Never Say Genius (2 page)

Were thrown into a giant vat of SPAM in Minnesota.

Dropped five days’ worth of human waste on the head of Mrs. Higgins (their germ-phobic, psychopath health teacher, remember).

Were given a series of increasingly difficult secret messages, which they had to decipher.

Had a climactic confrontation with the person who had been trying to kill them.

In the end, guess who was trying to kill Coke and Pep the whole time? It was Dr. Warsaw, the inventor of The Genius Files. Ha! Who’d a thunk it?

(Deep breath)

Whew! Let’s see
you
try to sum up a 304-page book in just three breaths.

The story really wasn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds …
if
you read
The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable
. It just seems that way when you try to compress a lot of stuff into a few paragraphs.

Anyway, that’s basically what happened in the first book. Now you don’t have to read it yourself. You could even write a book report on it if you wanted to.

Our new story begins in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where
Mission Unstoppable
left off. If you’d like to follow the McDonalds on their trip east to Washington, it’s easy. Get on the internet and go to Google Maps (http:// maps.google.com/), MapQuest (www.mapquest.com), Rand McNally (www.randmcnally.com) or whatever navigation website you like best.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay, now type in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and click SEARCH MAPS. Click the little + or – sign on the screen to zoom out until you get a sense of where the twins are. See it? That’s the starting point.

Now that we’ve gotten all that preliminary nonsense out of the way, let’s get to the cool part—the part where Coke and Pep get lowered into a vat of boiling oil…

H
appy birthday to you…

It was June 25. The McDonald family (Coke, Pep, their mom, Bridget, and dad, Dr. Benjamin McDonald) were sitting in the RV in the parking lot of The House on the Rock. Mrs. McDonald had baked a little cake in the microwave oven. Dr. McDonald stuck thirteen candles in it and lit them. That’s the problem with getting older—at some point your birthday cake becomes a fire hazard.

“Can you believe we have a couple of teenagers on our hands, Ben?” asked Mrs. McDonald, shaking her head at the wonder of it all.

“Do you remember the day they were born?” he replied (as if she could ever forget). “I held each of them in my arms like a couple of footballs. I remember it like it was yesterday. And now look at them.”

Coke and Pep sat in the backseat, silent. They were still stunned after what had happened to them at The House on the Rock. Just minutes earlier, they had been captured by Dr. Warsaw in The Infinity Room, a pointy extension that hung off the house like the beak of a huge bird. Dr. Warsaw had given them a choice: die by electric shock from the wireless iJolt he had invented, or plummet one hundred fifty feet to their deaths. They chose neither. Instead, Pep knocked the iJolt out of his hands with a Frisbee, and Coke used his famous Inflictor karate move to kick Dr. Warsaw out of The Infinity Room and to his virtually certain death. It would be awhile before the twins would be ready to return to anything resembling normal.

“It’s time for your birthday presents!” Mrs. McDonald announced.

“Yay!”

A while was over. The twins, being of short attention span (like most thirteen-year-olds) instantly forgot all about Dr. Warsaw and their ordeal at The House on the Rock.

“What did you get us?” Pep asked anxiously, clapping her hands together.

“Just a little souvenir to help you remember our fun time in Wisconsin,” Dr. McDonald told them. With that, he presented them with a framed photo of The Infinity Room.

Coke gulped and Pep lurched backward in her seat involuntarily. Somebody had
died
at The Infinity Room. And it had almost been
them
. They certainly didn’t need a constant reminder hanging on the wall.

“But that’s not all!” said Mrs. McDonald, in her best infomercial voice.

She presented each of the twins with a little plastic bag filled with what appeared to be those Styrofoam peanuts that are used to pack boxes.

“What is it?” Pep asked.

“Cheese curds!” Mrs. McDonald exclaimed. “You can only get them in Wisconsin. Go ahead, taste one. When you bite into them, they squeak.”

“We also got you some genuine Wisconsin Cheeseheads,” Dr. McDonald added, pulling the big goofy yellow hats out of a bag and handing one to each twin. “Cool, huh?”

“It’s awesome, Dad,” Pep said semi-sarcastically as she put on her Cheesehead.

“We knew you’d like them,” said Dr. McDonald.

He pulled out of the parking lot and into the first gas station on the road to fill the tank of the RV. Then he merged onto Route 14 East heading out of Spring Green. Dr. McDonald had attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and knew the area well. Soon they were in the country, passing by the rolling hills and dairy farms of southern Wisconsin.

“Look, a cow!” Pep hollered.

“Big wow,” Coke said. “What, you never saw a cow before?”

“Be nice to your sister,” warned Dr. McDonald.

“It’s Wisconsin!” Coke said. “Do you have any idea how many cows they have in Wisconsin?”

“I give up,” Pep admitted. “How many?”

“One point two million,” Coke said.

There was no point in arguing with him. Coke had a photographic memory. He could remember virtually anything he ever saw, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted. And one day, several years earlier, he happened to be reading the back of a milk carton that said there were 1.2 million cows in Wisconsin. Of course, there could be more cows now, or less. But at some point in time, there were definitely 1.2 million cows in Wisconsin.

“Hey, speaking of cows,” Dr. McDonald said, “do you know what kind of milk comes from a forgetful cow?”

“What kind?” everybody asked.

“Milk of amnesia!”

“Lame, Dad,” Coke said.

Actually, Coke thought his father’s joke was minorly funny. But it’s not cool to laugh at your parents’ jokes, as you well know.

It seemed like there were dairy farms everywhere. Wisconsin is the cheese capital of the world. Coke put on his Cheesehead to get into the spirit of it. Pep munched on cheese curds, which actually did squeak when she bit into them, and they were also delicious.

“The people in Wisconsin probably put cheese on their cornflakes,” Coke commented as he looked out the window.