The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled

by Amanda Valentino

  The four of us stared at Mr. Fowler. Then turned to each other.

  “Thornhill planned this trip?” Hal said.

  “Is the whole scavenger hunt a clue?” Callie asked.

  “Amanda was still here when he put the trip together,” Nia said, thinking out loud. “He wouldn’t have had much of a chance to make changes since he was assaulted not long after she left.”

  “That’s right,” Nia said. “He must have planned this trip with Amanda in mind.”

  “Great,” said Callie. “So now, not only are we supposed to be decoding Amanda’s clues, we’re also supposed to be cracking the code someone else has left for her?”

  I took the pendant out from under my shirt and ran my fingers over the filigree.

  “Do you guys think Amanda’s in D.C.?” Hal asked. “Do you think she’s living here now? Has she left Orion for good?”

  “Obviously, we don’t know,” Nia said. “But it would make sense. Thornhill planned this trip before he knew Amanda was going to disappear. He’d have thought she’d be on it. He must have wanted to lead her here—”

  “Listen up,” Mr. Fowler said, raising his voice to quiet us all down—everyone was talking loudly at this point. “I’m going to read out the groups.”

  Suddenly: silence. Forget the bulletin board. Forget the letter home. What would be worse than anything was getting stuck for the day in a high-pressure scavenger hunt with someone you could not stand?

  “Group one,” Mr. Fowler began. “Jerry Miller, Hank Albright, Stef Stone, Kendall Minovi. Group two,” he continued, working his way down the list. As he read, there were whoops and groans as people registered their fates. I noticed two important things. Number one: friends were generally being split up. That was not good for us. Number two: the I-Girls got to be together as usual.

  Mr. Fowler had gotten about halfway down the list when he read, “Nia Rivera.” I don’t think he actually paused before moving on to the next name, but at the time, I felt like the moment between when he read Nia’s name and when he read mine lasted an hour. “Zoe Costas, Henry Bennett, Callista Leary.”

  Almost immediately my sigh of relief transformed into a lump in my stomach as I realized what our names being together meant.

  Nia must have had the same thought, because she leaned across the aisle to whisper, “The scavenger hunt really is for us.”

  “I know,” Hal said. His face was white and his voice sounded thin, like a reedy sax playing out of its range.

  Chapter 12

  Callie was scanning her copy of the scavenger hunt sheet that had been passed back. “There’s a lot of stuff on here,” she said. “I’m not sure we’re going to be able to do it all and still have time for anything extra, like looking for Robin.” She pointed to Nia and Hal, and her tone became very businesslike. “You two are the ones who will really get in trouble if we don’t finish the hunt. Maybe Zoe and I should look for Robin while you guys make sure you pass the assignment.”

  “No way,” said Hal.

  “Yeah,” Nia concurred. “Remember—‘Come Together’?” One of Amanda’s messages to all of us when I was still hiding from the other guides was an in-code version of the Beatles song that she’d loved. It was clear Amanda wanted us all working together—not on our own.

  “Yeah, okay,” Callie agreed. “I didn’t relish the idea of splitting up either, just wanted to put the suggestion out there.”

  Cisco stood and started making his way down the aisle, telling kids that this was the time they should start planning out their scavenger route, if they hadn’t already. “There’s not a lot of time to get all these places in,” Cisco said loud enough so that everyone could hear. “You should map out how you’ll fit in the minimum of fifteen you need to visit.” It’s amazing how quickly people got to work the second he spoke.

  Girls kept making up stupid questions to ask him, just to enjoy for a moment the feeling of having him look straight into their eyes as he answered them patiently. “I thought having Cisco on this trip might be helpful,” Nia groaned. “These girls are so ridiculous.”

  When Cisco got to our seats, he crouched down in the aisle and said, low enough so that only we could hear, “You guys ready? You have a plan?”

  Nia had told him all about our mission for the day. To find Amanda’s sister, Robin, who could be anywhere in this city of six hundred thousand.

  “But we also need to finish the scavenger hunt,” Callie said, still scanning the list.

  “I was looking at the layout of the monuments,” Cisco said. “And I was thinking strategically, about the best way to hit as many of these places as we can.”

  “Using your soccer field sense?” Nia said.

  “No.” Cisco laughed. “This feels less like soccer to me and more like bowling. The idea is that you only get a set number of tries to knock down as many pins as you can.”

  He spread out the rough map of the D.C. area that was on the back of the hunt packets across his thighs. “Look,” he said, “the bus is going to drop you off here, right? And Nia said you’re heading for the World War Two Memorial at nine thirty? If you sweep up here, you can snag a picture of the Washington Monument. Then, standing on the hill just in front of it, use the zoom on your camera to shoot up toward the White House and get a shot of that. By then it will be time to head to the World War Two Memorial. After that, you can scoot down to the Jefferson Memorial—get a picture of that across the tidal basin, don’t walk all the way up there. But do walk around close enough to get in the FDR Memorial.”

  The scavenger hunt sheet had spaces for writing down a quote from each Memorial. “You’ll be most efficient,” Cisco went on, “if you work together as a team. One of you should use the camera—probably best for Zoe to do that, since I am pretty sure she is the photo editor of the yearbook. Nice photos of the soccer team in that last issue, by the way! One of you should carry the map. Callie? You are good with maps and abstract concepts, right? Somebody told me that . . . and Nia, you should be the one to jot down the quotes. You’re good with literary references.” He was so disarmingly charming it was almost hard to look into his earnest brown eyes.

  “And me?” said Hal. “What’s my job?”

  Cisco raised his eyebrows. “You, my friend, will take on the bad guys.”

  Hal flexed his scrawny runner’s arm muscle. Cisco laughed and shook his head.

  “Stick with the psychic premonitions, dude. Focus on your strength.” Cisco chuckled.

  Hal laughed, as unnerved by Cisco as all those girls who were still asking him where the National Mall was, even though it was clearly marked out on the map.

  As Cisco continued to make his way down the aisle, checking in and reassuring kids, I wondered if what Cisco did was a talent. I thought about Heidi again, how maybe her power was a similar thing.

  And then I tried to imagine Cisco convincing a kid to give over his wallet, or getting Wynne to move out of her seat, and though I knew that he was charming and persuasive, what Heidi had the power to do was more extreme. No, I realized glumly: In terms of having a super power, Heidi was definitely one of us.

  The bus came to a groaning halt at the side of the road. I could see the green grass of the Mall stretching on either side of 15th Street.

  “We’re here,” I announced. I checked my watch. “And it’s already nine fifteen.”

  “We better get moving then.” Nia pursed her lips. She does this thing, which I think of as putting on armor—her face shuts down into a mask. When she looks like that, no one messes with her. Hal shifted in his seat. Callie tucked a reddish curl nervously behind her ear. And me? I got so still that nobody could see me. Even now I was ducking behind the seat in front of me so the kids filing down the aisle couldn’t see me.

  Once we were off the bus and Mr. Fowler was out of the way, Callie looked at the map. “Okay,” she said. “Cisco said to start with the Washington Monument. But do we even have time?”

  “We have ten minutes,” Nia said.<
br />
  “But look up,” I said. Because there it was, a giant needle reaching into the sky, twenty feet up a hill to our right.

  I snapped a picture. We ran up the path and ducked inside—Mr. Fowler trotting behind us, marveling at the fact that, for once, there was no line. Quickly we all scanned for some kind of quote. I was taking pictures at the same time, which is why I noticed that when I looked through the lens of the camera, some of the words in one of the lines inscribed in the wall took on a glow, almost as if someone had painted over them with a gigantic highlighter.

  “Do you see that?” I said, showing it to Nia. She looked at the letters, then looked through the lens of the camera. “I wonder if it means anything,” she said. Just in case, I snapped a picture and she wrote the words down.

  Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6.

  She underlined Train up a child, as those were the words that, when viewed with the camera, seemed to glow.

  The souls of efficiency, we turned on our heels and left. Three minutes total, and now it was 9:23.

  The White House was next. Even with the digital zoom opened up all the way you could barely see it in my image, but that was nothing a little cropping couldn’t take care of. The assignment said “photo.” It said nothing about the resolution.

  “Time check?” Hal said.

  “Nine twenty-four,” Nia answered.

  “We’re here.” Callie was checking her watch and looking down at the map. “The World War Two Memorial is . . .” She looked up at the street signs. “Fifteenth Street and Constitution.”

  “Time is nine twenty-five,” Hal warned.

  We set off walking fast, noticing that a few other teams of students were headed in the same direction.

  “There it is,” Hal said, pointing about twenty yards ahead, where we could see columns and a fountain just across the road.

  I recognized the World War II Memorial from the postcard Amanda had wedged inside the sunflower purse—it is a large plaza sunk into the ground with a fountain in the center, a wall in the back and curving rows of pillars on either side.

  We had to cross 17th Street to get to the monument. While we waited for the light to change, Callie pointed to one of the other teams from our class. They were talking to a pair of park rangers. The way the rangers were standing, leaning forward on their toes—the kids on the team weren’t asking the questions. The park rangers were.

  “Are those guys in trouble?” Callie said, squinting.

  Then suddenly, one of the rangers was staring at us. He was pointing, and I did what came naturally. I kicked out a foot to trip Hal and then scooted four steps to the left, whipping out my cell phone and pretending it had rung. Actually I pressed the speed dial for Hal.

  “What the—?” Hal said. Callie bent down at his side.

  Nia plowed over to me, irate. “You’re on the phone?”

  “Good,” I said, glancing back at the rangers out of the corner of my eye. “Did you see how that one was pointing?” She nodded. “We’re not close enough for him to see our faces, and there’s a crowd. All he could tell is that we’re in a group of four. I needed to break up our line, but more quickly than I could have if I’d told you all to move. Callie went to Hal. You followed me.” I couldn’t help smiling.

  “You’re kind of obnoxious,” Nia noted, eyeing me up and down. I smiled even more.

  By now my call had gone through. I had Hal on the line. “Sorry about that,” I said, explaining.

  Nia got out a map and pretended to examine it. “What should we do? Should we try to sneak away?”

  “But Amanda might be there,” Hal protested. “It’s already nine thirty-four.”

  “We’re never going to see her if we get stopped by those two park rangers first,” I said.

  Callie said something to Hal I couldn’t understand, but after, she bit her lip, obviously disappointed. I knew how she felt.

  “What if you guys go around,” I suggested. “Separately. Hang out at the back. Find someplace you can’t be seen.”

  “What about you?” Hal sounded concerned.

  “I can find out what the rangers are carrying on their clipboards,” I said. “And you never know. Maybe Amanda’s in there, in disguise. It’s worth the risk.”

  “But you’re not actually invisible,” Nia warned. “I’ve been watching while we stand here. The rangers are checking every kid who goes in there.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll see me. But what’s important is—”

  “—that they won’t know they see you?” Nia said.

  “Exactly,” I answered, sounding way more confident than I actually felt.

  After Nia, Callie, and Hal disappeared into the trees to the left of the monument, I made my way toward it. One of the rangers started to head toward me as I meandered down the shallow steps into the plaza. I took a good look at him. He was keyed up, edgy, on a mission. He was probably singing Nirvana in his head right now. If I even thought about Nirvana, it would be like attaching a loudspeaker to my face. He’d notice me for sure.

  But spunky, early Beatles? If I could turn myself into the lightly flying and swaying “Love Me Do,” this guard would not be able to see me. I could tell just by the way he rolled his shoulders defensively that he was one of those boneheaded morons who don’t understand what 90 percent of human beings love about the Beatles.

  So I hummed as hard as I could. The music made me feel lighter, almost like I was floating on my tippy toes, barely touching the ground. I felt like my body had grown wispy, a lightly dancing cloud. I didn’t look at the ranger directly, but I could see his legs and they were stopped as if he’d remembered something mid-stride.

  He was working. Another student, Hannah R., was approaching, and he moved toward her. She wore leggings and a hoodie and chewed on her nails, covered in a pale pink polish, as she asked the ranger a question. I walked past and he didn’t give me so much as a look.

  I turned, as if admiring the majesty of the Washington Monument behind me, but really I was looking at his clipboard. He wasn’t hugging it to his chest as carefully as he should have been.

  Especially given that the photograph I saw on it was so incredibly large. It covered the entire board, and was something I recognized right away.

  It was Amanda.

  Not a great picture of her. And not a recent one. But it was still Amanda. Her hair was its natural light brown color, hanging down against her face. Her large gray-green eyes stared out at the camera and her mouth was turned up just enough so that I could see she didn’t care much for the person taking the shot. School portrait? At Endeavor, she’d managed to be absent when they were taken, but at some other school in some other town, she must have not yet perfected her absenteeism.

  Quickly, I turned my head to see if I could catch a glimpse of the other ranger’s clipboard—but he was too far away.

  Were these guys even park rangers for real? Or were they working for the Official, part of the group that was after Amanda?

  Stepping into the monument, I kept my face toward the ground, covering it with my hair. Other kids from school were there, but I didn’t look at them directly, giving them no reason to acknowledge me.

  I pretended to read a quote engraved into one of the walls, inching my way closer to a third ranger, this one standing at the back of the monument. I took a bottle cap out of my pocket and tossed it behind me into the fountain.

  The ranger I was near was not one of the pair I’d seen at the entrance. He had a clipboard though, so I assumed he was working with the other two. When he turned to see the splash, I followed his gaze, looking at his clipboard. But there was nothing on it except a stack of brochures about the memorial. As I was looking, this kid Sean Divine went up to the ranger and asked for one.

  Was this third ranger for real? Were all the rangers for real? Because of the Smokey the Bear hats and the whole campfire talk association, park rangers have alway
s seemed to me even more trustworthy than police officers, but now I didn’t know what to think. If regular rangers were out to get us—if there was some sort of version of a Wanted poster up in the park rangers’ office with our pictures on them—we were not going to be able to get away.

  Did this Official—the one Hal’s dad had told us had all those government connections—have that kind of control? Could he control the police? How about the army? Okay, that’s ridiculous. He only had a couple of rangers, and not even all of them.

  But how had he managed to find out that Amanda had sent us that message?

  This was not a good time to be working these thoughts out in my head. I could feel myself starting to panic. I had to get myself under control.

  I noticed a woman dressed in jogging clothes, standing on the other side of the fountain from me. She was watching me. Or at least I thought so. I couldn’t see her face under her baseball cap, but she had her hands on her hips and was positioned with one heel perched up before her, stretching out the back of her leg. I caught her glancing up in my direction.

  She wasn’t Amanda—Amanda had at least three inches on this woman.

  So why was she looking at me?

  Pushing my panic way down deep inside, I forced myself to go perfectly still. With my whole body I sent the message: There’s nothing to see here. This body will do nothing interesting. I made every joint in my body—elbows, toes, neck, you name it—assume a neutral position. I took long, slow, even breaths. If the jogger was really just a jogger—if this whole ranger thing had just turned me paranoid—her gaze would move away from me.

  I channeled Feist—you know, deep and mellow—music that makes me think about the feeling of being deep under water.

  The jogger didn’t look away.

  This whole setup was starting to feel like a trap.

  And speaking of traps, this memorial—the shape of it—suddenly struck me as a total disaster. It was sunk into a hollow in the earth, surrounded on three sides by ten-foot walls. The rangers were guarding the only way out.