by Ben Mezrich
“How can you be proud even when I lose?” Charlie finally said. His dad grinned.
“Well, sometimes you actually win by losing.”
He turned back to his magazine, and for a moment Charlie thought the conversation was over, that his dad would be lost in whatever scientific article had caught his attention for the evening. But to his surprise, his dad reached down and carefully tore one of the pages out of the magazine, then handed the shiny sheet of paper to Charlie.
“Let’s see what you got, kid.”
Charlie took a deep breath, then carefully started manipulating the page. He made a crease down the center. Then smoothed the two sides, folding two corners at an angle. His goal was to keep it simple. Nothing fancy. At the very least, he didn’t want a repeat of what had happened at the museum.
He pulled the outer corners down again and made a sharp point, then folded the wings outward, carefully matching the sides. This was it. This was going to be the best plane ever.
Charlie and his father carefully looked over the folded plane. Then, without a word, Charlie cocked his elbow back and tossed the plane into the air, hoping to see it soar across the living room.
For the first few feet, everything seemed to be going perfectly. The plane tore through the air, rising high toward the ceiling. And then, suddenly, it jerked up—then took a quick nosedive straight down, slamming into the hardwood floor.
“Three feet,” Charlie’s dad laughed. “A new world record.”
Charlie grimaced. He and the Whiz Kids had a lot of work to do.
But his decision was made. He was heading to Washington, DC.
6
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IN a few minutes we will be reaching our top cruising speed of one hundred fifty miles per hour. Sit tight, and enjoy the fastest train in the continental US!”
Streaks of color zoomed by the rectangular window, a few inches from Charlie’s face, as he clutched at the lightly padded armrests of his business class seat. Sure, train travel didn’t bother him as much as flying. Speed, on its own, didn’t scare him, and the rumble of the tracks beneath the Acela’s wheels was somewhat soothing, even though the way the rocket-shaped chassis rocked back and forth as it took the soft turns, keeping itself vaguely parallel to the Eastern Seaboard shoreline outside the trembling window, was mildly unnerving. But the Acela wasn’t just a train; having been designed to resemble the French TGV, with 6,200-horsepower engines, the Acela was America’s version of a bullet train, the fastest class of rail-based travel. Despite its international nickname—“the pig,” so called because of the heavy weight requirements of the US Federal Railroad Administration—the Acela managed to reach its top speed of over 150 miles per hour in two stretches between Boston and New York. They’d just entered the first stretch, and it was as thrilling, and terrifying, as Charlie had expected.
“Kentaro, hold on tight!” yelled Jeremy from across the aisle. “You’re liable to blow right out the window!”
The train vibrated even harder as Kentaro clutched his bright neon backpack to his chest, scrunching up his face and sticking out his tongue in response to Jeremy’s harassment. That ridiculous backpack had been a hot topic of conversation for the Whiz Kids ever since their parents had put them on the train, back at South Station in Boston. Jeremy was the last of the five to sit down and ended up in a four seater alone directly across from his teammates. But the short thirty inches across the train aisle didn’t stop him from torturing Kentaro. The backpack was bright orange, with neon-yellow shapes inked all over the fabric in a graffiti-like pattern. Just like most things that Kentaro had brought back from his family’s yearly visit to Japan, it was small in size but huge in visual impact. To the Whiz Kids, it looked like it had been designed for a toddler, but it fit Kentaro’s body perfectly.
Kentaro tilted his head toward the window, now fully engrossed in the speed-blurred panorama outside. From Charlie’s angle, he really did look like a little kid; Kentaro was sitting next to Crystal, and his head barely cleared the top of her chin. But despite his tiny size, he was the language powerhouse of the Whiz Kids. Having been reading in five different languages since kindergarten, he’d made winning two state spelling bees in consecutive years seem like a piece of cake. At age six, he had been deemed too small for peewee soccer, so instead of kicking a ball, he’d found himself moving tiles around on a Scrabble board, and had placed second in a regional high school tournament.
Sitting directly across from Kentaro in the fourth seat, next to Charlie, was Marion Tuttle. He looked up from his sketch pad for a split second—not to defend Kentaro against Jeremy’s jibes, but because Anastasia and Porter walked by with a couple of cardboard-box trays full of food. Realizing it would be a while before they got to them, he ducked his head back down and kept drawing. He was truly the artist of the group. When you needed anything drawn or images computer generated, Marion was your man. With his pudgy fingers you wouldn’t think he could whip up the sort of designs that would impress art professors, but in mere minutes, he could produce something that looked like da Vinci had drawn it himself. His tool of choice was usually a simple Bic pen—nothing fancy, just a regular ballpoint, with a plastic cap that he liked to chew on while he worked.
As the train continued to roar past the Connecticut countryside, Marion bit down a few more times on the blue plastic, his freckled cheeks bouncing up and down with each chomp.
“Seems like you’ve got enough to eat,” Crystal said, pointing to the gnarled pen cap. “Probably just as tasty as a bag of old, slightly warm nuts.”
Marion barely glanced up from his drawing.
“According to my last visit to the Children’s Hospital allergy wing, my blood levels are reading one hundred plus for peanuts. So nobody better go for the nuts. A little peanut dust blows my way, you’re going to get a quick lesson on the proper use of an EpiPen.”
Peanuts were just one of Marion’s many food-related enemies: coconut, gluten, shellfish—heck, it was amazing how many foods he had to avoid on a daily basis, especially considering his robust build. And foods were just one of the many components of his allergic makeup; he’d actually once spent an entire week in a hospital because of an ant bite. The doctors at Children’s were still writing papers on the episode a year later, trying to understand how a two-millimeter ant had caused a 110-pound sixth grader to have a nearly life-threatening reaction.
“Please, no EpiPens on this trip,” Charlie begged. “And let’s keep the fooling around to a minimum. I get the feeling our ‘proctors’ have a pretty low tolerance for monkey business.”
Charlie glanced down four rows, to where Anastasia and Porter were sitting and presumably organizing the food trays. Anastasia’s wide-brimmed hat was just visible over the vinyl of the seat back behind her. The stone man’s square head, on the other hand, rose a good eight inches above the vinyl. His crew cut seemed to catch the light from the panels on the ceiling, each short strand glowing like threads of supercharged fiberglass.
“Yeah,” Crystal whispered, leaning over the table. “About them. They give me the creeps. If there wasn’t the possibility of actually getting to see and touch a moon rock, live and in person at the museum, I’d be back in fourth-period study hall right now.”
Although Charlie had kept his silence with his father about the real reason they were on their way to DC for a paper airplane contest, he hadn’t thought once about keeping anything from the rest of the Whiz Kids. He’d learned his lesson at Incredo Land; they were a team, in every sense of the word. If they were going to have a chance at winning this thing, there couldn’t be any secrets between them.
“Sure,” Jeremy said. “You’d much rather be dodging Dylan in the hallways than staying in a fancy hotel in Washington, DC, playing with paper airplanes, possibly winning enough money to afford college tuition for a year. Such a sacrifice you’re making.”
Crystal answered by sticking out her tongue. Jeremy was about to reach for it with his fingers when the train con
ductor came back over the intercom:
“Next stop, New Haven!”
As the train started to slow from the 150-mile-per-hour top speed, many of the adults in the seats around them rose, reaching for briefcases and carry-ons. Charlie had never been to New Haven, but he knew it was a fairly large city in Connecticut—part industrial town, part academic oasis, especially where the Ivy League school Yale was located. He watched as the train pulled into the concrete-covered station, and the businesspeople made their way to the doors.
After the passengers had disembarked, new passengers began piling in. Charlie saw a small group of kids clamber aboard, all carrying matching green backpacks. The packs were emblazoned with huge white letters: WORTH HOOKS MIDDLE SCHOOL. The kids looked to be about Charlie’s age, and he began to wonder: Are these kids part of the competition?
Before he could voice his thoughts out loud, something flashed just above his line of sight. He looked up in time to see something white and pointy floating across the top of the cabin, a good foot above the tallest passenger’s head. The rest of the Whiz Kids followed his gaze and watched together as the paper airplane flew the entire length of the train car.
“Holy cow,” Jeremy said.
How could something so graceful and powerful be made by simple folds on a piece of paper? When the plane finally crashed into the far wall of the train, falling to the floor, Charlie turned his head back down the aisle and watched as the Worth Hooks kids, all five of them, filed in one after another, filling the empty seats just a row away from where the Whiz Kids were seated.
“Why don’t you take a picture?” a freckled boy said as he lowered himself into a seat directly across the aisle. “It will last longer.”
The kid was tall, maybe six inches taller than Charlie, and had thick arms. Every inch of him seemed covered in those patches of freckles.
“Sorry,” Charlie said. “Didn’t mean to stare. Heck of a paper plane. Did you make that?”
“What paper plane? I think your mind’s playing tricks on you, kid. I don’t see anything on this train but a herd of nerds.”
A flowery scent filled Charlie’s nostrils as a girl moved through the aisle and took the outer seat next to the freckled kid, pushing him toward the window.
“Don’t mind Ryan. He was raised by cavemen. I’m Kelly. That’s Jack, Michael, and Ross. Worth Hooks Middle School, outside New Haven. Are you guys from Boston?”
Charlie felt a familiar burst of awkwardness as he took in her long blond hair and rounded cheekbones.
He’d never been good talking to girls—other than Crystal—and girls like Kelly, well, they might as well have been aliens for all he knew how to communicate with them. But he knew that sitting there with his mouth open, staring, wasn’t going to make a great first impression.
“Uh, yeah. Well, Newton, actually. Nagassack Middle. Where are you guys headed?”
“DC,” Kelly responded. “And yes, that was one of our planes. We’re going to a national paper plane contest. I’m guessing, since you’re all about the right age—except maybe your friend with the Day-Glo backpack—you’re on your way to the same place?”
The train had started up again, the car suddenly swaying side to side so aggressively that Charlie nearly fell into the aisle. Kelly was caught in the motion as well, and for a brief second their faces almost touched. Charlie pulled back in pure embarrassment, heaving himself a little too hard, nearly pinning Marion against the window.
“Geez, Casanova,” Ryan shouted, “you work quick. Going in for a kiss before we’re ten feet out of the station. You’ll be picking out wedding chapels by the time we reach Washington.”
Charlie turned bright red. He could see Crystal pursing her lips across the table from him, disgusted by his awkward display. Jeremy and Kentaro were trying to hold back laughter.
“Sorry,” Charlie mumbled.
Kelly just smiled at him. “Hey, nothing to be sorry about. I like a confident competitor. If you’re as good at making airplanes as you are at breaking the ice with girls, we’re going to be in for quite a battle.”
Charlie’s face couldn’t have gone any deeper red if he’d stuck it in a bucket of paint. He wanted to scream that he hadn’t been going for a kiss. Heck, he’d never kissed a girl in his life, unless you counted his mom, and he wasn’t planning on starting with a total stranger, in the middle of a crowded train, with everyone watching. But he had a feeling that opening his mouth was just going to embarrass him, and it already felt like his head was about to explode.
Instead, he just tried to smile back. Since Crystal chose that exact moment to kick him as hard as she could in his right shin, what he managed was much more of a scowl.
“Keep your mind on the game,” Crystal whispered across the table. “We’re not here to make friends. We’re here to build airplanes.”
Charlie knew she was right. The problem was, he was pretty sure the girl across the aisle was a heck of a lot better at both.
7
“OH MAN, THIS IS pretty posh. I think we might be underdressed.”
Charlie followed Jeremy through huge wooden double doors, stopping dead at the edge of a vast ballroom. Although it was only a quarter past six and the welcome party was supposed to have begun a few minutes ago, the place was already packed, filled with well-coiffed sixth graders from one opulent wall to the other.
“I feel like we’re in one of those scenes at the beginning of a Batman movie,” Kentaro chimed in from somewhere to Charlie’s left. “Any minute now, the Joker is going to come down from the ceiling and take everyone hostage.”
“We should be so lucky,” Crystal said.
Charlie smiled, but he could sense that she was only half kidding. Crystal put on a good front, but he knew she suffered from the same anxieties and shyness as the rest of them; being outsiders at an age when everyone did his or her best not to stand out from the crowd left little room for real confidence. And even a kid who was pretty sure of himself would have been sweating at the sight in front of them.
The Moretti Grand Ballroom of the Watergate Hotel would have been a daunting setting even if it wasn’t filled with more than a hundred kids decked out in their Sunday best. The Watergate was actually one of five buildings in the historic complex built in the late sixties, named after the wooden water gate that controlled the flow of a man-made canal running perpendicular to the mighty Potomac River. When the hotel first opened in 1967, it had been considered a playground for the rich and powerful: champagne splashing across the pool deck, Hollywood stars mingling with Capitol Hill elite. On June 17, 1972, the hotel became famous for a different reason altogether: At around two in the morning, five men broke into suite 600, which at the time housed the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. When it turned out that at least two of the men were on President Richard Nixon’s payroll, the infamous scandal led to the resignation of a sitting US president.
Charlie had never imagined that by midway through sixth grade, he’d be setting foot in a hotel famous enough to have changed history. As he stared across the crowded hall, with its fifteen-foot ceilings, original fixtures, and huge picture windows that looked out over the Potomac, it almost seemed like he was traveling back in time. The ballroom—named after celebrity architect Luigi Moretti, who had dared create a curved building at a time when most buildings were square—dripped gravitas, which meant that Charlie and his Whiz Kids stood out like five sore thumbs.
“Just remember why we’re here,” Charlie said. “We’re here to win a contest.”
Judging from the crowd, there was little chance of that happening anyway. To Charlie’s left, he saw a kid ordering a Coke from a tuxedo-wearing bartender. The kid looked no older than eleven, with spiky brown hair, but he was wearing a full seersucker suit, like something right out of a black-and-white movie. Next to him, two other boys had on matching navy blazers, with plaid shirts and khaki pants. Beyond the boys sat a table of girls in black dresses, all of them with their hair pulled bac
k in tight ponytails.
As for the Whiz Kids, the best dressed of their crew had to be Crystal, who had managed to throw on a peach, faux-crystal-encrusted T-shirt dress. Charlie had on his favorite Batman long sleeve sweatshirt and faded jeans. Jeremy had a Spider-Man crewneck. Kentaro was wearing a neon jumpsuit, and Marion had on something gray and old, which looked suspiciously like his Nagassack PE uniform.
“Well, since we made it this far, we may as well eat,” Marion said, immediately splitting off toward the buffet table that ran along one of the ballroom’s curved walls. “I think I see mini-burgers. You think they have gluten-free buns? Hopefully one of these penguins in their tuxes has an ingredients list.”
Kentaro and Jeremy gave Charlie a look, then followed Marion toward the steaming chrome trays. Charlie was about to join them when Crystal touched his arm.
“We shouldn’t waste any time. If we’re going to find Richard Caldwell in this crowd, we’ll have to work together.”
She was right, of course. Anastasia had passed Charlie a photograph of Caldwell on their way off the train at Washington’s Union Station, and though they’d had plenty of time to study the picture during the cab ride to the hotel, it was going to be tricky to pick him out from a distance. Auburn hair, longish in the front, with blue eyes and a good, square jaw. His dad might have been a famous astronaut, but Caldwell looked exactly like a million other prep-school middle schoolers.
Even so, Charlie was hoping to find their target as early in the night as he could. Despite what he’d just told the Whiz Kids, winning the paper airplane contest wasn’t their mission—they were there to get close to Caldwell. If Caldwell really was the genius Anastasia had said he was, then getting to the finals of the contest would be the best way to ensure they got to know one another. But if Charlie could lay some groundwork, even from the beginning, it might make things easier down the line.