take off her cap and leave it inside?”

  Carlo cocked his head. “Someone would have found it in there by now and turned it in to the Lost and Found, don’t you think? And it wasn’t there, remember?”

  “Maybe they would have turned it in,” said Ethan slowly. “Unless they thought it was just another photo prop, like the animal masks. It could be there.”

  “Only one way to find out!” said Gianna. She sprang into the air like a Weedle from a Poké Ball and started running back down the path.

  Gianna was the first one to reach the photo booth. Ethan crossed his fingers on both hands, hoping the cap would be inside. But just as he reached the booth, she stepped back out.

  And she wasn’t smiling.

  “Nope,” she said. “Not there. Just another dead end.”

  Ethan sighed. He sat on a bench next to her, and pretty soon Carlo and Devin plunked down beside them, too.

  When Ethan saw that Devin had her phone out, he pretended to scold her. “No playing Pokémon GO at a time like this!” he squawked, sounding like a macaw in the Rainforest Center.

  Devin rolled her eyes. “I’m not playing,” she said. “The photo booth gave me the idea to check my photos. There might be some clues in them about the lost cap. At least the pictures will remind us where we’ve been today so we can retrace our steps.”

  “Oh, good idea.” Ethan watched over her shoulder as she scrolled from picture to picture. When she reached one of the big goat with horns, he shrank backward.

  But Devin seemed pretty excited about that photo. “The petting zoo!” she said. “Remember that nasty old goat that wanted to eat Gia’s cap?”

  I remember, alright, thought Ethan. I’m the one who had to play tug-of-war with it.

  So when Devin suggested they go back to the petting zoo to look for Gia’s cap, Ethan didn’t exactly jump for joy.

  “But we got the cap back from the goat,” he protested. “Remember?”

  Devin shrugged. “Maybe Gia dropped it as we were leaving the petting zoo. Or maybe the goat lifted it off her head and she didn’t even notice.”

  Gianna crossed her arms. “If that rude goat ate my lucky Pokémon-catching cap, I’m going to be so mad,” she said.

  “I’m pretty sure it didn’t,” said Carlo, reaching for her hand to pull her up. “But let’s go visit that old goat, just in case.”

  They started running, but the petting zoo seemed farther away than Ethan remembered.

  Devin seemed to be dragging, too, as she jogged along beside him. “I feel like we already ran five miles today!” she said, breathing hard.

  Or at least five kilometers, Ethan thought suddenly. He stopped running and pulled out his phone.

  “Ethan, come on!” Devin shouted over her shoulder.

  He waved her on. “I’ll catch up to you,” he said. “I have to check something.” Then he went to his Pokémon collection and tapped on “Eggs.”

  They hadn’t quite run five kilometers yet today, because the egg hadn’t hatched. “But we ran two and a half kilometers!” he said out loud, checking the numbers by his incubating egg.

  He sprinted after his sister, determined to cover the last two and a half kilometers as quickly as he could.

  “Wait up!” he called to Devin.

  He veered right at the petting zoo and nearly ran into a rope that had been strung across the entrance. A CLOSED sign dangled from the rope. But he could hear Devin’s voice coming from somewhere nearby. Where was she?

  He shaded his eyes and looked into the petting zoo. There she was! Devin was standing by the wooden fence with Gianna and Carlo—and about a million baby goats.

  Why are they inside the petting zoo if it’s closed? Ethan wondered. He almost called out to Devin, but he didn’t want to get his friends in trouble. So he looked both ways to see if any of the zoo guides were around, and then he stepped over the rope.

  As he approached the wooden fence, none of his friends looked up to greet him, but the goats sure did.

  “Sorry, little guys. I’m fresh out of pellets,” he whispered. Then he asked Devin, “What are you doing in here? Didn’t you see that the petting zoo is closed?”

  Devin didn’t say a word. S
he just pointed.

  There, in the far corner of the goat pen, was the rude old goat—the big one with horns. He was nibbling at something round. Something flat. Something green.

  As Ethan squinted to get a better look, he heard Gia sniffling beside him.

  “So much for my lucky cap,” she said quietly. “It’s gone now.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Maybe we can distract the goat long enough to get in there and rescue Gia’s cap,” said Carlo, pacing back and forth in front of the wooden fence. “Do we have enough money for those little food pellets?”

  “Sure,” said Gia. “But there’s no one at the pellet stand to buy them from. The petting zoo is closed, remember?”

  “Right,” said Carlo.

  “Wait—there are pellet machines. Look!” said Devin, pointing. She hurried toward one of the machines. “Does anyone have any quarters?”

  Ethan dug in his pockets and found only the two ten-dollar bills his mom had given him for souvenirs. “Will the machine accept PokéCoins?” he joked. But that joke fell flat, just like the last one. “Sorry,” he whispered to no one in particular.

  “Wait, here’s one!” said Devin, crouching beneath the machine. She picked up a coin from the ground, quickly wiped it off, and slid it in the slot.

  The sound of the knob cranking on the pellet machine brought the goats running—all of them.

  “It’s working!” said Ethan as he watched the big goat trot toward the fence. “He dropped Gia’s hat. He’s coming this way! But, wait, now what do we do?”

  He was surprised to see that Carlo already had a plan in place. As the goat ran toward the fence, Carlo started running around the fence.

  “Is he going to climb into the goat pen?” asked Ethan, sucking in his breath.

  Gia’s eyes grew wide. “I think so. You don’t think that goat will hurt him, do you?”

  Ethan shrugged. “I sure wouldn’t mess with the goat,” he said, watching the animal knock all the little goats out of the way to get to the pellets in Devin’s hand.

  But the pellets didn’t last very long. As soon as they were gone, Ethan looked up to see how Carlo was doing.