22 Accidents Happen

Chapter 22 ACCIDENTS HAPPEN You're probably getting a little impatient, maybe even a little angry, by now. On the first page of this book, you were told—you were promised—that Coke was going to be thrown into a giant shredder. So far, we have encountered no shredder. Not a shred of a shredder. You have every right to be mad. Promises should be kept. But trust me, dear reader. Your patience will be rewarded. Soon. Interstate 20 starts close to the gas station where the twins met up with Bones and Mya. It cuts all the way across the state of South Carolina and doesn't end until it reaches West Texas. The highway looked like it stretched ahead

to infinity, so Pep pulled out the cipher she had been puzzling over ever since she received it that morning. OGO THT LEV INI RGO OM It looked so easy, but she couldn't seem to crack it. Then, as they were driving through Lee State Park near Bishopville, South Carolina, she figured it out. Pep noticed that when the first four letters—OGOT—were reversed, it spelled out TOGO. TOGO very probably meant TO GO, which possibly meant GO TO. "Go to" would be an obvious way to start a message. So if reversing the first two letters made sense, and reversing the next pair of letters made sense, what would happen if she reversed all the pairs of letters after that? She wrote it out in her notebook.... GOT OTH ELI VIN GRO OM "Go to the living room!" Pep shouted. "What are you talking about?" her father said

from the driver's seat. "It's an RV. We don't even have a living room." "Uh, nothing, Dad," Pep said. "I was just having a dream or something." She leaned over to show Coke how she had figured out the cipher. "Go to the living room?" Coke whispered. "What's that supposed to mean?" "Beats me." As the highway unrolled endlessly in front of them, each person in the family was deep in thought. Pep tried to figure out what "go to the living room" meant. Coke was trying to figure out how he would be able to use the fireworks he had purchased as weapons without hurting anyone in his family. Mrs. McDonald was trying to think of a way to convince the rest of the family to visit the Button Museum, which was right nearby. Yes, it's a museum about buttons. Look it up if you don't believe me.

And Dr. McDonald was thinking about his next book. He had to admit that the last one he had written, The Impact of Coal on the Industrial Revolution, had been a bomb. Oh, it sold a few thousand copies and received some nice reviews in scholarly journals. But hardly anybody had read it. He wanted to write something that millions of people would read. Working as a university professor was rewarding, but what he really wanted was to see his name on the bestseller list. "I was thinking that I should try something more commercial next time," he announced to nobody in particular. "I should write a biography

of somebody really famous." "I thought you had already decided that you were going to write a biography of Herbert Hoover, dear," said Mrs. McDonald. He was going to write a biography of President Hoover. But that was before they visited the Hoover Historical Center in North Canton, Ohio, and found out it was the home of the guy who owned the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Company. "I changed my mind," he replied. "Nobody cares about Herbert Hoover. Even I don't care about Herbert Hoover." Soon they started seeing road signs for Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Stomachs had started rumbling. It would be a good time to stop for lunch. Mrs. McDonald decided not to mention the Button Museum to the rest of the family. She had another idea. "Take exit 73A, Ben," she said. "It's coming up on the right." "What's there?" he asked.

"Trust me." She directed him into the heart of the city, until they reached Taylor Street. He pulled into the parking lot of the AgFirst Farm Credit Bank. And there it was, right in the middle of the parking lot. "Behold!" announced Mrs. McDonald with a sweep of her arm. "What is it?" asked Pep. "What do you think it is?" said her mother. "It's the largest fire hydrant in the world!" "You gotta be kidding me," said Coke. But Coke's mother wasn't kidding. Oh sure, there's a twenty-five-foot fire hydrant in Beaumont, Texas, and a twenty-nine-foot fire hydrant in Elm Creek, Manitoba. But this one was thirty-nine feet tall and made of five tons of steel set in a concrete base. Even Dr. McDonald was impressed by the sheer grandeur of it.