The Smartest Kid in the Universe

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. It’s been in our family for centuries. It’s also in Spanish.”

  “Oh. I, uh, don’t speak Spanish.”

  “So I’ve heard. And you can’t read it, either. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, don’t worry, Jake. We can work on this secret code together.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Me too,” said Grace.

  Someone rapped their knuckles on Jake’s hotel room door.

  “Mr. McQuade?” said the muffled voice of Special Agent Andrus. “It’s time to go. Deputy Assistant Director Struchen has assembled the team at the Hoover Building. They’re waiting for us.”

  “Be right with you. Grace? I gotta go.”

  “Good luck, Jake. Have fun. And use that big brain of yours to help them catch the bad guys!”

  * * *

  —

  Agent Andrus drove Jake in a sleek black sedan to the FBI’s flag-draped, no-nonsense, honeycomb-of-concrete headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  They passed through security (Jake got another pretty cool temporary ID badge) and headed upstairs to a conference room, where a buttoned-up man with a snowy-white crew cut named Deputy Assistant Director Struchen was waiting with half a dozen field agents. Pictures and photographs were pinned to bulletin boards lining the walls.

  “Welcome, Mr. McQuade. I’m Don Struchen.”

  They shook hands.

  “Please take a seat.”

  “Is there assigned seating?”

  “No. Just grab any empty chair.”

  “Um, okay,” Jake mumbled as he sat down. “In school, some of the teachers have a chart….”

  “Here’s our case.”

  Struchen went to the bulletin boards and tapped photos and drawings with a pointy aluminum stick as he presented the facts.

  “Two weeks ago, a bank in Bakersfield, California, was robbed by two men. We suspect this gentleman, Mick Shaffer, a resident of Bakersfield, was one of them. However, on the day of the bank robbery, Mr. Shaffer was visiting his brother, Bob, in Columbus, Ohio. He flew there, rented a car, and didn’t fly home until three days after the bank robbery.”

  Jake raised his hand to ask a question.

  “Yes, son?”

  “Does this guy’s brother own a car?”

  Struchen nodded.

  “Then why’d he have to rent one? I mean, unless his brother was too lazy to come pick him up at the airport. I guess that’s possible. I used to be super lazy. I might’ve told Emma to rent a car or grab a cab if, say, there was a good game on TV and I didn’t want to go pick her up. But that’s beside the point. I can’t drive. Not for four more years.”

  The FBI agents were all staring at Jake, probably wondering why they asked this kid to help them. They didn’t know that sometimes, when the pressure was on, Jake McQuade just babbled.

  Struchen cleared his throat. “We have impounded the rental vehicle as evidence. Mr. Shaffer put on a lot of mileage.”

  Jake studied the bulletin boards. Saw a map of the continental United States. Did some quick math.

  “Was it over four thousand five hundred and seventeen miles? ’Cause that would be the length of a round trip to Bakersfield from Columbus and back.”

  Struchen nodded.

  “And was he with his brother for more than sixty-six hours? That’s how long it would take to do the driving, give or take an hour or two. He might’ve stopped for gas. Or to use the bathroom. Or grab some chips. Maybe a doughnut.”

  “Yes,” said Struchen. “He was there for a whole week.”

  “So it’s possible that Mr. Shaffer flew to Columbus, drove to Bakersfield, robbed the bank, and drove back to Ohio, where he caught a flight home to California a few days later to give himself an alibi?”

  “That’s what we think,” said Struchen, planting his hands on the conference table and leaning in. “It’s why the Bureau is involved. We think this was an interstate crime.”

  “Me too,” said Jake, wishing Kojo could’ve stayed for this part of the trip. All these detectives and evidence and pictures pinned to bulletin boards? Kojo would’ve loved it. Jake wondered if the FBI would let him take pictures. Probably not.

  “So tell me,” said Struchen, “how do we prove it?”

  Jake leaned back in his chair. And thought.

  This was a hard one.

  A fly flitted through the room. Agent Tillman followed it with her eyes. Then, in a flash, she grabbed it out of the air and squished it.

  That reminded Jake of the road trip his mom took them on last summer. To the Grand Canyon. By the time they made it all the way to Arizona, their car’s license plate and grill were splattered with bug guts and mangled wings.

  “You still have the car?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Struchen. “The rental company has been very cooperative.”

  “Okay. Have your people in Ohio scrape the windshield and the grill. The front license plate, too, if there is one. We need to analyze any and all squished bugs.”

  “Squished bugs?”

  Jake nodded. “You’re also going to need an expert entomologist. Someone who can identify all the insects.”

  The FBI agents scrambled and made phone calls. Jake leaned back in his chair and grinned. It was pretty awesome to have all these grown-ups listening to him. Maybe adults should listen to kids more often!

  Four hours later, Jake was presented with the entomologist’s lengthy report. He scanned the list.

  “Here we go,” he announced. “Two species of Hemiptera, or ‘true bugs’—Neacoryphus rubicollis AND Piesma brachiale—plus the leg of a rainbow grasshopper, all of which are endemic to the western United States, not Ohio.”

  “Brilliant!” said Deputy Assistant Director Struchen. He turned to his agents. “Tell the team in Bakersfield to arrest Mr. Shaffer. Have the field team in Ohio pay a visit to the brother. And let all the lawyers know about our new evidence. Mr. McQuade?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “My pleasure, sir. And, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “If anybody asks, you might tell them that this arrest was made possible, in part, thanks to the fine public education offered at Riverview Middle School.”

  Jake received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Riverview on Friday morning.

  Banners festooned the much cleaner hallways. Kids decorated their lockers with art and copies of the headlines in all the newspapers:

  LOCAL GENIUS CRACKS CASE FOR FBI

  EGGHEAD SCRAMBLES ROBBERS’ ALIBI

  JAKE MCQUADE = BRAINIAC²

  Kojo had a stack of T-shirts printed with Jake’s class picture and genius spelled out using letters from the periodic table of elements.

  He was selling them at the school supplies shop in the main corridor and proclaimed that all proceeds would be going to the “maintenance and general betterment” of Riverview Middle School.

  Jake was back to knocking knuckles with all his buds.

  “You’re a real inspiration,” said Mr. Lyons, shaking Jake’s hand.

  “No, sir,” Jake told him. “You are. Even though this building is a wreck, you never gave up on us. You wanted me to learn even when I didn’t. You pushed me to be better at b-ball. It’s like a quote I read on a coffee mug once.”

  “What’d it say, Jake?”

  “I forget. But I wish I had that mug so I could give it to you right now!”

  All the kids hanging in the halls broke into a cheer.

  Which was soon cut off by the crackling speakers in the ceiling.

  “Students? This is your principal speaking.” Mrs. Malvolio’s voice echoed off the walls. “You are to report to your homeroom
s immediately. You will not congregate in the halls for an unauthorized pep rally. You will also remove any and all balloons, banners, and celebratory decorations. Might I remind you that this is a school, not Party City?”

  Bummed out by their principal, everybody shuffled off to class. By lunchtime, all the decorations were in the dumpsters.

  “Of course Mrs. Malvolio is upset by your achievements,” Grace told Jake when they grabbed a table with Kojo in the cafeteria. “She doesn’t want us to succeed. If we keep showing the world how smart kids are here, no way is the city shutting down Riverview.”

  “You up for signing autographs, baby?” asked Kojo.

  Jake shook his head. “Not today. We have work to do.”

  “We sure do,” said Grace.

  Kojo stood up. “No autographs today, people,” he announced. “My man needs a little space. His brain’s been working overtime this week.”

  Everybody nodded. Several were wearing those GENIUS T-shirts.

  “By the way, Jake,” said Kojo, “while you were down in DC helping the G-men—”

  “I so wish you could’ve been there, Kojo.”

  “Next time, baby. I was busy up here. Dug a little deeper. Picked up some fresh intel.”

  “From whom?” said Jake, because that was grammatically correct.

  “Mrs. Malvolio herself,” said Kojo, gesturing for Jake and Grace to lean in closer. “I was in the office, pretending to admire those pens they have with the plastic flower tops. Anyway, Mrs. Malvolio had her door wide open. She was on the phone with her uncle, Heath Huxley. She’s definitely working with him.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Grace.

  “Totally. She said”—Kojo put on a funny, high-pitched voice and started pretending to fidget with a chunky necklace—“ ‘Oh, Uncle Heath, I’d prefer the green carpet in my free penthouse apartment in the new building. Green will remind me of all the money we’re going to make!’ Then, I heard her say something else.” Kojo lowered his voice. “I think she knows about that pirate booty you told us about, Grace.”

  Grace’s eyes went wide. “Why? What’d she say?”

  “ ‘Once the bulldozers get here, Dog Breath will pay for everything!’ ”

  “They know about the treasure!” said Grace. “We need to move fast. You guys? We need to go see Uncle Charley.”

  “No more secrets,” said Grace when the group was safely inside Mr. Lyons’s office, the converted custodian’s closet.

  “You sure it’s okay we’re in here?” said Jake.

  “It’s fine,” said Grace. “I texted Uncle Charley. He’s on his way. Look, you guys, Uncle Charley and I know something that we haven’t shared with anybody. A secret.”

  Jake and Kojo glanced at each other.

  They had a secret, too.

  A big one.

  A secret about jelly beans and Ingestible Knowledge and an oddball scientist named Haazim Farooqi that they hadn’t shared with anybody, either.

  But Jake had promised Mr. Farooqi that he wouldn’t reveal anything about the IK breakthrough until the scientist was confident he could re-create what he’d done with that first batch of jelly beans.

  Plus, Jake wasn’t too keen on confessing to Grace (and the world) that he’d more or less cheated his way to his high IQ. That he was a phony and a fraud. That he was only the smartest kid in the universe because, one night, he wolfed down the first sugary snack he could find without exerting any effort.

  “Secrets are a bad thing,” said Kojo.

  “Unless,” Jake quickly countered, “revealing them could hurt somebody. For instance, if you knew that someone, say, had created a revolutionary new secret recipe for, I don’t know, bubbling purple goop over a Bunsen burner, and they shared that secret with you, it’d be bad to blab about it to anybody.”

  “True,” said Kojo, nodding to confirm he understood what Jake was really saying. “Bubbling purple goop over a Bunsen burner is a whole different, top-secret kind of category.”

  Grace rattled her head like she was trying to clear Jake’s and Kojo’s words out of her ears. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Nothing,” said Jake. “It’s just a hypothetical ethics debate.”

  “About purple goop,” added Kojo. “Bubbling. In a beaker…”

  The door opened. Mr. Lyons quickly slipped into the cramped room, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “Have you told them?” he asked Grace.

  “I’m trying. Can you two forget about the bubbling purple goop for a nanosecond? I’m trying to reveal our big family secret!”

  “And I need to get back to class,” said Mr. Lyons.

  “Right,” said Jake.

  “Go on,” added Kojo.

  “We need your brainpower, guys,” Grace said to Jake and Kojo. “And we need it fast. Uncle Charley?”

  “Grace is correct. We need help. My family has tried to do this on our own for centuries. But now that Mrs. Malvolio and her uncle seem to know…”

  He went to a shelf and pushed aside a cardboard filing box to reveal a small safe. He worked the combination. The heavy steel door sprang open.

  “Aha!” said Kojo. “So that’s the real reason why our vice principal has his office in an old custodian’s closet! Not only does it have a secret doorway to a fallout shelter, but it also comes with a hidden wall safe.”

  Mr. Lyons reached into the safe and pulled out a document that was sealed inside a thick plastic sheet. It was an antique parchment, the pale brownish color of a tea stain.

  “What is that?” asked Kojo.

  “This,” said Mr. Lyons dramatically, “is the cabin boy Eduardo Leones’s treasure map!”

  Jake studied the sealed document.

  It definitely didn’t look like a map. More like an antique letter.

  “This parchment is very fragile,” said Mr. Lyons. “Of course it’s also nearly three hundred years old. This was written before the American Revolution.”

  He pushed away a pile of papers and very carefully laid the protected sheet on his desk.

  “Where’d you get it?” asked Jake.

  “From my father,” said Mr. Lyons. “Who received it from his father. Who received it from his father. And so on, all the way back to 1728.”

  “How come there’s nothing but words?” said Kojo. “Most treasure maps have landmarks and dashes and an ‘X’ to mark the spot where the treasure’s buried. And if it’s a pirate map, it should also have a skull and crossbones on it somewhere.”

  “This map,” explained Grace, “is more like a riddle. A seemingly easy yet remarkably complex puzzle.”

  “It would be a lot easier if everything down below had remained exactly as it was when young Eduardo wrote it,” said Mr. Lyons. “All we know for certain is that the treasure is hidden in a cavernous room underneath this school.”

  “Is that where your ‘fallout shelter’ tunnel really leads?” asked Kojo. “Down to the caves?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Lyons. “If you follow it beyond the old shelter. The treasure is also why someone from the Leones or Lyons family has stood guard on this land since our ancestor, the extremely clever cabin boy, Eduardo, hid his treasure.”

  “I’ve done a lot of research at the library on pirate history in this area,” said Grace. “Trying to see if I could fill in some of the blanks.”

  “Was that the leather-bound journal in the bag that you had at the library?” asked Jake.

  Grace nodded. “I was hoping I could find a similar style of ‘treasure map,’ one that was all words.”

  “Any luck?” asked Kojo.

  Grace shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Then,” said Jake, “it’s up to us!”

  Kojo snapped several photos of the parchment, holding his phone sideways, like he’d seen spies do in
movies.

  “You kids don’t need me,” said Mr. Lyons. “I’ve tried to figure this thing out for thirty-some years. I’m no good with puzzles. I leave that up to you three.”

  “We won’t let you down, Coach,” said Jake. “We’re gonna unbury your family’s buried treasure!”

  The three friends spent all day Saturday working with the treasure puzzle in Jake’s bedroom.

  “Can we crack open the window, baby?” said Kojo. “I’m burning up.”

  Jake jimmied up the window. “Sorry. Steam heat radiators.”

  “It’s also very hot heat.”

  Grace had a photo of the treasure puzzle up on Jake’s computer monitor. Jake’s mom set them up with soda and snacks—including a bag of Pirate’s Booty cheese puffs, which made the three friends laugh.

  “What?” said Jake’s mother. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” said Jake. “It’s just the perfect snack. Cap’n Crunch would be good, too.” Then he forced himself not to giggle.

  But Grace couldn’t help herself. Neither could Kojo.

  They both cracked up.

  “Emma?” Jake’s mom called down the hall. “Maybe you and I should go catch a movie. Let these three work on whatever hysterical project it is they’re working on.”

  “Awesome!” said Emma.

  Jake, Grace, and Kojo had the apartment all to themselves. The photo of the ancient parchment glowed on Jake’s computer screen:

  “Okay,” said Grace, “I’ll translate the text, line by line.”

  “Great,” said Jake. “And maybe I can, you know, pick up some Spanish along the way.”

  “Oh-kay. ‘En esta cueva, encontrarás dos pilares de piedra.’ That means, ‘In this cave, you will find two stone pillars.’ ”

  “Those would be the ‘dos pilares de piedra,’ ” said Jake.

  “¡Perfecto!” said Grace.

  “That means ‘perfect-o,’ ” said Kojo. “Or, you know, ‘Oh, perfect!’ ”

  “Let’s draw this as we translate it,” suggested Jake.