Max Einstein was miserable, doing her least favorite thing in the world: NOTHING!
The world’s not gonna save itself! she thought.
Yes, she knew there were dangers lurking around every corner, especially after her successful adventure in Africa. But she was tired of following orders. Of “lying low” and “playing it safe.” She had to get out of the room that was starting to feel more and more like a prison—complete with guards, who were stationed in the room across the hall, trying their best to disappear, which was extremely hard to do when you were a pair of six-foot-tall bodybuilders in a tight-fitting suits.
Okay, to be fair, they were Max’s bodyguards, there to protect her from the Corp—a dangerous group of evildoers that would do anything to get their hands on who they considered the smartest girl in the world. But still. Max hadn’t asked for them. They were Ben’s idea. Ben worried a lot, especially for a fourteen-year-old billionaire. (Yeah.)
Max checked the weather app on her smartphone. Ninety-two degrees with 90 percent humidity. Sweltering. New York City could become a steamy concrete sauna in the summer.
“I need to be outside,” she told the Einstein bobblehead doll smiling at her from inside the battered old suitcase she’d propped open in the corner of her small dormitory room. It was Max’s portable shrine to all things Einstein. She used to have a very nice, brand-new apartment over a renovated horse stable. But a few months ago, Ben had insisted that Max move somewhere safer and more “secure” where she could spend most of her time doing what she was doing this weekend.
NOTHING!
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, she told herself, remembering Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion. A body in motion will remain in motion.
It was time to get her body moving.
Max pulled her curly mop of copper-colored hair into a ponytail. Slipping a bathrobe over her shorts and T-shirt (which had Star Wars lettering spelling out “May the Mass Times Acceleration Be with You”), she slid into a pair of rubbery flip-flops. She tucked her sneakers and socks into a shower tote, hiding them underneath the shampoo and loofah sponge. She also slid in a small hand mirror.