The Great Escape

by Kate Biberdorf

“There are numbers there,” Birdie said. “And some of them are just like the numbers in the secret message on that paper.”

  I snapped my fingers so hard I thought I could light a fire. “Birdie, that’s amazing! That could be it. Each element on the periodic table has a number. For example, oxygen or O is the eighth element. That’s why there’s a number eight over it.”

  Phoenix wiped the whiteboard clean and winced. “Okay, let’s try this out.”

  “Does your hand still hurt?” Birdie asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  I glanced up at the periodic table. “The number thirty-two is germanium. That’s Ge,” I said in a rush.

  Phoenix wrote that down.

  “And seventy-three is Ta, which stands for tantalum.”

  “Got it,” said Phoenix.

  “The fifth element is boron. B,” said Jeremy.

  “Fifty-seven is lanthanum or La,” I said. “And nineteen is potassium, K. Number three is lithium, which is Li. And finally, fifty-two is tellurium, which is Te.”

  We all stood there scanning the letters to see if we could made sense of them.

  “It’s says “GeTaBLaKLiTe,” said Birdie, shaking her head.

  “Oh, that’s so helpful.” Jeremy laughed. “Sounds like gibberish or some alien language.”

  Birdie sighed heavily. “I really thought . . .”

  “No, you thought right, Birdie,” I said. “We have to just keep on figuring it out.”

  Jeremy stepped away to start inspecting some test tubes.

  Elijah came over to look at the letters with me, Birdie, and Phoenix.

  “That says ‘Get,’” Phoenix pointed out.

  And then Elijah’s mouth dropped open. “It says ‘Get a blak lite’! We need to find a black light!”

  I could feel the smile stretching across my face. And we all jumped up and down. Now we were really fired up!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Light Will Set Us Free

  Mercury (noun). One of two elements that is a liquid at room temperature. It moves around like an alien and it’s super shiny—you could almost imagine it’s from the planet Mercury!

  “OKAY, IT’S SIMPLE NOW,” said Jeremy. “We just need to find a black light.”

  “On it,” I said, kneeling on the floor to search under the desk.

  Birdie went back to inspecting the bookshelf.

  Elijah banged open and shut every drawer, while Memito inspected behind various doors. And Jeremy checked behind some framed posters.

  My eyes scanned the tile floor for something we had missed. I picked up area carpets as Birdie slid her hands behind the old radio to check it out one more time.

  Suddenly there was shuffling outside. “Please, hurry!” said the spy formerly known as Ms. Daly. “Dr. Dragas and his gang are almost at the lab. You’re running out of time.”

  “Guys, we can do this!” said Elijah, staring at the clock.

  “Only eight more minutes,” reported Memito. His voice sounded as panicked as I felt. He plopped onto a seat. “I don’t see how we can get out in time before . . . you-know-who arrives.”

  I frantically scanned the lab. Could there be a black light clue near one of the gazillion test tubes? No, we had already checked. Or maybe in the bookshelf? No. It had been thoroughly searched as well. “The answer has to be here somewhere. I’m sure we’re missing something big.”

  “Kate’s right,” said Jeremy. And for a moment, I blinked in complete shock. Did Jeremy Rowe just agree with me for the second time today? I felt too stunned to say anything back.

  “Hey, what if it’s something right in front of our eyes,” added Jeremy. “Something so obvious it’s funny.”

  That’s when Elijah started grinning really big. He raced into the closet and pulled out a blue lab coat. He dug his hands into the left pocket of it and whipped out what looked like a thick black pen. “Look what I found!”

  “Dude, how?” asked Memito. “We already checked those coats.”

  “I know,” said Elijah. “I put on the lab coat I’m wearing now when we first got here. The one I got in Daly’s lab was too small. Ms. Daly must have planted this blacklight in my pocket.”

  Memito smacked his head. “That’s why we didn’t find it. Because you had already switched lab coats.”

  “Yup!” Elijah clicked the back of the light, and suddenly Jeremy’s white shirt was glowing super bright. “It’s you!” joked Elijah. “Jeremy is the message.”

  “You know it, bay-bee!” said Jeremy.

  Phoenix and I snickered. The light hit a bar of soap near the faucet in the WC. I raced over to pick it up to see if any message was on it. It was so bright it almost looked radioactive in the dim room.

  But nothing.

  Elijah continued to shine the black light around the room, but nothing else was glowing, except for some paper on the desk, which we had already examined.

  “It doesn’t seem to be doing anything,” I said, exasperated.

  “Seven minutes,” announced Jeremy, shining his regular flashlight on the timer.

  Meanwhile, Memito started to try to open up the drawers in a cabinet.

  “I’ve looked through those,” Jeremy huffed.

  “Well, you didn’t find this.” Memito held up a ball of black slime and threw it for Elijah to catch.

  “Gross,” said Elijah. He set it down on a nearby table.

  “Why would Dr. Franklin have slime in her lab?” asked Phoenix as she started opening drawers on the desk.

  “I’ve already done that,” said Memito.

  “Well, you didn’t open this center drawer.” Phoenix tapped the drawer right under the desktop. “Because it’s stuck.”

  Memito pulled on the knob. “Because it’s supposed to be that way. It’s one of those fake drawers.”

  Crouching down, Jeremy inspected. “Nope. They usually only do those fake drawers in bathrooms. They’re directly under the sink. An actual drawer assembly can’t fit because of all the plumbing.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know that,” admitted Elijah as Jeremy began to try to pry open the drawer.

  “My uncle is a plumber.” Jeremy shrugged. “He’s taken me to a few jobs.” He tugged on the knob. “This is a real drawer all right. I could probably do something if I could just work the blade of a putty knife right down in there.” He continued to try to pull.

  “Whoa, stop,” I said. “Remember what Ms. Daly—I mean that spy said. We shouldn’t force anything.”

  “I think the drawer might have a magnet inside,” said Jeremy.

  Memito started counting down the minutes. “Five minutes. That’s all we got.”

  “Stop,” said Birdie. “You’re making me nervous.”

  Crouching down, I shone a flashlight in the little crack in the drawer. “I don’t see a magnet,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Me either,” said Elijah.

  Then I remembered something I saw on Dr. Caroline, and suddenly, it all made sense.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Slimed!

  Adhesion (noun). This is the force that binds molecules together. And it’s the reason why iron filings don’t slip right out of magnetic slime.

  “MAGNETIC SLIME!” I scooped up the black blob on the desktop. “That stuff has iron in it, which is magnetic. I just watched Dr. Caroline make magnetic slime with iron oxide, glue, and borax last week.”

  And Ms. Daly had a bottle of iron oxide powder on her desk back in her lab!

  The blob oozed between my fingers and felt awesome and gross at the same time. I pressed it against the drawer.

  It stuck right to it. “Jeremy was right about the magnet,” I said. “But I have no clue what to do next.”

  “The plastic wrap!” screamed B
irdie. She zipped into the WC and sprinted back into the lab, removing the plastic wrap from the toilet paper as she ran. Palming the slime, she wrapped it in the plastic and tossed it to Elijah.

  “What are you doing?” asked Memito.

  “No questions,” begged Jeremy, pointing at the timer. “Two minutes.”

  My heart thudded so loudly it could probably be heard clear across the school.

  Elijah used the magnetic slime, now wrapped up in plastic, to slide the magnet in the drawer to the left.

  The drawer opened!

  Waving my flashlight, we all peered inside. But there was nothing.

  “It’s empty!” moaned Memito slapping his hands against his forehead. “We’re running out of time.”

  “This is so bad,” said Jeremy.

  “We’re not getting out,” said Birdie with a dramatic sigh.

  “We can!” I cheered, but honestly, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, I was really starting to doubt it.

  “Hey, nobody talk for a second,” said Elijah. “Let’s think.”

  “The black light!” shouted Phoenix.

  I grabbed the light off the table.

  There were only sixty seconds left.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Time Is Up

  Phosphors (noun). Substances that glow when struck by special kinds of light, such as ultraviolet light. Your teeth and fingernails have phosphors, which is why they look so awesome under a black light.

  I SHONE THE LIGHT IN THE DRAWER. Glowing letters immediately appeared.

  RIO.

  “Rio! Is that some kind of element?” asked Birdie.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “That’s where Dr. Franklin went,” guessed Phoenix. “It’s in South America, Brazil, actually.”

  “Okay, great,” said Jeremy. “Now we know where she’s hiding out. What next?”

  “That’s where the globe comes in,” said Phoenix. She spun the globe until her finger hovered right over Brazil.

  “Is there a code written on the globe?” asked Elijah hopefully.

  “Maybe so,” said Phoenix.

  I sped over to the lock. “Latitude and longitude. Read them out,” I said. “The longitude goes up and down the earth, just like how we cut an apple. And the latitude goes around the earth, like a hula hoop.”

  “Okay,” called out Phoenix. “Wait. The latitude and longitude are written in Sharpie right here. That makes it easy, which is good since we don’t have much time. The latitude is 22.91 and the longitude is 43.17.”

  “So that would be too many numbers,” I called out. “This is a four-digit combination padlock.”

  “Try twenty-three and then forty-three,” suggested Memito.

  I swirled the numbers. I tried 2343. “Nope.”

  “What if you add the latitude and longitude together?” said Elijah, who loved math. “So it would be 6608. Try that!”

  I spun the numbers into place and then tugged. The lock opened! We all burst out of the room, with four seconds to spare.

  “We did it!” I cried, jumping up and down.

  In the hallway, Blanche greeted us with a huge smile. And it grew even bigger as Elijah handed her the tube with the virus image. “For safekeeping,” he said.

  “Thank you. Dragas will never get it now,” Blanche said, tucking it into her trench coat.

  Then she took off her sunglasses and smiled with pride. “Really, congratulations, everyone. You did it! That was some wonderful teamwork!”

  We all smushed into a group hug, jumping up and down.

  “Does that mean that Dr. Dragas won’t be able to rule the world?” asked Memito.

  “That’s right,” said Ms. Daly. “You all saved the planet.”

  “And our grades,” said Phoenix.

  “I’ll say,” said Ms. Daly. “Those big fat goose egg zeroes have just been changed to hundreds. You guys used impressive teamwork in there, right down to the wire.”

  Birdie smiled at me. And I smiled back, giving her a knowing look and a wink.

  “That was so much fun.” Jeremy glanced at Phoenix, me, and Birdie. “You guys rocked.”

  Wow. Those were words I never thought I’d hear coming out of Jeremy Rowe’s mouth.

  “We all rocked,” I said. And then we all high-fived each other.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep very well tonight,” admitted Memito. “Because my heart is never going to slow down.”

  “It’s definitely a rush,” I admitted. “So much science.”

  “And just plain fun!” yelled Elijah.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Vile Pumpkins!

  Catalyst (noun). Substances that speed up a chemical reaction by providing a better pathway from the reactants to the products. Think of them sort of like wilderness guides. They know all the shortcuts!

  BACK IN THE LAB, Mom and Liam greeted me. “We’ve been anxiously waiting here hoping that you would get out on time,” said Mom. “You did it. Congrats!”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t realize you knew about the escape room the entire time.” I bit my lip. “I should have told you about it.”

  “We can talk about it later,” said Mom. “You know your father is going to want to have a long chat about this. It’s not like you to keep anything from us. We did try to give you an opportunity at dinner to tell us.”

  I hung my head. “Yeah. I remember. I’m really sorry.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “But it looks like you worked really hard to make it all right.”

  Liam hugged my waist. “You’re alive!” he shrieked. “I thought you had gotten eaten by ghosts and monsters.”

  “Well, there was one ghost,” I admitted, then explained about the steam cleaner.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t a real ghost and just a speriment,” cried Liam.

  “Experiment,” corrected Mom with a smile.

  “Yay! No ghosties!” yelled Liam.

  Ms. Daly put her fingers to her lips. “Nobody can talk about what happened in the escape room. What happened in the lab stays in the lab.”

  “We don’t want to spoil the surprise for the other kids,” explained Mom.

  Liam’s lips curled down into a pout. “Now I know. And I’m a kid. I’ll never get to go to an escape room.”

  Mom ruffled Liam’s hair. “Don’t be silly. When you’re in fifth grade, Ms. Daly will make an escape room for you. And Daddy was talking about going to an escape room as a family. Maybe over winter break when we visit Grandma Dort and Grandpa Jack in Texas.”

  “Yay!” shrieked Liam. Then he looked at me with shining eyes. “You beat the bad guys.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I wasn’t so sure it would happen.”

  “Really?” said Birdie. “You seemed so confident.”

  “Well, I was literally sweating,” I admitted.

  “Me too,” said Jeremy.

  “Me three,” said Memito.

  “Me four,” said Elijah.

  “Me five,” said Phoenix.

  “Me six,” said Birdie. “Big-time.”

  Ms. Daly announced, “I have an offer that I think you won’t refuse. If you agree to work as a team again, you can make a second pumpkin vomit during the Fall Festival on Friday. Julia, Avery, and Skyler as the winners of the Fall Science Challenge will stand in front, but all of you can be up onstage, too. The winners from the other half of the class will be showcasing a glow-in-the dark pumpkin later in the evening. And the rest of the kids will be demonstrating a drumming routine after that. So are you up for handling a Vomiting Pumpkin?”

  Everyone looked at each other. “Yes!” we all shouted.

  * * *

  On Friday afternoon the Fall Festival had kicked off in a big way. And while kids and families could enjoy all
kinds of booths, treats, and carnival games, we headed into the gym area for our show. That meant everyone from the escape room, plus Julia’s group, of course. Basically, all the kids in our Fall Science Challenge group. Julia and I were carrying the jack-o’-lanterns. And, naturally, we were all wearing our lab coats, gloves, and goggles. Last night, with some help from Dad, I had carved my group’s pumpkin with a giant mouth and big round eyes.

  It was in the gym, so families could watch while they played some of the carnival games that were actually inside. There were all kinds of wonderful things laid out on a table for the silent auction, and they were even raffling off a bicycle. Plus, there was fun stuff like face and nail painting.

  Phoenix looked a little sad when she spotted a craft table. “I want to make a bracelet for Avery,” she said, “just like this one.” She pointed to the macramé one on her wrist. She frowned. “But I can’t because of my hand.”

  “That’s okay, we’ll help you later,” said Birdie.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “You guys are the best,” she said.

  Up onstage, a group of first graders performed a falling leaves dance.

  “So cute,” gushed Birdie.

  “I know it,” said Julia. “It’s hard to believe we were ever that little.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Skyler, and we all laughed, since he’s always been the tallest boy, even in kindergarten.

  “I can’t believe Liam will be in first grade next year,” I said. Each kid was dressed in golds, oranges, and yellows. They twirled around and sang a song about fluttering, falling leaves.

  “Okay, once they’re done,” said Ms. Daly, “the fourth graders are going to sing a couple of songs out front, which gives me enough time to get all set up.”

  And before we knew it, we were walking onto the stage, ready to put on a truly disgusting show. As Ms. Daly promised, Julia’s group was right up front and we were in the back, but I didn’t mind. I was just happy to be up there doing science.

  “We’re going to be so gross,” said Birdie, who stood on my right.