Secret Weapons Read Free Page A

still and his eyes were even more glassy-looking.
    As Ari watched, Carson caught a deep, shaky breath and muttered something that sounded like “Terrorists.” He glanced from side to side, quickly and nervously, as if he expected to see something sneaking up on him. “It’s the terrorists,” he said again before he blinked, swallowed hard, and added, “Web. I gotta tell Web.” Then he started on up the sidewalk at top speed, which in Carson’s case was a kind of lopsided trot.
    “Hmmm!” Ari said. “Terrorists?” His hand was reaching back automatically for his fanny pack before he remembered about the prickles and stopped. But a couple of minutes later, when he was sure Kate and Aurora had had enough time to get clear back to the old studio, he crawled out of the holly bush and started up the sidewalk in the direction of Web Wong’s house.
    Ari was almost to the Wongs’ driveway when he stopped for a minute to get out his notebook and pencil, in case he might want to do some spur-of-the-moment writing about terrorists. It was while he was trying to get his fanny pack unzipped that he heard an odd thumping, scuffling noise and looked up in time to see Susie Garcia jumping rope down the sidewalk right at him. He ducked quickly to one side, but not quite quickly enough. Susie’s jump rope hit him on the shoulder, and a second later she hit him again. With her fist this time.
    Susie Garcia, who was in Ari’s third-grade class at Beaumont, was like that. She hit people a lot, particularly boys. But Ari had always figured it wasn’t her fault. Growing up with lots of older brothers could probably do that to a person of the opposite sex.
    “You made me miss,” Susie said. “Why didn’t you get out of the way? I was almost to five hundred.”
    Ari grinned at Susie. He liked the way her funny baby-rabbit face looked when she was angry. In fact, he pretty much liked the way Susie looked anytime. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I guess I was too busy getting out my notebook.”
    Susie’s frown changed from plain old mad to slightly curious. “Why?” she asked.
    “Why was I getting out my notebook?” Ari thought fast. If he came up with a really interesting answer, maybe she’d stay and talk for a minute. It was a long shot, he knew. Susie never talked to boys if she could help it. “Well …,” he said. And then suddenly he had it. “Well, it’s because of the terrorists.”
    “Terrorists?” Susie’s huge black eyes seemed to grow even bigger.
    “Yeah,” Ari said. “Haven’t you heard about them?”
    Susie shook her head.
    Ari took a deep breath. “I don’t know too much about it yet, either, but I know it has something to do with Web Wong.”
    “With Web? Why would a terrorist want to …”
    Ari racked his brain. Why would a terrorist be after Web Wong? his brain asked itself—and almost immediately came up with an answer. Web, who along with Ari and Susie and Carson Nicely was in the third grade at Beaumont, was a genius. A scientific genius. Web was always doing absolutely amazing scientific things, and right at the moment he and Carson were doing a special project for the science fair. Ari knew that for sure because he was supposed to be part of their team. But after he’d talked to Ms. Nelson about how basically unscientific he was, she’d agreed to let him write about the science projects instead of doing one. So he didn’t really know what Web and Carson were doing. Except that Carson had said that he had to tell Web about the terrorists. So …
    Lowering his voice to a whisper, Ari said, “It’s his science-fair project, I think. It’s like—some kind of secret weapon and these terrorist guys probably want to steal it.”
    “Ohhh,” Susie said. “Ohhh, wowee!”

Chapter 4
    W HILE ARI WAS HAVING his ladder disaster, and then running into Susie, Carlos Garcia was at home. In the Garcias’ game room, actually, and Bucky Brockhurst and Eddy Wong were there too. Eddy and