“Excuse me?”

“We can chat about this later, Derek.”

“Indeed we will. What about a python? I told you I wanted a python.”

“The gentleman has offered us a very large Burmese, though it’s not tame.”

“Even better!” chortled Derek.

Raven Stark sighed to herself. She was accustomed to working around Derek’s enormous ego, but there were times when she felt like reminding him that he was basically a tap dancer, not a grizzled woodsman.

“Anything else that’s super-scary?” he asked.

“I noticed they had a large snapping turtle,” she said.

“How large?”

“Large enough to take off a hand.”

“Excellent,” Derek said. “Set up an underwater scene-I’m swimming along through the Everglades, minding my own business, when the hungry snapper charges out from under a log and drags me to the bottom of the lagoon.”

“Right. Except turtles don’t eat people.”

“How do you know?” Derek demanded.

“Call me when you land in Miami,” said Raven Stark.

Wahoo had an older sister named Julie who was finishing law school at the University of Florida in Gainesville. His father was secretly proud of her, but he wouldn’t let on.

“Just what the world needs-another darn lawyer,” he’d grumble.

“I love you, too, Dad,” Julie would say, and pinch his cheek.

Wahoo thought his sister was pretty cool, although he sometimes felt intimidated because she was so smart and funny and sociable. Wahoo was shy, and not as self-confident. Julie had always been a straight-A student while Wahoo wasn’t: his best-ever report card was two A’s, four B’s and a C (in algebra, naturally).

“Just do your best,” his mom would say. “That’s good enough for us.”

Mickey Cray never really took an interest in the children’s schoolwork because he was too busy with the animals.

“Put the old man on the phone,” Julie said when she called.