Odds & Ends Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-3132-7

  eISBN 978-1-68335-401-7

  Text and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 Amy Ignatow

  Title page illustrations copyright © 2018 Melissa and JW Buchanan

  Jacket illustrations copyright © 2018 Melissa Manwill

  Jacket and book design by Pamela Notarantonio

  Jacket copyright © 2018 Amulet Books

  Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use.

  Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.

  Amulet Books® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  ABRAMS The Art of Books

  195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007

  abramsbooks.com

  To Susan Van Metre and Maggie Lehrman, who know all my deepest, darkest, secretest grammar mistakes

  THE DAILY WHUT?

  Does anyone find it odd that not one, not two, but eight students from Deborah Read are among the top students in the state? Riiiiiight. I once saw some kids in this town and they are not that bright. I once saw some kids trying to steal the enormous inflatable canvas bear above Melody’s Sandwich Shoppe. It was bolted down with steel cables. COME. ON.

  Now, I’m not saying that every Read student is dumb as a stump. I’m sure that one or two of them have managed the subtle art of breathing through their noses. But eight? EIGHT? Either a huge mistake has been made or there is some shady business happening in Muellersville. Is it so difficult to believe that Principal Jacobs and the parents that happen to work for Auxano would go above and beyond the norm to give their dumb kids an academic advantage?

  When your intrepid investigative blogger was in middle school the kids thought it was funny to give other kids swirlies (putting a kid’s head in a toilet and flushing it). Most kids are just not smart. Am I the only one who sees this?

  Ever questioning,

  The Hammer

  “Farshad!” his mother called. “Come downstairs to talk to your mâdarbozorg!”

  “Mom, I’m busy!”

  Farshad Rajavi wasn’t really busy, but it was the fifth time she’d called him to talk to a relative on the phone since the exam results came back. He’d already spoken to his aunt and uncle in New Jersey, his other aunt in England, his cousin in Texas, his mother’s college roommate in California, and now his grandmother was on the phone from Iran. He was pretty sure his conversation with her would be just like the others. “Congratulations, Farshad, we are so proud of you, you are so famous . . .” Maybe if things had been different he might have actually enjoyed the conversation (well, maybe not with his mother’s college roommate—that was never not going to feel awkward), but he was too preoccupied with worrying over exactly how he had achieved such a high score on the exam. Was he actually smart, or had Dr. Deery’s formula managed to increase his IQ in the same way that it helped that dum-dum Izaak Marcus to get an equally high score? And if he was so smart, he probably could have found a way to break Mr. Friend out of Auxano’s prison. He was also nervous about accidentally crushing his mom’s cell phone by holding it too hard with his thumb.

  “Farshad, you come down here right now!” His mom was using her DO IT NOW voice. Farshad trudged down the stairs and gently took the phone from his mom’s outstretched hand.

  Cookie Parker was lying on her bed not answering her texts. She was not answering her texts because, technically, she hadn’t received any texts, but that was beside the point; the point was that if she were to receive any texts, she had already made the decision that she would not be answering them. She needed to think.

  Thinking, of course, wasn’t as easy as it once was. Before the accident she took for granted her ability to think without having the incredibly boring but loud thoughts of others popping into her head, and now she couldn’t concentrate because her stepdad was downstairs making Jell-O and concentrating reeeeeeeeaaal hard on what was quite possibly the easiest set of directions she could think of.

  Boil water.

  Empty packet of Jell-O into bowl.

  Pour one cup of hot water into bowl.

  Stir.

  Add one cup of room temperature water to mixture.

  Refrigerate.

  Pretty simple, right? But George was thinking, Uh, okay, need a measuring cup. Can I use a large measuring spoon or do I need the glass thing with the spout? But where is that? I know I saw it somewhere at some point. I’ll just use the measuring spoon. But it’s plastic. Should I be putting boiling-hot water into plastic? Is it going to melt on me? Maybe I shouldn’t boil the water all the way. Maybe it should just be warm water? No, the directions say hot water, not warm water . . .

  Cookie couldn’t even be that mad because the only reason her stepfather was making Jell-O in the first place was because she’d made the mistake of telling him that she wasn’t feeling very good, and to George “not feeling very good” meant: KID NEED JELL-O. Fever? NEED JELL-O. Scraped knee? NEED JELL-O. Friends not texting? NEED JELL-O. Sudden onset of mind-reading abilities caused by a spilled mystery chemical during a bus accident? NEED JELL-O.

  (Not that George knew about her newfound ability to read minds—only when people were thinking about directions—but still, she had said she wasn’t feeling well, so, yeah, NEED JELL-O.)

  Given that George’s answer to every medical problem was Jell-O, Cookie would have thought he’d be better at actually making Jell-O.

  Ugh, George, she thought. The glass measuring cup is in the second cabinet with the mixing bowls and the other baking stuff.

  Oh! There it is. Now, where’s the teakettle?

  On the stove, doofus, Cookie thought.

  Right, on the stove!

  Cookie stifled a short gasp. George could hear her thoughts! Was that possible? It was bad enough that she had to listen to his brain try to figure out the intricacies of Jell-O making, but if he could hear her, was nothing she thought private? Was he reading her thoughts RIGHT NOW?!?

  Cookie ran down the stairs and grabbed her sweatshirt on the way to the front door.

  “Cookiepuss?” George asked as she speed-walked by him. “Where are you going?”

  “I . . . uh . . . out.”

  “But you said you weren’t feeling well. I’m making Jell-O!”

  Don’t think. Don’t think. “I was just thinking that some fresh air would do me good. I’ll be back by the time the Jell-O is . . . less liquidy.” Cookie headed out the door, leaving a befuddled George holding a teakettle in one hand, a glass measuring cup in the other.

  “Did you see it?” Jay Carpenter shoved a laptop into Nick Gross’s face. It was Nick’s aunt’s laptop and he was pretty sure that if Jay broke it Jilly would break him. His aunt was short and extremely pregnant, but she was also pretty strong, and Nick suspected that she wouldn’t mind the excuse to hurl Jay into oncoming traffic. A lot of people felt that way about his best friend. Nick was used to it.

  “Jay,” Nick said, trying not to sound too exasperated (not
that Jay would have noticed), “it’s hard to read something that’s being shoved directly into my face.”

  “Right-o.” Jay took a step back and with a flourish placed the laptop on the coffee table in front of Nick. A tab was opened to a Daily Whut? blog post.

  “You’re kidding me with this.”

  “Read it! Read it. Read it read it read it. Read it. Nick. Nick. Nicknicknicknicknick read it read it read it. READ IT.”

  “So you’re saying you want me to read this?”

  “Nick! Read it! He knows. HE KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON AT AUXANO.”

  Nick hunched over to read the article. Jay was right—The Hammer was alarmingly not totally wrong. It was bizarre that eight kids from the same small town had made the highest test scores in the state, and it wasn’t a coincidence that all of those kids had parents who worked at Auxano. But still. Everyone (except Jay) knew that The Hammer was a total kook. “It’s interesting,” Nick admitted.

  “It gives me an idea,” Jay said.

  “Of course it does.”

  “Let’s find The Hammer and tell him our story!”

  “What story?” Jilly asked, waddling in from the kitchen with a large bowl of watermelon chunks.

  “Vittles!” Jay cried, bouncing up and trying to pluck a piece of watermelon from the bowl. Jilly turned to him and let out an alarming snarl. Jay recoiled.

  “Don’t touch a pregnant lady’s snacks,” Molly called from the kitchen.

  “All of that is for you?” Jay asked.

  Jilly let out an audible growl.

  “NEVER QUESTION A PREGNANT LADY’S SNACKS!” Molly yelled.

  Jilly plopped down on the sofa and began to pop watermelon chunks into her mouth. “What story are you talking about?” she asked, eyeing the computer. “Is that my laptop?”

  “Sorry, Jilly,” Nick said, picking up the laptop to hand it to his aunt, and then setting it back down on the coffee table as she made it clear with hand gestures that watermelon holding and eating took precedent over laptop retrieval. “Jay was just reading an article about all the kids at school who aced the exam.”

  “Didn’t you ace the exam, Jay?” Nick’s mom asked, coming down the stairs into Molly and Jilly’s living room. She was still looking a little worse for wear after her stay in the hospital for smoke inhalation, and Nick was trying, and failing, to not look worried every time he saw her.

  “I did, I did,” Jay said, his brow furrowed.

  “That’s wonderful,” Nick’s mom said, settling in on the sofa next to her son and gently tugging the hair on the back of his head, which was Mom-language for You need a haircut. Normally Nick would react by hunching his shoulders and pulling away (because he hated getting haircuts—it was fifteen agonizing minutes of torturous boredom and being forced to stare at himself in a mirror), but he didn’t move. It was just his mom’s way of telling him that she loved him. And he probably needed a haircut.

  “Is it, though?” Jay muttered, staring at the laptop.

  “Of course it’s wonderful,” Nick’s mom said, rolling her eyes a little. “Your parents must be proud. I should call your mom to congratulate her on having such a smart kid.”

  “Oh, she knows,” Jay said. “But how much does she know?”

  “Is Jay not making sense?” Jilly looked up from her half-eaten bowl of watermelon to ask. “Are the not-pregnant people in the room understanding what he’s saying?”

  “Never,” Nick said.

  Jay shot him a look. “Isn’t it time for us to do that thing?”

  “What thing?”

  “The thing where boys run off to talk about private weird teenage-boy things,” Jilly chimed in.

  Nick looked at his mother. “Go, go,” she said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. “Stop looking at me like I’m in danger of collapsing and go.”

  Jay had already grabbed four clementines from the bowl on the kitchen counter and was heading out the door. Nick followed him and they walked down the street in uncharacteristic silence for a few minutes before Jay veered off into the woods. The last time Nick was in those woods he’d had an altercation with some of the Farm Kids, only getting out of it unscathed because Ed the Invisible Bus Driver had pelted them with clumps of dirt. And now Ed was . . . no one knew where Ed was. They’d just left him in the Auxano labs to be dissected by mad scientists.

  Jay grabbed Nick’s hand. “Focus, man,” he said, “you’re shifting again.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be so close to all these trees,” Nick said. “Maybe I should stick to open fields. Forever. So that I don’t accidentally merge into a tree. Or a building. I could live in the desert or something.”

  Jay rolled his eyes. “Hush your absurd face, you were doing much better at controlling your business. Now the question is, can I?”

  “No,” Nick said, “you have never ever been able to control your business.”

  “Now, now, you old gristmill, now is not the time for sarcasm.” Jay seemed genuinely worried, which was a very not-Jay way of being. Nick stifled the urge to wonder aloud why Jay was calling him a gristmill (or what a gristmill even was). There was never a good explanation anyway.

  “So what’s on your mind?” he asked. They were deep in the woods now. Jay looked around theatrically and leaned forlornly on a fallen tree. Despite his Jaylike dramatics, Nick could tell that his best friend was genuinely upset.

  “All right. So what do we know about all the high scorers? What do they all have in common?” Jay asked.

  “They all go to Deborah Read.”

  “Well, duh, my dear boy,” Jay said. He began to pace. “What else?”

  “They’re all human beings.”

  “Again, your powers of observation never fail to astound. All of the high scorers—myself included—have parents who work for Auxano.”

  Nick thought a moment. “Okay, true, but half of the kids at school have at least one parent who works for Auxano. And if you’ve got a parent who works for Auxano it stands to reason that they make you study a lot so you can be smart like them. Like your parents,” he added.

  “Sure, sure,” Jay said, rubbing his hands through his dark blond curls. “Clearly causation does not imply correlation.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Jay stopped pacing and looked up at Nick, his face full of worry and doubt. “What if I’m not actually smart?”

  “What do you mean?” Jay was the smartest kid in the school—everyone knew it, as sure as everyone knew that he was also the weirdest kid in the school (although Martina Saltis could probably give Jay a run for his money—she was just a quieter sort of weird). “Of course you’re smart. About some stuff. Book stuff.”

  “Smart like Izaak Marcus?”

  “What? Izaak Marcus is an idiot.”

  “Of course he is!” Jay nearly shouted. “I once saw him eat a whole jar of pickled eggs on a dare.”

  “I remember that! He barfed everywhere.”

  “Of course he did. Because he’s very stupid. And yet here we are, me and Izaak, both sporting the highest scores on the exam, and both of us with parents who work at Auxano.”

  “Well, yeah, because he was given the formula. There’s no way that he could have scored that high without it.”

  “And . . .” Jay paused. For the first time in their friendship Nick could see that Jay was thinking before he spoke. “And what if he wasn’t the only one who was given the formula?”

  “You think some of the other kids were given it as well?” Nick asked. “Sure. Claire Jones is definitely not that smart.”

  “What if we were all given the formula?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Jay said, his voice quivering a little, “what if my parents gave me the formula? What if they’ve been using me as a lab rat?”

  “What? No.” Nick shook his head. “You’ve always been smart.”

  “Yes, yes,” Jay murmured, still pacing, “yes, and also incredibly handsome, but let’s be objecti
ve here. My parents are scientists. They work at Auxano. I have always been smart, which you could say was a trait I inherited from my brilliant parents. But, BUT, what if I didn’t? What if I was just the first kid to get the formula?”

  Nick blinked a few times. In all the years he’d known Jay—their whole entire lives—he’d never seen his friend have an inkling of self-doubt. Watching him question his own intelligence (something Nick did to himself all the time) was perhaps the most unnerving thing to have happened, and in the past few weeks Nick had been in a bus accident, gained the power to teleport, broken into a lab, and been assaulted by chemically weaponized screaming bunny rabbits. Jay’s self-doubt was, incredibly, somehow worse.

  “No,” Nick said gently, “you know that the formula that messed with the rest of us was only developed a little while ago. You’ve been at the top of the class forever.”

  “Sure. But is it completely beyond belief that my own parents could have been part of the whole project to enhance human potential from the start? Who is to say that they haven’t been using me as guinea pig the whole time?”

  “Jay . . .”

  “What if I’m not who I think I am? What if I’ve been genetically engineered to be an incredibly handsome genius? And if that’s the case, who would I have been otherwise?”

  “Jay, stop.” Nick stood up and put his hands on Jay’s slight shoulders. “First of all, I don’t think that your parents are some mad scientists who used their own son in their experiments. If they did, they’d probably pay more attention to you.”

  Jay thought a moment. “You know what, old saucer? You have a point. What’s the second thing?”

  “Second,” Nick continued, “even if your parents did do something to you, there’s no going back. You’re still you.”

  Jay let out a sigh and then straightened up. “You know,” he said with a bit of the old Jay Carpenter twinkle in his eye, “you’re smarter than you look.”

  “I’m choosing to ignore that.”

  Cookie was as unnerved as Martina was calm as they walked to the woods that connected the neighborhood to the school. “Did you hear me?” she asked, incredulous despite the fact that she had specifically aimed to get Martina’s attention.