“Since you asked…” James looked to Emily, and she nodded for him to go ahead. “We’d like to give the money to you, Hollister. To help you get your store back up and running.”
Hollister had been mid-bite of his ice cream sandwich. His mouth dropped open in surprise, but he closed it quickly, pressing a napkin to his lips. He mock grabbed his chest and stumbled backward, then laughed as the rest of the party clapped and cheered at James’s announcement.
“You two.” Hollister swung an arm around both their shoulders and hugged them to his sides. “You two are the sweetest. That is a very generous offer, but I’m going to turn you down.”
“What?” Emily pushed away in surprise. “Why?”
“That’s your reward. You two earned that money, and you should treat yourself to something special. Put the rest away for college. The fact that you would even consider giving that money to me is a gift in itself.”
“But…” Emily looked around at the drop cloths and bookcases clustered together. “Your store?”
“My store and I will be just fine, don’t you worry. In fact, I’ve been working up a plan of my own, with a lot of help from my old partner.” Hollister nodded to Mr. Griswold and said, “Why don’t you do the honors and fill everyone in, Gary?”
Mr. Griswold grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” He raised his It’s-It. “I’d like to make a toast. To Hollister and the magnificent future your store will surely have. And to these young people for their generosity in donating their time today. As you know, I was so impressed by your ingenuity with the game you planned for your school dance last weekend. It was inspiring.”
Mr. Griswold looked down for a moment and cleared his throat. “Truth be told, I have not felt like myself since I was attacked last fall.
“Watching your game reminded me that the energy we put into the world is infectious. There is a ripple effect, whether you are fostering fear or fun, cruelty or kindness. You heard the laughter from your classmates during your game—the positive energy you generated was palpable in that gym.
“You planted an idea in my imagination. I hurried home and called Hollister immediately, and now, without further ado, I’d like to announce my next big game.”
The store had been silent, other than soft jazz playing behind Mr. Griswold’s words, but at the mention of a new game, everyone started talking at once—even Jack, who seemed just as surprised by this news as any of them.
“What is it?”
“What’s the event going to be?”
“A new game?”
Claus sat up and barked sharply three times, and everyone laughed.
When the room quieted, Mr. Griswold asked, “Have you heard of an escape room challenge?” When nobody spoke up, he explained, “Participants are placed in a locked room and have to work together to solve a series of puzzles in order to break out before time is up.”
“That sounds fun,” Emily said.
“It’s great fun, and I’ve decided to host one in the ultimate San Francisco escape challenge location.”
“Where’s that?” James asked.
“Alcatraz,” Mr. Griswold said.
“Alcatraz Alcatraz?” James asked. “The old prison on the island?”
“The one and only.”
Hollister whistled and shook his head. “I told him he was crazy when he pitched the idea to me, but Gary never thinks small.”
“The event will be called”—Mr. Griswold swiped a hand in the air like he was unveiling a banner—“Unlock the Rock.”
“Cool!” Kevin and Devin said. “Do we get to go?”
“Of course! I’ll also invite some of the top Book Scavenger competitors from across the country, and the rest of the tickets will be auctioned off as a fund-raiser to help get Hollister’s bookstore back up and running. What do you say? Are you onboard?”
The group erupted in cheers. Emily clinked her It’s-It with James, then Nisha and Vivian.
Maddie leaned close. “Don’t think you’ll have an edge over me just because you found a gold bowl,” she said, but with a smile on her face.
“How about we work on the same team for once?” Emily replied.
“And what kind of fun would that be?” They clinked It’s-Its and joined in when Devin and Kevin started chanting, “Unlock the Rock! Unlock the Rock!” Every-one chimed in, except Mr. Quisling, who stood with his arms crossed on his chest, but he looked amused. Next to him Ms. Linden bounced her shoulders to the beat of the chant. She playfully bumped her hip against his, and Mr. Quisling grinned, shaking a finger to the beat like it was a waving pennant.
Emily couldn’t remember a time she’d felt this light and happy. The first day she’d walked into Hollister’s store many months ago, she wasn’t even sure if she could call James a friend yet, that was how brand-new everything had been. Mr. Quisling and Maddie were so intimidating back then. Mr. Griswold existed only on the Internet and in her imagination. Emily didn’t think she would ever know what it felt like to belong to a place or a group of people outside her family. And then, within a matter of months, she was surrounded by not just friends but a community. She never wanted to lose that feeling. She thought about what Mr. Griswold had said, how important it was to create positive moments and generate goodwill. She wondered if doing that would make this feeling last forever.
One could only hope.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Unbreakable Code is a work of fiction; however, I did draw on historical events and people for inspiration. Here are some of the facts behind the fiction.
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, and the Unbreakable Code
The legend of the unbreakable code is entirely made up, but Mark Twain really did live in San Francisco between the years of 1864 and 1866. He was known then by his birth name, Samuel Clemens, and worked as a reporter for the Morning Call. During this time, he wrote the short story that launched his literary career, “The Jumping Frog,” and published it under his famous pen name. The Transamerica Redwood Park, where Emily and James followed Mr. Quisling, is a real place you can visit in San Francisco, also known as Mark Twain Plaza. The fountain Mr. Quisling circles has sculptures of jumping frogs as a tribute to Twain’s story.
During his time in San Francisco, Twain met a San Francisco firefighter by the name of Tom Sawyer. According to Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer by Robert Graysmith, Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer met at the very location where the Redwood Park is now. In 1864, there was a large building there known as Montgomery Block, which housed the Bank Exchange Saloon and Turkish baths, both places where Twain and Sawyer allegedly interacted.
It is Sawyer himself who claimed that Twain borrowed his name for his future iconic character. In an 1895 article in the Morning Call, Sawyer was quoted as saying:
[Twain] walks up to me and puts both hands on my shoulders. “Tom,” he says, “I’m goin’ to write a book about a boy, and the kind I have in mind was just about the toughest boy in the world. Tom, he was just such a boy as you must have been. I believe I’ll call the book ‘Tom Sawyer.’ How many copies will you take, Tom, half cash?”
Twain never refuted Sawyer’s claim, but he also never confirmed it. It remains left to history to know whether Sawyer’s account was true.
In an 1898 interview, Sawyer recounted a trip he took to Virginia City, Nevada, where he spent time with Mark Twain. In Black Fire, Graysmith writes of this visit that “Sawyer had an exciting few nights with his pal Sam and his friends. He drank and gambled with him and high rollers.…” From this I imagined the scenario of Twain accepting the unbreakable code for the payment of a gambling debt owed to him.
The fires that the unbreakable code was rumored to have survived were actual historical fires. The first was the great San Francisco Fire of 1851, the largest in a series of fires to overtake the young and rapidly developing city. The Niantic, which had been run aground and converted from a whaling ship to a place of business and commerce, burned to the waterline during this fir
e. The remains of the Niantic were left in the ground, along with the many other burnt store-ships, as the waterfront was filled in and developed over. The Niantic Hotel was built over the remains of the old ship, and when the hotel suffered a major fire in 1872, it was rebuilt as the Niantic Building, which was then destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires.
The second fire was one Mark Twain experienced in Virginia City while staying at the White House Hotel, shortly after Tom Sawyer had visited him. The third incident happened to Tom Sawyer’s saloon, which he owned for the last twenty-five years of his life at 935 Mission Street. His saloon was destroyed in a fire in 1906, and Sawyer died later that same year.
The Gold Rush
In January 1848, gold was quietly discovered near present-day Sacramento, mere weeks before California was included in the large territory of land ceded to the United States as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to end the U.S.–Mexican War. The Gold Rush became an international event, bringing fortune seekers from all around the world including China, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Germany, and France. In the span of two years, San Francisco exploded from a small settlement town with a population close to one thousand to over twenty thousand people. San Francisco was the main port of entry, and as there was no transcontinental railroad at this time, many people arrived by ship. Sometimes these ships were left abandoned and cluttering Yerba Buena Cove by crews headed north to the gold fields. Because building materials were scarce and expensive, these ships were sometimes broken down for their materials or brought aground and converted into commercial and business spaces, as was the case with the Niantic.
Yerba Buena Cove was gradually filled in and built up. The land closest to water was most desirable both because of the proximity to ships bringing in goods and also because the majority of San Francisco terrain was hilly and provided challenges for a newly developing city.
With the prospect of great wealth at stake, tensions between different ethnicities were prevalent during the Gold Rush. When California became a state in 1850, the legislature enacted the Foreign Miners Tax, which meant non-American miners had to pay a fee of twenty dollars a month. This was an often lawless time, with minorities especially receiving little to no legal protection. According to the Harvard University Library open collection, “the Chinese adopted the unique practice of melting down gold to make household goods, such as pots and other utensils” in order to protect their wealth from thieves. That detail, as well as reading The Chinese in America by Iris Chang, Chinese San Francisco 1850–1943 by Yong Chen, and the fictional story from the Dear America series, The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung by Lawrence Yep, inspired my origin story for the unbreakable code.
Buried Ships of San Francisco
The dig that Mr. Quisling participated in to recover the Niantic in 1978 is an actual event that happened. The ship remains were discovered when a construction crew was excavating a lot in preparation for a new building. Construction was halted, and the Maritime Museum was brought in to see what could be salvaged from the old ship. At the Maritime Museum, Emily and James view part of the Niantic stern, a miniature model of the converted storeship during the Gold Rush, and artifacts from the 1978 excavation project. These are actual displays that exist (as of the printing of this book) and can be seen, although the exhibits are spread out between the Maritime Museum and the Maritime National Historical Park Visitor Center. For the sake of storytelling, I combined them into one location.
While the Niantic is the best known, there are at least forty-seven ships from the Gold Rush era buried underneath the city of San Francisco.
Gull Island
Gull Island is fictional, but I was inspired by Red Rock Island, the only privately owned island in San Francisco Bay. (And as of this writing, it is currently available for sale!)
Wave Organ
The Wave Organ is an acoustic sculpture commissioned by the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It’s located on a jetty that was built from the remains of a demolished cemetery.
Sodium and Water
Certain alkali metals, like sodium and potassium, cause an explosive chemical reaction when mixed with water. Sodium, the element the arsonist uses in my story, is a silvery metal that is soft at room temperature and typically stored in mineral oil because of its ability to be spontaneously explosive. When a lump of sodium is dropped into water (which should only be done by trained professionals with appropriate protective gear), sodium hydroxide and hydrogen is produced, causing the metal to zoom around the water and ignite into flames. You can find many videos on YouTube to view this reaction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Unbreakable Code would not exist if it weren’t for my editor and publisher, Christy Ottaviano, who envisioned Book Scavenger as a series and nurtured it into the story it is today. Also vital to this book’s existence is my literary agent, Ammi-Joan Paquette, who always makes me feel like I can do it, even when I doubt myself. It is an honor and a joy to work with you both.
This story is also indebted to everyone at Macmillan, who rejected my original title (and second and third—don’t feel bad for me, they weren’t very good titles). I received the “Could you come up with something else?” e-mail at the same time I’d written myself into a wall, plot-wise. My publisher didn’t know this, of course, but I was panicked and floundering, worried that I’d never be able to pull off this sequel. I was asked if I could come up with a title that sounded more fun, something like The Unbreakable Code. There was no “unbreakable code” in the story at that point, but I read the e-mail and thought, “Heeeeeey…” And voilà! I punched right through my plotting wall and was off and running again.
The whole team at Macmillan has been phenomenal to work with. Thank you to: Jessica Anderson, Starr Baer, Nicole Banholzer, Molly Brouillette, Lucy Del Priore, Katy Halata, Kathryn Little, Kallam McKay, Amanda Mustafic, John Nora, Caitlin Sweeny, Mark von Bargen, April Ward, Melissa Zar, and the many other people who have worked hard on this book’s behalf. Thank you to Sarah Watts for your wonderful illustrations.
Thank you to the following people who generously answered questions for me as I researched a wide variety of topics for this book: Yong Chen, Pat Cordor, June Cutter, Lisa Shah Evans, Jenni Frencham, Neal Griffen, Vanessa Harper, Ann Kodani, Adi Rule, Ryan Russo of Walk SF Tours, Elaine Vickers, Steve Wood, and Laura Young-Cennamo.
A hug and thank-you to Tharind Bopearachchigedon, Joaquin Diaz, and Morgan Rieb, three young Book Scavenger fans who read an early draft of this book. Your feedback was very helpful and gave me a boost of confidence when I needed it most.
To my dear Writing Roosters—Tracy Abell, Vanessa Appleby, Claudia Mills, Laura Perdew, Jennifer Simms, and Michelle Begley who will always be with us in spirit—you lift me up with your encouragement, laughter, wisdom, insightful critiques, and friendship. Thank you so very much. I am also appreciative for the children’s writing community at large. This story in particular, and my mental well-being while creating it, benefited from the advice and feedback of: Ann Bedicheck, Tara Dairman, Kari Anne Holt, Ingrid Law, Jeannie Mobley, Katherine Rothschild, Jennifer Stewart, and Elaine Vickers.
Thank you to my family and friends, always, for your love and support, and for understanding this hectic place I have found myself in the last two years.
A special thank-you to my husband, Justin: the list of reasons why would fill a book all by themselves. To our son: You were three and four when I wrote this story, and I’m giving you twenty-ten-ninety-nine hugs and smooches for being the best little boy a mama could hope for.
To the booksellers, librarians, educators, and others who champion children’s books every day: Thank you for what you do. So many of you have embraced Book Scavenger and connected with me in meaningful ways. At the risk of forgetting someone and kicking myself later, I have to thank the following people for being so dang inspiring and awesome: Sarah Azibo, Eric Barbus, Lauren Baumgartner, Leslie Berkler, Kim Campbell, Kirsten Cappy, Jesica DeHart, Brooke Dilling, D
rew Durham, Scott Fillner, Kristen Gilligan, Cressida Hanson, Brett Keniston, Sharon Levin, Angela Mann, Cheryl McKeon, Kim Parfitt, Kari Riedel, Angie Tally, Susan Tunis, Brianne Walterhouse, and Susan Whited.
Finally, to the enthusiastic fans of the first book: Thank you. I’ve had the chance to meet and hear from many of you over the past two years, and those experiences always left me motivated and excited to return to this book. I tried to honor you by writing the best sequel I possibly could. I hope you enjoyed it.
Honors and Praise for
BOOK SCAVENGER
An Amazon Best Book of the Year
An Indie Next List Pick
An NCTE Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts
A Bank Street College Best Book of the Year
A PW Best Book for Summer
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
A Texas Lamplighter Award Nominee
A Pennsylvania Young Readers Choice Award Nominee
A Georgia Children’s Book Award Finalist
“Full of heart and replete with challenging ciphers for readers to decode, Bertman’s debut is literary cousin to classic puzzlers like The Westing Game, and a story that values books and reading above other pursuits. Sure to be popular with voracious readers.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Fans of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library will appreciate the abundant literary allusions, and readers will hope for more adventures.”
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