Ordinary. Normal. Average. Unexceptional.

Awful words: the whole lot of them. Why, just saying them can turn a mouth sour! An exaggeration? Absolutely not. To be an ordinary, normal, average, unexceptional child in a world that celebrates first place, the best, top of the class, and so on is tantamount to being invisible. It’s the human equivalent of wallpaper, someone who just blends into the background. So who would have ever imagined that two ordinary, normal, average, and highly unexceptional children would be tasked with saving the country after the greatest security breach in history?

OCTOBER 14, 7:45 A.M. MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

“There is no way a trained seal could do my job!” Arthur Pelton huffed at his wife, Franny, while fastening the shiny brass buckles on his uniform. A size too small, the navy-blue suit covered Arthur’s meatball-esque figure so tightly that it cut off a significant amount of oxygen to his extremities, leaving his face, hands, and feet perpetually pink and puffy.

“A trained orangutan or a monkey, maybe. But a seal? Never!” Arthur continued as he furrowed his brow with frustration.

“You sit on a stool and point at a sign all day. I’m pretty sure a seal could do that,” Franny replied, stifling a yawn.

“Seals have flippers, not fingers. They couldn’t point even if they wanted to. And believe me, they don’t want to!” Arthur shouted as he stormed out the front door.

Whether from anger or the physical exertion of slamming the door, Arthur had to pause on the front stoop to wipe his perspiring brow. His stubby little fingers scooped the sweat from his forehead and smoothed it across his thinning salt-and-pepper locks. Not that he was thinking about his thinning hair or propensity for perspiration. Arthur was still stuck on seals. How did he know seals didn’t want to point? Maybe they did. And now that he thought of it, they could motion toward the sign, which was kind of like pointing. Franny was right. A seal could do his job.

Arthur’s face dropped; his jowls sagged and his eyes closed. Total devastation. But then a smile slowly emerged as he reviewed the basics of his job. He worked the guard booth at an out-of-use delivery gate. But he didn’t just point at the sign in the window, which stated that the gate was “no longer in service,” any time a car or person approached. He also sat on a stool. How would the seal get onto the stool? Seals can’t climb. They don’t even have legs!

Arthur was not an intelligent man. Reading the ingredients on a box of crackers exhausted him. Counting was an activity that still required the use of his fingers. Needless to say, it was nothing short of a miracle that Arthur had a job. And not just any job, but a job protecting the president of the United States of America. Or so he claimed. In reality a cavalry of highly trained Secret Service agents protected the president, and Arthur manned a defunct delivery gate located on the west side of the White House.

OCTOBER 14, 11:07 A.M. THE WHITE HOUSE. WASHINGTON, DC

“Excuse me.” A steely yet high-pitched voice jolted Arthur from what appeared to be a nap.

“I wasn’t sleeping! I just have really bad posture!” Arthur blurted out as he turned toward the voice.

Standing at the booth’s window in oversized sunglasses, a trench coat with the collar turned up, and a baseball cap was a very tiny man. So tiny that Arthur couldn’t help but wonder if he was tall enough to ride a roller coaster. Or drive a car. Surely he couldn’t see over the wheel. Unless, of course, he has a specially equipped car, Arthur mused as the short-statured man stared at him. At least Arthur assumed he was staring at him. It was rather hard to tell where the man’s eyes were focused behind his baseball cap and sunglasses.

Arthur nodded his head ever so slightly as he mulled over a new idea. “Have you just come from the eye doctor? Because they’re not supposed to let you leave unless someone picks you up. You probably can’t see a thing. Do you even know where you are?”

The small man stood completely still as he continued to look in Arthur’s general direction.

“I said, do you know where you are?” Arthur repeated in a slow and deliberate fashion, all the while clenching his jaw. “Oh, I get it: Mr. Important doesn’t want to talk to a boring old security guard. What are you, some kind of really short celebrity? Man, do I hate celebrities! I remember this one time—”

The tiny man interrupted, “I am not a really short celebrity. And to answer your question, yes, I know where I am, Mr. Pelton.”

Arthur paused.

He opened his mouth.

He closed his mouth.

He narrowed his eyes.

“How do you know my name?”

“This, Mr. Pelton, is my house. I know everyone’s names.”

“Man, you are seriously lost. This is the White House, like where the president lives,” Arthur answered with a smirk, motioning toward the large white structure behind him.

“Mr. Pelton, I am with the Secret Service. Or rather, I run the Secret Service, which means I run the White House, which means this is my house.”

Arthur shrugged. “I guess that’s kind of true.…”

“The truth doesn’t come in kind ofs, Mr. Pelton. Things are either true or false. Those are the only options,” the tiny man barked. “Moving on, I am here today because the Secret Service needs your help.”

“I’m in!” Arthur squealed before even hearing what the man had in mind.

“We will be conducting a training mission tonight at nineteen hundred hours. And as such, we will require your assistance in accessing the west perimeter of the White House.”

“Nineteen hundred hours,” Arthur repeated as he counted on his fingers.

“Seven p.m., Mr. Pelton. Nineteen hundred hours is also known as seven p.m.”

“I knew that.”

Arthur Pelton most definitely did not know that.

“Until tonight,” the tiny man said, and then turned to leave. “Oh, and, Mr. Pelton, they don’t call us the Secret Service for nothing. You are not to tell a soul about this. Not. One. Soul.”

OCTOBER 14, 6:57 P.M. THE WHITE HOUSE. WASHINGTON, DC

A heavy fog hung low over the capital, obscuring the tops of trees and a large portion of the district’s monuments. The soft sound of classical music emanated from the White House. Arthur stuffed tissues in his ears as he bemoaned the yearly visit of the Metropolitan Children’s Philharmonic, currently playing for an audience that included the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state.

Tap, tap, tap.

Arthur yelped (of course he did; that’s what his wife, Franny, would have said).

The short-statured man from the Secret Service, whose face was once again obscured by a baseball cap, stood at the booth’s window.

“I had to put tissues in my ears because of the—”

“The Met Chil Phil. They’re nothing but a bunch of ingrates,” the man interrupted. “Now on to business.” He then pointed to the gate, followed by a keypad on the wall next to Arthur. But Arthur didn’t move. He just sat there, utterly paralyzed. He had never opened the gate; it had been out of service long before he had even started working at the White House.

“Mr. Pelton,” the man from the Secret Service said as sweat dripped steadily from Arthur’s brow.

This was his big moment, Arthur’s one chance to shine. And yet he couldn’t remember the code, which had been given to him on the off chance that an emergency might warrant opening the gate.

The small man’s voice grew louder, cutting sharply through the brisk air. “Is there a problem, Mr. Pelton?”

And then, as if by magic, Arthur remembered the code, punched in the numbers, and smiled excitedly.

“Good luck—or do you guys not say that in your business? How about knock ’em dead? Or break a leg?” Arthur babbled, prompting the man to twirl his hand dramatically in the air.

“What’s that about? You pretending to be one of those fancy guys who waves a stick at musicians?” Arthur grumbled as the man from the Secret Service disappeared into the night.

Within hours, the vice president of the United States had been kidnapped. The nation’s greatest group of spies deactivated. And one of two codes necessary to access the government’s mainframe, which housed classified documents belonging to the White House, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA, had been stolen. And all because Arthur Pelton wanted to prove that he wasn’t just some nobody doing a job that even a trained seal could handle.