14 The Old Hopi

Chapter 14 THE OLD HOPI Coke and Pep ran. They just ran. They didn't know where. It didn't matter. Anywhere. Away from that lunatic, John Pain. "That guy was nuts!" Pep said after a couple of blocks. She stopped to catch her breath. "I can't believe you killed the snake!" Coke said. "I can't believe you tried to feed it freeze- dried ice cream!" Across the street, a lady was pushing a stroller. Coke jogged over to ask her how to get back to Albuquerque's Old Town section. She pointed out the direction, and from there it wasn't hard for the twins to find the Rattlesnake Museum. Their parents were standing out front, looking worried. "Where's your shirt?" asked an exasperated

Mrs. McDonald as soon as she saw her son. Not Where have you been? or Are you okay? His mother's overriding concern was with what happened to Coke's shirt. "Funny you should ask, Mom," he replied. "Pep wrapped it around a rattlesnake's head so she could beat it to death." "Very funny," said Dr. McDonald. "It's true," Pep insisted. "You don't have to believe him if you don't want to." Mrs. McDonald simply shook her head, counting how many perfectly good T-shirts Coke had ruined on the trip so far. Five? Six? She had finally reached the point where she wasn't going to fight about it anymore. There was no use. The boy was a T-shirt-wrecking machine. She made a mental note to buy him only cheap T-shirts from now on. Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

Click Get Directions. In the A box, type Albuquerque NM. In the B box, type Lupton AZ. Click Get Directions. The McDonalds had a quick dinner and checked into the Econo Lodge West for the night. It was just a few blocks from Coronado Freeway—also known as I-40—which was the main road heading west out of Albuquerque. In the morning, the family got on the road early. It would be a long day, in more ways than one. Almost immediately, the highway flattened out. The stores and gas stations became few and far between. Pep worried silently, trying to figure out where Dr. Warsaw might decide to set off his nuclear bomb, and what they could do to stop it. Coke daydreamed, thinking about John Pain and the last thing he'd said to them: "You two ain't seen the last of me, I promise

you that." There wasn't much to look at out the window, except for the occasional billboard, announcing things like INDIAN VILLAGE and MOCCASINS FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY! "Ooh, can we go?" Pep asked. "Those places aren't real Indian villages," Mrs. McDonald told them. "It says in the guidebook that they're just tacky souvenir shops." "Ooh, can we go?" Coke asked. About an hour from Albuquerque, the speed limit slowed down to 35 miles per hour and a few stores popped up here and there. And then this appeared at the side of the road

"That's right!" Dr. McDonald said, slapping his forehead. "I forgot all about it. This is the Great Divide!" Dear reader, if you recall The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable, you know the McDonalds first crossed the Continental Divide heading east through Utah. It's an imaginary boundary line that begins in Alaska and continues all the way down through South America. Now they were crossing it again, heading west. "Rivers on the west side of this line flow into the Pacific Ocean," Dr. McDonald reminded the others, "and the rivers on the east side of the line

flow into the Atlantic Ocean." "That's cool," Pep said. "I read somewhere," said her brother, "that when you flush a toilet in the northern hemisphere, the water swirls in the opposite direction than a toilet flushed in the southern hemisphere." "That's one of those urban legends," his father told him. "It's totally not true." "It sounds like it could be true." "Trust me, it's not." "Who cares which direction toilet water