Read Chomp for Free Online Page B

table, tapping the keypad of a calculator. His father was stretched out on the sofa. Outside, the rain poured down and the yard was turning to mud. The taping of
Expedition Survival!
had been suspended until the weather cleared.
    “How much do we owe the bank?” Wahoo asked.
    Mickey Cray grunted. “I don’t recall.”
    “I bet Mom knows.”
    “Down to the penny.” Mickey sat up. “Hey, let’s call her.”
    “We can’t, Pop. She said once a week, remember?” Wahoo would have loved to hear his mother’s voice, but she’d warned about phoning too often. “It costs, like, ten bucks a minute,” he reminded his dad. “Plus, it’s the middle of the night in Shanghai.”
    “Put that stupid calculator away,” Mickey said sourly. “Let me deal with the bleeping bank.”
    Wahoo’s mom, who hated to hear cussing, made his father put a dollar in the cookie jar every time he said a bad word. Consequently, Mickey had trained himself to use “bleep” or “bleeping” instead. He’d gotten the idea from watching reality police shows, which replaced the criminals’ profanity with electronic toots.
    Wahoo said, “I’m not trying to be nosy, Pop.”
    He had a friend at school whose parents had lost their house to the bank because they couldn’t make the mortgage payments. Now the whole family was crammed into a small apartment in Naranja. Wahoo knew his mother was determined not to let that happen to them—that’s why she’d taken the job in China.
    Still, he worried.
    “Relax, would ya? We’ll be okay,” Mickey said.
    Clutching the TV remote, he lay back down. He flipped through the channels until he found a show called
When Animals Go Bonkers
. The first segment featured a crazed Canada goose attacking a garbage truck. Mickey didn’t even crack a smile; his thoughts were a million miles away.
    Wahoo was troubled to see his father acting so listless and distracted. He grabbed a weather jacket and walked outside.
    Rain always made the animals sleepy, so the backyard was peaceful. The TV crew had stowed its equipment and gone to lunch. Only the hum of Derek Badger’s humongous motor coach could be heard over the patter of raindrops. As Wahoo passed by the vehicle, he looked through a side window and saw Derek standing with Raven Stark in front of a mirror. With a tissue she was dabbing makeup on his nose, undoubtedly trying to conceal the button-sized turtle bite. Wahoo smiled to himself and kept walking.
    Alice the alligator was floating serenely in the faux Everglades pond. It was three times as large as a regular backyard swimming pool and twice as deep. Mickey Cray and twofriends had dug out the hole and poured the gunite themselves. Wahoo, who was only five at the time, had taken a turn with the shovel, too.
    “Hey, girl,” he said to Alice. He waved to her with his thumb-less hand, a private joke.
    Every year, the new kids at school would stare at Wahoo’s knobby scar and ask what had happened. Initially they wouldn’t believe the story, then they’d want to hear all the gory details. His classmates were always amazed when he told them he hadn’t felt any pain at first.
    In truth, Wahoo hadn’t even realized anything was wrong until Paulette, the girl he’d been trying to impress, shrieked and keeled over. Only then had Wahoo looked down at his hand and seen the empty, bloody socket where a perfectly good thumb had been attached.
    He’d wrapped the nub with his sweatshirt and dashed for the house, leaving Alice munching happily on the chicken and unseen appetizer. By the time the ambulance had arrived, Wahoo was in a world of hurt.
    He never saw Paulette again. Her parents moved her to a private school where the boys came from normal homes and kept hamsters or goldfish as pets, not giant flesh-eating reptiles. Wahoo understood completely.
    Yet he wouldn’t have traded his childhood for anybody else’s.
    He said goodbye to Alice and went to check on the injured young bobcat, which was still