“Have you met him… or her?”

  “No. No one in Jerusalem has.”

  “Max?” Charl came up the corridor. “You’ve completed your final exam?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Charl rocked his wrist and looked at his watch. “You had eight hours.”

  “I know. But I didn’t really need that much time. I was hoping I might do a little more exploring.” She gestured toward the door.

  “After what happened yesterday? Impossible. The Corp knows your location. You are at risk. So is the CMI and its mission. Kindly return to your room.”

  “Do as Charl suggests,” said a second security guard, stepping out of the Shabak team’s small office near the Institute’s front doors. It was Yahav. The van driver. Max figured he’d been given desk duty after what happened at the Einstein Archives.

  Good, she thought. It’s like Tisa had said earlier, “Dude deserves to be demoted.”

  “You will be summoned to a reading of your results after all the tests have been scored and evaluated,” Charl told her. “For now, return to your room. Read. Relax. Stay safe.”

  Max did as she was told.

  In her room, she popped open her battered suitcase and added a new souvenir: a black-and-white postcard of Einstein happily riding a bicycle. She’d purchased it at the Bloomfield Science Museum gift shop—right before Isabl and the security team charged into the building.

  Max spent nine long hours looking through her memorabilia, reading, and talking to her inner Einstein, until finally someone rapped on her dorm room door.

  “Max?” It was Ms. Kaplan. “It’s time. They will see you now.”

  “They?” asked Max. “Who are they?”

  “The council of five.”

  “Oh-kay. And who are the council of five?”

  “The judges. The ones who will help the benefactor decide which of you is the change maker we need. It is a decision that will be finalized within the next twenty-four hours.”

  Max nodded. Apparently, “the chosen one” was about to be chosen.

  34

  Ms. Kaplan led Max to a dimly lit room.

  Five very serious individuals, all of them dressed in black, sat behind a long table like a panel of stern elders. They were individually illuminated by five overhead spotlights that, shining straight down, turned their faces into craggy collections of harsh shadows.

  In the middle of the room, above the judge in the center, glowed a tiny red light inside a gray plastic dome.

  Max had a funny feeling that this session was being observed at some remote location via a closed-circuit video camera.

  She sensed the benefactor would be judging her, too.

  “Welcome, Max,” said the wise-looking man in the middle of the panel. His voice was deep and mellow. His goatee beard, tufts of white hair, and wire-rimmed glasses made him look like a kindly professor. Or maybe a wizard. He smiled at Max. Max smiled back. “We five have been chosen to help the benefactor select our instrument of change.”

  The kindly woman sitting to his right spoke next. “We, of course, have endeavored to give you and the other contestants every opportunity to succeed. For this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Not only for each of you, but also for our planet.”

  “If we choose incorrectly,” said the man in the middle, “the consequences would be worse than dire. They would be catastrophic.”

  “Whoever we choose,” boomed the woman to his left, “must help guide our planet to its best possible future.”

  Max nodded. “This has been a totally amazing opportunity. I know I can make the world a better place. So can all the other contestants. They’re all great. They’re also my new friends. Actually, they’re my first friends. Well, I mean among people my own age. Mr. Kennedy was my friend…”

  Max realized she was babbling. Her enthusiasm was getting the better of her. Again. She took a deep breath.

  “At the end of the day,” she told the judges, “I want to be like my hero, Albert Einstein. Maybe that’s why I have the same last name even though I know we’re not supposed to use last names here at the Institute. I want to change the world for the better. Dr. Einstein once said, ‘The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.’ Those are the ideals that I want to light my way, too.”

  “Well said, Miss Einstein,” remarked the man in the middle of the table. “Why then, if you so thoroughly understand the significance of this opportunity, did you fail your written examination so miserably?”

  “Why,” demanded the woman to his right, consulting her notes, “did you complete it in twenty minutes when you were allotted a full eight hours?”

  “Why did you only answer two questions?” added the angry looking judge at the end of the panel. “Were you in a rush to return to your room and watch your favorite YouTube videos?”

  “No, sir.” She was stunned. “Did I really fail the test?”

  “Of course you did!” sputtered the angry judge. “As I stated, you only answered two questions.”

  Max nodded. “I know. Those were the only two that needed answering. The other forty-eight were simply a prologue leading up to the two questions that I did answer. Number forty-nine—does science make the world safer? And number fifty—if Einstein were still with us, what would he be doing? If one can answer those final two questions, then they have also answered the previous forty-eight.”

  The panel looked dumbfounded by her response.

  “Would you like me to answer the other questions now? I memorized them all…”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said the man in the middle. “Thank you for your time. You will hear from us after we complete our deliberations.”

  “Thank you.”

  Max turned around and was ready to exit when an angry voice cried out, “What was question number seventeen, young lady?”

  It was the shrunken judge at the far end of the panel.

  She turned to face him.

  “‘If the universe is infinitely expanding, then how can humans’ actions be considered significant?’ The answer, of course, is simple. All human life is significant and, therefore, should be honored. At least that’s what Albert Einstein would be doing if he were still alive. So, you see, the answer to question fifty took care of question seventeen, too.”

  35

  Max walked back to the dormitory wing of the CMI building.

  All the other contestants, except Keeto, her fellow American, were hanging out in the commons area, munching on crunchy Israeli junk food: BBQ Bissli wheat twists and peanut buttery Bamba curls, which Max thought looked like brown Cheetos.

  They were being entertained by Klaus, who was wearing a curly yarn dust mop on his head.

  “Look at me, I’m Max!” He put on a prissy, high-pitched voice. “Oooh. I love Professor Einstein! When I grow up, I want to marry his brain!”

  Klaus had not seen Max enter the room. But she was standing right behind him.

  He pranced in place, flouncing around to make his curly mop top flop. “Dr. Einstein wrote E equals M-C squared just for me! See, it has M and E in it. ME!” Now he giggled like Max had never giggled before in her life.

  The other kids stopped laughing at his imitation. Because they saw Max, even if Klaus didn’t.

  “Um, Klaus?” said Hana. “You might want to knock it off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” said Max, “it’s hysterical!”

  She started laughing. Hard.

  “That’s me. I’m Einstein’s number one fangirl! I want to marry his brain!”

  She fell to her knees, her body (and curly hair) shaking with laughter.

  The rest of the kids started laughing, too.

  They’d all been under a lot of stress because of the eight-hour exam. Laughter was a good way to release some of it.

  When Max was able to breathe (and talk) again, she told everybody that she’d seen Keeto go into the judges’ room when she came out.

  “He’s the last one,” said Toma. “We’ve all received our test scores.”

  “I got an 83,” said Klaus, sounding more humble than usual. “How’d you do?”

  Max shrugged. “I’m not sure. They didn’t give me a score. More like an incomplete.”

  “I got one of those, too,” said Vihaan. “I found the section on quantum mechanics to be so fascinating, I spent four hours crafting my response to question thirty-two.”

  “I skipped that one,” said Siobhan.

  “Me, too,” admitted Max. “But soon, one of us will be chosen. We’ll have to start leading the charge for change.”

  Tisa nodded. “We’ll have to start healing the planet.”

  “Or find a planet B,” said Toma, the budding astrophysicist. “But there is no Planet B. Unless, of course, we find a wormhole our spaceship can time travel through.”

  “Okay,” said Tisa, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s play a game. ‘Saving the Planet.’ First challenge. Climate change. How do we change it back? Go!”

  Max hung back. She’d never played a game with kids before. Was she supposed to let them win like when she played chess with Mr. Weinstock?

  “Simple,” said Hana, hooking her long, dark hair behind an ear. “High speed rail! Like we have in Japan. If more countries invested in the technology, there would be significant carbon emissions reductions.”

  “Indigenous land management!” shouted Siobhan, getting into the spirit of the game. “Nobody’s better at protecting rain forests than the people who’ve lived in them for generations. Let the locals manage their own environments. If we did that, we could eliminate more than six gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere.”

  “How about improved rice production?” suggested Tisa. “If we could get rice farmers to do things slightly differently, we can dramatically reduce the amount of methane produced by current agricultural techniques.”

  “Wind turbines!” shouted Vihaan.

  “Educating girls, all over the world,” said Annika.

  “A plant-rich diet!” shouted Hana, the botanist.

  “You already said high speed rail,” groused Klaus.

  “So?”

  “You can’t have two solutions!”

  “Actually,” said the ever-logical Annika, “I would hazard to guess that none of the world’s problems will ever be resolved with one single solution, Klaus. It will take an amalgam of many.”

  “Annika’s right,” said Tisa. “Whoever wins this contest will need all the help and ideas they can get.”

  “They’ll need intellectual curiosity and imagination,” said Max, finally joining in. “Remember what Einstein said: ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’”

  “Oooh,” cooed Klaus, putting on his high-pitched voice and curly wig again. “Einstein said it! He’s such a genius. I looooove Albert Einstein.”

  Everybody in the room cracked up again.

  But Max was the one laughing the loudest.

  36

  Around ten p.m., as the group was discussing their ideas for eradicating poverty around the world, Isabl came into the commons room.

  Yahav, the Shabak security officer, was with her.

  “The judges will consult with the benefactor and announce their decision tomorrow morning. Before breakfast.”

  “Good,” said Keeto, who’d rejoined the other contestants after learning that he had scored a 77 on his written examination. “If it was after breakfast, I’d be too nervous to eat. And I’m already hungry. That kibbutz-style breakfast buffet you guys have here is amazing! Salad and waffles? Incredible and kosher.”

  “Will the test scores be the only determining factor?” asked Annika.

  “No,” said Isabl. “They will also consider your first test, your interviews, and all observed behavior.”

  Great, thought Max.

  She’d totally tanked on her first exam.

  She’d more or less blown off her interview.

  And she’d been observed straying from the herd and being chased out of the Einstein Archives by evil minions working for the Corp.

  She didn’t have a snowball’s chance in a microwave oven of being the “chosen one.”

  Still, her brief time at the Change Makers Institute had been some of the happiest days of her life.

  She was with kindred spirits. She’d actually made friends. With kids her own age. Her intellect had been challenged on a regular basis. She’d seen an exotic foreign land. She’d spent time looking at Albert Einstein’s actual writings. She’d eaten strange snack food items.

  She’d even enjoyed the rush of adrenaline that came with escaping the Corp thugs with her new friend Annika.

  “Will the chosen one operate out of Jerusalem?” asked Klaus. “Or will I get to go home to Poland?”

  “You, or whoever is selected, will be immediately sent out into the field,” said Isabl. “Exactly where you might go is TBD, depending on the mission. But the winner can’t stay here. We must assume the Corp knows about our operational base in Israel.”

  “What, exactly, is the Corp?” asked Tisa.

  “The bad guys,” said Annika.

  “They are,” explained Isabl, “the exact opposite of the CMI. They are against any and all changes we might want to see in this world.”

  “Why?” asked Toma.

  “Well, if I might quote Albert Einstein—”

  “Nope,” joked Klaus. “That’s Max’s job.”

  Isabl grinned.

  “It’s okay,” said Max. “You can quote him, too.”

  “And so I shall. ‘Fear or stupidity has always been the basis of most human actions.’ And to that I must add greed. The Corp isn’t stupid. But they prey on fear so they can feed their greed.”

  The room was silent as everyone thought about what Isabl just said.

  “Get some rest,” said Isabl. “Tomorrow will prove to be a very exciting and important day. Especially for one of you.”

  The group broke up and retired to their rooms.

  Max was too nervous to sleep. So, lying in her bed, she had another conversation with Albert Einstein. The imaginary one who lived inside her head.

  “Your archives were amazing,” she thought. “Eighty thousand items. All those documents. I need to start writing things down like you did.”

  “It is one way to outwit the constraints imposed by time,” replied her internal Einstein.

  “I’m not going to win this competition,” she admitted with a sigh. “I have to face that reality…”

  “Ah, but reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

  “So, what can the world learn from you today? What one thing would you have told the judges?”

  There was a pause.

  As if the imaginary Einstein in her brain was considering his answer.

  Finally, it came:

  “I would have told them that peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”

  “Yeah. That’s a good one.”

  “Danke.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And Max?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Your hair does not look as preposterous as that dust mop wig Klaus was wearing.”

  “Yes, sir. It does. That’s my reality. And it’s pretty persistent.”

  She stared up at the ceiling.

  “I don’t want to win this contest. But I don’t want to lose it, either. I also don’t want to endanger the CMI. Of course, I wouldn’t mind outfoxing the Corp again. It was sort of fun. There’re so many pluses and minuses to this whole thing. It’s enough to make my head spin.”

  “Remember the bicycle, Max. How do you keep your balance?”

  “By moving forward. And not panicking.”

  “Ah! Exactly. Sweet dreams, Max.”

  37

  “Are you on a secure line?”

  “Yes, Dr. Zimm.”

  “Report.”

  “The girl will be leaving Jerusalem. Soon.”

  “Even if she wins this so-called contest?”

  “She won’t, believe me. But if, by some miracle, she did, she would go on a field assignment for the do-gooders.”

  “Excellent. The field is much more conducive to a snatch and grab operation. Israel has too many security forces.”

  “True. However, none of them pay half as well as you and your friends.”

  “I am glad you are pleased with our arrangement. Keep me posted. When the girl moves, we move. I’d like you to spearhead the operation.”

  “Of course. I am happy to do so. Provided you keep wiring the funds to my offshore bank account.”

  “Don’t worry. We believe in greed. We will happily feed yours. One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Charl and Isabl. If the opportunity presents itself, kindly remove them from the equation. We’d happily relocate them to one of our holding facilities.”

  “Consider it done, Dr. Zimm.”

  “Thank you, Yahav.”

  38

  The next morning the nine contestants were invited to the Institute’s main auditorium.

  Five stools with seatbacks were lined up in front of a deep-blue velvet curtain. A familiar slogan scrolled across the top of the stage’s proscenium arch:

  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

  —Margaret Mead

  “But one of us has to lead that group,” mumbled Annika, sounding nervous.

  “Indeed,” said Tisa. “We have to be the change we wish to see in the world.”

  “Mahatma Gandhi said that,” said Toma and Hana, both trying to say it first. Both still trying to prove that they were the smartest kid in the class.

  The nine contestants were seated in the front row of the sea of seats. Max realized that the eight other finalists had always been considered the best and the brightest. She wondered if any of them had ever failed at anything before. Probably not. And yet, today, eight of them would. Okay, maybe just seven. Max had already accepted that she had been quickly eliminated from the competition. Those who scored incompletes on their final exams were seldom promoted to the head of the class.