8 In or Out

Chapter 8 In or Out As soon as they were safely away from the burning school, Bones pulled the twins out of sight, into the woods behind the playground. He tugged at his big bushy beard, and it came off in his hand. He pulled off his mustache. Then he reached under his shirt and tore away a thick piece of foam that had been wrapped around his stomach to make him look like an extremely fat man. Bones was actually skinny! "Guess I won't be needing this stuff anymore," he said, tossing his disguise aside. Underneath it all, Bones looked pretty much like a regular guy. It was an amazing transformation.

他们一安全离开着火的学校，骨头就把这对双胞胎拉到操场后面的树林里去了。 他拽了拽他那又大又浓密的胡子，胡子在他手里掉了下来。 他把胡子刮掉了。 然后，他把手伸到衬衫下面，撕开了裹在他肚子上的一块厚厚的泡沫，这块泡沫使他看起来像一个超级胖的人。 骨头真的很瘦！“我想我再也不需要这些东西了，”他说，把伪装扔到一边。 在这一切之下，骨头看起来和普通人没什么两样。 这是一个惊人的转变。

"You mean to say you've been wearing a fat suit and pretending to be a mute the whole school year?" Pep asked him. "Why?" "Because I knew this day would finally come," Bones said. "It's a long story." The fire department did its best to get the blaze under control, but it was hopeless. By the time the fire was completely extinguished, there wasn't much left to save. It didn't look like there was going to be school come September. Not at West Marin Middle School, anyway. The police were relieved to find that there were no bodies in the rubble. No students or teachers had been in the building when the fire started. At least that's what they told the news media. The detectives had no idea that the McDonald twins had been trapped inside the whole time. Mrs. Higgins, the health teacher, was long gone. Coke and Pep McDonald had a lot of questions for Bones, the first one pretty obvious: "Why would our health teacher try to kill us?"

“你是说你整个学年都穿着肥大的西装，装哑巴？”佩普问他。 “为什么?”“因为我知道这一天终将到来，”Bones说。 “说来话长。”消防部门尽了最大的努力控制火势，但毫无希望。 当火完全熄灭时，已经没有什么可救的了。 看起来九月份不像是要开学了。 至少在西马林中学没有。 警察发现瓦砾中没有尸体，松了一口气。 火灾发生时，没有学生或老师在大楼里。 至少他们是这么告诉新闻媒体的。 侦探们不知道麦当劳双胞胎一直被困在里面。 健康课老师希金斯太太早就走了。 可口可乐和佩普麦当劳有很多问题要问骨头，第一个问题很明显：“为什么我们的健康老师要杀我们？”

Bones was evasive. He told the twins he had been keeping an eye on Mrs. Higgins ever since they'd both been hired back in September. He suspected that she was up to something, but he didn't know what she was going to do or when she was going to do it. "Are you going to arrest her?" Pep asked. "She's probably just a paid assassin," replied Bones. "I want to find out who's doing the paying. And besides, I'm not a cop. I can't arrest anybody." "Then who are you?" Coke demanded. "What's going on? Why is all of this happening to us? We have the right to know. We didn't do anything wrong." "Yeah," agreed Pep. "That's the second time somebody tried to kill us in two days. And it wasn't Mrs. Higgins the first time. The first time it was some dudes wearing black suits and bowler hats." "Come with me," Bones told the twins. "I'll tell you as much as I'm allowed."

骨头闪烁其词。他告诉这对双胞胎，自从他们9月份被雇用以来，他一直在关注希金斯太太。 他怀疑她在做什么，但他不知道她要做什么，也不知道她打算什么时候做。 “你要逮捕她吗？”Pep问道。 “她可能只是个受雇的刺客，”骨头回答。 “我想知道是谁在付钱。 再说，我又不是警察。 我不能逮捕任何人。”“那你是谁？”可口可乐要求。 “发生了什么事？”为什么这一切都发生在我们身上？ 我们有权利知道。 我们没有做错任何事。” “是的，”佩普同意道。“这是两天内第二次有人想杀我们。 而且这也不是希金斯太太第一次。 第一次是一些穿着黑色西装、头戴圆顶礼帽的家伙。” “跟我来，”骨头对双胞胎说。 “我会尽可能多地告诉你。”

They walked around the corner to Bones's car, an old Ford with a nice variety of dents on the front and back fenders. The guy was either a lousy driver or... no, he was just a lousy driver. With some reluctance, Coke and Pep got into the backseat. Individually, neither one of them would have set foot inside that car. Together, they felt safer. If Bones tried anything funny, at least they had him outnumbered. Bones drove about a mile to a strip mall the twins had been to many times because their favorite Chinese restaurant was there. He pulled the car around to the back where there were some Dumpsters and wooden pallets leaning against the wall. Bones stopped at an unmarked garage door and got out of the car. "What is this, your supersecret spy headquarters?" Coke asked. "You might say that," he replied. Pep took Coke's hand so they couldn't be separated. Bones wasn't a complete stranger, but all the same she felt uneasy following him

他们拐过街角，来到骨头的车旁，那是一辆老福特，前后挡泥板上都有各种各样的凹痕。 那家伙要么是个差劲的司机，要么…… 不，他只是个差劲的司机。 可口可乐和佩普不太情愿地坐到了后排。 单独来看，他们俩都不会踏进那辆车。 在一起，他们感到更安全。 如果骨头想耍什么花招，至少他们在数量上超过了他。 骨头开了大约一英里的车，来到了一对双胞胎经常光顾的一家商业街，因为他们最喜欢的中国餐馆就在那里。 他把车开到后面，那里有一些垃圾箱和靠在墙上的木托盘。 骨头在一扇没有标记的车库门前停了下来，下了车。 “这是什么，你的超级秘密间谍总部吗？”可口可乐问道。 “你可以这么说，”他回答。 佩普拉着可口可乐的手，这样他们就分不开了。 骨头并不是一个完全陌生的人，但她跟着他还是感到很不自在

around. For all she knew, maybe it was Bones who was actually trying to kill them. Maybe this was all an elaborate trap, and they were walking right into it. Coke had no such concerns. "Do you have cool doors that slide open and go whoosh, like in spy movies?" he asked. "Not exactly," Bones replied. He reached down and yanked on the old garage door until it opened with a wrenching squeak. "You oughta oil that thing," Coke said as he walked inside the garage and looked around. "Hurry!" Bones urged Pep. "Whoever is trying to kill you may be following us. They may try to burn down the place, just like they burned down the school." "All right," Pep demanded. "What's going on? We want some answers." "Okay. Do the letters T G F mean anything to you?" Bones asked after Pep had stepped inside. He pulled down the door behind her.

周围。据她所知，也许是骨头真的想杀了他们。 也许这是一个精心设计的陷阱，而他们正走进去。 可口可乐没有这样的担忧。 他问道：“你们有没有像间谍电影里那样，滑动打开并发出嗖嗖声的酷门？” “不完全是，”骨头回答。 他伸手猛拉那扇旧车库的门，直到它发出一声刺耳的吱吱声打开。 “你应该给那东西加油，”科克边说边走进车库，环顾四周。 “快点!”骨头催促佩普。“想杀你的人可能在跟踪我们。 他们可能会试图烧毁这个地方，就像他们烧毁学校一样。” “好吧，”佩普要求道。 “发生了什么事？”我们需要一些答案。” “好吧。你对T G F这两个字母有什么印象吗？”佩普走进去后，骨头问道。 他在她身后把门拉了下来。

"No clue." "T G F!" Coke exclaimed. "Yeah! That was the last thing that lady Mya said to us before we jumped off the cliff!" "That's right!" Pep said. "And then she got hit by a dart and collapsed." "T G F stands for The Genius Files," Bones began. "It's a top secret government program. I work for TGF. Mya is one of us. Or was, I should say, before they got to her. Mrs. Higgins used to be with TGF too. Now, it appears, she has a different agenda. She must be working for somebody else." Bones told the McDonald twins all about Dr. Herman Warsaw and what had happened to him on 9/11. How he'd stepped outside for a cigarette; and as the plane crashed into the Pentagon, he'd come up with the idea of enlisting the smartest kids in the country to solve the world's problems. But somewhere along the way, that genius plan seemed to have gone off the tracks.

“不知道。”“不！”可口可乐喊道。 “是啊!这是米亚女士在我们跳下悬崖之前对我们说的最后一句话！”“没错!”Pep说。 “然后她被飞镖击中，昏倒了。” “T G F代表天才档案，”Bones开始说。 “这是一个绝密的政府项目。 我在TGF工作。米亚是我们中的一员。 或者，我应该说，在他们抓到她之前。 希金斯太太以前也是TGF的。 现在看来，她有了不同的计划。 她一定是在为别人工作。” 骨头告诉麦克唐纳的双胞胎所有关于博士。 赫尔曼·华沙以及911事件中他的遭遇。 他是如何走出去抽根烟的；当飞机撞向五角大楼时，他想出了一个主意，招募这个国家最聪明的孩子来解决世界上的问题。 但在这个过程中，这个天才计划似乎偏离了轨道。