by Stuart Gibbs
“She just wants to meet Summer,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Xavier replied, though he didn’t look like he fully believed that either.
“I’m a seventh grader who nearly got swirlied at the beginning of lunch and she’s the head cheerleader,” I argued. “You really think she wants to go out with me?”
“I think you’re cool,” Xavier said.
“That makes one of us.” I slipped Violet’s number into my pocket.
And then, out the window behind Xavier, I saw Vance Jessup.
He’d cleaned himself off and changed his shirt, probably in the school gym. Now he was staring at me. Vance had always been scary, but at that moment the look of hatred in his eyes was downright terrifying. I wondered how long he’d been watching me.
He pointed through the window at me. It was a subtle gesture, but it was loaded with meaning. Things weren’t over between us. Not by a long shot.
Then, before anyone else noticed him, Vance ducked away and vanished from sight.
UNDERCOVER WORK
I managed to avoid Vance for the rest of the day. He’d apparently ditched school after I saw him by the cafeteria. Even bullies could be embarrassed, and Vance’s plunge into the Toilet of Doom was the primary topic of conversation at school that afternoon.
Still, I doubted Vance had gone far. Several times I had the eerie feeling he was watching me. Once, as I was boarding the bus after school, I even thought I caught a glimpse of him inside a store across the street, glaring balefully at me through the window. But when I looked again, he was gone, leaving me to wonder if it had really been Vance, or if my skittish mind was playing tricks on me.
On the ride home, however, I received two texts that made me forget all about the bully.
The first was from Summer:
Heads up. Large Marge is meeting with Daddy tomorrow at FJ to make her case against you. Don’t think LM has any new evidence, but still, I thought you’d want to know.
Have you learned anything new?
The next was from my father:
Bad news. I’ve gone through all the security footage from the night of Kazoo’s disappearance. I didn’t find anything on it. No one went in or out of the koala exhibit except you.
I have to photograph a surgery for Doc this afternoon but should be done by 5. Mom is at her office. Check in with us when you get home from school.
I pocketed my phone, feeling frustrated. How could anyone have possibly swiped Kazoo without showing up on the security tapes? It didn’t seem possible. Meanwhile, Large Marge was briefing J.J. McCracken the next morning, and all the evidence still pointed directly at me. If I didn’t figure out who Kazoo’s kidnapper was before then, J.J. might not have any choice but to order my arrest.
It was time to put Summer’s plan into action.
Once the bus dropped me off at FunJungle, I returned home just long enough to ditch my backpack, then headed right into the park. Darlene, the guard, paid far more attention to me than usual. She actually stopped watching her movie for once when I walked in.
“Where you headed today, Teddy?” she asked suspiciously.
“Mom’s office,” I said.
Darlene wrote that down.
As I passed through the metal detector, my ankle bracelet set the alarm off.
“Hold it,” Darlene said. “I need to pat you down.”
“It’s only my monitor,” I said, hiking my pants leg.
“I gotta make sure,” Darlene told me. “Marge’s orders.”
So I spread my arms and legs and let her wave the security wand over me. It crackled like crazy around my ankle, but nowhere else.
“You’re clean,” Darlene said. “Stay out of trouble, now.”
I called Mom as I passed into the park.
“Are you home?” she asked.
“Just got back.”
“How was school today? Anything interesting happen?”
“Not really,” I lied. I planned to tell her and Dad the whole story about Vance, but it made more sense to wait until dinner. The moment Mom heard, she’d want every detail, and I didn’t have the time for all that. “How about you?”
Mom sighed. “I’m still having trouble with Motupi.”
“Furious George? Did he go nuts again?”
“No. He didn’t do anything wrong,” Mom said. “That’s the problem. I can’t figure out what’s triggering these episodes. If anything, he behaved beautifully all day. Gentle as a teddy bear. It’s killing me to keep him in solitary. Chimps are such social creatures; it’s obvious he’s unhappy away from the others.”
“Can you move him back, then?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Mom told me. “I can’t risk putting him with the others until I find out what’s going on. I need to spend a bit more time with him today. Were you planning on coming to the office to do your homework?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe not right now. I’d prefer to have as few distractions here as possible. Are you all right with that?”
“I guess so,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
I hung up, relieved. If Mom had demanded I come to her office, I’d have been hard-pressed to get out of it. But now both Mom and Dad had their hands full, leaving me the opportunity to investigate Kazoo’s disappearance.
I made a beeline for the character changing room.
This was located near the front entrance, in the employees-only area of the park. It was the place where the motley crew who’d been hired to dress as FunJungle’s animal characters put on their costumes. The actors—as they were known—were, for the most part, an unimpressive lot. After all, their job essentially involved standing still and letting people take pictures with them. The most demanding thing they ever had to do was wave their hand on occasion. However, the costumes could be quite uncomfortable—especially on summer days when it hit over a hundred degrees at FunJungle—and thus, even though the job was ridiculously easy, it wasn’t very desirable. Only three types of people tended to apply: slackers who were incredibly unmotivated, screwups who weren’t skilled at anything else—and aspiring actors who mistakenly believed that dressing as a giant animal was a good way to break into show business.
Charlie Connor fell into the last category. Apparently, he was quite a good clown, and had even gone to a prestigious clown school. He’d expected that as a character he’d be allowed to put some of his skills into effect to amuse the crowds: juggling, perhaps, or riding a unicycle. To his dismay, he’d learned he wasn’t supposed to do anything at all. (In the first few days FunJungle had been open, the actor playing Zelda Zebra had tried juggling some bowling pins and had accidentally brained a tourist with one. The tourist had threatened to sue, FunJungle had settled quickly, and the lawyers had nixed any further character performances.) Charlie suspected that he’d merely been hired because of his size. Sadly, this was probably true. As a dwarf, Charlie was the only person who could fit in some of the smaller, “cuter” costumes. Unfortunately for him, as much as he hated his job, he couldn’t find another. Being an ex-con severely cut down on the number of people willing to hire him.
Summer’s plan relied on the fact that Charlie was no longer playing Kazoo. No one was. Now that the public knew the koala was missing, Tracey Boyd had decided that keeping the character around was a bad idea. So the Kazoo costume had been shelved and Larry the Lizard, Charlie Connor’s old character, had been revived from the dead for him to play once again.
However, Summer suspected that while FunJungle’s administration had informed the actors that no one was supposed to play Kazoo anymore, they most likely hadn’t informed everyone at the park about this. Therefore, most employees wouldn’t think twice about seeing a giant koala wandering about—if they even thought once about it. As we knew, it was amazing how quickly people forgot the characters were actual people.
There was moderate security to get into the employee area at the park—which I passed through easily, as the guards all knew me—but there was
no security at the changing room at all. I found it empty. During the first months the park had been open, the room had often been filled with actors slacking off rather than doing their jobs, but one of Marge’s major initiatives had been to crack down on this. (“Lollygagging while you’re on the clock is the same as stealing,” she’d explained.) The actors hadn’t taken her seriously at first, but then she’d managed to get their pay docked for any time they didn’t work. After that, the changing room was almost always deserted.
Without anyone in it, the room was kind of spooky. The costumes hung on hooks on the wall, while the disembodied heads were all lined up on a shelf above them. It looked somewhat like a zoo full of gaily colored animals had been skinned and decapitated.
There were two Kazoo costumes, wedged between Eleanor Elephant and Alexander Aardvark. (There were two of every costume, just in case one got dirty, which happened quite a lot. Children rubbed everything from snot to melted ice cream on them, while the actors didn’t treat them so well either. A few days before, an actress who’d caught the flu had vomited inside Rhonda Rhino’s head.) I grabbed a Kazoo, pulled it on over my clothes, and walked right out the door.
Since Charlie Connor wasn’t much shorter than me, the costume fit pretty well, but it was still a pain to wear. It was made of thick material that trapped my body heat, so even though it was a cold day, after going only a short distance I felt like I was in a steam room. Plus, the giant head was incredibly difficult to see out of. I could only look out through some mesh in the mouth, but the mouth was angled downward. This was designed to make sure whoever was inside didn’t bowl over any toddlers, but it made it almost impossible to tell where I was going. Every time I wanted to look straight ahead, I had to tilt backward, but then the head was so heavy I’d nearly fall over. No wonder Charlie was always so grumpy, I thought. He spent eight hours a day in a koala-shaped torture chamber.
Between my inability to see and the bulkiness of the costume, I couldn’t move very fast. I was a bit worried that with my slow, shambling gait, everyone would think I was drunk. However, no one seemed concerned by it. Perhaps, since koalas are known for being slow and shambling, everyone figured I was method acting. I walked right through the employee area without anyone saying a thing, then entered the main park and headed for KoalaVille.
Getting there took a lot longer than I expected. Not only because I couldn’t move quickly, but because half the tourists I passed wanted pictures with me. No one seemed to think it was weird to have a giant Kazoo around when the real one had been stolen. Instead it appeared that many tourists were even more excited to see me because Kazoo was gone: Robbed of the chance to see the real koala, they could at least take photos of the fake one. In fact several families, perhaps worried their young children would melt down if they didn’t see a koala, tried to pass me off as the real Kazoo.
Despite all this, the costume worked perfectly, allowing me to hide in plain sight. I walked right past several security guards, who barely even noticed me.
I was passing Carnivore Canyon when I spotted Arthur Koenig lurking behind some bushes, talking on his phone. Something about him struck me as odd. He kept glancing around furtively, the way a kid who’s cheating on a test keeps an eye out for the teacher. Plus, it was unusual to see Arthur outside. Why was he making a phone call out there, in the cold, when he had a nice warm office—unless he didn’t want anyone at Carnivore Canyon to overhear him?
For once, no tourists were tailing me. So I slowed down as I approached Arthur, trying to test the idea that even employees forgot there were humans inside the costumes. It actually seemed to work. Arthur glanced at me, but then continued his call, as though maybe I were a real giant koala who happened to be wandering by.
“That’s not enough money,” he said. “What I’m offering is easily worth twice that.” He listened a bit, then grew annoyed. “Do you have any idea what I went through to get this? Do you understand the risk I’ve taken? If anyone finds out, I could go to jail! At the very least, I’d lose my job. . . .”
Unfortunately, the wind kicked up then, drowning out the rest of Arthur’s words. I tried to sidle a little closer, but it wasn’t easy to sidle in a koala costume. I got a bit too close, and Arthur froze in midsentence, eyeing me suspiciously.
I had no choice but to continue onward, acting as though I were merely strolling past rather than eavesdropping. Arthur seemed to relax, but I couldn’t keep watching him and walk at the same time. I headed on toward KoalaVille. By the time I felt comfortable enough to look back at Arthur again, he was gone.
Could that have been about Kazoo? I wondered. Was it possible that Arthur had taken the koala and was now trying to sell it? He’d obviously been up to something illegal. He didn’t work in KoalaVille, but he worked awfully close—and he knew a great deal about the park’s technology. Maybe he’d come up with a way to circumvent the alarm system. He’d also been very quick to turn me over to the cops and declare my guilt; maybe he’d been doing that to distract everyone from him.
There was no way for me to follow him now, however. I didn’t know where he’d gone. Most likely it was back into Carnivore Control, but I couldn’t get in there. Then again, maybe he was hiding somewhere, keeping an eye on me to see if I’d overheard him. Either way, I needed to stick with my original plan.
I turned back toward KoalaVille—and found Large Marge blocking my path.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
I gulped, wondering how she’d figured out it was me, but before I could say anything, she told me, “You’ve got your costume on all wrong.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. Marge hadn’t recognized me at all. Instead she thought I was an actor. Although now my silence had started to make her suspicious. “Hey,” she said, knocking on the koala head to get my attention. “You listening in there? What’s your name?”
“No hablo inglés,” I said.
Marge sighed, annoyed. “Figures,” she muttered. Then she began to speak very loudly and slowly to me, as if this would magically make someone who didn’t speak English understand it. “Your costume is on wrong! The head is cockeyed! You look like Kazoo has been in a car accident! Stand still!” Marge seized the head in both hands and heaved. The head twisted a bit and locked into place.
“There!” Marge stepped back to admire her work. “Much better.”
I nodded as well as I could with the giant head. “Muchas gracias.”
“That costume is your uniform,” Marge informed me, apparently having already forgotten she was talking to someone who didn’t speak English. “You represent this park when you wear it, just like me. So you wear it right, and you wear it with pride. Got it?”
I nodded again. “¡Sí, señora! ¡Sí!”
“Okay, then,” Marge said. “Don’t let me catch you improperly dressed again. Now get to your post.” She pointed off toward KoalaVille.
I hurried off that way. I was slightly worried Marge might follow me to see if I committed any more infractions, but then I heard her in the distance behind me, berating some tourists for putting recyclable bottles in the regular trash.
I headed into KoalaVille. The place was deserted. Even the bazaar had been closed down. After all, with Kazoo gone, FunJungle had made the wise—if rare—decision to stop selling any merchandise with the koala on it, feeling this was in bad taste. Kazoo’s exhibit was shuttered, the doors locked. According to my parents, the koala keepers had already been transferred to other locations. (Kristi Sullivan was now working at the small mammal house.) I was all alone, able to wander the area freely without any tourists clamoring to take my picture.
As Summer had instructed, I went right to the exhibit to see if there was any way in or out that wouldn’t be seen by the cameras.
My first thought was that perhaps there was an entrance I didn’t know about, but this quickly proved to be wrong. The building wasn’t big, so it didn’t take much time to thoroughly examine the exterior. There were no hid
den doors.
I also determined that there was no route to the exhibit that avoided the security cameras. I knew where the four closest ones were, having figured out their positions from the footage I’d been unlucky enough to appear in. They covered every angle of the exhibit—and in addition, I spotted two more cameras close by.
So the question remained: How had the thief gotten in and out without being seen? I could come up with only two answers:
1) There was a secret underground entrance.
This was doubtful. There was almost nothing underground at FunJungle, as the park was built on solid rock, which was very expensive to dig through. (J.J. McCracken had declared that building Carnivore Canyon into the rock had been a colossal, money-sucking mistake he was determined to never repeat.) The koala exhibit was far from the rest of the park and thus would have required an extremely long tunnel. Plus, the building had been erected so quickly there probably hadn’t been time to dig one anyhow.
2) Whoever had stolen Kazoo was a master of camouflage.
This seemed far more likely. Now that I considered it, camouflaging oneself was a surprisingly common skill in southern Texas. Lots of hunters lived in the area, and sporting-goods stores were chock-full of camouflage clothing and greasepaint (which the hunters used to cover their faces). There were also several military bases close by, which meant there were lots of current and retired soldiers. The schools all had big ROTC programs, where the art of camouflage was taught. And on top of all that, there were tons of paintball enthusiasts. In fact a twenty-five acre paintball range sat only a few miles from FunJungle, where hundreds of men, women, and children showed up in full camouflage every weekend to play pretend war. Until FunJungle had come along, Killer Paintball had been the biggest tourist attraction in the region.
Even my own parents knew a decent amount about camouflage: Dad used it all the time to photograph animals, while Mom had employed it to get close to gorillas in the wild. There were plenty of other field biologists employed by FunJungle; many of them had probably used camouflage as well.