The Unbreakable Code

by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

  Emily suddenly became very focused on making her cuts fall exactly on the traced outline of her heart. She didn’t have to look up to feel all the attention on her and James.

  Kevin or Devin—Emily couldn’t really tell the difference in their voices when she wasn’t looking—said, “I heard about that. My dad said the bookstore owner probably needed money.”

  That got Emily to look up. “Why would your dad say that?”

  Kevin nudged Devin, trying to give his brother the hint to be quiet. “He’s their friend,” he said.

  Devin went on, “I’m not saying that’s what happened. It’s just a theory our dad had. He said most cases of arson are started by the business owner to get money from their insurance. It’s called insurance fraud.”

  Emily fixed her glare on Devin, hoping her eyes could make him feel like a handful of pebbles were being flung at him. She normally liked Devin, but sometimes even nice people said dumb things. “Spreading a rumor like that isn’t any better than being the one to make the accusation in the first place. It’s worse, if you ask me.”

  Devin looked startled. She could tell he felt bad for saying anything and hadn’t been trying to get under her skin. But she was still mad.

  “Hollister wasn’t even—” Emily had been about to say that Hollister wasn’t even there when the fire happened, but then someone would ask how she knew that. She didn’t want to talk about being there.

  “He would never do something like that,” James finished for her.

  “Right,” Emily agreed, and returned her concentration to cutting the poster board. Her hand was a little bit shaky with the scissors. The dance committee meeting had distracted her from thinking about the fire and wondering why it had happened and what it had to do with Mr. Quisling’s and Coolbrith’s messages about the unbreakable code. But now that was all she could think about again.

  “So.” Mr. Sloan filled the awkward silence. “Fill me in on the rest of your dance plans. It sounds like you’ve got the fun-and-games part figured out, but what about the dance part of your dance?”

  Vivian stood up from her seat, her clipboard ready and pen poised. “What about it?” she asked.

  “Relax, Vivian.” Mr. Sloan held up both hands in surrender. “I’m not interrogating you. I’m just wondering if you hired a DJ—”

  “Of course. He’s their friend,” Vivian said, nodding to indicate Emily and James.

  “I wouldn’t call him a friend,” James said. “But we know him.”

  Emily and James exchanged a look, and she knew he was thinking about Charlie’s lie. But one lie didn’t mean he was an arsonist.

  “Have you all come up with a list of song suggestions?” Mr. Sloan asked. “That can be helpful. And see if he has a fog machine and those spinning lights. Those are always cool.”

  Vivian scribbled on her clipboard. “We hadn’t thought about a song list,” she muttered.

  “You’ve got to have a song list,” Mr. Sloan said. “Otherwise the DJ will end up playing the ‘Macarena’ on repeat.”

  Everyone laughed and groaned. Emily felt lighter now that the conversation had moved away from Hollister’s fire. Kevin and Devin chanted the “Macarena” with their safety goggles on. They extended one gloved hand, then the other, flipped their hands over, then folded them onto each elbow and wiggled their hips. “Heeeeeey, Macarena!” they cried.

  James shook his head. “I can’t believe they know that.”

  “This should be part of the presidential challenge!” Kevin cried.

  “No with a capital N-O,” Vivian said.

  Kevin and Devin jumped to the side to do the dance moves facing another direction, but they bumped their table covered in Dixie cup samples of lemonade. Several cups tipped over; one fell off the table and onto the poster Maddie was painting below. Maddie yelped. More liquid came racing down the lab counter and began dripping onto her work. Mr. Sloan raced to the wall and spun the roll of paper towels, grabbing several, before hurrying back to mop up the watery blue and red mess. Nisha aimed the heat gun at the liquid to dry it.

  “It’s turning brown!” Maddie cried. “You’re burning it!”

  Nisha snapped off the heat gun.

  “No,” Emily said. “It’s turning brown because it’s lemon juice. Acidic liquids can be used as an invisible ink and change color with heat.”

  Mr. Sloan looked up from his mopping, impressed. “Very good!”

  She had learned about invisible inks and how they react with heat when she was hunting down Mr. Griswold’s lost Poe book last fall. In fact …

  Emily got down on her hands and knees under the guise of helping with the mess, but really she wanted a better look at the browned lemonade spots. They reminded her of the mark on the unbreakable code parchment that had looked like someone had carelessly set a coffee mug on it and left a ring, but what if that mark wasn’t from someone’s mug? They had already discovered the paper could be folded in a way that marked an X on an island. Could there be even more?

  CHAPTER

  31

  EXCITED BY THE PROSPECT of there being more to the unbreakable code than they realized, Emily bumbled picking up the spilled cup of lemonade and more juice poured out.

  “Watch it,” Maddie snapped.

  Holding a cluster of paper towels, Emily helped blot up the mess, but the liquid and paint smeared together and the poster puckered with wet spots.

  “Ruined.” Maddie harrumphed. “And my lettering was perfect.”

  “Sorry, Maddie,” Emily said, even though she hadn’t been the one to knock the cup off the table in the first place.

  “Time’s up for today,” Mr. Sloan called.

  “Of course it is,” Vivian said. “We’ll never be ready in time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mr. Sloan reassured her. “There’s still next week. And remember, the important thing is students have fun. That can happen whether or not every last detail is perfect.”

  Emily jumped to her feet, eager to tell James her idea as soon as they left the committee meeting. The second they stepped outside the science classroom, she grabbed his arm and pulled him around a corner in the opposite direction from where everyone else headed.

  “What—where are we going?” James spluttered.

  “I have to tell you something. It’s important.” After making sure nobody was nearby, Emily said, “You know how the heat turned the lemon juice brown on Maddie’s poster?”

  “Boy, was she mad.” James shook his head.

  Emily waved away thoughts of Maddie. “The unbreakable code supposedly survived fires, right? What if that brown mark on the old parchment isn’t random but part of a message written in invisible ink that got revealed with heat?”

  Emily’s idea hit James with enough force that he dropped his hands from their grip on his backpack straps. They dangled slack at his sides. “Whoa,” he said. “Maybe that grid of letters that everyone has always assumed is the unbreakable code isn’t even the code. It could be a decoy!”

  They started walking down the hallway, an excited skip in James’s step. “I read once that George Washington had his Revolutionary spies write secret messages in invisible ink between the lines of normal-looking letters. If George Washington used invisible ink, then we know it existed during the Gold Rush.”

  “And don’t forget The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe,” Emily said, reminding him of a story they’d read last fall. “Invisible ink is mentioned in there, too, and Poe wrote that in the eighteen hundreds.”

  The hallway leading to the front doors was being mopped, so they turned a corner and headed for a side exit.

  “There’s one problem with my idea, though,” Emily said. “How are we going to heat the paper in the library? Ms. Linden seems cool and all, but I can’t imagine she’d be okay with us bringing in a hair dryer and blasting it on a historical document.”

  “No, probably not,” James agreed. He pushed on the side door to open it, but the door resisted. “Is this locked already?�
� He tried the door more forcefully, then slammed his shoulder against it for extra oomph, and it gave way. Blackened chewing gum had been ground into the lock, making it catch before opening.

  “Ugh, people can be so disgusting,” Emily said.

  They stepped into the sunshine, and James snapped his fingers. “I know—what about a black light?”

  “A black light?”

  “Yeah, remember that artist I was telling you about the other day? You needed a black light torch in order to see her paintings.”

  “A black light.” Emily nodded. “That’s a great idea. It sounds like something Matthew might have.”

  They found her brother in his room arranging LEGOs for another stop-motion video he was making as a tribute to his favorite band, Flush. He didn’t have a black light, but he pulled out his phone. “Maybe there’s an app for that!”

  It turned out there was, but it cost five dollars. Emily gnawed on her lip. “That’s a lot of money for something we’d only use once.” Why did everything have to be so expensive?

  “Could we make one?” James mused.

  One Internet search later, they discovered a simple hack that would temporarily turn Matthew’s phone into a black light.

  “All we need is clear tape, and blue and purple Sharpies,” Matthew said.

  Emily raided their mom’s graphic design supplies and found the necessary Sharpies. Following the instructions, they colored two pieces of tape with blue Sharpie and placed them over Matthew’s phone light, then placed one piece of tape colored with purple Sharpie over the blue one. Matthew turned on the flashlight feature, and a violet light beamed from his phone.

  It was too late to go to the History Center where the unbreakable code was kept, so they would have to test their theory the next day after school. Emily couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  When school finally ended Thursday afternoon, Emily and James raced home to meet Matthew before heading to the Main Library.

  “Did I really have to come?” Matthew asked when they were all seated together on the bus.

  “No, you didn’t,” Emily said. “I told you that three times already. I need your phone, not you. But you won’t let that stupid thing out of your sight.”

  Matthew hugged his phone to his chest and patted the backside. “Don’t listen to her,” he said in mock baby talk. “You’re not stupid. No, you aren’t!”

  When they reached the History Center on the sixth floor, Ms. Linden greeted them as before.

  “Hello, you three! It’s been a while.” She flipped her long braid, threaded with green hair, behind her shoulder. “You make a break in the case?”

  “Well.” Emily shifted her feet and exchanged a look with James. They had made a break in the case when they discovered how the parchment could be folded to overlay the X directly onto one of the circles. And of course there was her new theory about the beige blemish on the old paper. But she didn’t want to say anything until she knew for sure whether her hunch was right.

  “Could we look at the unbreakable code again?”

  “Of course. I’ll get it for you.” If Ms. Linden suspected they were up to anything, she didn’t let on.

  They left their backpacks at the front desk as before, taking Emily’s notebook, a pen, and Matthew’s phone with them to the long table, where they waited for Ms. Linden to bring out the folder.

  Once Ms. Linden left them, they stared at the manila cover. Emily had so many expectations tied up in the simple act of shining a light on a piece of paper.

  “So,” James said.

  “So,” Emily agreed.

  “What are you guys afraid of?” Matthew flipped open the folder and pulled out his phone. “Let’s do this.”

  Emily concentrated her attention on the mark that looked like a coffee stain. If that mark wasn’t an accidental blemish and really was part of the unbreakable code, who knew what might be revealed by the black light? Maybe the paper would be covered in words, or maybe there was a more detailed map?

  Matthew fiddled with his phone, turning on the flashlight setting. He held the phone up, bathing the paper in violet light. Emily squinted and leaned closer to the table. Under the colorful glow, it looked like a brush had painted light onto the page extending from the brown mark in a pattern of swoops and lines. Her breath caught. Was something really there? The variation in tone the light revealed was subtle, and Emily wasn’t sure if she wanted to see something so badly her imagination was making this up, or if there really was an image there.

  “Do you see that?” Emily asked her brother and James.

  “I think I see something,” James said.

  “It looks like a drawing,” Matthew added.

  From behind them, Ms. Linden’s voice made them jump. “What are we looking at?”

  CHAPTER

  32

  MATTHEW SNAPPED his phone light off, and the three looked anywhere but at Ms. Linden, until Emily realized it was silly to pretend like they hadn’t been doing anything when Ms. Linden had clearly observed them to some degree.

  “I … I had the idea that there might be a message written on this paper in invisible ink. We rigged up Matthew’s phone so it worked like a black light, and—”

  “It looks like Emily was right,” James jumped in.

  “But my phone hack doesn’t work well enough to get a great look,” Matthew said.

  Ms. Linden had one eyebrow cocked. “Invisible ink? Let me see.” She tipped her head in Matthew’s direction, indicating he should turn his phone light back on. She bent over the paper, her braid dropping forward over her shoulder. Matthew’s phone glowed once more, like moonlight falling across the page, and again Emily could see the ghost of a pattern. She hadn’t been imagining it.

  “I don’t believe it,” Ms. Linden said in a hushed voice. She snapped upright, her spine very straight, and declared, “I have something that might help us get a better look. Hold on.”

  She nearly ran to the door and disappeared into the next room. When the librarian reappeared, she held a slim, black, ruler-shaped object in her hand. “Professional-grade black light,” she said. “It’s sometimes used for archival work, although you have to be careful with UV light. It can degrade paper and ink over time. But this could be a historical discovery you’ve made, so I think the situation calls for using it.”

  The four of them huddled over the parchment. Ms. Linden snapped on the light. The beam it emitted was bolder and brighter than their homemade version and clearly illuminated two symbols:

  James stared, his eyes wide. “I think that’s Chinese!”

  Emily could see it now. The lines weren’t making a drawing as they had first thought. They formed characters in another language.

  “Amazing,” Ms. Linden said.

  “Do you know what it says?” Emily asked James.

  “I can only read Chinese well enough to order dim sum. But my grandmother will know. I’ll ask her tonight.”

  Matthew snapped a photo, and Emily and James copied the symbols onto paper.

  “This is amazing,” Ms. Linden said again. “I can’t believe this.” She turned the black light off, and then back on again, as if she was making sure the Chinese characters hadn’t disappeared.

  “So, why do you think the miner guy did this?” Matthew asked. “Did he just grab this piece of paper thinking it was blank and didn’t know this was on it?”

  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Emily said.

  “Yeah,” James agreed. “Maybe he was a Chinese miner and this reminds him where he hid his gold. The visible letters are meant to trick anyone who goes looking for it.”

  “Or maybe both parts are necessary to find the treasure,” Emily said. “Maybe a Chinese miner and an English-speaking miner worked together to make this, and so they used both their languages to guarantee they would find their gold again as a team, so one wouldn’t steal from the other—”

  “Or kill the other,” Matthew interjected.

  “Ew.
Morbid, but yeah, they would need each other to interpret the map and find where they’d hidden their gold on the island,” Emily said.

  “Island?” Ms. Linden asked. “How do you know they hid it on an island?”

  Emily and James exchanged a look. James shrugged, and honestly, Emily was so excited about this new development she was itching to share their other discovery about the map. She showed Ms. Linden how the x marked one of the four circles on the back when the paper was folded.

  “Amazing,” the librarian said, folding the paper again to try it for herself.

  “But we’re stumped on what the island could be,” Emily added. “We thought these three circles that are closer together are Angel Island, Alcatraz, and Treasure Island. No matter how you turn the page, the X doesn’t look like it could be Alcatraz. Angel Island belonged to the military when the code was supposedly created. And Treasure Island didn’t exist, so—”

  “Yerba Buena has always been there,” Ms. Linden said, referring to the natural island connected to Treasure Island.

  “Yeah,” Emily agreed. “That must be where it is.” The theory didn’t excite her, though, because Yerba Buena had gone through a lot of development over the years. A tunnel had been bored through it for the Bay Bridge, for one thing, and then the military and coast guard had used it for decades. Plus there was the new construction she and James saw when they had ridden bikes around Treasure Island with her family. Just like how the Niantic had been uncovered by construction workers digging to build a parking garage, she couldn’t help but think it was more likely the treasure would be uncovered by someone with an excavator, and not a couple of kids.

  “There’s also Gull Island,” Ms. Linden said. “I imagine that’s what the fourth circle is supposed to represent.”

  “Gull Island? Did you know about Gull Island?” Emily asked James.

  He grimaced in response. “I need a shirt that says Not a San Francisco Wiki.”

  “It’s very small, much smaller than any of the others,” Ms. Linden explained. “It’s definitely not a tourist spot like Angel Island or Alcatraz, and it’s not accessible like Yerba Buena and Treasure Island. It’s also a private island—the only one in the bay—so a lot of people don’t know about it.”