There’s a certain black boat
and a superhero dame
Called one and the same—
Natasha’s other name.
That’s where you need to go.
You’ll find it down below.
“How are your super-senses, Stanley?” Liberty asks me when we’re seated on the bench. It’s almost noon, and she’s just texted her mom not dead yet for like the sixth time this morning. She gulps her coffee and smacks her lips. “Are you hanging in there, Stan? You know, you gotta learn to speak to people. That coffee guy wasn’t gonna bite your head off.”
I make a face at her. “I thought the speaking was your part of the bargain. I solve the clues; you’re the public interface.”
“Yeah, well . . . I’m just saying.”
We sit in silence for a moment, thinking. She finishes her coffee, so I hand her my untouched cup, and she keeps sipping. “Okay,” she finally says. “So tell me about this next one, genius. A black boat and a superhero, both named Natasha? Who’s Natasha?”
I sigh. “Haven’t you seen any Avengers movies?”
Right then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice those two guys in Batman T-shirts walking near. They grab the bench next to us.
We smile; they smile. We are clutching a clue; they are clutching a clue.
I whisper to Liberty: “Let’s move somewhere else.” We get up but one of the men raises his hand and shouts, “Hey! Kids! Hang on a minute!”
Liberty stops cold, and I walk right into her.
“Do we detect fellow Questers?” he says.
Woop.
Okay, that’s a Red Alert.
“Um, we’re not supposed to talk to strangers. Come on, Liberty!” I say.
But Liberty’s stopped in her tracks, clutching our Natasha clue. I can practically see wheels turning in her brain. “Wait a second,” she says. “These clues are HARD. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“Liberty!” I hiss. “That’s cheating!”
The guy says, “We figured out the Clock clue, just like you guys, but if you hadn’t led us to the coffee hut, I don’t know if we would’ve put that together.”
“Yeah, thanks,” the second guy adds. “So . . . How about we team up for a bit? Or at least do some information sharing?”
Guy One leans in. “What clue did you get?”
“That’s cheating,” I repeat, staring at the ground, my heart starting to pound. I was doing so well until now—had almost forgotten to be nervous. But this situation’s giving me the sweats.
“What’s the harm?” says Guy One, waving his small envelope. “Don’t you want to know what we know?”
The question hangs in the air for a heavy second. “No dice,” I finally say. “Cheating ruins winning.”
“Hey, hey, hey, the point here’s to get us all VIP passes,” says Guy Two.
“But cheating takes the meaning out of it. It takes all the fun out of it.”
“Yeah!” Liberty adds.
I want to get away from those guys, so I take off, winding my way out of Horton Plaza. I only hope Liberty is still behind me.
At the crosswalk, Liberty taps me on the shoulder. “Did you mean it? What you said?”
“About what?”
“That cheating would take the fun out of it?”
I nod. “Of course.”
“Well, then, that’s big. You know what that means, don’t you? It means that in spite of how stressed and freaked out you look right now, you think there’s something fun about this.”
I don’t answer. I just hide a smile and start walking, fast, in the general direction of the ocean.
It’s high noon.
The Clock just struck.