Big Game

by Stuart Gibbs

  “That’s all right. That’s okay,” Violet and the cheerleaders chanted supportively. “We’re gonna come back anyway!”

  I was almost to the stands when someone grabbed me from behind.

  It was Xavier Gonzalez. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Summer said you stayed home today to investigate this rhino thing.”

  “I did,” I told him. “But Summer has a lead.”

  “Hey, so do I!”

  “Really? What?”

  “TimJim!”

  “TimJim?” I asked, trying my best not to sound too dismissive.

  “Yeah. I’ve been keeping an eye on them since yesterday, and they’re definitely up to no good. Come see.” Xavier grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the exit.

  I looked back toward Summer, who gave me a “What’s going on?” look. I replied with a shrug and mouthed, “I’ll be back.”

  Our team actually stole the ball and attempted a fast break. One player passed to another, but the throw was off by several feet. It sailed into the stands, where it clocked one of the team moms in the head hard enough to knock her out of her seat.

  Violet and the other cheerleaders grimaced at this. They seemed to be running out of ways to put a positive spin on things.

  The referee blew his whistle, calling a time-out while everyone went to check on the mom.

  I followed Xavier outside. He quickly yanked me behind a bush, then whispered, “TimJim’s over by the cafeteria. I was watching them right before you showed up, and they’re plotting something.”

  “And you think it has to do with the rhino?” I peered through the leaves. TimJim were hunkered down by the garbage bins at the back of the cafeteria. I couldn’t see what they were doing, but they certainly seemed to be plotting. The garbage bins always smelled like a week’s worth of rotten food. The only reason anyone ever hung out near them was when they were trying not to get noticed; that was where the kids who smoked snuck cigarettes. Plus, TimJim kept looking up now and then to case the area.

  “I overheard them talking before school this morning,” Xavier said. “Know what they did last night? Went poaching.”

  “They actually said that?”

  “Yes! Because they’re idiots. They were talking about how they’d snuck onto someone else’s property to try to shoot something. And what happened at FunJungle last night? Someone snuck onto the property and tried to shoot something.”

  “True,” I admitted. “But TimJim’s two people—and only one person snuck into FunJungle last night. Plus, it was a woman.”

  Xavier looked a bit shocked to hear this. “How do you know that?”

  “They have video footage of her from one of the cameras.”

  Xavier suddenly lit up with excitement as he thought of something. “Maybe it’s TimJim’s mom! She’s even worse than they are!”

  “She is?”

  “Oh yeah. How do you think TimJim got to be such jerks? Both their parents are bad news—and always have been. They used to pick on my dad when he went to school here.”

  Through the bushes, either Tim or Jim—I couldn’t be sure which—looked around furtively, then pulled something in a brown bag out from under his jacket. His brother peeked into it and laughed.

  I told Xavier, “Just because their parents are jerks doesn’t mean they tried to kill Rhonda.”

  “They’re poachers,” Xavier told me. “They’ve been busted, like, a hundred times for hunting on other people’s land. And not small stuff, either. They walked right onto Paul Dague’s ranch a couple years back and shot one of his cows. Then they tried to drag it off. If Paul’s dad hadn’t caught them, they’d have made off with a couple hundred pounds of meat.”

  “There’s a big difference between shooting a neighbor’s cow and shooting a rhinoceros.”

  Xavier frowned at me, like he was annoyed I wasn’t getting on board with his theory. “Yeah, a rhino’s worth a lot more than some stupid cow. If their mom was willing to sneak onto someone’s property for only a hundred bucks’ worth of steak, you don’t think she’d be willing to do it for a horn worth half a million dollars?”

  That actually made sense. “I guess. But how would their mom have gotten the horn? Rhonda was locked up in her house.”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize the house was locked. It doesn’t matter whether she had a good plan to steal the horn. What matters is whether she was dumb enough to try to steal it. And TimJim’s mom isn’t any smarter than they are. The Barksdales aren’t exactly a family of rocket scientists.”

  I considered that. I’d been thinking all along that the hunter must have had a plan, but the idea that she was merely bumbling along idiotically actually explained some things. Like why she hadn’t used a silencer the first time. Or why she’d climbed the back fence so close to the camera. “So you think what? That their mom heard the horn was worth a lot and decided to try to get one?”

  “Exactly. Or maybe it’s not about the horn at all. Maybe she only wants to kill a rhino because she’s a horrible person.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Sometimes people do things just to be jerks,” Xavier told me. “Back before I was born, there used to be this tourist attraction near here called Balanced Rock. It was this huge boulder that was perfectly balanced up on the top of Bear Mountain. It took millions of years to form and was really amazing. And then one day some vandals blew it off with dynamite. They ruined the whole thing forever for no good reason. Sometimes stupid people just want to make a mark on the world.”

  I sighed, saddened by this, because I knew Xavier was right. “And you think TimJim’s mom is like that?”

  “Absolutely. If there were only one rhino left in the world, she’d probably shoot it. And she’d probably be proud that she’d made a species go extinct. Maybe I heard TimJim wrong today. Maybe they weren’t saying that they’d gone poaching. Maybe they were talking about their mom. Or who knows? Maybe the whole family went, but their mom was the one who decided to go over the fence while the others stood guard or something. Hey! They’re going!”

  I turned back to peek through the bush. Sure enough, TimJim were now slinking off with their brown paper bag, heading around the back of the gym.

  “C’mon!” Xavier said. “Let’s go see what they’re up to.”

  “Summer’s saving me a seat,” I pointed out. “I told her I’d be right back.”

  Xavier huffed, annoyed. “They’re up to no good right now.”

  “Then we should tell the principal about it.”

  “Mr. Dillnut won’t do anything and you know it. What if this has something to do with the rhino?”

  “Like what?” I asked skeptically.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’re meeting with their mom to plot another attempt.”

  While Xavier had convinced me that Mrs. Barksdale might have been the hunter, I was quite sure TimJim weren’t sneaking off to plot with her right then. Plus, I was getting cold, and I really didn’t want to be tiptoeing around after TimJim when I could have been hanging out with Summer inside. “I’m going back in,” I said.

  “Well, I’m not,” Xavier told me defiantly. “I’m gonna find out what their scheme is.” Before I could protest again, he slunk off after them. He was a little too excited by his own mission; I could hear him humming the James Bond theme as he slipped around the gym in pursuit of them.

  I headed back into the gym. It wasn’t well heated, but it still felt nice after being outside. The game was back under way. The mom who’d been beaned now had an ice pack clutched to her head but seemed to be all right otherwise. The team was still playing terribly, though. The cheerleaders appeared to have given up on saying how good we were. Instead, they were now pleading with the team to try harder. “A tisket, a tasket, we want a basket!” they yelled.

  Up in the stands, Summer had stopped watching the game entirely and was doing her homework. She didn’t even notice as I came back in.

  Violet saw me, though. “Hey, Teddy!”
she said, waving a pom-pom.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  “Where were you today?”

  “Dealing with the rhino.”

  “Oh. Cool.” Our team started bringing the ball down the court, and the other cheerleaders looked to Violet expectantly. She sighed, like she wasn’t thrilled she had to get back to rooting on the team. “Well, I’ll see you after the game!”

  “I’ll be right up there.” I pointed up to Summer in the stands.

  Violet smiled, then got the girls cheering again. “Let’s go, Wildcats. Let’s go!”

  Hondo nodded to me as I climbed up the stands. “You’re missing a great game here,” he said sarcastically.

  Summer looked up, saw me, and returned her attention to finishing an algebra problem. “What was all that about with Xavier?”

  “TimJim’s up to something. And Xavier thinks their mom might be the hunter.”

  I’d expected Summer to not take this seriously. Instead, she cocked an eyebrow, intrigued. “Why?”

  “She has a history of poaching. And apparently, she’s dumb enough to go after the rhino just to do it.”

  Summer nodded. “Yeah. Daddy went to school here with her. He says she and TimJim’s dad were about the two dumbest people he ever met. Everyone always knew they were going to end up together because each of them had only half a brain.”

  “Think she’s worth looking into?”

  “Any lead is worth looking into. I’ll text my father and have him tell Hoenekker.” Summer finished the problem she was working on, then picked up her phone.

  I sat beside her. By this point, it was obvious that the only way our team was going to win the game was if our opponents all came down with food poisoning and had to forfeit. Even our coach wasn’t watching anymore—although he might have only been averting his eyes from the tragedy.

  Violet and the other cheerleaders were still doing their best to put on a good show. Our team actually made a basket, and the girls went wild, whooping and hollering as if we’d won the state championship. Violet ran down the sidelines and did an impressive handspring flip at center court. The fans cheered more loudly for her than they had for the team all game.

  I realized Summer was no longer texting. She was watching Violet intensely, with a look I’d never seen before. I couldn’t quite read it, but it looked like she might have been jealous.

  “Have you ever thought about going out for the squad?” I asked her.

  Summer looked at me, then laughed like this was ridiculous. “Never.”

  “I’m sure you’d make it. Everyone here likes you.”

  “Maybe, but . . . There’s no way. I could never do that stuff.”

  “Well, Violet’s really the only one who does flips and things. The rest of them only cheer.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I could never be a cheerleader, period. Or anything public like that.” There was an unusual tone to Summer’s voice. Normally, she was the most confident, positive person I knew. Now she sounded kind of sad.

  I turned to her, intrigued. “Why not?”

  Down by the court, one of the other cheerleaders—Shannon Butler—attempted the same handspring Violet had done. She didn’t stick the landing quite as well, though. Her feet went out from under her, and she tumbled backward onto her rear end. Violet and the other cheerleaders still clapped for her, though, and Shannon got back to her feet quickly and resumed cheering.

  “That’s why,” Summer told me. “Shannon does something like that and it’s no big deal. Maybe it’s a little embarrassing, and maybe some kids joke about it, but most likely it’s forgotten about in a few minutes. That’s not the way things work with me, though. The whole world knows who I am. If I were a cheerleader and wiped out like that, someone would record it on their phone and stick it on YouTube with a title like ‘Summer McCracken’s Epic Fail,’ and the next thing you know, there’d be a million hits and I’d be the laughingstock of the country.”

  “That wouldn’t happen,” I said supportively, though I actually wondered if it might.

  “It would,” Summer said flatly. “Sooner or later. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t like me simply because I’m me. They’re angry that I’m rich and they’re not, and they assume I must be some kind of spoiled brat and can’t wait for a chance to bring me down. So I have to be careful not to give them any ammunition. If someone in a crowd insults me, I can’t flip out or insult them back like a normal person. I just have to suck it up. If I go shopping, I can’t say anything bad about any of the clothes I try on. If I eat out, I can’t diss the food, even if it stinks. I can’t ride a skateboard or a bike or anything in public, because I might wipe out. And I can’t show up at a public pool in a bathing suit, because every magazine on earth will say I look fat. I can’t have a normal life, because my life isn’t normal.”

  I stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say. I’d always assumed that Summer’s life was nonstop awesomeness—and I knew everyone at school thought so too. And despite the issues she’d just laid out, I knew her life was still better than most people’s. She never went to bed hungry and cold and wondering where her next meal was coming from. But she still had a right to be upset about what she was missing out on. I found myself feeling sorry for her.

  It occurred to me that maybe this was why Summer was so determined to push her boundaries when the public wasn’t around, why she snuck away from her bodyguards when she could—and why she’d been so eager to show me how to swim in the hippo exhibit right after she’d met me. If I needed to be so cautious in public all the time, I’d probably want to blow off steam in private too.

  I was trying to figure out something supportive to say when the fireworks went off.

  They detonated right under the stands at center court. They weren’t big, fancy fireworks, merely little packs of gunpowder that went off one after the other, startling everyone in the gym. Violet and the other cheerleaders shrieked in fear. So did several of the basketball players. The mom who’d been clocked in the head earlier toppled out of her seat and whacked herself in the other temple.

  After all my time tracking down the hunter, I had guns on the brain and thought someone was shooting. I grabbed Summer and yanked her down, using the seats of the stands as cover. Hondo had the same fear, except he went the other way, snapping to his feet with surprising speed, his hand dipping below his sports jacket to the gun he kept holstered there.

  “It was TimJim!” Xavier yelled, racing into the gym. “They set the fireworks off! I saw them!”

  “Where are they?” Coach Redmond demanded.

  Xavier pointed to a door behind the stands. “They went that way!”

  Coach ran out the door, determined to catch TimJim—and probably thankful for an excuse to leave the game. The whole basketball team did the same thing.

  I sat up next to Summer, feeling embarrassed for overreacting. “Sorry.”

  “Why?” she asked. “You were only looking out for me.”

  “I guess that’s what TimJim was plotting,” I said.

  Hondo came over to us, extending a hand to help Summer up. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, then cased the gym. “Thank God this game is finally over. Let’s get Violet and get the heck out of here.”

  TAXIDERMY

  “My aunt and uncle aren’t jerks,” Violet said.

  She was sitting with Summer and me in the back of the McCrackens’ SUV as we headed out to the ranch. I was in the middle, between the girls, while Hondo was up in the front seat with Tran. Violet had changed from her cheerleading uniform into jeans and a sweater. She was obviously thrilled to be in the car with Summer, though she seemed a bit nervous about it too.

  It was strange to see Violet acting self-conscious. Until Summer had transferred to our school, Violet had been the queen there, the girl everyone wanted to be friends with. But despite Summer’s complaints earlier, she was still rich and famous, and now everyone wanted to be friends with he
r. Including Violet.

  “Why would we think they’re jerks?” Summer asked.

  “A lot of the time people just assume they are—without even meeting them,” Violet replied. “Especially people who don’t like hunting. They hear what my aunt and uncle do and figure they must be horrible people. But they’re not. They’re really nice.”

  “Sure,” I said, although the truth was, I had assumed Violet’s relatives were jerks. I couldn’t imagine how anyone nice could possibly run an exotic game ranch for a living. But now I felt like a bit of a jerk myself for making big assumptions.

  Now that she’d cleared the air, Violet seemed relieved and gave us all the background on the ranch. We didn’t even have to question her about it; Violet could talk a mile a minute when she got excited about something. Her family had been raising cattle in the Texas Hill Country since before the Civil War, but that wasn’t as profitable as it used to be. So when her uncle saw that lots of other ranches in Texas were converting from traditional ranching to raising exotic species for hunting, he’d decided to do it too. They still had cattle, but now much of the property was given over to exotics. Violet thought they had at least twenty different species there and more than a thousand different animals. “It’s not quite as many animals as your dad has,” she told Summer. “But we’re getting there! In fact, my family even sold him some antelope for SafariLand.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Summer said. “That’s really cool.”

  Violet beamed at the praise.

  It had never occurred to me to ask where J.J. McCracken had gotten all his animals. I’d simply assumed they had mostly come from zoos. But now I realized that was probably wrong. After all, J.J. had acquired thousands of animals in a very short time, which was a lot for zoos to provide. J.J. wouldn’t have been able to capture that many endangered species in the wild, either. It made much more sense that he’d bought them from exotic animal breeders. Which meant Violet’s claim that these places could help with conservation wasn’t a bunch of hot air.

  We arrived at the entrance to the ranch. It wasn’t very dramatic, merely an iron gate set between two stone pillars along a two-lane back road. It looked like a hundred other ranch entrances we’d passed on the way. The fence along the road was only barbed wire strung between ancient wooden posts.