Idiot Genius: Willa Snap and the Clockwerk Boy

Chapter One: Cat's in the Bag

Ever wonder why some crazy scientist hasn't blown up the world? I used to wonder about it all the time. Actually, I was pretty sure my mom would be the one to do it.

But now I know better. It turns out there's a force working hard to keep the world from going KABLOOEY.

Who are these people? Wait for it:

Idiots. Yep, you heard me right.

How do I know? Well, apparently, I'm an Idiot. At least, according to the Geniuses I am. Confused? I'm not surprised. You're probably an Idiot too. Offended? You shouldn't be—I called you an Idiot, not an idiot. There's a difference, just as there's a difference between a Genius and a genius. Confused and offended? It gets worse. There's a third category: Idiot Genius. Those are the ones you really have to look out for. You see, Idiot Geniuses—for some unaccountable reason—are completely obsessed with "improving" the world. Maybe it's encoded in their DNA. I don't know. I didn't get those genes. I have Idiot genes, which means that for an equally unaccountable reason, I'm obsessed with saving the world—usually from them.

I must warn you, my story isn't a pretty one: abductions, time-traveling dragons, the Order of the Black Fez, highly verbal cats, a secret invisible city, condescending robots (condescending means they talk to you like you're an Idiot; wait, is it condescending of me to explain what condescending means?), and that's just for starters.

But I digress. Digress, by the way, is a word I learned from my mother. You tend to grow a big vocabulary when someone in your family is a genius. If your vocabulary isn't up to speed and you're using an e-reader, feel free to look up digress using your built-in dictionary. However, if you're reading an ancient, smelly fire hazard of a book, then take a minute or two and go look it up in an ancient, smelly fire hazard of a dictionary, because I'm not going to waste my time explaining every single word I use just in case you don't know it. But I digress.

It all began on a Thursday at precisely 8 a.m. I was standing in the family room of our lovely two-story house, directly across the street from Squirrel Brand Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The same family room that, in a few minutes, I would never ever, ever see again—ever.

Squirrel Brand Park is a small park, but I miss the little place every day. When I was six, my dad swore he saw a squirrel in the park hide a tiny pair of binoculars behind its back. Dad was so serious! After, we laughed and laughed and laughed. We are not laughing anymore.

Back to the story. My mother had kept me out of school that day so I could attend her big lecture at the Hall of Speculative Science at MIT. MIT is a university in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston. Every month they pick someone to give a talk on an invention that could change the world. That month, they'd chosen my mom.

We were due at the hall in less than an hour, and my cat, the Magnificent Lady Grayson of the Silky White Underbelly, or Just Grayson for Short, was mixing up my mother's speaking notes by employing her claws to simulate a Cuisinart. Shredded papers were flying everywhere.

"Willamina Gilbert Snap! Get control of your cat!" screamed my mother.

I ran over to the coffee table, plucking bits and pieces of flying paper out of the air, and lifted the Magnificent Lady Grayson of the Silky White Underbelly, or Just Grayson for Short into my arms. She protested with a loud meow, clawing desperately to reach the last remaining unshredded note.

That's when my father walked into the room. "Honey," he said to Mom, "can you give me a hand with this?" He was trying to tie his tie, which he should know better than to try and do by himself. If you haven't already guessed, he's an Idiot, too.