The Case of the Wilted Broccoli (3 page)

"Brilliant!" Elon yelled back, half standing.

"Sit down back there!" the bus driver roared.

Linden smiled and said quietly, "Willow loves animals. It's good she's excited."
 

"Exactly." They were both worried that Willow might back out of the project. It's going to take their combined savings and Willow was the only one that knew how to program computers.

CHAPTER FIVE

O
N
F
RIDAY
MORNING
, Linden played wall ball with Kazuki and a group of boys in the schoolyard. He was just about to serve when another kid bumped into him, and then, without apologizing, kicked the wall ball halfway across the field. Linden's heart sank. Why did people do stuff like that? There were only a few minutes left to play before the bell rang.
 

By the time he got the ball, the bell rang for class. He stuffed the ball into his pack, then swung it onto his sweaty back and ran for the door. He found Elon just outside playing a videogame with another kid. He stopped to watch Elon hack and slash at zombies until a teacher yelled at them to go inside.

They bolted for their classroom, but stopped short midway through the school. Basil had set up shop in the main hallway by the front entrance.

"Hi Basil!" Linden yelled.

Basil was surrounded by piles of hair, Principal Winterson, Vice Principal Henry, and half the office staff. He must have started his science-fair hair-braiding project.

"I asked for permission to cut their hair," he argued.

"It's simply not okay to cut students' hair on school grounds," Principal Winterson said.
 

"Why?" Basil asked.

"First of all, it's dangerous. You shouldn't be using scissors like this and you need a license to cut hair."

"You only need a license to get paid for cutting hair," Basil said. "I'm not getting paid. And we use scissors every day in school."

Linden was impressed Basil had done his research.
 

"You're still not cutting hair on school grounds. You'll return that hair to the students you took it from."

Basil, Elon, and Linden all looked sideways at Mrs. Winterson. Return their cut hair? Basil appeared dumbfounded too.

"And then I'll want to discuss this with your parents."

Linden was dying to know what was going to happen, but he and Elon were ushered to class by the school counselor.

In their classroom, Linden noticed a lot of girls with short, uneven hair. He didn't see any boys with haircuts, but then few boys had hair long enough to be worthwhile to the hair-braiding project.
 

In class, their teacher reviewed the bridge-research assignment. "You've all picked your bridges, and you should have started your research. You have one week left to turn in the first draft of your report, which should be two pages long. And remember, no using Wikipedia."

Linden groaned inside. Teachers were always saying they shouldn't use Wikipedia, but he loved, loved, loved everything about it. He raised his hand.

"Yes, Linden?"

"We should be allowed to use Wikipedia," he said. "Wikipedia is equally accurate
and
more comprehensive than traditional encyclopedias."

"Anyone can edit Wikipedia. It's simply not a credible resource."

Linden's felt his blood start to pound in his ears. He respected his teachers, but they weren't always right. "But it's been studied by dozens of researchers, and they've found it has high quality, even in specialized subjects. Even if someone puts incorrect information into Wikipedia, the editors usually spot and correct it within minutes."

The teacher tapped her foot. Linden couldn't tell if she was annoyed or amused.

She looked at the wall for moment, then turned back to the class. "Regardless of the accuracy of Wikipedia, if you all do your research using it, everyone's reports will look exactly the same. Each person researching the Fremont Bridge will read the same information, and I'll get back ten of the same reports. So no Wikipedia."
 

The teacher's point was good. But Linden knew some secrets about Wikipedia. Some of the best stuff was not in the main page for an article, it was hidden on the Talk page. That's where the people writing an article had discussions. And if two people disagreed about a subject, the history of their arguments was preserved forever on the talk page.

That wasn't the only secret, of course. The History link displayed every change ever made on a Wikipedia page, so visitors could know what had been deleted or added.
 

Linden had already started his research on the St. Johns Bridge last night. After he read the main article on Wikipedia, he discovered on the Talk page that there was a disagreement over whether the bridge should have an apostrophe in the name. Should it be written St. Johns or St. John's? It turned out the bridge was named after James John, also known as "Old Jimmy Johns" or "Saint Johns." Since Johns was his nickname, the name of the bridge shouldn't have an apostrophe in it. And yet the main article hadn't said anything about who the bridge was named after.

He'd also checked to see what had changed in the last year, figuring that it was an old bridge, so any change would reflect recent news. The main difference was a note that the St. Johns bridge had been used in a TV show filmed in Portland.

Wikipedia had all these cool secrets to uncover.

CHAPTER SIX

I
T
WAS
S
ATURDAY
morning and Willow worked on the drone with Linden and Elon. Her brothers had gone to the hobby store yesterday with dad, and came home with what seemed like hundreds of parts that were now spread across the project table in the garage.

She'd brought her laptop into the garage, too, and was reading the documentation for ArduPilot, the auto-pilot computer and software that would fly their quadcopter. Even before her brothers finished building the hardware, she could test the software with a simulator. Right now Willow had bits of circuit boards plugged into each other, and she configured the ArduPilot software to explain what type of airplane they were building and which GPS they'd use. The GPS was a radio receiver that listened for satellites and could figure out exactly where in the world it was. They'd use it to let the plane find itself on a map. It was critical to allow the copter to fly itself around.
 

When the software was configured with the basics, she read instructions on how to set up the camera to take a photo every fifty feet. She daydreamed about having the copter fly back and forth in a pattern, taking photos automatically until she had a picture of every backyard in the neighborhood.

By lunchtime the boys had the frame of the copter assembled and they wanted to put the electronics in place. Willow reluctantly surrendered the circuit boards, and focused instead on connecting the transmitter to the software. The transmitter would let them take a picture or control the grappling hook from the ground, and fly the copter on manual control.
 

After a glance at the clock on her computer, Willow started to rush. She had to finish up, because Atlanta would be over soon, and they were going to the park to ride bikes. Suddenly the house phone rang, and her mom called Willow to get the phone in the kitchen.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Willow. This is Atlanta's mom. Atlanta can't meet you today. She has another stomachache."

Willow was silent as disappointment filled her, then said weakly, "I hope she feels better. Thank you for letting me know."

She hung up, and remembered that Atlanta hadn't been feeling good yesterday afternoon, right after lunch. Atlanta had eaten hot lunch again, some sort of meat thing, which Willow had passed over in favor of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
 

On Monday, they'd eaten the same thing, and both of them got sick. Yesterday, Atlanta was hot lunch again and got sick again, but Willow's sandwich seemed fine. Maybe there wasn't a stomach flu going around. Maybe it really was the food. She grew suspicious something was wrong with their school lunches.
 

"What did you have for lunch this week?" Willow asked the boys on returning to the garage.

"The same thing as always," Linden said. "Spaghetti, bread, and rice."

Linden was a fan of plain white, tan or brown foods and always brought his own lunch except for Brunch for Lunch Day, because pancakes fit within his color palette.

"Did you ever feel sick this week?"

"Nope," Linden said.

"And you, Elon?"

"Umm..." He was surrounded by wires and small circuit boards and electric motors. "What?"

"What did you have for lunch this week?"

"I can't remember," he said.

This was a problem. It was just plain hard to remember what you ate several days ago. She'd read enough detective novels to know that good detectives kept meticulous notes. She'd need a chart of what people ate and whether they got sick or not.
 

"How's the auto-pilot coming?" Elon asked.

"Good." Willow got back to work and forgot about food for a while.

Before they knew it, their dad was calling them to come in. They stopped only with reluctance, because they were making good progress. They might get a flight in with another day of work.
 

Their mom reminded everyone to dress up because they were going to a fancy restaurant to entertain an out-of-town coworker. Willow changed into a black dress with tights and came out to see Linden and Elon in pants and button-down shirts. For boys, and especially her brothers, they looked pretty sharp. Just for the heck of it, she gave them both hugs before they got in the car.

The restaurant had candles on the table (a good sign) and it was quiet (potentially troubling since Linden and Elon frequently weren't), but after one glance from mom and dad, they decided to behave. The kids sat at one end of the table so the adults could talk.

Somehow Willow ended up sandwiched between the boys, and of course got kicked. In the legs. Like ten times. But the food was worth it. The adults raved over salad greens (were they rabbits?) and local fish. Willow ordered salmon and broccoli, Elon got gnocchi with truffle sauce, and Linden -- somehow -- managed to get plain spaghetti and butter, which wasn't even on the menu.

Willow speared one stalk of broccoli with her fork and stared at it before taking a bite. It was crisp, bright green, and tasted good. The menu made a big deal about how all the food was local and fresh. This was puzzling, because their school lunches were also supposed to be local and fresh, but didn't look or taste at all similar. What was going on?

CHAPTER SEVEN

W
ILLOW
PICKED
OVER
her lunch on Monday. Unfortunately, she'd chosen hot lunch today, some kind of mystery meat. Why, oh why, hadn't she brought lunch from home? The school lunch tasted and smelled funny in addition to the odd gray color.

Atlanta bit into hers, then got a funny look on her face. She dug around with her fingers, and pulled out a small metal ball. "A BB!" she said.

 
Willow threw down her fork and pushed the plate away. "I'm done with this. My broccoli looks like it was sitting out on the counter all week. My apple is more bruises than not."

"I don't understand," Atlanta said. "Is this the food we donated extra money to get?"

Willow eyed her milk, suddenly suspicious, but it looked like the same milk they got every day.

Basil sat down next to them with his usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He slid the apple over to Willow.

She pushed it towards Atlanta, who pushed it back to Basil.

He ignored it.

"What's with the bandaids?" Willow asked. Nearly every finger on his hand had one or more bandages.

"Grrr. Arrgh."
 

"Articulate as usual. What gives?" she asked, turning to Atlanta.

"On Friday he got in trouble for cutting hair at school," Atlanta said.

"I still say there's no rule against cutting hair at school." Basil bit furiously into his sandwich.

"And on Saturday I was still sick," Atlanta said, "so Basil went to the high school track meet, and told the cheerleaders he was collecting hair to donate to charity --"

"Which we will!" he interrupted.

"And so he got all the hair we needed." Atlanta started to break down in giggles.

"What the what!" Basil said. "I've never braided hair before."

"On Sunday, he started braiding. I was still sick. How long did you braid for?"

"I braided hair, by myself, for ten hours. Ten hours!" He wiggled his hands at me. "These are blisters. Apparently I can rock-climb with no problem, but I can't braid hair."

Willow was fascinated. She couldn't imagine Basil working that hard on a school project. "How much rope do you have?"

"We don't have rope yet," Basil said. "We just have yarn."

Willow was puzzled. "Now you're making yarn?" she said. "Did you turn this into a crochet project?"

"No," Atlanta answered between bites of her mystery meat. "It takes several stages. Small bundles of hair have to be twisted together to make plies or singles. It's like thread or string. Then we take those singles and twisted them together to make three-ply rope."

"Yeah, it's really fun," Basil said, with a fake smile planted on his face. "You want to work on it with us?" He made puppy-eyes at Willow.
 

"No thanks, I'm good with our drone."

His face sagged and he turned to Atlanta. "You're going to help with the next part, right?"

"Of course," she said. "I don't want to be sick, you know."

But later that day, a bunch of kids, including Atlanta, asked to be excused to the office and didn't come back to class. By the end of the school day, the rumor was that thirty kids had gone home sick.

Willow called her that night and her dad picked up. "Is Atlanta home?" she asked.

"She's at the hospital with her mom," he said.

"Hospital?" Willow's stomach dropped and her heart beat faster.