Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter

by Beth McMullen

  Get a grip, Lola! The clock is ticking. Forty-eight hours is not long to find something that is worse than lost, something that is not supposed to exist in the first place. But I have to try. With some effort, I rein in the cry fest. “We don’t have much time.” I sniffle.

  “I think we need to go to the police right away,” Jin says. “Or the FBI or whoever handles magical stones on Planet Earth. Because even if we do find it, obviously we can’t just give it to the Shadow. He’s the bad guy!”

  This gets my attention. What is he talking about? “Of course we’re going to give it to him. It’s just a rock.”

  “Your dad doesn’t think so,” Jin says. “He was willing to do anything to protect the stone. He wrote that in his journal. Would he want you to just turn it over? The whole point was to keep it out of the Shadow’s hands.”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “Do you actually believe the stone has real magical powers?” Jin shrugs, noncommittal, but I can see it in his eyes. Just like for Hannah, my dad, and the Shadow, the idea of magic has him under a spell. What is wrong with everybody? “Well, it doesn’t. It’s just a stupid rock, one I need to get my father back.”

  “Lola, this is the world we’re talking about.” What is he implying? That it’s selfish to be more concerned with the fate of one person than it is to consider the other seven billion? Well, I don’t know the other seven billion, thank you very much.

  “I don’t care,” I say.

  “But your dad,” Jin responds. “He didn’t want—”

  “It’s not your father that’s in trouble!” I yell.

  Jin flinches. My cheeks flush hot. My hands ball into tight fists. How dare Jin, with his perfect family and cool work studio and bratty little brother, tell me what my father would want? Besides, I don’t care what my father wants. I’ve been trying to find him for eight months and now I am so close. “You don’t know anything about him,” I hiss, “and you know nothing about me.”

  Jin steps back, stunned, as if I slapped him. “Whatever,” he says after a pause. “Do what you want.”

  And with that, he peels off the path, leaving me fuming. What is wrong with him anyway? I’m so mad I can’t even hear my own thoughts. It’s like a bunch of cats are crammed into my head, all howling for dinner. Finally arriving at the cafeteria, I can’t bring myself to go in. Instead, I trudge back up the path to get my backpack and head home. It starts to rain.

  Of course it does.

  CHAPTER 21 A VERY BAD, TERRIBLE, AMAZING, CONFUSING DAY

  ON THE WAY HOME, THE rain drenches my Redwood Academy skirt and wilts my crisp white shirt. Little rivers run down my back and water drips off the ends of my hair. I never said I had any interest in saving the world. I’m in this to get my father back and that’s it. And the stone isn’t magic, so who cares if the Shadow has it? I mean, the worst he can do is throw it at someone.

  To take my mind off the rain and the impossible nature of my situation, I catalog all the things I hate about my current existence, starting with the wretched uniform and ending with everyone at Redwood.

  When I walk in the door, I’m not at my best. “My goodness,” says Great-Aunt Irma. “You look a mess.” She’s wrapped in a fuzzy blanket in her recliner, pounding away on her laptop while Zeus sits on her shoulder nibbling bits of kale.

  Without removing my wet clothes, I crumple in a heap on the couch. My emotions jump from being elated my father is alive to freaking out about saving him, to being furious at Jin and, alternatively, wondering if maybe Jin has a point. I try to keep my expression neutral, but the way Irma scrutinizes me, I don’t think I’m doing a very good job. Lipstick’s warning is fresh in my thoughts. Consequences. I need to distract Irma and fast.

  “I had a bad day,” I say. “I mean, parts of it were really good, but other parts, boy, they were awful.”

  Irma smiles. “Big feelings,” she says.

  “Big feelings!” Zeus repeats. With the kale finished, he begins chewing Irma’s hair.

  “Big feelings are what being a teenager is all about,” Irma explains. “When your dad was your age, he was like Colorado. If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. You feel really good one moment and really bad the next and there is usually no reason for the swing. It’s an emotional roller coaster and your job is to just hang on. Does that make sense?”

  It does. But in this case, she is completely wrong. My feelings are attached to very real, very terrible reasons.

  “And you’ve had an especially rough go.” Irma leans in close. “We know you are doing the best you can.”

  I think she’s sniffing me, probably to see if I smell like an art museum or an airport. I have to get out of here before I inadvertently blurt out everything. “You know what, I feel better having had this chat. But I have a ton of homework that I should start. What’s for dinner? Can we have burgers? And those curly fries?”

  Irma leans back in her chair. She’s not completely satisfied with this conversation, but she’s willing to let it slide. At least my bright pink cast is intact. “Yes. Burgers and fries. You got it. Go do your homework.”

  I try to bounce a little going up the stairs to convince Irma that I’m perfectly happy and everything is fine, but it’s not easy as the enormity of my task settles in along with a healthy dose of panic. I don’t even know where to start. If Jin were still helping me, maybe we could hash it out, work it through, throw out ideas and break them down and maybe eventually come up with a plan.

  But the reality is that I’m alone and I should stop whining and just get on with it. It’s not like I don’t know how to be alone. I’ve had a lot of practice. I need to break down the problem. Obviously, the Shadow thinks Dad found the stone and hid it. When they couldn’t shake its location out of Dad, they turned to me, believing that he not only told me but that I could get my hands on it pretty easily. Okay. Great. So where is it?

  I change into sweatpants and a hoodie and climb into bed. It’s easier to think under the covers. I got this. Come on, stone. Where are you?

  I make a list of possibilities. A locker at the airport. A duffel bag stashed in a basement. A shoebox hidden in the public library. This exercise is not boosting my confidence. I pull out the red notebook and fan through it. I reread the torn pages. Did he leave me a clue? Is the answer somehow right in front of me? I review my possibilities list. I consider crying. I toss out that idea as a waste of time. I start over and go through every last thing again. This is a dead end.

  I slide behind my desk. Frank is laid out, bits of him here and there. I think better when I’m tinkering. I set to work. Forty-five minutes later, Frank is looking much better, but I still have no idea where the stone is.

  I am very close to despair when the cell phone on my desk chirps to life. EmoJabber flashes for attention. Jin! Probably he’s just dumping me from the STEM fair team. Whatever. I don’t really want to look, but at least it is a distraction from the hopelessness of finding the stone.

  Jin:

  EmoJabber is worse than ancient hieroglyphics. A quick assessment indicates that Jin is probably not dumping me from the STEM fair team. Unless I am somehow interpreting the rainbow incorrectly?

  Me:

  Jin:

  Me:

  Jin:

  * * *

  The lightbulb and the thinking face must mean he has an idea. But what’s with the unicorn and rainbows? This is so much harder than it needs to be. How do I say “what is your idea”? And how do I say “I’m sorry for yelling earlier”?

  Me:

  Jin:

  He’s coming to my house? He’s coming to my house and he’s having a party? He’s coming to my house and he’s excited like it’s a party? Help! Okay, get a grip, Lola! I need to figure out if he wants a burger and fries.

  Me:

  Jin:

  I’m not sure, but I think this means he wants lettuce, tomato, and cheese on his burger? What I do know is I feel lighter, as if a great weight has been lifted f
rom my shoulders. But that doesn’t make sense because I’m no closer to finding the stone than I was five minutes ago.

  * * *

  When Jin arrives, Zeus is thrilled to see him. He flutters right to his shoulder and sets in nibbling his ear.

  “He only ever chews my ear,” Irma proclaims. “This is a very interesting development.”

  “It tickles.” Jin’s shoulder twitches beneath Zeus’s bird feet.

  “Zeus,” I command, “get off.”

  “No, he’s fine.”

  “French fries!” yells Zeus.

  We have to eat burgers before we can escape to my room and discuss Jin’s idea, and it’s plain torture although the burgers are excellent and the fries make me swoon. Great-Aunt Irma even sprang for these mini deep-fried apple pies, which makes her my most favorite person in the world right now. Anything seems doable with pie.

  Zeus refuses to get off Jin’s shoulder. He squawks and complains as Jin paces my small room, about to fill me in on his idea.

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before. It was not right. And I didn’t mean it.”

  Jin waves me off. “Paul yelled at me all the time. No big deal.”

  “But I’m not Paul.”

  Jin’s eyes flash and I swear I see relief. “I know you’re not. Now, do you want to hear my plan or what?”

  I nod. “Go ahead.”

  “I have it all figured out. First, we find the stone. Next, we access its power. Third, we use that power against the Shadow and get your father back.”

  There are many problems with this idea, starting with we don’t know where the stone is and ending with we don’t know where the stone is.

  But Jin’s not done. “There’s more. If we can’t access the power and control the Shadow, we just give him the stone and get your dad back because if the stone is not magical, there is no risk in him having it. Win-win!”

  “We don’t know where it is,” I say flatly.

  “Details. We just ate French fries and pie. It’s the perfect time to brainstorm possibilities. Quit worrying.”

  The deeper we get into this mess, the more Jin’s confidence grows. I’m a little envious because right now failure feels like a runaway freight train barreling down the track, intent on squashing us flat. Jin takes the pad of paper from my desk and settles into the chair, ready to figure out where the stone is hidden. “I was thinking on the way over here. If the stone chooses you, what is the first thing you would do with the power?”

  “Huh?”

  “What would you do? I’d convince my teachers to give me As so I could just stay at home and play Fortnite all day every day. I’d brainwash my parents so they thought I was doing something healthy like reading and eating carrots. That would be totally cool. Or maybe I’d make myself captain of the fencing team and win the state championships? That would also be cool. And duh, I’d win the STEM fair! Every year! Forever! Or at least until I graduate from Redwood. So what would you do?”

  There are a lot of questions right now that are hard to answer—where the stone is, for example—but not this one.

  “I’d get my father back,” I reply.

  CHAPTER 22 THE HANNAH PROBLEM

  OVER PANCAKES THE NEXT MORNING, Jin and I continue to throw out ideas about perfect stone-hiding places. He says under a tree. I say in a bank vault. He says in a pile of regular old rocks. I say this whole exercise is pointless and swipe one of his pancakes. He says I need to focus and get my own pancakes.

  This is when Hannah shows up, plopping her breakfast tray down with a loud thud. Between Lipstick and the Shadow and the ticking clock and the missing stone, I forgot all about Hannah. But she did not forget about us. And she still has that incriminating video. Begrudgingly, I give her credit. She wanted something and she went for it with no apologies. I understand that. It’s why I’m wearing a cast on my arm.

  “Good morning, teammates.” Hannah offers us a dazzling smile.

  Jin glares at me. “This is on you,” he says. Doesn’t he realize I was just trying to protect him from getting kicked out of school or worse? And besides, yesterday I was all about kidnapping albino penguins. How was I to know that today we’d be on an actual quest for the Stone of Istenanya? I can’t see the future. Jin should cut me some slack. But his expression indicates I should expect that slack sometime around the next century. Or never.

  “Good morning, Hannah,” I grumble.

  She takes a big slurp of orange juice and wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve. “I figure that when we find the stone and it talks to me—because of course it’s going to talk to me—I’m going to make things happen, starting with beating old Mr. Ghetti at chess. Boy, that would make his head explode. And the STEM fair? Well, that’s a given.”

  Jin snorts. “No way that stone is talking to you. I mean, come on.”

  “What? You think a magic rock is going to want to mind-meld with you? Your brain is like oatmeal. No way.”

  “And your brain is Swiss cheese. All those empty holes!”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  I put my head down on my arms and close my eyes. Neither of them pauses long enough to consider that Ördög cursed the stone, making its magic dark and ugly. They are both so sure the Stone of Istenanya will choose them and it will be Fortnite and chess wins for all eternity. They are drawn to the idea of magic despite the danger. I still refuse to believe that the stone is anything more than a rock, but I make a mental note to keep an eye on them, just in case. Power can tilt the minds of regular old people in weird directions. You just have to study history to know that.

  Jin pats me on the head. “Don’t worry, Lola,” he says. “It will all work out.”

  “Have you guys located it yet?” Hannah asks, returning to her breakfast with gusto. I shove my plate aside, appetite gone.

  “No.” Jin spears one of my abandoned sausages. “But we were making progress until you interrupted us.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  Jin turns to me, eyes pleading. “Can we kick her out?”

  “Just try it,” Hannah snaps.

  I drum my fingers on the table, remembering what Jin said about two brains being better than one. Which means that, logically, three are better than two. As of this morning, our two brains have not come up with anything approaching a possible location for the stone. If we had all the time in the world, we could work through the problem. But we don’t. And if we are stuck with Hannah, we might as well put her brainpower to work. “Fine,” I say. “Where is the stone?”

  Without missing a beat, she says, “Your father talks about mailing the notebook home. Did he mail it to your house?”

  “My aunt’s house,” I say. “She put all of his stuff in a storage locker. That’s where we found it.” There were rats there. I shiver at the memory.

  “Oh, I remember that morning. So?”

  “So what?” Jin says. “The storage unit was full of junk. Candlesticks. Old books. A box of rocks, even.”

  At the same moment, we turn to each other, mouths agape. Talk about rocks. I feel like one just fell out of the sky and conked me on the head. Of course! My father probably mailed the stone home, just like he did with the notebook, to get it as far away from the Shadow as possible, protected by the anonymity of international snail mail. And Irma tossed it in with the mosaic patio rocks. My lips flap in the breeze.

  How did we miss this one? The only reason I can think of is that we were one brain short.

  CHAPTER 23 A THREE-BRAIN TEAM

  HANNAH TAKES A MOMENT TO gloat. “You guys need me.”

  “We do not,” Jin replies, but less sharp now and more sheepish. We cannot deny that she saw what was right in front of us.

  “Fine,” I admit. “Maybe we do need you a little, but we don’t have time for that debate right now.” We have to call Lipstick before school starts and get to that storage unit, rats or not.

&
nbsp; “I don’t think we need her even a little,” Jin complains, still prickly but not willing to push it. Following the path from the cafeteria into a small grove of coastal redwoods, complete with benches so students may sit and contemplate the universe or at least what’s for lunch, we huddle around Jin’s phone and make the call to Lipstick.

  She picks up on the second ring and her personality sparkles as much as ever. “You’re cutting it awfully close,” she growls.

  “We still have twenty hours!”

  “Don’t argue, kid. Exchange is set for tomorrow, Pier Fifteen, in front of the science museum. There’s a statue of an atom. You know it?”

  “I know it,” I reply.

  “Two thirty.”

  Is she kidding? That’s right in the middle of social studies with Mr. Kind. If I miss that class, I’ll be reciting the Constitution of the United States after school in detention until I grow old and die. “That’s not going to work,” I counter.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have social studies. My teacher is mean.”

  “Tell me you’re joking.” No way. Mr. Kind is no joke.

  Grumbling with annoyance, Lipstick says, “Stand by.” Pier 15 is on the crowded Embarcadero, a walkway along the city’s eastern shoreline, chock-full of waterfront attractions. You can catch a ferry to Alcatraz, visit with sea lions, or maybe have a meal with a view of the Bay Bridge. I guess a hostage exchange in a place overrun by tourists is normal. But what do I know? Either way, I can’t miss social studies.

  Lipstick offers five o’clock as an alternative. Hannah objects, citing a conflict with choir practice. Lipstick, exasperated, asks how many schedules we need to accommodate. I tell Hannah she can go to practice if she wants, that we can handle it, and she says forget that. I accept the five-o’clock hostage/stone exchange meeting. I even go so far as to thank Lipstick, who is an accomplice to the kidnapping of my father, for being flexible. Before we hang up, Lipstick issues a warning.