Billy Sure Kid Entrepreneur Is a Spy! Page 5

  “None of the details I’ve noticed are any help,” Drew says.

  “What about you, Billy?” Josh asks. “Any sleep?”

  “Uh,” I say. I have to admit, this makes me feel kind of bad. I slept without a problem last night. “A little,” I say sheepishly. “I really hoped to have the Spy Dye blueprints when I woke up. But my blueprints were blank.”

  “Blank,” Drew repeats and closes his eyes, as if he’s thinking really hard about why that could be.

  Just then there’s a high-pitched WAH! WAH! WAH! from the other side of the cafeteria. Sounds like someone else didn’t get their crying crepes into their mouth fast enough!

  “I really can’t take that noise anymore,” Drew says. “I’ll see you guys in class. Later.” He gets up and leaves.

  • • •

  I work at the lab during free period, but there’s no luck there. Spy Dye keeps turning into a blob—a gross, slimy blob too, made up of hair dye and guacamole (don’t ask).

  I know I have to get this invention to Mom ASAP, but maybe what I really need is to clear my head for a bit. I decide to march over to today’s class—surveillance techniques. My chair near Josh, Morgan, and Drew is open, so I sit down there, and we wave to each other as I pass by. After a few moments, Mr. Doval walks in for our lesson.

  “The most basic form of surveillance is simply following suspects as they walk along the street,” Mr. Doval begins. “But this is not as simple as it sounds. In this type of surveillance, the suspect has the greatest chance of realizing that he or she is being followed. Thankfully, we have some more advanced techniques.”

  Mr. Doval presses a button on the top of the shiny black desk, and a holographic image comes to life and plays out in three dimensions in front of the classroom!

  A man in a long trench coat, a fedora, and dark glasses walks quickly down a city street. Honestly, I have to bite my tongue to keep from giggling.

  This is how I pictured myself in my dream about being a spy the night before I left to come here. I got the image from old black-and-white movies that I like to watch with Dad sometimes. The teachers at Spy Academy should really update their holo-films.

  Trench coat man glances back over his shoulder every few steps. He obviously thinks he’s being followed.

  “If you were to simply walk along the street behind the suspect, it wouldn’t take him long to realize that he’s being followed,” Mr. Doval says. “Here are a few techniques you can use to avoid being noticed.”

  As trench coat man hurries along the sidewalk, I see a woman on a bicycle in the street nearby. She doesn’t look like she’s following him, though. In fact, she looks a little flustered! She gets caught in traffic, falls behind him, talks on her phone with her boyfriend about being late to YODELING CLASS, and asks someone for directions.

  “The other major area of surveillance we use is remote surveillance,” Mr. Doval continues. “These techniques include hidden video cameras and TV surveillance trucks. Our surveillance units work closely with our evidence analysis units to create air-tight cases against those who would do us harm.”

  “Isn’t that what Agent Paul was doing?” asks Morgan. “Surveillance? But he was caught.”

  I see Mr. Doval’s lips stretch into a thin line. He looks kind of scared.

  “Agent Paul is one of the best employees we have—octopus or human,” he says curtly. “And anything you’ve heard about The Big Rescue Mission—”

  I gasp. Morgan vowed to find out what the rescue mission is all about, and it looks like she did! Agent Paul must be the agent who was caught by enemy spies! Mom mentioned that she and Agent Paul are a team. Kind of like how Manny and me are a team. Which means . . . if I don’t invent Spy Dye, Agent Paul and my mom are in BIG TROUBLE!

  So much for class being a place to clear my head. Now I’m feeling the pressure big time.

  “—doesn’t concern you,” Mr. Doval continues. “The Big Rescue Mission is for talented, fully-fledged spies only. But don’t worry. You’ll get there someday.”

  A silence washes over the class now.

  That’s when it hits me. Of course Josh, Drew, and Morgan will get there someday. They’ll be out on missions saving people. But me? I’m about as useful at scammer catching as I am at dancing, and that is to say, not very useful. I’m here for one reason and one reason only—and that’s to invent Spy Dye and save Agent Paul.

  I can’t exactly get up and leave the classroom, so my mind starts to wander. All my thoughts about Spy Dye keep coming back to Xavier. Could he possibly have moved my pen and prevented me from sleep-inventing?

  I’m so busy thinking that I hardly notice we’ve finished the lesson on surveillance. Some spy I am.

  “Our next lesson is in calming yourself to the point where your pulse rate doesn’t change when you tell a lie. This—along with monitoring your breath and sweat—allows you to fool a lie detector,” Mr. Doval says, bringing me out of my thoughts.

  “I’ll try this one,” says Morgan. She bounds up to the front of the room.

  Morgan sits in a chair next to a lie detector machine. Mr. Doval wraps a blood-pressure cuff around her arm and clips a pulse-measuring device to her finger.

  The wires from these clips connect to a big machine with a roll of thin white paper and a needle that draws a line showing any changes in blood pressure or pulse. Both of these things, Mr. Doval explains, are affected when someone lies.

  “Are you ready, Morgan?” Mr. Doval asks.

  “I will be in a moment,” she replies. “My ninja training is not just about physical ability. I have learned skills that allow me to control my mind as well.”

  She brings her hands together in front of her face, closes her eyes, and breathes in and out, in and out.

  I feel more relaxed just watching her.

  Morgan opens her eyes and nods at Mr. Doval. “I’m ready.”

  Mr. Doval starts the machine. The paper moves along as the needle draws a perfectly straight line.

  “Let’s start out with something we know to be true,” he says. “What is your name?”

  “Morgan.”

  The needle doesn’t waver. The line stays straight.

  “Now, please give me a false answer to each of these questions,” Mr. Doval says. “How old are you?”

  “Seventy-five,” Morgan replies.

  The needle stays straight.

  “Have you ever studied ninja techniques?”

  “No.”

  Again, no change in the needle.

  “Okay, one more. How tall are you?”

  “Seventeen feet tall,” Morgan replies.

  I see a small smile start to form along the side of her mouth. I wonder if she’s losing control over her ability to fool the machine.

  Nope. The needle stays straight as an arrow!

  “Thank you, Morgan,” says Mr. Doval as he detaches her from the lie detector. “Do you want to share your secrets with the class?”

  Morgan shrugs. “I would,” she says, “but a good agent never reveals her best tricks.” Then she returns to her seat.

  Mr. Doval claps.

  “Exactly! Thank you, Morgan. A shining example of how to keep information under wraps. Class, please note the first rule of being a spy: Never reveal your secrets!”

  As the class ends, I ask Drew, Josh, and Morgan if they would hang around for a few minutes.

  “What’s up, Billy?” Josh asks after everyone else has left the classroom.

  “How well do you guys know my roommate, Xavier?” I ask.

  “He’s in some of my ninja-training classes,” says Morgan. “But I don’t know him all that well. He’s pretty smart, and his ninja skills are top notch.”

  “He seems like an okay guy to me,” says Josh. “A little weird maybe, but I like him. Why, what’s going on?”

  “Just a feeling,” I admit. I don’t want to accuse Xavier of anything, especially since I don’t know if he’s guilty or not.

  “I actually know what yo
u mean, Billy,” Drew chimes in. “I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about him that I just don’t trust.”

  “Thanks, Drew. I’m sure it’s nothing,” I say. But I head off to the invention lab more worried than ever. I like Drew, and I trust him. If he has a bad feeling about Xavier, then maybe I really do have something to be concerned about.

  Factual, Observational Evidence

  BACK AT THE invention lab I decide to take a different approach than I have so far. Since I got here, I’ve been trying to create a full-blown version of Spy Dye, with all its functions working at once. Today, I’ll work on creating one aspect of the Spy Dye at a time.

  After about two hours, I have a mixture ready to test. One of the features Mom asked me to include in the Spy Dye is the ability to read the thoughts of others, if only for a few seconds. Kind of like Josh!

  I fill an eyedropper with a little bit of the thick black liquid I’ve come up with and place a single drop onto my hair. I turn my attention to Xavier, who is hard at work a few benches away. I focus my mind on him, straining to concentrate all my attention on his thoughts.

  I start to hear a soft voice in my head. It sounds like someone whispering in an echo-filled hallway.

  It works! I can hear Xavier’s thoughts in my mind. I concentrate even harder, and the thoughts flow from his mind to mine:

  Come on, Xavier. You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to make this invention perfect. You need to come through for Agent Paul! If only Billy Sure—

  And then the voice fades away. The Spy Dye has worn off, and I can no longer hear his thoughts.

  What was Xavier thinking about me?!

  There is definitely something suspicious about my roommate here at Spy Academy.

  I glance back over at Xavier’s workstation. Although I’m uncomfortable doing it, I decide I have to speak with Xavier. He’s the only one who could have possibly seen what I was or wasn’t doing in the room in the middle of the night.

  I walk over to his workstation.

  “Hey, roomie,” Xavier says. “Want to see something new?” Xavier pops a piece of candy into his mouth. A few seconds later, he’s gone. Vanished! No sign of him anywhere!

  Then I hear a tiny voice shouting up from the floor. I look down and see that Xavier has shrunk to the size of an action figure. He looks like he could live in a dollhouse!

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Xavier squeaks from the floor. “I finally got my MINI CANDY to work.”

  I see him reach into his (mini) pocket and grab a piece of candy that seems to have shrunk too. He pops it into his mouth and a few seconds later he is full size again—but then he keeps growing and growing until he has to bend over just to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling!

  “And my HUMUNGO CANDY works too!”

  The candy wears off and Xavier returns to normal size.

  “That’s amazing,” I say, wishing I could be as successful at my invention project. I can just see how Mini Candy and Humungo Candy will help on a rescue mission—just in case our agents need to get past gates or traps.

  “So, I wanted to ask you something,” I continue. “And it may sound kind of weird. Have you noticed me getting up and working in the middle of the night?”

  “You’re right,” Xavier says, “that does sound kind of weird. Well, I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, but I never heard or saw you. Why would you do that, anyway? That’s just strange.”

  “Never mind,” I say, not having the least desire to explain sleep-inventing to Xavier. “Thanks.”

  After not making much progress in the lab, I head to dinner, where I meet up with Drew, Josh, and Morgan.

  I decide that the time has come to fill them in on what’s been happening to me.

  “So, I have a real problem,” I begin. “I’m worried that someone stole my blueprints.”

  Drew is quick to respond. “I think Xavier is hiding something,” he says. “He always has a secretive look, and today he had dark shadows at approximately one centimeter below his brown eyes. Maybe he stayed up late to steal your blueprints.”

  “Sounds like factual, observational evidence to me,” says Josh. “Like we learned about in class.”

  “I have to solve this mystery,” I say as an idea pops into my head. “And I think I just came up with a plan that might work!”

  • • •

  I don’t see Xavier again before I go to bed, and once again, he’s gone before I wake up the next morning. But there’s good news—after a restless night’s sleep, I wake up to a set of blueprints at my desk. They’re not Spy Dye blueprints, though. They’re blueprints for what I call LIAR’S LEMONADE.

  I need to invent a foolproof method to find out whether someone is lying. That’s the only way I’m going to get to the bottom of what happened to my Spy Dye blueprints, and after seeing how Morgan fooled the lie detector, I can’t trust that device. Instead, I’m going to fine-tune one of the very first ideas I ever had for an invention, back when I was a little kid.

  Simply put, Liar’s Lemonade is a lemonade drink. When someone drinks it and then lies, his or her face and palms turn bright pink. You can’t use mind control or meditation techniques to fool it, because you don’t know that it’s anything other than a regular glass of lemonade. By the time you tell a lie, it’s too late.

  At the invention lab, I follow the directions from the blueprints. I start by mixing up a batch of lemonade and adding things like food coloring and sprinkles, plus some top secret—and non-toxic—mind-reading ingredients. Then I mix it over the lie detector. I don’t know if that will help, but it can’t hurt.

  It doesn’t take long for me to whip up a completed batch of Liar’s Lemonade. If only inventing Spy Dye were this easy, I wouldn’t have to go through all of this trouble!

  I need to make sure this works, so I test it on myself. I take few sips. Slurp! It tastes exactly like regular lemonade, which is important. The people I use it on can’t have any idea that this lemonade is special.

  I look into a mirror and state an obvious lie.

  “My name is Emily.”

  After I say the lie, I don’t feel any different. But guess what! In the mirror I’m thrilled to see that my face and the palms of my hands have turned bright pink! Perfect! My Liar’s Lemonade works like a charm. But oh no. How do I make my skin normal again?

  I look into the mirror. Well, if it worked once, maybe it will work the other way?

  “My name is Billy Sure.”

  Blurp blurp blurp! The pink fades away instantly. It’s official. My invention works!

  Which means now I can get to the bottom of this after all.

  I pour a tall glass and head over to Xavier’s workstation.

  “Hi, Xavier,” I say. “I see you’re working very hard. I thought you might like a glass of lemonade.”

  “Thanks, I love lemonade,” Xavier replies. He gulps down the entire glass. “Ah, that was great. Did you make it?”

  “Yup,” I say proudly.

  “So you’re a chef as well as an inventor,” Xavier says, smiling.

  This is just about the friendliest Xavier’s ever been. I start to feel kinda bad about fooling him like this, but I have to see if he’s behind the blueprint mystery.

  “Xavier, do you know what happened to some blueprints that were on my desk the other night?” I ask. It sounds awkward, like it’s coming out of left field, which I guess it is.

  “I don’t know anything about your blueprints,” he replies, looking at me like I’m the weirdest kid he’s ever met.

  I stare at him for a few seconds, searching for any sign that his face or palms are turning pink.

  But nope. Nothing. No change at all. Xavier is telling the truth.

  Xavier rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Man, you are one strange kid,” he says. “Anyway, thanks for the lemonade.”

  I walk back to my workbench, thoroughly discouraged. I don’t know what my next move should be. I know in my gut that something happened to my blueprint
s the other night, but I can’t prove it.

  I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that this whole Spy Academy thing is turning out to be a great big failure. That’s when I remember I haven’t seen Mom in a few days. She’s probably out in the field, looking for Agent Paul, waiting for her son the inventor to offer his help, and here I am with no progress!

  Dejected, I head back to my room. Fortunately, as usual, Xavier is working late at the lab, so I can be miserable all by myself. In the hallway I decide to type out a text to Manny, who still hasn’t answered any of my messages or e-mails.

  Miss you, partner. I hope you’re doing okay, and I hope Emily hasn’t annoyed you to death. Let me know how you’re doing—I haven’t heard from you in a while.

  I’ll be honest. I’m super worried about why Manny hasn’t answered my e-mails. Is he mad at me? Or worse, was he bitten by flying sharks or something?

  And then . . . success! As soon as I walk into the room, there’s a BEEEEP! It’s my cell phone. I have a text message.

  It’s from Manny!

  Billy, I know you are at Spy Academy. We need to talk. Can you do a video chat?

  GULP. Um, okay. That was far from the message I was expecting. How can Manny know where I am? Why didn’t he let me know? I type back quickly.

  Give me one second. Be there ASAP.

  I flip open my laptop and connect to Manny for a video chat.

  His face pops up on my screen. It’s real! He’s real! He’s Manny! I have never been happier to see anyone.

  “What do you mean, you know I’m at Spy Academy? How?” I ask.

  “That night before you left, during our sleepover, you talked in your sleep and told me all about Spy Academy and Spy Dye and everything,” Manny explains. “At first I thought it was crazy talk. But not anymore.”

  I’m stunned.

  Manny continues: “And unless I’m mistaken, something weird happened with your blueprints, right?”

  Okay, this is beyond crazy. How can Manny possibly know about that?

  “Yeah, but how can you . . . I mean . . . what . . . I . . .”

  “Let me explain,” Manny says calmly. I can use a heaping dose of Manny’s calmness right about now. “Ever since you told me about Spy Academy in your sleep, Emily and I have been trying to find out more about it. Also, Emily’s new ‘thing’ is that she paints each of her fingernails a different color.”