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beautiful, she had to admit, but all she could think about were those millions of zebra hairs, just out of reach!
    George pressed his nose against the glass. “Look at ’em, B! Have you ever seen something so amazing?”
    “Well, um …” B didn’t have time to finish. George clambered over her, unbolted the rear emergency exit door, and jumped off the train!

Chapter 15
    The emergency alarm shrilled.
    Brakes hissed as the train came to a stop.
    “Get back here, kid!” Mack cried. He whipped out a walkie-talkie. “Security, we have a situation in the zebra pen. Send a coupla guys, pronto!”
    B watched George’s back, racing off toward the zebras, then looked at Dawn and her friends, whose mouths were still hanging open in shock.
    What could she do? The only way out of this mess was to get a zebra hair!
    B leaped through the door and followed George.
    “Come back here!” Mack hollered.
    B sprinted through the tall grass. George was well ahead of her, and pulling farther away.
I couldn’t catch George even if he wasn’t a zebra,
B thought,
but I have to try.
    The zebras, grazing in groups, looked like a stripy optical illusion in the distance. One of them raised its head, ears pricked, and soon the whole herd was alert, hearing George’s footsteps approaching.
    “Hey, you kids! Stop this
instant
and come back to the train!”
    B glanced over her shoulder to see Mack and another zoo worker racing after them.
    Uh-oh.
    The zebras broke off their grazing and galloped around the perimeter of the pen in long, graceful strides, their black tails streaming. George swerved to follow them, his long legs flying. A pair of elephants, watching from over the fence, trumpeted at all the excitement.
    “Forget the girl, get that crazy boy!” Mack called to his comrade. The zoo workers passed B andclosed in on George. He ran in a zigzag, just like the zebras were doing. He let out a loud whinny, and a few of the younger zebras paused and turned to look back at him.
    There was no way she could catch up to George now, so B paused to catch her breath. It was all she could do not to flop in the grass.
    Then she saw them, not far off, hiding behind a thicket of bushes — a mother zebra and her calf, who had ducked underneath her round belly. The mother zebra watched the commotion warily.
    B tried to still her breath so the zebras wouldn’t be startled. She stared at them through the leafy cover.
    For a second B forgot everything else. The zebra was magnificent! Her muscles rippled under her smooth hide, and the stark black and white of her stripes was dazzling. Her mane stood stiff and upright, as B had learned from her zebra research. But to see one here, so close, breathing, watching, and nuzzling her calf, made all the online photographs insignificant by comparison.
    “H-A-I-R,” B whispered, hoping not to scare the mother zebra away.
    Her pointy ears twitched, but she didn’t run. Something
twinged
on the top of her mane, and a stiff black hair floated into B’s outstretched hand.
    “Gotcha!” the security guards cried, and B turned just in time to see Mack nail George with a perfect football tackle. Gripping the hair tightly, she hurried over to see if her best friend was okay.
    He was. He’d landed in a cushy spot: the soft mud around the zebras’ drinking hole.
    “I have never been so embarrassed in my life,” Angela declared on the bus back home. “Next time your sister wants us to take her somewhere, Dawn, will you please make sure she leaves her immature friends at home?”
    B avoided Dawn’s glare.
    “We won’t be taking either of them to the zoo any time soon,” Stef said, “since they’ve both been
banned for a year!”
    “They don’t need to rub our noses in it,” Georgemuttered to B. The mud on his face and shirt was slowly forming a crust.
    B bit her lip. She couldn’t exactly defend George for what he’d done, and yet, she was as much to blame for turning him half zebra in the first