PEOPLE ARE SCRAMBLING away in every direction. Legs, feet, stomping all around us. “Pick it up! Get our pager! Before someone steps on it!” I scream. I am going to have a heart attack, and we haven’t even gotten our first clue.
“I don’t see it!” she shouts. “Where is it?”
We scramble, darting this way and that. It was blue—I look for blue. Is that it? No! That’s someone’s sneaker.
Then a flash of blue plastic pops into sight to my left. I dash between the hairy legs of a big man—right before he lowers his shoe onto our pager, I grab it, scraping my knuckles on the cement.
“Watch it, kid!” says the guy, veering off.
The plaza has practically emptied by the time Liberty and I hold up our scratched blue plastic pager, trembling, and stare at the little screen.
The first part of the clue has already scrolled past! The remainder pops up now . . .
To a certain location . . . Where information . . . Is a-hoardin’ . . .
We look at each other in disbelief. I scream, “We’ve missed it! We’ve lost already!”
“No we haven’t! It’s still scrolling!” shouts Liberty.
. . . By someone name of Gordon.
That’s ridiculous. Information. Hoardin’. Gordon.
Wait. That’s not ridiculous.
A surge of relief washes through me.
I grab Liberty’s hand. Her bulging green eyes are almost as full of stress as mine.
“What is it, Stanley?”
“Someone name of Gordon.”
Her face goes blank.
“Seriously? Haven’t you ever even seen a Batman movie?”
A light sparks in her eyes. “Oh, the police guy? Commissioner Gordon?”
“Yes! Batman’s ally in the fight against the criminals of Gotham. So what’s Commissioner Gordon’s location, where information is a-hoardin’?” I prompt her.
My heart’s beating hard now, but it’s not with nervousness. It’s with excitement.
“Um, that would be . . . a police headquarters?”
I smile.
“So where do we go?”
“You’re the one in charge of the directions,” I say.
She pulls out a laminated pocket map of the city from her backpack and thinks for a minute. “That way!”
Up the hill we go, over the trolley tracks, past little shops and businesses, along the busy sidewalk. We wait at a ridiculously long red light. There’s a bunch of other Questers standing there, waiting to cross.
“The police station is that way, I think!” Liberty says, pushing at me to go left.
“SHHH!” I say. “Remember what the Master said? Don’t talk so loud!” A few Questers overhear us and laugh.
“Don’t worry, kid.” A tattooed guy with a long brown beard elbows me, showing me a green pager just like our blue one. “My clue’s got me headed somewhere different right now. But I’ll file that police-station hint in case I need it later!”
I smile and nod. But inside, I start to crumble a little. “Don’t give away our clue information, okay?” I hiss at Liberty as the light turns green.
“Sorry,” Liberty says as she skips ahead of me across the street. “I just got a little excited! I’ll control myself.” She smiles back at me. “Downtown’s fun! This is gonna be fun!”
As for me, I’m fighting nausea. “Wait!” I call as we hit the other side of the street. I lean against the corner building. I have to get control over my sensory overload.
Traffic horns. Exhaust. Glaring sunlight. Bodies pushing past. It’s a lot for me. No one gets this—my mom, my brother, Dad, Gramps, Joon—no one in my life has ever gotten this. How the whole world sometimes feels like it comes crashing down on my head. How everything’s suddenly too much.
I don’t expect Liberty to get it. But at least she’s sticking nearby, looking concerned. “You okay?”
I take a deep breath and nod. “Just let’s stand here a minute, okay?”
I lean against the building and close my eyes, trying to summon John Lockdown in my head. John Lockdown is impervious to noise. He does epic battle with sensory assault. He is fearless. What would he tell me to do now?
As I open my eyes, a sudden giant gust of wind swirls up street dust and makes me turn away—and I notice something down the side street. A strange building. I’ve seen photos of it before—modern, with a giant woven-metal globe stuck into it. It’s the kind of building you could imagine appearing in a comic.
Is that what John Lockdown would tell me to do? Go there?
Suddenly, it hits me. I know what that building is. We were heading in the wrong direction. This clue isn’t about a police station. It’s about a whole different type of information-hoardin’ location.
“Change of plans, Liberty,” I say, finally breathing normally again. “We’re going to the library.”