by Dan Gutman
It was a beautiful day, and lots of tourists were out. The McDonalds were looking for people dressed as a bride and groom.
“Over there!” Coke said as they crossed Constitution Avenue.
Hundreds of folding chairs had been set up in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The McDonalds grabbed the only four consecutive seats that were empty, in the back. They could barely see the big statue of Abraham Lincoln. It looked like they had arrived just in time. The bride had already walked down the aisle, but the ceremony had not started yet. The Elvis Presley song “Love Me Tender” was playing out of a big set of speakers.
Dr. McDonald took some coins out of his pocket and handed Coke a penny.
“Notice anything familiar?” he asked.
Coke looked at the penny and turned it over. The image on the back was exactly what he was looking at—the Lincoln Memorial.
“You know,” Dr. McDonald said, “this is the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”
“I know, I know,” Coke said.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” Mrs. McDonald asked, to nobody in particular, as she fussed with her hair.
“I wonder how they were able to get a permit for this space,” Dr. McDonald commented. “Somebody must have a lot of dough, or a lot of clout.”
“Shhhhh, you’re spoiling the mood, Ben.”
“All I’m saying is, you can’t just pay somebody a hundred bucks to rent the Lincoln Memorial. Somebody pulled some strings—”
“Shhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Mom,” Pep complained, “I can only see the backs of their heads from here.”
“Shhhhhhhhhhh! We’ll talk to Aunt Judy and her new husband after the ceremony.”
Mrs. McDonald stood up for a moment to get a better look at the front. She couldn’t see much. The bride was wearing a traditional long white gown. The minister was standing at a podium, fussing with some papers. The groom appeared to be sitting in a wheelchair.
“I didn’t know Judy’s fiancé was disabled,” she said.
“Shhhhhhhhhh!” Dr. McDonald replied. “I think they’re about to start.”
Mrs. McDonald sat back down. The buzzing in the crowd fell to a hush as the minister began to speak.
“Dearly beloved,” he said, “we are gathered together here to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony…”
Coke looked around. He wished he’d brought a portable video game system, or his iPod. This was going to be boring.
“Marriage is the joyous joining of two people in heart, in body, and in mind,” the minister continued. “In marriage, two people make a lifelong commitment to embrace their dreams, to face their failures, their disappointments, and to one day realize their hopes together.”
Mrs. McDonald started to tear up, and Dr. McDonald handed her a tissue. Coke looked around to see tissues being passed around among the sniffling crowd. Even Pep looked like she was getting a little choked up.
Coke looked over at his dad, and they winked at each other as if to share a secret—Weddings are a girl thing. It would be so much more fun if he and all the guys at the wedding could go to a ball game instead. Probably even the groom would come along.
“This occasion is a celebration,” the minister continued. “A celebration of the love and commitment with which this man and this woman begin the rest of their lives together. We are here today to witness their joining in marriage, one of the holiest bonds.”
Coke looked around. The stupid tie was choking his neck. Some of the men weren’t wearing ties. Why did he have to? One guy even had shorts on.
He noticed that the Washington Monument was directly behind them, about a mile in the distance. He thought about what might have happened if things had gone differently there the day before. He wondered which was worse, being dropped from a helicopter onto the tip of the Washington Monument, or having to sit through a wedding ceremony.
“What greater thing is there,” the minister continued, “than for two souls to be joined together in love, loyalty, trust, and honesty? In marriage, two people promise each other to aspire to these ideals throughout their lives, because with mutual understanding, openness, sensitivity, care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge comes the appreciation of one’s own happiness, growth, and freedom.”
Coke had barely heard anything the guy said after “Dearly beloved.” The words just washed over him. He checked his cell phone for the time, looked around some more, and wondered when it was going to be over.
The minister continued.
“If any person can show just cause why this man and this woman may not be joined together in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”
Coke looked around again. In the movies, this was the part where some old boyfriend would always jump up, tell the bride he still loved her, and the two of them would go run off together, leaving the groom and everybody else staring with their mouths open. No such luck this time. Everyone looked around at one another for an awkward moment or two, and then the minister turned to face the bride and continued.
“Do you, Judy McAllister, take this man to be your husband in the holy state of matrimony? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sadness and in joy, as long as you both shall live?”
“I will,” Aunt Judy said.
The minister smiled and turned to face the groom, sitting in his wheelchair.
“And do you, Herman Warsaw—”
EPILOGUE
What?! Are you kidding me? Dr. Warsaw is alive? He wasn’t supposed to have survived the fall from The Infinity Room! His obituary was in the newspaper! How could he possibly still be alive?
What happened to Mrs. Higgins? Where did the bowler dudes fly off to? And what would it be like to have your mother’s sister married to a psychotic mass murderer who was trying to kill you?
To find out the answers to these and other questions, well, you’ll just have to read The Genius Files #3.
I’ll tell you one thing right now, though.
It’s going to be a long ride back to California.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Jim Beard, Esther Goldenberg, Karen and
Katie Jergensen, Anne Kalkowski, Mary Kittrell,
Jennifer and Jabin Mallory, Sue Marchbanks, Shelley
Riskin, Kelly Salgado, Fred Valentini, and Nina
Wallace. And a special thank-you to Google Maps
and Roadside America.com, without which this book
could not have been written.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS
In The Genius Files, Coke and Pepsi McDonald take a cross-country trip, and I thought it would be cool to use photos of road signs to mark their progress. I was not in a position to go cross-country myself or to pay professional photographers to shoot the signs for me, but I have many loyal readers on my Facebook fan page, and they’re scattered all over the country. So I put out the word that I needed photos of some specific road signs, and instantly people came through for me. They shot all the photos I needed.
Thank you to these fans, and to the Hoover Historical Center, for providing me with these photos:
Page 21, Amanda LeBrun
Page 23, Kelly Salgado
Page 81, Katie Jergensen
Page 91, Liat Shapiro
Page 94, Mary Kittrell
Page 121, Tony Packo’s Inc.
Page 186, Hoover Historical Center / Walsh University, North Canton, Ohio
Page 194, Jabin Mallory
Page 207, Ellie Goldenberg
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Gutman is the author of such immensely popular books as Honus & Me, The Homework Machine, The Kid Who Ran for President, The Million Dollar Shot, and the My Weird School series. If you’d like to find out about Dan and how he got started as a writer, you can visit him online at www.dangutman.com.
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NOTE TO THE READER
All the places mentioned in this book are real. You can visit them. You should visit them!
CREDITS
Cover art © 2012 by Tim Jessell
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
COPYRIGHT
THE GENIUS FILES #2: NEVER SAY GENIUS
Copyright © 2012 by Dan Gutman
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gutman, Dan.
Never say genius / Dan Gutman.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(The Genius Files; #2)
Summary: As their cross-country journey with their parents continues through the midwest, twins Coke and Pepsi, now thirteen, again face strange assassins at such places as the first McDonald’s restaurant and Cedar Point amusement park.
ISBN 978-0-06-182767-9 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-182768-6 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062099273
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Genius—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Twins--Fiction. 5. Assassins—Fiction. 6. Recreational vehicles—Fiction. 7. Family life--Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G9846Nev 2012 2011019363
[Fic]—dc23
* * *
12 13 14 15 16 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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