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look up, thanks to Kazoo.
    Therefore, as closing time approached, lots of people were streaming out of KoalaVille. It seemed as though half that day’s visitors were there. I plunged in, fighting my way against the tide of humanity like a salmon swimming upstream. The security guards quickly lost sight of me amongst all the tourists.
    I ducked into the bazaar, veered down an aisle of T-shirts, and slipped around the back of Kazoo’s exhibit. There was a door marked with a sign that read AUTHORIZED KOALA PERSONNEL ONLY . I pounded on the door but got no answer.
    Instead of a standard keyhole, the door had a coded entry keypad. Every door at FunJungle was like this. Each had a different code, which was changed almost every day for security purposes. However, there was also one secret code that worked on every door: J.J. McCracken’s personal code. He’d shared it with Summer, who had shared it with me in a moment of crisis. I hadn’t used it since, figuring it was only for emergencies, but at the moment this seemed to qualify. I could hear Large Marge storming through the bazaar close by.
    I typed in J.J.’s code, hoping it hadn’t been changed in the last six months.
    The door clicked open.
    I stepped through it into the koala keepers’ office.
    The room wasn’t very big. The koala exhibit had been built so quickly that FunJungle had almost forgotten to addthe keepers’ office in the first place. There was a tiny desk and a folding chair, but the space was mostly used for storage. Jugs of water were stacked against one wall. Sheaves of eucalyptus lined another. The desk was piled with books and magazines. A door on the other side of the office led into Kazoo’s habitat.
    The door had a window in it, and I peered through this. Kazoo’s room wasn’t a whole lot larger than the office—about twelve feet square. The rest of the exhibit was taken up by the viewing area, which arced around Kazoo’s habitat like a horseshoe. Kazoo’s habitat was filled with eucalyptus trees. I spotted the koala in the central one, asleep as usual. Beyond him, through the foliage, I could see through the glass into the viewing area.
    Guests were lined up at the glass, pressing their noses against it for a glimpse of Kazoo. Beyond them I could see the keeper on duty.
    It was Kristi Sullivan.
    I heaved a sigh of relief. Kristi was one of my favorite keepers at FunJungle. She’d only been hired a few weeks before, as part of the new staff for Kazoo. She was his main keeper, meaning she was on duty most days, but since koalas don’t do a whole lot, much of her job involved standing at a podium in the viewing area and dispensing fascinating koala facts over a loudspeaker. As Kristi was young, pretty, andextremely perky, a lot of the guests ended up watching her more than the koala. (Especially the male guests, Mom liked to point out.) Kristi had always been nice to me. I was hoping she wouldn’t have to get involved in my current crisis, but if she did, I was sure she’d back me rather than Marge.
    At the moment it was four forty-five, and Kristi was trying to herd the tourists out of the viewing area. Kazoo’s habitat was actually supposed to close at four thirty, a half hour before most other exhibits, because it was a long way to the park gate. (In the winter, FunJungle closed two hours earlier than it did in summer, on account of darkness.) However, Kristi never had the heart to just kick the tourists out, so it generally took her fifteen minutes to gently coax everyone out the door. “Go on now,” I could hear her teasing the stragglers. “If you folks don’t get out of here, I’ll have to lock you in for the night.”
    Behind me, outside the keepers’ office, I could hear the far less sweet sound of Large Marge shouting at her underlings. “He must be around here somewhere, you morons! Just find him!”
    Kristi shooed the last tourists