Noble wasn’t having any of it. “Nonsense,” he said. “A lot of people have a hard time with math in high school, but they get it eventually…some of them even wind up being geniuses.”

“Yeah, like who?”

“Albert Einstein, for one.”

“Who?”

“Einstein,” Noble said. “He came up with the Theory of Relativity—you know, E equals MC squared.”

“What’s that mean?”

Noble thought for a moment. “I don’t know. All I know is, Einstein was a genius and he struggled with math, just like you.”

“Actually,” said Harlan over his shoulder, as he sat at the computer desk in the bedroom listening to Argus and Noble talk, “Einstein never struggled with math. What happened was, he got so bored with his schoolwork that he just stopped doing it. That’s why he failed math, and that’s why he got kicked out of school.”

“You’re not helping here, Harlan.”

“Sorry.”

The expression on Argus’s face had become a strange mix of frustration, anger, and panic, as if his life were quickly spinning out of control. “I don’t want to be a genius,” he told Noble. “I just want to be a forest ranger like Ranger Brock, and a forest ranger doesn’t have to know high school math.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Noble. “But a forest ranger does need to have a high school diploma, and you can’t get one unless you pass math.”

Argus’s face suddenly brightened as his attention shifted from Noble to Harlan and the computer terminal on the desk in front of him. “Why don’t you just hack into the school’s computer and fix my mark, like you did before?” he said. “I don’t need anything fancy, just enough to pass.”

Harlan shook his head. “I can’t do that anymore. The school has better protection against that sort of thing now, and they might even be able to figure out where the tampering came from. Besides, your math teacher, Mr. Surujpaul, knows you’re struggling and he’d realize something was fishy if you suddenly had a passing grade.”

“Especially when you haven’t gotten over fifty on a single test this semester,” Noble added.

Argus let out a long sigh. “Are you sure there isn’t an easier way to get through this than studying?”

“Sorry, Argus,” Noble said, “you’re just going to have to do it on your own.”

Argus shook his head in dismay, then cracked open his math textbook and began to read.

Just then the phone rang.

Ranger Brock answered, picking it up in the living room, just outside the boys’ bedroom.

* * *

“Hello?” said Ranger Brock.

“Hi, Garrett,” said the voice at the other end. “Konrad Martin here.”