Slacker

by Gordon Korman

  That got Cam’s attention. He began peering into windows as the vehicles cruised by. “Teenagers!”

  I frowned. “Don’t they sleep in even later than everybody else?”

  “Don’t you get it?” he rasped. “It’s the Friends of Fuzzy! They must have found out what we’re doing and they’re trying to beat us to it and steal the credit!”

  “Let them,” Melody reasoned. “As long as it stops the bulldozers, who gets credit shouldn’t matter.”

  “You don’t know the Fuzzies! They’re crazy!” He glanced over his shoulder and went suddenly white. “Evasive action!”

  “This isn’t a video game,” Melody began.

  Then I saw it, too—a bright red Dodge Charger, right on our tail and gaining fast. The four of us swerved to the right and jolted up onto the sidewalk. The big sedan roared past, its window open and none other than Jennifer Del Rio hanging out, her long dark hair wild in the wind. She shook her fist and shouted, “This’ll teach you to mess with Farley J. Peachfuzz!”

  Her boyfriend stomped on the accelerator to leave us in the dust, and that was when it happened. A blur of brown fur hustled out into the road from behind a bush. The Charger braked and swerved, but it was too late.

  Thump!

  The right fender struck a glancing blow and sent the unlucky animal skittering back to the curb.

  My eyes got so wide I thought they’d suck in the rest of my face. A horrified scream was torn from my throat.

  “Elvis!”

  “No way!” blurted Cam.

  I was off my bike even before Elvis had stopped rolling. All I could think of was that the poor little guy was dead, and it was our fault. If we’d been quick enough to catch him that day at the Y, we could have put him in his new habitat. And he would have been so happy that he never would have run out in front of a speeding car.

  He wasn’t moving. My eyes blurred with tears. I reached for him, determined that his last experience in life would be love.

  He slapped my hand away with his tail, scuttled across the sidewalk, and disappeared through the tall grass into the woods.

  Give the middle school kids credit. They almost pulled it off.

  We didn’t know until last night what they were planning at the freeway ramp. Joel Osterman’s seventh-grade sister accidentally ate a peanut, and Benadryl is like truth serum for her. She blabbed the whole thing.

  I had to admit it. It was an amazing idea—better than anything I could have come up with. It would have lifted the Positive Action Group out of the toilet and made them legends in this town.

  So of course I had to steal it. It would be easy for us. We had one huge advantage over the little kids: We could drive. All I had to do was sound the alert—a group text here, a tweet there, a posting or two on the Friends of Fuzzy Facebook page. Cam Boxer would never know what hit him.

  And now, a bonus: Not only were we going to save the freeway ramp. We were going to save the beaver, too.

  “I don’t get it, Jen,” Tony panted, running behind me through the trees. “I thought we were stopping bulldozers.”

  “That’s still on,” I tossed over my shoulder. “But first we’re going to rescue that beaver. He can’t be hard to catch after you winged him with the car.”

  Tony sounded rueful. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. What if he’s really hurt?”

  “Not our problem. He’s going in his habitat, dead or alive!”

  I could hear the middle schoolers crashing through the underbrush behind us. I recognized Boxer and that crazy girl from the Y pool, but not the other two. They looked younger—sixth graders, maybe.

  That was the only thing that could sink us—the chance that one of them might get to the rodent before we did. There were four of them and only two of us.

  Not missing a step, I whipped out my phone and dialed Sarah Schusselberg, First Assistant Grand Pal of the Friends of Fuzzy.

  “We’re just passing through downtown,” Sarah reported. “Jen, have you see all these kids? It looks like the whole middle school’s going to show up!”

  “Never mind that,” I puffed. “We just had a beaver sighting.”

  Sarah was all business. “Location?”

  “Ravine Park. I think we’re behind Taco Hut right now, but you can’t depend on that, because we’re moving pretty fast. And we’ve got company. The Boxer kid, for one. And that nut job from the pool.”

  “I’ll spread the word,” she promised.

  The crazy girl was screaming down the forest. “Elvis!” She had a loud voice that was like a cheese grater against my brain. “Elvis, come back!”

  “Will you shut up?” I barked back at her. “If he hears you, he won’t come back! He’ll run a mile!”

  A streak of brown fur flashed through the underbrush before me. But before I could react, the two younger girls dashed past me. Who knew sixth graders could be so fast?

  “Tony!” I snapped.

  “I’m on it!” He took three giant strides, tripped on a root, and landed flat on his face. Those clunky black boots looked cool with his leather jacket, but maybe they weren’t so great for a beaver hunt.

  Our quarry scrambled through some tall grass and took cover among the thick leaves of a fallen tree limb. I caught up with the girls, squeezed my bigger body between them, and kicked away the branch. Behind it cowered a terrified woodchuck. False alarm.

  “There he goes!” called Cam behind me, which started the crazy one screeching again.

  I hauled Tony to his feet and started after Cam.

  He tried to hold me back. “Come on, Jen. You’re a presidential scholar, head cheerleader, in more clubs than anyone in the history of Sycamore High. This time next year, you’ll be at Harvard ! Do you really have to go to war over a beaver?”

  I pulled free of him. “I’m not at Harvard yet !” I exploded. “We need that rodent!”

  At that moment, Sarah came crashing through the woods, followed by a pack of high schoolers. The cavalry!

  “I dressed for a freeway ramp, not a forest,” Sarah complained, zipping her cashmere hoodie up to her neck.

  “Follow me!” I ordered, leading the charge after the little kids.

  It was easy enough to follow them. The nut job was wailing like a police siren. What was she? Elvis’s mother?

  Sarah did a good job spreading the word; pretty soon the Friends of Fuzzy were all over the place. We needed as many searchers as we could get, since a beaver was low and built for hiding in the underbrush.

  I was reaching to pull my right sneaker out of a patch of mud when I bumped heads with a kid who was easily five years younger than me. A middle schooler, definitely, but not one of the original four.

  “How did you get here?” I rasped.

  “I just followed everybody else,” he replied. “Don’t you know Elvis is in the woods somewhere?”

  That was when I looked closely at the many faces peering behind trees and into underbrush. Yeah, the woods teemed with kids searching for the beaver. But at least half of them were from the middle school!

  It was like the YMCA all over again—Friends of Fuzzy versus P.A.G. Except this time, there was no way to blame the whole thing on them and walk away heroes. Today, the only victor would be whoever emerged from these woods carrying the beaver.

  It wasn’t a battle, exactly. But when you had hundreds of people stumbling around a maze of trees and vegetation, things were bound to get ugly. Every squirrel and jackrabbit caused a stampede. Kids from both schools went down, sliding in mud, tripped up by vines, and knocked silly by low branches. Some tumbled over an embankment into a creek, leaving them soaked and shivering, their phones ruined.

  Sarah wound up at the bottom of a hole, and had to be hauled out by the wrestling team. Robby Michaels got his jeans caught on a branch and ripped his pants clean off. One of the middle schoolers climbed a tree for a better view and couldn’t get himself down. That drew a whole crowd, shouting instructions.

  I was so distracted by t
hose idiots that I almost missed it—a high-pitched whining sound, almost like a crying baby.

  What would a baby be doing in the middle of the woods?

  I took a tentative step in the direction of the noise, and there he was, huddled in a thicket of juniper. It was definitely him—big rodent head; brown fur; broad, flat tail.

  The beaver!

  I approached in slow motion, savoring the moment, visions of Harvard Yard dancing in my head. Squatting low, I reached out to grab the little animal from behind.

  “El-vis!”

  Just as my hands closed on the furry hind legs, the nut job came careening into the thicket, grabbing the beaver from the front. For an instant, we froze in pure shock. Then the two of us hauled him clear of the bushes and stood toe-to-toe, staring belligerently at each other.

  “He’s mine!” I growled over the crying baby sound.

  “He needs to see a vet!” she exclaimed urgently. “He got hit by a car!”

  “I know that,” I retorted. “I was in the car that hit him.”

  “He’s injured! He’s barely resisting us!”

  “The Friends of Fuzzy rescued this beaver,” I said through clenched teeth. “Once we get credit for that, he’s all yours and good riddance. Now let go!”

  I yanked hard. The beaver squealed, but the crazy girl held on. I felt a warm trickle on my hands.

  He peed on me!

  No one peed on Jennifer Del Rio. I had a list in my mind of all the things I would never tolerate, and this was right near the top.

  “Tony!” I howled.

  The crazy girl started screaming, “Cam!”

  Well, that did it. The ground shook as every kid in the woods converged on the sound of our yelling and the beaver’s cries. Even the guy who was stuck in the tree got himself down somehow to see what was going on.

  Tony pushed his way through the crowd to stand beside me. The Boxer kid took his place next to the crazy girl.

  “Tony,” I raged, barely able to speak. “This is my beaver! I’m the one he peed on, and he’s mine!”

  Tears were streaming down the nut job’s face. “You can have him,” she quavered. “Just don’t pull him anymore. You’re hurting him, and he’s scared. And you have to promise to take him to a vet. I’ll let go when you do that.”

  “I’m not promising anything!” I spat. “I’m taking him straight to Audra Klincker’s house so that everybody knows the Friends of Fuzzy are heroes!”

  And then Tony, my boyfriend, who was supposed to support me, said a single word: “No.”

  “No? What do you mean ‘no’?”

  I’d never heard his voice so gentle—or so insistent. “Give her the beaver, Jen.”

  “But—” I sputtered. “Harvard—”

  “If Harvard needs this beaver so much, maybe you should pick another school,” Tony said quietly.

  There we were, the crazy girl and me, surrounded by practically every kid in Sycamore, locked in the ultimate standoff. And suddenly, the nut job let go and placed Elvis into my arms. She even took off her jacket and wrapped him up for me.

  I had absolutely no idea what to do or say. She loved him that much that she was willing to lose—in front of everybody she knew—just to keep him safe. It was the most surprising thing I’d ever seen. Maybe next year, at Harvard, one of the professors would be able to explain it to me.

  A few of the kids—from both schools—started clapping.

  Over that sound swelled another, louder noise. It was the grinding roar of heavy machinery.

  Cam was the first to recognize it. “The bulldozers!”

  “Oh, man!” I moaned. “We were so worried about saving the beaver that we forgot about saving the ramp!”

  “The freeway’s just on the other side of the woods!” Tony exclaimed excitedly. “Run!”

  I’d seen some pretty insane things in video games—battle scenes with bullets chirping past my ears; car races so realistic you could almost feel the hot blast of exploding fuel tanks; full-on attacks by cannibals, zombies, aliens, and werewolves; the sickening crunch of an entire planet sucked down a black hole.

  It was nothing compared to the sight of hundreds of kids pounding through the woods in a desperate sprint to make it to the freeway before the bulldozers. We ran flat out, underbrush grabbing our ankles and branches scratching painfully at our faces. We left behind our bikes and skateboards and scooters. The high schoolers abandoned their cars. Nobody thought twice about it. The only thing that mattered was making it to our ramp in time to stop the demolition.

  Part of me was thinking: This isn’t you! You belong on a couch in front of a screen! You shouldn’t be blundering through woods, dodging trees and hurdling bushes. Your only physical strain should be your fingers on a controller! This is crazy!

  And it was crazy. I had no breath, my eyes stung from dripping sweat, my lungs burned with every stride, and I was sure my heart rate had climbed higher than my usual maximum of sixty. But I was running faster than anybody—except maybe String, who was out in front of the pack, bellowing, “Hang in there! The String is coming!”

  I passed Jennifer, who was stumbling along carrying Elvis, and Daphne, who was keeping pace, shouting “Don’t drop him!” I passed Jordan, Kelly, and Felicia, and a little farther ahead, Melody and Katrina. I even passed Xavier, who was galloping full tilt, his huge body bent forward into the wind, his face glistening with perspiration.

  Not far behind the leaders, I pulled even with Pavel and Chuck. Running at top speed over rough ground wasn’t exactly the place for a conversation, but they both nodded in my direction when they saw me.

  “Gotta get there,” I gasped.

  “Gotta do it,” Chuck managed, panting.

  “Gotta,” Pavel agreed.

  It was all the breath any of us could spare.

  Then, amazingly, we began to gain on the leaders—String and some of the high school track stars. Unbelievable. We weren’t athletes; we were gamers, couch potatoes. Yet today we were the Awesome Threesome in a totally new way—the fastest kids in Sycamore.

  When we broke out of the trees, it was sudden and unexpected, almost like a giant curtain had been swept aside to let us through. The sight that met our eyes stopped us dead in our tracks, and we were almost trampled by the herd thundering up behind us.

  There was the demolition crew from the Division of Highways—hard hats, jackhammers, bulldozers, front loaders, and dump trucks to haul away the rubble of what used to be the gateway to our town. There was the ramp, waiting to be demolished.

  But they couldn’t get to it.

  Blocking their way were our parents, our teachers, storekeepers, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, mail carriers, waitresses, and short-order cooks. They were packed onto the ramp, and in front of it on the service road. Mayor Dolinka was there, the town council, Audra Klincker, Mrs. Backward, the head librarian, Dr. LaPierre, Mr. Fan-club, even …

  “Mom and Dad?” Melody blurted, pulling up beside me. “Did you tell them about this?”

  I shook my head in wonder. “Not me.”

  Pavel had a theory. “A few kids must have blabbed. Or they got caught sneaking out and spilled the beans. And the word just spread.”

  Amazing. Every kid in Sycamore went off chasing after Elvis and forgot to save our exit. But it was okay because every adult in Sycamore showed up to save the exit for us.

  We all squeezed onto the ramp, and believe me, it was a miracle we didn’t demolish it ourselves—that’s how many of us were jammed on there. Melody and I pushed over to stand with Mom and Dad.

  “I can’t believe you guys are here!” Melody told them over the noise of the crowd and the heavy machinery.

  “Our exit would have been toast without you!” I added. “Thanks!”

  “We’re the ones who should be thanking you,” my dad said emotionally. “We were so wound up in what was happening to our business that it never even occurred to us to try to do something about it. It took you kids to show us that.
”

  “It took your Positive Action Group,” Mom added to me.

  “I don’t really deserve all the credit for what the P.A.G. does,” I admitted. “Today is something Melody and I kind of came up with together.”

  It was almost like we were holding the Fourth of July on a little strip of pavement. Kids were hanging out with their families. Neighbors were meeting and greeting. Everything was there except the hot dogs. But it was really tense, too, because the whole party was happening in front of enough heavy machinery to plow us under in about fifteen seconds. The foreman of the demolition crew was shouting into his cell phone, asking for instructions, while the workers leaned on shovels and jackhammers, glaring at us.

  Time ticked by, and before we knew it, it wasn’t morning anymore. The workers turned off the trucks and bulldozers. We smelled victory and got really excited, but they were only breaking for lunch. A few of the restaurant employees got food for us, too, and both sides dug in to wait out the afternoon.

  It was actually pretty dull, and I’m sure all the other kids thought so, too, and probably a lot of the adults. Still, for some reason, it never occurred to me to take out my phone and check on my clan. It wasn’t fun, but it felt big. And the fact that the whole town was doing it together made it even bigger.

  It happened just before two thirty. I was half-asleep from boredom and exhaustion, so when the crew started up the machinery again, I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was a scary moment. What if they started driving at us, superslow, inch by inch? Would we have to choose between backing away and getting run over?

  Worried glances passed around the crowd. Would the workers actually do that? Surely they didn’t want to hurt anybody. Dad shoved Melody and me behind him, although how he thought he could stop a bulldozer was beyond me. All around us, parents did the same with their own kids.

  Then, one by one, the trucks, earthmovers, and loaders turned around and drove off down the freeway. We watched the line of road-busting equipment head out of sight. And when the last pickup disappeared from view, the celebration broke out.