“I WAS TWENTY-NINE and still striking when this old hero put on the first comic mask . . . ?” Liberty stares hard at the paper. “‘Still striking’ is what you say about old people when they still look attractive. That they’re ‘still striking.’” She sighs. “And who was the first superhero to put on a mask? Superman? Was Lois Lane supposed to be a striking twenty-nine-year-old or something?”
I smile. “Superman was early, but he wasn’t the first costumed superhero. Come on! You should know this—there was a Clock comic in the stack you lent me from your uncle’s moving boxes.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You’re kidding me. How can you possibly know this? I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.”
Come on! I couldn’t not research that old Clock comic. “He was the first masked superhero—mid-1930s. Predates Superman. The Clock was a lawyer by day, and wore a regular, old-fashioned suit and hat with his mask. And when he’d solved a crime or knocked out a bad guy, he left a calling card that said The Clock Has Struck.”
“The clock has struck . . . So, a striking clock. A clock that’s still striking?” Liberty says, slowly, thinking it through. “But what about the next two lines? My hands still work. But where am I now? That’s what you need to ask?”
“Definitely sounds like they mean a real clock.” I start to breathe quicker. “An old clock that’s still working. That’s maybe located somewhere around here.”
“Okay. So. A clock that was twenty-nine years old, back in the mid-1930s—a clock that was built around 1900 or so.”
We head back to the library information desk. The super-slow gray-ponytailed librarian is right where we left him.
“YOU talk to him,” I say, nudging Liberty.
She rolls her eyes but she steps forward. “Sir? We’re looking for local information,” Liberty says. “Do you know anything about a sort of old clock somewhere within walking distance of here? Something built around 1900?”
He slowly, slowly reaches his hand down behind the desk and brings up a rubber-banded stack of tourist brochures. “Well . . . yeah . . .” He thumbs slowly through them, and finally hands one over.
It says Welcome to Horton Plaza on the cover. I think my mom’s gone shopping there before. Yes. It’s a downtown shopping complex. “There’s . . . an old clock . . . somewhere . . . in that plaza . . . ,” says the super-slow librarian. “Is that . . . what you mean?”
“That is so what we mean,” says Liberty breathlessly. We thank him, and we’re off, sprinting toward Horton Plaza as fast as we can.