Whale Done, page 2
The fire station was located in the rear of FunJungle in order to be close to the forest, and thus, the biggest threat of fire. So it wasn’t long before the engines pulled into the employee parking lot, sirens wailing. The firefighters went right to work hooking hoses to the hydrants. But even in that short span, the blaze had grown surprisingly fast. The trees along the edge of the lot were blazing, and thick curtains of smoke rolled across the asphalt.
Xavier, Summer, and I hurried through them to talk to Chief Benson, who was a tough, no-nonsense woman in her fifties. She shouted at us as we approached. “You kids shouldn’t be anywhere around here! The best thing you can do to help is to leave this to us!”
“There’s still people in employee housing!” Xavier shouted back. “Over there!” He pointed through the flames.
Chief Benson immediately grew concerned. “Any idea how many?”
Xavier, Summer, and I looked to one another, unsure. “We don’t know,” I admitted. “Drew Filus was definitely in his house. And we heard a few others.”
“Maybe five or six?” Summer suggested.
“We’ll get them out.” Chief Benson spoke so confidently that I believed her. “Now leave this to us!”
We nodded in agreement and hurried back across the parking lot while the chief bravely led a team into the inferno.
Between the heat of the day and the heat of the fire, I was as hot as I had ever been in my life. My skin felt as though my entire body had just touched an iron. I was amazed that the firefighters could even function in their heavy fireproof clothing.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I wasn’t surprised to find that it was my mother. I answered. “Don’t worry. I’m safe.”
“Please tell me that you’re nowhere near that fire.”
I didn’t even consider lying to her; Mom could always tell. “Actually, I was right nearby when it started.…”
Mom sighed heavily. “Of course you were. Any time there’s trouble, you’re right in the middle of it.”
There was no point in denying this. Ever since we had moved to FunJungle, I had attracted trouble like a magnet. At first, this had been my fault, as I had taken it upon myself to investigate the murder of FunJungle’s mascot, Henry the Hippo, not realizing how much danger I would end up in. However, I had solved that mystery, which led to my involvement in several others—and lots more danger. Even when I did my best to be cautious, I still ended up in plenty of peril.
“I’m not in the middle this time,” I assured my mother. “I’m just on the sidelines.”
“It certainly sounds like you’re in the middle of it. And I’d like you as far away as possible. Come to my office. It’s safe here.”
Mom’s office was in Monkey Mountain, a building filled with primate habitats in the center of the park. It certainly would have been a good place to escape the fire—and as a bonus, it was very well air-conditioned—but to get there meant heading back into the park again. Passing through the employee entrance would have been almost impossible, as hundreds of people were streaming out through it, after which we would have to face the hordes of panicked guests rampaging through the park.
“I’m not sure I can get to you,” I told my mother. “I think the tourists might be more dangerous than the fire.”
“That’s a good point.” Mom spoke with the resigned tone of a woman who regularly chastised park guests for tormenting the monkeys. “How crazy is it out there?”
Over the fence, I watched the tourists streaming past. Some were screaming. Some were crying. Many were shoving their fellow humans out of the way. One frantic father was swatting everyone else with a Henry Hippo plush doll. I overheard the radio of a nearby security officer, where a report came in that dozens of tourists fearing the fire had leaped into the dolphin pool, unaware that Snickers, one of the male dolphins, liked to steal people’s shorts. So now, in addition to being frightened by the fire, they were also freaking out because they’d been pantsed.
“On a scale of one to ten,” I said, “it’s a hundred and twenty.”
Mom groaned. “All right. Stay away from the crowds. And the fire. Your father’s probably going to be there soon.”
Sure enough, Dad was exiting the park at that moment, on his way to join the other volunteer firefighters. I waved to him while telling Mom, “I see him.”
“Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid either,” Mom said, only half joking. Then she added, “I love you.”
“Love you too.” I hung up as Dad came over.
“I should have known you’d be in the thick of this,” he said.
“Mom already gave me an earful,” I told him. “And I’ve kept my distance.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” Dad ran a finger down my face, then held it up to show me that the tip was now coated with soot.
I hadn’t realized how dirty I was. I looked to Summer and Xavier and realized they were both coated in soot as well.
“Teddy’s telling the truth,” Xavier insisted.
“Right,” Dad said, obviously not believing him. “Stay over here. If this thing gets any worse, we might need your help to start evacuating animals.” He raced over to the fire engines, where the firefighters had already hooked the hoses up and opened the hydrants.
Torrents of water gushed into the flames, which were burning so hot that the water seemed to instantly turn to steam. Still, the firefighters managed to clear a path through the blaze and then keep the inferno at bay on both sides.
Six people emerged through the smoke with Chief Benson at the lead: the other residents from employee housing. They were black with soot and coughing from the smoke but otherwise seemed okay.
A cheer went up from the gathered crowd.
But the battle wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
It would take until nearly six o’clock the next morning before the firefighters fully doused the blaze. To do it, they needed the help of four local fire stations, a squad of smoke jumpers, and three forest service helicopters, which scooped up water from the fake lake around the Raging Rapids ride and dropped it onto the flames.
Their heroic efforts protected the entirety of FunJungle. Not a single animal had to be evacuated—although hundreds of tourists had been hurt in the panicked flight to the exits. (None badly, thankfully; it was mostly bruises, scrapes, and one broken arm.) There was some damage to FunJungle’s landscaping, mascot costumes, and a few kiosks, but overall, the park came out well.
However, the forest nearby was an entirely different story. The underbrush had been incinerated, and the trees had been torched. Hours before, the woods had been so thick with growth that much of it was nearly impenetrable; now there was nothing but barren ground and gnarled, blackened tree trunks. Ash rained down for miles around, but the thickest accumulations were in the burned forest, where great swaths of ground were carpeted in white, making it look bizarrely as if it were a snowy winter day, rather than a sultry summer one.
The blaze had been so hot when it tore through Lakeside Estates that almost nothing remained of our homes. The aluminum sides of the trailers had melted, and almost everything inside had vaporized, so all that was left were the warped metal hulks of our appliances and the concrete foundations.
Luckily, my family hadn’t lost much—because we didn’t own much to begin with. The first ten years of my life had been spent in a tent camp in the Congo while Mom studied primates, and we hadn’t accumulated many possessions since moving to America. All our furniture, cookware, and appliances had been provided by FunJungle. My parents had kept their computers and Dad’s photographic equipment in their offices, fearing exactly this sort of disaster—as well as thieves. (FunJungle had far better security than Lakeside Estates did.) So our losses were mostly limited to clothes, games, and books. But even so, as I stood among the wreckage the next day, I felt violated.
I had never been a big fan of the trailer, but still, it was home.
And now it was gone.
3
THE BEACH
There were two weeks until school started, and I didn’t have a place to live.
Mom had work, and Dad was leaving for Argentina in two days to photograph guanacos for National Geographic. The resort hotels at FunJungle were booked solid, and the next nearest places to stay were some cheap motels along the highway twenty miles away. Mom figured that, in a pinch, she could put an air mattress in her office, but it wasn’t big enough for two people. Xavier said I could stay with him, but he lived in a mobile home as well, with his parents and two younger sisters, so I knew that it was a big imposition for me to stay there. My next closest friends, Dashiell and Ethan, were away at football training camp for another week. And while the McCrackens had plenty of room at their home, Summer was about to go on vacation to Malibu with her mother, and I wasn’t comfortable staying alone with J.J.
Summer was the one who proposed the solution.
“Teddy should come with Mom and me to California,” she told my parents.
We were at the site of what had been our home the next evening, sifting through the remnants to see if we could find anything of value. Around us, the other residents of employee housing were doing the same. Although the fire was out, the surrounding forest still smelled like it was burning. The scent was overpowering.
My parents turned to Summer, unsure. “We can’t ask that of you…,” Mom began.
“It’s no big deal,” Summer said quickly. “We’re staying at a friend’s house, and it has like seventeen bedrooms. Teddy could have his own wing.”
“And then there’s plane fare…,” Dad said.
“Not an issue. We’re taking the jet.”
Mom and Dad shared a look. I could tell they were uncomfortable with accepting another free vacation from the McCrackens; their family had already taken all of us to Yellowstone that summer, not to mention having me over for dinner dozens of times and treating me to movies, concerts, and multiple trips to Schlitterbahn Waterpark in New Braunfels. I had felt a little weird about having Summer pay for everything at first, but she had ultimately told me that her family had more money than they knew what to do with, whereas mine did not, so I should stop fretting and enjoy it.
Despite their wealth, the McCrackens did not live ostentatiously. Instead of a mansion, they had a ranch house (albeit a very large ranch house on an extremely large ranch). Instead of limos and sports cars, they traveled in pickup trucks and hybrid SUVs. Summer bought the same clothes her friends did, from shops at the mall and thrift stores. But the McCrackens did splurge when it came to air travel. The jet was officially owned by one of J.J.’s many companies, but the family used it plenty. It was easy to understand why; my parents and I had taken the jet to Yellowstone with them, and it had been very nice.
Summer sensed my parents’ hesitance and nudged them. “Bringing Teddy won’t cost us anything extra. We’re paying for the jet anyhow, so it doesn’t matter if there are three people flying or four.”
“Four people?” Dad echoed. “I thought your father wasn’t going on this trip.”
“He’s not. But Doc is coming with us.”
Mom looked up from a pile of ash she was sifting through, surprised. “Doc is going on vacation with you?”
Doc Deakin was the head vet at FunJungle. While he was renowned for the care and concern he showed animals, he was the opposite where humans were concerned. Except for his daughter and my mother, he generally seemed to be annoyed by the presence of every other human on earth.
“It’s not a vacation for Doc,” Summer explained. “A marine mammal center in Long Beach rescued a sea lion that some awful fisherman shot in the face. It’s blind now, and they can’t rehabilitate it, so Doc’s going out to see about bringing it to FunJungle.”
My parents and I cringed; even though we had heard thousands of stories of humans doing terrible things to animals, they never stopped being upsetting. Mom also seemed bothered by another part of the story. “That sounds like the sort of thing Doc would normally send an intern to do. Assuming he’d deign to send someone from the veterinary staff at all. It seems more like a transport issue than a medical one. So why is Doc going?”
Summer shrugged. “Maybe he thinks he can save the sea lion’s eyesight or something?”
“I suppose,” Mom said, although she didn’t seem convinced.
A sob cut through the stillness of the day. Bonnie Melton, the head elephant keeper, was standing in the space where her trailer had been, clutching the remains of a charred photo album. It was amazing that any of it had survived the blaze at all—and yet, obviously, the damage was devastating.
Bonnie’s wife held her close, comforting her.
I looked at what remained of the forest around me. Somehow, not all of the trees were dead. Their trunks were charred black, but they still had tufts of green leaves. And while the ground was now barren, I knew that wouldn’t be the case for long. Fire was a natural part of the lives of forests. Many plants actually needed the underbrush to be burned away before they would have enough light to grow. Within a few weeks, grasses and flowers would emerge from the baked earth, and over the next few years, the trees and bushes would return. But that was of little solace to someone who’d lost their prized possessions in the fire.
“So?” Summer pressed my parents. “Teddy can come with us, right? It solves all your problems.”
“Not exactly all of them,” Dad corrected, waving to the space where our house had been.
“I mean the short-term ones,” Summer said. “Teddy needs a place to stay. So he can stay with us in Malibu. Done.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. Despite my home being gone, I was now feeling excited. I had never been to California before, and I’d heard that the beaches in Malibu were amazing.
“You don’t have anything to wear,” Mom reminded me. “All your clothes are gone.”
“We’ll get some at FunJungle Emporium before we leave,” Summer assured her. “They sell everything there.”
This was true. The Emporium was so big, it had a larger clothing section than most department stores—although every last bit of it was branded with FunJungle logos or characters. Even the boxer shorts.
“Please?” I implored my parents. “Can I go?”
Mom and Dad looked at each other again. Apparently, neither of them could think of a reason to say no. Mom turned back to Summer. “I suppose that if your mother says it’s all right, then we’d be okay with it.”
Summer beamed. “I know she will! Mom loves Teddy!”
Sure enough, Kandace McCracken was happy to have me join them. Which was how, less than a day later, I found myself at the beach in Malibu, California, staying in the biggest house I had ever been inside.
It was the home of one of Kandace’s best friends, a fellow model who went by only one name: Binka. She was originally from Brazil, but she had married an extremely successful land developer named Roswell Crowe. Roswell had become fabulously rich building mansions for celebrities and then decided to top them all when building his own home.
The marriage hadn’t worked out. According to Kandace, Binka and Roswell were in the midst of a very nasty divorce. Binka had ended up with the beach house, while Roswell got the mansion in Beverly Hills.
The beach house was extremely modern, with large open spaces and enormous windows facing the Pacific Ocean. My entire home could have fit inside the living room. The house was filled with paintings that I didn’t like and expensive furniture that seemed to be designed for looks rather than comfort. Binka eagerly gave us a tour when we arrived, rattling off the names of the creators of each work of art. “That’s a Twombly. That’s a Haring. And that’s a Bartleby-Combs.” She pointed lazily around the room as she spoke, so I couldn’t tell if she was talking about paintings or furniture. Apparently, I was expected to know the names of everyone she mentioned.
Kandace gasped with delight at everything, while behind their backs, Summer quietly made faces of disgust for my amusement.
As far as I was concerned, the most beautiful thing about the house was the view. Beyond the windows, the Pacific shimmered under a cloudless blue sky, while the beach arced away to either side. The house had a wide raised deck with an infinity pool overlooking the beach. Sliding glass doors led out to it, but for some reason, they were all closed, cutting off the ocean breeze. Without it, the air in the house felt stale—and there was a strange faint smell of decay.
We had come directly to Binka’s from the airport. Much of our route had taken us along the Pacific Coast Highway, which followed the shoreline from the more populated section of the city out to Malibu. Flying in, I had been astonished to see how big and spread out Los Angeles was; the last twenty minutes of the flight had been over a continuous stretch of urban sprawl. But there was also a surprising amount of wilderness in the midst of the city. From the plane, I had noted a range of mountains cutting straight through the metropolis. Some of it was developed, but most was open space. That same range continued on into Malibu, running directly along the coast. Much of Malibu was built on the extremely narrow strip of land between the mountains and the beach. In many spots, there was so little room that the houses couldn’t quite fit; their fronts were built on solid ground, while their backs perched on stilts over the beach. However, the area where Binka lived was different.
It was called the Colony, and even in Malibu, which was full of wealthy, exclusive neighborhoods, this one was regarded as the wealthiest and most exclusive. It was a gated community of opulent mansions, situated on a wide, flat delta that jutted out into the Pacific from the base of the mountains.
And yet, something struck me as odd about the Colony: almost no one had any sort of yard at all. The mansions were all built on thin strips of land and were so large, they took up almost their entire properties. The whole community was a line of giant beachfront homes wedged together like bricks, with barely any room between them. Binka’s mansion was a prime example: it had more rooms than Binka seemed to know what to do with, but not a single square inch of lawn. It was as though she and Roswell hadn’t cared at all about being outside—unless it was by the pool.
