License to Thrill

  DEDICATION

  Thanks to all the folks who helped me write this series: Laura Arnold, Mona Banton of the National Jousting Association, Jim Beard, Gail Bell, Brooke Bessesen, Peter and Jason Blau, Jane Sturdivant Britt, Steve Busti, Trish Carlberg, Diana Carr, Lisa Chapman, Edward Cheslek, Linda Clover, Joyce Allen-Crawford, Robert W. Dye, Christine Feller, Dennis Geoffroy, Esther Goldenberg, Google Maps, Sam and Emma Gutman, Ralph Hammelbacher, Jody Hotchkiss, Karen and Katie Jergensen, Robert Jones, Anne Kalkowski, Sarah Kaufman, Dave Kelly, Mary Kittrell, Alan and Samantha Kors, the Lucas family, Diandra Mae, Jennifer and Jabin Mallory, Sue Marchbanks, Elyse Marshall, Zack Medlin, P. J. Meriwether, Marcus and Jonathan Murdoch, Carrie O’Banion, Mike O’Connell, Dianne Odegard, Andrew and Lynne Paden, Jim Paillot, Andrea Reid, Shelley Riskin, Roadside America, Lara Robertson, Sarah Saladini, Kelly Salgado, John Shaffer of Luray Caverns, Angela Smith, Lucy and Jerry Trotta, Fred Valentini, Jon Van Hoozer Jr., and Jeremy Wolf.

  Special thanks to my wife, Nina, who helped with all the art; my agent, Liza Voges; and Barbara Lalicki, Andrew Harwell, Rosemary Brosnan, and all the folks at HarperCollins. You make me look like a genius.

  EPIGRAPH

  “Even the worst people in the world are capable of changing, you know.”

  —Nobody said this. But somebody should have.

  To the Reader . . .

  All the places mentioned in this book are real.

  You can visit them. You should visit them!

  Well, maybe not the moon.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1 You’re Up to Speed

  2 And Now for Something Completely Different

  3 I’ll Believe It When I See It

  4 Flog Slab

  5 Coke’s Nightmare

  6 English as a Second Language

  7 Liftoff

  8 Sweegling in Space

  9 Home Sweet Home

  10 A Land of Many Contrasts

  11 Ground Zero

  12 The First Cipher

  13 Cruelty to Animals

  14 The Old Hopi

  15 Your Future Will Come

  16 Choice Point

  17 The Perfect Place for Trouble

  18 Hoover Dam

  19 A Free Tour

  20 Vegas, Baby!

  21 Fun in the Sun

  22 A New Woman

  23 The Final Chapter

  Epilogue

  About the Photos

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  YOU’RE UP TO SPEED

  There were eight items on Coke McDonald’s to-do list at the end of July. But getting thrown into a volcano was not one of them.

  GET A NEW IPOD was on the list.

  STOP BITING MY NAILS was on the list.

  BUY SCHOOL SUPPLIES was on the list.

  FINISH SUMMER READING was on the list.

  But nothing about getting thrown into a volcano.

  And yet, strangely enough, getting thrown into a volcano was the one thing that Coke McDonald was actually going To Do at the end of July.

  Dear reader, right here in the first chapter I could tell you how Coke McDonald is going to get thrown into a volcano. Then you would be able to get on with your life, go play a video game, watch some YouTube videos of cats playing piano, or whatever it is you do to get your jollies. But that would spoil the fun for you, and I certainly don’t want to do that. Part of the joy of reading a book is letting the story unfold before your eyes. And to do that, you really need to read the first four books in the Genius Files series: Mission Unstoppable, Never Say Genius, You Only Die Twice, and From Texas with Love.

  (By the way, these books are conveniently available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions from your favorite bookseller. Or, if you’re intent on depriving me of the piddling royalties I would earn if you actually bought the book, you can get it for free at your local library. You can’t beat that deal.)

  In any case, go ahead and read those four books. The rest of us will wait here while you catch up.

  (insert whistling noises here)

  Wait. What? You say you already read the first four Genius Files books? You say you remember that a pair of twins from California named Coke and Pepsi McDonald were recruited to be part of a secret government program called The Genius Files in which the smartest kids in the country would be called upon to solve the world’s problems? You say you remember that the mastermind of The Genius Files program—the eccentric Dr. Herman Warsaw—decided to kill off the program and all the kids in it?

  You say you already know that Dr. Warsaw, his deranged henchwoman Mrs. Higgins, Archie Clone, Evil Elvis, Doominator, and a pair of nincompoop flunkies wearing bowler hats have been chasing Coke and Pep across the United States all summer?

  You say you remember that the twins jumped off a cliff, got locked in their burning school, were pushed into a sand pit and left to die, zapped with electric shocks, lowered into boiling oil in a giant french fry machine, run down by a remote-controlled car, kidnapped on a roller coaster, dipped in soft-serve ice cream while tied up in a Mister Softee truck, swarmed by a million flying bats, pushed into a spinning clothes dryer, poisoned through their bowling shoes, and had a cow dropped on their head?

  (Deep breath)

  You say you remember that Coke and Pep’s clueless parents had no idea what was going on the whole time, thinking they were simply taking a wholesome family vacation? You say you remember some of the oddball tourist destinations the family visited along the way, such as . . .

  (Deep breath)

  . . . the Largest Ball of Twine in the World (Cawker City, Kansas), the Duct Tape Capital of the World (Avon, Ohio), the Largest Frying Pan in the World (Rose Hill, North Carolina), the National Bowling Hall of Fame (Arlington, Texas), the factory where Snickers are made (Waco, Texas), and museums devoted to Spam, Pez dispensers, hot dog buns, yo-yos, and my personal favorite, the Toilet Seat Art Museum (near San Antonio)?

  You say you remember the shocking, blow-your-doors-off, didn’t-see-that-coming climactic ending to The Genius Files: From Texas with Love, when Coke and Pep were playing ping-pong outside a motel in Roswell, New Mexico, and an alien spaceship landed and lifted the twins off the ground in a beam of bright light? You remember all that?

  (Deep breath)

  Oh.

  Well, in that case, you’re fully up to speed.

  Splendid! Now we can plunge right ahead into the next installment of our story without having to go through all the boring rehash of what happened up to this point. That saves me a lot of time and effort.

  Don’t you hate when authors spend the whole first chapter of a book describing what happened in the last book of the series? I know I do.

  Now all you need to do is sit back, munch on some cheesy chips or whatever unhealthy, fat-filled treat you favor, and enjoy The Genius Files: License to Thrill.

  Chapter 2

  AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

  Pep felt her body rising slowly off the ground. Some mysterious, invisible force was gently lifting her up, as if she were filled with helium. She gripped her brother’s hand tightly, so tightly that she was crushing his fingers together. But he didn’t even notice the pain.

  The twins had their eyes shut tightly, but the bluish glare from two powerful beams of light managed to penetrate their eyelids. The temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. But Coke and Pep didn’t feel it. The wind whipped at their clothes. A humming sound was coming from above, and the air seemed to vibrate around them. There was an odor they had never experienced before. Metallic, maybe. Impossible
to describe. Powerful.

  It was too much stimulation at one time. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t get away. They didn’t want to get away. It was frightening, of course. But also magical. Intriguing.

  “What’s happening?” Pep whispered in wonder, fighting the temptation to open her eyes. She was afraid of being blinded by the light, or perhaps she was just afraid of seeing something she didn’t want to see.

  “I don’t know,” Coke replied. “But it’s . . . amazing!”

  Curiosity had gotten the better of him, as it often did, and Coke forced his eyes open. He involuntarily opened his mouth too as he hovered fifteen feet off the ground. He let out a little gasp. This can’t be happening, he thought.

  Months earlier, at the lunch table in school, he and his friends had had a heated discussion about which superpower they would choose if they could pick just one. One boy said he would love to have super vision so he could see through walls, and clothes. Another said he would choose super strength so he could beat up anybody in the world. Coke knew which superpower he would choose—the power to fly.

  “We’re flying,” he marveled to his sister. “This is what it must feel like to be a bird.”

  “Where does the power come from?” Pep asked.

  “Who cares?” he replied. “It’s beautiful.”

  She finally opened her eyes too, and her retinas were clobbered by blasts of light coming at her from every direction. Yet she and Coke seemed to be enclosed within a narrow cylinder of air, as if they were going up a glass elevator shaft with no elevator inside it.

  “ROY G BIV,” Coke said, looking all around.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,” Coke replied. “ROY G BIV. It’s a mnemonic device people use to learn the colors of the rainbow, in order of decreasing wavelengths.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Pep said, remembering her fifth-grade science class. “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. Rinse Out Your Granny’s Boots in Vinegar. It’s VIBGYOR backward. That’s how I remember it.”

  “Look at all the colors!” Coke said. “There are frequencies of light that I’ve never experienced before. Do you see ’em? Wonderful colors! They don’t exist in our spectrum. They don’t exist in our world.”

  “I see ’em,” Pep said, looking all around. “I see ’em.”

  And then, suddenly, the lights went out. The twins were in total darkness.

  “Who turned out the lights?” Coke asked, knowing full well that his sister had no idea who turned out the lights.

  “I’m scared,” Pep said, gripping her brother’s hand even more tightly. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  The darkness—the blackness—was total. There were no pinpricks of light scattered about. It felt like they must be indoors. They must have entered something. But there were no slits under a doorway where outside light could sneak through. Nothing. Their eyes were not going to adjust to the dark. There was nothing to adjust to. It was a power outage. A blackout. It was like all the light in the world had suddenly been switched off.

  “What’s happening?” Pep asked, just to make sure her brother was still there.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Maybe we were blinded,” Pep said, shivering. “Maybe those lights wiped out our retinas, like an eraser on a whiteboard. Maybe we’ll be blind forever.”

  And deaf? Coke wondered. The silence was overwhelming. The humming noises were gone. There was no wind, no rustling of leaves in the trees, no chirping of birds. The twins could hear only the sound of their breathing. Pep thought she could detect her own heartbeat. But that was because it was beating very hard, and very fast.

  She began to sob softly. Coke put his arm around her.

  “Shhhh,” he said. “We’re gonna be okay.”

  It was wishful thinking.

  Coke realized, an instant before his sister did, that he was no longer floating. His feet were on a surface now, and he could support his own weight. The floor must have come up from under them. He let go of Pep’s hand and got down on his knees.

  “It’s soft,” he whispered. “I can push my thumb into it and it springs back. It’s sort of rubbery. Spongy. Like a padded playground.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Pep whimpered. “I want to go back to the motel. Back to Mom and Dad.”

  “We’ve got to find the edge,” Coke said, feeling around on the ground. “It must end somewhere. Maybe there’s a door.”

  Pep had no choice but to get down on the floor with him. Coke was all she had, and she couldn’t risk losing him.

  “I have the feeling that somebody’s watching us,” she whispered.

  “No time for your feelings,” her brother replied, irritated. “The sooner we find the edge, the sooner we get out of here.”

  After a few minutes of crawling around, Coke did find an edge, a spot where the floor met a wall that seemed vertical, or close to it. He moved his hands up the wall, feeling around for a window or the crack of a door, but it was perfectly smooth and cold to the touch. He got back down on his knees so he could follow the wall around. It seemed like the room they were in was a large circle, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet in diameter.

  “I feel something!” Pep suddenly shouted.

  Coke crawled over to his right about ten feet, and he felt it too—vertical bars extending from the floor to as high as he could reach. They were made of some kind of metallic substance, about as thick as a salt shaker, and spaced five or so inches apart. The bars were too close together to squeeze through.

  “It’s like a cage,” Coke said, gripping the bars and trying to shake them. “We’re locked in.”

  “Like prisoners in jail,” Pep said.

  “Or animals in a zoo,” her brother added.

  That’s when the lights flashed on, for just a millisecond or two. It was a familiar white light this time, but painfully bright. Both twins covered their eyes with their hands. But for one split second, they were looking through the bars.

  And in that split second, Pep glimpsed the alien.

  Chapter 3

  I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT

  Now, those of you who have been following the Genius Files know that I don’t particularly like to describe what characters look like. For one thing, it’s boring. Nobody wants to read page after page about somebody’s face.

  For another thing, if you have a short attention span like many of us do, you probably forget what characters look like five minutes after you read the description. That’s why it doesn’t say what Coke and Pep look like in any of these books.

  You want to know what the twins look like? Look at the book covers! There they are, jumping off a cliff, diving out of a boat or a helicopter. And if you want to know what Dr. Warsaw, Mrs. Higgins, the bowler dudes, or any of the other characters look like, use your imagination. That’s what it’s there for.

  Having said all that, rules are meant to be broken. And this seems like the perfect time to break one.

  You probably have a mental image of what a space alien looks like. You’ve seen hundreds of them in schlocky movies, TV shows, commercials, comic books, and so on. They’re usually green, for some unknown reason, and they have these enormous, bulbous heads that are way out of proportion to their ridiculously skinny bodies. They never seem to have any hair, and they just stand there with emotionless, creepy-looking, almond-shaped eyes. They move in slow motion, if they move at all.

  Well, just because somebody in Hollywood decided that aliens should look like that doesn’t mean that’s what they really look like. No, when Pep opened her eyes and glimpsed the alien for the first time, she saw a creature that was completely different from what she expected.

  Picture this . . .

  A round, doughy creature, about the size of a portable refrigerator. It had very small legs and feet with no pinky toes. At the end of each arm was a “hand” that was sort of a cross between a claw and a pair of pliers. The alien was weari
ng some sort of robe that changed color every few seconds.

  The alien’s face was a wonder to behold. It had two eyes (which shouldn’t be taken for granted outside our solar system), but they were red. The eyes popped out slightly from the head, and they were all the more noticeable because the creature did not have any visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Or eyelids, for that matter. The eyes could not be closed, which made them even more frightening.

  Its nose looked much like ours, but the alien had a wide, lipless, sunken mouth with one golden tooth in the middle. The other teeth appeared to have hair on them.

  The alien had no external ears.

  Unlike your typical Hollywood alien, this one had hair on its head—a patch of yellow-, black-, orange-, and red-patterned hair that glowed in the dark.

  The skin, if you could call it skin, was reddish and translucent—much like fish scales. It appeared to be slimy to the touch, if one were to be so inclined to reach out and touch it.

  Got all that? A few pages from now you’ll probably forget the description, which is fine. Just remember this—it was a hideous-looking creature.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Pep shrieked.

  It was a scream that seemed to go on forever. If the twins had not been confined inside a sealed, soundproof enclosure, Pep would have been heard for miles in each direction.

  Everything went dark again.

  “Did you see that?”

  “No, see what?” her brother replied. “I was facing the other way.”

  “It was like . . . an alien. Or something.”

  “You’re hallucinating,” Coke told his sister.

  “I saw him!” Pep insisted. “Or it. Or whatever it was. It must have taken a picture of us with that flash of light.”

  “There’s no such thing as aliens,” Coke scoffed.

  “Oh, I suppose we just got sucked up off the ground in Roswell, New Mexico, by a mysterious light that doesn’t exist in our color spectrum, and aliens had nothing to do with it?”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes,” Coke said firmly.