7 “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough”

Chapter 7 "DON'T STOP 'TIL YOU GET ENOUGH" Coke frantically pulled the T-shirt over his head and angrily stuffed it into a garbage can. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" he muttered. "How could we have been so stupid as to trust that lady? Mrs. Higgins is insane. She always has been. I should have known!" "I really thought she had changed," Pep said as she put her Cubs shirt into the same trash can. "She seemed so sad when she was talking about Dr. Warsaw. And she sounded so sincere when she was telling us how unhappy she was working as a paid assassin." "Sincere?" Coke sputtered. "She played us for fools." "Do you think she was really in love with Dr.

Warsaw? Do you think she was really going to marry him?" Pep asked. "Or was that a lie too?" "Who knows?" Coke replied. "The two of them were made for each other. They're both psychos." The twins debated whether or not Mrs. Higgins could be working together with Archie Clone, but they were interrupted when Coke's cell phone rang. As expected, it was their dad. "Are you kids okay?" Dr. McDonald asked urgently. "Why did you say there was a bomb in the Cubs dugout? Are you crazy?" "Yes, we're okay," Coke replied. "I don't know why we said there was a bomb in the Cubs dugout. Maybe we are crazy." Dr. McDonald instructed the twins to meet him at a parking lot on North Sheffield Avenue, and hung up abruptly. It took the twins awhile to retrace their steps and find the location. When they did, their father was leaning against the side of the RV, hands on hips. Never a good sign. "If it was so important for you to leave the game

early, you could have just said so," Dr. McDonald said sternly. "You didn't have to have them evacuate the whole ballpark." "That wasn't it, Dad!" Pep replied. "Really! We would never do something like that." "Then why did you do it?" Pep looked at her brother, who was always better in situations like this. "Dad," he began, "would you believe me if I said our health teacher Mrs. Higgins works for the Cubs now, and she told us that singing the last line of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' would trigger a bomb in the Cubs dugout? Dad, she put a gun to our heads and forced us to sing it." "No," said Dr. McDonald. "I wouldn't believe that." "What if we told you it was a chocolate gun?" added Pep. "That was a very dangerous stunt!" their father scolded them. "People could have been killed running for the exits like that!" "But if there really was a bomb in the Cubs

dugout," Coke explained, "people really would have been killed!" "But there was no bomb in the dugout!" Dr. McDonald shouted. "You did it for no reason at all!" He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, which is what parents do for some reason when their kids do incomprehensibly dumb things. They climbed into the RV and headed downtown on Michigan Avenue, where Mrs. McDonald had arranged to meet them. She was waiting when they pulled over to the curb across the street from Millennium Park. "So how was the game?" Mrs. McDonald said cheerfully as she climbed into the front seat with a shopping bag. None of them, not even Dr. McDonald, particularly wanted to go over what had happened at Wrigley Field. "It was very exciting, Mom," Coke finally said. "That must have been cool, seeing your names up on the video screen," Mrs. McDonald said. "Was

it fun singing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game'? That was my idea." "It was a unique experience, Mom," Pep said diplomatically. Dr. McDonald shook his head slightly and snorted to himself as he put the RV into gear. The streets were busy, but he managed to merge onto Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago Skyway—Route 90. It was late afternoon by this time. Mrs. McDonald punched their location into the GPS. She did some rough calculations in her head as they left Chicago. It was June 26. They were about seven hundred miles from Washington, and they hoped to get there at least one day early to explore the capital before Aunt Judy's wedding on July Fourth. So they had about seven days to travel seven hundred miles. About a hundred miles a day. That was reasonable.

Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/). Click Get Directions. In the A box, type Chicago IL. In the B box, type Gary IN. Click Get Directions. They were making good time, and Dr. McDonald relaxed a little behind the wheel, brainstorming about his next book. Maybe I should write a biography, he said to himself. I've never done a biography. I could write about a historical figure. Maybe a president. People like to read biographies of presidents… Dr. and Mrs. McDonald were both thankful that up until this point, they hadn't encountered any of the typical road trip calamities—lost wallets, mechanical failures, kids getting poison ivy, and so on. (Little did they know that so far their children