Poached

by Stuart Gibbs

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because he stole it for me,” Violet said.

  Everyone in the cafeteria gasped.

  Violet quickly tried to explain. “I didn’t ask him to do it! He just did it, thinking I’d be impressed or something.”

  “Why would Vance be trying to impress you like that?” I asked.

  “Because he’s had a crush on her since third grade,” Xavier said.

  Now the entire school turned to Xavier, surprised.

  “None of you noticed?” he asked the crowd. “Really? I know he’s tried to keep it a secret, but the guy practically drools every time Violet walks by.”

  Violet blushed, embarrassed by this. “I didn’t know he liked me. Not until he showed up at my house the other night with the koala.” The whole story suddenly came tumbling out of her; after keeping it bottled inside for the past four days, she couldn’t contain it anymore. “My parents were out at a school meeting, so I was all alone—and suddenly Vance shows up at the door, saying he has a surprise for me. He totally freaked me out. First of all, he was all cut up and bleeding everywhere. And then he pulls this koala out of his backpack and says he got it for me. I thought it was a stuffed animal at first, but then it jumped out and scared the holy heck out of me. I always thought koalas were cute and all, but this one was mean. It started running around my house, squealing like a pig, knocking everything over and totally destroying the place. I got up on the couch and told Vance to get it out—but Vance didn’t do anything. Instead he sat there, trying to explain that I should like him because he brought this crazy thing to my house. He said he was just going to get me some stupid stuffed koala at first, but then he realized he could get me a real one, which was like a thousand times cooler. As if I’d ever want this stinky, screeching, freaky thing.”

  I thought back to the tapes I’d seen of Vance the night he stole Kazoo. He’d originally been holding a stuffed koala—the one he’d intended to give Violet. But then Vance had seen Kristi leave the office door open. And so, on the spur of the moment, he’d decided to bring Violet the real thing instead, thinking he would really win her over that way. Then he’d swapped the toy for Kazoo. Only it had all worked out far worse than he’d expected. “I don’t think he knew the koala would behave like that,” I explained. “He probably thought it would be like a living doll.”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” Violet said. “Vance is an idiot. He didn’t think anything through. He said he’d gone to FunJungle to scope out the shark tank for some prank and then just swiped Kazoo on a whim.”

  I groaned, regretting the day I’d suggested the shark tank prank to Xavier even more. Not only had that led to Vance forcing me to pull the prank—but it had also indirectly led to the theft of Kazoo. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about this?” I asked Violet.

  “Because Vance told me not to,” she replied. “I think he really expected that I would just fall in love with him when I saw he’d stolen a koala for me. And he was really upset when I didn’t. I mean, like super angry. I told him he’d better take the koala back, and he said he couldn’t because then they’d know he stole it. So then I said I was going to call the police—and he said that if I did that, he’d . . .” Violet trailed off, looking scared.

  “Did he threaten you?” Mom asked.

  Violet nodded, fighting back tears, then looked to me again. “I tried to reach out to you anyhow, though. I gave you my phone number. . . .”

  I grimaced, feeling like a fool. Under normal circumstances I would have called Violet. (Even if I’d suspected she was only using me to get to Summer.) However, a lot of other things had happened that day. The truth was, I’d forgotten Violet had given me her number at all.

  But Vance hadn’t, I realized. He’d been watching us through the cafeteria window. He’d seen Violet give me her number—and it had made him think I was a threat. Maybe he thought Violet was tipping me off about him and the koala. Or maybe he thought she was showing interest in me rather than him. Whatever the case, he decided to get rid of me. He had just learned I was a suspect in the koala’s theft—so he snuck into our home and planted evidence in my room to frame me. He hadn’t done it as revenge for embarrassing him, as I’d originally suspected. He’d done it to keep me away from Violet.

  “Do you have any idea where Vance is keeping Kazoo?” I asked her. “It’s important. He’s dying.”

  Violet shook her head sadly. “Vance took the koala from my house that night, and I never saw it again. I was hoping he would take it back to FunJungle, but when he didn’t, I . . . I was too afraid to ask. And if I called the cops, he’d know I was the one who turned him in.” She shifted her attention toward TimJim angrily. “But they’d know. Vance tells them everything.”

  We all looked toward TimJim, only to find that while Violet had been distracting all of our attention, they’d been sidling toward the door. Now they made a break for it.

  Bubba and Marge raced after them, but the boys had too big a head start. They were at the door before the police could take three steps.

  As TimJim opened the door, though, Ethan Sokol and Dash Alexander tackled them. The football players broadsided them so hard I could hear the wind getting knocked out of them from across the room. The twins ended up flat on their backs, the jocks pinning them to the floor.

  “Tell us where the koala is,” Dash warned, “or we pound both of you into dog food.”

  “Even you two meatheads aren’t strong enough to do that,” Tim shot back.

  “Oh, it won’t be just Dash and me,” Ethan told him. “It’ll be all of us.” He pointed toward the cafeteria.

  The entire student body nodded agreement. If there was one thing that could unite every single person in our school, it was saving a koala from Vance Jessup. Even a few of the cafeteria ladies joined the crowd.

  TimJim gulped in fear.

  “His uncle has a garage in town!” Jim blurted out. “Jessup Automotive! He’s been keeping the koala there!”

  I turned back to my parents and the police. Bubba Stackhouse gave me the thumbs-up sign—this was the info he needed—and then waved for me to come quickly. I started toward him, but Violet caught my arm.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told me. “I should have told someone sooner. If that koala’s dead, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “Trust me, I know how intimidating Vance Jessup can be.”

  Violet smiled, then released my arm. “Go get him,” she said.

  I grinned back, then raced out of the cafeteria. The entire student body followed me. Jessup Automotive wasn’t that far from school, and this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in town. No one wanted to miss it. They swarmed past Mr. Dillnut, ignoring his demands that everyone get back to class.

  “This is not a holiday!” he yelled impotently at the crowd. “This is an unexcused absence for all of you!”

  Bubba, Marge, Mom, Dad, and I all piled back into the police car. We peeled out of the parking lot.

  Despite the urgency of the situation, I noticed both my parents were grinning at me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Mom said cheerfully. “It just seems you’ve made a lot of friends.”

  “Who was that cute girl who gave you her phone number?” Dad asked.

  I could feel my ears turning red. “Nobody,” I lied.

  “She sure looked like somebody to me.” Dad looked at Mom, and they both stifled a laugh, as though this was all hilarious.

  I tried to change the subject. “Here’s what I don’t understand: Why would Vance steal Kazoo just to impress a girl? How could he possibly think that would work?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a man has done something incredibly stupid to get the attention of a woman,” Dad told me. “In fact, I’ll bet there isn’t a man out there who hasn’t made a fool of himself for love.” He looked back at Mom, and they both smiled again.

  “I still don’t get it
,” I said.

  “You will someday,” Dad told me. “Maybe even sooner than you think.”

  It didn’t take long to cover the few blocks to the garage, especially since the police car could tear through town at well over the speed limit. Jessup Automotive sat at the end of Main Street, right on the edge of the small commercial district. It was an old-fashioned garage and gas station that had recently gone out of business. The windows were boarded up. Behind it was a large yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. The yard was a maze of storage sheds and broken-down cars that had been pilfered for spare parts over the years.

  Bubba braked to a stop by the gas pumps. He and Marge leaped out of the car, though when my parents and I tried to follow, they turned on us.

  “Stay here,” Bubba told me. “It could be dangerous back there.”

  “But . . . ,” I began.

  “When we find the kid, we’ll bring him out here for you to ID,” Marge said. “Now just sit tight and keep your nose out of our business for once.”

  I tried to protest, but Mom signaled to me to let it go.

  Marge and Bubba slunk toward the boarded-up garage with their guns raised, like they were infiltrating a nest of professional assassins instead of going after a teenage boy with a stolen koala. They both seemed very excited to have an actual mission for once.

  “Idiots,” Mom muttered. “They’ll probably end up shooting each other.”

  Bubba banged on the garage door. “Vance Jessup! We know you’re in there! Come out with the koala!”

  There was no answer.

  My parents and I climbed out of the police car—it was too cramped and stuffy to wait inside—but we heeded Marge’s warning and didn’t try to follow her. Instead we waited by the gas pumps.

  Behind us, people had begun to emerge from the businesses on Main Street, intrigued by the police activity. They filed out of the real estate office and the furniture store and the diner. One man came out of the barbershop halfway through a shave, his face still covered with lather.

  The garage door was open. Bubba and Marge slipped inside.

  A noise began to grow in the distance, a great murmur of voices. I glanced down Main Street. Several blocks away, a horde of students charged around the corner. It was my whole school, racing to see Vance’s capture.

  A weird, piercing screech suddenly came from the junkyard. It sounded like a large bird being strangled.

  “That’s a koala!” Mom exclaimed.

  I’d never heard Kazoo make a sound before. But then I’d never seen him in distress.

  Vance Jessup burst out of a storage shed and raced through the junky cars, wearing a backpack from which the angry koala noises emanated. Since the police were blocking any exit through the garage, he ran for the chain-link fence instead.

  “He’s out here!” Dad called to the police, while Mom yelled, “He’s getting away!”

  We heard Bubba and Marge scrambling somewhere back in the junkyard, but Vance had gotten a huge jump on them. He quickly scaled the fence and leaped to the ground. Now the only thing standing between him and escape was me and my parents.

  Before we even knew we were doing it, we were running to stop him. Mom and Dad flanked him on both sides, while I ended up facing him head on.

  Vance froze, looking from one of us to the next, unsure what to do. He no longer seemed tough and menacing to me. Instead he seemed like a scared, desperate kid. There were a lot of new scratches on him, including a slash of claw marks across his face.

  Kazoo was thrashing about in the backpack, screeching and howling.

  “There’s no point in running,” Dad told Vance. “There’s nowhere you can go.”

  “All we want is Kazoo,” Mom said, trying to sound as soothing as possible. “His life is in danger. Just hand him over and we’ll tell the police you cooperated.”

  Vance relaxed for a moment, as though ready to give himself up.

  But then Marge and Bubba burst out of the garage and charged toward him. “Get him!” Marge howled.

  Vance bolted. As I was the smallest and weakest of the people boxing him in, he came right at me. Dad and Mom grabbed for him, but he dodged them.

  Without really thinking about it, I planted myself in his path. “Stop!” I yelled.

  “Move it, loser!” Vance yelled back.

  Although it only took Vance a second to reach me, a hundred thoughts went through my head. I considered getting out of the way, but decided against it. Every moment still counted for the koala. So I stood my ground, even though Vance was much bigger than me and coming on like a freight train. My father’s advice about how to deal with bullies came back to me. Just pop him in the nose, he’d said. I’d never hit anyone in my life, but when I thought about all the things Vance had done to me—harassing me and threatening me with swirlies and framing me for a crime he’d committed—not to mention all the mean things he’d done to Xavier and dozens of other kids, and how he’d even threatened to hurt Violet if she told the police what he’d done, and how he’d been so rough with Kazoo when he’d stolen the koala and probably had been even rougher over the past few days . . . the next thing I knew, my hand had tightened into a fist, and it was swinging right toward Vance’s face.

  I connected harder than I expected because Vance was running right at me. He could have gone around, but his inner bully had kicked in. He wasn’t merely trying to get away. He was trying to flatten me in the process. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that I might try to fight back.

  I caught Vance right on the chin, so hard that his teeth clacked. His head snapped back and he wobbled on his heels. For a moment he stared at me in shock, as though unable to believe that I’d punched him. And then he pitched forward, passing out on the ground at my feet.

  Mom and Dad stared at him for a moment. Then Dad turned to Mom and grinned. “I told you that would work,” he said.

  Mom sighed, but then stole a glance at me, and I could see that despite her best intentions she was actually proud of what I’d done. She quickly turned her attention to Kazoo.

  Luckily, Vance had collapsed face-first, so he hadn’t landed on the koala, which was still thrashing about in the backpack.

  “It’s all right, Kazoo,” Mom cooed softly. “You’re safe now. We’re here to help.”

  To my surprise, Kazoo calmed quickly, soothed by Mom’s voice. Mom unfastened the clasps on the pack, and the koala poked his head out.

  He wasn’t in good shape. He’d lost a lot of weight in the last few days. His hair was matted and dirty, and a few patches had fallen out. He shivered in the cold. It seemed he’d used the last of his energy trying to fight his way out of the backpack. Now he simply collapsed on his side. He didn’t even try to fight as Mom picked him up and wrapped him in her jacket.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Thanks to you.”

  Dad put an arm around my shoulders. When Mom’s back was turned, he winked and whispered, “Great punch, kiddo. Trust me, that guy’s never gonna bother you again.”

  Marge and Bubba arrived, gasping for breath after their brief run. Marge looked like she was about to lay into me for getting involved in police business, but before she could, Mom said, “We need to get Kazoo to the animal hospital at FunJungle as fast as possible.”

  “Of course,” Bubba agreed. Then he turned to Marge and threw her his keys. “Take my car. I’ll stay here with Vance. Get the Fitzroys and the koala back to FunJungle, pronto.”

  Marge wasn’t happy about being ordered to chauffeur us, but even she knew it was pointless to argue. “All right,” she grumbled.

  “Come on,” Mom said to me, motioning toward the police car.

  “I don’t need to go back to school?” I asked.

  “I think you’ve earned a day off,” Dad said.

  As we headed for the car, my fellow students arrived in force. They all swarmed around us, expressing concern for Kazoo and gaping at Vance Jessup.

 
“We saw you deck Vance!” Xavier crowed. “That was amazing!”

  Lots of other kids echoed this. Dozens who had never even bothered to introduce themselves to me now shook my hand and patted me on the back.

  I pushed through them all toward the police car. “I have to go,” I told Xavier. “See you Monday?”

  “You bet,” he grinned.

  As I reached the car, Violet Grace emerged from the crowd. “How’s Kazoo?” she asked.

  “He’ll be all right,” I told her.

  Violet sighed with relief, then glanced at Vance’s prone body. “Do you still have my phone number?” she asked.

  I paused, halfway into the police car. “Yes.”

  The cheerleader gave me a shy smile. “Then call me sometime,” she said.

  ONE LAST SURPRISE

  KoalaVille came down even faster than it had gone up.

  Doc Deakin, the head vet at FunJungle, had done a miraculous job of quickly nursing Kazoo back to health, but that was of little comfort to the Australians. They had already been furious about the koala’s theft. When the entire story was revealed—that FunJungle hadn’t properly installed the security cameras in the exhibit, that a keeper hadn’t locked the door, and worst of all that no one had noticed the koala’s disappearance for more than a day—FunJungle’s contract to display Kazoo was immediately revoked. Within twenty-four hours a team of official “koala ambassadors” arrived to take Kazoo back home to Australia. To J.J. McCracken’s dismay, they still charged him the full five million dollars he’d agreed to for six months of koala rental.

  And so, on a chilly, slate-gray day only a week after Kazoo had been recovered, my parents and I stood on the hill above KoalaVille, watching a demolition crew flatten the koala exhibit as quickly as possible.

  “It’s not a bad exhibit space,” I said as the bulldozers churned toward it. “Couldn’t they have put another animal in it?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “But everyone would still think of it as Kazoo’s old home—for a while, at least. And J.J. McCracken doesn’t want that.”

  “The longer KoalaVille stands, the longer it reminds people of Kazoo,” Dad added. “And Kazoo is a pretty big failure for FunJungle.”