Panda-monium Read online

  Summer did the same thing, and we ran for the front gates of FunJungle.

  If I had known how big a disaster the panda’s arrival was going to be, I would have stayed in the pool.

  THE BIG EVENT

  Most people didn’t know Summer was my girlfriend. Even our closest friends. Because Summer was the daughter of a billionaire and a famous model, she’d been in the public eye since the day she was born. Gossip websites and trashy magazines were always running stories about her, most of which were completely wrong. A few weeks before, she had been in the audience at a boy band concert in San Antonio, and the next day, the rumor machine announced she was dating the lead singer. (One website even claimed they were engaged, despite the fact that neither was old enough to drive.) In truth, Summer had never had a boyfriend before me, and she worried all the magazines and websites would go nuts if they found out about us.

  “Our friends aren’t going to tell the press that we’re dating,” I’d argued.

  “No, but they’ll tell someone,” she’d countered. “And those people will tell other people, who’ll tell other people, who’ll tell other people. Sooner or later, the media will find out about it, and the next thing you know, there’ll be TV crews camped out on your lawn.”

  “We don’t have a lawn,” I pointed out. “We live in your dad’s crummy trailer park.” We were supposed to have a lawn, along with landscaping and a communal swimming pool and all sorts of other nice stuff, but J.J. McCracken appeared to have forgotten about putting it all in. All we had was a murky sinkhole that excelled at breeding mosquitoes.

  “You know what I mean,” Summer said. “Trust me, the longer we can keep this a secret, the better.”

  I figured she knew more about being in the public eye than I did, so I didn’t tell anyone we were dating—except for my parents. I didn’t like lying to them, and they would have figured it out anyhow; I’d suddenly been spending a lot more time with Summer.

  Summer and I never really spent much time at my house, because even though we had a new double-wide trailer, courtesy of J.J., it was still smaller than Summer’s mother’s closet. Sometimes we went to the McCrackens’ ranch, because they had a pool and tennis courts and stables with horses and a chef who’d studied in Paris. But most of the time, we just hung out at FunJungle. Because Summer was J.J.’s daughter, she could arrange lots of cool things in addition to swimming with dolphins, like getting to sneak onto rides without having to wait in line like everyone else. Although Summer didn’t live at FunJungle like I did, she still considered it her second home. The park had been her idea, back when she was a little girl, and she’d spent much of her life watching it all come together. Since she loved animals, she’d been extremely involved in the development, making plenty of suggestions her father had actually used. So she knew the park as well as I did, maybe even better. As we raced through FunJungle from Dolphin Adventure, we both knew every shortcut, agreeing on the fastest route without even needing to discuss it. We dodged between Shark Encounter and the Petting Zoo, circled Monkey Mountain, and cut right through the underwater section of Hippo River until we arrived at the entry plaza.

  It was a madhouse. To our surprise, even though it was still a half hour before the park opened, hundreds of people were gathered at the front gates.

  While Li Ping’s arrival at FunJungle was huge news, J.J. McCracken had still hoped to keep the actual moment a secret. Over the past year, almost every time FunJungle had tried to hold a big media event, it had ended in disaster: At the gala opening of Carnivore Canyon, someone had let a tiger loose; when the park had made a big deal about getting a koala, it had been stolen; and when a formal funeral was attempted after Henry the Hippo died, the crane holding the coffin had dropped it, splattering the front row of dignitaries with hippo guts. So J.J. was worried about tempting fate yet again.

  Pete Thwacker, FunJungle’s head of public relations, had decided to use the secrecy of the event to sell the story. Pete didn’t actually know that much about animals—he’d recently stated on live television that the primary food source for coyotes was roadrunners—but he knew how to work the media. Instead of getting the public excited about the exact day the panda would arrive, he made the whole thing a huge mystery: Li Ping was coming . . . but when? He advertised on billboards, TV, and radio stations around the country. (“The first person to see Li Ping the Panda could be you!”) It worked like gangbusters. The story trended on every social media platform. Guests flocked to FunJungle, hoping they might be lucky enough to be there the day the panda arrived.

  Of course, J.J. and Pete had known the exact delivery date all along. It had all been planned out months ahead of time with the rigor of the D-Day invasion. The idea was to have Li Ping arrive in late April so that she would grab even more media attention, diverting tourists from other theme parks, like Disney World or Universal Studios, and enticing them to plan their summer vacations at FunJungle. But up until that moment, everything was supposed to be shrouded in secrecy. Almost no one was told the actual arrival date. Even Summer was kept in the dark. She had only learned the night before, then promptly called me to share the news.

  Li Ping was being shipped to FunJungle from the San Diego Zoo, where she’d been born, in a custom-made, climate-controlled semi truck. A male panda, Shen Ju, would be flown out from China later in the summer, with the hope that they’d breed. Originally, Pete had hoped to make an event of Li Ping’s transit across the country. He’d wanted to christen the truck “The Panda Express,” splash Li Ping’s picture all over it, and have it stop for photo ops in every town along the way. But J.J., fearing disaster, had made him scrap all that. Li Ping’s delivery was to be far more clandestine. The truck was specially designed for the panda on the inside, but on the outside, it was made to look like every other truck on the highway: a bland, easy-to-ignore gray.

  However, it was now evident that all attempts at secrecy had failed. Word had gotten out, and the panda fanatics had arrived in full force. When FunJungle had displayed a koala the previous winter, I’d been surprised by how many fans those animals had—but that was nothing compared to how crazy people were for pandas. Pandas, it seemed, were the rock stars of the animal world, right down to having groupies. (The people who worked at FunJungle had already taken to calling them “PandaManiacs.”) Maybe it was because pandas were cute; maybe it was because they were rare. Probably it was a combination of the two. Whatever the case, panda fans were more intense than those for any other animal.

  For starters, they dressed up. Almost everyone gathered outside the front gates had worn a combination of black and white. Many were merely in panda-themed T-shirts, but a surprising number wore panda costumes or had painted their faces. Almost everyone had a set of “Li Ping ears,” which had been available for purchase at FunJungle for weeks. (They were quite similar to the Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World, except the ears themselves were a lot smaller, which allowed J.J. McCracken to avoid accusations of copyright infringement and save on production costs.) Instead of looking like a large group of pandas, however, the big mass of black and white really looked more like an Antarctic penguin colony.

  Meanwhile, the press had come out in full force as well. News trucks from every local TV station, along with a few national ones, were parked outside the gates, cameras at the ready.

  Inside the park, at the far edge of the entry plaza, stood a much smaller, considerably less enthusiastic contingent of people.

  J.J. McCracken was there, in his customary jeans and cowboy boots, looking infuriated about the crowds. Pete Thwacker stood beside him, dressed in a fancy three-piece suit. Then came Chief Hoenekker, FunJungle’s head of security, in a freshly starched khaki outfit that looked more like something a five-star general might wear. After that came my father, ready to document the panda’s arrival with three separate cameras (two digital SLRs and one video recorder) dangling from straps around his neck. The last person was Mom, who was helping Dad out that morning, with two camera bags
slung over her shoulder. She and Dad were the only ones in the group who’d had the sense to wear shorts and T-shirts in the heat.

  “It’d be bad enough to have all the panda freaks out there,” J.J. was grumbling as Summer and I arrived. “But how the heck did all the news stations get wind of this? What holy idiot tipped them off?”

  “Er . . . ,” Pete squeaked, looking embarrassed.

  J.J. wheeled on him. He was nearly a foot shorter than Pete, even with lifts in his cowboy boots, but J.J.’s personality was so big, he somehow seemed just as tall. “You told them?”

  “Not all of them,” Pete mewled. “But I thought it’d be a good idea to offer exclusive access to a few stations.”

  “Jack’s the only one who was supposed to have exclusive access!” J.J. snapped, pointing at my father. “So we could control the story this time! If you offer exclusive access to a bunch of people, then it’s not really exclusive anymore, is it?”

  “No,” Pete admitted, “but the news stations all get more excited when they think they have exclusive access. Only, it looks like the few I told must have blabbed to all the others . . .”

  “As well as half the county,” Hoenekker muttered, nodding to the crowds.

  “And that crowd’s gonna get real angry when they find out the panda’s not even going on display for a month,” J.J. said.

  “A month?!” Pete echoed, going pale. “What do you mean?”

  “The panda has to go into quarantine at the hospital,” J.J. explained. “Just like any other animal that shows up here. We have to isolate it to make sure it doesn’t have any diseases that’ll infect the rest of my animals. You know the drill, Thwacker.”

  “Yes,” Pete whined. “But I figured, since the panda would be on display by itself, that would count the same as being quarantined.”

  “No dice,” J.J. replied. “Federal regulations state it has to be done in an official quarantine facility for thirty days. And Doc says it could be even longer.”

  “Longer?” Pete gasped, looking like he might pass out.

  The men were all so focused on the issue, no one noticed Summer and me arriving except Mom. She stepped away to greet us, ran her fingers through my wet hair, and smelled them. “Salt water,” she observed. “Someone’s been swimming with the dolphins again.”

  “Wow, Mrs. Fitzroy,” Summer said, impressed. “I see where Teddy gets the detective genes from.”

  “You did go with permission, right?” Mom asked.

  “Yes,” I groaned, even though Mom’s suspicions were probably justified. Summer and I had snuck into exhibits before, though never merely for fun. We had only done it to investigate crimes. “Olivia Putney was with us the whole time.”

  “So what am I supposed to do here?” Dad was asking the other men. “Am I filming Li Ping’s arrival—or are all the news crews?”

  “You are,” J.J. replied, cutting Pete off before he could answer. “You’re the only one I trust around the panda. When that truck gets here, I want you front and center. You go inside the trailer to document Li Ping, and you stay with her until she gets transferred to quarantine.” He turned to Pete. “That’s what exclusive means. The news will just have to be happy with filming the truck.”

  “They won’t even get to see the panda?” Pete asked, aghast. “They won’t be happy about that.”

  “Well then, you better go change their minds about it,” J.J. told him. “Flash that big old smile of yours, put a good spin on this, and make sure that crowd doesn’t turn into an angry mob.” He checked his watch, then added, “And do it quick. Li Ping’s coming in hot.”

  “All right,” Pete said. He was obviously annoyed at J.J., but as he turned toward the news crews, his standard, confident on-camera personality took over. A smile bloomed on his face. He straightened his tie and strode purposefully toward the front gates.

  The moment the crowd saw him coming, their excitement grew. Everyone started asking when Li Ping was going to arrive.

  “I assure you all, the long wait for Li Ping is nearly over!” Pete announced, and a cheer went up from the crowd.

  Hoenekker sighed. “Sometimes Thwacker can be such a moron, I’m surprised he can walk in a straight line.”

  “He looks good on TV, though,” J.J. said. “Often, that’s all that matters. Are these crowds gonna cause us any trouble?”

  “I think we’ll be all right,” Hoenekker replied. “I assigned extra security starting at oh-600 this morning in case of an eventuality such as this.” No one at the park but J.J. knew what Hoenekker had done before he had taken over security, but everyone suspected he’d worked for some branch of the military, or possibly the CIA; the way he spoke was a big reason why.

  “Any word from Marge?” Mom asked.

  “Officer O’Malley last reported in at oh-800,” Hoenekker replied. “Ever since they got past that traffic jam, the trip has gone without a hitch.”

  “Wait,” I said, concerned. “Large Marge is with the panda?”

  Mom gave me a sharp stare, displeased with my choice of words.

  “I mean, Marge O’Malley is with the panda?” I corrected.

  “She is tasked with providing security for Li Ping en route to FunJungle,” Hoenekker explained.

  “Really?” I asked, unable to hide my shock. “Of all the people in security, you sent Marge?”

  Since the day I’d first arrived at FunJungle, Marge had been a thorn in my side. She had instantly decided I was trouble, her thought process being: 1) I was a young boy and 2) all young boys were trouble. In her determination to prove this, she had often ignored the actual misbehavior of park guests—for example, littering, banging on the glass of the exhibits, or throwing food to the animals—in order to catch me at crimes she merely suspected I was committing. Eventually, I had played a few pranks on her to get her to back off, but they had produced the opposite effect I’d hoped for. Every time I had glued Marge’s shoes to the floor or left a gorilla poop in her locker, it had only made her even more determined to bust me.

  As a result, Marge had mistakenly tried to pin two major crimes at FunJungle on me, rather than looking for the real culprits. The first was the theft of Kazoo the Koala, and Marge’s failure to solve it had resulted in her getting demoted from chief of security in favor of Hoenekker. The second was a rash of thefts at candy and ice cream shops around FunJungle. Once Marge had realized I wasn’t responsible for those, either, she’d had a small nervous breakdown. She’d cried and admitted that she’d never be able to prove I was as bad as she thought, so she might as well give up. Unfortunately, I was the only person who witnessed this. Afterward, Marge pretended like it had never happened. In fact, she even seemed a bit angrier at me for witnessing her moment of weakness. She was still always bad-mouthing me, giving me the stink-eye, and trying to pin anything that went wrong at FunJungle on me.

  All of which was proof to me that Marge wasn’t a very competent member of the security team. I would never have trusted her to guard a piggy bank, let alone something as important as a giant panda. But then, I wasn’t chief of security.

  “I know you’ve had your differences with Officer O’Malley before . . . ,” Hoenekker said to me.

  “Differences?” Mom echoed. “She tried to send Teddy to juvenile hall! Twice!”

  “. . . but when it comes to keeping an eye out for crime,” Hoenekker continued, “she’s the most vigilant member of my entire team. And I needed someone vigilant on this mission to be alert for any signs of trouble.”

  I sighed, aware there was some truth to this. FunJungle was so large, it actually qualified as an incorporated city, which meant the security division was a licensed police force—but sadly, it wasn’t exactly Scotland Yard. Working security at a zoo usually wasn’t a very exciting job, and so it mostly tended to attract guys who’d barely finished high school and who couldn’t make the cut for the real police. Which explained why an overzealous bonehead like Marge could be considered one of the most competent members of th
e force.

  “What kind of trouble were you expecting?” Summer asked.

  “Any kind,” Hoenekker replied. “That panda’s worth millions, and technically, she’s not even ours. She’s property of the Chinese government. So I needed someone to sit with the driver of the truck and be alert for the whole trip, and O’Malley was the right one for the job.”

  “She was also probably the only one who wanted to do it,” Summer whispered to me.

  “She’s only in the cab of the truck?” Dad asked. “Not in the back with the panda?”

  “There’s no windows in the back of the truck,” J.J. explained. “You couldn’t see any trouble coming from there. And besides, I needed Doc in the back, keeping an eye on Li Ping.”

  That part I knew. Doc Deakin was the head vet at FunJungle and one of the finest zoo vets in the world. I had heard he’d wanted to send one of the vets who worked under him in the truck instead—traveling in the back of a semi didn’t sound like a very enjoyable way to cross the country—but J.J. had staunchly refused, insisting that where the panda was concerned, he needed the best man he had.

  “So Doc’s been riding in the back of a truck for a whole day?” I asked.

  “It’s not as bad as you’d think,” J.J. told me. “In fact, we fixed things up pretty darn nice for both Doc and Li Ping. I had the entire interior of the truck customized. Doc has a couch, a bed, and a TV with a DVD player. It’s nicer than a lot of hotel rooms I’ve seen. And Li Ping has her own separate area and all the bamboo she can eat. Frankly, it’s probably been like a vacation for the both of them.”

  I caught Mom and Dad sharing a look. It appeared they didn’t think Doc would have considered this a vacation at all. But neither said anything to J.J.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I heard Summer’s do the same thing, which meant someone was trying to reach both of us at once. I had a pretty good idea who it was before I even checked my phone.

  As I’d suspected, it was Xavier Gonzalez, my best friend. Xavier was an animal fanatic. He was creating his own zoo at home; his room was filled with aquariums holding lizards and snakes he’d caught in the woods, as well as fish and assorted small rodents. Every week, he spent his entire allowance on pet food. He idolized field biologists—like my mother—the way other kids idolized professional athletes.