“WHERE EXACTLY IS this boat we’re looking for, Stanley?”
I don’t answer right away. I know downhill will take us to the harbor, but . . . it’s a really big area.
“We need the Maritime Museum. Which way is it?”
“We’re far. And it’s already past noon. It’ll take a long time to walk there.” Liberty eyes me carefully. “We should take a bus.”
I stop, close my eyes, clench my fists. “No bus,” I whisper.
“Bus.” She grabs my arm and drags me forward. “How is it even any different from the school bus, Stanley? You can do this!”
But it is different. I always know where the school bus is taking me. But a public bus is full of unknowns. Strange crowds. Strange locations. You could get trapped going in the wrong direction. There’s noise. Germs.
Still. She’s right. We need to save some time—and save our legs. So I just nod slowly. We run downhill to a bus stop, and Liberty shoves me up the steps into the Metro bus, which is idling in a cloud of stinky diesel.
When the doors close, I feel like I’ve been swallowed into the guts of some zombie prison hurtling toward oblivion. “Are you sure this is the right bus?” I whisper to her. She nods.
What if we miss our stop? What if we can never get off? What if it takes us farther and farther away from where we need to be? What if some stranger bothers us, and there’s no way to get away?
Liberty’s oblivious to my internal freak-out. We each show our Trivia Quest badges to the driver. Then she yanks me down into a seat and looks around like she owns the place. She settles in and pulls out her phone to text her mom yet again. I look over her shoulder—the same three words: not dead yet.
“Don’t make contact with the dirty surfaces,” I whisper. “Don’t touch that grimy metal pole with your hand, then touch your phone. You’ll transfer germs! Probably thousands of other people have put their hands right there!”
A few passengers are staring at us. An old Mexican lady across the aisle smiles at me. I try to smile back but I really just want to shrink into the floor and disappear.
What would John Lockdown do? How would he handle this? He would lift the bus on his shoulders and fly us in a flash to our destination. He would wave his magic around, like Mr. Clean, and instantly disinfect the whole bus so it was new and perfect. He would turn it into our private super-limo, no other people staring at us. . . .
Aqua. Ochre. Aqua. Ochre. I close my eyes and try to imagine John Lockdown performing epic bus disin-fection.
But: diesel stink, perfume, stale cigarettes. The gross minty aroma of other people’s gum. Body odor, grease. Someone’s fast food. The filthy floor. People pressing in. . . .
“Get a grip, Stanley,” Liberty whispers. “Let’s talk about the clue. Focus on Natasha. Who is she? And what is her other name?”
Okay, okay. I pull the small gold envelope out of my pocket.
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.
“There’s only one Natasha in comics, Liberty. Natasha Romanov. And her other name is Black Widow. You’ve heard of the Black Widow, right? From the Avengers, and Iron Man, and—well, actually, she’s from comics starting like in the 1960s. She was supposedly born into Russian royalty but then she was handed off as a newborn to a soldier dude who trained her for the KGB. That’s after she trained as a ballerina—”
Liberty rolls her eyes. “Wow, totally riveting stuff, Stanley, but what’s it got to do with the boat? Do we need to look for a boat named the Black Widow? Because that’s Natasha’s other name?”
“Yes. But we’re not looking for just any old regular boat,” I say. The bus sways onto Harbor Drive and without thinking, I grab the grimy metal pole. Ick.
Liberty nudges me. “Then what is it?”
I sigh with relief. It’s almost time to get off.
“You’ll see,” I say.