Big Game (4 page)

Not that I'd have been allowed to help anyhow. Chief Hoenekker didn't seem to want anyone who wasn't an official member of his security forces involved in the investigation, and my parents wanted me to keep my distance too. “The last two times you've investigated crimes at FunJungle, you've ended up in serious danger,” Mom explained.

“But I survived,” I argued. “
And
I solved the crimes.”

“Chief Hoenekker's a professional,” Mom replied. “Let someone else face the danger for once.”

And so, at eight a.m., my parents loaded me onto the bus and I set off for Lyndon B. Johnson Middle School.

That didn't mean I left the troubles at FunJungle behind, though. The first thing Xavier Gonzalez, my best friend, said when he got on the bus was, “Why'd those elephants stampede this morning?” Xavier was a budding biologist and a FunJungle fanatic; he knew almost as much about animals as I did.

“You heard about that?” I asked, surprised. “How?”

“It's all over the news.” Xavier slid into the seat next to me. “Pete Thwacker was being interviewed.”

This was surprising to me. Pete was the head of public relations at FunJungle. He went on television a lot, but usually to
deny
that bad things had happened.

“I thought Pete would try to cover that story up,” I said.

“It's an elephant stampede!” Xavier exclaimed. “They trampled the Gorilla Grill! You can't cover that up!”

“That doesn't mean Pete wouldn't
try
,” I countered.

“Well, he wasn't telling the
whole
story,” Xavier said. “Or at least, I don't think he was. He said the elephants stampeded because they were frightened by a mouse, but that's something that only happens in cartoons, right?”

I groaned. “Right.” Even though Pete was being strangely open about the stampede, it seemed he was still trying to keep the fact that someone had shot at Rhonda a secret. Thus the mouse story. Pete probably thought it was true that elephants were afraid of mice; despite working at the world's biggest zoo, he didn't know squat about animals. In previous interviews, he'd mistakenly claimed that dolphins were fish (they're mammals), that chimpanzees were monkeys (they're apes), and that woolly bears were bears (they're caterpillars). His real talent was looking good on television.

“So what
did
scare the elephants?” Xavier asked.

“I don't know,” I lied. If Pete was keeping the gunshot a secret, then I figured I'd better keep quiet about it myself.

“You're lying,” Xavier said accusingly. “Knowing you, you were probably there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because you walk with the elephants every morning. And besides, whenever anything crazy happens at FunJungle, you're always there.”

“That's not true.”

Xavier ticked things off on his fingers. “You were there when Henry died, when the mamba got out, when the tiger escaped, when the shark tank collapsed . . .”

“Okay,” I admitted. “I've been there for a lot of crazy stuff. But I wasn't there this time.”

Xavier pouted, turning away from me. “I thought you were my friend.”

“You know I am.”

“Friends don't keep secrets from each other.”

I sighed. The truth was, I
wanted
to tell Xavier the truth. I wanted to discuss what was going on with Rhonda with someone. But it would have been nearly impossible to do that on the bus without someone else overhearing, and once word got out that somebody had tried to shoot Rhonda, it would spread like crazy through the school. Then the parents would find out and share the news, and pretty soon the entire country would know about it and I'd end up in trouble for not keeping my mouth shut. So I tried to change the subject and talk about our math homework. Xavier wouldn't take the bait, though. He spent the rest of the ride to school pretending to read a book, making a point of ignoring me.

It turned out, I could have saved myself all the trouble. Because Summer McCracken accosted me the first chance she got. Summer already knew about Rhonda because her father had been informed and Summer had been there when he got the news. She'd already texted me a dozen times that morning, wanting to know more, and I'd shared the little information I had, but that wasn't enough. Since Summer was a grade ahead of me, we didn't see each other until lunchtime. The moment I walked into the cafeteria, she ambushed me. “So, who do you think tried to shoot Rhonda?”

I cased the room to see if anyone was watching us. Of course, almost everyone was. Summer was famous, even though all she'd ever done was be born rich, and the whole school was always riveted to her every move. Including the teachers. It didn't help that Summer always wore pink from head to toe and had brilliantly blond hair, so she stuck out in any crowd like a flamingo surrounded by penguins. Plus, she had bodyguards. Today, her newest one, a hulking mass of muscle named Hondo, was tailing her. Luckily, it didn't seem that anyone had been close enough to overhear her.

I headed for our usual table, keeping my voice as low as I could. “I don't think we should talk about this here.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm pretty sure your dad wants it to be a secret.”

“That doesn't mean it
should
be one. If one of our animals is in danger, the public ought to know.”

“Know about what?” Xavier asked, dropping in beside us.

“Nothing,” I told him.

“Someone tried to shoot Rhonda this morning,” Summer said.

Xavier's jaw dropped open so wide, he looked like an angler fish. “Is she okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “The shooter missed.”

Xavier scowled suddenly, remembering he was supposed to be angry at me. “I knew you were lying about something this morning! Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because it's supposed to be a secret,” I said, more to Summer than Xavier, as we arrived at our table.

Violet Grace was already seated there, along with my friends Dash Alexander and Ethan Sokol and half a dozen other kids. “What's supposed to be a secret?” Violet asked.

“Someone tried to kill Rhonda Rhino,” Xavier replied.

“Oh my God!” Violet gasped, horrified. “Is she one of the sixth graders?”

Not everyone at school knew the names of the animals at FunJungle as well as Summer, Xavier, and I did.

“No,” Xavier explained. “She's a real rhino. At FunJungle.”

Our friends were relieved to hear that someone wasn't trying to kill our fellow students and extremely concerned about the rhino.

Those days I always sat at the center table in the cafeteria, along with the athletes, like Dash and Ethan; the cheerleaders, like Violet; and a couple of kids who weren't either, like Summer and Xavier. The group was known to most of the other students as the Royals, because they seemed cooler than everyone else, but now that I'd become friends with them, I had trouble thinking of them that way. For the most part, they seemed like all the other kids in middle school, with the same concerns and worries.

The only person who was really different was Summer. Although she'd decided to transfer from boarding school so she could have a “normal education,” she hadn't completely embraced everything at public school. Lunch, for example. In her defense, the cafeteria food was disgusting, but while I avoided eating it by bringing a lunch from home, Summer had her staff deliver a hot meal to her every day. Summer didn't want to appear too privileged, so she had her staff put the lunch in a plain brown bag, but she wasn't fooling anyone.

“What happened with the rhino?” Dash asked Summer as she and I sat down. Hondo hovered a respectful distance away.

Summer shrugged. “Ask Teddy. He's the one who was at the crime scene.”

Everyone's gaze shifted to me.

“I knew it!” Xavier cried. “Every time something crazy happens, you're there!”

“We're not supposed to talk about this,” I said.

I was pelted with wadded-up napkins in response. “C'mon!” Ethan taunted. “Don't be a dork!”

Several people echoed this. I shot a disgruntled look at Summer, but she avoided my gaze and dug into her meal. It was some kind of steak with fancy gravy, steamed potatoes, and sautéed green beans. She had a homemade napoleon for dessert. My tuna sandwich and carrot sticks looked pathetic in comparison.

I gave in to peer pressure. I didn't want to be a dork, and if I didn't say anything, Summer probably would have told everyone anyhow. “I'll tell you, but you all have to keep quiet about this, okay? It doesn't go any further than this table.”

Everyone nodded eagerly and swore they wouldn't spread the word, crossing their hearts and zipping their lips.

“I really don't know that much,” I reported. “Someone shot at Rhonda while she was inside her house in SafariLand this morning. She wasn't hurt, though. The bullet missed her and hit the wall.” I purposely left out the parts about Rhonda being pregnant and the shot having been fired from inside the park. Thankfully, Summer either didn't know this information herself—or she realized it shouldn't be shared and didn't correct me.

“Did this happen while the elephants were stampeding?” Dash asked.

“It's what
caused
the stampede,” I explained. “The elephants heard the gun and freaked out.”

“They went right through the Gorilla Grill,” Summer reported. “The whole place is trashed.”

“Aw, man.” Ethan groaned. “That's the best place to eat at FunJungle.”

Violet shook her head sadly. “Why would someone try to kill the rhino?”

“Probably for the same reason people kill them in the wild,” Xavier said, taking a bite of his sandwich. “For their horns. A lot of people think powdered rhino horn cures cancer—even though it's only made of keratin, which is basically the same stuff as our fingernails. They're willing to pay tons of money for it. Rhino horns are actually worth more per ounce than gold.”

Several people gasped in surprise at this—although Violet didn't. “I know all about the poaching,” she said. “My parents donate to the International Rhino Foundation. But the rhinos in the zoo are surrounded by walls and fences and stuff. Even if you can shoot one, that doesn't mean you can get its horn afterward, right?” She looked to me for confirmation.

“Right,” I agreed. “Rhonda was locked inside her house when the shot was fired. There's a keypad entry to get inside the building—and
that's
inside SafariLand, which has a different keypad at the gates. So stealing the horn from there would have been almost impossible.”

“Then why would someone shoot Rhonda?” Violet repeated.

There was a moment of silence while everyone mulled that over. Then Ethan said, “Sometimes people like shooting things just to shoot them.”

Summer laid down her silverware, looking disgusted. “You mean they do it to be cruel?”

“That's probably not the way
they
think of it,” Ethan explained. “It's more like, sometimes around here, guys go out with guns looking for stuff to shoot. Rabbits and birds and such. Not to eat or anything. It's only for fun.”

“It doesn't
sound
fun,” Summer replied. “It sounds horrible.”

Several of the cheerleaders chimed in agreement.

“Hey, I've never done it,” Ethan said quickly. “When I hunt, it's only for ducks or deer, and we eat what we shoot. I'm only saying there are other people who aren't like that. And maybe, if someone thought it was cool to shoot a rabbit for fun, they'd think it was
really
cool to shoot a rhino.”

Everyone nodded sadly. As distasteful as the idea was, I had to admit it made more sense than someone trying to poach Rhonda for her horn when the horn would be impossible to recover. “Do you know any of these people who like to shoot things for fun?” I asked.

Ethan sighed. “Lots of people do it. Half the people in town hunt, and I'll bet plenty of them have shot something just to do it at least once.”

“Even kids do it sometimes,” Dash added. “They get a new BB gun for Christmas, and the first thing they do is go out in the woods looking for snakes or blue jays.”

“That's disgusting,” Summer said. “Why would anyone ever want to kill anything?”

“You're eating a steak!” Ethan exclaimed. “Where do you think that came from? You think the cow committed suicide?”

Summer's cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “That's different.”

“Not really,” Ethan shot back.

“Vance Jessup used to shoot things for fun,” Xavier said quickly, before the argument got out of hand. “All the time. He was always carrying a rifle around in the woods.”

“Maybe,” Violet said. “But Vance is locked up in juvenile hall right now for stealing the koala, thanks to Teddy. So I don't think he's the one who shot at Rhonda.”

“I know,” Xavier replied. “But Vance almost never did anything without TimJim, and they're still free.”

TimJim was actually two people—the Barksdale twins—but they were almost always together and no one could tell them apart, so everyone just called them TimJim. Even their parents. Back when Vance Jessup had been bullying anyone he could, TimJim had been his accomplices. Now that Vance was gone, they didn't bully nearly as much, but they weren't exactly angels, either.

I glanced over my shoulder at them. They were sitting in a corner of the cafeteria, taking the baloney from their sandwiches and throwing it at the ceiling, then laughing when it stuck.

“Those guys are so dumb, they need to team up to count to twenty,” Summer said dismissively. “You think they're smart enough to go after a rhino?”

“You don't
need
to be smart to shoot at a rhino,” Xavier replied. “All you need is a gun.”