Book Scavenger (6 page)

“What's with the flowers?” Matthew asked.

A torn yellow streamer tied to one of the iron bars wafted up in the breeze, waving the word
caution
. Emily gasped, realizing the yellow tape was a remnant from the perimeter that had barricaded the underground stairway the day before.

“This is the BART station,” she said in a hushed voice, as if they were standing outside a cemetery and not a public transit stop. “We drove by this yesterday. All the emergency vehicles were here.” This was where Garrison Griswold had been mugged. Even though the sun beat down on them, Emily felt a chill.

 

CHAPTER

7

IF IT WEREN'T
for the pile of mementos honoring Mr. Griswold, a person might pass this corner and never guess something horrible had happened there. A poster board leaned against the railing. It read:
GET WELL SOON, MR. GRISWOLD! YOUR CITY NEEDS YOU!
Flowers, candles, stuffed animals, and cards were in the pile, but more than any other item, there were books. Lots of books as if all the people in the city had brought their favorites just for Mr. Griswold.

“I feel like we should leave something,” Emily said.

James looked in the nylon bag that held his grandmother's vegetables. He pulled out a bundle of leafy greens.

“Bok choy?”

Emily dropped to one knee and opened her backpack. She tore a piece of paper from her notebook and folded it into a makeshift card. She and James crouched on the sidewalk to write a note and sign it. James also signed
Steve
with three little lines coming up from the second
e
like a cowlick. Emily held the card up to Matthew.

“What?”

“You should sign it, too.”

“I don't even know the guy.”

“Sign it, Matthew.”

With a grumble, Matthew held out his hand for a marker. When Emily took the card back, she read what Matthew wrote:
My sister is bummed about what happened to you, so she's making me sign this. Get well soon, Mr. Candyman!

“Matthew! You can't write that. And I've told you before—the Willy Wonka nickname has nothing to do with candy. He makes books.”

“Fine, I'll fix it.” He took the card back, crossed out
Mr. Candyman
, and wrote in
Old Book Dude
.

“That's even worse!” Emily snatched the paper from Matthew and crumpled it in her hands.

“So where did it happen, anyway?” Matthew asked. “Do you think he was standing right here?”

Emily shivered. “Creepy! I don't want to think about that.”

“I think it was down in the station,” James said.

“I'm going to check it out.” Matthew was halfway down the stairs before Emily or James could say another word.

“Matthew, get back here!” Emily yelled after him.

“It's not closed or anything,” Matthew shouted from below. “This would be a sweet spot for a music video.”

Emily and James clambered down the stairs after him. The air grew warmer and more stale with every step until they were underground, standing next to Matthew, who panned the area with the video on his smartphone. The station was an expansive, slick-walled cave with flickering overhead lighting. Slow, faraway notes from a clarinet player Emily couldn't see made her think the station must stretch pretty far back from where they stood. Bright advertisement posters for Beach Blanket Babylon, Teatro ZinZanni, and other San Francisco businesses were framed and hanging along the walls and on columns. Fingerprint-smudged glass walls and electronic gates separated them from the escalators and stairs that went down to the level where the trains came and went.

A woman walked down the stairs behind them and straight through the fare gate, like she did this all the time. Up ahead, a group entered from a farther entrance and turned to walk away from them to the opposite end of the station. Did these people even realize where they were or know what violent thing had happened here just one day before? Thanks to her brother's earlier question, Emily couldn't stop wondering where Mr. Griswold had been when he was mugged. Was he arriving on a train or downstairs waiting for one? She didn't want to be thinking like that, which of course made it all the more difficult to stop.

“Let's get out of here,” Emily said. As she turned to leave, she lobbed the crumpled ball of her ruined card at a trash can, but it came up a few feet short. When she bent down to pick up her litter, she spotted the maroon edge of a book jammed between the can and the wall.

“No way!” she said. She pried the book loose from its spot and held it up. “A hidden book!”

“Is that for Book Scavenger?” James asked.

“
The Gold-Bug
,” Emily read the title. It would totally make up for Babbage poaching her book if this was, in fact, for Book Scavenger. She flipped the cover open. “There's no tracking label on the inside. You're assigned a unique tracking number when you register a book with Book Scavenger,” she explained to James. “You print the number on a label and put it inside the book. But sometimes people forget, or they don't care about tracking the book so they don't print the label and put it inside. But this must have been hidden, right? Why would someone throw this away? It looks brand new.”

She considered the book again. The gold beetle embossed on the front glittered at her.

“I'll leave my card, just in case.”

She crouched by the trash can, but before she could place her card, James nudged her.

“Um, your brother…”

Emily looked up to see Matthew applying a bumper sticker for Flush to the face of the ticket machine.

“Matthew! What are you doing? You actually carry those around in your pocket?”

“A devoted Swirly carries Flush paraphernalia at all times. That's rule number one. Rule number two is Flush adornment makes the world a better place. Besides, sticker slapping never hurt anyone.”

“Do you not see the sign?”

Directly above him was a sign that read:
NO VANDALISM. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

Matthew waved a hand dismissively. “That's like a ‘Beware of Dog' sign for Chihuahua owners. Nobody's even here—this place is practically empty.”

“Practically is not the same as totally,” James said, shifting from foot to foot as he eyed two men who had come into view on the far side of the station.

“Cut it out, seriously,” Emily said. She hastily slid her calling card behind the trash can, adjusting it so it could be seen by someone looking for it but not spotted as trash. She stood and nodded toward the approaching men. “Those guys are watching us.”

One was short and squat, the other tall and thin as a lamppost. The men were uncomfortably focused on them. If there was any doubt about that, it was squashed when the short man punched his friend on the arm and stabbed a finger in their direction.

The tall one cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted: “Hey, you kids! Stop!”

“Matthew, you idiot!” Emily said.

“Undercover security! Run!” Matthew shouted.

They flew to the staircase, Emily still clutching her new book. James pushed past Matthew when they hit the sidewalk.

“Follow Steve!” James shouted. His spiky tuft bobbed wildly as they ran.

James headed back in the direction of the Ferry Building. They hurdled flowers and stuffed animals, pounding down the brick-laid sidewalk until they reached a wall of people lining up to board a bus.

“Excuse us!” James shouted as they dove through the line. James turned a corner by the bucket man, who was still beating his makeshift drums in a frenzy. They ran toward the empty outdoor mall, the splattering of an immense concrete fountain urging them on. Emily looked over her shoulder. The men were still behind them, rounding past the bucket man.

“Keep running!” she shouted to James and Matthew.

James turned past a bakery and entered the mall. Glass-fronted stores passed by in a blur, then James turned sharply and hustled upstairs. There was nothing but the sound of their feet pounding until, finally, they slowed to a stop outside the public restrooms.

“I think we lost them,” Matthew said between gasps.

“Quiet!” James held a finger to his lips.

Emily, James, and Matthew hugged the wall next to the restrooms to stay out of view of anyone on the lower level until footsteps thundered beneath them and then faded. A man swore, which echoed in the empty shopping center. Another voice said, “I told you they circled back to the park. Come on!”

Emily counted to one hundred in her head and then, when she was certain the men were gone, turned to her brother, her face hot from running and growing hotter with anger.

“Matthew!” She thwacked him with the maroon book still gripped in her hand. “I can't believe you!”

“Jeez, chill out.” Matthew wiped sweat from his forehead with a corner of his T-shirt. “Who would have thought security guards would get so worked up over a stupid bumper sticker?”

 

CHAPTER

8

EMILY WANTED
to look up
The Gold-Bug
on the Book Scavenger website, and because there was almost always someone on the Cranes' computer and James had his own, they left Matthew at the front porch and went up to James's apartment. With every step up James's staircase, the smells of spices and roasting meat grew stronger. It had been a long time since Emily had been in a friend's house. She thought of James's grandmother and her scolding tone, and she started to feel anxious that she would do or say the wrong thing. She followed James's lead when they reached his entry landing, sliding off her shoes like him and adding them to the row that lined the wall.

Voices speaking Chinese came from the front room, and when Emily peered in, she saw they were from a flat-screen TV perched on a cabinet. An elderly Chinese woman, dwarfed by the floral armchair she sat in, was fixated on the screen. Every so often she'd flap her hands and say something too quiet for Emily to hear over the TV noise, like she was carrying on a one-sided conversation.

“Hi, Tai Po.” James crossed the room and gave the woman a sideways hug. “My great-grandmother,” he explained to Emily. “She lives over on Pacific with my auntie, but Saturdays she usually comes here because my cousins have weekend tournaments and stuff. You know how that is.”

James tossed those sentences out so casually, totally unaware of how such simple statements could make Emily's head spin. First of all, what tournaments? She assumed he meant some kind of sport or maybe chess, but no, she didn't know how those could be. Moving so often, organized sports and school clubs weren't really something she did. Her free-time activities were sightseeing with her parents, reading, puzzles, and Book Scavenger.

And then there were all the people James mentioned in one sentence—a great-grandmother, auntie, cousins—all right here, nearby? Like he saw them all the time? Emily saw her grandmother who lived in Vermont maybe once a year, and the rest of her grandparents had passed away. She had an uncle who was in Europe, at least she thought that was where he was. He and her dad weren't super close. And her mom had a sister she talked often with on the phone, but it had been years since they saw her.

There was a clatter from the kitchen at the other end of the apartment. Emily turned to look down the hall and saw another woman pop her head out of the doorway. “You're back!” she said.

“Hey, Mom.” James walked down the hallway to hand over the two bags he'd brought back from the farmers' market.

“Did you guys eat? The kitchen's a disaster zone, so don't come too close, but I can get you something. We're in the middle of prep work for that anniversary dinner we're catering tonight.” James's mom had long, glossy black hair and wore hoop earrings that rocked like swings when she talked.

“We're good,” James said, looking to Emily for affirmation. “Emily's going to show me the Book Scavenger website.”

“Oh, Emily! I haven't even introduced myself. I'm so sorry. I'm James's mom. I'd shake a hand but…” She waved her flour-coated hands. “How are you liking San Francisco?”

“It's nice.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the roar of a stove fan that had been switched on in the kitchen. Something sputtered as it dropped in hot oil. From inside the kitchen they heard James's grandmother shout something over the oil and fan.

James's mom held her palms up and shrugged, like she was saying, “What can you do?” and ducked back into the kitchen.

It was a little overwhelming how different James's apartment felt from Emily's, which was nearly identical in layout but nothing else. The Cranes' rentals were always furnished with the basics, and that was it. Stark and bland. James's apartment was layered with objects and smells and noises. There were rugs and couches and decorative pillows. Tables with fabric draped over them, and then frames and trinkets on top of the fabric. Real plants that you had to take care of. The walls were painted colors, not rental white, and covered with art, photographs, and a collection of paper fans. Some things looked brand-new, like the flat-screen TV, and some things looked like they belonged in a museum. James had said his family had been living in this building for generations, and you could feel it.