After school Scott found Erno outside the bike racks, so the two of them walked home together. He supposed Emily was home already—Carla Owens had concocted some story about the day’s events that made herself look blameless and Emily look like a rabid animal, so she’d been suspended for fighting.
“Has she ever done that before?” Scott asked.
“What, attack someone?” said Erno. “No. She usually just says nothing and walks away when people tease her. Or else she falls over.”
“Falls over?”
“Yeah, she gets these dizzy spells when she’s stressed out. Ear infection. She falls right over unless I’m there to catch her.”
“She’s lucky to have a brother in the same grade.”
Erno shrugged. “She’d be lucky if Carla Owens got swallowed by a volcano, but until that happens …”
Scott huffed. “Some things … some things you probably can’t even get a volcano to swallow, you know?”
Erno smiled a little. “Yeah. She probably tastes like a prune.”
They fell into an uneasy silence, discomfited by the mystery of what, if anything, Carla Owens tasted like.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said in class,” Erno finally spoke. “It would be just like Mr. Wilson to hide the answer to one of his games in a claw machine.”
“Mr. Wilson?”
“Our foster dad.”
“He thinks up these puzzles for you?”
“Yeah, and Emily was right: we’re supposed to do them ourselves. They’re our tests, you know? So it sort of ruins the test if we get help.”
Scott’s eyes narrowed. “So … your dad pits you and Emily against each other, to see who’s smarter?”
Erno frowned as if he’d never really considered the implications before. Scott was sorry he’d asked.
“Well,” he added, “it’s funny you mentioned the science museum, because that’s why I thought of claw machines. We just moved here, you know, and the move was kind of … hard, and my mom wanted to do something nice for my sister and me. She’s a scientist—my mom, I mean—so she took us to the science museum last weekend. And they have a claw machine in the lobby.”
Erno raised his eyebrows. “A claw machine in the science museum … man, that’s gotta be it. Hey, are you … are you expected at home right away?”
“Not really. My mom’s at work, and Polly’s staying after school.” Scott frowned and scanned the horizon. “To be honest, I’m not sure I remember where my house is.”
The boys hustled to the science museum, a squat little building by the high school with an entrance that was roped by a thick double helix of plaster DNA. SCIENCE IS FUN! read a banner of Albert Einstein on a bike. Because nothing says fun like a picture of an old person riding a bicycle.
They burst through the doors, and there it was: a claw machine behind the admissions kiosk. And inside the Plexiglas case, perched atop a pile of plush owls and dolphins and dolls of Einstein riding a bicycle, was another yellow scroll.
Erno turned to the woman inside the kiosk. “Do we have to pay admission to play the claw machine?”
“Well,” she said, “no. But we have a wonderful exhibit on the life cycle of rain clouds! Or, ooh! A photosynthesis workshop at four o’clock! Yeah?”
“Um,” said Erno, and he looked at Scott.
“Just the claw machine today, I think,” said Scott. “Can you make change?”
The woman sighed and reached for their five.
“Jeez. Fifty cents a game,” said Erno as they pressed close to the machine to examine the scroll—another yellow page tied in pink ribbon, just like the first one.
“It’ll be easy,” said Scott. “It’s right on top.”
Erno slid a dollar into the slot, watched it get spit back out again, tried once more, smoothed the bill against the corner of the machine, tried a third time. The game’s little claw of Archimedes shuddered to life. Erno jerked it in place over the scroll and pressed a button labeled DROP. The talons closed, and traced the edge of the paper tube as if testing its quality, and then rose and retreated to the chute in the corner, empty-handed. This claw was not so certain it wanted a yellow scroll. This claw was merely browsing.
“You try,” said Erno.
Scott tried. The claw pinched the scroll, raised it up by its end, and dropped it again—too early. It rolled off an owl’s mortarboard and came to a stop against the glass.
“We still have four dollars,” he said.
Four dollars later they had accidentally won two owls and a dolphin, but the scroll remained in the case, lodged between Einsteins.
“I don’t have any more money.”
“Neither do I.”
“Are you guys done finally?” asked someone behind them. It was a younger boy with a juice-stained face and two shiny quarters in his chubby little claw.
“Um. Okay,” said Scott, backing off. “But … can you do us a favor?”
The boy frowned. “A favor?” he asked, over-enunciating the word like he’d never used it in a sentence before.
“Yeah. Could you not try to get that yellow scroll? We’re trying to get that.”
“Yellow … you mean that roll of paper? I don’t want paper. I want an old man riding a bicycle.”
“Of course,” Erno muttered. “The one thing we can’t trade him for his quarters.”
“That’s great,” Scott told the boy. “Never mind, forget I said anything.”
The boy squinted at the scroll. “You guys want that?”
“Yeah, but you don’t, so—”
“Why? Is it good?”
“No,” said Erno. “It’s totally boring. You don’t want it, seriously.”
The boy looked at the scroll, then back at Scott and Erno, and then he stepped up to the controls. A second later it was clear to everyone present that the boy only had eyes for the scroll, and when the claw dropped, it hooked through a loop of pink ribbon.
“Oh man,” said Scott. “Are you kidding me?”
“Little jerk,” Erno muttered under his breath.
The scroll dropped down the chute, and they could hear it thap lightly against the door of the slot below.
“We’ll give you two owls and a dolphin for it,” said Scott.
The boy had the scroll in his hands. “Stuffed animals are for girls. You two are girls,” he said with a sticky pink grin. Then he pulled at the ribbon and unrolled the page and stared at its inky center.
“What does it say?” asked Erno. He sounded desperate.
“Why should I tell you? It’s mine. It’s really awesome, though.”
“We’ll give you two owls and a dolphin and…”—Scott searched his backpack—“an eraser shaped like Agent SuperCar and most of a pack of gum.”
“Strawbubble?” the boy asked, looking at the pack.
“Very Cherry.”
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Deal.”
“Thanks,” Erno said to Scott as they exchanged their gum and toy eraser and stuffed animals for the secret message as if they were the sissiest spies alive. The boy ran off with his haul.
Erno unrolled the page, and together he and Scott read the single, typewritten line:
THIS ISN’T A CLUE, EITHER.
Erno sighed. “This is child abuse, right?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”