“You dummy!” hisses Darvish. “She was pointing at him!”
“It’s not technically my fault!” I clarify. “Her paws are like oven mitts. She should be more specific with her fluffy-handed pointing.”
But our Meeting of the Minds is cut short.
“Hey!” says Talon Smithfield. He clicks something in his hand and the blue sparks of a Taser zap to life. “What are you kids doing here?”
But it doesn’t matter whether he’s Haughtry Vain or Talon Smithfield or the Queen of England for that matter. He will fall victim to my devious coercion. For I have come up with an inspired plan. It is a plan even Her Royal Majesty would be fooled by.
I call it the “Play Along” Plan.
“I’m here to help you,” I say, with a big, sinister grin on my face. “To rid the world of these annoying endangered species once and for all.”
It is pure brilliance on my part. A plan of epic proportions that cannot fail.
“Nice try,” he says. “Come out of that bamboo.”
Except that it fails. Which is something that nobody, and I mean nobody, could have anticipated. This Talon Smithfield is a diabolical genius with more ingenuity than I have given him credit for.
“Come out of there.” He brandishes his Taser in our direction. Darvish and I emerge from the scrub. “Oh, I see you brought a little friend with you.”
“I’m not that little,” says Darvish.
“Don’t let him get inside your head,” I advise Darvish. “It’s just a ploy he uses to manipulate the weak-minded. Don’t fall victim to his wily ways and dreamboat eyes.”
Talon Smithfield clicks the Taser, making it spark with electricity. “I suppose you little tree-huggers are here to stop me.”
Darvish stuffs his hands in his pockets. “You’re Talon Smithfield,” he says. Poor kid. He’s resorted to stating the obvious.
“That’s right,” says Talon. “So what?”
“So, you’re the president of PUPAE,” says Darvish. “Aren’t you supposed to be king of the tree-huggers?”
“Give me a break,” he says. “I don’t care about animals. I created PUPAE because stuff like that looks really great on college applications.”
“He’s right,” agrees Darvish, nodding at me. “University admissions committees love community involvement.”
“Starting PUPAE was easy. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to be against stuff. Be against snakeskin pajamas. Be against using bunny rabbits as crash dummies. Be against scarecrows, which seriously traumatize poor defenseless crows.”
“Sounds easy enough,” says Darvish. “Any dimwit can be against something.”
“Yeah, but nobody wanted to join!” says Talon, scowling. “Colleges don’t care if you’re the president of a group with no members!”
“So you took action,” says Darvish. “By killing the Sumatran rhino.”
Darvish is pacing now. He’s warming up. He’s fallen into the classic blunder… trying to reason with your culprit. But it is clear that words are useless to our current predicament.
“I didn’t mean to kill it,” says Talon.
“Did he just call me an ‘it’?” snorts Tater Tot. “That guy is pure evil. And, I gotta say, super dashing for a human.”
“It’s those piercing sapphire eyes that really get you,” I whisper.
“You’re not wrong.”
Talon Smithfield rolls his piercing sapphire eyes disdainfully at Darvish. “I was trying to free that stupid rhino, not kill it,” he explains.
“Why would you free it?” asks Darvish.
“I thought if an endangered species escaped, if I returned it to its natural habitat, then people would get excited about PUPAE.”
He’s making a classic blunder. Everyone knows that Middling Falls isn’t a rhino’s natural habitat. It barely qualifies as a human’s natural habitat.
“Sure, sure,” says Darvish. “Freeing it with fire. Makes total sense.”
“Be quiet!” growls Talon Smithfield. “I was trying to drive it out of its pen with the fire. So it would run away. But the fire kind of got out of control.” Talon even looks a little apologetic as he says it.
“Kind of got out of control?” cries Tater Tot. “Sheesh! Would you look at me! I’m a charcoal briquette!”
“Please,” says Sea-Monkey. “You call that a burn? That’s nothing! I once died in a forest fire with third-degree burns over a hundred and seventy-five percent of my body! I resuscitated myself using only a bullfrog and an electric eel and grew all new skin!”
It is good Darvish can’t hear the gorilla. Because that kid will believe anything, and even I’m having a hard time believing this one. I mean, where is a gorilla going to get an electric eel?
“But people signed up for PUPAE,” Darvish says to Talon Smithfield.
“Like crazy!” Talon Smithfield nods. “It worked. For some reason, people really cared about that endangered rhino. And that’s when I realized I had a gold mine on my hands!”
“Hey, yeah!” I say. “You’re charging people fifty-nine ninety-nine to be part of your made-up fake organization!”
He looks at me as if he’s just realizing I’m standing there. “College is expensive! That’s fifty-nine ninety-nine per membership that was going straight into my pocket! So I tried again with the gorilla. But that dumb monkey didn’t escape. It just wandered into the Oceanarium and fell into the shark tank.”
“Mwaafhaafhaa!” says the shark. “Fweejoostcaldjyooadummunkoo!”
“I know he just called me a dumb monkey!” growls Sea-Monkey at the shark. “My ears are at least a million times bigger than yours!” He turns to me. “Can you believe this guy?”
“And then even more people signed up!” says Darvish. “And you made even more money.”
“Membership skyrocketed!”
“But something went wrong again with the elephant,” says Darvish.
“I lured the elephant into a big truck with a trail of peanuts. It was the perfect plan. But it was late. I needed a coffee before I drove out to the country to release it. I parked the truck in the junkyard so nobody would find it. When I came back with my coffee, the truck was gone.”
“I’m so sorry. Can he repeat that?” says Peanut indignantly. “Did he say ‘gone’? While he was ordering a chai latte, that truck was getting crushed into a teeny box. With me and the peanuts inside it!”
“You killed three endangered animals!” I cry.
“Four, Rexxie,” Drumstick reminds me. “Don’t forget the panda.”
“You killed four endangered animals!” I cry.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Talon Smithfield says. “I never meant for them to die. Even the panda shouldn’t have died. I just Tased it! I was just trying to subdue it. I didn’t think it would kill it! It’s not my fault that these animals are so frail and weak!”
“Wait a minute,” Darvish cries. “How in the world did you get access to the zoo or the cages? PUPAE wouldn’t have that kind of zoo access!”
Talon Smithfield laughs. “Brilliant, right?” he says. “I know the daughter of the zoo board president. She’s in PUPAE! This dopey little grade-school girl is hopelessly in love with me. She’ll do anything for me! Including steal her dad’s key.”
My heart plummets. The sound of crying unicorns and weeping rainbows fills my head. Because he’s talking about Holly Creskin.
“With those keys, you can come and go as you please,” says Darvish with realization.
“Why do you think the president of the zoo board is keeping it all under wraps?” crows Talon Smithfield. “Because he knows that his keys are being used! If it got out, he’d be ruined!”
He takes a step toward us. He no longer looks apologetic. For the first time, those crystal baby blues look dangerous.
“So… what am I going to do with you two?”
35
Darvish is all talk.
There he stands, hands in his pockets, chatting away with Talon Smith
field like it’s their first date.
“I’ve got it!” says Talon Smithfield. “I’ll tie you up! I’ll video me rescuing this poor defenseless panda from the horrible murderers!”
“What murderers?” asks Darvish.
“You!” shouts Talon Smithfield. “I’ll say I came to protect the panda.”
“You can’t do that!” cries Darvish.
“Of course I can! Nobody will believe a couple kids over the president of People United to Protect Animals Everywhere!”
This is where all of Darvish’s talking has gotten us. Framed by a hunky teenager. Thanks to my best friend, we’ll spend the prime of our lives rotting in the slammer. The clink. The big house.
Luckily, I am not all talk. Luckily, I am a man of action. And as such, I realize something that Darvish is incapable of realizing. Talking with this guy is useless. Guys like Talon Smithfield only understand brute force.
Muscle.
Brawn.
Action.
Clout.
Also, hair gel and teeth-whitening strips. Possibly colored contact lenses.
Unfortunately, Talon Smithfield is very large. It pains me to admit that he physically outclasses me by a mile. Plus, he has a Taser and I am blatantly Taserless.
But I possess something he never can.
A ridiculous amount of intuition.
An enormous knack for improvisation.
An uncanny flair for inspiration.
These things come with the territory when you’re mature beyond your years.
“You’ll get the blame,” crows Talon Smithfield. “And I’ll be a hero. Colleges will love it! It’s the perfect thing to do with you! This is working better than I expected. I’m so glad you kids showed up!”
I look Talon Smithfield square in the eyes. “I have a better idea of what you could do with us,” I say. “Play dodgeball.”
Talon squints at me. “What did you say, kid?”
Darvish squints at me. “What did you say, kid?”
I bend down and pick up the lantern blossom pod. Darvish grabs my arm. “What are you doing, dude?”
My eyes stay trained on Talon, but in my periphery, I can see the others. Tater Tot, Sea-Monkey, and Peanut have picked up my cue. They are in motion. Even Drumstick is moving into position.
“I’m going to do exactly what I said. Play dodgeball.”
Talon clicks the Taser again, making sparks fly. “Don’t try anything dumb, kid. This isn’t recess for schoolchildren.”
I save my clever rejoinder, knowing it will be wasted here. Instead, I hurl the blossom pod with all my might, straight for Talon Smithfield’s ridiculously handsome face. At least, that is where I attempt to hurl it.
In actuality, it flies somewhere off to my left.
“HA!” Talon Smithfield laughs. “Nice try, kid!”
But the pod bounces off Peanut’s box-shaped booty.
It sails through the air, rebounding off Sea-Monkey’s roly-poly belly.
It soars to the right and ricochets off Tater Tot’s head.
And creams Talon Smithfield right in the bean.
Talon stumbles backward in surprise. Tater Tot tilts her enormous nose-horn forward. She hooks the Taser and flings it skyward. Peanut deflects it with his agile posterior, sending it boomeranging straight into my hand.
“KAMIKAZE!!!”
Drumstick loops through Talon Smithfield’s lanky legs. Talon sprawls backward and falls right into the waiting arms of Kou Kou. The panda bear-hugs him gently but firmly into submission.
I click the Taser. The air zaps with electrical sparks. I put my arm around Darvish. “Sorry to interrupt your conversation, Darvish, old boy, but I couldn’t take any more talk. It was time for some action.”
Darvish smiles and pulls his hand out of his pocket. “Oh, I think all that talk paid off pretty well,” he says.
He’s holding something in his hand. It is long. It is thin.
It is his spy pen. With built-in ultrasonic recording capability.
He’s caught every word for digital posterity. I’m so proud. Hanging out with me has been good for him.
“You know what?” I say, realization dawning. “I’m starting to think that Haughtry Vain was never even involved in this at all.”
Darvish slaps his palm to his forehead. Clearly, this revelation never even occurred to him.
Good old Darvish. Always two steps behind me.
Talon Smithfield struggles in Kou Kou’s grasp, but it’s obvious that he’s going nowhere. “How did you do that?” he cries at me. “That was an impossible throw!”
I look around at my ghostly teammates and grin.
“I guess I’m just really good at dodgeball,” I answer. “It’s a curse.”
36
When Darvish and I return to school the next day, we are met with far less pomp and circumstance than befits our courageous deeds of derring-do.
There is a deplorable lack of parades.
There is a disturbing absence of cheering.
There is a neglectful dearth of balloons.
Once again, my acts of responsibility, common sense, and valor will go unsung.
All that greets me is the sound of Sami Mulpepper reading her current event. And the internal pride of a job well done.
Sami reads, “‘Middling Zoo Murders Solved under Strange Circumstances.
“‘Zoo staff arrived early this morning to a surprising sight. They found a teenage male being firmly but gently hugged by Kou Kou the panda. At first, officials suspected the victim was a zoo visitor who had unknowingly fallen into the panda cage. However, further investigation revealed a set of missing zoo keys on his person, as well as a recording device containing his confession in the murders of four endangered animals at the Middling Zoo over the last month. The offender has been identified as one Talon Smithfield, former president of an organization known as PUPAE, People United to Protect Animals Everywhere.
“‘The stolen keys belong to one Timothy Creskin, president of the zoo board.’”
“Oh my gosh!” cries Edwin Willoughby. “That’s Holly’s dad!”
I turn my gaze solemnly to Holly Creskin’s empty chair. She has clearly stayed home today. She is a good egg, despite her overuse of perfume and dislike for dogs. I hope she does not suffer too much because of her father’s scandalous predicament.
“Edwin, please don’t interrupt Sami while she’s reading her current event,” says Ms. Yardley.
“Thank you, Ms. Yardley,” coos Sami Mulpepper. She keeps reading.
“‘Mr. Creskin is being questioned for possible connections to the case, but it does not seem that he was involved in Mr. Smithfield’s activities. Meanwhile, Mr. Smithfield faces criminal charges.’”
Sami Mulpepper returns to her desk. “Hi, Rex,” she whispers as she takes her seat.
“Um…” I say. Classic.
Ms. Yardley rises to her feet. “Great job, Sami. Does anyone else have a current event to share?”
If she only knew. If she only had the slightest inkling that heroism sits in her midst, fresh from the battlefield of bravery.
But, sadly, Ms. Yardley has no intuitive appreciation for the congratulatory brouhaha that is due. No sense of occasion. No realization that celebration is in order, with parades and cheering and balloons. No recognition that Darvish, even Darvish, deserves a few balloons of his own.
She only understands the rigors of her lesson plan. Which happens to contain a chilling fact that lets the air right out of my nonexistent balloons.
“Our final research report is due tomorrow,” she says. “That’s you, Rex. We look forward to hearing your oral report.”
I’m unsure if a wicked grin flutters across her face or if it is a trick of the light. Either way, my stomach drops.
Because, in the hurly-burly of saving Middling Falls from the ravages of a deranged animal-murderer, I have forgotten all about my report. And, to use the fraction vernacular of which Ms. Yardley is so fond, I have done
zero-tenths of my research.
I haven’t even picked a topic.
But, as has been my experience, flashes of inspiration often come unbidden. Research may be a necessary evil for the average Joe, but when you have lived the current events, research is just one more needless parlor trick.
I pull out my notebook and begin to write:
THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE
MIDDLING ZOO MURDERS
BY REX DEXTER
37
My oral report is a groundbreaking success.
Modesty prevents me from sharing the details. But I will tell you that my topic is inspired. My stage presence is the stuff of legends. My delivery makes one want to laugh and weep all in the same breath. My ending is innovative and avant-garde, with just a hint of folksy charm to satisfy the common man.
All in all, it is a triumph of unparalleled proportions.
But modesty prevents me from saying more on the subject, so quit asking.
Except that it is truly A+++ material.
Now, stop bringing it up. You’re embarrassing me.
38
“C-plus?!” I exclaim.
It is an affront to nature and an indictment of the educational system in this country. Possibly several countries.
“I thought it was really good, Rex,” says Darvish. He is sitting in my beanbag chair, munching on some type of seeds.
I stare at him. “Out of respect for my unfairly graded condition, can you at least snack on something normal? Cheetos, perhaps?”
The rhino, gorilla, shark, elephant, panda, and chicken are gathered around me like a Greek chorus. They alone seem to understand the injustice that has befallen me.
“She didn’t like it?” asks Sea-Monkey.
I read Ms. Yardley’s notes from my paper. “She says it was delivered with confidence and self-assurance, but the facts themselves seem unknowable by any public record. A for presentation, D minus for research.”
I turn to them, agog. “She thinks I made this stuff up! She can’t handle my insider information!”
Darvish shrugs. “Maybe that’s best. Do you really want it to be widespread knowledge that you’re talking to dead animals? It seems cuckoo to me, and I’m living it alongside you.”
The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter Page 11