Poached (2 page)

I wished I'd had the nerve to stand up to Vance right then and there and tell him what I really thought of him. But my shoulder was already in terrible pain, and Vance wasn't even squeezing that hard yet. I got the sense that if he wanted to, he could snap me like a twig. And yet I still hesitated before giving Vance an answer.

That didn't please him at all. “Trust me on this,” he said. “You don't want to be my enemy. Before I heard about this shark-tank thing, I was about to pound your face in. I'd still be happy to do that.”

“No!” I said desperately, wanting to keep my face the way it was. “I'll do it!”

“Okay, then.” Vance released me and flashed a cruel smile. “See you tomorrow afternoon.”

So that's how I ended up dropping fake body parts into Shark Odyssey.

Vance cornered me right after school the next day. True to his word, he'd obtained the arm of a mannequin—and a foot as well. “The more body parts the better,” he explained. Just in case I'd managed to work up the nerve to say no to
him—which I'd been working on for the past twenty-four hours—he'd brought along two bullies-in-training: Jim and Tim Barksdale. The Barksdales were identical twins in the eighth grade. They were so dumb and mean that everyone, even their parents, had trouble telling them apart. Since they were rarely without each other, everyone simply called them TimJim.

Vance had hidden the mannequin parts in a large backpack, which he insisted I take with me on the school bus. “Don't even go home,” he threatened. “Take it right to the sharks. We'll be waiting for you there. If you try to chicken out—or tip off security—we'll come find you.”

“And then maybe we'll feed
you
to the sharks,” either Tim or Jim said.

The boys all laughed at this.

I felt like throwing up, but I didn't really see that I had a choice. So I left my regular backpack in my locker, took my homework and Vance's backpack, and hopped onto the school bus. Xavier, who rode the same bus as me, volunteered to come to Shark Odyssey as moral support—although I suspected he was actually more interested in getting to sneak into FunJungle the back way with me. “Thanks,” I told him, “but I should probably do this alone. Maybe I can trick Vance into doing it himself and get him busted for it.”

“I wouldn't do that,” Xavier warned. “If Vance catches on, it'll only make him angrier at you.”

“He won't catch on,” I said. “He's a moron. The guy's flunked eighth grade twice.”

Xavier shook his head. “Vance didn't flunk because he's stupid. He flunked because he's lazy. In fact, Vance is smarter than most people realize. If he put as much thought into studying as he does into being cruel and mean, he'd be graduating college by now.”

I thought back to my many nasty encounters with Vance and realized Xavier was right. Vance was actually quite clever; he just used his gifts for evil. For example, he knew how to make his own cherry bombs with chemicals he'd pilfered from the science lab. “So what should I do?” I asked.

“Pull the prank as fast as possible,” Xavier advised, “and pray you don't get caught.”

My bus stop was the last one, as FunJungle was located several miles from town. Technically it wasn't located in
any
school district; a special exemption had been made for me, the only child living there, to attend Lyndon B. Johnson.

FunJungle was so big it actually qualified as its own city. The park had been built by J.J. McCracken, a local billionaire. He claimed he'd done it for his daughter, Summer—but the fact that 175 million people visited zoos in America every year had certainly influenced him as well. FunJungle
was officially a zoo—the world's biggest, by far—though, to attract tourists, it was also part theme park. There were thrill rides, stage shows, themed hotels, and plenty of innovative exhibits, like a massive African habitat where you could go on a safari and several pools where you could swim with dolphins. Despite the gimmicks, however, FunJungle was committed to providing top-quality care for its animals. J.J. had hired lots of distinguished biologists (like my mother) and had shelled out big bucks to make the animal exhibits state-of-the-art. The whole park was nearly ten miles square, with its own police department, fire station, and hospital. (Technically it was an
animal
hospital, but it was nicer than most human hospitals and had a physician on staff for any FunJungle employees who got sick.)

I didn't really live at FunJungle per se. There was a trailer park behind the safari area that served as free housing for the distinguished biologists and their families. As Vance had ordered, I didn't go home once the bus dropped me off. But then I never did. There was no point in sitting in our trailer all by myself. Not when Mom's office was nice and cozy and had windows that looked into the gorilla exhibit. Many days I went straight there to do my homework, but if anything interesting was happening at FunJungle—and there often was—I'd go there instead. Thus Mom didn't really expect me to show up at any specific time. And as for Dad, he was
generally roaming the park taking pictures—if he was even at the park. His contract allowed him to accept freelance jobs as well. He'd just returned from photographing anacondas in the Amazon for
National Geographic
a few days earlier.

I entered the park through the rear employee entry booth, which was next to the employee parking lot and the trailer park. Darlene, the guard posted inside, barely gave me a glance as I entered. She was watching a downloaded movie on her iPhone, which was probably a violation of sixteen different security directives, but on that day I didn't care. I didn't want any scrutiny.

The entry booth wasn't much bigger than a storage closet. On one side a door led in from employee parking. On the other side a door led into FunJungle. Darlene sat between them next to a metal detector. “Hey, Teddy, how was school?” she asked.

“Same as usual.” I set the backpack down by Darlene, passed through the metal detector, and grabbed the pack again without giving her the chance to rifle through it. Not that she tried. Darlene hadn't examined my things once in the last six months. However, she did stare at the pack a little bit longer than usual.

“That new?” she asked.

“Yeah. Mom just got it for me.”

“It's awful big.”

“They give lots of homework at my school,” I explained.

“Yuck.” Darlene made a face of disgust, then returned to her movie.

I exited into FunJungle and made a beeline for Shark Odyssey.

The rear employee entrance was on the opposite side of the park from the main gates, hidden behind a thicket of trees so that tourists wouldn't notice it. A narrow path brought me out onto Adventure Road, the main route through the park, right between Carnivore Canyon and the Land Down Under.

The park was eerily empty. During the summer, capacity crowds had come every day and Adventure Road had been as crowded as a Manhattan sidewalk. But now the tourists were few and far between. The reason, everyone claimed, was the weather, which had been far worse that year than anyone had expected.

The main reason J.J. McCracken had built FunJungle in the Texas Hill Country was that it was supposed to be warm all the time. This would be good for the animals, most of which came from warm climates, and better for the tourists, who would theoretically flock there year-round. (This was the same reason that Disney and Universal Studios had built their theme parks in Southern California and Florida.) Unfortunately, this particular winter had been the nastiest
anyone could remember. Ever since mid-November, a freak cold front had stalled over the Hill Country, pelting the park with an incredible array of horrible weather. There had been hail, freezing rain, record cold temperatures, and even a few tornadoes. (Thankfully, these had all been quite small and done little damage, although one had uprooted a jungle gym in the Play Zone and flung it into the World of Reptiles.)

Thousands of guests who'd booked for Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays had canceled their FunJungle travel plans. This was terrible luck for the park, which had finally rebounded from its previous crisis, the murder of its mascot, Henry the Hippo, that summer. If anything, this was worse. Henry's death had at least sparked interest in the park; tourists had streamed in to see the notorious murder site. But few people had any interest in spending their vacations shivering in a sleet storm, staring at animal paddocks that were empty because the animals themselves had had the sense to go inside.

The stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas should have been a low-tourism time anyhow, but now it was far worse than expected. So J.J. McCracken had resorted to a few desperate moves to lure people to the park. The first was to drastically slash ticket prices.

The biggest deal FunJungle now offered was on annual passes. For only five dollars more than the cost of one visit,
people could upgrade their FunJungle FunPass and come for free all year-round. McCracken's idea was that the park could make back the money by gouging repeat visitors for expensive food and park merchandise—although most people quickly caught on to this and started smuggling in their own lunches. However, virtually everyone within a fifty-mile radius had bought the passes. FunJungle, no matter what the weather, was still the most exciting thing to happen in that area in decades, and the discount deal was simply too good to pass up.

Vance Jessup and TimJim had annual passes. And at fifteen, Vance had his learner's driving permit. This meant he was only supposed to drive with an adult in the car, but he drove himself all the time anyhow—and since he looked like an adult, the police never stopped him. The boys had all come to FunJungle directly from school and were waiting inside Shark Odyssey for me.

Normally, Shark Odyssey was one of the most crowded exhibits at FunJungle. In the summer there had often been hour-long waits to get inside. Now almost no one was there. It wasn't hard to spot Vance and TimJim in the sparse crowd.

Shark Odyssey was designed to display its inhabitants from many different angles. You began at the top of the massive three-story tank, from which you could look down into the water and watch the sharks from above. From there
you moved down a long ramp that spiraled around the tank, allowing you to see the sharks from the side. And finally you ended up in the big glass tube with sharks swimming all around you.

Vance and TimJim were at the first viewpoint, above the surface of the tank. Vance checked his watch as I approached. “Took you long enough,” he groused. “I figured you'd chickened out. We were about to come looking for you.”

“I got here as fast as I could,” I said. “The bus has a lot of stops to make before mine.”

“Whatever,” Vance said dismissively, as if this explanation didn't make sense. “We've waited long enough. Security's already started to pay attention to us.”

“How so?” I asked, trying to hide my concern.

“Some big woman guard with a ton of attitude's been giving us the stink eye,” Vance explained.

Large Marge
, I thought.
Of course
. Marge had been a constant thorn in my side since I'd come to FunJungle; she'd always been far more concerned with busting me rather than catching any park guests disobeying the rules. Originally this had been a mere annoyance, as Marge was only a grunt in the security force, but after she'd helped catch Henry the Hippo's murderer, she'd been promoted to head of park security. In truth,
I'd
done almost all the work catching the killer, with some help from Summer McCracken. I'd found all the
leads, taken all the risks, and finally solved the crime. All Marge had done was punch the bad guy as he was trying to escape. But she'd done that right in front of J.J. McCracken, who'd been impressed and promoted her. Now Marge had an entire security force she could order to keep an eye on me—although she still preferred to try to catch me red-handed herself.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Vance admitted. “She came over a few minutes ago and warned us not to cause any trouble, but then someone called her on her radio and she took off.”

“Why'd she think you were going to cause trouble?” I asked.

“What do I look like, a mind reader?” Vance demanded. “She was just being a jerk.”

“Yeah,” either Tim or Jim muttered. “All we did was spit in the shark tank.”

I turned on Vance, unable to control my annoyance. “You spit in the shark tank?”

“What's it matter?” Vance asked. “It's not like it'll hurt the sharks or anything. They live in water—and that's all spit is.”

I tamped down the urge to call Vince a moron. Spit
isn't
just water. It carries all sorts of diseases, which could be spread to the sharks, for which reason there were dozens of signs posted around the shark tank telling people not to spit
into it. The boys had blatantly broken park rules, getting Marge's attention.