“This a friend of yours?” Mickey asked Wahoo.
“She’s in my biology class.”
“Algebra, too,” said Tuna.
Wahoo’s father was looking at the tote bag. “Which way are you headin’, hon?”
“Anywhere,” she said. “Wherever you guys are going.”
When she stepped closer, they saw she had a black eye.
“Who did that to you?” Mickey asked.
“I fell down the stairs.”
“Baloney.”
“Then never mind,” Tuna said, and turned to walk away.
“Hold on.” Wahoo motioned her to come back. He didn’t know what to say or how to act. Who in the world would hit a girl? he wondered.
His father asked Tuna where she lived. She pointed toward a dented old Winnebago at the far end of the parking lot.
“Okay, but where do you keep it?” Mickey asked.
“Right there.”
“You live at the Walmart?”
“They let motor homes stay for free,” Tuna explained. “We got electric and water, everything we need. It’s not so awful.”
Mickey’s father shook his head. “If you like campin’ in a parking lot.”
Wahoo knew Tuna was telling the truth. In fifth grade he’d met a boy who had spent a whole summer with his family towing a Gulf Stream trailer from one Walmart store to another, all the way from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Portland, Oregon.
“What really happened to your eye?” Wahoo asked.
“I told you. I fell down.”
Mickey said, “That’s bull. Somebody slugged her.”
Tuna’s cheeks turned red. Wahoo was shocked that his father would say it aloud and embarrassed for Tuna that it was probably true.
Mickey bent down and whispered, “Was it your old man?”
Tuna pulled away. “So what if it was?”
“Has he been drinkin’ tonight?”
Her eyes welled up. “Every damn night,” she said quietly.
“Where’s your mom?” Wahoo asked.
Tuna covered up a sniffle. “Up north with my grandma.”
Mickey Cray was staring darkly across the parking lot at the Winnebago, and Wahoo knew he was considering paying Mr. Gordon a visit. Such a confrontation could only end badly, with police cars and ambulances. Wahoo’s father had absolutely no use for creeps who beat on small animals, especially kids.
“You’re coming with us,” Wahoo said to Tuna, “on a real camping trip.”
Her eyes brightened. “Seriously?”
“We’re heading out to the Everglades for a few days.”
“Sweet.”
Mickey said, “I’ll be right back,” and started striding toward the camper where Tuna’s father was drinking.
Wahoo ran up and cut in front of him. “No, don’t.”
“He’s got a gun,” Tuna said, “by the way.”
Mickey frowned. “Then somebody better take it away from him.”
“Stay out of it, Pop. She’s safe now.” Wahoo unclenched his father’s right hand and pressed a twenty-dollar bill into it.
“What the bleep is this for?”
“Now that we’ve got company, we’ll need more food for the trip,” Wahoo said. He looked over at Tuna. “You like Coke or Mountain Dew?”
“Anything’s good,” she said.
Wahoo gave his father another five bucks. “Mountain Dew it is.”
Mickey shoved the cash in his pocket and muttered, “You two wait in the pickup.” Then he trudged back toward the Walmart. Wahoo kept an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t make a detour to Mr. Gordon’s RV.
Once they were seated in the truck, Tuna said, “Look, I don’t want to mess up your vacation.”
“It’s not a vacation. It’s a job,” said Wahoo.
“What kinda job?”
When he told her, she didn’t believe him.***
Swaddled in his fluffy purple robe, Derek Badger watched the replay of the alligator scene over and over.
“Crikey, this is golden,” he murmured.
Raven Stark sat beside the director at a small dining counter in Derek’s motor coach. A map of the Everglades was spread in front of them.
“Have you arranged for a chopper yet?” Derek called from his bed.
“It’s on my list,” Raven said patiently.
Derek loved using helicopters to shoot high aerial scenes of himself traipsing through the bush, making it appear as if he were all alone. The key was to find a place where there were no obvious signs of human habitation. Fortunately, the Everglades covered a vast region, and much of it was remote.
“Where’s the new script?” Derek demanded.
“The writers are still working on it,” the director said.
“I want fresh pages by tomorrow morning. Understood?”
The pages were being rewritten to put the gator “attack” at the very end of the show. Because the scene was so brief, it would be shown several times in slow motion and dragged out to fill the last ten minutes of the program.
For the earlier part of the show, the director would need other videotaped segments-Derek hacking his way through the saw grass, building a campsite and, of course, cooking some poor luckless creature for supper.
“What about using your face-to-face with the snapping turtle?” the director asked. “It’s really not so bad-”
“I told you to erase that!” Derek exploded.
“All right. Consider it done,” the director said, although he had no intention of destroying the turtle tape. The nose-nipping scene would be digitally added to a secret DVD of Derek’s spectacular blunders that would be played on a giant flat screen when the crew of Expedition Survival! held its annual end-of-the-season party, which Derek never attended because he considered himself too important. The DVD was always the high point of the evening- even Raven had found herself weeping with laughter.
She wasn’t laughing now, scanning the map of the Everglades.
At first the Miccosukee tribe had agreed to let Expedition Survival! base its operations at one of its settlements along the Tamiami Trail. Unfortunately, Raven had just been informed by a tribal lawyer that Mr. Badger and his crew were no longer welcome.
“Because of the incident involving the Navajos,” the attorney had explained stiffly. “We found out about it on the Internet.”
Raven had grimaced at the memory.
Derek had been doing a cave-camping scene in New Mexico when he’d brainlessly decided to use an ancient Navajo prayer pipe to scratch an itch on his back. The sacred relic had snapped into three pieces, greatly upsetting the tribal leaders. Derek had been ordered to depart the reservation and never return.
Now, on the eve of the Everglades taping, Raven was scrambling to find a new place to use as a headquarters.
The director tapped a place on the map. “What about here, down in Flamingo?”
Raven frowned. “That’s in the national park.”
