The Girl Who Knew Even More

by Commander S. T. Bolivar, III

  Eliot tensed. “Actually—”

  “Never mind,” Mattie said, checking the angel’s alignment with the crystal one last time. “All we have to do is push.”

  Too bad the angel was heavier than she looked. Mattie pushed. Eliot pushed. Mattie and Eliot pushed together.

  “Nothing’s happening,” Eliot wheezed.

  “Try harder!” Mattie managed through clenched teeth. He took a few steps back and then ran forward, ramming his shoulder into the angel’s base. “Ow!”

  “What did you think would happen?” Eliot asked.

  Mattie rubbed his shoulder furiously. “Hey, Doyle? Maxwell? Could you help?”

  Doyle and Maxwell sighed, but they did indeed help. The clones, Eliot, and Mattie backed up several strides and then ran forward with everything they had. They hit the stone base with all their weight and—

  Crack! The angel wobbled. The angel tilted.

  Whump! The angel went face-first into the grass. Bits of dirt and statue flew up, showering them like confetti.

  Mattie grinned as they ran around to pull the broken bits of stone away. The force of the statue’s fall had driven the crystal and the angel’s face into the ground. Mattie dug around with his fingers.

  This is totally going to work, he thought, prying back mud and grass roots. The crystal will be smashed to bits. It’ll be…

  In perfect condition. Mattie stared down at the crystal. Even though it was lying in an angel face–shaped hole, it was still shiny and still smooth. It glimmered at him.

  “Huh,” Mattie said.

  “Yeah,” Eliot added, giving the statue a kick. The statue didn’t move.

  “Mattie?” Doyle asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you have a problem.”

  Mattie sat back on his heels, and nodded. He thought so too.

  “So, uh, what do we do?” Eliot asked.

  Mattie considered the crystal for a long moment. It practically twinkled in his palm, mocking him. How could something so pretty be so deadly? “I don’t know,” Mattie said at last.

  “Well, you better come up with something.” Eliot looked at Munchem. The fire trucks’ lights backlit the school’s three and a half towers in red and white. “We can’t hold on to it.”

  “I could hold on to it,” Doyle said.

  Mattie shook his head. “No way. I’m not putting you in danger too. Hoo isn’t going to stop searching for it. He wants the crystal and the clone minions. If he found both of you together, it would be, like, a mad scientist win-win.”

  “What are minions?” Maxwell asked.

  “Nothing,” Mattie said quickly. He pocketed the crystal. “There has to be another way.”

  But even as Mattie said it, he couldn’t think of a single one.

  IT’S AMAZING HOW MATTIE’S LIFE just kept getting More complicated. Amazing or depressing. Or maybe it’s just baffling. How was it possible for so many things to go wrong?

  I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s due to gravity, and I’m even more sure it’s due to incompetent writers. They ruin everything. Ask me how I know.

  In the meantime, however, Mattie and the Spencers needed another plan or maybe a miracle. Probably a miracle. Things were bad.

  Mattie rolled the crystal from hand to hand. “How do you think Hoo made this thing? How did he make it work for the Weather-matic? How did he know it would work for the Weather-matic? I have questions. Loads.”

  Eliot frowned. “Yeah, that’s usually your problem.”

  “That and you can’t let things go,” Caroline added.

  “I’m not the only one.” Mattie held up the crystal. Roughly the size and shape of a plum, it swallowed all the colors around it, lighting up Mattie’s hand with rainbows. “Everyone wants this thing. They’re not going to stop.”

  “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

  “I’m thinking out loud.”

  “If we can’t destroy it, we have to hide it, but where? They’re searching the whole school.”

  Caroline petted Beezus. “What about somewhere in the basement?”

  “Or the cemetery?” Eliot suggested.

  Mattie frowned. “But we’ve been all over those places. What’s to say someone else won’t do the same thing? It has to be somewhere no one will find it.”

  Eliot scratched his neck. “Maybe one of the clones could swallow it.”

  Caroline gasped. “Eliot, you can’t ask them to swallow the crystal!”

  “Oh, whatever.” Eliot waved his hand at his sister. “You make everything sound horrible when you use that tone of voice.” He faced Mattie, and with every word his blue eyes got bigger and rounder. “You should think about it. We don’t know how their digestive systems work. This could be a great opportunity to find out—and solve your problem.”

  “If I wouldn’t let them hold on to it, why would I let them swallow it?”

  “Then come up with something better.”

  Mattie wasn’t sure he could.

  “Face it, Mattie,” Caroline said quietly. “There’s no good place to hide it. It’s Munchem. There are too many people. Someone will find it.”

  “It can’t be destroyed and it can’t be found,” Mattie said slowly. “So that means we need to put it somewhere.”

  It wasn’t the smartest thing Mattie had ever said. He kicked at the ants trying to climb into his sneakers. I need to hide the crystal where it will never be found, but everyone’s looking for it and they won’t stop until they find it. Mattie sat a little straighter. It was that little voice again. The one that had good ideas—and occasionally spectacularly bad ones.

  “Guys?” Mattie said.

  The Spencers looked at him.

  “I’m not going to hide it.” Mattie grinned. “I’m going to give it back.”

  Caroline massaged her forehead. “Not this again!”

  “You’re going to give it back?” Eliot asked slowly. “I can think of about eleventy billion reasons why that’s not a good idea.”

  Mattie grinned even wider. “It is if they don’t have the real crystal.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m going to clone it.”

  “THINK ABOUT IT,” MATTIE CONTINUED. He leaned close to the Spencers. Some of this was due to the fact that he didn’t want to be heard, but the rest of it was due to the fact that Lem was snoring through study hall and the snores were surprisingly deafening considering Lem was such a slight man. “Let’s be totally honest with ourselves,” Mattie whispered. “What are Dr. Hoo and General Mills and Miss Maple and Delia going to do? Give up looking for the crystal? Of course not. So we give it back to them—only it won’t be the real crystal. It’ll be a clone, and when it doesn’t work, they’ll think the crystal’s broken.”

  Caroline sat up fast enough to startle Beezus. “And they won’t look for the real crystal because they’ll think they already have it! That’s awesome, Mattie!”

  “Or terrible.” Eliot frowned and picked at his T-shirt’s hem. “How do you know that would even work?”

  “I don’t,” Mattie said. “But the cloning machine creates good kids to replace bad kids, right?”

  Eliot shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Well, what if it could create a good crystal to replace a bad crystal?”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  “Is it?” Mattie asked. “I mean people are made out of carbon and this is made out of carbon. Okay, it’s a stretch—but if it works, it’ll be brilliant!”

  “I think we should try.” Caroline tugged Beezus out from under her shirt and scratched his scabby head. Bits of fur drifted through a bright sunbeam and landed on the shiny floor. “It’s not like you have any other ideas, Eliot.”

  Eliot scowled. “Do I get to program the machine?” he asked at last.

  “I wouldn’t let anyone else,” Mattie told him. Although this was mostly because no one else would be able to figure it out.

  Eliot’s face lit up.

  “You’ll
still need to do something with the original,” Caroline reminded Mattie. “If you’re not careful, you’ll get caught with both crystals.”

  Mattie nodded. “I know.”

  “And that would mean twice the trouble.”

  “I know.”

  “Like, I don’t even know what kind of punishments they’d give you for that, but—”

  “Caroline?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know!”

  Caroline huffed and spun around in her seat, just in time to see Delia walk into study hall, bringing the stench of sweat and powdered milk with her.

  “At least one thing went right,” Mattie whispered.

  “A little too well,” Caroline added. “Sour doesn’t even begin to describe how disgusting she smells.”

  The three friends watched as Delia took a seat at one of the nearby tables. Everyone who was sitting there paused, sniffed, and then scattered. Delia glared at the deserters; then she glared at Mattie and Caroline and Eliot.

  Mattie and the Spencers suddenly became very interested in their homework.

  Mattie tried to breathe through his mouth, but he could taste Delia’s stench too. He tried to breathe through his shirt, but then he smelled wool and Delia’s stench. His eyes began to water.

  “Um…” Mattie shoved to his feet. “I forgot something in my dorm.”

  Eliot also shot up. “Me too. I forgot something too.”

  “Cowards,” Caroline muttered, but the boys were already too far away to hear. They hustled into the hallway, and as Mattie passed a window, a dirt mover started up. The engine rumbled to life and Munchem’s walls shook as if the school were giggling. Mattie watched one Larimore Corporation employee point at a big dirt pile while two other Larimore Corporation employees nodded in agreement.

  “I wonder how long the new parking lot is going to take, because it seems like all they do is move dirt around and—” Mattie stopped. He stared out the window, thinking hard.

  For Mattie, sometimes ideas were like sculpting. He had to work and work at a solution until it finally emerged. But other times, ideas felt like they’d been dropped out of the sky, and as Mattie stared at the bulldozers, an idea dropped into his brain. It was completely formed, like it had just been waiting for him to need it.

  “Maybe we don’t have to destroy the real crystal,” Mattie said. “What if we just buried it?”

  Eliot followed his friend’s gaze, and when he spotted the giant bulldozer, he wilted a little. “No one would look under the parking lot.”

  This was a good thing, but Eliot’s tone verged ever so slightly on tears. Mattie patted his shoulder as he continued to turn the idea over and over. Below them, the bulldozer ground forward and the other two Larimore Corporation employees started shouting at each other. “Aren’t they supposed to start paving tomorrow?”

  Eliot’s lower lip wobbled. “Yeah.”

  Mattie grinned. “It’s perfect. We just have to get close enough to toss it in.”

  “You said almost the same thing about blowing up the gym.”

  “Blowing up the gym wasn’t the plan; it was just an unfortunate side effect.”

  “And also awesome.”

  Mattie frowned. “We can give the cloned crystal back and the construction crew can pave over the real crystal. It’ll be done.”

  “It’ll be gone forever,” Eliot said, sounding forlorn.

  “Safe,” Mattie added. He looked at Eliot. “Tonight?”

  Eliot nodded. “Tonight.”

  For the first time since they had stolen the crystal, Mattie felt his chest loosen. “This is going to be great,” he said. “We won’t have anything left to worry about.”

  “WE WON’T HAVE ANYTHING LEFT to worry about.” This is an example of what people call Famous Last Words. Sometimes, words are Famous Last Words because they really were the last words someone said, and those words became famous because they were especially true or especially funny or because that chocolate chip cookie recipe is just too good to take to the grave.

  But sometimes, Famous Last Words are called Famous Last Words because they’re ironic and the speaker has no idea what he or she just said is spectacularly wrong or delusional or inappropriate or all of the above.

  Which is exactly the case here. Mattie figured if he buried the crystal, he’d have nothing left to worry about, and the Spencers agreed because, really, what could go wrong?

  Well, a lot apparently. But we will have to pay extra-special attention, because Mattie and the Spencers didn’t realize what had gone wrong until it was far too late.

  Confused? So were the friends at first. The plan began like so many of Mattie’s good ideas: he returned to the basement, which was still dirty, still shadowy, and still a secret. From everyone except us, of course.

  Mattie edged the door at the bottom of the stairs open and peered inside. Somewhere, something was dripping, but no one was in sight and the machine was quiet. Mattie waved for the Spencers to follow him and they hurried toward the computer station. Eliot sat down at the spinny chair, hands hovering above the keyboard. For a moment, no one said anything and no one moved.

  Eliot should really be moving, Mattie thought. “Um, Eliot? Are you okay?”

  “Just give me a minute.” Eliot wiped his eyes and sniffled.

  Is he crying? Caroline mouthed at Mattie. Mattie nodded. Eliot was indeed crying and Mattie had no idea what to do about that.

  “Uh, yeah,” Mattie said, trying to sound patient, but unable to keep the squeak from his voice. “We really don’t have a minute.”

  Eliot didn’t look at them. “You can’t rush me. I’ve waited my whole life to use this thing.”

  “Oh, please.” Caroline took a step forward, looking like she was going to give her brother a thump. “You’ve only known about it since last term. C’mon, Eliot. Quit with the dramatics.”

  “Fine, I need a minute to figure out how to turn it on again!”

  “Oh. Okay, then.”

  Mattie and Caroline stayed quiet while Eliot tinkered with the computer system. His fingers flew across the key-board and the computer screen flashed bright blue as it powered up.

  Behind them, the smokestacks snorted, the conveyor belt groaned, and…

  Whoosh!

  “Did someone just flush a toilet?” Caroline asked, looking worriedly toward the shadowy ceiling. “I just heard water.”

  “It’s coming through the pipes.” Mattie pointed to a stop-sign red tube to their right. It jerked twice as the smokestacks began to pump. “Look!”

  Like Caroline could look away—like anyone who might have been standing there could’ve looked away. There was something about the machine lumbering back to life that was terrifying and exciting…and terrifying.

  Maaaaah! Maaaaah! The computer powered up. Eliot banged away on the keyboard as long lines of text scrolled across the screen.

  “Okay! I think I’ve got it!” Eliot jumped up from his chair. “If I remember right, the Rooster pulled this thing and then—”

  Eliot tugged on an enormous switch attached to the machine’s side. It didn’t budge. He tugged again. Still nothing. Mattie and Caroline rushed to help. They pulled. They yanked.

  Nothing happened.

  “Hey!” Mattie stood back. “All at once, okay?”

  They nodded.

  “On three,” Mattie told them.

  They nodded again, and everyone grabbed on. The handle was icy in Mattie’s grip. He tightened his fingers. “One-two-three!”

  All three of them hauled at the handle. Pop! It cranked downward. Everyone landed on their butts as smoke blasted through the stacks and the conveyor belt began to move.

  “You ready?” Caroline asked.

  Mattie nodded. He shoved to his feet and fumbled for the crystal. His hands were shaky. Now was the moment of truth, the moment they would know if the plan would work.

  Mattie placed the crystal on the conveyor belt the same way he’d watched the teachers place Maxwell
. Well, not exactly the same way the teachers had placed Maxwell. The crystal wasn’t tied up and it wasn’t whimpering and it definitely didn’t take three grown-ups to get it on the conveyor belt, but the sentiment was the same. Mostly the same. Whatever, you get the point.

  The conveyor belt chugged forward, hauling the crystal into the cloning machine’s wide mouth. Mattie and the Spencers craned their heads, but they lost sight of it after only a moment.

  “Is it working?” Caroline asked.

  “No idea,” Mattie said, sniffing the air. “But I smell burned hair, so that means we just need it to—”

  Yowl! The machine screeched and Mattie covered his ears. “That,” he yelled. “We needed it to do that!”

  Yes indeed, it looked and sounded like everything was working precisely as it should. The smokestacks puffed harder. The computer lights went orange. But when Mattie ran to the other end of the conveyor belt, he couldn’t see anything coming toward him. The belt churned and churned and Mattie looked and looked.

  “There it is!” Mattie cried. The crystal slowly emerged from the cloning machine. It trundled forward, winking and sparkling like it always did. Just like the original does, Mattie thought, all the breath squeezing right out of him.

  If the machine worked the same way it did with students, the clone always came first and the original would come second.

  Please let this work, Mattie prayed. Please let this work. The conveyor belt kept trundling, and a heartbeat later, the original crystal appeared. Mattie grabbed it. The edges were still warm. He held both crystals up, studying them closely.

  “So the original crystal is in your left hand?” Caroline guessed.

  “No,” Eliot said. “It’s in his right.”

  “No, it’s not.” Caroline squinted at them and Mattie held his breath. “You know what? I can’t tell.” She blinked. “I can’t tell! I can’t tell, Mattie! It worked!”

  The Spencers jumped up and down and Mattie joined them. “We did it! It worked!”

  “Good job,” Eliot said, and his smile looked especially shiny under the overhead lights. “This is the easiest thing we’ve done yet.”

  Mattie nodded. “Exactly. Like I said, nothing to worry about.”