by Sally J. Pla
She pulls out a laminated pocket map of the city from her backpack and thinks for a minute. “That way!”
Up the hill we go, over the trolley tracks, past little shops and businesses, along the busy sidewalk. We wait at a ridiculously long red light. There’s a bunch of other Questers standing there, waiting to cross.
“The police station is that way, I think!” Liberty says, pushing at me to go left.
“SHHH!” I say. “Remember what the Master said? Don’t talk so loud!” A few Questers overhear us and laugh.
“Don’t worry, kid.” A tattooed guy with a long brown beard elbows me, showing me a green pager just like our blue one. “My clue’s got me headed somewhere different right now. But I’ll file that police-station hint in case I need it later!”
I smile and nod. But inside, I start to crumble a little. “Don’t give away our clue information, okay?” I hiss at Liberty as the light turns green.
“Sorry,” Liberty says as she skips ahead of me across the street. “I just got a little excited! I’ll control myself.” She smiles back at me. “Downtown’s fun! This is gonna be fun!”
As for me, I’m fighting nausea. “Wait!” I call as we hit the other side of the street. I lean against the corner building. I have to get control over my sensory overload.
Traffic horns. Exhaust. Glaring sunlight. Bodies pushing past. It’s a lot for me. No one gets this—my mom, my brother, Dad, Gramps, Joon—no one in my life has ever gotten this. How the whole world sometimes feels like it comes crashing down on my head. How everything’s suddenly too much.
I don’t expect Liberty to get it. But at least she’s sticking nearby, looking concerned. “You okay?”
I take a deep breath and nod. “Just let’s stand here a minute, okay?”
I lean against the building and close my eyes, trying to summon John Lockdown in my head. John Lockdown is impervious to noise. He does epic battle with sensory assault. He is fearless. What would he tell me to do now?
As I open my eyes, a sudden giant gust of wind swirls up street dust and makes me turn away—and I notice something down the side street. A strange building. I’ve seen photos of it before—modern, with a giant woven-metal globe stuck into it. It’s the kind of building you could imagine appearing in a comic.
Is that what John Lockdown would tell me to do? Go there?
Suddenly, it hits me. I know what that building is. We were heading in the wrong direction. This clue isn’t about a police station. It’s about a whole different type of information-hoardin’ location.
“Change of plans, Liberty,” I say, finally breathing normally again. “We’re going to the library.”
24
THE CENTRAL LIBRARY is a big, wide-open space, but it’s quickly filling up with people—they’re streaming in, grabbing tables and chairs, spreading out into the stacks of books to browse. Everyone seems to know exactly what they’re doing here, and where they’re going. Except us.
“Where should we look?” Liberty asks. “And what are we looking FOR?”
“Shh!” I say, looking around. “I don’t think that clue is about Commissioner Gordon. It’s about his daughter.”
“And who’s that?”
“Barbara Gordon. Batgirl.”
“Aha! Oookay. And . . . ?”
“She runs Gotham City Public Library. Barbara Gordon is a computer whiz who does a lot of research and detective work. She’s like the queen of data security for Batman.” I could go on and on with Batgirl factoids, but I check myself.
“Seems to me it could equally be the police station. The police hoard their information, too.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s so obvious. Let’s check this place out quickly, and if the answer’s not really Batgirl, we’ll try the police station. Deal?”
We head up to the first level. “So what’s this Barbara Gordon look like, anyway?” Liberty asks.
“It depends on what comic you’re reading, but she’s pretty much always got red hair and glasses.”
“Then let’s go scope out the employees. You heard what the Master said about Quest officials in costume. Maybe she’s pretending to be a librarian.”
We do a methodic sweep, every area, floor by floor, but there are no red-haired librarians with eyeglasses in sight. Then, in desperation, we go back through and check name tags. None of them read Gordon.
“Nothing seems out of the ordinary about this library, Stanley. It’s all business as usual. Are you sure this is right? Maybe we should ask someone,” Liberty says, frowning. “And don’t forget the time. If we still come up empty, we’ll have to go to the police station. Quick.”
We head over to the information desk, where an old librarian guy with a long gray ponytail sits reading.
“Hey, um, excuse me,” Liberty says. “Can you tell us where books and info about comics are located?”
He taps on his keyboard in a way that’s slower than humanly possible: one key every five seconds. Then he reaches for a pencil and carefully prints a number on a little card for us. I’m jumping up and down by the time that pencil starts forming the last number because we’ve already wasted too much time.
“Is there some meaning to that number? Do you think it’s a code or something?” Liberty says, frowning.
“I don’t know. Let’s check the stacks.” We wander until we find the right section.
“Here’s comics,” Liberty says. “But there’s no book or comic that’s just about Batgirl, or Barbara Gordon. Or hoarding information.”
The whirring motor of anxiety in my chest is starting to speed up. “We’re wasting time!” I hiss.
“I think we should have gone to the police station. This is wrong, Stan.”
I have to swallow hard and give myself a moment before I can finally admit defeat. “Okay.” I sigh. “Let’s try the police station now.”
We silently make our way toward the entrance. I’m miserable over how much time we’ve taken—we’re still on the first clue, and it’s already after eleven o’clock. This Trivia Quest is going to be even harder than I thought. It’s a big city—if all the clues are this vague, we’ll never get seven coins. There’s just no way.
Before we exit the library, Liberty stops to take a sip at the drinking fountain. While I wait for her, tapping my toe, I notice something—a flyer, pasted right above the fountain, printed with the following words:
SPECIAL EXHIBIT:
THE ART OF THE COMIC
ART GALLERY, TOP FLOOR
As Robin once said in the old 1960s TV series: “Holy Crucial Moment, Batman!”
25
WE BURST OUT of the elevator at the rooftop level, and Liberty rushes to the edge. “Wow! Check out the view!” she says. “You can see all of San Diego! And look at the ocean!”
“Get back!” I yank at the hem of her shirt. “Watch out!”
She looks at me carefully. “Don’t you like the ocean?”
“We need to find Barbara Gordon, not sightsee,” I say.
The gallery is pretty much right behind us. A metal door is propped open—taped on it is another sign that reads: The Art of the Comic. We tiptoe in. And:
Bingo!
Inside, the walls are covered with vintage comics, both originals and prints. Some are blown up really huge-sized. I love the look of those pixelated little dots. Crowded together, the dots look like solid color on the old, pulpy pages. Spread the dots apart, and the shading gets really light. Those ink dots are like the comic-atoms, the basic building blocks of comic art.
“Whoa.” I rush over to a panel with a hooded figure in a familiar green cloak. It’s Joon’s old favorite, the Green Lama, in an original print from the 1940s!
“Man, I wish Joon were here,” I say.
Liberty comes and stands by me. She doesn’t say anything—just punches me on the shoulder.
“No offense,” I add.
“None taken,” she says.
We notice a pad of crude sketches for something called Beetle
Bailey. “Hey,” she says, “are all these sketches making you think about your giant Sketchpad of Mystery, or whatever you call it? Maybe that John Lockdown artist is somewhere nearby, doing the Trivia Quest today, too.”
I smile. Then, suddenly, I feel a gentle tap on my elbow.
A lady has rolled up to us in her wheelchair. She has short red hair, heavy black-framed glasses, and a strange smile on her face.
“Excuse me,” she says, looking around suspiciously. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the exhibit. But I have to say . . . Did I just happen to hear you mention . . . something?”
Liberty starts jumping up and down like she’s on a trampoline.
I swallow hard and try to catch my breath. “Yes! We’re on the Trivia Quest. We’re looking for—well—for you, I think! Are you Barbara Gordon? Who hoards information, at a library location, for a certain Caped Crusader?”
“Named Batman!” says Liberty, doing a little dance. I roll my eyes.
The lady in the wheelchair smiles. “Congratulations, kids!” She glances around. “Let’s keep our voices down. Half the fun is letting the other contestants figure it out for themselves. Also, the Quest team requests that you do not share answers to clues. Promise?”
We both hold up our hands and swear. We’re grinning from ear to ear.
“You can leave me your pager,” she says quietly, putting out her hand.
Liberty can barely fish it out of her pocket, she’s so excited. Then “Barbara Gordon” reaches into a little cloth tote bag attached to the side of her wheelchair and pulls out a shiny golden coin with a big letter Q embossed on it.
“Here is your token—don’t lose it.” She hands it to Liberty, who zips it into her backpack.
“And here’s your next clue,” the lady adds, handing me a tiny unmarked envelope the size of a business card, made of stiff gold paper. “Don’t read it until you’re far enough away from me to be inconspicuous.”
We can barely contain ourselves in the crowded elevator, heading back out. We try to walk casually and slowly. But by the time we’re on the street again, we’re jumping up and down.
“One down!” I shout.
“Six to go!” Liberty shouts back. She looks down at me carefully. “You good?”
I nod. I’m jittery and excited, but I’m good. So far, so good.
We sit on a bench, and I try to chill out. But my hands are shaking as I remove the small, mysterious card from its golden envelope.
I was twenty-nine and still striking
When this old hero put on the first comic mask.
My hands still work. But where am I now?
That’s what you need to ask.
26
“I WAS TWENTY-NINE and still striking when this old hero put on the first comic mask . . . ?” Liberty stares hard at the paper. “‘Still striking’ is what you say about old people when they still look attractive. That they’re ‘still striking.’” She sighs. “And who was the first superhero to put on a mask? Superman? Was Lois Lane supposed to be a striking twenty-nine-year-old or something?”
I smile. “Superman was early, but he wasn’t the first costumed superhero. Come on! You should know this—there was a Clock comic in the stack you lent me from your uncle’s moving boxes.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You’re kidding me. How can you possibly know this? I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.”
Come on! I couldn’t not research that old Clock comic. “He was the first masked superhero—mid-1930s. Predates Superman. The Clock was a lawyer by day, and wore a regular, old-fashioned suit and hat with his mask. And when he’d solved a crime or knocked out a bad guy, he left a calling card that said The Clock Has Struck.”
“The clock has struck . . . So, a striking clock. A clock that’s still striking?” Liberty says, slowly, thinking it through. “But what about the next two lines? My hands still work. But where am I now? That’s what you need to ask?”
“Definitely sounds like they mean a real clock.” I start to breathe quicker. “An old clock that’s still working. That’s maybe located somewhere around here.”
“Okay. So. A clock that was twenty-nine years old, back in the mid-1930s—a clock that was built around 1900 or so.”
We head back to the library information desk. The super-slow gray-ponytailed librarian is right where we left him.
“YOU talk to him,” I say, nudging Liberty.
She rolls her eyes but she steps forward. “Sir? We’re looking for local information,” Liberty says. “Do you know anything about a sort of old clock somewhere within walking distance of here? Something built around 1900?”
He slowly, slowly reaches his hand down behind the desk and brings up a rubber-banded stack of tourist brochures. “Well . . . yeah . . .” He thumbs slowly through them, and finally hands one over.
It says Welcome to Horton Plaza on the cover. I think my mom’s gone shopping there before. Yes. It’s a downtown shopping complex. “There’s . . . an old clock . . . somewhere . . . in that plaza . . . ,” says the super-slow librarian. “Is that . . . what you mean?”
“That is so what we mean,” says Liberty breathlessly. We thank him, and we’re off, sprinting toward Horton Plaza as fast as we can.
27
LIBERTY SHOULD BE on a track team with those stork legs. My right side is one big knotted-up cramp.
“Slow down!” I yell.
“Keep up!” she yells back.
Finally, a sign for the entrance to Horton Plaza appears. We dash into a maze of walkways at odd angles, past fancy department stores and water fountains and kiosks and escalators and shops.
“The clock should be over . . . there!” Liberty shouts, and we keep running and dodging this way and that, poking down walkways, until:
There it is, in the center of a little plaza. A beautiful old clock, up high on a pole, with lacy metal designs. It looks hundreds of years old—and totally out of place in front of all the modern window displays.
We slow way down before we approach it. Now we need to act cool so we don’t tip off any other Questers.
The clock is like something out of a European fairy tale. It has a big, white face that says Correct Time, San Diego in old-fashioned lettering. All around the perimeter are smaller clock faces that tell the time all over the world.
It makes me think of Dad in Africa. It’s 11:30 a.m. here now—late at night for him. “I’m sure you’ll do great,” he said to me this morning on the phone. Yeah, well, so far I’m not doing so great. It took us forever to get through that first clue. At this rate, we’ll never make it through all seven.
I try to get my breathing under control and stop panting like a dog. I spy a bench—we slide onto it, and Liberty tries to casually open the brochure, like we’re just your average Macy’s shoppers.
“Okay. So. Yeah. So this thing is called the Jessop’s Street Clock. It was built for a downtown San Diego jeweler back in 1907,” she reads to me. We stare at the old, grainy photo of the exact same clock, back more than one hundred years ago, with a horse and buggy by it. “It was relocated here when Horton Plaza was built. A famous local landmark.”
I do the math quickly in my head. “So, if I’m remembering right that the comic called the Clock first ‘struck’ in, say, around 1936 . . . Subtract twenty-nine years from that, and what do you get?”
“You get 1907!” she says. Liberty’s watery green eyes are glowing.
My chest swells with pride. “This clock was twenty-nine years old, already—and still striking on Jessop Street—when the Clock comic was first created! We got this one!”
We sit for a minute, looking at each other.
“Okay, so?” she finally says. “We solved it. What do we do now? Where’s the person? The contact?”
We look around, bewildered, but there’s no one tapping us on the shoulder like Barbara Gordon did at the library. No one who looks Clock related.
Some other shoppers—or maybe fellow Questers—are starting
to stroll and linger . . . Two guys in Batman T-shirts are lurking by the front doors of Macy’s. Suspicious, to say the least.
“Let’s walk around,” Liberty says, getting up off the bench.
I try to remember everything I can about the Clock’s alter ego. A lawyer or cop, or something. With an Irish name. McBride? McBrian? O’Brian?
There’s a group of mothers with baby strollers power-walking past. The two Quester dudes are still whispering by Macy’s. A homeless person, wrapped in thick layers of rags and a dirty down vest, shuffles around a corner. He looks so out of place among all the stores. It’s sad. But everyone pretends not to notice him. If this were a real comic strip, the homeless man might turn out to be Rorschach in disguise. Or maybe John Lockdown on undercover assignment.
A group of fancy older ladies push through the doors to Macy’s, bumping the two suspicious-looking Quester dudes. More people arrive . . . I scan them for signs of an old-fashioned lawyer named O’Brian. Or anything clock-related. But: nothing.
There’s a coffee hut across the plaza from the clock. On the awning, it says Java Time. And there’s a picture of a coffee cup with a big clock on it.
Hmm. Liberty and I look at each other. “Time for java?” she says.
We head over, and she steps right up and orders: “Two small regular coffees!”
“Coffee? Really?” I say.
“Yup. My mom won’t let me drink it,” she says, waving a handful of sugar packets. “But she’s not here, is she?”
“By the way, have you checked in yet?” I ask.
Liberty rolls her eyes. “Yeah. I’m texting her.”
“Two regulars,” says the coffee guy, holding out two cups. He’s got on an old hat with a brim, and under his apron, a business suit with big wide shoulders, the kind they wear in the old gangster movies on the classic movie channel.
I take a sharp breath and hold it.
Yup.
His name tag says Brian O’Brien.
Liberty is looking at me, eyebrows raised. I nudge her. She nudges me back. Finally, I get her to step forward and ask the question.