by Dave Barry
“How’re you going to do that?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“We’ll help you,” said Taylor.
“No. Absolutely not. I don’t want either of you to go anywhere near the Bevins, or the zoo. It’s way, way too dangerous. I only came here because I wanted somebody besides me to know what was going on, in case…Just in case. But it’s my problem. You two have to stay out of it.” He looked at Taylor, then me. “You understand?”
We nodded.
Jon looked at his phone. “Okay, it’s late. I need to find somewhere to catch some sleep.”
“You can stay here!” said Taylor.
“Thanks, but no. I’ll find a park or something, get a little sleep. I still have more than twelve hours until the zoo thing. I’ll figure something out.” He tried to smile, but it wasn’t much of a smile.
“You guys go to sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow’s a school day.”
He opened the window and climbed out. He looked back and said, “Thanks for your help, guys. Really.” Then he closed the window and was gone.
Taylor looked at me. “How’s he going to stop them, all by himself?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wyatt, we have to help him.”
“How?”
She stared at the window. “I don’t know.”
“Me, either. And I have to be at school in five hours. So right now I’m going to take his advice and try to get some sleep. You should, too.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess so.”
She opened the door and went into the hall. “Happy Halloween,” she said. She closed the door.
“Yeah,” I said, to nobody. “Happy Halloween.”
You know what’s weird?
What’s weird is getting on a bus and going to school on a Monday morning after you spent the weekend getting accused of stealing and being threatened with jail by the police, then getting visited twice in the middle of the night by a fugitive federal agent who tells you that a supposedly respectable businessman is planning to let some of the world’s deadliest animals loose in a crowd of innocent people.
That’s what’s weird.
All around me on the bus, kids were talking about their weekends, soccer games, homework, Halloween plans—normal human stuff like that. I didn’t talk to anybody until Matt and Victor got on the bus. I told them what Jon thought Bevin was planning to do at the zoo party. It took a while for them to understand what I was saying, and when they did, they freaked out, especially Matt, who said, way too loud, “HE’S GOING TO LET THE MAMBO SNAKE GO?” Which caused everybody to look at us.
“Quiet,” I said. “And it’s mamba snake.”
“I thought it was mambo.”
“That’s a dance, you moron.”
“We have to tell the police,” said Victor.
“Jon tried that.” I said. “They tried to arrest him. He’s hiding.”
“So what’s he going to do?”
“He said he’d try to figure something out.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”
“No.”
“Maybe we can do something.”
“Like what?”
“What if we can stop the trucks?”
“How would we do that?”
“I don’t know yet. But if the trucks can’t leave the Bevin house, the animals can’t get to the zoo. Maybe we could do something to them.”
“Okay,” I said, “except number one, I’m grounded. I have to go straight home after school.”
“Me too,” said Matt.
“Number two, there’s guys over at the Bevin house. And the trucks are in the backyard. They won’t let you just walk in and mess with them.”
Victor looked out the window. “I’ll keep thinking,” he said.
I nodded. I was glad somebody was thinking. I was too tired to do it myself.
When the bus got to school we got off and trudged into the courtyard, heading for the clot of kids we usually hung out with in the morning. Thirty seconds after we got there, Suzana showed up. I figured she’d ignore me, but she walked right over to me.
“Is it true?” she said.
“Is what true?”
“That you went over to Troy and Nick’s house and stole Nick’s Apple watch?”
“No!”
“Then how come I saw you in a video climbing over their wall and going into their house?”
“You saw the video?”
“Troy sent it to me.”
Of course he did.
“Okay,” I said. “I did go to their house. But I didn’t steal that watch.”
“You mean the watch that the police found in your bedroom?”
“I didn’t put it there!”
“Then how did it get there?”
“They put it there! To set me up!”
By now I was shouting, and kids were staring. Suzana was looking at me like I was crazy, which I guess is how I sounded. I tried to make myself calm down. “Listen, Suzana,” I said. “You know me. I’m not crazy. And I’m not a thief. You’re my friend. You know me.”
“I thought I did. But I also saw the video of you in the Bevins’ house. Wyatt, this whole thing you have about Nick and Troy…To be honest, you’ve been acting crazy. I know them. They’re nice guys.”
“No they’re not, Suzana. And you don’t know them. They’re nice to you. But they’re not nice guys, and their dad is a really bad guy. I found some stuff out about him this weekend, and it’s scary. If you just—”
“What’s scary?” said Troy, suddenly appearing between me and Suzana.
“Yeah,” said Nick, coming up behind Troy. “What’s scary?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“No, really,” said Troy. “Tell us about the scary thing.”
All three of them were looking at me, waiting. I could see pity in Suzana’s eyes. She was feeling sorry for me, her former friend turned crazy person.
“Never mind,” I said. I turned around and walked over to where Matt and Victor were standing. Pretty much everybody was watching me. My face felt like it was on fire.
“So, Suzana,” said Troy, loud enough for me to hear. “You coming to the Grove tonight?”
The Grove is Coconut Grove. There’s a massive street party there every Halloween.
“Absolutely,” said Suzana.
“Okay, we’ll meet you there,” said Troy. “Say eight o’clock, in front of CocoWalk?”
“Sounds good,” said Suzana.
“See you then,” said Troy.
As they left, they walked past me. “Hey, Nick,” said Troy. “What time is it?”
“Let me check my expensive Apple watch.” He looked at me. “No, better wait till there’s no thieves around.”
They walked away, smiling big Hollister-face smiles.
I looked at Suzana, thinking maybe I could try to convince her that I wasn’t crazy. She had her back turned to me. She was talking with her hot popular girlfriends.
The bell rang. Everybody started walking to class. I was so weirded out, it took me a few seconds to remember that my first class that day was Human Geography, which sounds like it should be about body parts but is actually not. It’s about stuff humans do on the earth. For example, they form cities, which in Human Geography is called urbanization. That’s what we were studying, and we were supposed to have written five paragraphs about it for homework. Unfortunately for me, I had written zero paragraphs, so the teacher, who, unfortunately for him, is named Mr. Gurk, gave me a zero.
So my day was off to a great start.
Nothing terrible happened in my next couple of classes. Then I had English, which meant I was going to see Suzana again. Mrs. Padmore was sick that day, so we had a substitute teacher. I feel kind of sorry for substitutes because they usually don’t know what’s going on, and kids sometimes take advantage of them. Like, one time, in Trigonometry, we had this substitute who was pretty clueless, even for a substitute. A couple of k
ids actually managed to convince her that we were studying subtraction. She was like, “Really? You’re studying subtraction in ninth grade?” And the kids were like, “Yes! We’re the mathematically disabled class. They didn’t tell you?” So she spent the whole period putting subtraction problems on the board, and we pretended to have a hard time solving them. It was kind of mean, I guess. But it got us a vacation from the hypotenuse.
Anyway, the substitute in English class was the kind of sub—every student’s favorite kind—who just wants to be left alone. We were supposedly studying Romeo and Juliet; and he told us to read Act III quietly to ourselves. Then he propped his head in his hands and, as far as we could tell, went to sleep. Kids started talking, texting, playing games on their phones, doing pretty much anything except reading Act III of Romeo and Juliet. I tried to think about the Bevin situation, but I was really tired. I put my head down on my desk to see if that would help me think.
“Hey.”
I jerked my head up. Suzana was poking my arm. She had switched seats and was now sitting next to me.
“Wake up,” she said.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” I said. “I was thinking.”
“Well you snore when you think.”
“Good to know. Is that why you woke me up?”
“No. I want to talk to you.”
“About how suddenly I’m crazy?”
“Basically, yes. It bothers me, Wyatt. I mean, we’re friends. Or I thought we were. We’ve been through stuff.”
“I know. That’s why I figured you’d at least listen to me.”
She nodded. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Promise you won’t interrupt until I’m done? Even if it seems weird?”
“I promise I won’t interrupt. I can’t promise I’ll believe you.”
So I told her everything, starting with me and Matt sneaking into the Bevins’ house to get Frank back, and ending with Jon’s second visit to my house that morning. She didn’t interrupt, but she frowned a lot, especially when I told her about Jon and what he thought the Bevins were planning to do.
When I was done, she was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “And this Jon guy…You believe him?”
“Yeah.”
“You believe he’s really a federal wildlife agent? Running around tapping on bedroom windows in the middle of the night?”
“I do.”
“Do you have any proof that he’s who he says he is? Did he show you any official ID or anything?”
“No, but—”
“Was he at least wearing a uniform?”
“No.” It didn’t seem like a good time to bring up the Snot House shirt.
“You realize how this sounds, right?” she said.
“How does it sound?”
“It sounds like you’re crazy. It sound like you made up this imaginary guy to excuse stealing the watch. Or, if you didn’t make him up, it sounds like he’s crazy. Or you’re both crazy.”
“Great. Thanks, friend.”
“Seriously, Wyatt. Think about it. You’re asking me to believe that the Bevins, a successful and well-known family in the community, are planning to do this horrible thing that could get innocent people killed. AND you’re asking me to believe that this federal agent knows about it, and he even told the police, and nobody’s doing anything.”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t think that sounds crazy? Seriously, tell me.”
What I wanted to say was, “Okay, fine, don’t believe me. Tomorrow, after there’s been a horrible tragedy at the zoo, I can say I told you so.” And I almost did say that. But then I had another idea.
“Okay,” I said. “If I’m crazy, then there’s nothing dangerous about the zoo party tonight, right?”
“Right.”
“So why don’t you go?”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to meet your new boyfriends Nick and Troy in the Grove tonight, right?”
“They’re not my boyfriends. But yes, we’re meeting in the Grove.”
“Okay, so instead of the Grove, tell them you want to go to the party at the zoo.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To prove I’m crazy. Tell them you’re a big fan of the zoo, and you really want to go and see the Killer Kritters. Say you don’t have a ride. Beg them to take you. Bat your eyelashes. You know how to do it. See what they say. If they say okay, they’ll take you, then I’m crazy. But if they won’t take you, or they say you shouldn’t go, then you have to ask yourself, why not? What are they afraid of? What do they know?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Okay, then. Don’t ask them. Go to the Grove tonight; have fun. Forget about your crazy ex-friend Wyatt and his imaginary Fish and Wildlife agent. But watch the news tomorrow morning. Just to make sure I’m really crazy.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to make sure.” She stood up. “I’m sorry, Wyatt. You need help.”
She went back to her desk. I put my head back down on mine.
“Okay,” said Victor. “I think I have an idea for stopping the trucks.”
Victor, Matt, and I were back on the bus, heading home. All around us kids were talking about their Halloween plans. In Miami, high-school kids usually don’t go trick-or-treating. They roam around in groups, mostly just hanging out but sometimes doing stuff like throwing eggs at people’s houses, which is a Halloween tradition that I think was started by the druids.
“I have an idea, too,” said Matt. “Potatoes.”
“Potatoes?” I said. “To stop the trucks?”
“Yeah,” said Matt. “I saw it on the Internet. You stick a potato in the whaddycallit—tailpipe. Then the motor stops.”
“Are you serious?” I said. “A potato?”
“Actually,” said Victor, “that does work sometimes.”
“It does?” I’m always surprised when Matt is right about something.
“Yeah,” Victor said. “I actually thought about doing it that way. The problem is, you need to really jam the potato into the pipe, or the exhaust pressure blows it right back out when the engine starts. We can’t do that because we can’t get to the trucks when they’re parked in the backyard. We’re going to have to get them when they’re moving.”
“So what’s your idea?”
“Road stars.”
“What’s a road star?”
“It’s a metal thing, with spikes, and the way it’s designed there’s always a spike pointing up. You put it on the road, and when a tire rolls over it, it gets punctured. They’re mainly for police or the military, but sometimes people use them to stop people from driving on their lawns.”
“Great,” I said. “But where do you get road stars?”
“I Googled it, and there’s this chain store called the Spy Cellar. They sell surveillance cameras and stuff like that, but they also have road stars. There’s a store in South Miami.”
“I’ve seen that store,” I said. “In a strip mall on Dixie Highway.”
“Yeah. I’ll ride my bike over there when I get home. It’s nineteen ninety-five for a pack of four. I’ll get a couple of packs.”
“Cool,” said Matt. “Road stars.”
“Wait,” I said. “How is this gonna work? We just stand out in front of the Bevin house, holding road stars, waiting for the trucks? Won’t we be kind of obvious?”
“Not tonight,” said Victor. “That’s the good part. It’s Halloween. There will be kids in the streets all over Bay Estates. We just put on costumes and blend in. We hang around until the trucks come out. Then one of us wanders into the street, so they have to stop. The other two put road stars under the tires. Then the one in front gets out of the way and the trucks roll over the road stars. The whole thing should only take a few seconds.”
Victor had really thought it out. Suddenly this seemed like a real thing that might actually happen: us against the trucks.
Then I remembered something.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m grounded.”
“Oh man, that’s right,” said Matt. “My parents won’t let me out tonight. Especially not tonight.”
Victor looked at me, then Matt, then back at me. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to try to do it alone.”
I tried to picture that.
“No,” I said. “We’ll be there.”
“We will?” said Matt. “How?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we will.”
I stared out my bedroom window, waiting for the sun to finish setting. It was taking forever.
Outside, Halloween had already started. We’d had a couple of early trick-or-treaters, little kids in Frozen princess dresses and Buzz Lightyear costumes who went around the neighborhood with their parents following close behind. Every time the doorbell rang, Csonka would go charging to the front door, barking like a maniac to let us know that the doorbell had rung, which Csonka considered to be the most exciting thing that ever happened in the history of the universe, no matter how many times it happened. To add to the noise level, every now and then a firecracker went off in the distance. Basically every holiday in Miami, including Christmas, involves setting off firecrackers. New Year’s Eve sounds like World War III.
I’d spent the afternoon worrying and texting. I texted Jon four times, telling him what we were planning to do and asking him what was going on. He finally answered me, with three words: busy talk later. I exchanged a bunch of texts with Victor. He told me he went to the Spy Cellar, and the sales guy there wasn’t too happy about selling road stars to a kid, especially on Halloween. But Victor finally talked the guy into selling him one package. So he had four road stars. He told me he figured the trucks would leave the Bevin backyard sometime after dark, so he planned to be outside the Bevin house, wearing a Darth Vader costume, at sunset, which according to him was going to be at seven twenty-eight p.m.
I told him I’d be there. But the truth was, I still didn’t know how I was going to escape from my house. Matt had texted me that his plan was to just sneak out his window. That actually made sense because Matt’s parents are as clueless as he is. There was a good chance they’d never even notice he was gone. My parents were not that clueless. My dad had cut a piece of wood and wedged it in my window frame from the outside so I couldn’t open it from the inside.