The Smartest Kid in the Universe

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Good idea,” said Kojo, grabbing some graph paper.

  “Hang on, you guys,” said Grace. “This next part will help us map it out. ‘Llamémoslos A y B.’ That means, ‘Let’s call them A and B.’ ”

  “Because,” said Jake, “the Spanish words for ‘A’ and ‘B’ are ‘A’ and ‘B.’ ”

  “This is starting to resemble a geometry problem,” said Kojo, labeling two random points A and B.

  “ ‘También encontrarás los restos de mi pozo de fuego,’ ” Grace continued. “ ‘You will also find the remains of my fire pit.’ ”

  “That’s his ‘pozo de fuego,’ ” said Kojo, marking a third random point on the graph paper and labeling it C.

  Grace led them through the rest of the translation. Jake and Kojo mapped out all the spots her ancestor from the seventeen hundreds mentioned.

  Start at the fire pit and count the number of steps it takes to walk straight to Pillar A. When you reach the pillar, turn ninety degrees to the left and take the same number of steps. When you arrive, make a mark on the ground. Return to the fire pit and count the steps to Pillar B by walking in a straight line. When you reach it, turn ninety degrees to the right and take the same number of steps. Make another marker on the ground. Dig in the place that is halfway between both marks, and there, my children, you will find my treasure!

  Jake drew a triumphant X to mark the spot halfway between the two markers.

  “Boom!” he said. “This will be easy.”

  “No, it won’t,” said Grace. “Because Uncle Charley, his father, his grandfather—they’ve all been down in the cave and found the treasure chamber. They can find the two rock pillars. But the fire pit isn’t there anymore!”

  “But everything depends on the location of the fire pit,” said Kojo.

  “Exactly,” said Grace. “That’s why nobody in my family’s been able to find the treasure for close to three hundred years.”

  Suddenly, someone rang the doorbell. Repeatedly.

  “It must be Mom and Emma,” said Jake. “They probably forgot their keys. I’ll go let them in.”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” said Grace.

  “I need some more soda,” said Kojo.

  “Five-minute break,” said Jake. He shut down the computer and hid the graph paper map in the bottom drawer of his desk under a stack of video game cheat guides.

  “Paranoid much?” joked Grace.

  “It’s very valuable information. We should take precautions.”

  It was a good thing he did.

  Because it wasn’t Jake’s mom ringing the doorbell.

  It was Mrs. Malvolio.

  “Oh, hello, Jake,” said Mrs. Malvolio, batting her eyes. “Is your mother home?”

  “No,” said Jake. “Is there some reason you’re here on a weekend, Mrs. Malvolio?”

  Grace and Kojo came into the foyer.

  “Yeah,” said Kojo, plunking a fresh Tootsie Pop into his mouth. “This isn’t school.”

  “This is a private residence!” added Grace.

  “Oh, goody.” Mrs. Malvolio clapped her fingertips together daintily. “You’re all here. I brought presents! May I come in?”

  Jake reluctantly stepped out of the doorway.

  Mrs. Malvolio picked up a festively decorated shopping bag and came inside. She looked around the living room. Her nose crinkled. So did the edges of her forced smile.

  “My, oh my. Your apartment is certainly…quaint. And cozy!”

  “What’s in the bag?” asked Kojo.

  “Gifts! I hope I guessed your sizes correctly.”

  She reached into the bag and pulled out three yellow T-shirts with sparkling black letters spelling out BRAINIACS.

  “The big day’s this Wednesday!” she gushed. “I wanted you to have proper team uniforms for the competition.”

  “Are those sequins?” asked Kojo. “Because I really don’t do sequins….”

  “They’re lovely,” said Grace. “Thanks.”

  “Yes,” said Jake. “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Malvolio stood there. Smiling. Batting her eyes.

  “Could I trouble you for some water? Feeling a mite parched.”

  “Let me grab you a bottle out of the fridge,” said Jake.

  As he walked to the kitchen, he tried to figure out the real reason for Mrs. Malvolio’s unexpected weekend visit.

  Did she know they were working on the cabin boy’s treasure puzzle?

  How could she?

  Unless she had a spy camera set up in the janitor’s closet. No. Mr. Lyons would’ve seen it and taken protective measures. He would’ve stacked boxes, books, and file folders to block it.

  Jake grabbed a small bottle of water out of the fridge and realized that there were some things even the smartest kid in the universe couldn’t figure out. Like what was up with Mrs. Malvolio.

  “Here’s some water,” he said, handing her the chilled bottle.

  “Thank you, Jake.” She twisted off the cap and guzzled a big gulp. Then she waited, smiled, and batted her eyes some more. After a few seconds, she tilted the bottle to her lips and guzzled again. She twisted the cap back on. Waited. She unscrewed the cap….

  “You can take the bottle with you if you want,” said Jake. “Just be sure to dispose of it in a recycling bin. Because enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Malvolio. “Let’s hope there’s a question about recycling at the Quiz Bowl!” She glanced at her watch. “Well, this has been fun, but I do need to run.” She giggled. “I rhymed! Did you hear that? I’m a poet and didn’t know it, although my shoes kind of show it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jake led her to the door and out into the hall. “See you on Monday, Mrs. Malvolio.”

  She shook a pair of invisible pom-poms. “Go, team!”

  Jake came back into the apartment and closed and locked the door.

  “Okay,” said Kojo. “That was weird. And I am not wearing that spangly T-shirt.”

  “We’ll wear what we wore last time,” said Grace as the team strolled back to Jake’s bedroom. “Black polo shirts and Pittsburgh Pirates baseball caps.”

  “Man,” said Kojo as they stepped into Jake’s bedroom. “It’s burning up in here again.”

  “Because,” said Jake, nodding toward the window, “whoever snuck in here from the fire escape while we were being distracted by Mrs. Malvolio was polite enough to close the window on their way out.”

  Jake checked to make sure nothing was missing from his bedroom.

  “They were probably looking for this,” he said, retrieving their first draft of the treasure map from its hiding place in the bottom right-hand drawer.

  “Or this,” said Grace, summoning the photo of the cabin boy’s puzzle on Jake’s computer. “You guys? We need to start our search for the treasure ASAP. Mrs. Malvolio and her uncle are definitely trying to find it, too.”

  “But,” said Kojo, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “how could they know we know what we know?”

  “They must’ve finally made the connection between Uncle Charley Lyons and the Cubano cabin boy Eduardo Leones. We need to move fast.”

  “Let me work the puzzle a little longer,” said Jake. “Maybe we’re not seeing something obvious.”

  “This is going to be tough without the fire pit,” said Kojo.

  “But not impossible,” said Jake. “It’s just a very challenging plane geometry problem. How do we find ‘X’ without knowing ‘A’? I may need to ask an expert for help.”

  “You gonna call Haazim Farooqi?” said Kojo. “Ask him to whip up a new solution?”

  “Who’s Haazim Farooqi?” said Grace.

  “A, er, geometry expert we know,” said Jake swiftly. “He might be able to ‘whip up
a solution’ to this problem.”

  “You guys know a geometry expert?” said Grace.

  “Sort of.” Jake’s armpits were getting soggy again. He hated even half lying to Grace. But he’d hate her knowing he was a phony genius even more. She wouldn’t be making any more heart hands at him if she did.

  “But I don’t think we’ll need his help on this one.”

  Jake said that last bit directly to Kojo.

  He winked to say, Got it, bro. Fortunately Grace didn’t see him. She was too busy staring at the graph paper map.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” said Grace. “The school will be closed. If Uncle Charley opened it up for us, it might draw more attention to what we’re doing. We have to assume that Mrs. Malvolio and Heath Huxley have people monitoring all the security cameras. Work the puzzle, Jake. Try to figure it out. We start our treasure hunt right after school on Monday!”

  Sunday morning, Jake’s mom took him and Emma to the Imperial Marquis Hotel for their world-famous brunch buffet.

  “The State Quiz Bowl competition is first thing Wednesday,” she said between bites of eggs Benedict. “But we’ll start setting up the grand ballroom on Tuesday. They need a pair of giant video screens to project the questions and answers. And they’re expecting an audience of over one thousand! Busloads of kids and teachers are coming from all over the state. It’s so exciting. I can’t wait to see you in action again, hon! Go, Pirates!”

  Jake’s mom was just one of hundreds of adults who were pulling for Riverview in the championship round because it had been their middle school, too.

  “Quick, Jake,” said Emma with a grin. “Why are those called eggs Benedict? Is it because that’s what Benedict Arnold used to eat for breakfast?”

  “No, Emma,” said Jake, returning her grin. “Some give credit for the dish to Pope Benedict the Thirteenth, who was put on a strict eggs and toast diet. However, most culinary experts agree that the dish was named after Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street stockbroker who wandered into a hotel one morning in 1894 and, hoping to find a cure for his grogginess, ordered buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a dollop of hollandaise sauce. Canadian bacon was soon substituted for the regular bacon, and the rest is, as they say, history.”

  Emma laughed. “You’ve still got it! Those other teams don’t stand a chance!”

  Feeling great, Jake and his happy family returned home.

  They were surprised to see a knot of people, many in dark blue police windbreakers, clustered outside their apartment door.

  “Is there some problem?” asked Jake’s mom, hurrying down the hallway with her keys.

  “I’m afraid so,” said District Superintendent Lopez, emerging through the wall of police officers. She held up a very official-looking document. “This is a warrant, Ms. McQuade. We need to search your son’s bedroom.”

  Jake’s mom opened the door for the police and Dr. Lopez.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” she demanded.

  “The answer sheet to the upcoming State Quiz Bowl questions,” Dr. Lopez replied, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “We received a tip late last night that your son stole it.”

  Dr. Lopez turned to face Jake.

  “And you were such a wonderful ambassador for our public schools, Jake. I’m so disappointed.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake protested. “I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Except this,” said a police officer, coming out of Jake’s bedroom, holding a blue booklet in his gloved hand. “The questions and answers to this week’s State Quiz Bowl competition. Says so right on the cover sheet.”

  “Where was it?” asked Dr. Lopez.

  “Exactly where the tipster said it’d be. Hidden underneath the kid’s Xbox console.”

  Dr. Lopez shook her head. “Is this how you won the district competition, Jake? By cheating?”

  “No!” said Jake. “I wouldn’t even know where to look for an answer sheet.”

  “At the offices of the State Quiz Bowl Alliance. They’re the ones in charge of organizing the event.”

  “We found these in his desk, too,” said the police officer. “Cheat guides for about six dozen different video games. Looks like cheating is a hobby for our young friend Jake here.”

  “Jake?” said his mom. All the pride had vanished from her watery eyes. “Did you do this thing?”

  “Of course not. I mean, yeah, I used to look for shortcuts for my video games but—” He snapped his fingers. “Mrs. Malvolio!”

  “Excuse me?” said the school superintendent. “What does your principal have to do with this?”

  “She was here. Yesterday. She’d brought us a bunch of sequined T-shirts. And while she was here, somebody snuck into my room from the fire escape.”

  “Ha!” laughed the cop. “Kid, next time you make up an alibi, try to make it sound a little less ridiculous.”

  “Good advice,” said Emma. She shook her head and walked away.

  “Jake McQuade?” said Dr. Lopez, sounding like a hanging judge. “You are hereby barred from the Riverview Middle School Quiz Bowl team. You are also suspended from school for a week.”

  Jake’s mom grounded him, too.

  He was “confined to quarters.” That meant he could only come out of his bedroom for meals or to use the bathroom.

  But that night, she let Grace and Kojo visit him in solitary confinement.

  “Is this how you got so smart so fast?” demanded Grace, who seemed furious. “Do you have answer sheets for every single subject at school?”

  “No,” insisted Jake. “It was Mrs. Malvolio and her accomplices! You guys saw the closed window. You know she doesn’t want us anywhere near the Quiz Bowl. Somebody broke in here while we were out in the living room dealing with her. They planted that evidence. That’s how they could tell the police exactly where to find it.”

  Grace simmered down a little. She was willing to consider what Jake was saying.

  “Well, how do we prove it?” she wondered.

  “We could dust the windowsill for fingerprints!” said Kojo. “Maybe collect hair and fiber samples like they do on TV.”

  “Do you know how to do that, Kojo?” Jake asked eagerly.

  “No.”

  Now Jake was frustrated. “You talk about all this detective and CSI stuff all the time but you can’t do any of it?”

  “Well,” Kojo snapped back, “maybe if Haazim Farooqi made me a jar full of magical jelly beans, I could, baby. Maybe I could be a genius, just like you!”

  Grace threw up her arms. “Who is Haazim Farooqi? And what’s this about jelly beans?”

  “That’s how Jake got smart,” blurted Kojo angrily. “Haazim Farooqi, who’s this kooky mad scientist working in the subbasement of a building at Warwick College, was doing some kind of even kookier Ingestible Knowledge experiment, and Jake here accidentally became Subject One when he went to his mom’s hotel and gobbled up a whole jar of jelly beans!”

  Grace’s mouth fell open.

  “You just made that up, right?” she said.

  Kojo shook his head. “Nope.”

  “It’s true?” she asked.

  Jake nodded. “Yeah. But I didn’t know that the jelly beans were a knowledge delivery system.”

  “So you cheated. And these magical beans weren’t enough? You had to steal the answer sheet, too?”

  “For the last time,” Jake pleaded, “I swear I didn’t do it. I don’t know how to steal anything.”

  “Oh yes, you do,” said Grace. “After all, you’re the smartest kid in the universe, remember?”

  Late that night, Jake couldn’t sleep.

  He lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. It was one of those bumpy ones, with what builders called a textured finish. As Jake studied the bumps, he started seeing patt
erns in the dots. Constellations of stars. Three-dimensional trigonometry problems. Vectors depicting advanced computer-aided design models for amazing new skyscrapers.

  He wished he could turn his brain off.

  He wished he’d never eaten those jelly beans.

  He wished Grace, Kojo, his mom, and even Emma weren’t so mad at him.

  A little after eleven, his phone rang. It was Kojo.

  “Hey,” Jake said into his phone.

  “Hey. I’m still not talking to you, but you need to turn on the news or crank up your computer.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Big fire. Down at Warwick College. Corey Hall.”

  “That’s where Haazim Farooqi has his lab!”

  “I know.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I think so. They say there weren’t any injuries, but I can’t say for sure how Mr. Farooqi is doing, because he doesn’t really call me. I’m not ‘Subject One.’ ”

  “Thanks for letting me know, Kojo.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Oh, by the way—Coach Lyons is disappointed in you, too. Says you’re back to being the kid who forgets his uniform on game day because it’s ‘too much work’ to remember stuff like that.”

  Kojo clicked off.

  Jake went to his computer and searched for the latest news about the Corey Hall fire.

  A fire in a subbasement chemistry lab was contained before it reached the upper floors of the college building, read the breaking-news bulletin. The blaze was brought under control just before 10 p.m., but damage to the subbasement laboratory was extensive. No injuries were reported.

  Jake grabbed his phone and called Farooqi.

  “Hello?”

  “Haazim? It’s me. Jake. Subject One. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Other than being temporarily lab-less and having my eyebrows singed, I’m fine. I might’ve used too many extension cords in my laboratory. There was some overheating and the smell of melting rubber. Then came the spark. The spark was not a good thing in a room full of chemicals and Bunsen burners. The entire room erupted into an indoor fireworks display.”