Never Say Genius (10 page)

A
s it turned out, Pep didn’t have to work on the cipher the next day after all. While she was sleeping, her unconscious mind was working feverishly on the problem. The brain has a funny way of doing that. It
never
sleeps. And when Pep woke up in the morning, the solution was waiting for her.

“It’s in Pigpen!” she whispered to her brother, who was still sleeping peacefully.

“Huh?” he muttered. “What?”

“That cipher we saw on the video screen at Wrigley Field yesterday,” she whispered. “It’s written in a code called Pigpen. I learned about it in Girl Scouts when I was little. They used it back in the eighteenth century to keep messages private.”

“Whatever you say,” Coke said, wiping his eyes.

Their parents were still asleep. Pep got out her notebook and explained to Coke how the code worked.

“Each of those symbols represents one letter, but we have to make a Pigpen grid to find out what the letters are. Let me see if I still remember how to make the grid.”

She turned to the page with the cipher.

Then, directly below it, she wrote out a Pigpen grid as she remembered it.

“Look, the first symbol represents the letter
T
,” Pep whispered. “See?”

Coke scanned the grid and saw that the little box with the
T
inside it matched the first symbol of the cipher.

“So that would mean that the second letter has to be…
W
,” he whispered.

“Right,” replied Pep. “And the third letter is
O
. So that’s probably the first word of the message—TWO.”

After that, they were easily able to figure out the rest of the letters one by one—PMJULYTHIRD.

“Two o’clock in the afternoon on July third!” Pep whispered excitedly. “That’s the message!”

Coke looked at his cell phone to check the date—June 27.

“July third is … six days from now,” he said, counting them off.

“Something is going to happen at two o’clock on July third,” said Pep.

“But that just tells us
when
,” Coke whispered, “it doesn’t tell us what’s going to happen, or where.”

“Aunt Judy’s wedding will be the next day, on July Fourth,” Pep said. “We’ll have to be in Washington by then, and Dad said he wants to get there early. So we’re sure to be in Washington on July third.”

“That doesn’t help us much,” said Coke. “Washington is a big city.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Dr. McDonald suddenly called out.

“Nothing, Dad!” Coke said. “Go back to sleep.”

After everyone was awake, bathed, and breakfasted, the grown-ups huddled at the picnic table, poring over the laptop screen and road atlas.

“Family meeting!” Dr. McDonald announced, gathering everyone around him. “We have a big day ahead of us. My goal is to get across the great state of Indiana.”

Dr. Ben McDonald was the kind of person who liked to set goals and achieve them. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction to cross things off his to-do list, and he tried to communicate the importance of setting goals to his children.

The plan for the day was to drive about a hundred fifty miles across northern Indiana, hitting five or six sites along the way that Mrs. McDonald could use in
Amazing but True
. They would start out on Route 80, which almost touches the Michigan border. At a certain point, they would veer off to visit some of the interesting sites south of the highway. He and Mrs. McDonald had mapped out the route carefully so they would stop at some historical sites for him, some offbeat sites for her, and also some sites that would keep the kids interested.

“Okay,” Mrs. McDonald said, “first, let’s go over the places we are
not
going to visit today. We are not going to see the world’s largest toilet bowl in Columbus, Indiana.”

“Oh, man!” Coke complained. “I really wanted to go there. In more ways than one.”

“Very funny,” Pep said.

“It’s two hundred miles south of here, and we’re heading east,” Dr. McDonald explained.

“There’s a twenty-foot statue of a woman made out of hubcaps in Jeffersonville,” Mrs. McDonald continued, “but that’s even farther south. And as much as I would love to see the world’s largest ball of paint, it would be a three-hour drive to Alexandria.”

“How big is the ball of paint?” Pep asked.

“It’s over three thousand pounds,” Mrs. McDonald said, consulting her guidebook. “Oh, and the world’s largest hairball is not far from here. It’s bigger than a basketball.”

“Let’s go!” Coke shouted.

“It’s not on display anymore,” Mrs. McDonald said.

“Bummer!”

“How was it possible for a cat to cough up a hairball bigger than a basketball, Mom?” Pep asked.

“It must have been a
very
large cat,” Coke guessed.

“It was a cow,” Mrs. McDonald said.

“Oh.”

“The Santa Claus Museum in Santa Claus, Indiana, would be a five-hour drive,” Dr. McDonald informed everyone, “and I refuse to go to Jones, Michigan, where your mother tells me there is a fake ghost town created by the guy who invented Kitty Litter. You’ll just have to come back on another trip to see those places—preferably after I’m dead.”

“So where are we going today?” asked Pep.

“Our first stop is the Lunkquarium,” Mrs. McDonald replied.

“The
what
?!”

They checked out of the campground and headed east for about an hour on Route 80. Then Dr. McDonald pulled off exit 83, and a mile or so down the road a sign came into view:

“Michigan?” Pep asked. “What are we doing here, Dad? I thought you said we were going to cross Indiana today.”

“We are,” Dr. McDonald replied. “This is just a quick side trip.”

“Woooooo-hoooooooo!” Coke hollered. “Did you know that Michigan is sometimes called the Wolverine State, even though there are no wolverines in Michigan anymore?”

“Get a life, brainiac,” Pep told her brother.

Soon they arrived in Edwardsburg, which bills itself as the “Live Bait Capital of the World.” Dr. McDonald pulled the RV into the big parking lot of a store called Lunker’s. There was a giant rotating fish on the roof.

“I don’t get it,” Coke said as they walked through the front door. “It’s a big fishing store.”

But actually, it was much more. The ceiling of the store was painted blue with white clouds, to make it seem like you were in the great outdoors. Besides all the fishing and hunting gear, the store featured a stuffed bear, an alligator, some huge iguanas, an enormous aquarium (the Lunkquarium), and an eight-thousand-pound sculpture of a bass that looked like it was crashing through a brick wall.

Even Coke had to admit the place was cool. Everybody had pretzels at the in-store restaurant before piling back into the RV.

“Okay, what’s next, Mom?” asked Pep.

“Our next stop is the RV Hall of Fame,” Mrs. McDonald announced.

“No!” Coke hollered. “It can’t be true! They can’t have a Hall of Fame devoted to RVs. Say it ain’t so, Dad!”

But it was so. In Elkhart, Indiana, just eleven miles south of Lunker’s, is the RV Hall of Fame. Mrs. McDonald read from the website.

Dedicated to preserving the history and honoring the pioneers and individuals who have made significant contributions to the RV and Manufactured Housing industries…

“Bor-ing!” Coke shouted.

“Please, Mom!” Pep begged. “Don’t make us go there. We’ll go anywhere else you want. Just don’t make us go
there
.”

“Okay! Okay!” Mrs. McDonald agreed. “Stay on the road, Ben. We’ll skip the RV Hall of Fame.”

In the back, Coke and Pep breathed sighs of relief. They weren’t sure if they would rather jump off a cliff, get locked in a burning building, or visit the RV Hall of Fame.

“Next stop,” Mrs. McDonald announced cheerfully. “The world’s largest egg!”

It may be hard to believe, dear reader. But about an hour south of the RV Hall of Fame, in the little town of Mentone, Indiana, rests the largest egg in the world.

Well, it’s not a real egg. And it may not even be the largest
fake
egg in the world, because there are other fake eggs in Washington State and Canada that the locals claim to be the largest. But if you walk down Main Street in Mentone, you will almost surely see a three-thousand-pound, ten-foot-tall concrete egg standing on its end near a bank parking lot.

The twins were not in a position to beg off going to look at the giant egg, as they had already talked their parents into skipping the RV Hall of Fame. One should choose one’s battles carefully.