IN MR. QUISLING’S class the next day, Emily eyed James slumped in his desk next to her. He was irritated because he hadn’t cracked Maddie’s code yet.
“It’s only Tuesday,” Emily reassured him. “We have all week.”
But James slumped even lower when his was one of the two ciphers broken. After class, Maddie stood behind James and drew an imaginary circle around Steve.
“Once you shave that off, you could draw an eight in its place and your head would look like a Magic 8 Ball,” she said.
James smacked Maddie’s finger away from his head.
“What, no plucky retort?” Maddie asked.
James yanked his backpack zipper closed with a ferocious tug.
“Don’t let her get to you,” Emily said as they left a smirking Maddie behind. “There’s plenty of time to solve hers.”
“Easy for you to say,” James said. “It’s not your hair on the line.”
* * *
By Thursday, James had made a breakthrough with Maddie’s cipher and was back in high spirits.
“She didn’t make it up herself,” James said at lunch. They sat at what had become their regular spot in the library. “It’s an alphabet from the Dark Ages called Ogham. I found it when I was researching ciphers online. Look, I printed out a copy.” James slid over a sheet of paper filled with various hash marks.
“She copied it straight out. If you know Ogham, you’d understand her message. But who knows Ogham, right?”
Emily looked over the Ogham alphabet sheet. It wasn’t all that different from hers and James’s secret code, but somehow using symbols instead of letters made it seem more foreign and intimidating.
James continued. “The only clever thing Maddie did was use a sentence that wouldn’t work well with frequency analysis: Zelda Zombie eats zinnias. Using that many z’s makes letter-frequency analysis difficult because you assume the symbols that appear the most often will be an e, t, a, or another frequently used letter, not z.”
That afternoon in Mr. Quisling’s class, James gave a satisfied smile when Maddie’s name was crossed off the board.
“The score’s still zero-zero, Fernandez,” he said to her after class.
Maddie gave a mock-scared face and waggled her fingers before walking away.
“Ms. Crane,” Mr. Quisling called over. “I need to speak with you before you leave.”
Speak with her? Emily’s lips felt dry all of a sudden. She wasn’t behind on homework. She hadn’t done anything to get on Mr. Quisling’s bad side since she was caught passing the note last week. At least she didn’t think she had. James gave her a questioning look. She shrugged and gave a small wave as he left for his next class. Kids filtered in for Mr. Quisling’s seventh period as she approached his desk.
“Emily,” Mr. Quisling said. “Are you a Book Scavenger user?”
“I … uh.” That wasn’t what she had expected him to ask. She didn’t know what she did expect him to ask, but it definitely wouldn’t have been about Book Scavenger.
“In our faculty meeting the other day, Principal Montoya mentioned that a man had contacted our school believing a valuable book of his was mistakenly found by a Book Scavenger player who listed Booker as his or her school in their profile. He said this player posted on the Book Scavenger forums about finding a book called The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe. I recall you had an unusual-looking Poe book on your desk last week.”
Mr. Quisling leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair, patiently studying Emily. She fiddled with the Book Scavenger logo pin she wore on her hoodie. She didn’t know what to say. She was surprised by all this—Mr. Quisling pulling her aside to talk, someone contacting the school about The Gold-Bug, someone claiming the book was his. And this was the second time someone had claimed the book—Emily thought of the guest user who had messaged her through Book Scavenger the other day. “Do you remember the book I’m referring to?” Mr. Quisling asked.
“Yes,” Emily said.
“And do you still have this book?”
“I … I don’t.” The lie came out of her mouth before she could change her mind about saying it. “I hid it again through Book Scavenger.”
Mr. Quisling raised his eyebrows. “You did?”
Thinking of her conversation with the guest user on Book Scavenger and how he or she didn’t know how many stories were in The Gold-Bug, she asked, “Why is this person so sure the book I found belonged to him? Maybe he’s wrong.”
He frowned. “Emily, if someone has gone to the trouble of looking up your profile and contacting your school, then I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Also, not that it should matter, but this person is a professional book collector. He’s not another Book Scavenger player trying to trick you. This man believes that book belongs to one of his clients, and if it’s the book he’s looking for, he says it’s very valuable. Not so much to you or someone else, but sentimentally it has significance for his client and, therefore, is valuable. It’s also valuable in that this man says he will lose his job if he can’t find and return the book.”
“The man who called the school is a book collector?” Emily asked. Mr. Remora was a book collector. And he’d been looking for a book that belonged to Mr. Griswold when they walked in on him at Bayside Press. How many rare-book collectors could there be in San Francisco?
“Yes,” Mr. Quisling said and continued on, not realizing that detail meant something to her. “Now, if you say you’ve already hidden the book, then I am trusting you at your word. But seeing as a man’s job is on the line, why don’t you try to retrieve it so he can take a look? If it’s not the one he’s looking for, you can return it to its hiding spot and the book can continue its Book Scavenger journey.”
Did this mean Mr. Remora knew about Mr. Griswold’s game? He didn’t seem like the sort who would get excited about something like that. And Raven had said there were fifty copies total of The Gold-Bug hidden around the city, so if Mr. Remora was interested in it for the game, he could find his own copy. Maybe he didn’t realize that Mr. Griswold had hidden the book and that it was missing on purpose.
“Earth to Emily.” Mr. Quisling snapped his fingers. “You’re not in trouble here. It’s a simple task. You found a book that belongs to someone else. Retrieve it and give it back.”
Emily nodded. “Yes, I’ll try to do that.”
And she would return the book to Mr. Remora. But she’d already made so much progress with Mr. Griswold’s game. It couldn’t hurt to finish it. That way, Mr. Remora would have the book back in his possession, and she’d have the satisfaction of solving an entire Griswold game. Everybody would win.
* * *
“So what did Mr. Quisling want?” James asked as they walked away from school.
Ahead of them a grocer sprayed down the sidewalk in front of his corner market. He released the nozzle as they walked by so the water stopped, then started blasting it again after they’d passed.
“You’ll never guess in a million years.”
“He selected you for a space mission? He’s learning to play ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano and needs you to play the harmony?”
Emily laughed. “Do you remember Mr. Remora? The book specialist who works for Mr. Griswold?”
“That guy we saw at Bayside Press and Hollister’s? Of course.”
“Well, apparently he’s looking for The Gold-Bug. That might have been what he was looking for last week in Mr. Griswold’s office. He saw my message in the Book Scavenger forums, saw Booker listed in my profile, and called our school. Our principal told the teachers, and because Mr. Quisling saw The Gold-Bug on my desk—”
“On the day that launched the Cipher Challenge, of which I will triumph!”
Emily grinned. “Right. And apparently the day that burned my Gold-Bug in Mr. Quisling’s memory.”
“Your Gold-Bug?” James smirked. “I thought it was Mr. Griswold’s.”
“You know what I mean.”
“So why does Mr. Remora want The Gold-Bug? Does he know about the game?”
“I wondered that, too, but I don’t think so. Raven said there are other copies to be found, after all, so why would he need this one? Mr. Quisling said the book is valuable for sentimental reasons, and Mr. Remora will lose his job if he doesn’t get it back in Mr. Griswold’s personal collection.”
“So did you give it back?” James asked.
“Of course not!” Emily said. “How would we finish the game?”
James stopped walking.
“If Mr. Remora needs that book for his job, Em … maybe that’s more important.”
James’s words stung, Emily couldn’t deny it. “But we’ve already figured out some of the clues for the game! And he was so rude at Hollister’s the other day.”
“He was. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t actually need the book.”
“I am giving it back to him,” Emily said, a touch defensively. “I just want to finish the game first.”
“Sounds like a plan, then,” James said, and they fell in step again.