The Smartest Kid in the Universe Read online

  THIS IS NOW A JANITOR-FREE SCHOOL!

  KINDLY CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESSES AND TAKE ALL TRASH, GARBAGE, AND RECYCLABLES HOME WITH YOU.

  A smiling Heath Huxley, his perfectly proportioned teeth shining like a white picket fence, stepped out of the principal’s office and stroked his sleek black mane.

  “That’s him,” whispered Kojo. “Heath Huxley. Real estate tycoon.”

  “Let’s go say hello,” Grace whispered back.

  The trio hurried up the corridor.

  “Hello, Miss Garcia,” said Mrs. Malvolio.

  “Hello, Mrs. Malvolio.”

  “We were just talking about you.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Huxley, stroking his chin and studying Grace as if she were a bug on the wall that he didn’t quite know how to squish. “You’re the brainy one. Patricia told me all about you. Congratulations.”

  Mrs. Malvolio fiddled with her chunky necklace. “So, Grace, have you put together your Quiz Bowl team?”

  “Almost.”

  “I’m on board,” said Kojo.

  “Excellent,” the principal said with a sly smile and a flickering series of eyelash flutters. “Perhaps Mr. McQuade here could be your third teammate.”

  Jake was about to say he might do it if Mrs. Malvolio rehired the janitor. But with a quick look, Grace told him not to.

  “I’m, you know, thinking about it” was all Jake said.

  “Wonderful,” said Mrs. Malvolio, stifling a giggle. “Have a good day, children. And if you’re late to class, don’t worry about it. Take time to smell the roses…and whatever else might be rotting in the hallways.”

  Then Mrs. Malvolio and Mr. Huxley turned to walk away.

  “That boy is a lazy fool,” Jake heard Mrs. Malvolio whisper to her uncle. “This is so perfect….”

  Jake was about to protest when Grace put her hand on his arm.

  It felt nice.

  “Don’t worry about what she says. We don’t want Mrs. Malvolio to know how smart you’ve become. Not yet. If she does, she might try to sabotage all of us.”

  “What would be her reasoning?” asked Jake.

  “When we win the Quiz Bowl, we’ll also be showing the world that Riverview Middle School has a resident genius….”

  “You?”

  “No, Jake—you. If the people in charge see that a student like you can come out of a place like this, maybe they won’t let those two creeps tear us down.”

  “What about me?” said Kojo. “You think Mrs. Malvolio’s afraid of me, too?”

  “She should be,” said Jake. “Because you’re not only smart, you’re the detective who is going to learn the truth about what those two are plotting.”

  Kojo grinned at his friend. “Who loves ya, baby?”

  “You?”

  “That’s right, Jake. The three of us? We’re like the Avengers or something. We’re gonna save this school!”

  “So, Jake, will you be on our team?” said Grace.

  Jake’s cell phone thrummed. He checked the screen. Haazim Farooqi had just hit him up with a text:

  Operation FRIJOL DE JALEA is complete. See you after school.

  Jake figured frijol de jalea was Spanish for “jelly bean.” (He still couldn’t read or speak Spanish. He just recognized the word frijol from the refried beans on the menu at his mom’s favorite Mexican restaurant.)

  “Maybe,” said Jake. “Probably. We’ll see. I need to do some stuff at home this weekend. If that works out, then yeah. You know, maybe.”

  Grace rolled her eyes and walked away, muttering something under her breath in Spanish.

  Jake had no idea what she was saying.

  But he sure wished he did.

  He really, really, really needed Farooqi’s frijol de jalea.

  When the final bell rang, Jake and Kojo bolted for the exit.

  On the bus ride downtown to Warwick College, they both fired off quick texts to their moms explaining where they were (emergency basketball practice).

  “Here it is!” said Farooqi. He was in his subbasement lab holding up a small plastic bag with one speckled purple jelly bean sealed inside. “As requested, this’ll help you understand and speak Spanish. I think.”

  “You think?” said Jake.

  “There are no guarantees when you’re pushing the outer limits of science as I’m attempting to do. I’m conjuring up magic here, fellas. Put on your patience pants. It took me all week to cook up this one jelly bean. I had to tweak the growth factors.”

  “The what?” said Kojo.

  Jake turned to his friend. “Learning happens when brain cells make new connections. The strength of these connections is enhanced by a group of proteins in the brain called growth factors.”

  “He’s absolutely right,” said Farooqi.

  “Of course he is,” muttered Kojo. “He ate all the jelly beans. Didn’t save any for me…”

  Jake shrugged. “I didn’t know they were smart pills when I ate them.”

  “Specific growth factors,” said Farooqi, cutting off Kojo and Jake, “such as BDNF, a member of the neurotrophin family, encourage the growth of new neurons and synapses.”

  Now even Jake was staring at Farooqi.

  “So that’s your secret sauce?” said Kojo. “BDNF? What’s it stand for? Brain diesel fuel?”

  “You forgot the ‘N,’ ” said Jake.

  “Yeah. I couldn’t come up with anything good for it….Thought ‘nuclear’ would be too much…”

  “ ‘BDNF’ stands for ‘brain-derived neurotrophic factor,’ ” explained Farooqi. “And, yes, manipulating those proteins is the key to my research.”

  “Works for me,” said Kojo. “Go for it, baby.”

  Jake nodded. Farooqi carefully peeled open the plastic bag’s tiny zip top. He extracted the speckled purple jelly bean with a pair of stainless-steel tweezers. He glanced at the dive watch on the wrist of his free hand.

  “Subject One is ingesting Spanish booster at four-oh-two p.m.,” he said out loud. “I guess I should’ve turned on my recorder before I said that.”

  “I’ll write it down for you,” said Kojo.

  “Thank you. Jake?”

  Jake held out his hand. Farooqi dropped the jelly bean into his palm. Jake closed his eyes and popped the pellet into his mouth.

  “Mmmmm. Tastes like Dr Pepper.”

  “I borrowed the idea from Jelly Bellys,” Farooqi admitted.

  “How long till Jake starts speaking Spanish?” asked Kojo.

  “How long did it take after your first dose to feel the effects?” asked Farooqi.

  “I don’t know. Ten minutes? I was riding home on the bus….”

  “Then go!” said Farooqi. “Quick. Do it again. There might’ve been something about the stomach agitation generated by the bus ride that stimulated the chemical’s rapid entry into your bloodstream and your remarkable results. Anything is possible when pursuing the impossible!”

  Kojo and Jake grabbed their backpacks and headed for the door.

  Farooqi dug an index card out of his lab coat.

  “Llámame,” he read off the card, “cuando empieces a hablar español.”

  “Huh?” said Jake.

  “My friend Polo taught me how to say that,” Farooqi explained. “It means, ‘Call me when you start speaking Spanish’!”

  “I need to hop off,” said Jake when the bus was two stops away from his apartment building. “I want to procure some provisions.”

  “Huh?”

  “Foodstuffs.”

  “Oh. You mean you’re going grocery shopping?”

  “Yeah. Sorry about my word choice. But I suddenly have an urge to whip up a feast of hot and cold appetizers for Mom and Emma.”

  “Before you do,” said Kojo, “can you read tha
t poster?” He gestured toward a print ad for Roach Motel written in Spanish above the rear exit door.

  “Sure,” said Jake. “ ‘Las cucarachas entran, pero no pueden salir.’ ”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Basically, it means, ‘Roaches check in, but they don’t check out.’ ”

  Kojo’s eyes lit up. “You can speak Spanish! The purple jelly bean worked.”

  “Not yet,” said Jake. “I just remember the classic Roach Motel slogan that, apparently, the poster is attempting to repurpose for a Latinx audience. Catch you later, Kojo!”

  Jake bounded off the bus.

  Since he had the credit card his mother gave him “for groceries only,” he zipped through the aisles of the cramped market and grabbed everything he knew he needed to create Spanish tapas!

  Once home, he flew into a frenzy of slicing, dicing, and broiling.

  “What are you doing?” asked Emma.

  “Making dinner for us.”

  “Tapas?”

  “Yeah. Pan tumaca con jamón, or tomatoes and ham on toasted bread, a Spanish omelet, plus some prawns with chorizo for me and Mom; olives, cheeses, vegan meatballs, and patatas bravas covered with a spicy sauce for vegetarian you.”

  “ ‘Patatas bravas’ means ‘spicy or fierce potatoes,’ ” said Emma, dipping her finger in the sauce to give it the quick-lick taste test.

  “Really?” said Jake, realizing he still didn’t understand Spanish, even if he did now know how to cook Spanish food better than the kids on MasterChef Junior.

  When Jake’s mother got home from work, she was so impressed by the gourmet meal that greeted her, she didn’t ask anything about how much it cost.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “And what have you done with my son?”

  Jake grinned.

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying dinner.”

  “So where’d you learn to cook like this?” his mom asked when she finally pushed back from the table. Her plates held nothing but a few crispy crumbs.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “Probably TV,” said Emma. “There are a lot of cooking shows on TV, and Jake watches a lot of TV.”

  “Yeah,” said Jake. “I used to.”

  “Well, hon, I like this new you. You even made your bed this morning.”

  “I guess it’s like Admiral William McRaven, the former head of the US Special Operations Command, said in a 2014 commencement speech, ‘If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.’ ”

  Jake’s mom smiled and stared at him.

  “I ask again: Who are you?”

  Jake laughed. “I’m still me, Mom,” he told her (silently adding sort of in his head).

  But it felt good.

  Having his mom beaming at him with pride.

  “Well, this was such a treat,” said Mom. “This food was better than anything you could possibly find at the top tapas restaurants in Barcelona.”

  “You mean ‘Barthelona,’ ” said Jake. “In the variety of Spanish spoken in Catalonia, where, of course, Barthelona is located, it is pronounced ‘Barthelona.’ ”

  “Thank you, Jake. I did not know that. I also did not know that, since you’re such an expert on Spanish, you can now help Emma with her homework—instead of me.” And then she speared a bite of patatas bravas from Emma’s plate and popped it into her mouth. “Delicious, hon. Thanks again.”

  “Sí,” said Emma. “Muy delicioso y considerado de tu parte, Jake.”

  And Jake still had no idea what she was saying.

  After dinner, Jake went to his room and called Farooqi.

  “This is Subject One,” he said.

  “Greetings, Subject One!” said Farooqi. “What’s the report?”

  “Failure to launch.”

  “The purple jelly bean didn’t work?”

  “Not the way we wanted it to. But my mom sure enjoyed my newfound mastery of Spanish cuisine. I also know some obscure historical trivia about Spain, the Spanish Armada, and, for some reason, Spaniels.”

  “Remarkable,” said Farooqi. “But still no language skills?”

  “Nada.”

  “That’s Spanish! You just spoke Spanish.”

  “Everybody knows ‘nada’ means ‘nothing.’ It’s been in movies.”

  “Okay, okay. I need to tweak the formula. Maybe lose the Dr Pepper flavoring. That might’ve thrown things off. Or not. It’s a possibility. Sort of. I should’ve written the formula down somewhere….”

  “You don’t know what you gave me?”

  “I did. But then, when everything was bubbling in the test tube, I had a brainstorm. I added a secret ingredient.”

  “What was it?”

  “I can’t tell you, Jake. It’s a secret.”

  “But you added it to the formula, right? You wrote it down?”

  “No, Jake. I was having a brainstorm. You don’t waste time writing things down when there’s a storm raging in your brain!”

  “Are all scientists as absentminded as you, Mr. Farooqi?”

  “No. Only the good ones. Sir Isaac Newton. Nikola Tesla. Albert Einstein. Haazim Farooqi.”

  “That’s you.”

  “I know. I’ll be in touch.”

  Jake hung up. There was a knock on his door.

  It was Emma.

  “Can you help me? I’m having trouble with my verbs.”

  “Ah, yes. Verbs. A word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence that forms the main part of the predicate in a sentence. To run. To sprint. To dart. To dash. To scuttle…”

  “These are Spanish verbs.”

  “Okay. Hopefully they still describe an action, et cetera.”

  “I don’t know when to use ‘ser’ and when to use ‘estar.’ ”

  And neither did Jake.

  “Hold that thought, Emma,” he told his little sister. “Help is on the way.”

  And then he made another phone call. To Grace.

  * * *

  —

  Grace, who had already finished her homework, came over right away. Jake’s mother offered her dessert.

  “Would you like one of the torrejas Jake made for dinner? They’re very cinnamony. Like Spanish French toast!”

  “No thank you, Ms. McQuade.”

  “Call me Michelle. You kids have fun. I need another torreja….”

  Mom went back to the kitchen. Grace and Jake went to Emma’s room, where Emma was frowning at a Spanish-language worksheet. Jake watched in amazement as Grace clearly explained the difference between the two verbs.

  “They both mean ‘is.’ But use ‘ser’ for something that’s permanent—like your black hair. Use ‘estar’ for something that can change—like your confusion about these two verbs. For instance, if you want to say ‘I’m in love with you,’ you’d use the first-person singular form of ‘estar’—‘estoy’—because that’s something that can change. Over time. The more you get to know someone…”

  Jake started tugging at his shirt collar. Emma’s bedroom was amazingly toasty all of a sudden. Like the radiator was overheating.

  Grace drilled Emma on a series of sample sentences. Emma caught on quickly. Thirty minutes later, she hugged Grace and then she hugged Jake.

  “Thanks for having such smart friends,” she said. “Thanks, Grace!”

  “De nada, Emma,” said Grace.

  And Jake actually understood what she meant.

  “Thanks for coming over,” Jake told Grace.

  “My pleasure. It’s really hard to learn on your own. We all need help.”

  True, thought Jake. And some of us also need jelly beans.

&n
bsp; “I’d better head home,” Grace announced. “I took the bus.”

  “Let me walk you to the stop.”

  Jake and Grace rode the elevator down to the lobby. That made Jake all kinds of nervous. He tried to will the sweat glands in his armpits to take a break.

  They didn’t listen.

  His brain wasn’t that good.

  “You really speak Spanish beautifully,” he told Grace, his voice cracking slightly.

  “Thanks. My mom and dad came to America from Cuba. We still speak Spanish in my house…and English, of course.”

  “I’m better with English.”

  They exited the building and headed up the block.

  “You know, Jake,” said Grace, “if you really want to understand and speak Spanish, you could just study Spanish.”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that works. For some people.”

  “So how’d you get so smart so fast if you didn’t study?”

  “Um…”

  For some reason—maybe embarrassment, maybe because he was afraid she wouldn’t believe him—Jake wasn’t ready to tell Grace the truth. About Haazim Farooqi. About the jelly beans. About any of it.

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “It just sort of happened….Hey, do you know why we’re called the Riverview Pirates? Because—BOOM!—I just figured it out.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?”

  “Either that or a synapse in my brain just got a fresh shot of BDNF.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. But that pirate you told us about, Captain Dog Breath, he was chased upriver by the British, the same guys who defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. Legend has it Dog Breath docked his ship very close to where our school now stands.”

  Grace stared into Jake’s eyes. Like she was sizing him up. Seeing if she could trust him with what she said next.

  “The boat that docked near where the school stands today wasn’t Dog Breath’s El Perro Apestoso.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “ ‘The Stinky Dog.’ ”

  “Cool.”

  “It was a rowboat piloted by the ship’s Cubano cabin boy, Eduardo Leones. He found a cave. A place to hide the ship’s treasure so the British couldn’t seize it. He also didn’t want Dog Breath to find it, because the evil captain had made Eduardo’s father, Angel Vengador Leones, the real captain of the pirate ship, walk the plank after an ugly mutiny.”