Poached

  “Summer told me not to. She said it was for emergencies only. I forgot I even knew it until this afternoon.”

  “If you ever use it again, you’ll be in big trouble,” Mom warned.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Mom started to say something else, but Dad put a hand on hers and said, “I’m sure Teddy understands. He was in a tough spot tonight, and frankly, I think he handled himself rather well overall.”

  Mom nodded and gave me an apologetic smile. “I suppose you did, given the circumstances. It’s those bullies who put you in this situation that I really ought to be talking to.” She pounded the kitchen table angrily. “I ought to call their parents right now.”

  “No!” I said, a little too quickly. “That will only make them angrier at me.”

  Mom frowned at this but realized I was right. “Well, we have to do something. This has to stop. And your principal was obviously completely ineffectual against these boys.”

  “I think Mr. Dillnut got me in more trouble with them,” I said.

  Mom sighed. “It’s times like this when I feel a bit too removed from society. After all those years in the bush, I keep thinking humans will behave as nicely toward one another as gorillas do. But they don’t, do they?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “So what do we do now?” Mom looked to Dad for help.

  “You could put itching powder in those guys’ shorts,” he suggested.

  “Jack!” Mom cried, then gave Dad a playful smack on the shoulder. “Don’t go putting bad ideas in Teddy’s head.”

  “Too late,” I said. “I already tried pranking Vance. In fact that’s why he was so mad at me this time.”

  “What’d you do?” Dad asked.

  “I put a snake in his gym bag.”

  Dad stared at me for a moment, then grinned. “That’s my boy,” he said.

  We all went to bed without solving the bully problem. I had a lot of trouble going to sleep, plagued by thoughts of Vance or Large Marge coming after me the next day. Plus, my bedroom was as cold as a meat locker.

  The perk of free housing at FunJungle had sounded great on paper, but in reality it hadn’t turned out so well. We’d known we were only going to live in trailers, but I, at least, had assumed they’d actually be nice trailers. Instead J.J. (who lived in a sprawling, twenty-four-room ranch house) had simply bought a bunch of cheap trailers in bulk. The walls were paper thin, the electricity tended to conk out, and the heaters were so weak that I could often see my breath inside. Despite this, no one ever complained. This was partly because the employees were so committed to their animals that they were usually at FunJungle during all their waking hours—and partly because field biologists have very low standards for living conditions. In the Congo my family had spent more than a decade living in a tent, so for us, simply having a roof counted as a luxury.

  It seemed as though I had just finally fallen asleep when an intermittent buzzing woke me.

  It took me a few seconds to figure out it was my phone. According to my clock it was five thirty in the morning. I sat up groggily, annoyed at whatever jerk had the nerve to call so early, then I checked the caller ID.

  It was Summer McCracken.

  All my aggravation vanished in an instant. In fact I was suddenly thrilled.

  I hadn’t spoken to Summer in months. Unlike me, she didn’t have to attend the closest public school. Being the thirteen-year-old daughter of J.J. McCracken, she attended an elite girls’ prep school in Connecticut.

  Summer was the first friend I’d made in Texas. We’d bonded while investigating Henry the Hippo’s murder. We’d hung out a bit after that, so I’d expected—perhaps a bit naively—that we’d stay in close touch once the school year began. However, once Summer left town, it quickly became evident that she had plenty of other friends to distract her. I had only received the occasional e-mail or text message from her since. And while we’d planned to get together for lunch over Thanksgiving break, that had been derailed when her parents had suddenly decided to take her skiing in Aspen. Not that I could blame her for going.

  I tried not to text Summer too much, wanting her to think I was quite busy myself, even though I wasn’t. On occasion I actually found myself hoping another animal would die under mysterious circumstances so that we’d have an excuse to talk again.

  Given that, I probably should have been more suspicious about why Summer was calling at such a ridiculously early hour. But all I could think about was how nice it would be to hear her voice again.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound like I hadn’t just woken up.

  “Where are you right now?” she asked.

  “Where do you think? I’m in bed. It’s five thirty in the morning.”

  “Well, get up and get dressed. Fast. You need to get out of there.”

  I stayed where I was, thinking Summer was joking. “This isn’t funny.”

  “No, it’s not. Large Marge is coming to arrest you right now. And she’s got some cop from juvenile services with her.”

  I leaped to my feet. “Why? Because I put a plastic arm in the shark tank? That’s not really a crime, is it?”

  “An arm in the shark tank?” Summer suddenly seemed to realize she knew far more than I did about my current situation. “Teddy, they think you stole the koala.”

  Summer might as well have slapped me across the face. I was completely stunned, a hundred questions tumbling around in my head at once. Without even realizing I was doing it, I started yanking clothes on. “Somebody stole Kazoo?”

  “Yes! Last night!”

  “Well, it wasn’t me.”

  “If I thought you’d done it, would I be calling you right now?”

  “No, but . . .” I shook my head, trying to clear the last cobwebs of sleep from my brain. “Why do they think it was me?”

  “Apparently, they have security footage of you going in and out.”

  I winced. There were security cameras everywhere around FunJungle. Thousands of them. “But they couldn’t possibly show me with the koala. I didn’t take him.”

  “They show you with a backpack, I think. Something big enough to put the koala in. And now the koala’s gone—and no one entered the exhibit last night besides you.”

  I did my best to remain calm, though it wasn’t easy. “You’re sure about that?”

  “That’s what my dad says.”

  I was now dressed. My clothes, which I’d simply grabbed off the floor, were completely mismatched. I jammed my feet into a pair of sneakers, grabbed my winter jacket, and exited my bedroom. Our trailer only had four rooms: my bedroom, my parents’, the bathroom, and the kitchen/family room/living room/everything else. Mom and Dad emerged from their bedroom as I came out of mine, obviously roused by my phone call. I hadn’t thought to keep my voice down. Both my parents wore pajamas but were surprisingly alert, given the time.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked. “Is something wrong?”

  The room suddenly lit up as a pair of headlight beams slashed across our windows. I glanced outside and saw two official vehicles approaching in the distance.

  “Very much so,” I said.

  “Who is that?” Mom asked, worry in her voice.

  “The police,” I told her. “Large Marge is bringing them to arrest me. She thinks I stole Kazoo.”

  My parents both gasped at the very thought of this.

  “Summer just told me,” I explained. “I have to get out of here. I’ll stay close, though.”

  Before either Mom or Dad could protest, I banged out the door.

  We lived on the very fringe of civilization. Beyond our front door there was a small patch of grass and then miles of uninterrupted woodland. A herd of white-tailed deer was gathered on the grass. They’d frozen like statues, staring at the approaching cars, but at the sound of my exit they scattered, darting about frantically before melting into the darkness.

  I followed them, ducking into the woods before the headlights could catch me.


  It was freezing outside. My breath clouded the air in front of my face. I pushed deeper into the trees, putting distance between myself and the police. “You still there?” I asked into the phone.

  “Yes,” Summer said. “Sounds like you’re taking my advice.”

  “Marge is practically here,” I told her. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “What would you do without me?” Summer asked, only half teasing.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me. “How’d you even know the police were coming right now?”

  “Because you got me involved.”

  “How?”

  “You used my secret code to break into the koala exhibit.”

  I winced again. I’d forgotten something like that could be tracked. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “You should be. Daddy didn’t know I’d given that to you.”

  I figured I’d run far enough. I scrambled up a cedar tree and peered back through the woods, just in time to see the police vehicles stop in front of our trailer. I tried to tell Summer to be quiet for a moment, but when Summer wanted to tell you something, it was impossible to get a word in.

  “They didn’t realize the koala was missing until about an hour ago,” she was saying. “Some night watchman noticed. He freaked out and called Marge, and then she declared a full-on red alert.”

  Since there weren’t any streetlights around the trailer, the police left their headlights on so they could see the way to our door. I saw four of them silhouetted in the high beams. Marge was easy to pick out, given her girth. A man built like a linebacker with a ten-gallon hat walked beside her, while two humans of slighter build—I couldn’t tell if they were male or female in the dark—hung back by the cars.

  Luckily, I was far enough away that they couldn’t hear Summer on the phone. To be safe, though, I turned the volume down so she was barely audible.

  “The first thing they did was call Daddy,” Summer went on. “He’s in Germany on business. Of course, he flipped when he heard the news. When they told him which code had been used to enter the exhibit, he recognized it and called me.”

  Marge pounded on the door of our trailer. Her fist on the metal rang out like gunshots in the still night air.

  “I didn’t answer right away, seeing as it was crazy early in the a.m. and I had my phone off,” Summer continued. “But I checked my calls when I got up and there were like a hundred from him, so I called back, and by that time park security had looked at the tapes and seen you on them. Daddy said they’d have to arrest you—”

  “Even he thinks I did it?” I asked, worried.

  “He doesn’t want to,” Summer explained. “But he also says video doesn’t lie.”

  My parents opened the trailer door. I couldn’t quite tell from the distance, but it looked like they were pretending that Marge had woken them.

  “Hold on for a bit,” I told Summer. “Marge is with my parents. I want to listen.”

  “Gotcha,” she said.

  Even though there were a dozen trailers near ours housing sleeping FunJungle employees, Marge made no attempt to be quiet. In fact she seemed to be speaking louder than usual, as though she wanted everyone within earshot to know what her business was there. “Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy,” she announced, then nodded to the giant man beside her. “This is Officer Bubba Stackhouse from the Juvenile Services Division of the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office. He’s here to take Teddy into custody for the kidnapping of Kazoo the Koala.”

  My parents were illuminated by the headlights, so I could see them do a solid job of feigning surprise, followed by indignation. “You’re making a mistake,” Mom told Marge. “Teddy didn’t do any such thing.”

  “Oh, he did it all right,” Marge said. “We’ve got it all on video. Caught your boy red-handed. Now, you have thirty seconds to produce your son or we will take him by force.”

  “Teddy’s not here,” Dad said. “He’s having a sleepover at a friend’s house.”

  Marge snorted with disdain. She sounded like a hippo coming up for air. “I don’t believe that for a second. Step aside. We’re coming in.”

  Dad and Mom quickly blocked the doorway with their bodies. “You can’t do that!” Mom protested. “Not without a warrant. This is our private property.”

  “Actually, it’s not.” Marge sounded as though she was enjoying this. “You haven’t paid one red cent for this place. It is officially the property of FunJungle—and as the chief security officer of said park, I have the right to enter any structure I choose whenever I choose. So step aside—or I’ll have Officer Stackhouse here arrest the both of you as well.”

  If I’d actually been in the trailer, Mom and Dad probably would have put up more of a fight, but as it was, they stepped back from the door. “J.J. McCracken is going to hear about this,” Mom warned.

  “Oh, he already knows all about it,” Marge chuckled. She shoved past my parents into the trailer and called out tauntingly, “Teddy! Come out, come out wherever you are!”

  Bubba Stackhouse followed her inside. The trailer groaned under his and Marge’s weight. The other two police officers remained outside. My parents stayed by the door.

  “What’s going on?” Summer asked me.

  “Marge is searching our trailer,” I reported. “Did your father send her?”

  Summer waited a bit too long before answering. “I don’t think so. He likes you, Teddy.”

  “Can you get him to call Marge off, then?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. It’s just that . . .” Summer trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Well, from what I understand, the evidence against you is awfully strong. And you have a history of causing trouble at the park.”

  “I only play pranks!” I snapped. “I’ve never broken the law! In fact, I caught someone who was breaking the law here. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “It should, but you and I both know Marge has a serious bone to pick with you. If all the evidence points to you, she won’t be very motivated to look anywhere else.”

  In the trailer, Marge roared in frustration. Our home was so small she and Bubba had already searched every corner. She stormed back to the door, glaring at my parents. “Where is he?”

  “We told you,” Mom said. “He’s sleeping at a friend’s.”

  “Where?” Marge demanded.

  When Mom and Dad hesitated, Marge told them, “I can have Officer Stackhouse run you in for impeding a police investigation, you know.”

  “I think we have the address somewhere around here,” Dad said. He disappeared into the trailer for a few moments, then came back jotting something on a scrap of paper. “Here you go.”

  Marge greedily snatched the note out of his hand. “If you hear so much as a peep out of Teddy, you’d best report it to me. Otherwise I’ll consider that you’ve aided and abetted a felon.”

  “He’s only accused of being a felon,” Mom shot back. “You haven’t shown us one shred of proof yet.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of proof, all right,” Marge said cheerfully. “I’ll be happy to show it to you once we have your son in custody.” She then hurried toward her car, excited to find and arrest me.

  Officer Stackhouse tipped his hat to my parents, then returned to his vehicle as well. If he’d said anything to them, he’d spoken too softly for me to hear it. The other two officers followed him to the cars.

  Marge had caused a big enough commotion to rouse our neighbors. In every other trailer the lights had come on. Ken Parker, the polar bear expert who lived next door to us, and Mike Matthews, an elephant researcher who lived on the other side, were both on their way over in bathrobes and slippers to see what was going on.

  I waited until Marge and the police were back in their cars and driving away before speaking to Summer again. “So since this crime occurred at FunJungle, Marge is the one in charge of the investigation?”

  “That’s right. FunJungle is technically its own incorporated municipality.”

>   “And since she’s convinced that I’m the thief, she probably won’t look for the real one.”

  “Exactly,” Summer agreed. “You know what this means, Teddy?”

  “Yeah,” I said sadly. “I do.”

  “If you want to prove you’re innocent, you’re gonna have to find the bad guy yourself.”

  FRAMED

  “Absolutely not,” Mom told me. “You are not investigating any more crimes.”

  “But if I don’t, no one else will,” I protested. “Marge is the law here, and all she wants to do is bust me.”

  It was only a few minutes after Marge and the police had driven away. Dad had lied to our neighbors about what Marge had wanted and sent them all home. He’d also lied to Marge: He’d given her a fake address in town where I’d supposedly spent the night, one he’d simply picked at random out of the phone book. We figured it would take half an hour for Marge to discover this and another half hour to get back. In the meantime our trailer would be safe. Dad and I were seated at the kitchen table. Mom was making us breakfast, although I didn’t think I could eat it. My stomach was churning with anxiety.

  “Marge will come around,” Mom said, cracking eggs into a bowl. “J.J. McCracken will force her to. He needs her to find that koala as soon as possible, not waste time with you.”

  “But Summer says all the evidence points toward me,” I protested. “What if that convinces J.J. McCracken, too? What if everyone really thinks I’m the thief?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mom said. “We know you didn’t do it.”

  “You’re my parents,” I argued. “You’re supposed to think I didn’t do it. I’m going to need more proof than that to get Marge off my case.”

  Dad nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  “Jack!” Mom snapped at him.

  “I mean about Marge,” Dad told her, then turned to me. “Though I agree with your mother that you shouldn’t take this on yourself. . . .”

  “Why not?” I pleaded.

  “Because the last time you investigated a crime here, you nearly got yourself killed a couple times over,” Dad said.

  I sat back in my chair sullenly, aware he had a point.