“Your friends are waiting,” his mother said, as Finn came through the front door to his home.
Finn glanced into the living room.
“Hey,” Philby said.
“Hey,” said Willa.
“Hey there,” answered Finn.
“We’re here for the project,” said Philby, aware that Finn’s mother did not approve of Finn’s association with his fellow Kingdom Keepers.
“The inter-school math competition,” said Willa.
His mother, standing a few feet behind Finn, seemed to relax a little.
“You didn’t say anything, dear,” his mother said.
“I wanted to surprise you,” said Finn, surprised himself.
“We’ve been given a code—” Philby said proudly, addressing Mrs. Whitman.
“—that we have to break,” said Willa.
“At least that’s what we hope,” Finn told his mother. “If the other teams break the code first—” He left it hanging there because he wasn’t sure how to finish it.
“Then we lose,” Philby completed.
“How…interesting,” said Mrs. Whitman.
“Would you like to see it?” Philby offered. “Other kids’ parents are going to help. That’s a no-brainer.”
As his mother stepped forward, Finn used her as a shield and shook his head violently at Philby, who had just taken things way too far. What Philby didn’t understand—had no way of knowing—was that Finn’s mother had, until five years earlier, worked at NASA on the Space Shuttle program. After the birth of his sister, she’d tried mostly working from home, but had finally given up her job amid a budget cut.
The thing was: his mother was a rocket scientist. The real thing. She could do advanced calculus in her head.
“Well, I could take a look, I suppose,” she said.
Finn squinted and hung his head and knew it was too late: there was no way they would be getting rid of her now.
Philby got one chance to look Finn’s way as Mrs. Whitman sat down onto the couch beside him. His expression said, Who knew? But Finn’s heart sank because he knew.
Philby unfolded the piece of paper and placed it in front of her.
Mrs. Whitman studied the page for less than a minute as the three looked on.
“Your assumptions are clever,” she said.
“With cryptograms,” Philby said, “we were told the whole thing is repetition. So the two words that are the closest are the VKPFP—”
“—and the MKPFP,” said Willa, who wanted in on this.
Finn looked on, a bit bewildered.
“The apostrophe,” said Philby, “tells us M is an S or a T. A possessive or a contraction. And that means that W—”
“Could be an N,” said Mrs. Whitman, “if it’s part of a contraction. Very good. Let’s play with that for a moment.” She focused on the page and reached over, accepting a pencil from Philby as if she’d asked for it, which she had not.
“So P has to be E,” she said, erasing and adding to Philby’s chart.
“Because?” Philby asked.
“Because probability favors R, in TDIEPR, as the plural, S. And if R is S, then—”
“P is a vowel, and it’s an E!” Willa nearly shouted. “And if R is S, then W can’t be S. It has to be T, making the apostrophe a contraction, just as you said, Mrs. Whitman. I get it.”
Mrs. Whitman showed the others her work.
The chart was beginning to take shape. Finn could even understand the substitution of letters.
Not wanting to be left out, he said, “So M and V have to be consonants in words like there and where…and…what other five-letter words end in here?”
“There aren’t any,” his mother said with complete authority. “There are a couple six-letter words, like adhere, but no five-letter words. So, you’re right, Finn. M and V are either T or W.”
“And we already know that M is T,” Philby proclaimed, pointing to the chart.
“So V is W,” stated Willa.
“V is W,” said Mrs. Whitman, adding this to the chart. “I love this kind of puzzle!”
Indeed, Finn’s mom was leaning over the table, writing and erasing. She turned and presented the page to the others.
MKPFP IFP TDIEPR VKPFP RMIFR CQW’M JFQV HT 2736/2730
THERE —E ——ES WHERE ST—S —’ T
“Whoa!” Finn gasped. “We have all that already?”
“Finn,” his mother said, “Google four-letter contractions. That’s the next piece of the puzzle. I’m going to get us all cookies.”
Finn felt as if he’d entered a parallel universe where an alternate life-form had taken over his mother. There was a good deal of evidence to support his theory: first, his mother was asking him to get on the computer, not off it; second, she was offering cookies before dinner.
He knew his mother to have a nearly uncontrollable addiction to chocolate, an addiction that especially revealed itself when she was nervous or anxious. That in turn told him something about her current condition.
“I’m on it,” he said.
By the time he returned, there was a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table, along with three glasses of milk and a glass of water.
Another piece of evidence: his mother spoke with her mouth full of food. Unthinkable.
“So…what’d you find?”
“There are four: isn’t, won’t, don’t, and can’t,” Finn reported.
“Two with Os, one with an I, and one with an A,” his mother said, licking chocolate off her front teeth.
She adjusted the chart accordingly.
She had shaded the letters that they felt certain about.
“You missed a couple Fs,” Philby said, pointing to her chart and, more importantly, to her line of deciphering:
MKPFP IFP TDIEPR VKPFP RMIFR CQW’M JFQV HT 2736/2730
THERE —E ——ES WHERE ST—S —’T
He changed it to:
MKPFP IFP TDIEPR VKPFP RMIFR CQW’M JFQV HT 2736/2730
THERE -RE —ES WHERE ST-RS —’T -R-W
“So I did! Good catch!”
“I is A,” Finn announced loudly, wanting to be more than the errand boy.
His mother nodded and scribbled in the letter.
MKPFP IFP TDIEPR VKPFP RMIFR CQW’M JFQV HT 2736/2730
THERE ARE —A-ES WHERE STARS —’T -R-W
“We’re getting there now,” whispered Willa, as if by speaking too loudly she might jinx it.
His mother read, substituting words. “‘There are…traces…spaces….’”
“Places,” Willa said.
“Places,” Mrs. Whitman said, nodding. “Yes, I think you’re right: ‘There are places where stars…’”
“Isn’t, won’t, can’t or don’t,” Finn said, supplying the only four-letter contractions that seemed plausible.
“We can eliminate isn’t because ‘stars’ is plural,” Mrs. Whitman said. “We can eliminate can’t because we’ve identified the letters A and W and there’s no A or W in the word. So it’s got to be don’t.”
“P!” Willa announced. “The T of the code—the last letter—is the same as the first letter of places.”
Finn mumbled to himself. “He made it so we could figure it out.”
“Your teacher?” his mother said. She never missed anything. He could be thinking something up in his room and his mother could somehow overhear it.
“Our teacher,” Philby answered for him, seeing that Finn was tongue-tied.
“Up,” said Willa. “The last word is up. There are places where stars…don’t…grow up.”
“We did it!” Willa proclaimed.
“You did it, Mrs. Whitman,” Philby corrected.
“We did it as a team,” Mrs. Whitman said in a tone of voice that Finn recognized as preachy. “I really had nothing to do it with. I was more of a coach than a participant.” His mother was always trying to turn everything into a life message. If a bug died on the porch light it was a life message. If a mira
ge appeared on the highway, instead of just being cool it had to be a life message too.
“Mo-om!” Finn said in his best whine.
“Okay,” she said, anticipating his objection before it was enunciated.
“The Milky Way,” Willa said. “Stars just don’t grow up—they burn out and die.”
“But of course they grow up,” Philby said. “They can’t die unless they are created. Stars are constantly being created and burning up.”
“It’s the natural order of the universe,” said Mrs. Whitman.
“You worked for NASA, mom,” Finn said, giving her a chance to redeem herself. “What’s with stars not growing up?”
“It would appear to be some kind of riddle,” she answered. “What teacher assigned this? Science or math?”
Willa answered, “Math,” at the same exact instant Finn answered, “Science.”
His mother gave Finn the evil eye; she knew something was up.
“Finn?”
Philby stepped in. “They’re both right in a way,” he said, sounding typically Philby-convincing. “Because it’s an inter-school competition, several teachers from each school were involved in creating the code and, I suppose, whatever riddle is involved.”
Philby was presently the color of a ripe raspberry. Finn hoped his mother didn’t know him well enough to notice—but his mother didn’t miss much.
“Well, that makes sense,” said Mrs. Whitman.
“What kind of riddle?” Finn asked.
“Philby is right,” she said. “Stars are constantly being created, and stars are constantly burning out after millions of years of burning. What makes it more complicated—much more complicated—is that we are seeing the stars, thousands, hundreds of thousands, of years after whatever happened. It takes light all that time to reach earth. So by the time we identify a star it may actually no longer be there.”
“An illusion,” Willa said.
“Yes!” Mrs. Whitman said. “In a manner of speaking. But not exactly an illusion, since it did exist in the first place, perhaps for millions of years.”
“‘There are places where stars don’t grow up,’” Willa repeated.
“On a Christmas tree,” Mrs. Whitman said. “Or in a stained-glass window.”
“A church!” Finn said.
“Do you suppose it’s some sort of scavenger hunt?” Mrs. Whitman asked.
Finn glanced at the others. “I…ah…I think we can take it from here, Mom.”
Mrs. Whitman bit down properly on her cookie and chewed with her lips pressed closed tightly. She looked at each of them, one by one. She took a sip of water, looking right over the brim of the cup at Finn.
“A starfish that has been preserved,” she said. “A museum comes to mind.”
“A church or a museum,” Finn said. “That’s really good, Mom. I think we’ll take it from here.”
“Doesn’t one of the car makers use a star as its hood ornament?”
“Really,” Finn said, “we’re good.”
“Thank you for the cookies and milk,” Willa said, trying to help Finn.
“They were delicious,” said Philby. “And your code breaking was awesome.”
“I hope it doesn’t disqualify you that I helped,” Mrs. Whitman said.
Both Finn and Philby screwed up their faces in confusion.
“The competition!” she said.
Both boys nodded. They were becoming trapped by their own story.
Mrs. Whitman returned the empty cookie plate to the tray and accepted the empty glasses as well. She left the room.
“Whoa,” Finn said.
“Museums?” Willa said in a whisper. “Churches? Christmas? What’s he trying to tell us?”
“One Man’s Dream is like a museum,” Philby said.
“It’s not impossible to think of Cinderella’s Castle as a cathedral.”
“At Christmas all the parks go wild with decorations,” Willa added. “There must be a million stars.”
“Fireworks!” Philby said. “That’s one place that stars never grow up. They go up, and they come down.”
“The numbers at the end!” Willa said. “We forgot the numbers at the end.”
“No we didn’t,” Philby said. “I solved that first: ten-fourteen. It’s either a time, or a date.”
“And if a date, it’s tomorrow,” Finn said.
“So what stars just don’t grow up tomorrow, and only tomorrow?”
“We should check a Disney calendar,” Willa said “I’m on it.” Finn took off to Google a Disney calendar. He bounded up the stairs.
He was at his computer—having no luck at all with the calendar—when his mother cleared her throat from his open door.
“Hey,” he said, paying her a passing glance over his shoulder.
“Hey there yourself.”
“You did awesome,” he said.
“Did you solve it yet?” she asked.
“I’m Googling some stuff.”
She didn’t say anything. She just stood there, leaning against the doorframe.
“What’s up, Mom?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
He didn’t dare turn around. If she got a good look at him she’d know something was going on. He couldn’t hide stuff from her even when he wanted to. He’d learned to avoid some of her more penetrating questions, but outright lies were beyond him; he didn’t even want to lie.
“You know,” she said, “when you can’t look at me, it tells me a lot.”
“Who said I can’t look at you?” he asked, not looking at her. “I’m just busy, that’s all.”
“While you’re at it, why don’t you Google, Orlando School Code Contest, or Orlando School Challenge, or…any other combination you can think of. Or I could save you the trouble. The last one listed was in 1996.”
Finn panicked. His lungs stung, as did his eyes. His fingers felt cold and his throat dry. All this in a matter of seconds. Her, he thought. Only his mother could have such an effect on him.
“It’s the Kingdom Keepers, isn’t it?”
“Mom…”
“Is that your answer? ‘Mom?’ That’s…pretty lame, Finn.”
Lame? Since when did she talk like he did?
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“You are so grounded.”
“Mom…we’re just figuring stuff out.”
“You’re just putting your college education at risk,” she said. “That’s all. Do you know what your father would do?”
“Please don’t tell him! You helped solve it, after all.”
“Under false pretenses.”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Exactly and completely.”
“You’re part of it now. Think what Dad would think of that.”
“You’re threatening me? Do you really think you’re in any kind of position to threaten me? You’re about to turn grounded into grounded forever. As in infinity. Have you studied infinity?”
“The code,” he said, spinning around. “The code is nothing, Mom. A friend dreamed it. I swear that’s the truth. A dream. But she remembered it exactly, and we decided to try to solve it for her.”
“That is even lamer,” she said.
“But it’s the truth. I promise! Amanda’s friend, Jess. She dreamed the whole thing. We thought it might actually mean something and so we tried to decode it.”
“And it does mean something,” his mother said.
He stared at her, knowing her as he did, knowing that her arms and ankles being crossed suggested a confidence she rarely displayed. This was the Ph.D. mom, the math mom, the rocket scientist.
“You solved it,” he said, aghast. “You solved the riddle.”
“And wouldn’t you like to know the answer,” she said, not denying it.
“You gotta tell me,” he pleaded.
“I ‘gotta’ do nothing of the sort,” she said. “I gotta ground you.”
“So ground me. A couple days, a week? I can t
ake it.”
“Two weeks. And we say nothing about this to your father,” she said.
“As if I’d object to that,” Finn said.
“When I tell you the solution, you’re going to do whatever it is you’re all doing—here. Here, tomorrow night, where I can be a part of it. Where I can keep an eye on you. You’ll have your friends over, and if I find out you’re lying to me about any of this, then not only is the deal off, but I’m calling all their parents, and I’m putting an end to this—to whatever it is you aren’t telling me about.”
“It was a dream, Mom. I swear.” Was she going to make him beg for the solution? The official Walt Disney World Resort calendar had nothing of interest for the following night. It left him with the fireworks displays at the various parks, and not much more.
“Television,” his mother said.
“Excuse me?” Finn said, as politely as possible.
“On television, stars don’t grow up. They stay the same age.”
Finn’s jaw dropped. She could have put a golf ball into his open mouth.
“Genius,” he said.
21
“DUMBO?” Maybeck groaned in complaint.
“It’s so sad,” Charlene said. All the kids looked over at her in disgust, including Amanda and Jess, both too embarrassed to admit they’d never seen the movie.
“What?” Charlene said defensively. “Those ears?”
“Give me a break,” Maybeck said. “Bridge to Terabithia is sad. Dumbo is just…stupid.”
“Is not!” said Willa.
“Is so,” said Philby, supporting Maybeck and quickly drawing a line between the boys and the girls.
Gathered in Finn’s basement family room around a behemoth of a rear-projection television, they talked through the ads while Finn had it on mute.
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