The Smartest Kid in the Universe

by Chris Grabenstein

  Thanks, Haazim, he thought. Thanks, jelly beans!

  “We dig here!” he announced.

  “Good job, genius!” said Kojo.

  Out came the pickax and shovels again.

  Please let me be right!

  Up flew the gravel.

  Three feet down, they hit wood.

  “Yes!” shouted Kojo. “That sounds like a hatch if ever I heard one.”

  They dropped to their knees and cleared away more stones to discover four one-foot-wide rough-hewn beams clamped together with thick metal bands along the edges.

  “Looks like something the cabin boy could’ve salvaged from a shipwreck!” exclaimed Grace. “A wooden hatch from a deck. Maybe from the Stinky Dog after it sank.”

  “And,” said Jake, “it’s wide enough for the treasure chest.”

  “Grab hold of the handles, guys,” said Kojo. “Maybe we can tilt it up on its far edge.”

  They leaned down and gripped the metal handholds on the near edge.

  “On three,” said Jake. “One, two, three!”

  They heaved with all their might and, with a few more grunts, propped the ship’s hatch open.

  “Look,” said Kojo. “There’re ladder rungs down the side. It’s like a maintenance hole leading down into the sewers.”

  A gust of air rushed up from the vertical tunnel and whacked them in their noses.

  “Eww, what’s that smell?” said Grace.

  Jake sniffed the air the way a sophisticated connoisseur might.

  “If I’m not mistaken, that’s the familiar and fragrant scent of yesterday’s french fries and deep-fried chicken nuggets.”

  “The cafeteria?” said Kojo.

  Jake grinned. “Yep!”

  “Then let’s get out of here!” said Grace, scampering down the ladder first.

  “I’m right behind you, baby,” shouted Kojo. “I could really go for some french fries and chicken nuggets!”

  The escape hatch led down to a very well-constructed stone corridor, like something you’d find in a medieval castle.

  There were no electric lamps on the walls but plenty of torches for the taking. Three of them still had enough fuel to blaze through the darkness. And Kojo had remembered to pack waterproof matches. Because he was always prepared for anything.

  “Man, how long did your ancient ancestor work on this project down here?” remarked Kojo, admiring the carefully crafted corridor of stone.

  “Probably years,” said Grace, holding up her torch. “But don’t forget—they didn’t have TV or video games back then. There wasn’t much to do except build stuff.”

  “Up ahead!” said Jake. “See it? That’s a shaft of light shining down through some kind of slats!”

  Jake, Grace, and Kojo ran up the narrow cobblestone corridor to the dappled circle of light on the floor.

  Where they all slipped and landed on their butts.

  Their torches sizzled out in the pond of scum they’d just landed in because the floor beneath the overhead grate was slick with a pool of greasy water.

  “That’s the drain in the cafeteria floor!” said Grace, peering up twenty feet to a circular, slatted grate. “That’s where Mr. Schroeder pushes all the slop when he mops.”

  “Gross, disgusting, and yet wonderful!” said Jake.

  Iron climbing rungs were bolted into the stone sides of a circular silo leading up to the grate.

  “Let’s hope we can push that drain cover open,” said Jake, leading the climb up the rusty ladder.

  When he reached the top, it just took a good double-handed shove to send the grate wobbling across the cafeteria floor.

  Jake helped Grace and then Kojo climb out of the hole.

  “Now what?” said Kojo.

  “First things first,” said Grace. “We go rescue Uncle Charley.”

  “Then we come back and grab a snack!” added Kojo. “I’m still starving!”

  The trio took off running down the empty hall.

  They pushed open the vice principal’s office door and found Mr. Lyons tied up on the floor.

  Jake, who, probably thanks to one of the jelly beans, suddenly had an untapped mastery of sailing knots, quickly untied the vice principal’s hands and feet while Grace carefully peeled the duct tape off his mouth.

  “What? Where am I?” mumbled Mr. Lyons.

  “Everything’s okay, Uncle Charley,” said Grace, filled with relief. “You’re fine, we’re fine.”

  “Who was that French guy who bopped me on the head?”

  “Eriq LeVisqueux,” said Kojo. “Known jewel thief and treasure hunter. But don’t worry—the FBI and I are on his tail, sir.”

  “Did you find the treasure?”

  “Yes, Uncle Charley,” said Grace. “We did. It’s magnificent. Unfortunately, some very bad people stole it from us.”

  “But don’t worry about that, either, sir,” said Jake. “We’re going to get it back. Kojo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Call our friends at the FBI.”

  “No problem. Special Agents Tillman and Andrus are still in the city, searching for Monsieur LeVisqueux.”

  “Have them meet us at the Imperial Marquis Hotel at nine.”

  “Why? LeVisqueux’s not going to be there. He already has the treasure.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Mrs. Malvolio will be there!”

  Grace nodded. “She said so herself. She’s probably planning a big scene for when we don’t show up. She’ll say and do something dramatic in front of Superintendent Lopez and the press about how dangerous our building is, just to make sure Riverview Middle keeps its date with the bulldozers.”

  “Well, we can do something dramatic, too,” said Jake. “After you call the FBI, Kojo, make sure your phone is good and charged. Can you edit together a shorter version of the video you shot down in the cave?”

  “No problem. I’ll cut a highlights reel. Us finding the treasure. Mrs. Malvolio, Heath Huxley, and LeVisqueux admitting we found it. The bad guys waving that sword and stealing our treasure—it’ll be the best of the best. Like a trailer for a TV show!”

  “Perfect,” said Jake. “We nab Mrs. Malvolio, she’ll give up the others.”

  “She’ll fold faster than a cheap lawn chair, baby!” said Kojo.

  Everybody stared at him.

  “Sorry. That’s just something we detectives say sometimes.”

  Jake turned to Grace’s uncle. “Mr. Lyons?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you drive us to the hotel?

  “Sure. No problemo.”

  “¡Fantástico!”

  “And, Jake?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “When this is all done, you should ask Grace to help you with your accent.”

  “Will do,” Jake said. “We should probably leave here around eight-thirty. We don’t want to show up at the hotel too early…or too late. We need to call our parental units. Let them know we’re all okay—no matter what they hear from Mrs. Malvolio.”

  “Good idea,” said Grace.

  “But ask them to play along. Act surprised and shocked if Mrs. Malvolio tells them we’re missing in a dangerous cavern underneath our even more dangerous school.”

  “My mom and dad are good actors,” said Grace. “Mom fakes surprise and delight every time Dad gives her a bad Christmas present.”

  “My mom does that, too,” said Kojo. “But seriously: Who gives someone a vacuum cleaner for Christmas?”

  Jake laughed. It felt good to be with his friends. Hanging with these two? Probably the smartest thing he’d ever done.

  “Okay, you guys,” he said. “Let’s charge our phones and make the calls. I also need to ask my mom for the password for the Apple TV system in the ballroom. Because that’s where we’re go
ing to have the world premiere of Kojo’s phone-movie masterpiece!”

  Mr. Lyons drove Jake, Kojo, and Grace to the service entrance behind the downtown hotel.

  “I wish I could go sit in the audience and watch the show,” he said. “But that might give you guys away.”

  All parents had been contacted. They were relieved, on board, and ready to play their parts.

  “The FBI is standing by, too,” said Kojo. “Let me send you their number, Jake. This will put you right through to their earpieces when you need them.”

  “Perfect. Mom sent me the code for the Apple TV in the ballroom. That’s how they’re projecting the Quiz Bowl questions up to the two jumbo screens on either side of the stage. I’m sending it to you.”

  “Got it!”

  With the help of his friend Tony, who was taking another break on the loading dock, Jake led his two teammates through the hotel’s industrial-sized kitchen and into the greenroom.

  The place where the whole jelly bean thing had started.

  Jake turned up the volume for the video monitor mounted on the cinder-block wall. “We can watch everything from back here until it’s time for us to make our entrance,” he said. “There’s no telling when our first round will be.”

  “Welcome one and all to the state finals of this year’s Middle School Quiz Bowl competition,” said the emcee, Haley James, the weather reporter from the biggest TV station in the state. “Let’s get this tournament started. Each team will field ten questions. The top scoring teams in the preliminary rounds will move up to the next bracket. We’ll keep eliminating teams until the top two face off for the title of state champion!”

  The audience applauded.

  “All right, let’s welcome our first contestants: Riverview Middle School and their upstate rivals Farragut Middle School.”

  “What?” said Kojo. “We’re up first?”

  “Excuse me!” cried Mrs. Malvolio, bustling through the packed ballroom, working her way toward the stage. “Excuse me! Principal of Riverview. Coming through. I have horrible news!”

  “Let’s go, you guys,” said Jake. “We’re on.”

  He trotted out of the greenroom and weaved his way across the kitchen to the ballroom stage entrance. Kojo and Grace were trotting right behind him.

  They could hear the crowd murmuring as Mrs. Malvolio pushed her way to the podium.

  “I’m Patricia Malvolio,” she said. “As principal of Riverview Middle School, it is my sad duty to report that I have absolutely no idea where our team might be. I think the pressure was too much. They caved.”

  She giggled slightly, enjoying her own inside joke.

  The crowd moaned.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Malvolio. “I too am severely disappointed in them.”

  Jake speed-dialed the FBI agents and whispered, “Go!” just as the Riverview team stepped onstage.

  A spotlight hit the three students.

  People gasped.

  Mrs. Malvolio gasped the loudest.

  “I knew they’d never give up!” shouted Mr. Keeney, seated in the front row.

  “Way to go, team!” cheered Noah “No Neck” Nelson.

  Jake’s, Grace’s, and Kojo’s clothes were dirty and dusty—not to mention slightly torn. Their faces and hair were a mess. Their butts were soggy. They didn’t care.

  “We didn’t cave, you guys,” Jake said into the nearest microphone. “Riverview Pirates never give up. But we did spend some time in a cave last night. Can we dim the houselights, please? Hit it, Kojo.”

  Kojo tapped a button on his phone.

  The two giant video monitors on either side of the stage were instantly filled with a grainy, sixty-second movie about everything that happened in the cavern. Grace, Kojo, and Jake digging up the buried treasure. Celebrating. Tossing gold coins up into the air. (That earned a few laughs.) Mrs. Malvolio bursting into the room. LeVisqueux waving his sword, admitting what they were doing.

  “Zees is my favorite way to hunt for zee treasure,” everyone heard LeVisqueux say. “Let some other fool find eet, and zen steal eet out from under zem.”

  “Boo!” shouted Noah Nelson from the audience. “That dude’s the bad guy.”

  The next shot showed the famous real estate tycoon Heath Huxley chuckling, “Thanks for doing our digging, kids.”

  Noah threw his arms up over his head. “Another bad guy!” The whole crowd started booing.

  The screen cut to Mrs. Malvolio joking, “I’ll make sure you all get extra credit for it.”

  Now the crowd was hissing on top of the boos.

  “We found the treasure,” proclaimed Grace on the screen. “Therefore, it’s ours.”

  The crowd rose to its feet and cheered.

  The closing line went to Mr. Huxley: “Not if we steal it from you first!”

  The cheers became a horrified grumble.

  “Lights, please,” said Jake.

  Mrs. Malvolio was still onstage. She was smiling, batting her eyes, and fidgeting with her clunky necklace. But she wasn’t budging. Because she was flanked by the two FBI agents, Tillman and Andrus.

  The school superintendent, Dr. Lopez, was in the first row, steaming.

  “I know where you can find Uncle Heath!” blurted Mrs. Malvolio. “And the treasure. And Eriq LeVisqueux. I’m ready to make a deal!”

  “Let’s talk about it outside,” said Special Agent Tillman as she escorted the principal off the stage.

  “Good luck in the Quiz Bowl, kids!” Mrs. Malvolio shouted, giving Jake, Grace, and Kojo another one of her lipstick-crackling smiles. “I love children. And being a principal. I don’t know what I was doing down in that cave. It was stress. Being the principal of a middle school is a very stressful job. That’s why we had a sword. It was my emotional support sword. Superintendent Lopez? Are you here, Rosalia? I think I need a vacation.”

  Superintendent Lopez had made her way onto the stage.

  “Oh, you’re going to get one, Patricia,” said the superintendent. “A nice, long vacation. Probably five to ten years.”

  “Woo-hoo!” shouted Grace, Jake, and Kojo as the audience applauded wildly.

  “And tell your uncle,” Superintendent Lopez added, “we’re not tearing down Riverview Middle School. Not now, not ever. How could we, when it produces geniuses such as Kojo Shelton, Grace Garcia, and, of course, Jake McQuade!”

  The TV news crews followed the FBI agents and the disgraced principal out of the ballroom.

  “Maybe we should all take a short break before we begin,” said the emcee.

  The ballroom burst into another standing ovation.

  Not because of the break.

  They were cheering for Grace, Kojo, and Jake.

  Riverview Middle School went on to win the State Quiz Bowl competition.

  Grace, Kojo, and Jake took turns answering questions. They didn’t miss a single one.

  With invaluable assistance from Mrs. Malvolio, who, as Kojo predicted, sang like a bird and folded like a cheap suitcase (two more of his favorite detective clichés), the FBI quickly apprehended and arrested both Heath Huxley and Eriq LeVisqueux.

  A judge ruled that Grace Garcia, because she was related to Eduardo Leones and had led the expedition to dig up the cabin boy’s treasure, was entitled to everything buried underneath the school. After giving 10 percent to Jake and Kojo, Grace gave half of her share to her uncle (who didn’t buy an island in the Caribbean—just new basketball uniforms for his team).

  But even after she had given away 55 percent of her wealth, Grace was still the richest twelve-year-old in the world. She immediately set up a trust fund for the “perpetual betterment of Riverview Middle School and all struggling public education facilities in the city.”

  Kojo donated most of his treasure money to the same fund. But he kept en
ough to buy a complete, professional-grade forensics investigation kit.

  Jake used the bulk of his earnings to finance Haazim Farooqi’s room, board, and tuition for the biomedical engineering PhD program at New Jersey’s Rutgers University.

  “Thank you, Subject One,” Mr. Farooqi told him. “They’re giving me my own lab. Meanwhile, don’t tell them, but I’m purchasing mass quantities of research supplies: sugar, gelatin, cornstarch and…jelly bean molds!”

  Mr. Charley Lyons, the (now) extremely wealthy vice principal, was promoted to principal of Riverview. Mr. Keeney became his new second-in-command.

  Jake’s mom and little sister had never been prouder of him.

  Not because he’d won the State Quiz Bowl competition. Because he’d given away his share of the treasure.

  “With great power comes great responsibility,” he reminded them.

  They laughed. And asked him to quit saying that.

  * * *

  —

  Three weeks later, things had started to settle down.

  No one was asking for autographs anymore, and Jake was back to his regular life—only with really good grades, some amazing Spanish dinners, and time spent “sending the elevator back down”—tutoring kids (including Emma) who needed a little help with their homework.

  One day Jake was bopping down the freshly painted halls of Riverview Middle School, admiring the rows of shiny new lockers. He knocked knuckles with his pals and headed to homeroom. He had another interesting math puzzle to challenge Mr. Keeney with.

  Suddenly, Principal Lyons stepped out of his office.

  “Jake?” he said, sounding super serious.

  “Yes, sir? Is everything okay?”

  “Can you come with me? There are some folks who need to speak to you. They say it’s urgent.”

  Jake followed the principal into the office and his small conference room.

  General Joe Coleman, the one Jake had worked with at the Pentagon, was waiting with his hands clasped firmly behind his back. Two military personnel with almost as many ribbons on their chests were with him.

  In the distance, Jake could hear the familiar whump-whump-whump of a helicopter’s whirring rotors.