IT’S 4:05. JUST thinking about that fact makes my stomach lurch.
I’m alone in Balboa Park.
Where do I go from here?
What would John Lockdown do?
Maybe he’d start with first things first. Like: breathing. And zipping the coins into my pack.
And now the final clue. The one from Dr. Pym.
I hold it up with shaking fingers and stare at it. All I see is panicked squiggles. I force my brain to turn them into actual letters and words. Words I need to read. A clue I need to solve. I will keep competing. I will win this thing. Not for Liberty. Not for Joon. Not for Mom. Not even for John Lockdown. But for me now. Just for me.
Faster than a locomotive,
this model citizen
saves his “model” city.
Faster than a locomotive? This is an easy clue! That’s Superman. Bends steel with his bare hands, et cetera. And Superman, just like John Lockdown, is a do-gooder, the Good Guy, the ultimate model citizen. Right?
And model city. San Diego’s motto is “America’s Finest City.” Is a finest city the same thing as a model city?
I’m feeling the deafening silence of no one to talk to about this.
Think. Think think think.
My dad would say there’s no such a thing as a model city. He’d say all cities, and all places, have problems. Because all people have problems.
I remember him showing me a photo, before he left, of a paper model his charity organization had made. It was on a big board, a white model of a small village center with a new well and a school and a health clinic. . . .
Model city.
Okay. Now I have an idea.
I run around until I find a stop for the little trolley shuttle, the one that goes around to the different areas within Balboa Park, and when it comes, I board, even though I’m shaking with nerves. I clear my throat and ask the driver: “Excuse me, do you know where the Model Railroad Museum is? Do you stop near it?”
He nods.
I hop on and quickly take a seat. I stare out the window to be sure I don’t miss the stop.
A few minutes later, he pulls up by some arched, covered walkways. I step off and take a deep breath. I don’t see any signs for a Model Railroad Museum. Now I’m shaking again.
Woop.
Woop.
I jog down one side of the walkway, and up the other. Finally, just past a restaurant and a gift shop, I spy it!
The place is smaller than I remembered. Dad took Calvin and me here a really long time ago. I remember the action figures and Matchbox cars in the little street scenes set up around the train tracks.
I’m hoping against hope that one of those action figures is Superman.
I look at a wall clock: 4:15.
Woop.
Woop.
The place is filled with big tabletop displays—model cities—of tiny villages, mountains, and farms, through which rumbling model trains chug and puff. Faster than a locomotive/this model citizen/saves his “model” city. Where is he?
I run from one layout to the next, scanning the tiny main streets, side streets, farms, trains, bridges, forests, and tunnels. My heart’s pounding as I race.
Where are you, Superman?
My gaze lands on a scene by a lake; there’s a tiny fisherman with a fish on his line, the rod back behind his shoulder. A little plastic bear is coming out of the woods behind him, about to steal his fish.
And parked in front of the general store is a model of Scooby-Doo’s mystery van. A chicken truck is overturned on the road, and a wolf—or is it a coyote?—is slinking away with one of the chickens.
But no Superman.
It’s like a high-stress Where’s Waldo? My eyes scan tiny schools, restaurants, gas stations, surf shops, candy stores, ice cream parlors, hardware stores, and farms with little fake cows and goats. There are roadways with vintage toy cars, painted plaster hills, and rough rocks beyond, and then taller mountains with a giant suspension bridge, way back against the wall, and then . . .
“I found him!” I shout. An old man in an engineer’s cap and apron with a volunteer badge turns and looks at me. “Superman!” I explain. “Helping out his model city! Like in the Trivia Quest clue! Right?”
The little plastic Superman action figure is lying flat, his hands grasping the train rails on a broken section of bridge, his feet hooking the rails behind. He’s completing the track with his body, so the train, when it comes, won’t tumble down into the gorge. A classic Superman-to-the-rescue move. He’s a model citizen saving his model city all right.
The old man in the engineer’s cap smiles at me and presses a button. A sleek, orange-and-silver engine with a bright single headlight makes its way out of the tunnel and crosses, clickety-clack, over Superman’s stretched-out body.
The train takes a bend, goes through another tunnel, then turns to descend into town. It slows to a gradual stop right in front of me.
Inside its empty coal car is a shiny golden token.
“Wow!” I turn to the engineer, smiling. “Thanks!”
He nods and checks his pocket watch. “How many clues did you find today?”
“This was my seventh one!”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Whoa!” he says. “You’re a grand-prize VIP pass winner!” He glances at his watch again. “That is, you will be—if you can back get down to the plaza within . . . twenty-four point five minutes!”
I dash out the door.