shaking vigorously. “I won’t stand for any of that Mr. Oswald business. Call me Oz.”
Under no circumstances was I going to call the man Oz.
“How’d you enjoy the seminar?” he asked us.
“It was…illuminating.”
Mother placed a hand over her heart. “I’ve never felt closer to myTality than I do at this moment.”
Seeing him up close, I was even more certain Oswald wouldn’t approach fifty for at least a decade. He was young and handsome and clearly charismatic. I imagined those traits accounted for his success more than any business acumen.
What did that mean for the hoax? Was Ishmael’s charm more essential than my scientific knowledge?
No, I told myself. They’re equally important.
While Mother and Oswald exchanged platitudes, my mind wandered. I wouldn’t take my brother’s skills for granted, I decided, but I wouldn’t diminish my own either. The hoax required both of us. It could only be a success if we worked together.
And it would be a success. It had to be. My whole future was suddenly riding on it.
Interview
Subject #3, Cassidy (Cass) Robinson: I spent Sunday rehearsing for my epic performance. Not memorizing lines for Hamelin!, but… You sure it’s all right to talk about this? Okay, cool beans. So yeah, I practiced for the stunt Gideon asked me pull on Monday morning. I was totally ecstatic about the hoax, which maybe makes me a bad person. But whatever. I needed some joy in my life after being cast as the love interest in Hamelin!. Ugh. Is there any role more insulting than the love interest?
Interlude
Hoaxes in History
Hoaxes aren’t new. Over the course of human history, there have always been individuals with the desire to fool the people around them—or, for the truly ambitious, to fool the entire world.
Take George Hull, for instance. In 1869, he discovered the petrified body of a ten-foot tall man on his property. Soon to become known as the “Cardiff Giant,” Hull charged spectators admittance to see the spectacle in person. But when the legitimacy of the “giant” was called into question, Hull admitted it was a prank.
Another infamous hoaxer was a man named Robert Kenneth Wilson, who, in 1934, sparked interest around the world when he took a photo of a strange serpent-like creature, eventually dubbed the “Loch Ness Monster.” Today, of course, that photo is generally considered to be fake.
Then there’s George and Kathleen Lutz. In 1975, they bought a home where six people had been brutally murdered. After moving in, the Lutzes experienced rampant paranormal activity, eventually leading them to write a bestselling book about their experiences. But ultimately, the haunting of the Lutzes’ Dutch Colonial house in Amityville, New York, was revealed to be just another hoax.
More recently, in 2000, someone calling himself John Titor gained internet fame for insisting he was a time traveler from the year 2036. But when many of the predictions about world events were inaccurate, his followers became skeptical. It turned out that, you guessed it, it was yet another hoax, perpetrated by a Florida entertainment lawyer and his computer scientist brother.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There was the Piltdown Man; the Cottingley Fairies; the Dihydrogen Monoxide incident; the Sitka, Alaska, volcano eruption… Century upon century of hoaxes.
What makes some people take pleasure from tricking others? Is it a cry for attention? A desperate need to outsmart their peers? An attempt to achieve glory?
I won’t deny that I felt kinship with past hoaxers. But I judged them too. I saw where they’d been sloppy, where they’d missed opportunities to take their hoaxes to the next level.
I wouldn’t make their mistakes.
Event: First-Period Performance
Date: Sept. 11 (Mon.)
Since Ishmael was a year older than me, we shouldn’t have had classes together. But he’d failed health class the previous year, so we shared first period.
It mystified me that he managed to fail health class. The only thing preventing the class from being a complete breeze was that once a year Father brushed off his unused degree (See: exercise science.) and gave a guest lecture on fitness. Just the thought of it was humiliating.
Cass was also in the class. Usually she actively participated, answering questions before they were fully out of Mrs. Novak’s mouth. Not because Cass had a great love of the subject material, but because she had a great love of talking. Talking about anything, at any time—from the zany contestants she’d seen the night before on Pitch, Please to whether Isaac Newton or Gottfried Leibniz was the true inventor of calculus.
I knew people would find it