by Bryan Chick
When the students broke for recess two hours later, Ella took her backpack. Outside, the scouts headed toward the Monster Dome, avoiding the puddles left behind by the morning storm. On the climber’s steel bars, a bunch of second graders were hanging upside down, their faces looking like turnips, red and swollen. The scouts gathered in a quiet area far behind the action.
Noah gestured toward Ella’s backpack. “Everything okay so far?”
Ella zipped open her bag. P-Dog poked out his snout and gave the playground air a curious sniff, looking no worse for wear. Ella quickly palmed his head and pushed him back inside. “Sorry, P,” she said as she sealed the bag.
“I just thought of something,” Richie said. “What if P-Dog has to go to the bathroom?” When the scouts gave him blank stares, he felt the need to elaborate. “You know … the number two type.”
Ella said, “Then I guess things are going to get a little stinky.”
For the rest of recess, the scouts listened again to Ella tell her story of the previous night. Despite all they’d been through with the Secret Zoo, it still seemed unreal—DeGraff in her front yard, Solana and the guards chasing him down their streets. When the bell rang, the four friends merged into a crowd of children headed indoors. In the hallways, sounds echoed off the steel lockers and concrete walls. Ella made her way into class and slipped her backpack under her desk once more. She felt the bag shift as P-Dog squirmed into a new position.
Once everyone had settled in at their desks, Mrs. Simons started talking about something. Ella couldn’t pay attention. Like a sports team with a narrow lead, she only cared about beating the clock.
When the class was dismissed for lunch, Ella jumped from her desk and scooped up the backpack. She followed Megan down to the cafeteria line, paid two dollars for a slimy concoction involving noodles and clumpy gravy, then took a seat beside Richie and Noah, where she put her bag on the table beside her tray.
Then, not a minute later, the worst thing that could happen happened.
CHAPTER 6
WIDE WALT ARRIVES
“What’s up, dorks.”
The voice, deep and menacing, had come from Wide Walter White, the worst bully in Clarksville Elementary. From between two long rows of tables, Walt strutted toward the scouts, his elbows batting the heads of a few seated students. Dave and Doug, his two cronies, followed and glared all around, daring anyone to attempt eye contact.
“Great …” Megan groaned as she steered her attention back to her tray. “Here comes bonehead.”
Walt continued toward them, his wide shoulders swaying. When one student was struck by Walt’s elbow, his glasses fell off and plopped into his wet pile of noodles. When another student was bumped, his spork missed his mouth and instead jabbed his ear. Noah glanced around and saw there wasn’t a single adult in sight.
“The Action Dorks,” Walt slurred, as if he were talking around a mouthful of pebbles. When he neared the scouts, his gaze fell to Ella’s backpack. “What’s in the bag?”
Noah watched his friends tense up. It was Ella who answered—a bit too quickly and defensively, Noah thought.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? What kind of an idiot walks around carrying a bag of nothing?” Dave and Doug nodded once, twice, three times. Noah thought they looked like bobble heads, the kind you stick on the dashboard of a car.
“Walt …” Ella said, “your head is a bag of nothing and you still carry it around.”
Walt’s eyes opened so big that Noah could actually see their roundness.
“Talk a walk, White,” Ella said. “You’re blocking our light, you gargantuan oaf.”
Walt’s back stiffened. He studied the nearby students to calculate how many had witnessed the insult. Then he slowly drew down his eyelids and leaned so close to Ella that she could have puckered up and planted a kiss on his lips.
“What—did—you—just—say?”
Ella locked her stare on his. A fourth grader at the next table gasped. Another student began to whimper.
“Okay,” Walt said with a sneer. “I’ll walk. But not without this.” With a clean jerk of his arm, he seized Ella’s backpack and slung it over his shoulder.
The scouts jumped up. Noah reached across the table, spilling his chocolate milk. Ella swiped at her pack and missed, her fingertips grazing Walt’s shirt.
“Whooaaa!” Walt said, his voice quivering with laughter. “What do you got in this thing?”
“Give it back, Walt!” Megan shouted. “Give it back now!”
“Or what? What are you twerps going to do?”
Ella swiped at her backpack a second time, missing completely. Walt jumped back and allowed his friends to step in front of him like a shield. When Noah again reached across the table, Walt snickered. He juggled his stare between Noah and Ella, saying, “Maaaan … whatever you dorks got in here, it must be good.” He fumbled for the zipper.
Ella lunged forward, but Walt’s cronies held her back. She reached around Doug, her open hand sweeping through the air. “Let—go—of—me!” she said, her words snapping out one at a time.
“Get your hands off her!” Richie hollered. He reached around Ella and shoved Doug, who didn’t budge.
Just as Noah was about to yell for help, Walt unzipped the backpack and, without looking, plunged his hand inside. He immediately squealed, dropped the bag to the floor, and stared with wide eyes at several dots of blood on his finger.
Ella reached around the legs of Walt’s friends and snatched up her pack. She pitched it across the table into the open arms of Noah, who zipped it, then tossed it over to Megan, who was farthest from Walt.
“You freak!” Walt poked his finger into his mouth to suck off the blood, then pulled it back out. “What the heck’s in that thing?”
Dave and Doug backed away from Ella until they bumped against Walt.
“Not telling,” Ella said. “But for fifty bucks, you can have the antidote.”
Walt’s eyes widened with worry. It was obvious he believed her, at least a little.
From across the cafeteria, a voice rang out: “White!”
A hundred heads turned, and the room fell to silence. Standing at the end of the tables was Mr. Kershen, the toughest teacher in Clarksville Elementary. He marched between the benches and stopped at the scene, his hands propped on his hips.
“You guys haven’t learned to get along yet?”
Walt uncorked his finger from his mouth with a slight popping sound. He shook his bleeding fingertip toward Ella and said, “That freak … she’s got something in her bag! Something that—”
“You mind telling me what you were doing with her backpack?”
Walt’s eyes shifted as he searched for a good lie. “I … I thought she took my library book.”
Mr. Kershen’s face fell in a frown. He hooked his finger inside his shirt collar and pulled it away from his neck. “You got to be kidding me.” As he spoke, his mustache rolled like a wounded caterpillar. “White—the last time you checked out a book it was a movie.”
“But … Mr. Kershen … I …”
“C’mon …” He grabbed Walt’s arm and led him down the aisle between the tables. “To the principal’s office.”
Walt’s friends, suddenly unsure about everything, dashed out of sight.
The scouts dropped into their seats and Megan slid the backpack over to Ella. Within seconds the normal cafeteria activity resumed. Among the chatter of the students, Richie found it safe to talk.
“‘Gargantuan oaf’?” he said to Ella. “Where in the world did that come from?”
Ella shrugged.“I guess stress brings out my vocabulary.”
Noah turned and watched Mr. Kershen escort Walt from the cafeteria. This was the third time in two years that Walt had gotten in trouble after an altercation with the scouts.
The thought made Noah very nervous.
CHAPTER 7
RETRIEVING RICHIE
When the final bell sounded that day, stude
nts poured out of their classrooms, running, hollering, and laughing. The twang of flimsy locker doors filled the air, and a few wads of paper sailed overhead. As Noah and Richie headed through the commotion, they kept a careful watch for Wide Walt. They’d learned that Walt hadn’t been sent home after the incident in the cafeteria. This meant he could be prowling the halls, looking to retaliate.
Noah squirmed through the students to get to his locker, and Richie continued down the hall to his own. After spinning through his combination, Noah opened the door and pulled out his jacket. Megan and Ella approached, their coats and backpacks already on. Ella was wearing her pink earmuffs and Megan her fleece headband.
“We ready to roll?” Ella asked as she pulled her gloves tight.
Noah nodded. He slipped on his jacket and his backpack, then closed his locker. “P-Dog okay?”
“I guess. I can feel him moving around.”
Walt and his two cronies suddenly charged past on their way to the main entrance. Walt was laughing and gleefully pushing kids aside.
“What’s that thug so happy about?” Ella asked. “He finally learn the alphabet?”
Noah shrugged. He stared in the direction from which Walt had come and couldn’t spot Richie in the thinning crowd. But on the floor by Richie’s locker lay his jacket and backpack.
“Uh-oh,” Noah said.
Ella followed Noah’s gaze. “Did Walt just make a sardine out of Richie again?”
Noah shook his head in disgust. “C’mon … let’s go get him.”
The three of them hurried down the hall, weaving through kids. When they reached Richie’s locker, Noah said, “You in there?”
A voice came through the vent at the top of the locker: “Alas, it is I.”
Noah dialed in Richie’s locker combination—each of the scouts kept it memorized for this exact situation. “You hurt?”
“Not really.” Richie’s voice was muffled and tinny. “It’s actually quite comfortable in here.”
Noah opened the door to see that Richie was turned half sideways, the curves of his skinny body fitted into permanent dents in the locker walls. His shoulders were slouched and his glasses were crooked. A few pens had fallen from his shirt pocket and lay on the steel floor.
Ella grabbed Richie’s arms and yanked him out. She stared up the hall at the place Walt had been. “Someone really needs to lay out that clown!”
Richie bent over and collected his pens off the ground. “And, rest assured, that someone is not going to be me.” He donned his jacket and backpack and closed the locker door. “Forget about him,” Richie said as he made a move toward the exit. “We have more important things to worry about.”
The scouts watched their friend walk off. After a few seconds, Noah said, “He’s right. Walt’s nothing next to DeGraff.”
The girls nodded, and the four friends made their way through the crowd. Outside, they headed straight for the zoo, where crosstraining was scheduled to begin in just a few minutes at Koala Kastle.
CHAPTER 8
KOALA KASTLE
P-Dog stuck his head out from the backpack and sniffed the ground curiously, his whiskers twitching about. As he raised his snout to investigate the air, the wind lifted a leaf and dropped it on his furry face, startling him.
“Hurry up, P!” Ella said. “Go!”
He struggled out of the backpack and hobbled across the zoo lawn.
The scouts were at Little Dogs of the Prairie, the outdoor prairie dog exhibit in the Clarksville Zoo. It resembled a sandy prairie, one that was pitted with holes, and beneath it was a tunnel system that led first to the Grottoes and then the Secret Zoo. The four friends were all alone—on such a cold weekday afternoon, the zoo was practically empty.
P-Dog crawled beneath the fence surrounding the exhibit and dove inside. He landed less than perfectly, his stomach smacking the ground. Several nearby prairie dogs sniffed his bad leg with concern, then led him to a tunnel hole, where he climbed inside and disappeared.
Ella grabbed her backpack and headed up the path. “C’mon—let’s get our superhero costumes on.”
On the day Mr. Darby, the leader of the Secret Zoo, had welcomed the scouts into the Secret Society as Crossers, Tank—Mr. Darby’s right-hand man, a lead security guard at the Clarksville Zoo, and a good friend to the scouts—had given each of them a zoo uniform: an ugly shirt with oversized pockets and a long, stiff collar. The shirts disguised them as zoo volunteers. When the scouts cross-trained during the week, they changed in either their school bathroom or in BathZOOm, the nicest restroom in the Clarksville Zoo.
Everyone fell in line behind Ella. The day was cold, wet, and gray. A steady wind stripped leaves from half-barren trees and swept them off the ground into piles. With their necks and chins buried in their jackets, the scouts looked like turtles trying to duck into their shells.
“You know,” Richie said, “some days it would be nice just to go home from school and plop down on the couch.”
After a few minutes, Ella turned onto the sidewalk leading to BathZOOm. Richie, his thoughts apparently more on getting out of the cold than on where he was going, followed Ella and Megan into the women’s bathroom. As the door banged closed, Noah shook his head and began to count in his head: One … two …
“Richie!” screamed Ella and Megan.
The bathroom door flung open and out spilled Richie, saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
“Nice work,” Noah teased.
The two boys headed into the proper bathroom, where they tossed their backpacks onto a bench and unpacked their shirts. Standing in front of the mirror, they dressed, Richie not bothering to take off his winter hat. Noah stared into the mirror and noticed again how the points of his collar reached his shoulders.
“Do the Descenders really hate us this much?” he asked. The teenagers who trained the scouts every week were the ones who had chosen the shirts.
Richie shrugged. “They must.”
The boys gathered up their stuff and headed outside, where Megan and Ella were already waiting. They soon reached Koala Kastle. The building looked like a real castle, a tower with battlements in each corner. A fake drawbridge crossed a wimpy moat and led to a pair of glass doors, the exhibit’s entrance. A nearby sign read “Closed for Construction!” Noah pulled out his special zoo key, glanced over his shoulders to ensure no one was around, then unlocked one door. Just as the scouts started to head inside, a voice rose behind him.
“You kids be careful in there.”
Noah stuffed the key back into his pocket and allowed the door to ease shut. The scouts spun around and came face-to-face with Charlie Red.
“Charlie!” Megan said. “Where did you …”
On the drawbridge, Charlie stood perfectly still, leaves spinning around his feet and falling into the moat. His hair, as red as a cooked lobster, whipped back and forth on top of his head, and his big dark freckles stood out on his otherwise pale skin. Behind him the zoo was desolate and gray. Noah couldn’t figure out how the security guard had walked up behind them so quickly.
Ella said, “Red—you are such a freak. You trying to give us a heart attack or something?”
“You kids be careful in there,” Charlie said, echoing himself.
“Ummm … weirdo …” Ella spoke up. “You just said that.”
There was a strange emptiness in Charlie’s eyes. When he forced a smile, Noah saw how chapped and cracked and swollen his lips were.
“Charlie?” Noah said. “You okay, man?”
Charlie widened his smile a bit more, revealing yellow gunk wedged between his teeth. Something about his smile reminded Noah of a jack-o’-lantern’s.
Ella said, “Red—you lose your toothbrush or something?”
Charlie only continued to stare at the scouts, his wind-tossed hair swatting his brow and curling around his ears. “I’m watching you,” he uttered at last. “I see everything you do.”
With that, he dropped his smile, scanned the scouts a final ti
me, then turned. As he walked across the drawbridge, the scouts watched him go. A minute later, he took a path headed toward Penguin Palace and disappeared behind a row of trees.
“Talk about a creep show,” Richie said.
Ella said, “We need him getting weirder like we need Richie getting smarter.”
“Forget it,” Noah said. “We’ve got DeGraff to worry about.” He abruptly turned, fitted his key back into the keyhole, and pulled on the handle.
The building consisted of an open courtyard surrounded by stone walls. Noah led the scouts down the first hall, which was lined on one side with arched windows. The friends turned to a window and looked out into the yard—a neat, grassy plain covered by a gabled glass roof. It had six sides, each a different length. The open space was crowded with eucalyptus trees, their slender leaves dangling above an assortment of stone benches, fountains, and two wells with short circular walls.
Ten koalas lived in the courtyard. With dark snouts and fuzzy Mickey Mouse–like ears, they sat nestled in the crooks of tree branches, sometimes sleeping, other times staring out at the world. A few strolled around, sniffing interesting spots on the ground and gobbling up freshly fallen eucalyptus leaves. Noah watched as one hopped onto a stone bench, stood on its hind legs, and took a sniff of the air, its black snout wriggling.
From around the corner came Solana. She was wearing her usual outfit: ripped jeans, a blue leather jacket, and fingerless gloves. She had dark eyes, high cheekbones, and long hair that trailed down her back and shoulders. Seeing her now, Noah could hardly believe she could raise quills all along her arms and torso, shooting them out through holes in her clothes. As she approached, Ella called out, “DeGraff—did you get him?”
Solana shook her head and Noah and Ella groaned, Megan banged her fists against her thighs, and Richie kicked at something on the ground.
“Man!” Ella said. “I thought for sure … What happened?”
