Book Scavenger (25 page)

“We don't want to hurt you,” the tall man said.

Don't want to
wasn't as reassuring as
aren't going to.

A car door slammed up the hill, and Emily jerked to look behind her. Red rear lights of a car parked all the way at the top turned on, and the car eased away from the curb, driving away.

“The best thing to do is just give us the book. We know you have it.”

The short guy—Clyde, the other had called him—stepped toward her again, but his friend swung an arm in front of him. “Just wait,” he said.

“What—” Her voice croaked when she tried to speak. She started again. “What book are you talking about?”

“That one from the BART station,” the tall guy said. “Let's not play games anymore, okay? That was clever what you did, posting the book like you hid it in Outer Sunset. We spent a good deal of time at that park, and we know it's not there.”

Clyde flipped his hand in the air. “This is a waste of time! Let's just grab her bag and go!”

“No!” Barry snapped. “No,” he repeated, more calmly. “We don't need to
steal
, okay?” To Emily he said, “Give the book to us, and we'll be on our way. You'll never see us again.”

Emily had to think of something to do, and fast. These men could grab her without even taking a step—that was how close they were. And that Clyde looked like a dog who wanted to fight. The problem was, she really didn't have the book.

She could tell them that, but would they believe her after she'd already sent them clear across the city? And what would they do if they didn't believe her? She couldn't outrun them. Her only choice was to outsmart them. An idea came to her, but it was risky. It would only work if these guys knew as little about Mr. Griswold's book as she hoped they did.

“Is it Poe?” she asked.

“You know it is,” the tall man said.

“A maroon cover?”

She swung her backpack to her front and tucked her chin to hide her nervous swallow as she unzipped her bag. She took another step backward and uphill. Any space she could create between them, the better.

“I was enjoying reading it, but if you need it that badly…”

Emily pulled out the collection of Poe stories from Hollister.

The tall man accepted the book, holding it at arm's length to study the cover before Clyde grabbed it and flipped it open. Emily swallowed again and stepped back, sure her bluff was about to be called.

Clyde turned to
The Gold-Bug
, which she'd marked up as she compared it against Griswold's to find all the typos. She did her best to look indifferent and bored.

“You wrote in it!” Clyde shook the book.

“I … I did,” she said.

“You shouldn't write in books.”

“It doesn't matter.” His partner pulled him backward by the hood of his sweatshirt. “It's just a book.”

The two men turned, and Emily watched until they rounded the corner and disappeared completely. She watched a few minutes more, and when the men didn't return, she drew in a long inhale and exhaled slowly.

Two books lost in one day. Not a good day for a book scavenger.

*   *   *

Emily stood on the landing of her building and stared at James's door. It had been three weeks since a strange boy made her laugh and then solved her cipher when she wasn't looking. Then—
poof!
A best friend where she'd never had one before. Easier than solving an Encyclopedia Brown–level clue in Book Scavenger. She wanted to tell James about those two men. And losing
The Gold-Bug.
And Mr. Griswold's past as co-owner of Hollister's bookstore. And that she'd discovered Babbage's secret identity. She missed James. Hollister's words—
just be, just do
—washed over her mind like a wave on sand. If Hollister were here, she imagined he would tell her to try knocking and see what happened. But she couldn't risk the possibility of Ms. Lee opening the door again instead of James. Of asking to see James and having him reject her.

She opened her own door instead and trudged up the stairs. She swung her backpack onto her bed, planning to do homework and to try to get her mind off losing what felt like everything important in the span of a few days. When she unzipped her overfull backpack,
The Maltese Falcon
tumbled out.
After her meeting with Babbage/Mr. Quisling went downhill, she completely spaced on the fact that while she may have lost
The Gold-Bug
, she still had
The Maltese Falcon
and its clue. Maybe she hadn't lost out on everything, after all. If she could crack that clue, maybe she could still move forward with Mr. Griswold's game,
Gold-Bug
or no
Gold-Bug
, James or no James.

*   *   *

Bob the seagull had gotten a little too demanding about his bread, so on Friday, Emily went back to spending her lunch in the library. Being surrounded by books was comforting, even if she sat at a table by herself.

James was there, too, at a nearby table with those twins, Kevin and Devin. Emily tried not to be obvious about it, but she glanced over at James every so often. Again she thought of Hollister and their conversation the day before. What she thought Hollister meant was that she shouldn't be afraid to take the wrong step with a friendship. Any step was a good one as long as you were trying to be a good friend. But sitting there in the library with the low, bouncy beats of reggae music spilling from the librarian's office and the hushed conversations broken up by the occasional rip of loud laughter, Emily felt too much potential for wrong steps, despite what Hollister thought.

One time when Emily glanced James's way, she caught him looking at her. He whipped his head back so fast to the card game the brothers were arguing over that Steve appeared to have momentarily laid down before bouncing back upright. Shortly after that, James put his cards down and pushed back from the table. Emily tried to look busy at work on the
Maltese Falcon
cipher. She was disappointed when James kept walking. He had been on his way to the bathroom.

After that, she tried to work in earnest, and, therefore, she didn't hear James come back.

“Pigpen,” she heard his voice say from behind her.

She turned. “What?”

He'd been studying her paper over her shoulder. He pointed. “Pigpen. You'll see it.”

And that was it. He walked away.

Emily studied her work again. The original cipher was written at the top of the page.

The paper was covered in her work trying to decode it, which looked like a bunch of unfinished hangman games minus the hanging men. She'd also written down Raven's hint:
Charlie, Sally, Lucy.

“Pigpen,” Emily whispered to herself, and she realized what James had seen. The names were all characters from the
Peanuts
comics: Charlie Brown, Sally, and Lucy. Pigpen was another character, but what did that have to do with the cipher itself? The solution was six letters long, and
Pigpen
was six letters. But that couldn't work, because the third and fifth letters were the same according to the cipher, and in
Pigpen
those letters were
g
and
e
. Not the same.

But
Pigpen
had to mean something. Emily went to the computer bank. All the results on the first page had to do with the cartoon character. She scrolled down and saw a heading for “Searches Related to Pigpen,” and in the list underneath that, the word
code
got her attention. Pigpen was the name of a cipher!

She printed out a Pigpen key:

Once she had a key, it took her only seconds to figure out the solution to the
Maltese Falcon
clue.

SCARAB.

 

CHAPTER

34

SCARAB.

Scarab
was the word Poe's narrator used in
The Gold-Bug.
It meant
beetle
, like the glittering gold one on the cover. Like the inky-black one on the inside page.

If
scarab
was the next clue, Emily had a sinking feeling she knew where Mr. Griswold was directing her. Back to
The Gold-Bug.
Back to the book that had been taken away.

Emily pressed her forehead into her hands, her elbows anchored to the library table. This was it. She'd reached the end of the line for Mr. Griswold's game. It was like working on a complicated jigsaw puzzle without knowing the final picture. Just as the pieces began to fall into place, and you could almost make out the image, someone came along and swiped it all onto the floor. And then vacuumed up the pieces for good measure. To choose to stop now would have been one thing. To have the power of choice taken from her made Emily feel insignificant and small.

She raised her head and caught James studying her. They both looked away as if their eye contact burned. The bell rang and Emily started to pack up. She zipped her bag closed when James appeared next to her.

“Did you get it? Pigpen?”

“Oh.” Emily looked down for a second
.
“I did. Thanks for the hint.”

Even if James could tell she was upset and asked her about it, she wasn't sure she wanted to explain why. James had wanted her to stop playing the game, and Emily couldn't bear the possibility of someone telling her that being forced to stop was for the best. All James said was, “I recognized the symbols from one of my cipher books. I was happy to help. Sometimes two eyes are better than one.”

In a knee-jerk reply, Emily added, “No offense to the Cyclops.” They exchanged small smiles before James walked away.

*   *   *

That afternoon in social studies, Mr. Quisling asked for any final attempts to break James's cipher. His long strip of letters was the only submission for the week. Emily held her breath, waiting to see if anyone raised his or her hand.

The room remained silent, and Mr. Quisling said, “Mr. Lee, your cipher has survived the week. Congratulations on winning your first homework pass.”

Emily couldn't resist peeking behind herself to look at Maddie, who scowled at her binder and scratched a doodle in the margins of her paper.

James punched his fists in the air and tilted his head back to shout at the ceiling, “STEVE SURVIVES!”

The class tittered, and even Mr. Quisling looked somewhat bemused.

“Would you—or Steve—please illuminate for the class how your cipher works?”

James stood in front of the class and held up his vertical strip of paper with letters on it:

“I used a type of cipher called the scytale. You take a vertical strip of paper like this, and you wrap it around a cylinder-shaped object.” James held up a pencil. He wrapped the strip around it, and all the letters lined up horizontally. “To decode my message, you have to wrap the paper around an object with the same diameter as the one the original message sender used in order for the letters to align correctly. This pencil is what I used.”