by Dan Gutman
And then, after they got to Washington and went to the wedding, they would have to drive that whole way back home, too.
It was going to be a long summer.
Pep was already bored, and the trip had just begun. Coke turned on his iPod and got lost in the music as he mindlessly shuffled the deck of playing cards Bones had given them.
The McDonalds were cruising along I-80 for a little more than fifty miles when they started to see signs for Leisure Town and Nut Tree Airport. Dr. McDonald pulled onto Interstate 505 North.
“Where are you going, Dad?” Coke asked. “Why did you get off I-80?”
“Ask your mother,” Dr. McDonald grumbled.
“We’re going to the National Yo-Yo Museum!” Mrs. McDonald exclaimed. “It’s only about two hours from here!”
“We’re driving two hours out of our way to look at some yo-yos?” Coke asked, slapping himself on the forehead.
Not just some yo-yos. Hundreds of yo-yos. Glow-in-the-dark yo-yos. See-through yo-yos. Flintstone yo-yos and Star Wars yo-yos. The National Yo-Yo Museum has everything from antique 1920s yo-yos to today’s metal alloy yo-yos with a centrifugal clutch transaxle, whatever that is.
Mrs. McDonald gasped as the family walked inside The Bird in Hand, an educational toy store in Chico, California, where the National Yo-Yo Museum is located. This was her kind of place.
“Feast your eyes, kids,” Mrs. McDonald said, pulling out her camera to document the majesty of it all. “You’re standing in front of the world’s largest wooden yo-yo!”
It was a monster of a thing. 256 pounds. The string, unrolled, was seventy-five feet long. A little plaque on the floor said that “Big-Yo” was only used a few times. Once it was dropped off a crane over San Francisco Bay.
“The world’s largest Pez dispenser is bigger,” Coke said, unimpressed.
He knew all about yo-yos, of course, having once seen an article about them while he was bagging up the newspapers for recycling. He told the family that the yo-yo was invented in China, and the Greeks had them way back in 500 BCE.
“Fascinating,” Dr. McDonald said sarcastically. “I hope this ‘museum’ doesn’t get any government funding.”
“This is real history, Dad!” Coke told his father. “Y’know, legend has it that Filipino hunters would hide in trees and hunt animals by bonking them on their heads with yo-yos from above. And during the French Revolution, people who were about to be guillotined would ease their tension by playing with yo-yos.”
“I know that if they were about to chop off my head,” Dr. McDonald replied, “I would want to use that time to play with a toy on a string.”
The kids watched videos of people doing insane yo-yo tricks. There were some sample yo-yos on display, and Coke and Pep tried to do the tricks—with limited success.
After a short time, the kids had enough yo-yoing. They went out to the parking lot looking for something to do while Mrs. McDonald conducted her yo-yo research for Amazing but True. Their dad had left the RV door unlocked, as usual, so Coke went in and grabbed the Frisbee that Bones had given him. He held it out to Pep.
“I don’t want to,” Pep told her brother. “I don’t know how.”
“In a few days, you’re gonna be thirteen years old,” Coke told his sister. “It’s about time you learned how to throw a Frisbee. It’s a life skill everybody should have.”
He handed her the disc, backed up ten yards, and urged her to give it a try. She flung it wildly, of course, curving it off to the side and almost hitting a parked car.
“Hold it level,” Coke instructed as he ran off to retrieve the Frisbee. “Don’t just use your arm. Put your whole body into it. And snap your wrist. Like this.”
He made a perfect return toss, which Pep dropped.
“One more time,” he encouraged her.
Pep tried to do as her brother said, and proceeded to fling the Frisbee high into a grove of trees next to the parking lot.
“You are totally pathetic, you know that?” Coke told his sister. “C’mon, help me find it.”
They ran into the woods and started poking around. A white Frisbee should not be hard to find in a grove of green trees. But it wasn’t there. Or, at least, it wasn’t within sight.
“It’s got to be right here,” Pep said. “I saw it go into the trees.”
“You owe me ten bucks to get a new one,” Coke told her.
“I do not,” she replied. “You didn’t pay for that Frisbee. Bones gave it to you.”
At that moment, the twins walked around a thick maple tree. There was a rustling noise from above and then suddenly everything went dark. Something had fallen on their heads.
“What the—”
It was a large plastic tarp, the kind that people put under their tent when they go camping. Somebody grabbed them and wrapped two big arms around the tarp to prevent them from getting away.
“Shhhh! Quiet!” a man’s voice warned.
“Help!” Pep tried to yell, but the sound was muffled by the tarp over her face.
“Keep your mouths shut and you won’t be hurt,” the man barked.
The twins struggled for a few seconds, but soon it became obvious that it was hopeless, and they stopped fighting. That’s when their assailant pulled the tarp up over their heads and revealed himself.
It was Bones.
The McDonald twins gasped.
“Is this what you were looking for?” a woman’s voice said.
The twins gasped a second time when they saw who was standing behind Bones with a Frisbee in her hand. It was Mya, the woman in red who had saved their lives when they were being chased on the cliff by the men in golf carts!
“You’re . . . alive?” Pep asked, her eyes wide with wonder.
“We thought you died when the building exploded!” Coke told Bones.
“I was down in the basement,” Bones said. “All I got was a flesh wound.”
“Aren’t all wounds flesh wounds?” Coke asked. “What else would you wound besides flesh?”
“We thought that dart killed you, Mya!” Pep said, hugging her. “We thought you died in our arms!”
“The poison wore off in a few minutes,” Mya informed them. “I was fine. I returned your backpacks to school for you.”
Pep thought back and remembered what had happened at the cliff moments after Mya collapsed. Suddenly, she turned around and punched her brother in the stomach.
“Oooof!” Coke exclaimed. “Are you crazy? What did you do that for?”
“Because you pushed me off that cliff!” his sister yelled.
“I was trying to save your life!” Coke yelled back at her.
“Even if they hit me with one of those dart things, I would have survived!” Pep yelled again. “Mya survived! You didn’t have to push me! We didn’t have to go over that cliff!”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry!” Coke said, rubbing his sore stomach. “How was I supposed to know that? She looked pretty dead to me. I had to make a snap decision. Give me a break!”
Bones stepped between the angry twins.
“You did the right thing pushing your sister off the cliff,” he told Coke. “If you two had been captured up there, you would not be alive today. I’m quite sure of that.”
“Look, we don’t have time for pleasantries,” Mya interrupted. “I’m sure your parents are wondering where you are. We have important information for you.”
“Is it about a house on a rock?”
“What?” Bones replied. “What house on a rock?”
“Didn’t you put an envelope under my pillow last night with a coded message about meeting you in a house on a rock?” Coke asked.
“No,” Bones replied. “You must be confusing me with the tooth fairy.”
“Listen carefully,” Mya said. “We found something out that is crucial to your survival. Some of the people who were involved in The Genius Files have abandoned our cause and now actively oppose us and the program that Dr. Warsaw created. Your health teacher,
Mrs. Higgins, is one of them. There are others.”
“Those bowler dudes,” Pep said.
“Right,” said Mya. “We don’t know why these people are trying to kill you. But we’re going to find out.”
“How about finding out fast?” Coke said. “Before they actually do kill us?”
“We’re trying our hardest,” Bones told him. “In the meantime, we have your first mission. We intercepted a text message late last night. There is going to be a terrorist attack.”
“Where?” Coke asked.
“In the United States,” Mya said.
“Can you be more vague?” Coke asked.
“It will be at the site of the largest ball of twine in the world,” said Mya.
“We’re going there!” Pep exclaimed. “Our mother has this weird website called Amazing but True, and she’s—”
“We know,” said Bones.
“How do you know?” asked Coke.
“You’d be surprised at how much we know,” Mya replied.
“But that’s crazy!” Pep said. “Who would attack the largest ball of twine in the world?”
“The largest cat in the world?” suggested Coke.
“I didn’t say they’re necessarily going to attack the ball of twine,” Bones told them. “All we know is, there will be an attack at the site of the ball of twine.”
“What are they gonna do?” Coke asked.
“We don’t know,” Bones said.
“When are they gonna do it?” Coke asked.
“We don’t know that either,” Bones said.
“How come you know so much about us,” Pep asked, “but you don’t know anything about them?”
“We know they’re trying to kill you,” Mya said, “and they won’t stop until they’re successful, or until we kill them.”
“So what are our instructions?” Coke asked.
“Simple. Stop the attack,” Bones replied.
“Why can’t you stop the attack?” Pep asked.
“We’ll try to get there also,” Mya said, “but there are other Genius Files children we are monitoring. We can’t be everywhere at all times.”
“How are we supposed to stop the attack?” Pep asked. “All we know is where it will be. We don’t know when. We don’t know how—”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Bones interrupted her. “You’re geniuses, right? That’s why you were chosen.”
“We must leave,” Mya said. “Not a word of this to anyone.”
Chapter 13
The Second Cipher
“Where were you kids?” Dr. McDonald asked anxiously when the twins came running back to the RV in the parking lot. “Your mother and I have been looking all over for you.”
Pep turned to her brother.
“We were playing Frisbee,” he explained. “Pep chucked it into the woods, and we had to go look for it. She totally can’t throw.”
“You can’t catch!” his sister complained.
“Can too.”
“Can not.”
Dr. McDonald preferred to avoid arguments, especially the can too–can not variety. He opened his road atlas and flipped to the map of Nevada.
“Well, thank goodness you’re safe!” Mrs. McDonald told the twins, reaching for her purse. “Five more minutes and we were going to call the police. Here, I bought you each a souvenir.”
“Let me guess,” Coke said. “Yo-yos?”
“How did you know?” Mrs. McDonald asked.
“I’m a genius.”
Mrs. McDonald took two new yo-yos out of her purse: a red one for Coke and a blue one for Pep.
“Awesome!” Coke said. “Wanna see me walk the dog?”
“Maybe later,” Mrs. McDonald replied. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”
“Mom,” Pep said, “I wish you wouldn’t buy this stuff. You’re wasting your hard-earned money.”
“Yeah, money doesn’t grow on trees, Mom,” Coke said as he tried to duplicate a yo-yo trick he had seen on the video.
“But you’ve got to bring home souvenirs!” Mrs. McDonald told them. “That’s part of the fun of traveling!”
She passed around sandwiches she had made while the twins were in the woods. Dr. McDonald started the RV and pulled out of the parking lot. After driving a little Honda for years, he wasn’t used to such a big vehicle, and he backed out carefully.
Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).
Click Get Directions.
In the A box, type Wendover UT.
In the B box, type Evanston WY.
Click Get Directions.
As he pulled onto Route 70 South, he relaxed a bit and began humming the old Willie Nelson song “On the Road Again.” It wasn’t long before they had merged back onto I-80, heading east.
“I was looking at the map,” Dr. McDonald told the family after they had been on the road for a while. “Lake Tahoe is only about an hour from here. That might be a good place for us to stop for the night. Maybe we can even stay for a day or two. We could go swimming or kayaking. Have some fun, you know? Lake Tahoe is beautiful.”
“No!” Pep shouted.
“We want to go see the largest ball of twine in the world!” shouted Coke.
“Yeah,” Pep added. “Lakes are a big bore.”
Mrs. McDonald turned around in the front seat.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Yesterday everybody was making fun of me for wanting to go see the largest ball of twine in the world. And now you’re all anxious to get there. What’s going on?”
“Yeah,” Dr. McDonald said. “Why are you suddenly so interested in that silly ball of twine?”
As usual, Pep looked to Coke for the answer. She wasn’t about to tell her parents that there would be some sort of attack at the ball of twine and that they had to help stop it.
Coke thought fast.
“We’re twins,” he announced. “And twine is twin with an e at the end. So we want to see it.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Dr. McDonald sputtered. “So instead of swimming and kayaking on a beautiful lake, you want to go look at a ball of twine because it has an E in it?”
“Yes!” the twins agreed.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Pep said. “You’re not a twin.”
“Well, I’m pleased to see you kids are getting into the spirit of the trip,” Mrs. McDonald said. “The twine ball is in Cawker City, Kansas.”
“Then that’s where we want to go,” Coke declared. “We hate swimming and kayaking.”
“Since when?” his father asked. “You used to love swimming and kayaking when you were little.”
“Please, please, please, please?” begged Pep.
Dr. McDonald could not resist a child with puppy dog eyes, especially when it was his own. He sighed when the exit for Lake Tahoe appeared on the side of the road, and he drove right by it.
Mrs. McDonald passed her laptop back to the kids so they could see the route to Kansas. The McDonalds would have to drive along I-80 all the way across Nevada, through the top of Utah, across the southern part of Wyoming, and halfway across Nebraska before detouring south into Kansas.
“It says Cawker City is 1,414 miles from here,” Mrs. McDonald informed the family, “and today is June nineteenth. It should take us a few days to get there, depending on how often we stop.”
“Speaking of which, I’m beat,” Dr. McDonald announced. “Let’s start looking for a campground.”
About ten miles from the Nevada border, signs began to appear at the side of the road: Donner Lake . . . Donner Pass Road . . . Donner Memorial State Park . . . Donner Camp Picnic Area . . .
“The Donner Party!” Pep yelled excitedly, almost causing her dad to drive off the road. “This is where they were!”
Ever since she was little, for reasons nobody could quite explain, Pep had been fascinated by the Donner Party. Other girls become obsessed with soccer, dolls, scrapbooking, or some boy band. But Pep loved the Donner Party.
She was probably
the only child in America who knew the story. In 1846, George Donner and his brother Jacob, Illinois farmers, set out for the promise of California in covered wagons with several families, including their own. They took a shortcut that turned out to be a longer route, hit bad weather, ran out of food, and resorted to cannibalism (yes, that means eating each other). Only a few members of the party survived.
Some party, huh?
Dr. McDonald spotted a sign for a campground in the town of Truckee, California, so he pulled off the highway.
“Maybe they have a Donner Party museum here,” Pep said hopefully.
“Donner Party museum?” Coke said, snorting. “Are you kidding? Nobody’s gonna make a museum about a bunch of cannibals.”
“Why not?” Pep asked. “Somebody made a museum about a bunch of yo-yos. Somebody made a museum about a bunch of Pez dispensers. Why not a museum devoted to the memory of the Donner Party?”
That’s when they saw a sign at the side of the road.
“See!” Pep hollered. “They do have a Donner Party museum! Can we go there? Please, Dad? Please, please, please?”
Dr. McDonald pulled into Donner Memorial State Park and found the museum parking lot.
“It is historical, I suppose,” he said.
“I might be able to use this on Amazing but True,” Mrs. McDonald added.
“I can imagine the souvenirs they sell in the gift shop,” Coke remarked. “Do you think it has a meat department?”
The exhibit was actually pretty interesting. There was a twenty-five-minute video about the Donner Party and a musket that one of the desperate pioneers had used to shoot an eight-hundred-pound grizzly bear. Outside was a memorial that showed how high the snow had gotten that tragic winter: twenty-two feet.
“I’m not entirely sure that museum was appropriate for children,” Mrs. McDonald said when the family piled back inside the RV.
“The Donner Party were heroes,” Pep said. “They did what they had to do to survive.”