She pushed me in the arm. “Record what? I didn’t say a thing.” She laughed under her breath.

I laughed along with her. But then a thought hit me. There were a couple of people who I could help that I had been ignoring.

The Badgers. They asked me to redeem them.

I bolted to my feet. “Zoe! I think I know what I need to do!”

She stood up next to me. “What?”

“I need to bring the Badger brothers back.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no, Arcade! The Badger brothers don’t deserve to be saved after all they’ve done!”

“But don’t you see? I’ve been acting just like them. I’ve been greedy and sneaky and . . . what did you call me? Self-absorbed! Why should I expect the power of the token to help me, if I withhold its power to help them?”

Zoe plopped back down and buried her face in her hands. “Arcade, I hate this! If you bring them back here, who knows what they’ll do! They want your token, and they’ll stop at nothing to take it away from you.”

“So? What if I just give it to them? They’d leave me alone then, right?”

“But they’d abuse the power.”

I shrug. “And that would only hurt them. As for me, I’d just go back to being the ultra-cool person I always was.”

“Without Loopy and Doug. And then you wouldn’t have the token to help you get them back.”

“And Flames will never make it back to the Beijing Zoo.”

“Well, you could always get on a plane to China and deliver him yourself. You don’t need the token for that. Sure, it would take a while. You’d have to save for the plane ticket, convince Mom and Dad—”

“THAT’S IT, ZOE!”

“What’s it?”

“You just gave me an idea of how to bring the Badgers back but keep them away from me for a while.”

“How?”

I stood up and walked down the stairs. “I’ll tell you while we go feed Flames. I just have to make sure I’m super specific when the time comes!”

*  *  *

“We’re getting low on shrimp again.” I dumped a bunch in a bowl in Doug’s kitchen, and then Zoe and I made our way up the stairs to the extra bathroom. Zoe pinched her nose as we walked in the door.

“Hey, Flamesy! Great to see you, bud! Want some shrimp?”

Flames flapped his feathers and glided over to me.

SQUAWK!

“Zoe, look how orange he is!” I elbowed her in the side.

“He’s getting big. We can’t leave him in here much longer.”

“I know. He needs some sunshine too. You think we could take him out to the Ramble?”

“The RAMBLE? How would we do that?”