11 Dreaming Happy Dreams

Chapter 11 DREAMING HAPPY DREAMS Coke and Pep didn't know what to think anymore. After his marriage to Aunt Judy in Washington, Dr. Warsaw had vowed that he was going to get them, but there had been no attempt on their lives since then. Mrs. Higgins could have easily harmed them at Luray Caverns, but she didn't. The bowler dudes could have finished them off at the Jousting Hall of Fame but didn't lay a hand on them. Maybe Bones and Mya had been right. Maybe nobody was trying to kill them anymore. By this time, it was late afternoon. Dr. McDonald was determined to make it through the state of Virginia and stop for the night at a campground somewhere near the state line. He

stayed on rural roads heading south out of Mount Solon until he was able to merge on I-81 and push the RV to seventy miles per hour. They were making good time. Soon they passed the exit for Lexington, Virginia. "Hey, you'll never believe what they have in Lexington!" Mrs. McDonald said, paging through her guidebook. "What?" everyone asked. "Stonewall Jackson's grave!" she replied. "Not just his arm. His real gravesite!" "You're kidding me!" Coke exclaimed. "For real?" "Yes, and his stuffed horse, Little Sorrel, is in Lexington too," Mrs. McDonald said. "We should go!" Pep exclaimed. In the driver's seat, Dr. McDonald rolled his eyes. Soon it would be dark out, and the thought of driving to the next exit and finding his way back to Lexington didn't appeal to him. Besides, a grave is a grave. To him, the location of a person's remains was not as

important as the location where they lived their life, where they achieved their accomplishments. "I wish somebody had mentioned that before we passed the Lexington exit," he announced. "There might not be another exit for miles. I don't want to go back now." "That's not fair, Ben!" protested Mrs. McDonald. "When we were near the gravesite of Stonewall Jackson's arm, you said you didn't want to go because it was just his arm. You said you'd go if it was the gravesite of his whole body! And now we get to the gravesite of his whole body and you don't want to go there either." "But it's not the gravesite of his whole body," Dr. McDonald replied. "It's missing an arm." "Ben, that's not fair!" Coke laughed, but Pep just listened in silence, worried. Her parents had certainly been arguing a lot lately. Usually they got along pretty well. Maybe they had just been pretending all

that time. Maybe being cooped up together in this RV for so long had brought out the problems in their relationship. Maybe they really didn't love each other. Maybe they were going to get a divorce. A foul mood settled over the family as they drove south on I-81. Mrs. McDonald had been planning to stop off in a town called Natural Bridge to visit the Virginia Safari Park. But now she was afraid to even bring it up. She turned on the radio to break up the awkward silence. "Next month is Elvis Month," boomed the DJ, "as we celebrate the life and remember the tragic passing of The King. But I just can't wait, so here's a little taste of Elvis right now...." "Blue Suede Shoes" blasted out of the speakers. Pep was only half listening to the radio, but suddenly her eyebrows went up and her eyes opened wide. She reached for her pad and rifled through the pages until she found her notes on the cipher that she had been trying so hard to

solve. LEVEL VIS I Of course! She fiddled with the letters for just a few moments, then wrote something down. Then she punched Coke in the shoulder and whispered in his ear, "I got it!" "You got what?" She showed him what she had written. ELVIS LIVE "LEVEL VIS I is ELVIS LIVE," she whispered excitedly. "It's so simple! I don't know why I didn't see it before." "Yeah, but what does ELVIS LIVE mean?" "It wasn't any secret message directed at us," Pep told him. "It was probably just an ad for some Elvis impersonator show! They must have mixed up the letters." "But why would they put an ad for an Elvis impersonator show at the end of the fireworks?" Coke asked. "Who knows? Who cares?" said Pep. "What

matters is that Bones and Mya were right. Nobody is trying to kill us anymore. Not Dr. Warsaw. Not the bowler dudes. Not Mrs. Higgins. And certainly not Archie Clone. It's all over. We're in the clear!" It was nighttime when the McDonalds finally pulled into Paradise Lake and Campground just north of Danville, Virginia. They had a quick bite to eat, and then the twins got ready for bed. They had made it almost all the way through the state of Virginia. There had been no attempts on their lives since Archie Clone had tried to drop them on the Washington Monument. For the first time in a long time, Coke and Pep felt totally secure. They slept soundly, dreaming happy dreams and looking forward to the rest of the summer and the rest of their carefree lives. They had no idea that terrible, horrible, violent things were about to start happening to them. And one of them, of course, was going to involve a shredder.