Billy Sure Kid Entrepreneur Is a Spy! Page 6

  “I think I noticed that before I left, actually. But I’m confused. Can we get a little closer to the point of this story?” I ask. What does my sister have to do with any of this?

  “That’s where I’m headed, partner,” Manny replies. “One night Emily and I were looking for information about Spy Academy in your mom’s office. Emily picked up what appeared to be a blank piece of paper. She had just finished painting her nails and held her hand up to a lamp to see how the nails looked.”

  “Why are we still talking about Emily’s nails?”

  “Hang on. She was still holding the blank piece of paper when she lifted her hand up near the light, only when the light hit the paper, we discovered that it wasn’t blank at all. A map appeared on the paper. A map written in Hidden Ink. A map showing the way to Spy Academy!”

  Hidden Ink! Xavier’s invention!

  Manny goes on. “Next, we found a directory of everyone who attends Spy Academy. When we opened it up, it looked like a blank book, but when we held it up to the light too, we saw that the names in the directory were also written with Hidden Ink. Have you looked at yours?”

  I realize that honestly, I haven’t opened up the directory Mom gave me on my first day at Spy Academy. I dig through a pile of stuff on my desk and find it. Opening the cover, I see that the pages are indeed blank. Then I hold it up to a desk lamp and a list of names appears.

  “I never even looked at it,” I say.

  “Now that you know about the directory, is there someone named Drew at Spy Academy?” Manny asks.

  I feel a cold chill run down my spine. Drew?

  “Yeah, there is,” I say. “We’ve actually become friends.”

  “Do you know Drew’s last name?” Manny asks.

  Huh. Now that Manny mentions it, I guess I never asked Drew what his last name is. All I know is that it begins with an S. I hold the directory up to the light and flip through the pages. I come to Drew’s name and gasp.

  Swiped! Drew’s last name is Swiped!

  Swiped is the last name of my arch nemesis, Alistair Swiped. Swiped is a so-called inventor who spends more time stealing ideas (mine) and cheating, rather than actually inventing anything himself.

  “Could Drew be related to Alistair Swiped? If he’s anything like Alistair, he could be the one who stole my blueprints for Spy Dye. Manny, what am I going to do?”

  Before Manny can answer, a hooded figure leans into the video chat window and grabs Manny!

  And then before I can see anything else, the video goes dead.

  “Manny!” I shout at the blank screen on my laptop.

  Manny to the Rescue

  PANIC FILLS MY entire body as questions race through my brain.

  Is Manny okay? Who would have possibly grabbed him? And why? And does all this have anything to do with me and Spy Dye? And how am I ever gonna help the Big Rescue Mission, my mom, and Agent Paul?

  In the midst of my anxiety, I don’t even notice the door to my room opening and someone walking in, until a voice behind me suddenly says:

  “Don’t worry about Manny.”

  I spin around and find myself face to face with Drew.

  Drew SWIPED!

  “What did you do with him?” I ask. Did my best Spy Academy friend just kidnap my real best friend?

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Drew cackles, unable to hold back a smug, self-satisfied smile. “Uncle Alistair will take good care of him.”

  So that was Alistair? Why? Is Manny all right? And how can the Drew standing in front of me be such a totally different person from the Drew I thought I knew?

  “I—I don’t understand, Drew,” I say. “I thought we were friends.”

  Drew smiles again, but this time it’s a little sad. He stares at me for a moment, then turns and hurries from the room without saying another word. BAM! The door slams behind him.

  Before I even have time to think, much less to absorb everything that has just happened, I hear a lock being turned in the door to the room—from the outside!

  I dash across the room and grab the doorknob.

  It won’t turn. I yank on it, but it doesn’t budge. I think about running to the window, but then I remember that we’re underground.

  I’m trapped. I’m all alone in the room . . . I’m locked in. I start banging on the door.

  Nope. Nothing. Everyone is either in class or working in a lab or in the cafeteria.

  I pace the room. My mind is reeling.

  Stop! I finally say to myself. Sit down . . . think . . .

  Okay, first, Manny and Emily have known all along that I’m at Spy Academy. It makes sense, I guess, that I sleep-talk as well as sleep-invent—and sleep-talk especially when I have crazy spy dreams. So after I let the cat out of the sleeping bag, Emily and Manny figure out that Drew is Alistair Swiped’s nephew. Me, I didn’t have a clue. I just thought he was my new good buddy.

  And then, at exactly the moment these two new startling pieces of information are revealed to me, Alistair Swiped grabs Manny—why, I’m not sure.

  And then, Drew comes in, changes from nice guy to evil nemesis, and locks me in the room.

  Again, why? Why all of this?

  And, of course, Manny. Is he okay? Where is Alistair taking him? And what do Drew and Alistair want?

  This is getting me nowhere. Some spy I am.

  Which makes me think. Spy . . . Mom!

  I’m so rattled, I missed the obvious. I grab my cell phone and punch in Mom’s number.

  A message immediately pops up:

  All Calls Blocked.

  Blocked? This must be some kind of spy training Drew had that I didn’t. He must have somehow stopped my phone from working. I’m totally stuck. I can’t leave the room and I can’t phone for help.

  And what about Manny? With each passing second I get more and more worried about Manny.

  Just as I’m thinking this, there’s a noise.

  CRACK!

  It’s the sound of the door bursting open!

  I jump to my feet in time to see someone stumble into the room, as if he’s just been shoved in. But before I can see who did the shoving, the door slams shut and is locked again. The person’s hands are tied behind his back and his head is down, but he has a special Sure Things, Inc. button pinned to his shirt.

  “Manny!” I cry.

  “Nice to see you, partner,” he says, lifting his head and forcing a smile.

  That’s Manny, calm and ready with a joke, even now.

  I walk behind him and untie his hands.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah, no one hurt me,” Manny replies. “Everything just suddenly went dark while I was talking to you. Someone slipped into the office and blindfolded me. Then I was shoved into a car, driven around for a bit, and now I’m here. Whoever did this never said a single word the whole time.”

  “It was Alistair Swiped,” I say. “When I asked about you, Drew said ‘Uncle Alistair will take good care of him.’ Then he locked me in here. And now you’re in here too.”

  “So, what’s been going on at Spy Academy?” Manny asks in his “it’s time to get down to business” voice, which at the moment is very comforting to me.

  “What hasn’t been going on at Spy Academy?” I say. I start at the beginning. I explain how I have to invent Spy Dye to save Agent Paul on the Big Rescue Mission, but how I haven’t been able to. I talk about my Liar’s Lemonade, and of course, the greatest mystery of all: Where are my blueprints for Spy Dye?

  When I get to that part, Manny’s eyes open wide. He rubs his chin and scratches his head.

  “I don’t think your blueprints were blank, Billy,” he says, standing up.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

  “Remember the map I told you about? And the Spy Academy directory? They were both written using Hidden Ink.”

  “But the pen I used was my own, with normal ink,” I explain.

  Manny picks up the pen and scribbles o
n a blank piece of paper. It looks like no ink is coming out of the pen. But when Manny holds the paper up to the lamp, his scribble suddenly appears.

  “Someone swapped your regular pen for this one, which is filled with Hidden Ink,” Manny says.

  And that’s when the door to the room swings open and in walks . . . Drew.

  Drew Swiped

  “OH, BILLY, BILLY, Billy,” Drew says, taunting me by holding up a pen that looks exactly like my pen, because it is my pen! “Sorry about the delay in my arrival. I was just discussing matters with Uncle Alistair. He has been telling me all about you and all the problems you’ve caused for him.”

  “You mean problems with his business model of stealing my ideas and rushing his junky knockoffs to market before the real inventor can get his out to the public?” I shoot back. “Because we’re happy to cause him problems with that business anytime,” I add.

  Drew ignores my little swipe at Swiped. “Usually, I couldn’t care less about what Uncle Alistair has to say,” Drew continues. “I know about his tendency to ‘borrow’ the work of others. And as a real inventor myself, I don’t have much use for dear old Uncle Alistair. But being a real inventor, this time I do care.”

  Drew pulls out his phone and streams a video.

  “Remember this?” he asks, handing the phone to me. I take it. Manny looks on.

  The video shows Drew standing next to a large machine with a flashing light, a huge antenna, and a single seat. He starts to make a presentation about his invention. I don’t remember this particular submission (there were many), but I realize instantly that this was one of the entries submitted to our Next Big Thing contest and TV special.

  “That’s my invention, Billy,” Drew says. “A time machine. A time machine that really works! With that caliber of invention, I should have won your little competition, but you rejected me. You were too busy parading around, telling the world that you are the world’s best inventor. But here I was, with an actual TIME MACHINE! I’m the best, and nobody even knows it.”

  I remember this invention now. It’s as fake as Drew’s friendship with me. Tons of kids submitted ideas for time travel devices. Tons of kids wanted Sure Things, Inc. to make one. But it can’t happen. I’ve learned from years of trying that you just can’t mess with the space-time continuum.

  I roll my eyes and give Drew back his phone.

  “Do you know how many kids try to invent a time machine, Drew?” I say. “We must have seen a dozen submissions just in the Next Big Thing contest alone. It’s actually the most popular invention idea. But so far, no one has come up with one that works. My guess is that no one ever will.”

  “You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Billy,” Drew says. “Mine does work, but you didn’t even give me a chance! It works, and I can prove it!”

  Drew reaches into his pocket and pulls out a page that he has torn from a magazine. Manny unfolds it, and I see that it’s an advertisement for a flying hovercraft.

  I gasp. I can’t believe it. The ad shows Drew standing next to a hovercraft which looks exactly like the design for a hovercraft that Manny and I have been working on for the past few months. We haven’t quite perfected it, but it appears that somehow Drew has.

  The caption under the photo reads: Drew Swiped, inventor of the first flying hovercraft.

  “How did you invent the hovercraft?” I ask. “And how could we not know about it? And how can yours look exactly like the one Manny and I have been working on?”

  “You did do a good job of keeping your hovercraft design a secret,” Drew says. “But, you see, I have a working time machine. I went into the future to the day you completed your hovercraft, stole the design, and came back so I could beat you to it.”

  Like uncle, like nephew, I think.

  “And get a load of this,” Drew says, pulling something out of his back pocket.

  It’s a blueprint! A blueprint for Spy Dye! Only this one is plainly visible—and in Drew’s handwriting.

  “Not only did I sneak into your room and switch pens, but the next day I came back and stole the Spy Dye blueprints. You were supposed to have no idea you invented it, so you wouldn’t even look for them,” Drew explains.

  “But what you didn’t count on was the fact that I knew I wrote out the blueprints because my pen was moved,” I add.

  But I also don’t know what to think. It seems to me that Drew has pulled off the perfect crime. I have no way of proving that I invented Spy Dye first.

  But the best is yet to come.

  “And last, but not least, is this,” Drew says.

  He holds out a contract. “This is a deal I made with Savino Airlines to mass produce my hovercraft,” he boasts. “Here.”

  I take the contract from Drew, and Manny and I look it over. I see that it is signed by Drew and by John Savino, president of Savino Airlines. It calls for the mass production of Drew’s hovercraft.

  “Look at the date,” Drew says.

  The date of the contract is six months from now!

  “So you see, my time machine really does work,” Drew says. “I went into the future, took your hovercraft idea, and made this deal. And, I’ll do it again. So you have two choices. You can either keep on creating inventions, and I’ll just jump into the future, steal them, then come back and release them before you do. Or you can stop inventing altogether.

  “Either way, Billy Sure, your career is finished. Say hello to Drew Swiped, the next kid entrepreneur!”

  I’m finished. Done. My career over at the ripe old age of thirteen. I see no way out of this one.

  That’s when Manny takes over.

  “I disagree, Drew,” he says calmly. “By the way, I’m Manny. I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.” How can Manny be so polite at a time like this?!

  “What I do believe, however, is that we are firmly planted in the present, where I have been recording this entire conversation on my phone. Good catch blocking calls, by the way. Thankfully, other apps still work. So now I have an audio recording of you admitting to stealing the hovercraft idea and Billy’s design for Spy Dye,” Manny continues.

  “So, unless you want me to go straight to the head of Spy Academy and hand the recording over, you’ll give us the blueprints for Spy Dye. And, oh yeah, we know your time machine is a fake. Don’t we, Billy?”

  I’m too stunned by Manny’s speech to say anything at first. He seems to have instantly turned the tables on Drew just when I thought we were finished.

  I finally manage to say, “That’s right!”

  Drew’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean ‘time machine is a fake’?” he says. “I know about the hovercraft. I have a signed contract—from the future!”

  “Really?” Manny says, pretending to be surprised. “Well then, why don’t we drink a toast to your time machine?”

  Manny turns to me. “Billy, do you have any of your delicious lemonade around?”

  This is where I’m really glad that Drew locked me in my dorm room with its mini fridge and not someplace more random.

  I grab a pitcher of Liar’s Lemonade and pour three glasses, handing one to each of us.

  “To Drew’s time machine,” Manny says, raising his glass.

  Drew is hesitant, but the lemonade smells really good, and I see him take a sip.

  “So tell me, Drew, did you really invent a time machine that really works?” Manny asks immediately.

  “Yes!” Drew insists.

  What do you know? His face and hands turn bright pink!

  Aha!

  “That was some of my Liar’s Lemonade,” I admit, as Drew stares in horror at his colorful hands. “And you, my friend, are a liar!”

  I turn to Manny. “How did you know?”

  Manny shrugs, as if this amazing feat of spy work he just pulled off is no big deal.

  “I figured that the hovercraft ad was fake,” he begins. “It’s easy enough to doctor a photo. But I must admit that the Savino Airlines contract is pretty impressive.�
��

  Manny holds up the contract and looks at Drew. “And you even got your hands on some Savino Airlines letterhead. Very nice touch. However, you didn’t do your homework, Drew.

  “I read four business publications every day, which is how I know that John Savino, the founder of Savino Airlines, turned the company over to his daughter, Joan, about a month ago.

  “So, if you really had gone six months into the future and signed a contract with Savino Airlines, Joan Savino would have signed it, since she is now the president of the company. This signature says: John Savino. It’s a fake. And so are you!”

  Drew’s head drops. His plan has been exposed and defeated. He hands over the blueprints for Spy Dye.

  “Stupid Savino Airlines,” he mutters.

  “So it turns out that Manny is the best spy of all!” I say. “And he didn’t even have to go to the academy!”

  “So the question now is, what do we do with Drew,” Manny says.

  “It’s tempting to report Drew to the academy,” I say. “After all, you have recorded evidence. But Drew is good at spying. He must have spied in my notebook to find out what we want the hovercraft to look like. And if he stays here, he’ll be spying for the agency and not on Sure Things, Inc.!”

  I wonder what kind of mental image Drew’s forming of me—Billy Sure, thirteen years old, blond hair, not a spy.

  “I will, however, have to tell my mom about all this,” I tell him. “She should be keeping a closer eye on you.”

  My mom!

  It suddenly hits me that I now have a working blueprint for Spy Dye. Only Drew is blocking the door. How will we get out?

  At that moment there’s a rustling at the door. Oh no. Alistair Swiped is probably coming inside! What if he takes Manny’s cell phone with the recording?

  The dorm door swings open. But it’s not Alistair Swiped that walks in. It’s XAVIER!