16 Hub City

Chapter 16 HUB CITY Did you ever have a really bad day when just about everything was going wrong? That was the kind of day Coke was having. So far, a cow had been dropped on him and he was almost run over by a couple of motorcycles. And it was still early afternoon. There's a little hill on the north side of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza near some concrete steps. It's referred to as "the grassy knoll." Many Kennedy assassination experts believed at least one of the shots that hit the president came from this spot and not from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Coke and Pep went over and sat down on this grassy knoll to regain their composure. They had about ten minutes until it was time to meet their parents

第十六章枢纽城市你有没有过非常糟糕的一天，几乎所有的事情都出了问题？ 这就是可口可乐的好日子。 到目前为止，一头牛落在他身上，他几乎被几辆摩托车碾过。 那时还是下午早些时候。 在迪利广场的榆树街北侧有一座小山，靠近一些混凝土台阶。 它被称为“草丘”。 许多肯尼迪暗杀专家认为，至少有一枪打中了总统，而不是从德克萨斯学校图书仓库的六楼。 可口可乐和佩普走过去，坐在这个长满草的小丘上，恢复镇静。 他们还有大约十分钟就要和父母见面了

in the parking lot. "Are you going to be okay?" Pep asked. "Yeah. I'm indestructible. You know that." "That was a really dumb thing you did," Pep told her brother. "I know." Coke lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky. His T-shirt was ripped and his knees were scraped from crawling across the street. "So... what did you see?" Pep asked him. "Huh?" "Just before those motorcycles came, you told me there was something written in the X," Pep reminded him. "What did it say?" "Oh, yeah," Coke said. The near miss with the motorcycle had almost made him forget that he had bent down to look at the words on the street. "You're gonna laugh. It said BUY ITCH." "BUY ITCH?" "It must be some kind of an ad," Coke said. "I guess they're selling an anti-itch cream. Can you believe that? Companies will advertise

在停车场。“你会没事吧？”Pep问道。 “是的。我是坚不可摧的。 你知道的。”“你做了一件很愚蠢的事，”佩普对她哥哥说。 “我知道。”可乐躺在草地上，抬头望着天空。 他的t恤破了，他的膝盖在爬过街时被刮伤了。 “所以……你看到了什么？”佩普问他。 “嗯?”“就在那些摩托车来之前，你告诉我X上写着什么。”佩普提醒他。 “上面说什么？”“哦，是的，”可口可乐说。 摩托车差点撞到他，差点让他忘了自己曾弯下腰去看街上的标语。 “你会笑的。上面写着‘买痒’。” “买痒吗?”“这肯定是某种广告，”可口可乐说。 “我猜他们在卖一种止痒霜。 你能相信吗？公司会做广告

anywhere, even in a place like this." "Not necessarily," Pep replied. "Maybe BUY ITCH is an anagram that we're supposed to figure out." "Are you serious?" Coke said, sitting up. "You think somebody would send us a cipher by putting letters on an X in the middle of the street?" "Why not?" Pep said. "They put one at the bottom of a swimming pool, remember? They put one on the radio. When we were in Chicago, they put one on the scoreboard at Wrigley Field!" "But what could BUY ITCH mean?" Coke asked, as he juggled the letters around in his head. Pep took her notepad and pencil from her pocket and wrote BUY ITCH at the top of a page. Then she got to work, writing down every possible combination of those letters. "CUT BY HI," she said softly as she wrote. "No, that can't be it. I CUB THY... CHIT

任何地方，即使是在这样的地方。” “不一定，”佩普回答。 “也许‘买痒’是我们应该弄明白的一个字谜。” “你说真的吗？”可乐说着坐了起来。 “你认为有人会把字母放在马路中间的X上，给我们寄来密码吗？”“为什么不?”Pep说。 “他们在游泳池底放了一个，记得吗？” 他们在收音机里放了一个。 当我们在芝加哥的时候，他们在瑞格利球场的记分牌上放了一个！”“但是‘买痒’是什么意思呢？”科克一边问，一边在脑子里摆弄着那些字母。 佩普从口袋里拿出记事本和铅笔，在一页的上方写上“买痒”。 然后她开始工作，写下这些字母的每一个可能的组合。 “你好，”她边写边温柔地说。 “不，不可能是这样。我知道你…… 芽

BUY..." It was just nonsense words. It didn't seem like BUY ITCH could possibly mean anything besides BUY ITCH. Coke looked up at the passing cars, while his sister continued working on new letter combinations in her head. "Wait a minute!" she said suddenly. "I think I've got it!" She wrote this on her pad: HUB CITY "Hub City?" "'Hub City' is an anagram for BUY ITCH!" she told her brother. "We need to go to Hub City." "Oh, great," Coke said. "Now all we have to do is find out where Hub City is." When the twins met their parents in the parking lot, Mrs. McDonald took one look at Coke and went into "Mom Mode." "What happened to your shirt?" she asked.

买……”那只是些废话。 除了“买痒”，“买痒”似乎没有别的意思。 科克抬头看着过往的汽车，而他的妹妹则继续在脑子里琢磨新的字母组合。 “等一下！”她突然说。 “我想我找到了！”她在笔记本上写着：枢纽城市“枢纽城市？”“‘枢纽城市’是‘买痒’的变位词！”她告诉哥哥。 “我们得去枢纽城。” “哦，太好了，”可口可乐说。“现在我们要做的就是找出枢纽城在哪里。” 当这对双胞胎在停车场见到他们的父母时，麦当劳太太看了一眼可乐，就进入了“妈妈模式”。 “你的衬衫怎么了？”她问。

"It ripped." "I can see that!" said Mrs. McDonald. "How did it rip? I left you on your own for less than an hour, and now you look like you got run over by a truck." "Funny you should say that, Mom," Coke told her. "You see, I was standing on the X in the street where President Kennedy was shot when these two motorcycles came out of nowhere and almost ran me over. So I jumped up in the air and flipped around, and—" "Ha-ha! That's a good one, son," said Dr. McDonald. "How do you come up with this stuff?" "I guess I just have a vivid imagination, Dad." They got in the car and Dr. McDonald paid the parking attendant. But Mrs. McDonald wasn't finished nagging Coke. "I wish you would take better care of your clothes," she told him. "We just bought that shirt the other day, and now it's ruined." "I'll try, Mom," said Coke, who knew from

“这破。”“我看得出来！”麦克唐纳太太说。 “它是怎么裂开的？”我让你一个人待了不到一个小时，现在你就像被卡车碾过一样。” “你这么说真有趣，妈妈，”科克对她说。 “你看，我当时正站在肯尼迪总统遇刺的那条街上的十字路口上，突然不知从哪儿冒出来两辆摩托车，几乎把我碾过。 于是我跳到空中，翻了个身，然后——”“哈哈！这是个好主意，孩子。” 麦当劳。“你是怎么想到这些东西的？”“我想我的想象力太丰富了，爸爸。” 他们上了车。 麦克唐纳付了停车费。 但麦克唐纳夫人还没有说完对可口可乐的唠叨。 “我希望你能好好保养你的衣服，”她对他说。 “我们前几天刚买了那件衬衫，现在它毁了。” “我试试，妈妈，”可乐说，他知道

experience that it was always better to agree with his mother than to argue with her. They got back on the road and after a few minutes everyone had calmed down a little. "Can we borrow your computer, Mom?" asked Pep. "We need to look something up." "What for, sweetie?" Mrs. McDonald said from the front seat. "It's an assignment for school," said Coke, who was always the better liar of the two. "You're working on schoolwork over summer vacation?" Dr. McDonald asked, turning around so he could see it with his own eyes. "Are you feeling okay?" Mrs. McDonald handed her laptop back, warning the kids to be careful with it because her entire website—her entire career—was stored in that little box. Then she turned the radio back on. "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away" was playing, and Dr. McDonald turned it up loud. Coke took the laptop and Googled "Hub

经验告诉我，同意母亲的意见总比和她争论好。 他们回到路上，几分钟后，每个人都平静了一些。 “我们能借你的电脑吗，妈妈？”佩普问。 “我们需要查点东西。” “为什么，亲爱的？”麦克唐纳夫人在前排座位上说。 “这是学校布置的作业，”科克说，他总是比她更会撒谎。 “你整个暑假都在做作业？”博士。 麦克唐纳问道，他转过身来，想亲眼看看。 “你感觉还好吗？”麦克唐纳太太把她的笔记本电脑还给了孩子们，警告他们要小心，因为她的整个网站——她的整个职业生涯——都存储在那个小盒子里。 然后她又打开了收音机。 “如果你不离开，我怎么能想你呢？” 麦克唐纳把声音调得很大。 科克拿着笔记本电脑，在谷歌上搜索“Hub”