by Dan Gutman
“I can’t believe they have a museum devoted to a rock,” Pep told her brother as she yanked open the heavy front door.
“Why not?” Coke replied. “We’ve already been to museums devoted to Spam, mustard, yo-yos, Pez dispensers, vacuum cleaners, hot dog buns—”
Coke could have listed every oddball museum they had visited on the trip, but the words stuck in his throat as he gasped at the sight of someone he had hoped he would never see again.
Mrs. Higgins.
“Well, if it isn’t the McDonald twins!” she said cheerfully. “Welcome to The Bauxite Museum! Fancy meeting you two here! I’ll be your tour guide today.”
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Pep nearly fainted, but her brother grabbed her before she could hit the ground.
If you’ve been following The Genius Files series, you’re well aware that Mrs. Higgins is the germaphobic and psychotic health teacher who set the twins’ school on fire while they were locked in the detention room. She also chased them through The House on the Rock in Wisconsin, forced them to cause a riot at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and tried to blow their eardrums out with heavy metal music at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
In all fairness, Coke and Pep had not exactly reciprocated with kindness toward Mrs. Higgins. In fact, back in Kansas they had emptied the RV’s toilet on her head as she sat in a convertible. And Mrs. Higgins still had a scar across her neck from the time they clothes-lined her with a ball of twine.
The twins took a terrified step backward, but the door to the museum had already closed behind them.
“Don’t you dare touch us!” Coke shouted, pointing his finger at Mrs. Higgins as he leaped into one of his karate poses.
“I have no intention of touching you,” she replied, still smiling cheerfully. “I’m just happy to see you again.”
“Our parents will be here any second!” yelled Pep, trying to appear threatening.
“Great!” said Mrs. Higgins. “I was so disappointed that I didn’t get the chance to meet them on Back-to-School Night.”
“You’re crazy!” Coke declared, looking around desperately for help, or at least an EXIT sign. “And you’re stalking us!”
“Who, me?” asked Mrs. Higgins innocently. “Oh dear no.”
“If you’re not stalking us, how come you always manage to get a job wherever we happen to be?” asked Pep.
“It’s just an amazing coincidence, I suppose,” she replied, with a smile. “Teachers don’t get paid much. I needed to earn some money over summer vacation, and here I am.”
The door opened once again, and Dr. and Mrs. McDonald entered the Bauxite Museum. Coke and Pep let out a sigh of relief. That lunatic Mrs. Higgins wouldn’t dare try anything with their parents standing right there.
It should be noted that the logical thing for the twins to do at this point would be to tell their parents all the horrible things Mrs. Higgins had done to them. By all rights, the police should be called. Mrs. Higgins should be arrested and locked up in a place where she would be in no position to harm innocent children.
But Coke and Pep didn’t say a word. Their parents had never believed them before, and there was no reason to think the situation would be any different this time. The kindly looking, smiling woman in front of them seemed incapable of hurting a fly.
“Welcome to the Bauxite Museum!” said Mrs. Higgins, reaching out to shake hands with the parents. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Audrey Higgins. I had the pleasure of teaching health to your lovely children this past year. It is so nice to meet you in person.”
The McDonalds made the usual adult pleasantries, mainly focusing on the difference in weather between California and Arkansas.
“Wasn’t it horrible, what happened to the school?” Mrs. McDonald asked.
“Oh yes, what a tragedy,” replied Mrs. Higgins.
“Did they ever find out what caused the fire?” asked Dr. McDonald.
“It’s a mystery,” said Mrs. Higgins, sincerity oozing from her voice.
Coke and Pep stood there, open-mouthed. Mrs. Higgins was the one who burned the school down! That was after she had locked them in the detention room! It was all her doing! She was either a fantastic liar or, more likely, insane.
“Well, thank goodness they’re rebuilding the school,” Mrs. McDonald said. “I received an email from a friend of mine who said it should be finished by the time the kids go back to school in September.”
“That’s wonderful news!” Mrs. Higgins replied.
After a few more minutes of chitchat, Mrs. Higgins led the family into the museum, taking Coke and Pep by the hand. The kids tried to pull away, but she had an iron grip.
“Let me show you around,” she said. “Did you know that bauxite is the most abundant metal element in the earth’s crust?”
“I did know that, actually,” Coke replied. “It’s also the state rock of Arkansas.”
Mrs. Higgins spent several minutes telling the family the history of bauxite, which wasn’t nearly as boring as one might expect.
“Aluminum is very light, strong, and resistant to corrosion,” said Mrs. Higgins as she led them through a room filled with dusty display cases, photos, and primitive mining equipment from a century ago. “It was used to make thousands of American bombers and fighter planes during World War Two.”
“Think of it,” Mrs. McDonald said. “If not for bauxite, Hitler might have won the war.”
“Yeah,” agreed Dr. McDonald, “if not for bauxite, we’d probably be speaking German right now.”
“Ich spreche Deutsch jetzt,” said Coke.
“Since when do you speak German?” asked Pep.
“Since Tuesday.”
“You sure know a lot about aluminum, Mrs. Higgins,” said Mrs. McDonald as she snapped photos for Amazing but True.
“Well, that’s my job,” Mrs. Higgins replied. “Come, let me show you our most popular exhibit.”
She led the family to a display case labeled BAUXITE TEETH. Behind the glass were a bunch of teeth that were discolored and streaked with brown.
“The bauxite in the local water supply caused this,” she explained. “But the funny thing is, they brought in some dentists to investigate, and they found that people with bauxite teeth had harder enamel than average, and they had less tooth decay. That’s one of the reasons they started putting fluoride into toothpaste and water.”
“Hmm,” said Dr. McDonald. Having spent five years working on his scholarly book The Impact of Coal on the Industrial Revolution, he was intensely interested in minerals.
It didn’t take long to see everything in the little museum. When the tour was finished, Mrs. Higgins led the family back to the front door.
“This was fascinating,” said Mrs. McDonald. “Thank you so much for the tour. My children certainly are lucky to have such a wonderful teacher.”
“Yeah,” Pep said. “Really lucky.”
“We’ll go get the car,” said Dr. McDonald. “You kids can look in the gift shop.”
“No!” Coke shouted. “We don’t want to look in the gift shop!”
“We’re coming with you!” shouted Pep, clinging to her mother like a three-year-old.
The last thing the twins wanted was to be left alone for one more minute with a psychotic killer.
“Don’t be silly,” their father told them. “You kids talk with Mrs. Higgins. “I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.”
The door slammed shut as the parents left. The twins turned around, fearing the worst. Mrs. Higgins still had a sickly sweet smile on her face. She also had her hands behind her back.
“She’s got a gun!” Pep yelled as she dove out of the way. “Duck!”
“No, it’s a knife!” Coke shouted, covering his face with his hands.
Mrs. Higgins laughed.
“It’s nothing of the sort,” she assured the twins. “I wanted to give you a little present.”
“Whatever it is, we don’t want it,” Coke told her.
“Yeah, after everything you’ve done to us, we don’t trust you for a second,” said Pep.
“Look, I want to be honest,” Mrs. Higgins said. “There’s a reason I’m being so nice to you.”
“What is it?” asked Pep.
“I know what you did to your aunt Judy,” Mrs. Higgins replied.
“We didn’t do anything to her,” Pep insisted. The thought of what happened to Aunt Judy almost brought tears to her eyes.
“Oh please,” Mrs. Higgins said. “People don’t just vanish into thin air. I’m guessing that she was in your RV when it exploded. Am I right? I just wanted to thank you for getting rid of her.”
“Why?” asked Pep.
Tears welled up in Mrs. Higgins’s eyes.
“You cleared the way for me,” she said. “Now that Dr. Warsaw is single again, he can marry me. Thank you for killing her.”
“We didn’t kill her!” Coke said, raising his voice.
“He’s the only man I’ve ever loved,” Mrs. Higgins said softly, “and now he will be all mine. But Herman is very fragile, both physically and psychologically. He just lost his wife. He needs me to make him well again. I owe it all to you kids. Please trust me. Here’s a little something to show my appreciation.”
She opened her hands to reveal two chunks of bauxite, each about the size of a golf ball.
“It’s a trap!” Coke warned. “Don’t take it, Pep!”
“It’s just a little souvenir to help you remember your visit to our museum,” Mrs. Higgins said.
“They’re bombs!” Coke shouted, slapping the rocks out of Mrs. Higgins’s hands. “Run for it!”
He grabbed Pep’s hand and together they ran out of there as fast as their feet could carry them.
Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).
Click Get Directions.
In the A box, type Bauxite AR.
In the B box, type Hot Springs AR.
Click Get Directions.
Chapter 8
HEAVEN IN HOT SPRINGS
Heading west out of Bauxite, Dr. McDonald eased the Ferrari onto Route 70. It’s a quiet rural road, and the scenery didn’t capture the kids’ interest. Coke pulled out a copy of The New England Journal of Medicine he had found in the lobby of the Heartbreak Hotel. He started going through it like a scanner goes through pages of documents.
There wasn’t a whole lot of time to pass. Forty minutes from Bauxite, signs of civilization started to appear at the side of the road. Billboards, buildings, businesses. Soon they had reached the town limits of Hot Springs, Arkansas, nestled within the low-lying Ouachita Mountains.
It was getting late, and Dr. McDonald had driven almost two hundred miles since leaving Memphis that morning. He pulled into the first name-brand hotel he saw—a Best Western—and the family had a relaxing dinner at Outback Steakhouse.
There was a rack of travel brochures near the cash register, and the twins grabbed some of them to look through while they waited for their food. Hot Springs, they were surprised to discover, had a wax museum, a go-kart track, mini golf, a water park, an alligator farm, and the world’s only diamond-producing mine that is open to the public.
“Hey, this place looks cool,” Coke told the group.
“Check it out, Mom,” Pep said. “The Gangster Museum of America is right here. It’s a museum all about mobsters and criminals. That would be great for Amazing but True.”
And it would be. But the McDonalds, for a change, hadn’t come to Hot Springs to visit the usual tacky roadside attractions. They’d come for the water. First thing in the morning, the family piled into the Ferrari and found their way to a small section of town called Bathhouse Row.
“Do you kids know why this town is called Hot Springs?” Mrs. McDonald asked the kids.
“Because spring is really hot here?” Pep quickly guessed, trying to beat her brother to the punch.
“What a dope!” Coke said, shaking his head in amazement.
“Don’t call your sister a dope,” scolded Dr. McDonald.
“A million gallons of natural mineral water a day flows from forty-seven springs nearby,” Coke said, recalling a library book he’d once glanced at in second grade. “The water bubbles down beneath the earth to superheated areas deep in the crust, and when it gets to the surface, it’s 147 degrees Fahrenheit.”
“That’s right!” Mrs. McDonald said.
“In fact,” Coke continued, “according to scientists, the water that reaches the surface in Hot Springs today fell as rainfall four thousand years ago.”
“Just shut up already, okay?”
“Don’t tell your brother to shut up,” warned Dr. McDonald.
“Yeah,” Coke said. “Don’t tell me to shut up. It’s not my fault that you don’t know anything.”
“Shut up!”
Dr. McDonald parked the car outside a Spanish Colonial Revival building with a large dome covered by tiles.
“We’re going to take a bath?” Pep asked warily.
In fact, taking a bath was exactly what they were going to do. Before they got out of the car, Mrs. McDonald read a section from her Arkansas guidebook:
“Hot Springs is sometimes known as Spa City. According to legend, back in the 18th century the Quapaw Indians discovered the magical healing powers of the springs. Today, millions of people pay good money to sit naked—”
“I’m not getting naked in front of a million strangers!” Pep yelled.
“You don’t have to get naked,” assured her mother. “I brought our bathing suits.”
The guidebook went on to explain that, over the years, presidents, outlaws, movie stars, and athletes had flocked to Hot Springs to soak in the natural mineral pools. The Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, and Boston Red Sox used to hold their spring training camps there. Visitors would spot Babe Ruth walking down the street, sitting next to them in a tub, or gambling at the racetrack nearby. Nowadays, regular people come from all over the world to relax in the waters and ease the pain of arthritis, bursitis, rheumatic fever, and other ailments.
“I don’t have any of those diseases,” Pep said. “Can I wait in the car?”
“Don’t be silly,” Dr. McDonald said. “This is a family vacation. We’re doing this as a family. You’re going to love it.”
Bathhouse Row consists of eight historic buildings and is part of Hot Springs National Park. The McDonalds climbed the steps of the Quapaw, which was built in 1922. The twins examined the Native American artwork and artifacts that decorated the lobby.
“Welcome to the Quapaw!” said the smiling lady behind the counter.
Dr. and Mrs. McDonald looked over the menu of services, which included everything from whirlpools and sitz baths to facials, foot scrubs, needle showers, aromatherapy, and hot towel wraps.
“Ooh, look, Bridge,” Dr. McDonald said excitedly, “they have Swedish massage. Your birthday is the day after tomorrow. How about a massage for a present?”
“I think I’m going to get the Invigorating Body Polish and a Moisturizing Hand Paraffin Wax Dip instead,” Mrs. McDonald replied.
Quapaw Baths & Spa is sort of like an amusement park for middle-aged parents.
“Hey, how about we get a couples massage?” suggested Dr. McDonald, pulling out his credit card.
“Ewww, gross,” the twins said simultaneously.
The whole idea of sitting in mineral water gave Coke and Pep the creeps, and they made no effort to pretend otherwise.
“I wish you kids would get into the spirit,” their mother told them. “This is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
“Let’s hope so,” Coke muttered.
“That aluminum museum was a once-in-a-lifetime experience too,” said Pep. “I never want to go back there again.”
“Just so you know,” said the lady behind the desk, “children under the age of fourteen are not allowed in the vapor cabinets.”
“Vapor cabinets?” Pep said, wrinkling up her nose. She didn’t want to k
now what a vapor cabinet was. It sounded gross.
The lady gave out robes, slippers, and locker keys, and the McDonalds went to change into their bathing suits.
Four large European-style soaking pools, each of them a different temperature, were located on the first floor. Dr. McDonald picked the hottest one and the rest of the family followed him to the edge of the pool.
“Ahhhhhh,” he said as he eased himself into the water. “Oh yeah . . .”
Mrs. McDonald was the next one in. Once submerged, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“Oooh, I feel my stress just melting away,” she said.
Coke and Pep looked at each other. Stress? What stress did their mother have to deal with? She didn’t have to jump off a cliff wearing a wingsuit. She wasn’t thrown into a vat of Spam. She wasn’t attacked by a remote-controlled car. She wasn’t tied to a chair and left to die in a Mister Softee truck. She didn’t have a band of lunatics chasing her across the country. If anybody needed to have their stress melt away, it was Coke and Pep.
And they did. As soon as they lowered themselves into the hot mineral water, they felt like they had stepped into a calmer, more peaceful world.
“Ooooooh!”
“Ahhhhhh!”
A gentle waterfall flowed on one side of the pool, and after a good long soak, Coke went over to stand under it and let the spray tumble all over his head and shoulders.
For the others, the soothing sound of the waterfall combined with the quiet music and the outdoorsy smell of the tropical plants scattered around was enough. For a few minutes, nobody wanted to speak and risk spoiling the mood.
Pep felt her anxiety slipping away. Temporarily, she was able to forget all the bad things that had happened to her since the start of summer vacation.
“This is so relaxing,” Dr. McDonald finally said, breaking the silence. “I don’t even remember what day of the week it is.”
“I don’t even remember what month it is,” said Pep.
“Who even cares what year it is?” Coke said. “Just lie back and enjoy it.”
After about ten minutes of this euphoria, a heavyset woman came over to the pool with towels and ice water.
