Whale Done

Contents Cover Map Title Page Dedication Chapter 1: The Escape Chapter 2: The Inferno Chapter 3: The Beach Chapter 4: The Carcass Chapter 5: The Explosion Chapter 6: Questions Chapter 7: The Patsy Chapter 8: The Suspects Chapter 9: Garbage Chapter 10: The Surf Rat Chapter 11: Public Relations Chapter 12: Sand Chapter 13: The Chase Chapter 14: The Victim Chapter 15: Fish Chapter 16: The Fight Chapter 17: Eavesdropping Chapter 18: Sharky Chapter 19: The Thief Chapter 20: The Accomplice Chapter 21: The Premiere Chapter 22: The Deduction Chapter 23: The Hostage Epilogue: The Pod Our Oceans are in Danger! Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright III V VI VII VIII IX X 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 
 
 Stuart Gibbs
 New York Times Bestselling Author of the Spy School Series
 Whale Done
 A Funjungle Novel
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 For Marc Zachary, who knows more about theme parks (and plenty of other stuff) than just about anyone. Thanks for all the advice over the years.
 
 
 1 THE ESCAPE
 I would never have seen the whale explode if a kangaroo hadn’t burned down my house.
 The kangaroo was a four-year-old male named Hopalong Cassidy, and the fire wasn’t entirely his fault. It’s not like kangaroos go around plotting arson. All that Hopalong was truly guilty of was trying to escape.
 I know this because I witnessed the entire event.
 My name is Teddy Fitzroy. I’m fourteen years old, and I live at FunJungle Wild Animal Park.
 FunJungle is the most popular tourist attraction in all of Texas, an enormous theme park and zoo featuring many of the finest animal exhibits ever built. Both my parents work there—my mother is the head primatologist, while my father is the official photographer—and because their jobs require them to be at FunJungle at all hours, we have employee housing.
 But while FunJungle had spared no expense to create incredible habitats for the animals, with state-of-the-art facilities and innovative designs, the park had really skimped when it came to providing lodging for humans. The public relations department had named the staff housing area Lakeside Estates, but it was merely a group of mobile homes haphazardly arranged in the woods behind the employee parking lot. They were supposed to be deluxe models, but my father suspected they were actually defective merchandise that the dealer hadn’t been able to sell. (J.J. McCracken, the billionaire owner of FunJungle, also owned the mobile home company.) Our home was slightly lopsided, with bargain-basement appliances and walls so thin you could hear what neighbors were watching on television. Even worse, the utilities were barely functional. The septic system often smelled worse than the elephant house, and the electricity conked out on a regular basis.
 Which was why I wasn’t home during the fire. The mobile home park had suffered a power failure—on the hottest day of the year, no less.
 Central Texas is known for being hot and humid, but that mid-August day was brutal. The state was suffering through its worst heat wave in a decade, and that afternoon it had been 116 degrees in the shade. Even animals that lived in deserts, like the camels and fennec foxes, seemed to think this was too much and refused to go outside. Despite this, the park was still busy; it was the height of tourist season, and parents who had built up the trip for weeks didn’t have the heart to tell their children they weren’t going. (In addition, many guests had prepaid for nonrefundable park admission packages.) But everyone who had dared to venture outdoors looked miserable. They slouched about in the heat, gulping down overpriced sodas to stay hydrated and griping that none of the animals were doing anything but napping. The Polar Pavilion, which was refrigerated to arctic temperatures for the polar bears and penguins, had a two-hour line to get inside.
 I had spent most of the day with my best friend, Xavier, and my girlfriend, Summer, trying to find ways to stay cool. Xavier was a junior volunteer at FunJungle,