Solving Zoe (14 page)

On Monday morning Isadora and Malcolm walked Zoe back to school. They didn't make a big thing out of it. They just waited for her to brush her teeth and then casually picked up their backpacks and followed her out of the apartment. Isadora was in an especially good mood, having decided, as of Friday afternoon, to assistant stage-manage the musical. “It's incredibly fascinating,” she chattered happily. “Maybe even more fun than performing. Okay, not
more
fun, but close. And to tell you the truth, Zoe, I didn't realize it, but I was practically starving for a challenge!” Meanwhile, Malcolm was going on and on about how many points he'd scored in the last Math Olympiad, but Zoe was only half-listening, anyway. Mostly she was thinking about what she was about to tell Lucas, and what, if anything, she would say to everybody else.

As soon as she got to her locker, Mackenzie rushed to her side.

“Welcome back,” she said, as if she owned the school. But she was smiling so sweetly that Zoe had to smile back.

“Are you mad at me, Zoe?” she asked. “I feel absolutely horrible.”

“It wasn't your fault, Mackenzie.”

“I know. But I blamed you for the notes. And then I asked you for your handwriting.”

“It's okay.”

“But it wasn't,” Mackenzie insisted. “You should be furious with me. You should be furious with everybody! Especially Lucas.”

“Oh, no, don't blame Lucas.”

“Why not?”

“Because he's a really nice person. And people are so nasty to him. Not you,” Zoe added, noticing she'd offended Mackenzie. “Other people.”

“Yes, well,” Mackenzie replied. “Maybe if he was nicer to other people, they wouldn't be so nasty to
him
.”

“I know, I know. He really messed up. But just give him another chance, okay?” Zoe closed her locker. “I'm supposed to see Signe before homeroom. I'd better run.”

“Good luck,” Mackenzie said. “Oh, and Zoe? Can I give you some advice? Look her right in the eye and speak loudly. She likes that.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Then she smiled. If anyone had told Zoe three weeks ago that she'd be taking Signe-advice
from Mackenzie Stafford, she'd have thought they were crazy.

She climbed the stairs to the third floor, not even minding the typical Monday morning crush of kids with their French horns and lacrosse sticks and earsplitting hellos. Then she knocked on Signe's door. No answer. “Hello,” she called loudly, and waited for a response, but nothing happened. So she walked inside the classroom.

What she saw made her gasp.

There was Lucas, wearing his hideous brown overcoat. He was standing in the back of the room holding two enormous suitcases.

Suddenly he beamed at her. “Hey, Zoe. You made it just in time!”

“For what?”

“The taxi's coming. You almost missed me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm leaving for the airport. Signe just called a taxi.”

She stared at him. “Why are you going to the airport?”

“Because you can't walk to Guatemala.”

“You mean you're leaving Hubbard?” she asked stupidly. “Right now?”

He shrugged.

“But you can't, Lucas! What about school?”

“It was only an experiment, remember? And I finally convinced my parents that it failed.”

“But it didn't,” she said quickly. “I mean, you
didn't
fail. You're just on probation. So what? So am I!”

“It's not the probation. I just don't belong here, Zoe. Don't tell me you didn't know that.” He tilted his chin at her in that defiant way of his.

“But you've only been here a month. It'll get better.”

“Maybe.”

“Look, I'm sorry I said people hated you. They don't. They just don't know you yet. I only said it because I was angry.”

He shook his head impatiently. “It doesn't matter. I really do need to be in Guatemala. The archeologists are holding this major press conference in two weeks. I've convinced them that the glyph may possibly predate every other Mayan glyph ever discovered.”

“What do you mean—”

“I think that the reason we couldn't decipher it is that it's from an earlier writing system. Maybe
much
earlier.”

He waited for a reaction. When she didn't say anything, he added, “And that could mean the Maya developed hieroglyphics centuries before anyone supposed!”

Her brain was struggling to keep up with the conversation, which seemed to be happening too fast for her right
now. She had to say something, clearly, but it was hard to think of what. Then she saw that his eyes were shining, so she said, “Whoa. That's really amazing, Lucas. But how did you figure that out?”

He grinned. “By looking. After you left Signe's apartment, I stayed up the whole night just studying the glyph, comparing it to others. The headdress was funny—kind of fatter, didn't you think? And the eye: Did you notice the way it kind of stared at you? No other glyph has an eye like that—at least, not any I've ever seen. So then I thought: Maybe the glyph wasn't impossible to read; maybe it was just different. And then I thought: Well, why would it be different? Was it from another time? And I e-mailed my parents, and they showed it to the archeologists, who agreed that was a possibility. So they're flying in these other archeologists to run radiocarbon tests on the charcoal. That'll help them date the glyph, which could be the first step toward deciphering it. Anyway, I asked my parents if I could come watch, and at first they were against it. But then Signe got on the phone and stuck up for me, and they said yes.”

“Whoa,” Zoe repeated. “And then you'll be famous.”

“No, I won't. And who even cares about that?”

“I know. I'm just saying.”
Shut up,
she yelled at herself.
“But after all that, I mean after the tests and everything, you could come back to Hubbard, right?”

“Theoretically. But only to visit Signe. And you, if you're not too mad at me.”

“I'm not mad,” Zoe said. But it was a lie. She wasn't mad at Mackenzie, but she was incredibly mad at Lucas. Because how could he just fly off like this? And not even warn her ahead of time? Did he think she wouldn't care if he was gone from school by the time she came back?

And who was she supposed to be friends with now? Lucas was the only one she had anything in common with. He'd said so himself that first time they'd argued in front of Isaac's brownstone, and then again when they'd sat freezing on Isaac's steps. And now he was acting as if the whole reading-Zoe thing had never happened. Or the notes. Or that afternoon at Signe's. It felt almost as if he, too, were swimming away, leaving her to—what, exactly? The shallow water? But she didn't even belong there anymore.

He checked his watch. “I need to meet Signe in the lobby. You want to come?”

Zoe nodded helplessly. They ran into Signe just as they entered the staircase.

“So you're ready?” Signe asked, panting a little. “Oh, hello, Zoe dear. Lucas has a farewell party, I see.”

“It's not a farewell party. I didn't even know he was leaving,” Zoe murmured.

“Well, neither did I, and neither did he! We just arranged it all last night. Everything's happened so quickly.” Signe took off her red plastic glasses and rubbed the lenses on her coral pink scarf. Her white bun was loose and sliding down to her left ear; she looked exhausted. “Zoe, grab a suitcase, please. I'm afraid my old back forbids carrying luggage.”

“So you're coming to the airport?” Lucas asked Signe excitedly. “Don't you have classes to teach?”

“I'm sure my students will survive a day off,” Signe said dryly. “Now hurry, both of you. The taxi driver called my mobile. He's on his way to the school.”

Zoe gripped the handle of a beat-up-looking, mouse-gray suitcase that had probably accompanied the Joplins all over the world. For a second she imagined that it was her suitcase, that she was flying off with Lucas to some mysterious Mayan temple, and a team of eager archeologists would greet her when she landed. But of course that was just silly. She'd probably never get to do anything that extraordinary in her entire life.

It was beginning to drizzle on the street, so Signe suggested they wait for the taxi inside the Hubbard
lobby. Lucas immediately started to pace in front of the interior swinging doors, but then he stopped abruptly and reached inside his coat pocket for his little spiral notebook.

“Just checking to make sure I had it,” he said, smiling sheepishly.

And that's when Zoe remembered why she'd needed to talk to him, or at least had thought she did. It all seemed kind of ridiculous now, but she knew if she didn't speak up, she'd never forgive herself. Glancing quickly at Signe, who was poking her head out the front door, Zoe walked over to Lucas and touched him lightly on the arm.

“Listen,” she said quietly, hoping Signe couldn't hear what she was about to say. “You're going to think this is strange. Or demented, or something, but I have to tell you:
four blue
.”

“Four blue what?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “I was drawing the glyph over and over, just like you did. And—” She stopped.

“And what?”

“I have this theory about numbers. I mean, I see them as colors; I always have. That's what I was writing on my whiteboard desk. Anyway, every time I drew the four dots on the glyph, I saw blue. Because four
is
blue.”

“I see the taxi,” Signe announced. “Let's move outside, shall we.”

A shiny black Town Car—not what Zoe considered a taxi at all—pulled up to the school entrance. The driver opened the trunk and tossed in the two suitcases, clearly unimpressed with their appearance.

“JFK?" he barked.

“That would be lovely,” Signe replied, as if he'd just asked her to dance.

She allowed the driver to open the door for her, and then stepped in gracefully, as if she were wearing glass slippers and not high-top sneakers with NBA logos. Lucas followed awkwardly, his skinny legs arriving in the seat a couple of seconds after he did. It occurred to Zoe then that this was it, Lucas Joplin was really leaving. She couldn't talk; there were words in her throat, but her mouth just wasn't working anymore.

He rolled down the window and grinned at her. “Four blue,” he said. “Okay, you're right, Zoe: That really
is
demented. I think you've been spending too much time with the lizards.”

She shook her head and grinned back at him.

Four blue,
she told herself as the car sped away.
No, it isn't demented, Lucas. Four blue.

For the next few weeks Zoe was the perfect Hubbard student. She turned in all her assignments on time and didn't doodle once during class. She even raised her hand every once in a while to ask smart questions that proved she was paying attention. Signe was pleased with her; she told Zoe so every day when they met in the morning before homeroom. And after a week or so Owen called Mom and Dad to tell them “things seem to be on track,” which made Zoe feel like one of Spencer's train sets that had been rescued after derailing.

At lunch Zoe sat with Ezra at the weirdo table. Sometimes Mackenzie and Jake joined them, challenging each other to remember song lyrics and lines from movies, but mostly they were okay, and Zoe could tell Ezra enjoyed the company. (He even put away his iPod most of the time.) Every once in a while she spotted Dara at a far-off table, but Dara never seemed to look up at the precise moment Zoe was watching her, and she probably thought Zoe had forgotten all about her. Or maybe Dara had forgotten all about Zoe. That was actually way more likely.

Mostly, though, Zoe thought about Lucas. She wondered if he was happy being back with his parents, or if he missed anything at all about going to Hubbard. And she wondered if she'd ever find out what had happened with the glyph dating. Because even if a super-ancient hieroglyph was big news to archeologists, it probably wasn't the sort of story that would make the local papers. Maybe she could Google “Mayan writing” or even “Lucas Joplin” and see if the story had been picked up anywhere.

Or possibly she could just ask Signe, who seemed to know everything that was going on with the Joplin family. But she imagined herself meeting Signe before homeroom and saying something like,
I did my Do Nows for Anya and I wrote an essay for Babe-riel and, oh, by the way, has Lucas e-mailed you anything about four blue something-or-other?
And then she imagined Signe's amused-but-uncomprehending reply.
You like pizza? I have a feeling you will change dramatically.

Probably, Zoe told herself, she'd never hear from Lucas again, about the glyph or anything else. Probably he'd never come back to Hubbard, even for a visit.

 

And then one day as she was taking her seat in Ancient Civilizations, she noticed something on her whiteboard
desk. In the lower left-hand corner there was a tiny message written in smudgy purple marker:

She gasped so loudly that Mackenzie cried out, “Zoe? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she answered, turning crimson. She could hear Leg and Paloma giggling as Signe swept into the room.

“Zoe, I'd like to chat with you after class,” Signe announced. “That is, if you don't have other plans.”

For a second Zoe thought Signe had to be kidding. What other plans could she have that were more important than the return of Lucas Joplin—because how else could you decipher the smudgy message? He'd told her he hadn't been the one writing on her desk, but obviously he'd just been playing dumb. Because if it wasn't Lucas, who else could it possibly be?

“Sure,” she managed to say. Signe nodded, and then the lesson began, something about Mesopotamia that Zoe was too distracted to even hear.

At last class was over. Zoe stayed seated until everyone
else had left the room (including Mackenzie, who had come rushing over to Zoe's desk to ask if she was absolutely sure she was all right). By the time Signe closed the door and toddled back to her desk, Zoe could barely keep herself from shouting, “Then he's back?”

“Who, dear?”

“Lucas Joplin!”

“Why, no. He's in Guatemala. As you're well aware.”

Then who'd written on her desk? Zoe stared blindly at the smeary handwriting.

“
You
wrote on my desk, didn't you?” she said finally. “It was you the whole time.”

“Oh, no,” Signe said, smiling playfully. “So I've been discovered at last.”

“But—that's graffiti!”

“No, my dear, it isn't. Graffiti is a permanent ugly scar; I abhor graffiti, despite its origins in Ancient Rome. Did you know, Zoe, that graffiti is derived from the Italian ‘
graf-fiare
,' meaning ‘to scratch'? Originally graffiti was carved into walls, sort of the opposite of hieroglyphs, which were
sacred
carvings.”

Signe swiped her hand through the purple message; instantly, it appeared on her fingertips. She beamed at the shiny white desktop. “Aren't these whiteboard desks just
marvelous? I knew they inspired good listening skills, but I'm also convinced they stimulate communication.”

Zoe stared at her teacher in shock. “I thought I was writing to Lucas.”

“Yes, I realized that. And that's why I stopped.”

“But why did you—”

Signe sat herself at the desk closest to Zoe's. She lined up her purple fingertips as if she were praying to some crazy ancient god. “Every once in a while,” she said, as if she were telling another bedtime story, “there's a student you simply cannot figure out. You can tell she's very bright, a creative thinker, potentially, and yet she remains something of an enigma. And so you try everything you can think of—special games you can share, projects perhaps. Anything that could spark some kind of connection.”

“And that's what you were doing? Playing games with me?”

“No, of course not, Zoe. Please just listen for a moment.” Signe removed her red plastic glasses and perched them carelessly on top of her head. “I could see you were terribly uncomfortable in my classroom, my dear. But you were very engrossed in your whiteboard, so one day I had a little peek. And when I saw this equation you were making between numbers and colors, it suggested to me that
you had the sort of unconventional but systematic mind I've always found so intriguing.”

Zoe couldn't believe her ears. So Lucas hadn't been pretending. He really hadn't had a clue about the number-color desk. And meanwhile, all this time, it had been her own teacher—the scariest person she knew—who'd been sending her secret messages about her theory. Which she obviously thought was fascinating. Or anyway, not totally brain-dead.

“Okay,” Zoe said uncertainly. “But then why did you write on my desk just now?”

“Only to continue our conversation. Because I don't want you to think nobody's interested. Even if Lucas
isn't
around.”

She patted Zoe's arm. Then she toddled over to her desk and opened the top drawer, taking out what looked like a small tube of paper, fastened with a rubber band.

“Here,” she said, walking back and handing it to Zoe. “This arrived yesterday in a package the Joplins sent to me. It's from Lucas. He said he thought you might like to see it.”

“What is it?”

“Well, if that's truly a question, Zoe dear, why don't you have a look?”

Zoe slid off the rubber band and unrolled the tube. On the top was a note from Lucas, written in Pigpen: “Hi, Zoe. Guatemala is really cool, despite the lizards, which I still refuse to touch. Oh, btw. Did you know Texas banded geckoes have moveable eyelids? That means they can blink. So disregard everything I ever said. Lucas. P.S. Thought you might like deciphering these pages. Let me know if you're stuck.”

The second sheet of paper, and the third, and the fourth, she recognized instantly: the Zoe cipher. The spiral notebook pages he'd written in the lunchroom that first day at Hubbard. She stared at the strange symbols. Maybe she was ready to read the whole thing now. Maybe not. “Thanks, Signe,” she said softly. She rolled up the tiny pages again and slipped them into her pocket.

Signe watched her. “You know,” she remarked, “if you have any trouble solving it, feel free to come and chat. I'm not as good with these things as our friend Lucas, but I do have a little personal history with secret codes.” She took off her red glasses, and Zoe could see that her eyes were sparkling.

Zoe waited for Signe to explain, to possibly reveal something about her mysterious past, but she didn't. And perhaps Signe was expecting a follow-up question, maybe
she was even inviting Zoe to inquire about her “little personal history.” But right then Zoe had something else on her mind.

“Do you know anything about the Mayan glyph?” she asked. “Did they figure it out yet?” She looked Signe right in the eye, just as Mackenzie had advised.

“Yes, I believe they have,” Signe replied. “But of course, Mayan writing is not my particular passion. What intrigues me is the process—
how
they arrived at the translation.”

She wiped her glasses with her sleeve, and then put them back on.

“Do you remember,” she added pleasantly, “I once said to you that any real achievement requires three things: precision, patience, and intuition. Intuition is the most precious, of course, but it's no use until you trust it. But why am I telling you all this, Zoe? You should be telling me.”

Telling her what?
Zoe wondered.

She waited for Signe to speak again. But when Signe just returned to her desk and started shuffling papers around, Zoe picked up her backpack and quietly left the classroom.