Never Say Genius (9 page)

It took the twins awhile to retrace their steps and find the location. When they did, their father was leaning against the side of the RV, hands on hips. Never a good sign.

“If it was
so
important for you to leave the game early, you could have just said so,” Dr. McDonald said sternly. “You didn’t have to have them evacuate the whole ballpark.”

“That wasn’t it, Dad!” Pep replied. “Really! We would never do something like that.”

“Then why did you do it?”

Pep looked at her brother, who was always better in situations like this.

“Dad,” he began, “would you believe me if I said our health teacher Mrs. Higgins works for the Cubs now, and she told us that singing the last line of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ would trigger a bomb in the Cubs dugout? Dad, she put a gun to our heads and
forced
us to sing it.”

“No,” said Dr. McDonald. “I wouldn’t believe that.”

“What if we told you it was a chocolate gun?” added Pep.

“That was a very dangerous stunt!” their father scolded them. “People could have been killed running for the exits like that!”

“But if there really
was
a bomb in the Cubs dugout,” Coke explained, “people really would have been killed!”

“But there
was
no bomb in the dugout!” Dr. McDonald shouted. “You did it for no reason at all!”

He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, which is what parents do for some reason when their kids do incomprehensibly dumb things.

They climbed into the RV and headed downtown on Michigan Avenue, where Mrs. McDonald had arranged to meet them. She was waiting when they pulled over to the curb across the street from Millennium Park.

“So how was the game?” Mrs. McDonald said cheerfully as she climbed into the front seat with a shopping bag.

None of them, not even Dr. McDonald, particularly wanted to go over what had happened at Wrigley Field.

“It was very exciting, Mom,” Coke finally said.

“That must have been cool, seeing your names up on the video screen,” Mrs. McDonald said. “Was it fun singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’? That was my idea.”

“It was a unique experience, Mom,” Pep said diplomatically.

Dr. McDonald shook his head slightly and snorted to himself as he put the RV into gear. The streets were busy, but he managed to merge onto Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago Skyway—Route 90.

It was late afternoon by this time. Mrs. McDonald punched their location into the GPS. She did some rough calculations in her head as they left Chicago. It was June 26. They were about seven hundred miles from Washington, and they hoped to get there at least one day early to explore the capital before Aunt Judy’s wedding on July Fourth. So they had about seven days to travel seven hundred miles. About a hundred miles a day. That was reasonable.

They were making good time, and Dr. McDonald relaxed a little behind the wheel, brainstorming about his next book.

Maybe I should write a biography,
he said to himself.
I’ve never done a biography. I could write about a historical figure. Maybe a president. People like to read biographies of presidents…

Dr. and Mrs. McDonald were both thankful that up until this point, they hadn’t encountered any of the typical road trip calamities—lost wallets, mechanical failures, kids getting poison ivy, and so on.

(Little did they know that so far their children had been forced to jump off a cliff, locked in a burning school, pushed into a sand pit, thrown into a vat of SPAM, zapped with electric shocks, lowered into boiling oil, and chased through the streets of Chicago by enraged Cub fans.)

Dr. McDonald knocked wood—well, the dashboard, anyway—and reached into the glove compartment to put on a CD—Michael Jackson’s
Number Ones
. There was little the whole family could agree on, especially when it came to music. But after Michael Jackson died, they had all gone to see his concert film
This Is It
. By the time the movie was over the McDonalds had become Jackson fans. Four heads were bobbing together when the first notes to “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” pumped out of the RV speakers.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Mrs. McDonald said suddenly. “I got you kids souvenirs.”

She opened her shopping bag and pulled out a Cubs shirt for each of the twins. They immediately flipped them over to see if there was any writing on the back.

“Thanks, Mom!” Coke and Pep said together.

“I thought these would help you remember your day at Wrigley Field,” Mrs. McDonald said.

“Oh, we’ll remember our day at Wrigley Field,” Pep said. “I’m sure of that.”

They continued along Route 90 for a few miles when, at the same time, all four spotted a sign at the side of the road.

“Wooooooooo-hooooooooooo!” Coke yelled. “Hey, do you know that five vice presidents were born in Indiana?”

“How can you possibly know that?” asked Pep.

“I read it on the place mat in a restaurant when we were in Wyoming,” Coke said. “In fact, Indiana is nicknamed ‘Mother of Vice Presidents.’”

“You’re laboring under the misconception that anybody cares,” Pep said.

The McDonalds couldn’t see it, but they were only a mile from Lake Michigan at this time. “Billie Jean” pumped out of the RV speakers as Dr. McDonald pulled off Route 90 at exit 14B. The sign said GARY. He drove a couple of miles through this busy working-class city before the kids noticed they were no longer on the highway.

“What are we doing here?” Coke asked.

“Do either of you know what Gary, Indiana, is famous for?” asked Mrs. McDonald.

“I do!” Pep said excitedly. She began to sing that old song from
The Music Man
that consists mainly of the words “Gary, Indiana” repeated over and over again.

If you don’t believe me, YouTube it.

“Nope, that’s not it,” Dr. McDonald said as he turned onto a street filled with very small houses. “Guess again.”

“I give up,” Coke said.

The RV stopped in front of a simple little house with white siding and a dark shingled roof.

“Look at the street sign on the corner,” Mrs. McDonald said.

The sign said 2300
JACKSON STREET
in one direction and
JACKSON FAMILY BLVD
in the other.

“Beat It” was pumping out of the RV speakers.

“This was Michael Jackson’s house!” Pep yelled.

“That’s right,” Mrs. McDonald said. “It’s his boyhood home.”

Only then did the kids notice a few stuffed animals and flowers that fans had left near the front door.

Mrs. McDonald rolled down the window and snapped a few photos.

“Weren’t there something like ten brothers and sisters in the Jackson family?” Coke asked. “And they all lived in this tiny little house?”

“Nine,” Mrs. McDonald said. “The family moved to California when Michael was eleven.”

“Is this a museum or something?” Pep asked. “Can we go inside?”

“No, somebody lives here,” Dr. McDonald said.

“But this is like going to Graceland if you’re an Elvis fan,” Mrs. McDonald explained. “Like going to Liverpool if you’re a Beatles fan. Like going to Hoboken if you’re a Sinatra fan.”

“Hoboken?” Coke asked. “What’s that?”

“What’s a Sinatra?” asked Pep.

“Forget it.”

They listened to “Thriller” as they headed back onto the highway. Just ten miles east of Gary, they pulled into Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Camp-Resort in Portage, Indiana. Mrs. McDonald had called ahead on her cell phone and made a reservation.

Dr. McDonald hooked the RV up to the camp’s electrical system while the others pitched in to prepare dinner—frozen chicken and vegetables. Afterward, there was a campfire going on, and the kids went over to toast some marshmallows.

While they were sitting there, sticks in the fire, Coke was thinking about what had happened that day, and he suddenly remembered something. Back at Wrigley Field, right after their birthday message flashed up on the video screen, it had been replaced by another message. He had almost forgotten all about it, but his brain somehow had memorized the message itself.

Pep ran back to the RV to get her notebook so they could write it down and figure it out.

“It looks like it might be some ancient picture language,” Coke guessed. “Like something the Aztecs used, or the Egyptians.”

“Or each of those symbols might represent a letter of the alphabet,” Pep said.

Using the flickering light from the campfire, Pep puzzled over the strange symbols for a long time while Coke toasted more marshmallows. He had no patience for ciphers or puzzles, or any of that spy stuff his sister loved so much.

There were fourteen symbols, and numbers one and ten were the same. None of the others were repeated. Pep turned it upside down and sideways, trying to get a different perspective on it. The dots had to be important, or they wouldn’t be there.

After a half hour or so, Pep called it quits. It was late. The fire was dying out, and it was getting hard to see the notebook. They were both tired. Most of the people staying at the campground had gone to sleep. She could work on it some more the next day.