“Why do you talk about them in the past tense?” I asked, staring up at the stone Zenobia. “It’s like you think they’re gone forever. They can’t be. I cannot believe heroes like Hauntima, Zenobia, and the Palomino would quit.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” asked Akiko. “When people keep making such a mess of things? There was too much for them to do, I guess. So they hung up their capes.”
Mae’s expression went soft. “Lots of people have lost hope. But I haven’t. Sometimes I imagine I could be like them and have superpowers too. I want that more than anything—to fly to the front lines in France and make sure my daddy’s okay. He’s an ambulance driver in the war.”
“I’d fly to my brother, Tommy,” whispered Akiko. “Wherever he’s fighting.”
The three of us fell quiet. And I knew we were doing the same thing: thinking about the people we loved. And how this terrible war could take them from us forever.
Nine
OKAY, ENOUGH WITH THE SUPERHEROES,” Akiko said. “Tell us what you know about Room Twelve, Mae. And we promise to keep it to ourselves—just the three of us.”
Mae stretched her neck and looked all around, making sure nobody was nearby listening. Then the three of us tucked in close together on the fountain’s ledge, our foreheads touching this time.
Suddenly, as we pressed together, a surge of electricity pulsed through me. It wasn’t as painful as when I touched a bedroom lamp after a shower when my feet were still wet. This sensation was strange, like a faint electrical current thrumming through my arms and legs.
Mae and Akiko must have felt it too, because they jumped backward at the same time I did. We looked at one another suspiciously.
“Okay, let’s try that again,” Mae began. We pressed in close again, this time with our shoulders forming a tight triangle. And again the crackling energy returned.
“Room Twelve is one of the most top secret programs in military history,” Mae whispered. “Spies, secret codes, false identities, you name it. They’ve planted undercover operatives all over the world.”
My eyes bugged wide enough to roll right out of my head like a couple of marbles.
“What does this have to do with puzzles?” Akiko asked with a noisy sniffle. “The advertisement that brought us to the Carson Building talked about ‘math minds’ and ‘cracking codes’ and ‘big brains.’ None of the people trying out today looked like secret agents!”
Mae shook her head.
“That’s the thing. Room Twelve is top secret. The operatives working for it look like ordinary people—they dance the jitterbug, sell comic books at the newsstands, even put curlers in their hair at night. Room Twelve wants everyone to believe they’re ordinary. But in reality, they’re something much, much bigger. They’re extraordinary.”
My mind was thunderstruck.
“I work at the diner on Captain Flexor Street. You mean Gerda or Harry, the people who flip the pancakes, maybe they could be secret agents? Or my cousin Kay McNulty from County Donegal in Ireland? You mean she could be doing secret work for the war effort?”
Suddenly a thought dropped like an ice cube down the back of my shirt. Why hadn’t I thought more seriously about this before? Mam told me and my little brothers that Cousin Kay worked as a cashier at Caruso’s Market, ringing up sales of apples and milk and all that. I saw her leave for work every day with my own eyes: Kay slipping on her nice jacket, Kay tugging her red hat over her hair, Kay carrying a matching red pocketbook.
Was it possible she was doing something different? Something secret? Questions snagged at the edges of my mind, the way a hangnail catches fabric.
Didn’t most grocery stores close at seven o’clock? Why was Kay sometimes working past midnight and through to morning? Why, if her job was to ring up sales of things as basic as salted crackers, did I sometimes see Kay at the kitchen table using a slide rule and working through complicated geometry problems? And why, if she was a simple cashier at a grocery store, was Kay reading library books about ballistics, bombs, and guns?
Suddenly Room Twelve didn’t sound so far-fetched.
“From what I hear, Room Twelve tries to catch bad guys everywhere,” Mae went on. “There are people all over the country spilling secrets to the Germans and the Japanese. . . .”
Mae’s words snapped me back: the Germans and the Japanese. And like a newsreel at the Saturday matinee, images of planes crashing, bombs dropping, and enemy guns firing at our troops played in my mind. My heart leapt high in my throat, and I squeezed my eyes shut. My father.
Ah-choo!
Akiko wiped her nose, then fiddled with her hankie. When she looked up in the heavy silence that had fallen between us, I could tell she was trying to figure out our expressions. She glanced from my face to Mae’s and back again.
“I’ve seen those looks before,” she said, rubbing her irritated eyes. When she was done, they were pinker than ever, and she blinked rapidly to clear her vision and focus on the two of us again. I did the same thing whenever I was near my neighbor’s cats. Their fur made my eyes so itchy, I could barely keep them open. “It was the same in San Francisco, when we had to leave home. You look at me, but you see the enemy.”
I thought about Akiko’s brother risking his life fighting for our side against the Nazis, even though his family was locked up behind barbed wire in an internment camp in California. And thoughts of my German friends at the diner, Gerda and Harry, leapt to my mind too. Gerda and Harry being German didn’t make them Nazis. Just because Akiko looked a lot like the enemy—the enemy that shot at my father in the Pacific—didn’t mean she was the same as them, did it?
Mae and I watched Akiko blow her nose, then stuff the hankie back into her Hauntima bag. She looked at us again with her itchy, irritated eyes.
And it occurred to me that prejudices were a lot like allergies.
They made it hard for us to really see.
Ten
SO, WHAT SHOULD WE DO about Room Twelve?” I asked, a little worried at the thought of having been so close to spies and undercover operatives. “It sounds like it could be dangerous.”
“True, like that Hank Hissler,” said Mae. “I didn’t get a good feeling about him. Do you think Room Twelve is actually up to bad things?”
“I don’t want to get into any kind of trouble,” said Akiko.
I thought of my mom and all her worrying. Trouble was the last thing I needed too.
Stay safe, Mam was always warning me. I can’t bear it. . . .
“We have until two o’clock to think about it,” began Mae. “I say we—”
Suddenly Akiko gasped and shot her hands to her head, interrupting Mae.
“Dangerous or not, it doesn’t matter! We’ve got to get back to Room Twelve. Now,” she said, jumping to her feet and sending a few pebbles into the air. “I left my hat up in that place, and it’s my auntie’s favorite. She’ll yell at me if I come home without it!”
We took off through the iron gates and back to the sidewalk, retracing our steps through downtown all the way to the Carson Building. Racing up the back staircase, it wasn’t too hard to reach the seventh floor again and find those brass numbers reading ROOM 745. We knew the mysterious Room Twelve was somewhere nearby.
All three of us slipped inside, Akiko rushing around in search of her hat. Mae and I fanned out to explore the desks and peek into a few cabinets. I was looking for some sort of clue about spying, but I wasn’t so sure what it might be. A telescope? A camera? A magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes used?
But before any of us could explore further, a bark broke the silence. And suddenly a brown-and-white ball of fur raced over from the back of the room and jumped onto a steamer trunk that was serving as a coffee table for a sofa and chairs. Tail wagging wildly, he seemed happy to see us.
It was the same dog from this morning!
“Astra!” Mae shouted, throwing her arms around his furry neck. “I can’t believe it’s you. I met him for the first time last night at the l
ibrary, just as Granny and I were closing up. He sat down right in front of the comic book display.”
Akiko looked excited too, but she kept her distance. Probably worried about dog dander making her sneeze.
“So you met him before too? That’s odd,” she said, looking a little puzzled. “I ran into Astra early this morning, before the exam. He followed me on an errand I was running for my uncle’s shop. Astra seems pretty smart . . . for a dog.”
I couldn’t believe this coincidence.
“And I met him this morning before I came here, when I was sweeping up in front of Gerda’s Diner,” I said, completely baffled. “The woman with him turned out to be . . .”
“Mrs. Boudica—” began Mae.
“She acted like she wasn’t paying attention to what was happening around her,” interrupted Akiko, “but I could tell she was. I saw her writing things down in a little notebook.”
“That’s right,” came a confident voice from the back of the room. Mae jumped, and Akiko dropped her Hauntima bag. I stepped around Astra, nearly falling over. “I’ve been observing you girls—all three of you.”
A brown leather chair spun slowly around, and Mrs. Boudica herself was sitting there. Her elbows rested on the chair’s arms, and her fingertips pressed together like a pointy rooftop.
“While we spoke earlier, we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Constance Boudica. But please, call me Mrs. B,” she said. “I have been observing the three of you for some time now. Though it’s not just I who was observing, I should say, but we. And we like what we see.
“Room Twelve has taken a series of hits lately. And we’re having to rethink our strategy. We’ve been looking for the right combinations of traits and skills. And you girls just might have them.”
“Like what?” I wanted to know.
“Like determination, compassion, and perseverance.
“Like intelligence, heart, and spirit.
“Like justice, selflessness, and courage.”
Ah-choo!
Akiko looked stricken. “Courage? Why in the world are you looking at me, then? Or her?” she added, hooking her thumb at Mae. “She wears socks with lace edges.”
“I beg your pardon?” whispered Mae, clearly annoyed by Akiko’s insult. “Leave my footwear choices out of this!”
“Or me,” I said, my voice cracking. I took a moment to clear my throat. “I’m not exactly the most courageous person you’ll ever find.”
Mrs. B’s eyes flicked to Mae’s bloody knee. To my scuffed dungarees. And to Akiko’s messy hair. Akiko unclipped her barrette; then she smoothed down a few stray clumps and clipped the barrette back in.
“We all must fight injustice however we can,” Mrs. B said, getting to her feet. As she crossed the room toward us, I noticed she walked with a slight limp, her left leg seeming to move at an awkward angle. “And that is precisely what I’d like to speak with the three of you about. I’ve studied your exams for the puzzler tryout, and I am quite impressed with your abilities there. You see, Room Twelve involves clever thinking and attention to details.
“The three of you, I believe, offer promising hope.”
Mrs. B was talking about the three of us like we were a team. But we’d met only this morning. And, to be perfectly honest, we couldn’t be more different. And it wasn’t just the color of our skin, the texture of our hair, or where our families came from. It was so much more—like how Mae wore dresses with pleats that were ironed stiff and straight. And she kept her hair rolled neat and tidy. Glancing over at Mae, I couldn’t stop myself from running a hand over my own wild mop of curls, patting them into place.
And Akiko? She dressed in mismatched hand-me-downs and seemed to carry a general store in her canvas Hauntima bag. While Mae was charm-school prim and polished, Akiko was messy: a mouth breather who interrupted people whenever they were speaking.
I figured I must fall somewhere in between. I pulled my comic book from my back pocket and rolled it up in my hands like a tube.
Astra circled Mrs. B’s feet, then hopped back onto the brown steamer trunk and sat down. He gazed at us with watchful eyes as Mrs. B went on.
“We’ve never seen three girls who were more alike.”
I heard Mae issue a little gasp and Akiko cough. I rattled my head to pay closer attention.
“Each one’s strength seems to complement the others’. And then there’s the obvious:
“All three of you appear obsessed with superheroes.
“All three of you go to bed at night worried about someone you love.
“And all three of you want—more than anything—to do whatever you possibly can to keep them safe.”
This Mrs. B was smarter than I’d first thought.
“I believe I have what you’re looking for, Miss Nakano, do I not?” she asked, holding a straw hat out before her. Astra took it from her hand and padded over to Akiko, who accepted it from the dog’s jaws with a look of complete disgust. Akiko held it up with a single finger, so the least amount of canine contamination would touch her.
“Thanks,” she said, without the slightest enthusiasm. “Good, um, little doggy.”
Astra sat down at Akiko’s feet, one ear raised curiously, as if studying her.
Then a sound on the other side of the closed door caught his attention. Suddenly Astra bounded to the doorway and began barking frantically. Mrs. B rushed over and swung it open. In an instant, she and Astra crossed the hallway and into the next room.
So of course Mae, Akiko, and I followed.
I couldn’t believe the commotion as we stepped inside. There seemed to be a fight going on. A man in a dark suit and a gray fedora hat was yelling at another figure, who wore all black. Only this second man wasn’t in a traditional business suit like the first. He was wearing a costume—a long black cape, a black mask, and tall black boots.
A caped hero? I couldn’t believe my eyes! It had been so long!
“What are you playing at, Hissler?” hollered the man in black. “I don’t trust your motives! Come back here and explain yourself!”
Mrs. B and Astra had rushed toward them too. “Mr. Hissler, I’ve asked you before, what do you think you’re—”
Hank Hissler didn’t explain himself. Instead he barreled past them toward the door. Akiko, Mae, and I stumbled out of his way just in time, but my comic book slipped from my hands onto the floor.
The man in the black cape—it must have been the Stretcher, a legendary superhero whom my dad had admired when he was a boy—reached out to grab Mr. Hissler. His long black arm stretched nearly the whole length of the room!
Just as the Stretcher caught hold of Mr. Hissler’s suit collar, the room erupted in a burst of white light. It blinded my eyes. And the crack that accompanied it sounded like shattering glass.
In the frantic seconds that followed, blinking and waving away the smoke, I realized that both Mr. Hissler and the Stretcher were gone. I heard pounding footsteps and a sinister cackle, which told me our snake-eyed instructor was escaping down the hall. But what about the Stretcher?
Once the smoke thinned out, I saw where Akiko and Mae were staring. Following their gaze down to the floor, to where he had been standing only seconds before, I noticed a few sparks sizzling into the smoky air. All that remained of the Stretcher was a pair of black boots, a shimmery black cape, and a black mask.
Coughing and wheezing, Mrs. B, Akiko, Mae, and I fanned the air and tried to make sense of the scene. Astra barked and raced to the door and back a few times.
I reached down and gently picked up the cape, surprised by its heft. The fabric looked light and airy, but it weighed more than I’d expected. Beside me, Mae squatted to the floor and collected the two boots. Akiko scooped up the mask and turned it around delicately in her hands.
“This,” said Mrs. B breathlessly, trying to control her anger. “This is what we’re up against. A force darker than any of us could have imagined. With each attack, another caped hero disappears. Vaporized. There h
ave been far too many taken from us to count.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, trying not to yell. “Vaporizing superheroes? Eliminating those who are trying to do good in the world?”
“Who?” fumed Mae. “Who would do such a thing?”
“And how can they be stopped?” wheezed Akiko, her cheeks as pink as her irritated eyes.
Mrs. B turned to face the three of us, and her expression was fierce.
“This is where you come in,” she began. “We think you can help. Room Twelve would like you to join in solving this, our biggest puzzle.
“As I’ve said before, our league of secret heroes sees something in each one of you. And even more important, we see the potential of what the three of you bring together.”
I was about to ask a question when a shout from the hall interrupted us.
“Mrs. B! Come quick!” A man staggered into the doorway and leaned against the frame, panting for air. “The maps room caught fire. It’s spreading fast!”
Astra and Mrs. B raced out the door, leaving Akiko, Mae, and me to stare at one another in the silence.
“We’ve got to help,” Akiko said in her sandpaper voice. “But how?”
“Can’t we chase after them?” said Mae, eagerly turning toward the door, the black boots in her arms. “If people are in danger, we’ve got to do something.”
I wanted a moment to think. So I reached over and clutched Mae’s shoulder, hoping she’d wait before running off.
As my hand touched Mae, sparks suddenly crackled in the air above our heads, and a small jolt of electricity pulsed through my arms and body. Mae jumped. She grabbed Akiko’s hand in surprise, her eyes wide. And again, sparks sizzled into the air.
“What’d you do that for?” Akiko gasped, clutching the black mask to her chest in surprise. “You shocked me!”
“I didn’t mean to,” Mae said. “It’s coming from these boots, I think. What’s happening in here?”
I couldn’t make sense of the electricity in the room. It hummed in my ears. And the cape I was holding in my hands seemed to shudder with energy.
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