The Pompeii Disaster Read online

  “When you hit one of us, you hit all of us,” one of the guys said.

  He raised his stick. The others did the same. The Flashback Four put their hands up to protect their faces.

  A humming, crackling sound filled the air. A powerful invisible force froze the Flashback Four.

  “So long, suckers!” shouted David.

  And then they vanished.

  “Where did they go?” one of the gang asked.

  An instant later, the Flashback Four appeared in the office of Pasture Company in Boston, Massachusetts. They landed on the floor, gasping for breath, happy, relieved, exhausted, and emotional.

  “You’re back!” shouted Mrs. Vader, rushing over to greet the kids. “We were getting a little worried about you.”

  Luke, Julia, Isabel, and David got up from the floor and brushed themselves off.

  “So,” Miss Z said excitedly. “Tell us what happened! Did everything go according to plan? How was Pompeii?”

  “Did anything exciting happen?” asked Mrs. Vader. “Did you encounter any problems?”

  “Problems?” asked Luke. “No! No problems at all!”

  The Flashback Four looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  EPILOGUE

  WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE FLASHBACK FOUR next? Will they ever recover from their adventure in Pompeii? Is their time-traveling career finally over for good?

  You’ll have to wait for Flashback Four #4 to find out!

  FACTS & FICTIONS

  Everything in this book is true, except for the stuff I made up. It’s only fair to tell you which is which.

  First, the made-up stuff. The Flashback Four, Miss Z, and Mrs. Vader do not exist. They are fictional characters. (But Hilarius was a real name in Roman times. It meant “cheerful.”) There’s no such thing as a smartboard that enables people to travel through time. And there’s no TTT to send texts through time or an Ear Buddy to translate foreign languages. At least not yet.

  Most of the other stuff is true. To research this book I visited Pompeii to see it with my own eyes, and I also watched videos, scanned websites, and read many other books on the subject. To name a few: The Fires of Vesuvius, by Mary Beard; Bodies from the Ash, by James M. Deem; Pompeii: Lost & Found, by Mary Pope Osborne; The Buried City of Pompeii, by Shelley Tanaka; The Lost City of Pompeii, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent; Pompeii, by Richard Platt; and Pompeii, by Robert Harris.

  The descriptions of ancient and present-day Pompeii were pretty much accurate. Fullonica Stephani was a real laundry. And yes, the laundries of that time period actually used urine to clean the clothes. It is true that slaves were used to stomp around in tubs full of pee.

  In fact, that’s only one of many uses of urine. Throughout history, people have used the stuff for softening leather, making gunpowder, and—are you ready for this?—toothpaste and mouthwash! It’s true! Until the eighteenth century, urine was one of the most common ingredients in mouthwash. Don’t believe me? Look it up for yourself.

  The Pompeii amphitheater, Palestra Grande, and the gladiator games were very much the way they were described, but even more bloody and gruesome. Hey, this is a book for kids! If you want to read all the gory details, well, that’s why they invented Google.

  When Pompeii was finally unearthed, the skeletons of eighteen men and one horse were found at the Palestra Grande, where the gladiators trained. Historians have estimated that there were about four hundred amphitheaters like this throughout the Roman Empire, and as many as eight thousand gladiators died in them each year.

  Finally, of course, Mount Vesuvius is a real volcano that buried Pompeii—and the nearby town of Herculaneum—in the year 79. The volcano has erupted numerous times since then, including in 1872, when the photo that appears here was taken. To this day it is an active volcano, and three million people live a short distance away from it around the Bay of Naples.

  It could blow again at any time.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Courtesy of Dan Gutman

  DAN GUTMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the Genius Files series. He is also the author of the Baseball Card Adventure series, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world, and the My Weird School series, which has sold more than 12 million copies.

  Thanks to his many fans who voted in their classrooms, Dan has received nineteen state book awards and ninety-two state book award nominations. He lives in New York City with his wife, Nina. You can visit him online at www.dangutman.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  BOOKS BY DAN GUTMAN

  The Get Rich Quick Club

  Johnny Hangtime

  Casey Back at Bat

  Rappy the Raptor

  Baseball Card Adventures

  Honus & Me

  Jackie & Me

  Babe & Me

  Shoeless Joe & Me

  Mickey & Me

  Abner & Me

  Satch & Me

  Jim & Me

  Ray & Me

  Roberto & Me

  Ted & Me

  Willie & Me

  The Genius Files

  Mission Unstoppable

  Never Say Genius

  You Only Die Twice

  From Texas with Love

  License to Thrill

  And don’t miss any of the books in the

  My Weird School, My Weird School Daze,

  My Weirder School, and My Weirdest School series!

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  COPYRIGHT

  The author would like to acknowledge the following for use of photographs: Travis Commeau, here; Nina Wallace, here, here, here, here

  FLASHBACK FOUR #3: THE POMPEII DISASTER. Copyright © 2018 by Dan Gutman. All rights reserved undver International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Cover art by Scott Brundage

  Cover design by Catherine San Juan

  * * *

  Digital Edition APRIL 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-237446-2

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-237444-8

  * * *

  1819202122CG/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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