“Hey! That’s cheating!” Celia yelled and ran up behind Greg Angstura, who was laughing at how Oliver fell down.
He was still laughing when Celia’s fist hit him square in the face. It was his turn to hit the pavement. Celia was the only one on the blacktop left standing.
“Out! All of you! Navels! Angstura!” Mr. McNulty yelled and blew his whistle again and again. “To Principal Deaver’s office! Now!”
“But—,” Celia objected.
“Ugh,” Oliver groaned, still lying on the ground.
“Ugh,” Greg Angstura groaned, also still lying on the ground.
And just like that, recess came to its brutal end.
Principal Deaver was still at her desk when Oliver and Celia trudged back in. Half of Oliver’s face was red from where it met the blacktop. Greg Angstura had a black eye. Celia’s face was intact, but her sense of justice was wounded.
Sixth grade, she had decided, was nothing but a series of unfair punishments and cruel rituals. Like most things, it seemed like a lot more fun on television.
“I am not happy to see you both again,” the principal said. “And Mr. … um …”
“Angstura,” Greg said.
“Yes, Mr. Angstura.” Principal Deaver looked at his face. “I think you should go to the nurse to have your eye looked after while I speak to these two.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Greg said as he left the room again. He stuck his tongue out at Oliver as he went.
“Hey!” Oliver started to shout, but Celia put her hand on his leg to stop him. They were in enough trouble already.
“Navels.” Principal Deaver sighed. “Do you know who Theodore Roosevelt was?”
“There’s a statue of him in the Natural History Museum,” said Oliver.
“He was the president of the United States,” said Celia, rolling her eyes at her brother.
“He was. He was also an explorer, much like your father. He led the first expedition to navigate the River of Doubt, a river in the Amazon rain forest. His son Kermit joined the expedition and played a pivotal role in its success. Father and son worked together, and now the River of Doubt is named after them, the Roosevelt River. There is no more Doubt. The greatness they achieved as explorers is due to one thing: Teddy Roosevelt’s commitment to physical fitness.”
“You mean, like, gym class?” said Oliver.
“I do,” said the principal. “He believed that a mind could be healthy only if the body was healthy. They were part of a system and one could not be strong unless the other was strong.”
“Okay,” said Celia, not sure what the principal was trying to say.
“Your performance today has been weak,” said Principal Deaver.
“So … you want us to lift weights?” Oliver asked.
The principal sighed and rubbed her eyes. “My school is like the Roosevelt expedition, parent and child working together to discover the Golden City of Knowledge. I am like the parent. You are like the child. And you are not strong enough to accompany my expedition.”
“We don’t really like expeditions,” Celia tried to explain. “We’re sort of indoor kids.”
“It’s a metaphor, Celia.” Principal Deaver sighed.
“I think you mean a simile,” Oliver added. “When something’s like something else, it’s a simile, not a metaphor.” Celia’s jaw dropped as the principal’s face tightened. Oliver just shrugged at her. “What? I know stuff too.”
The principal studied the twins in silence for some time and then her face cracked into a forced smile. She started writing on a piece of paper on her desk. “I think two weeks should do it,” she said at last.
“Two weeks should do what?” Celia asked.
Principal Deaver handed Celia a note on school stationery.
“Give that to your father,” she said. “We will call to let him know you are coming.”
Celia looked down at the note. Of all the injustices she and Oliver had thus far faced, this was perhaps the worst injustice yet.
Oliver and Celia were being suspended for two weeks.
“You can’t suspend us on the first day of school!” Celia objected.
“Celia, you have hit another student. Oliver nearly killed that same student with a lizard. I believe I can suspend you for two weeks and I believe I just have. You are the weakest part of my expedition! How’s that for a metaphor, Oliver?”
Oliver shifted nervously in his chair. He hadn’t meant to offend her.
“You may take your lizard from Mr. Rondon before you go.” Principal Deaver went back to looking at papers on her desk and Oliver and Celia knew their meeting was over, along with their first day of sixth grade.
Everyone else was in class and the hallway was as silent as a tomb.
Actually, as the twins knew all too well, tombs are rarely silent. There are bugs buzzing and spiders chewing, and lizards hissing and occasional death traps. One could more accurately say that the empty school hallway was as silent as an empty school hallway. Nowhere else in the world is there such an eerie silence.
“Who names his son Kermit?” Oliver wondered.
“An explorer,” said Celia with a roll of her eyes, pulling her brother along.
The door to the custodian’s closet was still closed when Oliver and Celia got there. Their backpacks were weighed down with notebooks and textbooks they wouldn’t use for another two weeks.
They couldn’t hear any movement on the other side of the custodian’s door.
“Maybe we should come back another time?” Oliver said. “I mean, if this were a horror movie, there would be a creepy body on the other side of this door and the moment we discovered it, it would start a whole chain of horrible events that would end with one of us getting eaten by cannibals.”
“Yeah, but if this were a comedy, we’d find Mr. Rondon dressed up like a giant baby or something. Or, like in a soap opera, he’d be in there crying for his long-lost brother.”
“And then we’d have to help find his brother and it would start a whole chain of horrible events that would end with one of us getting eaten by cannibals.”
“That doesn’t happen in soap operas.”
“Well, it could.”
“Well, you have to get Beverly,” Celia said.
“I know, but—wait … what? I have to?”
“She’s your lizard.”
“She’s Sir Edmund’s lizard.”
“Still. Your responsibility.”
Oliver sighed. The injustices would never cease.
He knocked on the door. No answer.
“I tried. Let’s go home,” he said.
“Try the knob,” Celia said.
Oliver tried the knob and the door opened. It creaked.
“Of course it creaks.” Oliver groaned. “It always creaks just before something terrible happens.” He closed his eyes and pushed the door open, wondering what it would feel like to be eaten.
“Hello,” Mr. Rondon’s voice boomed happily.
“Gurrrlp,” Beverly said, which was a completely new noise for her. Oliver opened his eyes to see Beverly on Mr. Rondon’s lap. The custodian was petting her like she was a small dog. He set her on the floor carefully.
“Come,” Mr. Rondon said. “Quickly, quickly.” He ushered the twins into his little closet and closed the door. There was a shelf filled with cleaning liquids and a cart with a giant trash can on it and a lot of supplies and a big sink and an entire wall covered with mops. “I am sorry you had trouble. Now we hurry, hurry, hurry.”
“What are you talking about?” said Celia, impatient.
Mr. Rondon turned and rummaged through the mops hanging on the wall until he found the one that he was looking for.
“Aha!” he said, and smiled. “All okay.”
He turned around holding a brightly colored mop that the twins immediately knew was not a mop at all. For one thing, it had no handle, and for another, all the strings were different colors and they all had knots tied in them. They all hung from a t
hick cord made of gold.
“A key-poop,” Oliver said.
“Khipu,” Mr. Rondon corrected him, smiling.
“Okay, now really,” Celia demanded. “What is going on here?”
Mr. Rondon opened the collar of his shirt to reveal the tattoo on his neck: an ancient key with all kinds of crazy writing in squiggly letters around it, ancient Greek letters, to be precise.
The symbol of the Mnemones.
“You take khipu,” he said. “You will need. For the Lost City of Gold.”
“Um, what?” said Oliver.
“We don’t want it,” said Celia, crossing her arms.
“You need soon. Your mother say so.”
Celia uncrossed her arms.
“Wait, you’ve seen our mom?” Oliver exclaimed. “When? Where?”
“She come to me, just a few—”
With a bang, the door burst open and Principal Deaver stood in the hallway. Next to her stood a large school safety officer, even larger than Mr. Rondon. The officer clutched his walkie-talkie like a weapon. Mr. Rondon quickly shoved the colorful bundle of string into Celia’s backpack. The principal didn’t seem to notice.
“I believe it is time for you to be going,” the principal said. “Your suspension has begun.” She gestured at the lizard and Oliver picked Beverly up in his arms like he was carrying a baby. He grunted under the lizard’s weight. She didn’t scurry onto his back this time, so he had to strain his arms to carry her out of the closet.
“Mr. Rondon,” the principal said, looking at the custodian’s open collar. “I never did notice your tattoo before. How very … interesting. Perhaps you can tell me about it in my office.” She looked down at Celia. “You may go,” she said. “Go straight home. Your father is expecting you.”
She rested her hand on Celia’s shoulder to guide her out and Celia saw, much to her dismay, a golden bracelet on Principal Deaver’s wrist inscribed with a picture of a scroll wrapped in chains.
14
WE AWAIT OUR PUNISHMENT
OLIVER AND CELIA didn’t speak. People gaped at them as they walked the streets of New York City in the middle of the day with a large lizard. They were thinking about what had just happened.
Everywhere Oliver and Celia went, it seemed, they were doomed to find explorers, and not all of them were friendly.
Celia wondered why there were explorers working in their school, and why she and Oliver would need this unreadable guide to El Dorado “soon.” Oliver wondered how much it would hurt to get a tattoo like Mr. Rondon’s and wondered what country he was from.
Both of them wondered where their mother was. When had she talked to Mr. Rondon? Why hadn’t she come back to them?
They stopped outside the grand arched doorways of the Explorers Club.
“Do you think we’ll be grounded?” Oliver wondered.
“I hope so,” said Celia.
“Me too,” said Oliver.
If they were grounded, they’d get to stay in the apartment for the next two weeks with cable TV. No adventures. No school. No dodgeball. Just the couch and some snack cakes and The Celebrity Adventurist. Heaven.
As they stood on the street, the doors to the club opened, and there stood Dr. Navel, looking very serious.
“Celia, Oliver,” he said. “Come inside.”
The children stepped into the building. They stood in the lobby in front of a giant old globe that had been given to the club by a crazy Scottish duke. Most of the countries on it were either in the wrong place or didn’t exist anymore. Some of them probably never existed. Oliver was always tempted to spin it, but no one was allowed to touch the globe. Dozens of animal heads watched them from the walls with lifeless, glassy eyes.
“I received a telephone call from your principal,” Dr. Navel said. As he spoke, an explorer dressed in scuba gear came down the stairs and rushed past them, running like a penguin in flippers. He popped out on the street and jumped into a waiting taxi. Dr. Navel continued.
“Celia, violence is never the answer to your problems,” he said. “I do not approve of you hitting other children. That being said, your suspension could not have come at a better time!”
He smiled and wrapped his arms around the twins.
“What? You aren’t mad?” Oliver asked. “But we got suspended from school on the first day! Aren’t we grounded? Why aren’t we grounded?”
“We demand to be grounded!” said Celia.
This was an unexpected and unfortunate turn of events.
“Why ever would you be grounded?” Dr. Navel asked.
“Oh, I don’t know … because we got suspended from school!” Celia said.
“Oh, school can wait! There will always be more of it. I have a surprise for you! Come along!” He turned and rushed up the stairs. Oliver and Celia looked at each other. Beverly leaped off Oliver’s back and raced up behind Dr. Navel. The lizard seemed to like surprises.
Oliver and Celia did not.
Their father’s surprises never went well for them.
“Do you think we have cable now?” Oliver asked.
Celia just sighed and pushed her brother up the stairs ahead of her.
The stairs grew narrower and narrower as Oliver and Celia climbed to the 4½th floor. The carpet grew more and more threadbare. At one point, a small staircase branched off the main one, which led them to their apartment. A large moon rock sat on a shelf just above the door. It always fell when the door slammed too hard, scattering bits of precious moon dust onto the carpet.
The twins came inside and looked immediately to the television, hoping their surprise would be a glistening new cable box. They couldn’t wait to catch up on Agent Zero, Love at 30,000 Feet, and of course, The Celebrity Adventurist. They were fairly sure that video on demand was the greatest human achievement since the moon landing.
But there was no cable box.
There was no cable guy installing a cable box.
There was, however, an unknown figure sitting on their couch with his back to the twins.
“Where’s the cable box?” Celia asked, slamming the door behind her. They heard the moon rock hit the ground outside with a thud.
“You promised!” Oliver added, ignoring the man on the couch, who did not turn around.
“I have something so much more exciting for you than cable,” said Dr. Navel.
Oliver and Celia deflated like day-old birthday balloons. This was turning into the worst day ever. Certainly, their father was about to introduce them to some famous deep-sea diver or long-distance camel racer or crazy-eyed shaman or some other person he thought was fascinating, who would bore the twins with hours and hours of stories and photos and artifacts.
“I’d like to introduce you to my new friend, just back from the northern wilderness,” Dr. Navel said as he stepped into the hall to put the moon rock back on its shelf. Celia could barely contain her groan. “He’s traveled a very long way to be here,” Dr. Navel called back into the apartment.
The figure on the couch stood up and Celia rolled her eyes, which she immediately wished she hadn’t done.
Because she was standing face-to-face with the teen heartthrob and star of Sunset High, Agent Zero, and The Celebrity Adventurist, Corey Brandt.
15
WE ARE RECEIVING VISITORS
“YOU MUST BE CELIA,” Corey Brandt said, smiling. His eyes seemed to sparkle and his hair fell in shining brown wisps across his forehead. He put his hand out for Celia to shake.
“Uh, um, uh,” Celia said, staring at Corey Brandt with her mouth hanging open and her arms hanging loose at her sides. He was taller in person than she’d imagined him.
“I’m Oliver,” Oliver said, grabbing the actor’s hand and shaking it wildly with both his hands. “I love Agent Zero. My favorite episode is when you’re trapped on the roof of the Hashimoto Bank building, wrestling a panther, and you use your prep school tie to ride a power line like a zip cord and then you jump that speedboat into a private pool party so you can tak
e Melissa St. Germain to the prom, but she tries to kill you and everyone thought you were slow dancing but you were really fighting and she was really an assassin from the Nori Crime Syndicate, and that was really, really awesome, but I wonder if you use a stuntman, because I once fell off this cliff and went over a waterfall and it really hurt and I just don’t think I could do that every day for my job like you do, if you don’t use a stuntman, but I just think it’s really cool even if you do, but it would be even cooler if—”
“Hi,” Celia finally said, interrupting her brother.
The room fell quiet and everyone stared at each other.
At that moment, Professor Rasmali-Greenberg came out of the bathroom, drying his hands on the bright yellow duck tie he was wearing.
“Ah, Celia, Oliver, you are home at last. I trust the sixth grade is going well?”
“Um,” Oliver started.
“They were suspended for two weeks,” Dr. Navel explained.
“Excellent!” The professor clapped. “Well done!”
“We didn’t do anything,” Celia objected. She looked at her brother in disbelief. Things were getting very strange indeed. The adults were all happy they had been suspended, there was no cable in the apartment, and Corey Brandt was standing in their living room.
“I had to leave regular school when my acting career took off with Sunset High,” Corey Brandt said. “I didn’t miss it, you know? There was, like, all that drama in school, not like TV vampire drama, but like interpersonal drama, which is totally dull and who needs it, you know? Although sometimes I worry I missed out on a real, like, authentic experience, you know?”
Oliver and Celia didn’t know. What was he talking about? Was this how actors really talked?
“I am sure you are wondering what this is all about,” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg said. And indeed, they were.
“An exciting opportunity has materialized,” he told them. “Corey Brandt would like to hire the services of our Explorer-in-Residence”—the professor smiled at Dr. Navel—“and his family, as consultants on his hit show, The Adventuring Celebrity.”
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