by Laura Ruby
“What does that mean?” said Theo. “What else could it be a map of?”
“I don’t know!” Tess said.
Edgar pushed back his chair. “Did you bring the original letter with you? And the copy of Penelope? Why don’t we look at those?”
Tess didn’t know what good it would do, but she pulled the letter and book out of her messenger bag and handed them over. Uncle Edgar read the Morningstarr letter, muttering, “Fascinating, just fascinating. So, you’d already gotten this when you came to see us?”
Tess’s ears went hot. “Yes. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. We weren’t sure we were on to something, and we thought that if the society got involved, Slant might figure it out.”
“‘Trust No One,’” Uncle Edgar said, pointing to the warning on the envelope. “I understand. I’d have done the same thing.” He set the letter aside and picked up the book. “Now, this is even more fascinating. We know so little about Ava Oneal. Records show that she worked as a nurse at a hospital for sick orphans—one of Eliza Hamilton’s projects, I believe—which was where Ava met Theresa Morningstarr. But we don’t know where she born or who her family was. People have speculated whether she was a runaway from a plantation and was living under an assumed name, but, again, we have no evidence of that. Apparently, she didn’t have a Southern accent.” He thumbed through the book. “By all accounts, she was as smart as she was beautiful, but I don’t think either condition made life any easier for her.”
“What do you mean?” said Jaime.
“Excuse me a moment.” He strode to one of the shelves and scanned it with a finger. He found what he was looking for, some sort of leather-bound journal, and brought it back to the desk.
Tess edged closer to look. “What is it?”
“Notes of a physician from the New York City Lunatic Asylum.”
“I think Ava Oneal was in that asylum!”
Edgar said, “Yes, she was. All sorts of scribbles here, some difficult to read. Here we have ‘Young man admitted. Caught stealing a pig. Claimed the pig was his brother, Charles.’ And a few pages after that, we have ‘Mrs. Roddington still claiming her husband had her locked up because he didn’t like her cooking.’ Unfortunately, more than a few people were locked up simply because they were nuisances and not because they were insane. And here’s something about a boy who had an unfortunate incident with a Roller; that’s a bit gruesome, so I won’t read that one. Ah! Here are the notes that are more interesting.”
He pointed to some notes dated April 1853. “‘A most interesting case. Ms. Ava Oneal. Servant to the Morningstarrs. Abused a would-be suitor for trying to kiss her.’”
“My grandmother did that,” said Jaime.
Uncle Edgar grinned. “I’ve met your grandmother, and that doesn’t surprise me a bit. About Ava, the doctor writes that she ‘seems in good physical condition. Incredibly strong for a woman.’”
“Yes, because women are weaklings,” said Tess, rolling her eyes.
“The people of that time were not known for their egalitarianism, Tess,” said Uncle Edgar.
“Tell me about it,” said Jaime.
Theo said, “What else does it say?”
“That she spoke a lot of nonsense. ‘Today she asked me if I remembered the old fable “The Man and the Lion,” where the lion asserted that he should not be so misrepresented when the lions wrote history. When I asked her who was the lion, she laughed and laughed and would not stop.’ And that she spent three days repeating these sentences: ‘“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” I’m afraid she’s desperately, irreversibly ill, and possibly dangerous. I recommend she be confined indefinitely.’ This doctor didn’t seem to realize that Ava was quoting the abolitionist Wendell Phillips and the writer and orator Frederick Douglass.”
“That’s actually pretty funny,” said Theo.
“If it wasn’t so horrible and sad,” Jaime said.
“Yes. And it turns out that this doctor, a Dr. Chauncey Welborn, quit the profession after it was discovered he had quite the problem with whiskey.”
He closed the volume, turned his attention back to the computer screen. The lights of the city really did look like a gentle shower of stars, Tess thought. But what could you read in a map made of stars? Real stars were never still, never fixed in place; they moved across the sky. Every time you looked at them, the stars would be different.
“A map made of stars,” she said out loud. “Or a star map?”
Theo’s brows bunched, then flew up in surprise. “I think you might be right!”
“Wait, how is a star map different from a regular map?” Jaime asked.
“The stars look different depending on the exact date and time you’re looking at them. If Tess is right, then the star map will give us a specific date. Maybe another clue.” Theo turned to Edgar. “Is that something your computer can calculate?”
“Well,” said Edgar, leaning back in the chair, considering. “Yes. I think it can.” He slid the chair closer and typed in some more commands. “This should identify the positions of the lights, er, stars, and tell us what day we need to pay attention to. It should also give us the vantage point from which the stars need to be viewed. It will take a minute or two.”
Nobody spoke as the computer calculated.
And calculated.
And calculated.
Tess tapped her foot. Theo pulled his lip. Jaime’s fingers drummed a rhythm on his leg.
The computer gave a soft ding!
They all leaned forward.
December 3, 1844. Brooklyn.
Edgar leaned back in his chair, blinking.
“Brooklyn?” said Tess. “What happened in Brooklyn in 1844?”
“Brooklyn wasn’t even a part of New York City then, was it?” Theo asked.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Uncle Edgar. “Let’s see, 1844, 1844.” Into the computer he typed the date and place. On the screen appeared inventions from the nineteenth century, notations from history books, photos and bios of dead presidents, endless lists of information. He frowned at the search results, lips working, fingers scrolling, until he stopped, took in a sharp breath, let it out with a long hiss.
“What?” said Tess.
Uncle Edgar didn’t answer but again walked over to one of the towering bookshelves. He consulted one volume, then another. Then he pulled a third. He opened the book.
“What is it?” Tess said.
Uncle Edgar spread the volume out on the desk, showing them a yellowing newspaper article. “On December 3, 1844, the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel officially opened in Brooklyn.”
Tess looked down at a drawing of a train entering a dark shaft. “What’s the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel? I’ve never heard of it!”
“That’s because it was only open for twenty years, and then it was closed, buried, and forgotten,” said Edgar.
“Until now,” said Tess.
Uncle Edgar laughed, and his laugh was equal parts shock and delight and belief. “Yes. Until now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Theo
They only had a few minutes to celebrate the discovery of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, because they soon found out that only way to access the tunnel was through a manhole cover smack in the middle of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. If they didn’t want to be seen, they would have to make the journey in the middle of the night and would only have a few hours to find the next clue. And since the tunnel was seventeen feet high and some 2,500 feet long, it was way too much ground to cover in so short a time, especially if you had no idea what you were looking for.
So, they would have to be prepared before they went anywhere, Edgar insisted. And to be prepared, they had to find out everything they could about the tunnel. Edgar Wellington dug up books and articles in the archives. Jaime searched the internet. Tess helped Omar and Priya and Ray continue to pack up Grandpa Ben’s apartment, just in case Grandpa
had a relevant letter or a book or an artifact stashed somewhere, something that might describe the precise location of a new clue in the tunnel. She did this with the energy of a squirrel searching for a nut.
A few days into their research, however, Theo’s mom announced that they would be making a trip out to Long Island, and it was as if someone had stuck a pin in Tess and all her excitement and energy drained out. She sat deflated in the car next to Theo as Nine nibbled at her fingers and Mom issued her normal warnings: Grandpa could be having a good day, or he could be having a bad day, or he could be having an in-between day when one minute he was good and the next he was bad. They had to be ready for anything.
They were never quite ready.
The drive to Grandpa’s took about an hour. The place was a smallish white building situated on a wide lawn so green you might think it was spray-painted. Maybe it was. It also had lots of trees, winding paths for walking, and benches for sitting. If it was one of Grandpa’s good days, they could stroll around the grounds, maybe even go out to dinner. If not . . .
Well.
They found him in the sitting room, a sunny space decorated with gauzy curtains that let in as much light as possible. He was sitting by one of the windows, white hair swept back from his brown, regal profile like a bust you’d find in a museum. When Theo’s mom knelt next to Grandpa’s wheelchair and kissed Grandpa on the cheek and Grandpa said, “Hello, Rabbit,” they knew it was a good day, or at least a day with some small good in it, because Rabbit was Grandpa’s old nickname for Theo’s mom—no Yiddish for her. “I call you Rabbit because you’re so easily spooked!”
“Not so much anymore,” Theo’s mom said, her voice thick.
Grandpa patted her hand. “Sometimes, though?”
“Maybe,” Theo’s mom said.
Grandpa turned to Theo and Tess. “Look at you! So tall!”
“Hi, Grandpa,” said Tess, bending to give him a hug.
Grandpa held Tess by the shoulders, beaming at her fondly, his eyes still clear and blue as ever. “And what do they call you?”
Tess swallowed hard. “Tess. And Gindele. You always called me that.”
“Ah,” said Grandpa. “Rabbit is a rabbit and you are a deer. That’s nice.”
So maybe a bad day, too.
Grandpa turned to Theo. “And you, young man? Are you a rabbit or a deer or something else entirely?”
“I’m Theo,” he said. “Just myself.”
“Hmmm,” said Grandpa. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Theo.
“Because Rabbit has had imaginary friends before, right, Rabbit?”
Theo stuck out his arm. “Not imaginary, Grandpa. I’m real.”
Grandpa squeezed his hand. “So, you are,” he said, still smiling. “The other man was real, too.”
“What other man?” said Theo’s dad.
Grandpa Ben looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected Theo’s dad to speak, as if he were a painting that had suddenly offered an opinion. “The tall man. Very tall. Had to look up so far I hurt my neck.”
Theo’s mom said, “What was his name? Did he tell you?”
“Oh, I’m sure he did. He was very polite,” said Grandpa. “He sat and helped me with my crossword.” He gestured to a puzzle that lay on the table next to him. The puzzle was blank.
“What color was his hair?” said Theo’s mom.
“Hair?” said Grandpa. “He had hair. I told him that you had what he wanted.”
“What? What do I have?” Theo’s mom said. She looked as if she were about to cry.
Grandpa Ben laughed. “Not you, Rabbit, you!” He pointed at Tess. “The little deer that isn’t so little. Little deer grow up so fast.”
“But I don’t have anything,” Tess said.
“You have everything you need,” Grandpa said, nodding wisely. “You just don’t know it yet.”
But they didn’t have everything they needed, not according to Edgar Wellington. Theo wished he could ask Grandpa about all the other companies competing with the Morningstarrs to modernize and expand New York City, about the trains that caused so many accidents that the people of Brooklyn demanded a tunnel be built. And he wished he could talk about all the rumors about the tunnel after it was sealed: that pages from John Wilkes Booth’s lost diary were buried there. That German terrorists were making bombs down in the tunnels during the First World War. That bootleggers had taken over the tunnel and made gin in the 1920s. That spies hid in the tunnel in the 1950s. That a whole locomotive might be buried in the rubble. He wished he could ask: What do you think we’re looking for, Grandpa? Is this the end of the line? Is the real treasure of the Morningstarrs buried in this tunnel? Is Tess right, and the treasure has been waiting there for us to discover? Or are we somehow creating the puzzle ourselves, building it out of the choices we make?
But Theo didn’t ask any of this. He played checkers with Grandpa while Tess took Nine around to the other patients in the sitting room, letting them pet the cat. One very old man held on to Nine and cried into her fur. He missed his dog so much, he said. The younger woman sitting next to him said that he’d never had a dog.
The man kept crying. “I miss the dog I never had.”
“You can’t miss what you never had,” said the woman, irritated.
“Yes, you can.”
Could you miss what you never had? Theo wasn’t so sure. One of his earliest memories was unwrapping a Hanukkah present from his grandfather and finding a paper dictionary so heavy that he could barely lift it. His mom asked his grandfather why Theo couldn’t just use the internet, but Grandpa said the paper version was better because you could write in it. You could interact with the words, make them your own. Every time he came upon a word he didn’t know, he and Grandpa Ben would look it up. When he got older, they would write sentences using that word in the margins. “The boy’s bathroom was as fetid as a swamp.” “I am all agog to hear your latest story.” “He used several malapropisms when he said that Michelangelo painted the Sixteenth Chapel.” Grandpa Ben showed him three-letter words useful for crossword puzzles: ore, era, zuz.
But one day, he lost the book. Or rather, the book was taken. He and Tess were playing with the dumbwaiter, putting things inside it and sending them for a ride through the building—one of their mom’s frying pans, a cactus, even Nine (who liked it so much she rode it ten times in a row). They put Theo’s dictionary in the dumbwaiter, but when the dumbwaiter returned, the book was gone. They put Nine in the dumbwaiter to find the book, but then Nine was gone. They ran and told their mother, who called Mrs. Cruz, but Mrs. Cruz had no idea where the items disappeared to. Tess was in tears over Nine, until Nine showed up on the roof, basking in the sun. They never did find that book.
Grandpa Ben said that the building sometimes did that—“borrowed” things it liked and offered other things as gifts. Grandpa said he’d buy Theo another dictionary, but Theo knew it wouldn’t be the same. Mrs. Cruz locked up the dumbwaiter and disabled the power. No one had used it since.
Theo missed his dictionary still. And he didn’t see how you could miss something as ordinary as a dictionary in the same way, if you’d never spent hours sitting with Grandpa Ben, poring over the new words, tasting them on your tongue, then pressing those words into the paper, shaping them into sentences that you made up yourself, with your grandpa laughing at your malapropisms.
“Young man!” said Grandpa.
“What?”
“Isn’t it your turn?” He tapped the edge of the checkerboard.
“Yes. Right.” Theo made a move. Grandpa grinned and jumped a black checker over three red ones, though Grandpa was supposed to be playing red.
After a couple of hours, Grandpa Ben, tired from all the checkers and the chatting, yawned, his white head drooping.
Theo’s mom stood, kissed Grandpa on the cheek. “Okay, Dad, I think you need to go back to your room and get some rest. We’ll be back soon.” She motioned for an aide. A round woman with milky
skin and a pouf of blond hair came over and took the handles of Grandpa’s wheelchair.
“I’ll take it from here,” the aide said.
“Thanks so much, Gladys,” said Mrs. Biedermann.
Gladys began to push the chair, then stopped. “Oh! I meant to ask you if you got the letter.”
“What letter?” Mrs. Biedermann asked.
“There was a letter that your father needed help mailing a few weeks ago, but he wanted to mail it to himself. Or at least, to his post office box. I figured that since you were the one picking up his mail, he meant to send it to you. I hope you got it. He was very agitated about it. Made me cross out the address and rewrite it more clearly so that it didn’t go to the wrong place. Said it was top secret. For his eyes only. Or yours.”
“Trust no one,” Grandpa whispered as he fell asleep.
All the way home, Tess gripped Theo’s wrist tight enough to crush the bones. Grandpa Ben had sent the original Morningstarr letter to himself. But where did he get it? Who sent it to him? When he told Tess she had everything she needed, was he talking about the letter?
Theo’s mind was spinning by the time they got home to find Mr. Stoop and Mr. Pinscher in the lobby. The two men had some sort of metal detector that they were sweeping across the tiles.
“You’re not going to find anything,” said Theo. “People have been scanning and x-raying and examining this building for decades.”
“Not with this device, they haven’t,” said Mr. Stoop. “This is a new invention. A modern invention. Notice the elegant design?”
“Elegant?” said Tess. “It looks like a plate attached to a stick.”
“Right. It looks exactly like what it’s supposed to be and not a . . .” He twirled his hand in the air.
“A grasshopper?” offered Mr. Pinscher.
“Or a cockroach,” said Mr. Stoop.
“Who would design a scanner to look like a cockroach?” Tess said.
“Who indeed?” said Mr. Stoop. When Tess stared up at the man, frowning hard, and Nine growled, Mr. Stoop’s smile only got wider. Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann glared and steered Tess and Theo toward the elevator.