“Anyway, I didn’t give it too much thought, because it seemed like a lighthearted game. When the book cipher in the second Tom Sawyer mentioned a map, I immediately thought of my old friend Miranda. Ina Coolbrith had been her favorite poet.
“Mr. Sloan himself never once crossed my mind. When I ran into him at Book Scavenger events this past year, he seemed vaguely familiar, but I assumed it was the Book Scavenger connection. I had long forgotten how I really knew him. He was a friend of Miranda’s whom I barely remember. A blip on my life radar. Apparently I wasn’t a blip on his.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” James said. “Mr. Sloan wanted you to think he was someone playing a friendly game with you. Someone who was interested in reviving your interest in the unbreakable code.”
“I don’t think Mr. Sloan actually even cared about the unbreakable code,” Emily realized.
“No, I don’t think he did,” Mr. Quisling agreed. “He used it because he knew it would get my attention. Especially if I thought the messages came from Miranda.” Mr. Quisling blushed. “Anyway. It’s getting late. Have you called your parents yet?”
Parents! Emily and James turned to each other in startled panic. In their haste and worry about Mr. Quisling, they had completely forgotten about checking in. Automated texts would have been sent to the families of students attending the dance after the gym was evacuated. If anyone was trying to find them out front, they would be freaking out. They hurried through the darkened hallways with Mr. Quisling to the front door.
“My mom and grandma are catering a Valentine’s dinner tonight,” James said. “They probably haven’t even seen the notice yet.”
“Your dad may have,” Mr. Quisling said, slightly out of breath.
“He’s traveling. Again.”
The bitter note in his voice made Emily think of Mr. Sloan and his decades-long resentment. Was that what had happened to him? A drop of bitterness at a time, revisited over and over again until he was carrying around a bucketful?
Emily wasn’t sure if her parents would be out front yet, either. They didn’t check their phones often or have them set with sound notifications, because they didn’t like electronic disruptions. They might be at home assuming all was well and Emily was at school helping clean up after the dance.
They pushed through the front doors and saw the commotion had calmed down greatly from before. The fire truck idled, but the ambulance was gone. One police car remained—Emily guessed Officer Pike and his partner were still inside talking with Mr. Sloan. Many students had left or been picked up. Looking down from the steps on the front lawn to see the group of remaining kids and teachers adorned with Abraham Lincoln hats, George Washington wigs, and trailing balloons made it seem like a late-night picnic instead of the aftermath of a fire evacuation.
Emily saw Sal, the family minivan, before she noticed her dad standing in front of it with the principal. Both were scanning the crowd, the principal with a phone to his ear.
“Dad!” Emily waved.
Mr. Crane’s head snapped to the school’s front entrance, and a smile split his face. Principal Montoya rolled his shoulders in an exaggerated sigh.
“James!” a voice called. As Emily ran down the front walk, she saw James’s dad stepping out of a sedan and waving.
“Dad?” James called. “What are you doing here?”
Both Emily and James reached their dads at the same time. Emily heard Mr. Lee say, “I decided to come back a day early.” James threw his arms around his dad’s waist and buried his head against his chest. Mr. Lee laughed lightly, then raised a hand and hesitantly stroked James’s hair, patting down Steve.
Mr. Crane swung his arm around Emily and hugged her tight to his side. “What in the world happened?” he asked.
“A fog machine caught on fire.” She didn’t want to get into explaining Mr. Sloan the serial arsonist yet. She knew she’d only have to repeat herself to her mom, and then probably again to Matthew, since he’d want to hear the story, too. It suddenly hit her how tired she was, and right now all she wanted to do was curl up in bed with a book.
“Oh, before I forget,” her dad said, “there was a phone call for you tonight. From a San Francisco public librarian?” His eyebrows were question marks.
“Ms. Linden!” Emily clasped her hands together. She’d forgotten about leaving her a message.
“Yes, Linden. That was the name. I asked her if you had overdue fines, but she said she was returning your call to answer your questions about boats.” Her dad said the word boats with emphasis, like Ms. Linden had said intergalactic space pigs.
Emily realized something. “I need to talk to Mr. Quisling. Hold on, Dad.”
The teacher was standing where she’d left him on the front steps of the school in his traditional stance: legs spread, arms tightly crossed over his chest, steely gaze (which now seemed more like “keenly observing” than “steely” to Emily) on the crowd.
“There was something else we wanted to tell you, Mr. Quisling. A good something.”
Mr. Quisling raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Emily looked back to James, who was walking with his dad to their car. “Actually, I should let James tell you about it. He’s the one who solved it.”
“Solved … what? You don’t mean the unbreakable code?”
Emily wished she could snap a picture of the incredulous look on Mr. Quisling’s face. She may not have been the one to solve it, and she’d learned Mr. Quisling was much less cutthroat than she originally had him pegged, but it was still satisfying to think they’d bested their teacher.
“It would be better if we showed you in person. Could you meet me and James at the main library tomorrow afternoon? On the sixth floor at the History Center?”
CHAPTER
44
AFTER EMILY FILLED IN her family about the night’s excitement, she collapsed on her bed planning to read for a few minutes, but she woke up in the middle of the night still fully dressed with her Scrabble boards on. She changed into her pajamas and went to brush her teeth, but had barely stepped down the hallway when she heard her parents talking in the front room. Her mom often stayed up late to work, and that night her dad must have joined her.
“You don’t think it will upset Emily?” her dad said.
Emily froze at the mention of her name.
“It’s the right thing for our family, David. It’s a great opportunity.”
“I know, but it’s a big change. And we promised her—”
Her mom interrupted him, “I bet she’ll surprise you.”
Emily hurried back to her bed, not wanting to hear any more. She knew what they were talking about, and it had nothing to do with the fire at the school or Mr. Quisling. Her parents had made only one promise recently: that they wouldn’t move again. Her parents had promised they would call San Francisco their home until Emily and Matthew decided they were okay with moving again. That had been the deal. That’s what they agreed on. And now her parents were about to go back on their word.
Emily tossed and turned in her bed, kicking her bunched-up sheet straight. The argument she’d overheard came back to her, about her dad losing a client and money. San Francisco was an expensive place to live. They had budgeted for only one year. But they had promised her they wouldn’t move again.
The next morning, Emily didn’t say anything to her parents. She kept waiting for her dad to drop the bombshell, but with every slurp of his cereal and cheery comment about how beautiful the weather was going to be that day, she imagined an internal needle inching toward her red zone, like some kind of gauge that measured anger.
Emily buried her nose in a book in her room for the rest of the day, biding her time until she and James could go to the library to meet Mr. Quisling. Finally, it was almost time to leave. As she double-checked her backpack for her notebook and extra pens, Matthew walked in and flopped on her bed. “I’m bored. Want to go do something? We can walk down to the beach at Fort Mason. Or see if anything�
��s going on in Washington Square.”
“I can’t,” Emily said. “James and I are going back to the History Center.”
“The place with the green-haired librarian?”
Emily nodded.
“You’re still trying to figure out that old cipher?”
“Not trying to. We did figure it out.”
Matthew sat up. “For real?”
“For real,” Emily said, zipping her bag.
Their dad popped his head into Emily’s room. “Oh good, you’re both here. Do you guys have a minute for a family talk? There’s something your mom and I need to discuss with you.”
Emily took a deep breath in an attempt to calm that needle on the anger-meter so it wouldn’t spin off it completely.
“Is it about last night?” Emily said evenly, already knowing the answer.
“No, no, no.” Their dad rubbed a hand against his head and stared at the floor, looking a little sheepish. “Just some changes we might need to make.”
Matthew groaned. “Are we moving again?”
Their dad looked up, surprised. “I thought you liked the moving?”
Matthew raised his hands and spoke to the ceiling, like he was having a conversation with James on the other side. “Why does everyone think that? Geez, you get misunderstood a lot when you try to be easygoing.”
Emily couldn’t believe her dad had chosen this moment, right when she was about to leave and do something she’d been looking forward to all day, to drop his big announcement. She knew her dad had done that on purpose, too. He probably thought it was a nice thing—pull the rug out from under her first, and let the fun activity distract her from the bruises. But it didn’t work that way. She was going to the library as she planned: bruise free. His announcement could wait.
“Now isn’t a good time. James and I have to do research at the library for a school project. It closes at five.”
The doorbell rang, much to Emily’s relief. She sent James a silent thank-you for his excellent timing. “Can we talk later?”
Mr. Crane sighed. “Yes, this can wait.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow at Emily after their dad left the room.
“Since when is the unbreakable code a school project?” he asked.
Emily jerked her thumb to where their dad had just stood. “I’m not about to feel bad when they have been misleading us.”
“You know something I don’t know?” Matthew asked.
“Yes,” Emily said, simply. “Anyway, James and I are meeting Mr. Quisling at the library. We’re showing him what we discovered. So that’s kind of like a school project.”
“Well, if you don’t want Mom and Dad to know the real reason you’re going to the library, then you’re going to need me to come with you.”
“What! Why?”
Matthew shrugged. “Because I’m bored. And if you leave me here with nothing to do, I’ll probably wander around the house in a stupor, babbling about the unbreakable code. I can’t prevent what Mom and Dad might overhear.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “If you really want to come, fine.”
Matthew grinned and tugged her ponytail as he stood up. “Thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER
45
EMILY, JAMES, Matthew, Mr. Quisling, and Ms. Linden all crowded around the original unbreakable code document as Emily and James took turns recounting how they deciphered the message. Emily pointed out the steps in her notebook, from using hope as a keyword cipher to writing the grid of letters in the order they fell if you read their columns from top to bottom and right to left.
Finally, she flipped a page to reveal the final message:
X T H I R D T R E E E A S T O F D U C K R O C K
“Well, I’ll be,” Mr. Quisling said, shaking his head in awe. “Those are some excellent observational skills you two have. I never would have thought to question that brown mark or about the possibility of invisible ink. Many people assume that’s a modern invention and don’t realize how long it’s been utilized as a tool.”
“Isn’t it also fascinating,” Ms. Linden chimed in, “how most people who have attempted to break this code over the years probably assumed the original gold miner was the stereotypical caricature of a white, Yosemite Sam type of guy?”
“Yes, exactly.” Mr. Quisling nodded enthusiastically. “It makes you realize how much you limit yourself if you refuse to think outside your preconceived notions. Excellent work, you two.”
“This is so exciting.” Ms. Linden pressed her hands together and said to Emily and James, “I am begging you to let me be part of this adventure. I’d love to take you to Gull Island on my boat, whenever you’d like. Because of its small size, if Gull Island is actually what the map is marking and not Yerba Buena, then I think you’ll have a much better chance of identifying this duck rock. There’s probably only fifteen trees on the island all together, so even if the duck rock is elusive, you might even be able to happen across this final spot by investigating each tree.”
Emily had been so excited about sharing how they solved the puzzle, she’d momentarily lost sight of the fact that there might be something waiting at the end of these directions. Something valuable that would change her parents’ mind about the big change they were preparing to spring on her and Matthew.
“Can we go right now?” she asked.
“Oh!” Ms. Linden looked at Mr. Quisling, then her watch. “Well, I get off work in half an hour. If you wanted to meet at the marina an hour from now, I suppose we could do that. I’ll need your parents’ permission, of course.”
Emily chewed her lip. “Can we have a minute to talk this over?” she asked, indicating herself, James, and Matthew as the “we.”
“Of course,” Ms. Linden said. “Just meet us at the front desk when you’re ready.”
“What do you think?” Emily asked once the adults had left the room.
“I’m game,” Matthew shrugged.
“My mom likes Mr. Quisling, so she would probably say yes if he’s going,” James said.
Emily was less confident about what her parents would say. They hadn’t talked to her teacher very often, as she’d lived in San Francisco for only four and a half months. After Hollister’s fire and then the events from the night before, she wasn’t sure they’d be so agreeable about her sailing off with two grown-ups they didn’t really know, even if Emily promised they were trustworthy. There was one way she knew they’d agree to her and Matthew going, and it would probably make James’s mom more comfortable, too.
“Can I use your phone?” Emily asked Matthew.
He handed it over, and she dialed their dad’s cell phone number.
“Hey, it’s Emily,” she said when he picked up. “How would you and Mom feel about going on a little adventure right now?”
* * *
Emily’s parents were surprised about the spontaneous boat trip, but one of the perks of having parents who embraced new adventures was that they were often up for something out of the blue. Emily, James, and Matthew went home from the library, in order to change into warmer clothes and meet up with the Cranes, before the group assembled again at the marina.
In no time at all, the seven of them were wearing lifejackets in a small sailboat bobbing across the bay toward Gull Island. It was freezing on the water, and Emily was glad she had listened when her mother told her to bring her fleece jacket.
Much to Emily’s amusement, Mr. Quisling and Ms. Linden were hitting it off. She would have pegged them as opposites. He was so rigid and rule-oriented, and Ms. Linden seemed anything but, with her color-streaked hair and tattoos. Mr. Quisling asked her about learning to sail, and the librarian pushed up her windbreaker sleeve to show him the tattoo that commemorated the first time she’d sailed to Farallon Islands. Mr. Quisling began asking about the stories behind other tattoos, and then to Emily’s great surprise, he pulled up his pant leg to show Ms. Linden his own tattoo of a blue-inked compass rose.
While Mr. Quisling and Ms. L
inden bonded, Emily and James filled her parents in on the unbreakable code and where they were headed.
“Mark Twain once had this cipher in his possession?” her dad repeated, incredulous.
Emily’s mom turned to Mr. Quisling. “How did you first learn about this legend?”
“It was back in 1978, believe it or not, when I volunteered with the recovery effort of a whaling ship that was discovered buried underneath the city. The unbreakable code has ties to that ship, the Niantic, so it brought the old puzzle back into the public’s eye for a short time.
“I got so far as figuring out the paper might double as a map. An old girlfriend and I even hiked Angel Island once with a metal detector, hoping to find the gold.” Mr. Quisling shook his head, humored by his younger self.
“You did?” Emily said.
Mr. Quisling nodded. “Yerba Buena belonged to the military at that time and wasn’t easy to traverse, so we crossed our fingers and hoped we’d make a lucky find on Angel Island. When Coolbrith said there was new info about the map, I thought perhaps Miranda had figured out which island. Of course, that message was only a trick.”
To Emily’s parents Mr. Quisling said, “I realize this must seem absurd. A grown man getting caught up in book and treasure hunts.”
Emily’s dad waved him away. “You don’t have to explain yourself to us. We’ve been called the same for wanting to live in each state.”
“And we know all about book hunting, thanks to Emily,” Mrs. Crane added.
“And it’s not absurd, at least not according to me,” Ms. Linden said. “Are you kidding? I’m in my late forties, I belong to a competitive Yahtzee club, and spend my downtime coloring in coloring books. I’m not judging anyone for participating in a Book Scavenger quest, no matter what their age. I think more people should get off their keisters and do quests, as a matter of fact, that’s what I think.”
“Keisters?” James said, and Mr. Quisling gave a loud belly laugh in response.
Ms. Linden grinned. “Keisters. I said it, and I’m sticking by it.”
The Unbreakable Code Page 21