The League of Unexceptional Children

  “Ready? You can’t be serious!” Jonathan scoffed.

  “Well, of course you’re not ready, but the country is about to collapse. So unless you’re ready to see this whole place crumble beside you, I suggest you find some courage,” Hammett barked, wagging his index finger in Jonathan’s face.

  “Not to worry, I’m sure he has some courage hidden in there somewhere,” Shelley jumped in. “For as I often say, behind every pair of khaki pants is a denim soul.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, but thank you anyway,” Jonathan muttered to Shelley.

  Hammett pointed across the Mall. “We’ve got a man, approximately thirty-seven years old, in a red cable-knit sweater and gray slacks with a tan Pomeranian on a leash. I’d put the dog at five to six years of age, but with all that fur, it’s a ballpark guess at best.”

  Jonathan and Shelley turned and scanned the promenade until they spotted the man with the Pomeranian.

  “He’s your training target. You are to approach with a story about being lost, looking for the Smithsonian, and ask if he can give you directions. While he is helping you, you are to find out his name and profession. But be careful; you mustn’t attract suspicion. After getting said information, you are to leave. Get it? Got it? Good-bye.”

  “Wait! Before you go, can we discuss my character’s background? Do I have an accent? Am I Latvian? Australian? Should I limp? To get the guy’s sympathy, you know?” Shelley asked.

  “You really are an eager beaver, aren’t you? But listen, doll, you got this all wrong. This isn’t drama class. Act like who you are, Shelley, only with a different last name. Understood?” And with that, Hammett headed toward a bench a few feet away, toothpick in mouth and hands in pockets.

  “I guess we have to do this,” Jonathan mumbled halfheartedly.

  “The thing is, Johno—can I call you Johno?—I’m over all this training nonsense. We’ve been at it forever. And frankly, I’m itching to handle the bad guys,” Shelley declared confidently.

  “We’ve been training for a couple of hours. That’s not even the length of a school day,” Jonathan pointed out.

  “In movies, training sequences are always cut together with really cool music. It’s like boom, two to three minutes later, everyone’s an expert.”

  “Good to know you keep your expectations realistic,” Jonathan offered sarcastically.

  “Johno, I think you should ask for directions, then I’ll compliment his sweater, and after he says thank you, I’ll ask the questions.”

  “That actually sounds reasonable,” Jonathan admitted, surprised by Shelley’s sudden burst of practical thinking.

  The man in the red cable-knit sweater with the tan-colored Pomeranian on a leash was now but a few feet away. Jonathan sighed and reminded himself that it was only a training mission; there was absolutely no need to be nervous. Walking next to him, Shelley exuded her usual mix of self-confidence and delusion, a combination Jonathan found reminiscent of his mother.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Jonathan called out to the man.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re here visiting and we really want to see the Smithsonian, but we can’t seem to find it,” Jonathan muttered, smiling stiffly.

  “Nice sweater,” Shelley piped up, although the man didn’t hear her, so she impulsively grabbed his arm. “I’ve always loved the color red. It’s a shame it’s the color of blood, especially since it rhymes with dead. Red dead. Dead red… You know what? I’m really sorry, but can I have a do-over? My brain just went haywire with excitement talking to you.”

  “Shelley! You can’t ask the target for a do-over! That’s super-unprofessional! Plus it makes you look insecure, and spies can’t be insecure!”

  “You’re spies?” the man asked, barely stifling his laughter.

  “Way to go, Johno! You told the target we’re spies! Nice job!” Shelley scoffed, shaking her head with disappointment.

  “Oh no, I did, didn’t I?” Jonathan muttered quietly, his face crumpling with shame. “This is bad! Good spies don’t tell people they’re spies!”

  “Maybe you’re more of a mediocre spy?” Shelley suggested.

  “What about you? Dead is red! The color of blood! Way to act normal!” Jonathan shot back.

  “While I admit it wasn’t my finest hour, I think we can both agree that I am the winner here because I didn’t tell the man we’re spies,” Shelley stated triumphantly.

  “There is more to being a spy than just not telling people you’re a spy,” Jonathan said, trying to convince himself as much as Shelley.

  “But you’ve got to admit it’s pretty important.”

  Jonathan suddenly looked around. They were alone. The man with the red cable-knit sweater and Pomeranian was nowhere to be seen.

  “We lost the target,” Jonathan uttered in dismay.

  “That is definitely not good spymanship… wait, is spymanship a real word?” Shelley asked.

  “You want a real word? How about fail? As in, you two just failed your training mission,” Hammett snapped from behind Jonathan and Shelley. “Less than ten seconds and you two were barking at each other like a couple of rabid squirrels, completely losing sight of the target!”

  “We’re really sorry,” Jonathan mumbled, his eyes trained on his shoes.

  “We may have gone a little off course, but we’ll do better next time, I promise,” Shelley offered sincerely.

  “There is no next time. Training is now officially over. So go home, lick your wounds, and sleep a full eight hours,” Hammett instructed firmly. “Tomorrow morning you will receive a message in your locker with your first real mission.”

  “But we just failed our training mission,” Jonathan said.

  “That’s right, so unless you plan on failing your country, I suggest you two straighten out your heads and get serious.” Hammett bristled. “This is a war, and you’re the only soldiers on the field… understand?”

  OCTOBER 16, 7:03 A.M. EVANSTON, VIRGINIA

  Seconds after the sun rose, Shelley jumped out of bed, fed her goldfish, Zelda (who was still hidden away in the closet), and tried on the first of several “spy” outfits. Shelley was aiming for cool, professional, and ready to take down the bad guys. Standing in front of the mirror, she practiced pulling out a badge, having forgotten that League operatives did not use badges.

  “The name’s Shelley Brown and you’re going down… darn it! I used my own name again! Zelda, I’m going to need a do-over,” Shelley mumbled to her fish as she clenched her fists with frustration.

  A few streets away Jonathan was standing in his bathroom, staring blankly at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t up for the task. He was barely up for being alive, never mind rescuing the vice president of the United States and saving the country from possible invasions and rampant chaos. Who knows, Jonathan thought, maybe anarchy wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe he’d kind of enjoy it, everyone doing whatever they wanted, when they wanted. Wait a minute, he thought, that’s the equivalent of letting my parents run the country—and that’s a very, very, very scary idea. Why, it was so scary, there weren’t enough verys in the world to describe it!

  Downstairs, Jonathan ran through the kitchen, grabbed his lunch from the fridge, and double-checked that he had both his pen and his popcorn book.

  “What’s the rush, champ?” Mickey called out as Jonathan bolted toward the front door.

  “I’m off to save the world!” Jonathan replied as he dashed from the house at 8:02 a.m., a full thirteen minutes before the neighborhood kids would hit the pavement.

  “Looking for me?” A girl’s voice jolted Jonathan as he exited the front door.

  Standing next to his neighbor’s elderly pug was Shelley, dressed in a green-and-brown tweed pantsuit.

  Jonathan looked the girl up and down before asking, “What the heck are you wearing?”

  “This, Mr. Khaki, is what I call Sherlock Holmes chic,” Shelley answered, turning in a full circle to showcase her outfit.

  “Sh
erlock Holmes was a detective, not a spy. And to be honest, you look more like someone who’s about to jump on a horse and hunt rabbits,” Jonathan confessed while eyeing the thick wool ensemble.

  “I would never shoot a rabbit. Unless, of course, I was lost in a forest without any other options. Although I doubt I could skin it, and we all know I can’t start a fire to save my life—”

  “Or earn a badge,” Jonathan added as Shelley took off her Sherlock cap and hid it behind a shrub in front of his house. “What are you doing?”

  “A little tweed goes a long way.…”

  “Come on, we’ve got to get to school and check our lockers. Hammett said there’d be a message regarding our first mission,” Jonathan explained, pulling at Shelley’s arm.

  “Our first step in stopping the Seal and saving the country.”

  “And if we fail?” Jonathan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Shelley answered. “Actually, I do. We’ll have to move to a remote part of Canada in case it ever gets out that we’re responsible for the greatest failure in history. Plus we’ll probably feel super-guilty… like worse than the time I decapitated my sister’s doll.”

  OCTOBER 16, 8:19 A.M. EVANSTON MIDDLE SCHOOL. EVANSTON, VIRGINIA

  “Hey, Marcus! What’s happening up there?” Shelley called out as she passed a six-foot-one basketball player on the way to Jonathan’s locker. “You take care too! See you later!”

  “Marcus didn’t respond to you. He literally did not look at you or say one word,” Jonathan informed Shelley.

  “That’s not true. He sort of looked around as if to say, ‘Hello, Shelley, wherever you are.’”

  “I didn’t see anything even remotely like what you’re describing.”

  “That’s because you’re a Dougie Downer, a Negative Ned. You see the world through gray lenses. And I’m a Sunshine Sally, spreading joy wherever I go,” Shelley declared, opening her arms as if to give some invisible person a hug.

  Jonathan twirled the combination to his locker, his stomach in knots. He still didn’t feel ready to be a spy. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even feel ready to read a spy novel. And yet he was seconds away from receiving his first mission.

  “You have a furry egg in your locker? That’s super-weird. Like weirder than a kid who keeps all her baby teeth in a box under her bed,” Shelley said, and then smacked her hand against her forehead. “Why did I say that? I have a box just like that. Although I also have a really good reason; I’m keeping them in case I ever need dentures.”

  “It’s a kiwi. And clearly you didn’t read How to Make Great Popcorn in the Microwave last night. Because if you had, you would know that a kiwi means we need to head straight to Nurse Maidenkirk.”

  “Why not just leave a note? Or send us a text?” Shelley asked.

  “Notes and text messages can be intercepted, but not a kiwi.”

  OCTOBER 16, 8:29 A.M. EVANSTON MIDDLE SCHOOL. EVANSTON, VIRGINIA

  “An air-conditioning unit dropped two stories, knocking a man unconscious while walking in Old Town Alexandria this morning. Apparently, he can’t remember a thing. Not that I’m surprised; the radio said his head looked like a chewed-up piece of roast beef,” Nurse Maidenkirk shared immediately upon seeing Jonathan and Shelley in the infirmary.

  “Good morning to you too,” Jonathan grunted as Shelley shook her head at the odd greeting.

  “If only I got interesting cases like that in here,” Nurse Maidenkirk said as she looked around at the twelve empty beds in the sick bay.

  “Do you want us to drop something on someone’s head?” Shelley inquired as Nurse Maidenkirk narrowed her eyes at the young girl.

  “Of course not. That would be a criminal act, and I loathe criminals.”

  Sensing they were getting off track, Jonathan jumped in. “I found a kiwi in my locker this morning.”

  “We are expecting your first assignment from President Arons in precisely two minutes and seven seconds,” Nurse Maidenkirk informed Jonathan and Shelley as she switched on the mammoth television in the corner and pulled out a stenographer’s machine and a collapsible stool from behind one of the beds.

  A morning talk show, consisting of eight women crammed around a table drinking coffee and yelling at one another, was shortly thereafter interrupted by a blond and overly made-up news anchor.

  “We are now cutting live to the White House for a briefing from the president regarding the possible increase in ground troops,” the anchor stated before the screen jumped to President Max Arons standing at a podium with two American flags and a blue-and-white oval plaque of the White House behind him.

  “Good morning, everyone,” President Arons greeted the room of reporters, brushing his right hand against his left eyebrow. “Late last night I met with the Speaker of the House”—the president cleared his throat and scratched the left side of his head—“regarding his opposition to the deployment of further ground troops at this time.”

  Nurse Maidenkirk typed frantically, her fingers moving in an absolute flurry.

  “However, he has assured me that should the threat increase, therefore endangering US Air Force bases in the region,” the president said before twitching his nose a few times and scratching his right cheek, “he would reverse his current stance. Thank you very much. I will not be taking any questions at this time.”

  And with that, President Arons left the podium, and the channel returned to its regularly scheduled program.

  “Interesting,” Nurse Maidenkirk stated cryptically as she pulled the white paper from the stenography machine. “You’re going to have company on this mission, and not the kind of company that you’ll enjoy.”

  “I don’t get it. He didn’t even talk about anything that had to do with us,” Jonathan said.

  “Clearly, someone was listening with his ears instead of his eyes,” Nurse Maidenkirk pronounced.

  “No way! All that fidgeting was code?” Shelley said, and then clasped her hand over her mouth.

  Jonathan lowered his eyes. His stomach sank. There was something about his fellow unexceptional “getting it” that made the boy feel even more lacking in intelligence than usual.

  “Normally the president is able to convey messages by other means, but due to the high security at the White House following Vice President Felinter’s kidnapping, which as Hammett mentioned is being kept top secret, the president is taking no chances.”

  Shelley rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “So what’s the mission?”

  “The president knows his chief of staff, Alice Englander, to be paranoid and, like a certain former president, Richard Nixon, she tapes all of her phone calls. We need those recordings to know what she’s up to, which means you will retrieve them from the basement of her home… today.”

  “When you say ‘retrieve,’ do you mean we’re going to break into her house and steal them?” Jonathan asked, wiping his sweaty palms against his khaki slacks.

  “Yes, that is exactly what I mean. And as Alice Englander lives in Evanston, you two will need an adult companion; otherwise, you most certainly will be picked up for truancy.”

  “So you’re coming with us?” Jonathan guessed.

  “Absolutely not. I have to administer shots to the entire basketball team,” Nurse Maidenkirk said while miming jabbing a needle into her arm.

  “That means Hammy’s in the house!” Shelley hollered excitedly.

  “No. I’m afraid Hammett will not be accompanying you either.”

  “Then who’s coming with us?” Jonathan asked.

  “Someone who sweats a lot. Someone who yells a lot. Someone who eats a lot…”

  OCTOBER 16, 9:13 A.M. EVANSTON MIDDLE SCHOOL. EVANSTON, VIRGINIA

  “Someone who sweats a lot. Someone who yells a lot. Someone who eats a lot,” Shelley repeated back to Nurse Maidenkirk. “I assume you’re not talking about my uncle Jerry. He’s also a scientist like my parents… just a really angry one with a perspiration problem and an enormous appetite. I once saw him eat a
n entire turkey by himself.”

  “Well, I once saw a woman choke on a turkey bone,” Nurse Maidenkirk added.

  Shelley shook her head at the news and then asked, “Did she die?”

  “No. I gave her the Heimlich maneuver. I even kept the bone she coughed up as a souvenir.”

  “Personally, I prefer a postcard, but that’s just me.…” Shelley trailed off as Jonathan snapped his fingers.

  “You’re talking about Arthur Pelton! The angry security guard from the White House, right?” Jonathan pressed Nurse Maidenkirk, clearly proud to have figured out the clues.

  Nurse Maidenkirk nodded and then went on to explain that they were to meet Arthur Pelton at the bus bench next to Evanston’s Metro station.

  OCTOBER 16, 10:31 A.M. EVANSTON METRO STATION. EVANSTON, VIRGINIA

  It had been a couple days since Arthur had been placed on leave from the White House, yet he was still wearing his uniform. And as usual, his hands and face were pink and puffy as a result of the suit being a size too small. Hunched over, eating a roast beef sandwich on rye bread, Arthur failed to notice the kids approach.

  “Mr. Pelton?” Shelley said quietly as she took a seat next to him on the bench and opened up a newspaper.

  “Shelley, we’re supposed to be with Mr. Pelton, remember? There’s no need to pretend you aren’t talking to him,” Jonathan pointed out.

  “Rats! You’re right, Johno.” Shelley groaned. “Mr. Pelton, can we take it from the top? I’d like to redo my entrance.”

  “If only the White House would give me a redo, then I wouldn’t be sitting on some bus bench instead of working, protecting this country from scum like that Seal! You know, I’ve never liked seals. Not one bit. They’re just a bunch of big, fat, lazy beasts that spend their days barking for handouts. You know what I say? Get a job, you bums!”

  “Just to be clear, you’re talking about actual seals. Like the ones we see at the zoo?” Jonathan clarified.

  “That’s right,” Arthur answered.