Chapter 2
Moments later Cody’s email inbox dinged again. This time, it was a message from Quinn:
Then came M.E.’s response:
Then Mika’s email:
And finally, Luke’s simple reply:
Cody grinned at the Code Busters’ responses. By the time she’d received all the emailed replies, she’d almost forgotten about the strange message from “Rosabelle” that she wasn’t able to decipher. She would bring it up to the other Code Busters at their meeting later that day.
Cody spent the morning doing her chores—cleaning her room, folding the laundry, and taking out the trash. When she was finished, it was nearly time to go to the Code Busters Clubhouse, located in the eucalyptus forest, up in the Berkeley hills.
Cody texted M.E. and Mika to see if they wanted to walk with her. Mika lived around the corner and could pick up M.E. on her way over to Cody’s house. No one liked going through the forest alone, ever since a mountain lion had been spotted in the area some months ago. Even though M.E. loved animals, she was afraid of this particular animal, and with good reason.
“Em-me & Senjin,” Cody texted the two club members using their code names, then typed her message in Vowelless Code.
“Cm 2 m hs, thn wll g 2 th clb hs 2gthr.”
Seconds later, she got a response from Mika with the letter, “K.” Then came M.E.’s text: “OMW.”
Code Busters Key and Solution found on pp. 159 and 161.
Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang and a light in the living room blinked on and off. Since Tana couldn’t hear, their mom had installed the doorbell light so Tana would know when someone was at the door. Cody came running down the stairs to greet her friends, but Tana beat her sister to the front door.
“Hi, Tana,” M.E. and Mika signed to Cody’s sister.
Tana greeted them by saluting “Hello.”
“Ready?” M.E. asked Cody.
Cody nodded. She called out to her mother who was gardening in the backyard. “Mom, I’m going to the clubhouse to make plans for Magicland.”
“Okay!” her mother called back. “Have fun! Be careful of the mountain lion!”
M.E. shivered.
“Mo-om!” Cody called out. “There haven’t been any sightings for ages!”
Tana tapped her lip, asking in sign language what Cody had just said. Cody told her they were going to the clubhouse.
“Can I come?” she signed, by pointing to herself, then outward, meaning “me go?” in ASL.
“Sorry, Tana,” Cody signed back, circling her chest with her fist. “The clubhouse is for members only. Maybe when you get bigger.”
Tana stuck out her lower lip in a pout. Cody’s heart tugged for her little sister, but she knew Tana would just be bored at the meeting.
“Go play with your friend Maddie. Aren’t you BFFs?”
Tana shrugged. Cody gave her a quick hug, then headed off with her two friends, still feeling a little guilty about leaving Tana behind.
The girls chatted about Magicland along the way, keeping an eye out for a mountain lion, spies, and snoops. When the three girls reached the clubhouse, Cody gave her secret knock in Morse code.
She could tell the boys were already inside because the outer chain lock was open. When a voice asked for the secret password, Cody said “Yadirf,” the day of the week, pronounced backward. She heard the boys open the lock and slide off the inner chain. Then the door opened.
“Hey,” Quinn greeted the girls as he held the door for them. In his other hand, he held a small box, about the size of a half cube of butter.
“What’s in the box?” M.E. asked as she entered.
“Something magical,” Quinn said mischievously. “Wanna see?”
“Sure,” M.E. said.
Quinn held out his hand, still clutching the small box. “Open it.”
M.E. eyed him, then carefully pulled off the top of the box.
She screamed.
Cody glanced over to see what made M.E. react. Inside the box, sitting on top of some cotton balls, was a live, wiggling finger.
“Very funny!” M.E. said, frowning at him as soon as she realized Quinn had cut a hole in the bottom of the box and stuck his own finger inside.
“Cool, right?” Quinn said. “It’s my latest magic trick.”
M.E. rolled her eyes, then sat on the floor, where Luke was looking at the printout of a map.
“What’s that?” Mika asked.
“It’s a map of Magicland,” Luke answered. “I printed it so we can plan what we’re going to do first.”
“Great idea!” M.E. said. “How about Harry’s Magic Mansion first? I love finding the hidden doorways and secret passages. I’ll bet there are some of Houdini’s Handprints inside.”
“I’d rather start at Harry’s Trunk of Trickery,” Quinn said. “I want to learn some more magic tricks.”
Luke pointed to another area on the map. “I think Harry’s Secret Sorcery Show will be cool. My grandmere knows some voodoo from when she lived in New Orleans, and she says that’s real magic.”
Cody smiled at Luke. She knew Luke’s grandmother was a big influence on him since she’d raised him after his parents died, but she didn’t believe in all that magic. Still, she thought it was fun to pretend.
“What about Harry’s Séance Salon,” Cody suggested, “where you can talk to the spirits and have your fortune told? Maybe we’ll find out that the Code Busters are going to be rich and famous one day!”
The others laughed at Cody’s wild prediction.
“Well, it all sounds awesome!” Mika said. “We don’t have anything like that in Japan—only Disneyland.”
“When we get there,” Cody said, “let’s start by looking for the Hidden Houdini Handprints and see where they take us.”
The others agreed this was the best idea. Besides, finding the handprints was going to be the most fun because there was a prize for the first person or group to find all of them that day. The Code Busters were determined to win.
“Did you know,” Cody began, “that Harry Houdini and his wife made up a code so they could contact each other after one of them died? That’s why I want to go to the Séance Salon. I’ll bet they’ll reenact the code there.”
“What’s the Houdini Code?” Quinn asked.
“It’s a little complicated,” Cody answered, “but basically, they made up a word for each letter of the alphabet. Like, the letter ‘B’ stood for the word ‘answer’ and the letter ‘E’ was the word ‘tell.’ ”
“That’s way too confusing,” said M.E., who liked to keep things simple. “If the words are just random, then you have to memorize all twenty-six.”
“True,” Cody said, “but what if we created our own code and made it easier by matching the words with the letters they start with, like ‘B’ equals ‘Butter’ and ‘E’ equals ‘Eagle?’”
Quinn shook his head. “That’s no different from the Phonetic Alphabet Code, which we already know. ‘A’ is for ‘alpha,’ ‘B’ is for bravo, ‘C’ is for ‘Charlie’ . . .”
“Yeah,” Luke said, “but it would be harder to crack if the words didn’t match the first letters. Maybe we could make up a couple of sentences that would be easy to memorize.”
The Code Busters pulled out their individual Top Secret Code Busters Club Notebooks and began creating sentences for each letter of the alphabet to see what they came up with. Cody thought maybe the Pledge of Allegiance might work as a code and wrote it down from memory.
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
She counted the number of words—thirty-one. There were twenty-six letters in the alphabet—not enough. But some of the words were repeated. She assigned an alphabet letter to each word in order, skipping words that were repeated:
A = I, B = pledge, C = allegiance, D = to, E = the, F = Flag, G = of
H = United, I = States, J = America, K = and, L = Republic, M = for
N = which, O = it, P = stands, Q = one, R = Nation, S = under, T = God,
U = indivisible, V = with, W = liberty, X = justice, Y = all
“I’ve got it!” Cody said, sitting back. Except for the last letter—Z—her Pledge of Allegiance code was perfect! Since everyone had already memorized the pledge, it would be easy to remember and re-create. She wrote a message and then showed the others how to decipher it.
Liberty the Nation the / of it states which of / God it / for I of states allegiance republic I which to
Code Busters Key and Solution found on pp. 158 and 161.
“Awesome!” M.E. said. “That makes it so easy, since we all know the pledge.”
“Speaking of codes,” Cody said, suddenly remembering the mysterious message she had received in her email that morning. She flipped back a page in her notebook where she had copied it and showed it to the others. “I got this email right after my mom sent the message about going to Magicland. It came from someone named ‘Rosabelle,’ using a Berkeley Public Library email, but I can’t crack it. Can any of you figure out what it says?”
The kids studied the message. Quinn copied it into his notebook and tried to match it to the LEETCode without success, other than the similarities between the letters O and U. M.E. tried looking at the message in the mirror, then shook her head in defeat. Luke connected the symbols with her pencil but came up with nothing meaningful.
Finally, Mika sat up. “I think I know how to crack it,” she announced. “Look at the first two symbols. I don’t know what the first one is, but the second one sort of looks like the letter ‘M’ So the first word could be ‘Am’ or ‘I’m.’ ”
“Go on,” Quinn said, frowning at the drawing of ) (***) on his paper.
Mika pointed to the next set of symbols.
“The second one looks like an ‘O,’ right?” she said. The others nodded. “And if the second symbol in the message is an ‘M,’ then I think the next two are ‘Ns.’”
“So we’ve got AM or I’M,” Cody summarized, “then blank, ‘ONN.’”
“That last letter could be an ‘A,’” M.E. added.
Mika nodded. “If that’s an ‘A,’ then the fourth word could be ‘ALL!’”
“I think we’re getting it!” Cody said.
They continued cracking the code, trying to figure out which alphabet letters fit the symbols the best.
“We did it!” Cody said, once they were finished with the translation. “The message from Rosabelle must have to do with us going to Magicland!”
“Yeah, but is it some kind of challenge to see who finds all the handprints first?” Quinn asked, wrinkling up his nose.
“We still don’t know who Rosabelle is,” Luke said.
“And how did this person know we’re going to the amusement park?” M.E. wondered aloud.
“Maybe it’s Matt the Brat,” Mika suggested.
Before Cody could figure out how Matt might have found out about their trip, she heard a sound outside the clubhouse.
“Shh!” Cody shushed everyone, listening intently.
The other kids looked at her, frowning.
“I heard a noise!” she signed, pointing to her ear, then shaking her hand beside her head, then pointing outside.
The others froze, eyes wide, not breathing.
Was Matt the Brat spying on them again? Cody wondered. Or was a mountain lion sniffing around for a snack?
M.E. grabbed Cody’s arm, while Luke stood up quietly and tried to peer through a crack in the old billboard they’d used to build their clubhouse. He shook his head. As silently as he could, he picked up an old heavy military flashlight to use as a weapon, undid the lock, then jerked open the door, ready to scare away any intruders, aliens, spies, or hungry animals.
Instead, he jumped back a foot.
“Whoa!” he said. “You freaked me out!”
Standing just outside the door was Tana, Cody’s little sister.
Cody rose up and rushed to the door. “Tana! What are you doing here?” She frowned as she pointed down, indicating the word “here.”
Tana shrugged and signed, “I wanted to see the clubhouse.”
Cody shook her head. “You followed us here? Don’t you know there is a mountain lion up here?” she signed angrily.
Tana shrugged again. “I’m not afraid.” She shook her head as she opened both hands at her chest.
Cody closed her eyes at the thought of what could have happened to Tana if she’d gotten lost—or worse, run into a mountain lion. “Does Mom know you’re here?”
Tana shook her head. “I left a note.”
“Mom’s going to be so mad when she finds out!”
Cody could just imagine what her sister had written—and her mother’s reaction when she read it, especially being a cop. She had to get Tana back home, hopefully before her mom saw the note and blamed her for Tana’s disappearance.
“Come on,” she signed to her sister. “We’re going home. Now! And you’re going to be in big trouble!”