Cold Cereal

  “What’s the matter, Utz? Aren’t they feeding you enough at home?”

  “Erno! Over here! You can have this pudding I dropped.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Erno looked up at this last remark. He hadn’t noticed the new boy standing just across the can from him. It was a fair question.

  “Um, I lost my lunch bag in here.”

  “You’re not still gonna eat it, are you?”

  “No! No, it just has this piece of paper inside it I need. With … a phone number written on it.”

  “Oh,” said the boy. “Well, here.” He used his binder to shovel some of the garbage aside, and with this help Erno quickly found the bag.

  Inside, beneath the carrot sticks and sandwich, was a tight roll of pink paper secured with tape. He pried free the tape, and the paper uncoiled like a party favor, and the secret message, which was most plainly not a phone number, divulged its hidden mysteries:

  THIS IS NOT A CLUE.

  “Son of a—” said Erno, and he threw the paper back in the trash.

  The other boy was eyeing him strangely. Well, maybe not so strangely, considering.

  “Um, thanks,” Erno said. “I think I’m gonna go wash my hands.”

  “I’ll come with you. I want to wipe off my binder.”

  They walked out of the cafeteria and through the wide halls. Erno couldn’t help liking this new kid: he had a kind face that was unassumingly handsome, if that was possible.

  “Thanks again,” Erno said. “You didn’t have to help.”

  “My name’s Scott,” the boy answered. “I just started here this morning. I’m in Ms. Egami’s class.”

  “I’m Erno. I’m in Mr. Klum’s class, right next door to you.”

  “Erno? Erno Utz?”

  “Yeah,” Erno said, surprised.

  “We’re in Project: Potential together,” Scott said.

  Project: Potential was a separate class that the gifted students went to for an hour each day. The name was supposed to make it sound exciting, like Code Name: Cursive or Mission: State Capitals. While the regular kids took spelling tests, the P: P students learned things like architecture or mythology or Latin. All the things a smart kid was supposed to want to learn and none of the things he really needed to know, like how to shrug off the embarrassment of attending a class called Project: Potential.

  “How did you know my name?” asked Erno.

  Scott smirked. “You’re supposed to be the smartest kid in the sixth grade.”

  Erno looked at the jelly sliding down his wrist. “That’s not true. I’m not the smartest.”

  “But everyone says—”

  “Yeah. They just say that because they hate my sister.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Project: Potential was in the afternoon, in a mint-green room that smelled like mentholyptus. It was taught by Ms. Wyvern, a musty, clown-faced woman who spoke with an unplaceable accent that was thick with gurgling r’s and sneezy vowels. Her black bowl-cut hair was interrupted in front by a white skunk stripe, which she claimed appeared right after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957. And she seemed to have no idea how much she spat.

  Erno sat staring at the yellow paper from that morning and was not listening to Ms. Wyvern read them a story from a fat book titled Legends and Lore. “‘King Vortigern’s mens rrrebuilt the tower, but aaagain the tower fell down. Sssso he called to him his wise men.’Julie, would you continue the readink?”

  Julie read, “‘The wise men advised King Vortigern to find a boy with no earthly father and kill him, and mix his blood with the mortar of the tower.’ Gross. ‘Only then would it stand strong. So the king made to search the countryside, and soon they found a group of boys in the midst of a quarrel.’”

  Veterans Day is the eleventh, thought Erno. He copied every eleventh letter from the verse and then every eleventh word, but each yielded only gibberish.

  Julie passed Legends and Lore to Gerald, behind her.

  “‘Two boys taunted a third,’” read Gerald, “‘saying, “Boy with no father, no good will come of you.” So Vortigern’s men seized that boy and brought him to the ruined tower. And when he learned he was to be killed, he was exceedingly wroth.’ Wroth? Um, ‘He asked King Vortigern, “Who has set you upon this course? Bring them here so I may question them sith they would have my blood.” And when the wise men came forth, he asked them to explain why the tower always fell. But the wise men did not know the answer.”’

  Erno scanned the last line of the poem: “The key to this.” Maybe this was the most important word in the whole clue, and he had to find the key to it? He was grasping at straws.

  “‘“If you wist not why the tower falls,”’” read Brandon, “‘“how can you claim to know the solution?” he asked them, and the wise men were dolorously beshamed. Then King Vortigern asked the boy his name, and the boy answered, “I am Merlin, and I know why your tower falls.’””

  Brandon tried to pass the book to Erno, but Erno didn’t notice, so engrossed was he in the little poem. He also didn’t hear Ms. Wyvern ask him if he’d like to share his note with the rest of the class, so she had to ask him twice.

  “MESTER UTZ. Woult you like do shaaare thad note with the rrrest of the class?”

  The other students giggled. Erno blinked and looked up at Ms. Wyvern.

  Nobody, of course, ever wanted to share their note with the rest of the class. Erno didn’t understand why they always asked. It had given Erno the idea a while back to make up a dummy note he could keep ready to exchange, with a little sleight of hand, for any real note that got discovered. The dummy note read:

  TEACHER’S DOING A GREAT JOB TODAY, ISN’T SHE?

  CHECK YES IF YOU AGREE.

  But he’d never gotten to use it, and he couldn’t use it now—it wasn’t on yellow paper.

  “Um, sorry,” said Erno. “It’s not a note.”

  “Et looogs like a note.”

  “It’s … it’s not. It’s a puzzle.”

  Ms. Wyvern brightened. She suddenly appeared quite pleased, which was not a good look for her.

  “Vaaabulous! Perhabs the whole class can heelp you wid thes puzzle.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Erno saw Emily tense up in her seat and frown.

  “I’m supposed to do it myself,” said Erno.

  Ms. Wyvern’s smile fell, and she made a faint hissing noise, as though the air had been let out of her cheeks. She was uncomfortably close now, her breath medicinal. Emily and Erno had argued once over whether Ms. Wyvern wore actual makeup or instead allowed herself to be bitten repeatedly on the face by mildly poisonous spiders; but now, at close range, Erno was prepared to admit he’d been wrong about the spiders.

  “Es thes puzzle a … schoooool assignment?”

  “… No.”

  Her arm lashed out with reptile speed, and before Erno could think, the paper had left his hand. He blinked, and there it was: long and curled between the pursed tips of Ms. Wyvern’s scaly fingers.

  “Don be greeedy, Mester Utz.” She pulled the paper taut, then read:

  “Whaare doth the claw uf Archimedes rrrest?

  In yeddow pages staaart thy quest.

  By Veterans Day you should haf guessed

  the key tooo this, thy gurrent test.”

  “Fmpf,” she added. “Not ferry good poetry.”

  “Archimedes was a mathematician,” blurted Ethan from the back of the room. “And he was Greek. And he invented things.” Ethan was the sort of student who was always keeping score—if he couldn’t be the first to declare his knowledge of something, he would make certain you understood that he’d known it already. One day he would be declared the winner, and there would be a Smartest Boy trophy and a parade.

  “Yess, yess, Archimedes,” Ms. Wyvern agreed. “Great man. But whoo knows uf the claw uf Archimedes?”

  Erno had looked that up, and he was pretty sure Emily knew about it as well. But neither sibling raised their hand.

  Ms. Wyv
ern revived her laptop, which was projecting on the whiteboard behind her. “Hode on, I’ll focus. Lights, pleeease.”

  The room went dark, and an encyclopedia entry emerged from the digital fog. It featured a detailed etching of something like a huge crane with a claw at the end of its tether. The crane strained over a seaward stone wall to pluck a warship right out of the ocean.

  “The claw uf Archimedes, allegedly uuused to defend his Sicilian home frrrom the Romans.”

  “I knew that already.”

  “Well done, Ethan,” said Ms. Wyvern. “Sssooo … whaare doth the claw uf Archimedes rest?”

  “In Sicilia?” said Carla.

  “Sicily.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  Erno knew this wouldn’t be the solution. It was too easy.

  “Maaaybe. Maaybe. Veterans Day is on the eleventh—you haave nine days, Mester Utz.”

  Erno looked over at Emily, but she just shook her head sadly and put her face in her hands.

  “Messes Utz, do you thenk you can do better?”

  Emily flinched. Ms. Wyvern and the whole class were staring at her.

  “Maaaybe you thenk you can solve thes theng, hahn?”

  Emily looked down. “We’re supposed to do it ourselves,” she said softly. “We’re not supposed to have help.”

  The other kids laughed. They laughed whenever Emily said anything, like it was unnatural, like she was putting on a show.

  Ms. Wyvern harrumphed like a backed-up toilet and returned to the screen.

  “Soooo, whazzizzit? What haf you figured out, Mester Utz?”

  Erno sighed and said, “Well, the answer probably isn’t something you can just find on the internet. That’s not how they usually … it’s probably something you can find here in Goodborough.”

  “A-hahn.”

  “So,” Erno continued, “the claw of Archimedes rests on a ship, right? Maybe the answer is on one of the boats in the harbor. Or maybe the science museum has a model of the claw, or…”

  “A-hahn. Eenyone else?”

  The boy who had helped Erno at lunch had been sort of half raising his hand for three minutes, but the way Ms. Wyvern suddenly flinched and noticed him you’d have thought he’d popped out of a box.

  “You—new boy. What do yoou thenk?”

  “Scott. My name’s Scott.”

  “Yes, yes, new boy Scott. What you thenk?”

  “It’s like one of those claw machines. Where you try to grab prizes.” The class laughed at this, and Scott flushed.

  “Was your prize that you got to keep the ship?”

  “I think your prize was not getting killed by Romans.”

  Project: Potential ended for the day as a freshly photocopied stack of poems was passed from hand to hand. Each student was instructed to work on the puzzle at home. They filed out of the room in twos and threes, except for Emily. Erno sidled up to Scott.

  Then Carla Owens turned to face Emily and everyone else. Carla was a big girl who wore purple, and she had long, bright purple fingernails, which she used to scratch and pinch out small punishments to people she didn’t like. She didn’t like Emily.

  “We’re supposed to do it ourselves,” Carla said in a nasally whine that was meant to sound like Emily, but didn’t. “Don’t help Erno! Oh, don’t help him. He’s not supposed to HAVE help.”

  Many of the other kids laughed. Project: Potential kids could be a little bloodthirsty: some of them loved to see others abused. They loved it because it wasn’t them, the way people used to love watching gladiators get eaten by tigers.

  Emily ignored the taunt and tried to walk briskly by, but Carla blocked her way.

  “Leave me alone,” Emily said quietly.

  “What? What did you say? You’re so scrawny I couldn’t hear you, Pinkeye.”

  Erno stepped forward. “Just leave her alone, Carla.”

  Carla’s eyes blazed. Her mouth quivered. “Shut up, Erno! I was taking your side! She—if she wasn’t your sister, you’d hate her too!”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Erno said, and he was pleased to realize that he meant it. “And you weren’t taking my side. If I needed a cheerleader I could do a lot better than Carla Owens.”

  “You’re just like your sister!”

  “If only.”

  Carla’s face looked pink and sweaty, like a hot dog. She said, “No wonder your mother’s dead,” and suddenly nobody was laughing anymore. “When she saw Emily’s ugly little rat face, she decided she’d rather die than be your mother!”

  There was a seasick silence. Emily was swaying a little and breathing fast, the way she always did when she got one of her spells.

  It seemed from her expression that even Carla Owens knew she had gone too far. Everyone stared at her, and at Emily, mouths slack, and for a quiet, poisonous moment, nothing happened. Nothing except for the sudden appearance of a thin line of blood between Carla’s nose and lip, like a red mark on her great mistake of a face.

  “Your nose is bleeding, Carla,” said someone.

  Carla looked cross-eyed at her own nose and tried to dam up the flow with a slip of tongue. “How did …,” she muttered, then looked fearfully at Emily. And Emily attacked.

  For an instant it was like watching a nature film of a tiny white mouse pouncing on some garish South American toad. The mouse scrabbled and bit, and the toad’s eyes popped at this unexpected turn. But nature soon corrected itself, and the giant toad knocked the mouse aside with the long, purple fingers of her long, purple arm.

  Emily got to her feet with a cut on her cheek. She seemed ready to leap again, but this time Erno stopped her and held her fast as she flailed at Carla.

  “You don’t know anything about my mother!” Emily’s tiny voice screamed. “You don’t know anything about anything! You’re only in Project: Potential because your dad’s the vice principal! YOU READ AT A THIRD-GRADE LEVEL!”

  Erno pulled Emily back, and Carla quickly walked away. The other students scattered, and Emily began to cry, and the twins stood together in the school quad, alone and late for class.

  CHAPTER 4

  After school Scott found Erno outside the bike racks, so the two of them walked home together. He supposed Emily was home already—Carla Owens had concocted some story about the day’s events that made herself look blameless and Emily look like a rabid animal, so she’d been suspended for fighting.

  “Has she ever done that before?” Scott asked.

  “What, attack someone?” said Erno. “No. She usually just says nothing and walks away when people tease her. Or else she falls over.”

  “Falls over?”

  “Yeah, she gets these dizzy spells when she’s stressed out. Ear infection. She falls right over unless I’m there to catch her.”

  “She’s lucky to have a brother in the same grade.”

  Erno shrugged. “She’d be lucky if Carla Owens got swallowed by a volcano, but until that happens …”

  Scott huffed. “Some things … some things you probably can’t even get a volcano to swallow, you know?”

  Erno smiled a little. “Yeah. She probably tastes like a prune.”

  They fell into an uneasy silence, discomfited by the mystery of what, if anything, Carla Owens tasted like.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said in class,” Erno finally spoke. “It would be just like Mr. Wilson to hide the answer to one of his games in a claw machine.”

  “Mr. Wilson?”

  “Our foster dad.”

  “He thinks up these puzzles for you?”

  “Yeah, and Emily was right: we’re supposed to do them ourselves. They’re our tests, you know? So it sort of ruins the test if we get help.”

  Scott’s eyes narrowed. “So … your dad pits you and Emily against each other, to see who’s smarter?”

  Erno frowned as if he’d never really considered the implications before. Scott was sorry he’d asked.

  “Well,” he added, “it’s funny you mentioned the science museum, b
ecause that’s why I thought of claw machines. We just moved here, you know, and the move was kind of … hard, and my mom wanted to do something nice for my sister and me. She’s a scientist—my mom, I mean—so she took us to the science museum last weekend. And they have a claw machine in the lobby.”

  Erno raised his eyebrows. “A claw machine in the science museum … man, that’s gotta be it. Hey, are you … are you expected at home right away?”

  “Not really. My mom’s at work, and Polly’s staying after school.” Scott frowned and scanned the horizon. “To be honest, I’m not sure I remember where my house is.”

  The boys hustled to the science museum, a squat little building by the high school with an entrance that was roped by a thick double helix of plaster DNA. SCIENCE IS FUN! read a banner of Albert Einstein on a bike. Because nothing says fun like a picture of an old person riding a bicycle.

  They burst through the doors, and there it was: a claw machine behind the admissions kiosk. And inside the Plexiglas case, perched atop a pile of plush owls and dolphins and dolls of Einstein riding a bicycle, was another yellow scroll.

  Erno turned to the woman inside the kiosk. “Do we have to pay admission to play the claw machine?”

  “Well,” she said, “no. But we have a wonderful exhibit on the life cycle of rain clouds! Or, ooh! A photosynthesis workshop at four o’clock! Yeah?”

  “Um,” said Erno, and he looked at Scott.

  “Just the claw machine today, I think,” said Scott. “Can you make change?”

  The woman sighed and reached for their five.

  “Jeez. Fifty cents a game,” said Erno as they pressed close to the machine to examine the scroll—another yellow page tied in pink ribbon, just like the first one.

  “It’ll be easy,” said Scott. “It’s right on top.”

  Erno slid a dollar into the slot, watched it get spit back out again, tried once more, smoothed the bill against the corner of the machine, tried a third time. The game’s little claw of Archimedes shuddered to life. Erno jerked it in place over the scroll and pressed a button labeled DROP. The talons closed, and traced the edge of the paper tube as if testing its quality, and then rose and retreated to the chute in the corner, empty-handed. This claw was not so certain it wanted a yellow scroll. This claw was merely browsing.