The Boy Who Knew Everything (2 page)

The moment passed.

“I guess I'm too old for birthday parties now,” Conrad said finally.

Senator Harrington's smile melted into a hard line and he got to his feet. A pain began bubbling in the back of his head and he pushed it with the fingers on his right hand. “There's a reason these things happen, reasons you don't understand,” he barked with a strange, angry voice. “No one wants you to get involved.”

“You mean someone wanted that satellite to crash?”

“No! No.” The senator's composure was slipping and with effort he took himself in hand by straightening his tie and brushing the creases from his pants.

“You leave me no choice, Conrad.” Senator Harrington turned away. “I'm sending Dr. Hellion up now.”

“But Father…”

Senator Harrington walked out of the room and out of Conrad's life without missing a beat. As Conrad stood alone and helpless, despite the vast resources his genius provided him, he wondered what he was going to do without a father to father him.

 

CHAPTER

2

Conrad had four long, agonizing years to consider and reconsider his conversation with his father while he suffered under the control of Dr. Letitia Hellion. Dr. Hellion had taken it upon herself to collect all things exceptional and under the guise of “helping” was systematically eradicating the world of anything that she deemed to be abnormal. In her opinion, Conrad's extreme intelligence was definitely abnormal and thus a threat to society as a whole and to Conrad as an individual. Day in and day out, year after year, Dr. Hellion used every means at her disposal (and her arsenal was indomitable) to force Conrad to relinquish his intelligence and embrace normalcy.

There was no doubt in Conrad's mind that his father would have left him at the mercy of Dr. Hellion indefinitely had Piper McCloud not arrived. Like Conrad, Piper was exceptional: she had the ability to fly. With her long brown hair and sky-blue eyes Piper was like a well-meaning tornado stuffed into a china teacup. Thanks to Piper and her flying, Conrad was able to finally plan an escape that not only set the two of them free, but all the other kids under Dr. Hellion's control too.

But of course the price of his freedom was the reminder that he had no home to return to: his father wouldn't take him back. Once again Piper stepped in and saved the day by offering up her home and family. Betty and Joe McCloud lived on a humble farm in remote Lowland County and, like Piper, they were honest and good-hearted country folk. They soon came to love Conrad like their own son and Conrad adjusted to the pace of life on the farm and began to flourish. He built a laboratory in the old barn and got to work on his pet “time travel” project; he helped Joe with the farm work and ate up every last bite of Betty's amazing country cooking. All of a sudden Conrad was smack dab in the middle of a real family; he had loving adults looking out for him and over him, and he had the company of his good friend Piper, who could always be counted on to come up with some crazy scheme.

For instance, that very day Piper had happened to uncover a fabulous secret that Conrad was trying to keep from everyone: it was his twelfth birthday. Not only had Piper discovered this, but she had planned a surprise birthday party for him. With the greatest care she had secretly invited all of their friends and had planned everything so that at just the right moment they would leap out on her unsuspecting friend and yell—

“SURPRISE!” Piper mouthed the words, not allowing sound to escape.

Before the sun had touched the clouds that morning, Piper had slipped from her bed, tingling with excitement. Conrad had the little bedroom next to hers, and she was careful to be very quiet when she opened her bedroom window. As soon as her feet lifted off the ground, the thrill of taking to the morning sky made her soar.

It was the beginning of November and the air was crisp and she flew fast and far over the forest. They had enjoyed an Indian summer that kept the leaves on the trees late that year, and the foliage burned red, yellow, brown, and orange in hues so bright and vivid it took Piper's breath away. The wind picked at the leaves and tossed them about in passionate tangos. Piper swooped down over the trees and went low, as low as she dared, and dodged this way and that through the festival of color.

Piper allowed the twists and turns of Clothespin Creek to lead her back to home and family. It contented Piper to fly over the simple farms of her neighbors, where she could see the sheep and cattle grazing and hear the roosters crowing.

When Piper reached her farm she circled above it. It still amazed her to see all that had changed on the farm. When Conrad had first arrived at the McClouds' they had twenty rocky acres of farmland and not much else. No sooner had Conrad moved in than he began urging Piper's father to adopt revolutionary farming techniques, which had lifted his crop yield from poor to overabundant. As the money came in, Conrad advised Joe McCloud to buy the hundred acres of swampland that bordered their south field. It was with amazement that Millie Mae Miller, the town gossip, reported to her sewing circle that somehow Joe had devised a way to irrigate the swamp, drain the water into a reservoir, and then plant crop after bountiful crop. In no time flat the McClouds had gone from subsistence rock farmers to the most prosperous landowners in the county. Joe now had a shed stocked full of the most up-to-date farming equipment of every description, the herd of cattle had tripled in number, and the sheep were bursting from the fields.

The simple clapboard farmhouse had undergone its own Cinderella-like transformation. The peeling, eroding structure had been revived with a splashy coat of bright blue paint. White shutters and flower boxes had been added around the windows and a flowering vine danced up through lattice.

Circling one last time, Piper quickly dove down and landed on the roof of the old barn. Wiggling through a hole in the cupola, she arrived in the hayloft to find Myrtle waiting for her.

After Piper and Conrad had escaped from Dr. Hellion's evil institute, all of their exceptional friends had gone their separate ways. It was quite a task getting the word out quietly about Conrad's surprise party that morning.

Myrtle, a painfully shy beanpole of a girl, was the first to arrive. Of course, Myrtle would be first since she could run faster than the speed of light. She was sitting on top of a large rafter, her feet dangling impatiently.

“Myrtle! You're a sight for sore eyes!” Piper swooped down and settled next to her. “I can't wait to see the look on Conrad's face when he sees you all here.”

“You sure he doesn't know?” Myrtle was very shy and she spoke softly and tilted her head downward in an effort to hide beneath her thick brown hair.

“Nope.” Piper shook her head with certainty as she crossed her heart with solemnity. “My lips are sealed.”

Piper showed Myrtle where she had stowed boxes of decorations and the girls began to decorate the hayloft with streamers, bright signs, and balloons. No sooner had they begun than Nalen and Ahmed Mustafa, mischievous identical twins and weather changers, arrived, followed soon after by Daisy and Jasper. Piper was particularly happy to see her good friend Violet, who could shrink to the size of a teacup. Violet, with flashing brown eyes and a dark complexion, was soft-spoken but fiercely loyal and surprisingly courageous.

With her super strength, Daisy set to effortlessly tossing the hay bales around, arranging them to Piper's specifications while Ahmed and Nalen hung the streamers from the rafters and Jasper and Violet blew up balloons until their heads felt dizzy.

And some things never changed—Kimber and Smitty showed up bickering. They bickered just as much as they ever did when Piper first met them at Dr. Hellion's school. Smitty had just had a growth spurt and his mother had slapped a pair of braces on his teeth, but his X-ray vision was as sharp as ever. Sharp enough to sneak peeks at Kimber's underwear, despite the electricity that Kimber wielded in her fingertips. Over the course of the last year Kimber's wild red hair had mellowed into a rich auburn color and her freckles had faded to reveal milky-white skin that hinted at the striking young woman she would one day become. Which did not mean for a second that her wicked temper had in any way mellowed; indeed, she was just as hotheaded as she'd ever been.

Piper hugged them both gleefully. “Conrad didn't see you come, did he?”

“No way. No one saw us,” Kimber reported confidently.

“The cows saw us,” Smitty corrected.

“Fine.” Kimber sighed irritably. “No one saw us who can talk. Jeez, do we have to fight about everything?”

The last and final member of their group to arrive was Lily Yakimoto, and she would have been there sooner but she had to fix her hair—twice. Lily was nine years old and prided herself on her spotless appearance. Her hair hung in ringlets, her shoes gleamed, and she allowed only the finest silk dresses to grace her delicate form. She often used her keen telekinetic powers to arrange the ribbons in her hair or to retie the hard-to-reach bow on her dress.

“Five minutes,” Piper warned in a loud whisper. “Conrad always comes in here before breakfast to check on his experiments.” She nodded to the center of the loft where Conrad had set up a makeshift science lab. Despite the fact that he'd cobbled together odds and ends of computers and other random high-tech equipment, which regularly had stray bits of hay raining down on them, the effect of the entire arrangement was strangely awe-inspiring—in a mad-scientist sort of way.

The finishing touches were completed with the balloons dangling from the walls and the streamers pinned on the hay and the rafters. Violet handed out party hats and blowers and then Piper ordered them into hiding places. As she crouched down in the hay, Piper held herself gleefully. Every pair of eyes rested on the barn door as they silently waited, ready to jump out.

“ACHOO!” A loud sneeze blasted through the barn.

Jumping up, Piper looked about. “Shhhhh!”

“ACHOO!”

Piper spotted Lily holding her two hands over her face and bending over. “ACHOO!”

“Lily, you have to be quiet!” Piper whispered frantically.

“I can't—ACHOO—help it!” she whined. “This hay is—ACHOO—making me sneeze. ACHOO.”

“Maybe she's a-allergic,” Myrtle whispered.

Piper had never considered this. “Are you allergic to hay?”

“ACHOO!” Lily's eyes were running by this point and her face was getting red and puffy. She nodded her head miserably.

“Here.” Piper tossed Lily her sweater. “Sneeze as quietly as you can into this.”

“Someone's coming,” Smitty warned, using his X-ray vision.

“Places, everyone,” Piper whispered.

Once again everyone crouched down and listened to the approaching footsteps. A moment later the barn door swung open.

“SURPRISE!” Piper shouted, jumping out and throwing brightly colored confetti. All around her the other children did likewise while Kimber used the electricity in her fingertips to create a sparkler effect.

“SURPRISE! SURPRISE!”

“Happy birthday!”

Standing before them, with the life near scared out of him, was none other than Piper's father, Joe McCloud.

Now it was Piper's turn to be surprised. “Pa? What are you doing here?”

Joe clutched his chest and took several steps back, using the wall for support. When he could gather himself he pointed to the bags of chicken feed stacked against the wall.

Piper's shoulders fell. “Oh no, it's Tuesday. Feed day.” Piper suddenly remembered that on Tuesdays Joe always collected the chicken feed he needed for the week.

“But where's Conrad?” Kimber wanted to know.

“I'm right behind you,” Conrad said clearly.

At the sound of his voice all the children swiveled around to discover Conrad languidly leaning against the back wall with an amused smirk on his face. His blond hair was tousled and in need of a haircut, but the erect way he held himself and the precision with which he dressed belied his keen attention to detail. He was, without a doubt, the only person in the entire barn at that moment who wasn't surprised. Poor Joe felt as though his life had just flashed before his eyes.

“Surprise,” Conrad said evenly.

Piper's face sank. “You knew! How'd you know?”

“Simple,” Conrad said. “You didn't eat your piece of apple pie last night.”

“You knew I was throwing a surprise birthday party because I didn't eat my apple pie?”

“Of course. You didn't eat because you were excited. I knew you were excited because of the way you wiggled your baby finger.” He demonstrated with his own baby finger. “And then there was the purple marker on your hands. Obviously you'd been making something—but you don't usually do crafts. Which meant there was a special reason that you were doing them, and the only thing special that was going on was my birthday. It was pretty obvious.”

Piper shook her head and sat down hard on a hay bale. “You're impossible.”

“Sorry.” He nodded to Lily and tossed her a box of allergy medicine. “Take two of them now and then two in another four hours.”

“You knew Lily was allergic to hay too?” Piper was not only disappointed now but also exasperated.

“Of course. Didn't you?” Conrad paused. “But the one thing I couldn't figure out was how you knew it was my birthday. I never told any of you, nor do you have access to any information that would tell you. So how'd you find out?”

Piper smiled, triumphant.

“Well?” Conrad waited on her answer.

Suddenly a lone voice started singing “Happy Birthday.” Conrad looked about, surprised. A cake with twelve candles brightly burning on top appeared from around the corner of a stack of hay. It floated through the air, heading straight for Conrad.

Jumping to her feet, Piper clapped and sang. The other kids joined in.