Seventeen

Emma

Emma could hear the other kids calling after her—“Wait, where are you going?” “What did you just figure out?” “Emma?”

But she didn’t look back. She took the stairs three at a time, sped down the upstairs hallway, and turned the corner into the bedroom so quickly that she clipped the wall. She knew she’d end up with a bruise, but right now she didn’t care.

Her hands shook as she reached inside her pillowcase to pull out a piece of paper.

And there it was: the sheet of gibberish math calculations she’d brought from her own house the day before. The only thing she had left from her father.

The paper she thought had only sentimental meaning.

But she laid the paper down on the floor and put Kona’s coin right beside it, and she was right. Unlike the coin Emma and her brothers had found at the Cuckoo Clock, Kona’s coin had numerals mixed in among the incomprehensible symbols.

And the numerals imprinted on the metal coin might as well have been written by Emma’s father. Emma hadn’t seen the connection when she just had one coin. But now that there were two . . . If you could say that the way someone formed their numbers (and other mathematical symbols) was handwriting, then everything engraved on Kona’s coin—or Emma’s—was Dad’s handwriting.

“Emma? Is something wrong?” Mom stepped into the room. Even stressed and distracted and troubled, she was still the first to reach Emma.

Evidently Emma screaming and suddenly running up the stairs at full speed, out of nowhere, was enough to trip Mom’s “something’s going on with my kid” instincts.

Emma dropped the paper and held out the coins to Mom, one in the palm of each hand.

“This is Dad’s writing, isn’t it?” Emma asked. Her voice shook. So did her hands. She felt cruel even talking about Dad, when Mom was already so worried. But she had to know. “Dad died eight years ago, in the other world. Why does it look like he wrote this code on these coins Chess and Kona found yesterday?”

Mom gasped and put her hand over her mouth. Her eyebrows shot sky-high.

“Where?” she whispered. “How—?”

Before Emma could answer, everyone else crowded into the room behind Mom, even the Gustano kids. They looked like they’d just stumbled out of bed.

Emma knew she should probably apologize for waking them up. But she could barely look away from Mom. It wasn’t surprising that Mom looked stunned. But why did she also look happy?

Or is that . . . hopeful? Emma wondered.

The Gustano kids shoved closer to Emma—past Mom, even. Then Emma Gustano’s voice rang out: “Don’t you know Rocky has a coin like that, too? Show them, Rocky!”

That made Emma pivot toward the Gustanos. Rocky dug into his pocket. Emma’s head flooded with questions even before he had the coin out and lying flat on his palm.

“Where did you find a coin yesterday?” she asked, staring at the coin, which was the same size and color as the ones in Emma’s hands. “And—”

“Yesterday?” Rocky repeated. His face twisted mockingly. “I didn’t find this yesterday. I’ve had it for years—ever since I was four!”