by Bryan Chick
“Their gear?” Richie asked, referring to the magical equipment that gave the teenagers their incredible animal skills.
Mr. Darby nodded.
Megan said, “But … right in our neighborhood! What if someone sees?”
It was Solana who answered. “The streetlights in your neighborhood—they’re sparse. And there are plenty of places to hide. If a chase happens, we’ll keep to the darkness. As much as we can, anyway.”
“I don’t like this,” Noah said. “The risk is so—”
“But what do you suppose we risk by not stopping DeGraff?” Mr. Darby interrupted. “Which risk do you suppose is greater?”
No one said a thing.
“I assure you, there is no other way. We must move to the offensive if DeGraff is to be defeated.”
Megan asked, “How will the Specters contact the Descenders?”
Mr. Darby nodded at Solana, who stepped forward and pulled something out of her pocket—a headset, the tiny earphones the Descenders wore. She reached toward Evie, the headset in her open palm.
Evie stared down at the headset, seemed to consider something, then turned away. Solana shared a disappointed look with Mr. Darby, then stuffed the equipment back into her pocket, saying to Evie, “Well … you know where to get one if you change your mind.”
The scouts passed a confused look among themselves.
“The Specters will flag the tarsiers,” Mr. Darby answered. “The ones on patrol. The tarsiers will then alert the owls, as they normally would.”
Ella asked the obvious: “But why not the headsets?”
Mr. Darby glanced at Evie, then Solana. After a few seconds, he simply said, “They’ll use the tarsiers.”
Noah couldn’t figure out why Evie seemed so reluctant to talk. And why did it seem that she didn’t like Solana? He turned to the other Specters. They seemed emotionless. He noticed the way they looked again—Kaleena’s hair a cascade of heavy braids, Jordynn’s a tuft of weightless curls. On the railing Lee-Lee sat dangling her legs, and Elakshi leaned coolly against a beam. Sara stood with her hip cocked out, her blue eyes buried in black smudges of makeup. The Specters. Six peculiar girls who could vanish in the camouflage of chameleons. Six ghosts.
CHAPTER 13
WIDE WALT STRIKES
At afternoon recess two days later, the scouts headed out to the playground among a swell of crazed kids. Noah ducked under a swinging bridge, Megan swung around a set of monkey bars, Ella dodged a second grader flying off a slide, Richie nearly got flattened by a fourth grader taking a flying leap off a climbing wall, and they all met up by the soccer field for a private spot to discuss the Specters again. Just a few minutes into their conversation, Marlo flew in and touched down on Noah’s shoulder. The scouts were barely startled—the kingfisher was so tiny that he could drop in almost anytime and not risk being spotted. He had a folded-up piece of paper pinched in his bill.
“Hey, Marlo,” Noah said as he plucked the note from the bird’s pointed mouth.
Marlo chirped a greeting.
Noah unfolded the message to find two pages. The scouts gathered close and read the first, a flier from the Clarksville Zoo.
Volunteer Appreciation Night!!
This Friday and Saturday the Clarksville Zoo will be hosting its 15th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Night to honor the hard work of our generous volunteers! Because we enjoyed such a ZOOmungous number of helpers this year, the event will be hosted across two nights. The volunteers have been divided into two groups, the Lions and the Lambs. The Clarksville Zoo will host the Lions on Friday and the Lambs on Saturday. Festivities will include:
- Games at Creepy Critters!
- Dinner at Koala Kastle!
- A movie at Metr-APE-olis!
- A sleepover at the Forest of Flight!
- Breakfast at Butterfly Nets!
As always, the event will be chaperoned by adult volunteers. Parental permission is mandatory for kids under seventeen! (See form below.) Anyone planning to stay the night should bring a sleeping bag and a pillow.
GET READY TO GET WILD!!!
Noah swapped the pages, and the scouts read the second note in silence. Marlo peered over Noah’s shoulder, as if reading along.
Dear Scouts,
As you may know, Volunteer Appreciation Night is an annual event. This year we’ve divided the volunteers into groups and plan to host the event over two nights. One group will include the real volunteers, and the second group will include the four of you.
Hope to see you on Saturday night at 8:00! If you have issues with your parents or are unable to attend, please send a note back with Marlo later in the week. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you then.
Come prepared for the competition of your life.
Sincerely,
Mr. Darby
P.S. The flier is intended to show your parents—no need to return!
“Competition?” Ella said. “What’s he talking about?”
“Crosstraining,” Richie said. “Our party—it’s really a crosstraining session.”
Noah nodded. “An all-nighter. You guys think your parents will be cool with that?”
Richie said, “My mom will think it’s the neatest thing in the world!”
Ella nodded. “My mom, too.”
Noah turned to Megan. “And what about Mom and Dad?”
“They’ll go for it, I think.”
“Okay,” Noah said. “Then I’ll just sign this right now.”
Ella reached across Richie’s lap, plucked a pen from his pocket of nerd-gear, and tossed it to Noah, who uncapped it and scribbled, “We’ll see you on Saturday” onto Mr. Darby’s note. Then he folded the paper and held it out for Marlo, who pecked it from his fingertips, sprang off Noah’s shoulder, and shot across the playground.
“An all-nighter,” Ella said.
“Oh boy,” Richie said. “What are we up against now?”
The school bell ended recess. The scouts jumped to their feet and headed inside.
For Ella, the rest of the day dragged along. With all the things happening with DeGraff and the Secret Zoo, it was becoming next to impossible to concentrate on school. What did world history matter when you feared the world was about to become history?
At the sound of the final school bell, more than four hundred kids jumped to their feet and flooded out of their classrooms. Outside, Noah and Megan piled into their mother’s car for dentist appointments, and Ella and Richie began their walk home, cutting across the playground toward Jenkins Street.
As Ella and Richie neared the end of the schoolyard, three kids appeared from out of a wooded area and approached them—Wide Walt and his two friends, Dave and Doug. Ella glanced over her shoulders to see that no one was around. This meant one thing—trouble.
“Be cool,” Ella said to Richie from the corner of her mouth.
“Check this out!” Walt said as he stepped up. “Two of my favorite dorks!”
Walt’s head looked smaller than ever against the padded shoulders of his poofy jacket. He smiled from ear to ear, displaying his lopsided teeth.
Ella said, “What do you want, Walt?”
Walt laced his fingers and pushed his arms forward, loudly cracking his knuckles. This was one of his signature moves, and it was meant to intimidate. Richie flinched.
“I want what’s in your backpack.”
“Huh?”
“Your backpack. I want whatever the heck’s inside it—the thing that did this to me.” He held out his hand inches from Ella’s face. His index finger was badly bruised and wrapped in a Band-Aid with the picture of a Transformer.
“Megatron,” Ella said. “Niiiccce.”
Walt pulled back his hand and coiled it into a fist.
With unmoving lips, Richie whispered, “Don’t … upset … him.”
“You think you’re funny?” Walt spat out.
“Richie’s the funny one,” Ella said. “Richie—why don’t you tell Walt a joke?”
Ric
hie didn’t move.
Walt held out his arm. “The backpack.”
“No chance, White.”
“The backpack. Or we drop”—he nodded at Richie—“the nerd.”
Doug took a step forward and shot out his chest a bit. He wore a white baseball cap, its flat bill cocked to one side. Beneath it, a messy mop of collar-length hair curled out, covering his ears, his neck, his forehead. He had an upturned nose that was nearly piglike. To her friends, Ella called him “the oinker.”
Ella didn’t know how long she could stand her ground. But if she showed weakness, the scouts would pay for it the rest of their time at Clarksville Elementary. Walt fed off weakness.
Ella glanced over her shoulders. Still, no one was in sight.
“You guys had this coming,” Walt declared. “You got no one to blame but yourselves.”
Walt nodded to Doug, who immediately sprang his arm forward, punching Richie’s stomach. Air gushed from Richie and he buckled forward, his glasses shooting off his face and landing in a patch of oversized weeds. He dropped to the ground and rolled around, his eyes and mouth pinched shut.
Walt reached out and fist-tapped Doug. With his head bobbing in satisfaction—as if to a musical beat that only he could hear—he uttered his tagline: “That’s what I thought.”
Rage tore through Ella. Her cheeks flushed and her heart began to slam in her chest. She dove forward, reaching for Walt, who grabbed her arms and easily threw her to the ground. Dirt filled her mouth. She felt a tug on her shoulders and realized someone was stripping the pack off her back. She was yanked and bounced around. Her jaw struck the hard earth and stars began to shoot across her vision. Finally, the backpack slipped off.
She rolled over. Walt had opened her backpack and was rifling through her stuff, throwing anything that didn’t interest him into the air—her books, her little purse, papers, the leftovers of her lunch. Doug and Dave cast around nervous glances—this was serious and they knew it. Not only had Walt just assaulted a girl, but he was now going through her belongings.
Ella started to say something and stopped. Not because she couldn’t speak, but because she worried that she might start crying. And she wouldn’t give Wide Walt the satisfaction of that.
Walt tossed out a handheld mirror given to Ella by her grandmother, then tipped over the open bag and shook out the remaining loose items—a piece of gum, a quarter, some lip balm. He threw the empty backpack aside. There was nothing in it that interested him.
Walt looked at his friends. “Whatever she had … it’s not there anymore.”
Ella’s lips trembled. She was close to tears.
Walt stared down and shook his head. “I hope you turds learned something today.” To his friends he said, “C’mon—let’s get out of here.” The three of them turned and ran. Within seconds they were gone.
Ella lay on the ground, her lips quivering. After some time, she crawled over to Richie. Her friend was still clutching his stomach. She touched his head, saying, “Your glasses …” She swept them out of the weeds and carefully placed them back on. She was sickened to see that one lens had a crack in it. “We’re okay, Richie,” she said. “They’re gone now.”
She noticed her belongings scattered about like litter. She climbed to her feet, claimed her backpack, and picked up a schoolbook. Then she went to her next thing, then the next, and the next. Her eyes welled with tears that blurred her vision. She turned her head to hide her face.
“We’re okay,” she reminded Richie as she swept up her mirror. A web of cracks ran through the glass, and a jagged piece had fallen out. “It’s—”
She felt her voice shudder and swallowed back her breath. She wouldn’t cry—not in front of Richie. All her friends thought of her as the strong one, the tough one. She couldn’t let them down, not with so much at stake.
Memories unexpectedly filled her. She pictured DeGraff staring out at her from the shadows in her front yard as she stood all alone on her porch, no one nearby to help. She thought about her home—how different it was now, how lonely it sometimes felt, even with her mother by her side. Finally, she remembered her father, how the world had taken him away, and it was too much for Ella to bear. She turned away from Richie and allowed her tears to come.
CHAPTER 14
FROM PIZZOORIA TO ZOOASIS
Noah and Megan boiled with fury when Ella and Richie told them what had happened with Walt. He’d never actually hit one of the scouts before. Their first thought was to go to an adult, but then they feared this might only make matters worse. After a long, heated discussion in Fort Scout (one in which Noah tirelessly paced back and forth and knocked over a chair in frustration), they decided to wait it out and see what might happen with Walt back at school after the weekend.
The four of them had no problems getting permission to attend the supposed volunteer party, and at dusk on Saturday, they loaded up their packs, grabbed their sleeping bags, and headed for the Clarksville Zoo, excited but nervous about what they might find. As they pushed through the turnstiles at the front gates, the guard told them to report to PizZOOria, the big cafeteria. Across the zoo grounds, tall light posts carved cone-shaped wedges out of the darkness.
At PizZOOria they pushed through the unlocked doors to find Tank sitting at one of the cafeteria’s many long benches, his fist buried in a tub of popcorn. On the tabletop beside him was a tiny, bright blue bird—Marlo. The kingfisher was pecking at a pile of popcorn Tank had given him. Behind Tank was a portable whiteboard. As the scouts dropped their stuff and approached the bench, Tank shoved a fistful of popcorn into his smile.
“Hungry?” Ella asked.
As Tank munched, he said, “When you’re as big as me, you’re always hungry.”
“Makes sense. But how do you explain this?” She jerked her thumb toward Richie, who was greedily reaching for some popcorn. “This guy weighs less than his own clothes.”
Tank laughed and offered the tub to Richie, who plunged his hand into it.
“He burns all his calories worrying about stuff,” Tank said with a wink toward Richie.
Megan said, “Okay … what’s on the agenda tonight?”
“Some training—an emergency session, I guess you could call it, because of the DeGraff sighting. And we’re going to follow it with a test.”
“Great,” Ella said. “Like we don’t get enough of those in school.”
“It’s more of a challenge—and don’t worry, it’s not going to kill you. At least it shouldn’t, anyway.” Richie’s eyes widened as Tank rose from the bench. “But that’s not until later. Right now, I got a whole bunch of things to review—Mr. D wants to make sure you’re up to snuff. With DeGraff on the loose, we can’t afford mistakes. So take a seat. And here”—he slid the tub of popcorn across the table—“help yourselves.”
The big man went to the whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and for the next three hours, the five of them reviewed the Grottoes, the tunnel system beneath the Clarksville Zoo. Tank had them repeatedly come up to the whiteboard to draw pictures of particular sections. He wanted to be certain they’d memorized the passages—how they interconnected and led to different areas.
Around 11:00, Tank set down the marker, announced it was time, and donned his jacket, which was so thickly padded that it made him look a bit like a small cloud. After the scouts dressed, Marlo sprang to his usual spot on Noah’s shoulder and the group stepped outside and walked to ZOOasis, a big outdoor garden surrounded by a wide web of concrete paths. Flamingo Fountain sat at its core. Mostly devoid of flowers this time of year, the garden was still alive with evergreen bushes and trees. Marble benches were scattered along the grassy paths, and when the group reached ZOOasis, they saw Mr. Darby sitting on one.
“Welcome!” Mr. Darby said as the scouts approached. Noah found it strange that the old man was wearing his sunglasses in the dark. “The four of you have come prepared for a physical challenge, yes?”
A bit unsure, the scouts nodded anyway.
&
nbsp; “Excellent.” The old man peered beyond the four children and said, “All of you, if you’ll come out, please.”
From around a group of shadowy bushes, the Descenders appeared—Tameron, Solana, Sam, and Hannah. They were wearing the clothes that carried their powers: leather jackets, hats, boots, and gloves. Tameron had his enormous backpack slung over his shoulders. As they neared the scouts, Sam peered out from beneath his long bangs; Tameron, from under the tilted brim of his cap. Hannah worked her jaw over her chewing gum, and Solana stood with her hands on her hips.
Ella said, “Looks like our opponents just arrived.”
Hannah loudly popped her gum and winked at Ella.
Richie said, “So we’re facing off against teenagers who can fly, throw quills, smash out walls, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
Mr. Darby turned to Tank. “Richie has a point, Mr. Pangbourne. Should we award our scouts something to compensate for the Descenders’ remarkable skills?”
“Seems fair enough.”
“Very well. Your animal friends—Blizzard, Podgy, Little Bighorn, any that you know personally—they may assist you.” Mr. Darby turned to the kingfisher sitting on Noah’s shoulder. “Marlo, will you please make sure the scouts’ companions know of this?”
Marlo chirped, sprang into the air, and dashed out of sight.
“Now then …” Mr. Darby looked toward Tank. “Can you please explain our challenge, Mr. Pangbourne?”
“You guys ever hear of a game called Capture the Flag?” Tank asked.
The scouts nodded. They’d played Capture the Flag countless times.
“Well, this is the flag....” Tank slipped a small piece of velvet from his jacket and tossed it toward the scouts. Noah snagged it. It was so thin that it was practically threadbare. “All you need to do is capture it,” Tank finished.
