The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga Page A

us for "the single cause of the Great Depression," the question asked to a room of silence and gazes suddenly cast down onto notebooks. I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't raise my hand simply because there
was
no "
single
cause" of the Great Depression. We'd just read a chapter that pretty much spelled that out.
    After a few moments of painful silence, I tried to clarify the issue: "Mrs. Sawyer, there really wasn't a
single—
"
    "I want," she said, cutting me off, "the
single cause,
the
one thing
that caused the Great Depression."
    I couldn't believe it. I was dumbstruck by the stupidity
and
the temerity. I don't know why I did what I did next, but somehow all of the contempt and creativity bubbling in my head boiled over in that moment and I found myself raising my hand. When Mrs. Sawyer called on me, I said, "The sea turtles."
    If possible, the room grew even more silent. A roomful of sophomores, plus Cal and a couple of stray juniors, looked at me, wondering,
What the hell is he up to?
    "The
sea
turtles?" Mrs. Sawyer asked, narrowing her eyes.
    "Specifically, large sea turtles. The ones that live off the Galápagos Islands." I don't know where it was coming from. I was making it up on the spot. Some leftover, random data from a Travel Channel special, maybe. I don't know. "They died. That caused the Great Depression."
    I think that if a student had laughed, Mrs. Sawyer probably would have either laughed, too, and then went on, or would have thrown me out of class. But no one moved. No one spoke. No one breathed. So she just looked at me. Maybe she thought I'd run out of steam.
    Not a chance. "It's famous," I went on. "In 1928, there was a massive kill off the Galápagos Islands. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles died."
    "And this caused the Great Depression how?"
    "The British imported a
lot
of sea turtles back then," I went on. I had it all linked up now. It all made sense. I could do this. "They made turtle soup and they used the skin to make leather—belts, shoes, boots, stuff like that." She was nodding a little bit. Why not—that part was plausible. "When the turtles died off, the British stopped importing, but it had a ripple effect on their economy. It messed up their trade policy. No one in South America would trade with
them
because they'd wrecked the Ecuadorian economy. So the British were losing money and trading partners. They had to stabilize their economy, so they did it the quickest way possible: They stopped payment on their World War I debts to the United States."
    Mrs. Sawyer's eyebrows arched.
    "When they did that, the ripple effect hit
here.
The U.S. was suddenly losing a big chunk of expected revenue. The government started to work out a new payment plan with England, but word had already filtered to Wall Street, where investors got nervous. Within a year, the stock market crashed, which caused the run on the banks, which led to the Depression."
    Still, silence. No one said a word. A single giggle would have ruined it.
    "Really?" she asked.
    "Yes."
    "And where did you learn this?" She hefted the history text.
    "I saw it on the History channel," I told her.
    Silence. A lie like this works for one reason: because people think,
Why the hell would he lie about something like this?
    "He's right," cal said suddenly. "I saw that show, too."
    I blinked. Someone I didn't know—a junior, someone on a sports team with cal—raised his hand. "Yeah, I saw that one. It was a couple months ago. They did a whole thing on the turtles."
    Maybe half a dozen heads nodded in unison. I couldn't believe it. I had to put the cap on it.
    "It was the Great Ecuadorian Tortoise Blight of 1928," I told her. "The single cause of the Great Depression."
    Mrs. Sawyer's eyes widened, and, much to my surprise, I could tell that she actually
believed
me. It was the crowning achievement of my high school career, and it came in my freshman year.

Chapter Nineteen
     
    "
Y OU
MADE THAT UP ." Kyra laughs. "Oh, man!