The Tell-Tale Start (9 page)

“OK, we don’t deny it,” Edgar said, looking around the wrecked bookstore.

“But you should be pleased with us, Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith,” Allan said. “You’re always talking about the value of education. Well, today we taught a bookseller a valuable lesson about literature.”

“There’ll be no new books for you today,” Uncle Jack announced as he steered them out of the store.

“What?” they moaned. (The truth was, while reprogramming the computer, they’d checked the inventory and discovered the store was out of the books they wanted. But they kept this news to themselves.) They looked at each other, their eyes puppylike and sad. “No
True Stories of Horror?” they muttered. “Gee, Uncle Jack. You’re so mean.”

Uncle Jack stood a little taller and nodded as he held open the door for his wife and nephews. “You got
that
right. Now, how about some lunch?”

“Chinese?” Allan suggested.

“Why not?” Now that Uncle Jack had been “stern” enough, he could afford to be generous.

Chinese was the twins’ favorite, not so much for the food but the fortune cookies. Or rather, the fortunes inside the cookies.

The Poe family walked across the parking lot to the Jade Dragon. There, they ordered spicy-hot beef, orange chicken, fried rice, and the Buddhist’s Delight vegetable plate. The food proved forgettable. But the identical message each boy discovered in his fortune cookie proved otherwise:

Of course, that meant the Gale Farm and OZitorium.

Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith received ordinary fortune cookie fortunes: “You will share the gift of friendship” and “Your hard work will be rewarded.”

“Did you boys get identical fortunes again?” their uncle inquired, looking over their shoulders.

They nodded. They
always
got identical fortunes. Why wouldn’t fortune cookies predict the same future for two boys who were virtually interchangeable?

“Twin messages again for our twin boys,” said Aunt Judith. “Isn’t it amazing how that always happens? What a coincidence!”

Allan and Edgar didn’t believe in coincidence.

Rather, they believed in fortune. Particularly when it was packaged in a cookie….

Most people don’t take fortune cookies so seriously. But the boys’ fortunes had always been accurate. For example, at age five, they each received a fortune that read:

This proved true a few days later, when they found themselves involved in a new enterprise called kindergarten.

At age eight their cookies read:

And within a week, both boys were banned from Little League for their inability to hold on to their baseball bats when they were up at home plate. Oh, how the spectators in the stands dodged for cover.

At age ten they read:

And two days later when the boys “borrowed” Uncle Jack’s car for an experiment, they discovered that pressing on the gas pedal instead of the brake indeed renders obstacles such as fences, walls, and plate-glass windows passable. Yes, they sped right through.

And there were many other instances.

Now this:
The farm is a brilliant trip….

The boys had thought they were just retrieving their cat, but perhaps a few pleasant surprises awaited them.

WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW…

FROM A LETTER WRITTEN NINE YEARS

EARLIER BY THE BOYS’ MOTHER, IRMA POE,

TO HER SISTER-IN-LAW, JUDITH

A bell chimed in the front office of the Wagon Wheel Motel as the road-weary Poe family entered. It had been eight hours since their lunch at the Chinese restaurant and three hours since dinner at a greasy spoon this side of the Kansas border. Now they were only a hundred and ten miles from the Gale Farm and OZitorium. But Edgar and Allan didn’t press to go any farther—the hour was late and Uncle Jack was bleary-eyed despite all the coffee he’d been drinking to stay awake.

Roderick would be OK with the professor for one more night.

The motel office was packed tight: a wall of brochures for local tourist attractions, a spinning rack of postcards, two armchairs arranged around an end table with a coffee maker, porcelain coffee mugs, and a pink
box of doughnuts (left over from that morning’s free continental breakfast). More surprising was a handwritten sign at the tall front desk. It read:

The night clerk, a sleepy man in his early twenties with bad teeth and a ponytail, emerged from the back room carrying a book of Sudoku puzzles. “Can I help you?”

“Hey, we’re Poes,” Uncle Jack said, pointing to the sign. “Does that mean we get a discount?”

“Twenty percent,” the night clerk said, setting the book on the counter.

“How thoughtful,” Aunt Judith remarked. “But why for Poes?”

Uncle Jack didn’t wait for the answer. “Doesn’t matter why,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “A discount’s a discount. Right? It’s a great deal. We’ll take it.”

“How’d you know we were coming?” Allan asked the clerk.

“Oh, our discount is always available. We value education.”

“What does education have to do with it?” the boys asked.

The man looked at them. “You two are good students, right?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘good,’” Allan answered.

“We know plenty of things,” Edgar added. “More than our teachers, generally.”

The clerk turned to Uncle Jack. “You’ll have to show documentation to prove you’re a POE.”

“No problem.” He displayed his driver’s license.

“Your
name’s
Poe?”

“Sure is.”

The man laughed. “I hate to disappoint you, but the discount isn’t for people
named
Poe. It’s for members of the organization Parents of Exemplary Students. Get it? P-O-E-S. So unless you’ve got a copy of their current report cards, along with two letters of recommendation from teachers, I’m afraid I can’t give you the discount.”

Jack balked. “What?”

“But they
are
exemplary students,” Aunt Judith said.

“That’s true,” Allan added, “if by ‘exemplary’ you not only mean smart but also ‘expelled.’”

The night clerk shook his head, a smile still playing on his face.

“Fine, then we’ll take our business elsewhere,” Uncle Jack snapped, glancing around the cramped office. “This place isn’t exactly the Ritz.”

The man shrugged. “There’s not another motel open for sixty miles.”

Aunt Judith tapped her index finger on the counter. “I think this POES organization is a bad idea. My goodness, parents of exemplary students already get many advantages. What about having an organization for parents of
ordinary
students?”