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better get out of here,” Amos said. “Now. I don’t want to go through that again.”
    “And if Emile and Claude catch us here,” Dunc said, “we’re—”
    “You’re what?” A man’s voice stopped them.
    The boys turned. Emile and Claude were standing in the cage door, watching them.

The men stood in the doorway with their hands on their hips. Emile was in front, and he smiled.
    “Ah, so what is this?” Emile said. “A rescue party for a skateboard?” He chuckled.
    “I think the rescue party is going to need a rescue party,” Claude said. He smiled and pushed the sleeves of his raincoat up forearms that looked like raw hams. They stepped forward.
    “Get back, get back, you mangy animals!”
    Emile and Claude looked over the threeboys’ shoulders. Amos, Dunc, and Lash turned around. The old zookeeper was trotting up from the rear of the exhibit, desperately throwing bananas over his shoulder as he went. A crowd of monkeys was chasing him, grabbing the bananas before they could reach the ground.
    “I tell ya,” the old man said, “I give you monkeys one banana, and you take two. I give you two bananas, and you take three. When’s it going to end? This is blackmail, you know.” He looked up, saw the crowd of humans in the exhibit, and stopped. “Oh, hello,” he said.
    “So now we have another member of the party,” Claude said. “No matter.”
    Just at that moment the parrot, sitting on a tree branch directly above Claude, looked over its shoulder, belched once for luck, aimed carefully, and let loose.
    Emile turned around to see what his partner was cursing about. A happy scream came from the tree branches, and Kissing Gertie exploded out of the brush. She grabbed Emile. Hard.
    “Not again, you hmmph—” Emile said ashe fell backward. The parrot sat above them on the tree branch, nodding its head up and down, laughing.
    “Run!” Dunc shouted. They dodged past the cursing thugs and ran toward the zoo entrance. As Lash went past Emile, he broke loose from Gertie and made a grab that knocked the skateboard loose. It flew through the air, and Amos caught it. They skipped left and right through people coming to see the animals, and the last thing Amos saw of the other two boys was when Dunc yelled:
    “Get over to the skateboard championships and get lost in the crowd. We’ll try to find the police.” Then a tour group cut them off, and Amos was alone. He headed across the street toward the skateboard park.
    Just before he ducked into the mass of people, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Emile and Claude leaving the zoo, one wiping green stuff out of his eyes and the other wiping monkey slobber off his face. They looked toward the park and saw him and immediately came running across the street.
    Amos darted back and forth through the crowd. Emile and Claude were gaining on him. He put on a burst of speed, jumped through the last of the spectators, and suddenly found himself trapped between the thugs and the steep concrete drop of the track.
    “Give us the board, Mr. Hare Krishna.”
    Amos turned. They were walking slowly toward him, evil grins on their faces. He felt the weight of Maggie in his hands and took a deep breath. Just as they reached him, Amos put Maggie down, stepped on it, and pushed out onto the track.
    He couldn’t remember much of what happened after that. There were vague pictures, mind-photos, but things moved so fast he could never be sure. He remembered going down the track somewhere near the speed of light, and then he thought he might have hit the side and done a flip almost the same as the day before, but higher.
    Much higher.
    He shot into the air as if he had been fired out of a cannon. Halfway through his trajectory he looked down and saw thetrack. It seemed to be a skinny white snake across the park, and the people like ants looking up at him. Next to his ear he thought he heard a migrating goose honk.
I’ll have to be careful
, he thought—
there are planes up