The words rang in her head: “Find me.” Rachel felt as if soda bubbles were fizzing through her veins. “Find me.” “That. Is. Awesome!”
“Kind of a weird thing to write on a ring. What does it mean?”
What does it—How did he even have to ask? Wasn’t it obvious? Grinning, she spun toward Joon. “It means we have to do it! We have to find her!”
He looked extremely confused. “Us?”
“Yes, us!” It was perfect. He needed to keep busy so he wouldn’t think about how his parents were about to turn his life upside down (his words), and she . . . I get to follow the trail of Anna Smith Strong, the first woman spy in America! She waved the ring in his face. “Look at it! It’s pleading with us: ‘Find me.’ You can’t say that’s not un-resistible. Irresistible? Whatever. I know you, Joon. You can’t resist this!”
“Rachel, we can’t.”
Staring at him, she lowered the ring. Can’t? Joon was always the first to say Yes, let’s do it. Even when she’d had the idea to tie towels around their necks and jump off the porch roof, pretending they were superheroes, he was ready to go. By the time she’d realized it was a terrible idea, the always-prepared Joon had already presented her with the perfect beach towels. She was the one with the ideas; he was the one with the follow-through. Why was he picking now to say no? “Why not?”
“Because she’s, like, way dead.”
“So?”
“A Revolutionary War spy? One of George Washington’s spies?” Joon said. “That’s, like, two hundred years ago. More like two hundred fifty years ago. As cool as it sounds—and, yeah, it’s irresistibly cool—we can’t just go find her and say, ‘Hey, here’s your ring.’ It’s literally impossible to return a ring to a woman who died more than two centuries ago.”
Well, sure, but Rachel didn’t think that was what the words meant for them to do. “It doesn’t say ‘Return this ring.’ It says ‘Find me.’”
“Maybe that’s just a fancy, old-fashioned way of saying ‘If found, return to whomever.’ Like when your parents write your name on your coat. And hat. And notebooks. And markers.” Joon’s parents took teachers’ requests to label supplies seriously. Every year, he showed up at school with everything labeled, from binders to glue sticks to individual crayons. He came by his “be prepared” attitude very naturally.
“Or maybe it means we’re supposed to find her,” Rachel said. “Like, where she’s buried.”
She expected him to jump on board at that, but instead Joon’s mouth went round. “Rachel, we can’t”—he glanced around the kitchen and lowered his voice—“Dig up a grave!”
Okay, that was not at all what she’d meant! When had she ever suggested anything like that? Looking for Captain Kidd’s treasure chest didn’t count, and that garden they’d dug up had a lot of weeds in it anyway. Besides, they’d been in third grade then and hadn’t known any better.
“We won’t even touch it,” Rachel promised. “We’re just going to find it. Don’t you see, Joon?” She waved the ring under his nose. “The date that Dave said doesn’t match any of Nancy’s dates, plus the command ‘Find me.’”
His eyes lit up. “You mean it’s like a clue?”
At last he got it! “Yes!”
“Like to a mystery?”
“Exactly!” Oh, this was so much better than eavesdropping on Mom and Dave talking about napkins and spoons. This was real spy stuff!
“But why would there be a mystery in an old ring?”
“Maybe Nancy put it there because she thought it would be fun? She was a spy. All spies like riddles and puzzles and mysteries.” Whatever the reason, it didn’t change the fact that there was a clue that they could follow. “Come on—look up where to find her.”
With growing excitement, Joon pulled out his phone and began typing. His parents let him have a phone with internet. Rachel had a phone “for serious purposes only.” No browser, no games. Only texts and calls.
While he typed, Rachel barely breathed. The date could be just a really old typo. Or worse, the ring could be someone else’s altogether. But she had a fluttery feeling in her stomach that said this was something. Okay, yes, she wasn’t sure what kind of something it was. An interesting something. Fascinating, even. Irresistible.
Frowning, Joon said, “Too slow. What’s your Wi-Fi password?”
She didn’t know it. She’d have to ask Mom, and then Mom would want to know why they needed it. And then Rachel would have to explain how she’d “borrowed” her future present without permission . . . And then she’d have to explain how she knew about the ring . . . And then she’d have to explain that spying wasn’t really eavesdropping. It was listening and observing and following clues not out of nosiness but for important reasons, like finding a way to stop Joon’s parents from making him move to another town or making sure Rachel’s mom didn’t spring more major life events on her without warning. Most likely, Rachel would end up grounded, which would be the worst—she did not want to miss out on the little time that Joon had left. She tucked the ring within its velvet box back in her pocket.
“Upstairs,” she commanded.
She charged up the stairs with Joon close behind her. Glancing through the open door to Mom and Dave’s room, she spotted her mom, still matching pairs of socks, before she darted inside her own bedroom, across the hallway.
Rachel’s room was what she liked to call “organized chaos,” and what Mom liked to call a “fire hazard.” Rachel knew where everything was, sort of. All her spy stuff was on her desk: a magnifying glass (that she’d found at a yard sale), a pair of binoculars (that Dave had given her, in hopes she’d like bird-watching), an invisible-ink pen (that didn’t work but was still cool), a fake mustache (that was just plain funny), her homemade fingerprint-lifting kit. . . . Plus she had her spy notebook, written in code—every letter was written as a number, but instead of starting with A = 1, which would be obvious, she’d added two to every number, so that A = 3, B = 4, C = 5, and so on.
Across the room, the pile of stuffed animals on Rachel’s bed shifted.
Joon yelped.
“It’s just Brewster,” Rachel told him.
Her dog, Brewster, liked to plop himself in the middle of her teddy bear collection and take a nap, camouflaged, like a perfect spy dog. Whacking a few bears off the bed with his tail, he jumped to the floor and trotted over to Rachel. He stuck his nose into a pile of papers and projects she’d brought home from school over the last year and knocked over a health class project—a plate of veggies, made of clay. Several clay peas rolled under her desk.
Sitting at Rachel’s desk, Joon asked, “Password?”
“You know it,” Rachel said.
He typed. “RachelJoonBFF. You know, you’re supposed to change it sometimes. Especially if you’re a spy who handles sensitive information.”
“I do,” Rachel protested. “Sometimes I add an exclamation point.” She scratched Brewster’s ears, and he panted at her. “Good boy. Gather any intel for us?”
He licked her cheek.
She wiped off the drool with a stray T-shirt. “Not quite what I meant.” His spy-dog training would probably be going better if he spoke English instead of spittle.
Joon typed for a bit and then said, “Okay, got the basics.” Reading from Wikipedia, he quoted, “‘Anna Smith Strong—April 14, 1740, to August 12, 1812—of Setauket, New York, was an American Patriot, and she may have been one of the only female members of the Culper Spy Ring during the American Revolution.’”
Yes, she knew all of that. They’d learned that much in social studies. In fact . . . “Wait, I’ve got it somewhere here. . . .” She dug through the papers in her toppled stack of school stuff. Helping, Brewster shoved his nose into the pile, spilling several more papers, and she nudged him out of the way. She pulled out a rumpled oaktag poster. “Aha!”
“‘Aha’ what?”
Since George Washington’s spies had been based in Setauket—in practically their backyard—teachers at Setauket Elementary School got very excited about the Culper Spy Ring. They gave their students projects about the Revolutionary War and life in the Colonial Era pretty much every year. This past year, in fifth grade, Rachel had made a poster about the Culpers, and Joon had done a diorama of a grist mill with a waterwheel that actually turned. He’d gotten last pick of topics—no one had wanted to research how Colonists made flour—but it had turned out kind of cool.
She held her poster up. It featured a colorful map of New York and Connecticut with names next to key locations. “See?” She read, “‘George Washington’s Culper Spy Ring: Benjamin Tallmadge, Abraham Woodhull, Austin Roe, Caleb Brewster—’”
Her dog gave a hopeful whine.
“Not you, Brewster. Different Brewster. He was a whaleboat captain.”
Joon jumped in. “I remember! He was a smuggler, which is almost as cool as a pirate.”
“And”—she paused dramatically—“‘Anna Smith Strong.’”
“Wonder if he ever wanted to be a pirate,” Joon said.
Rachel pointed to New York City, a purplish blob in the lower left corner of the poster. “Spies would gather information about British troops and stuff in Manhattan, then they’d carry it by horse fifty-five miles east to Setauket.” The courier was Austin Roe. She’d written his name next to a photo of a random horse, above the number of miles. “Austin Roe would give the spy info stuff to the head spy, Abraham Woodhull. Then Caleb Brewster would sail into Setauket Harbor, hide his boat in one of the coves, and wait for Woodhull to come under the cover of night.”
“Maybe he was a pirate on the side,” Joon said. “Like a hobby.”
Rachel tapped the map on her poster to draw his attention away from pirates and back to spies. “Anna Smith Strong would watch for his boat, and when she saw it, she’d take her laundry outside and hang a black petticoat on the line to signal to Woodhull that Brewster was near. And then she’d hang white handkerchiefs to signal which cove he was hidden in. One for the first cove, two for the second . . .”
“Ooh, we should totally make up signal flags,” Joon said. “One flag means everything’s fine. Two flags means my parents are making me move hours away and I’m doomed.”
No “doomed” talk, Rachel thought. We have a mystery to solve! “They called it ‘Nancy’s Magic Clothesline,’” she continued. “Woodhull would give a report on all the secrets to Brewster, and he’d sail across the Long Island Sound to Connecticut and then deliver it to George Washington in his camp north of New York City.” She stared at the map, at the town of Setauket, their hometown, the heart of Washington’s intelligence network.
The fizzing feeling was back. She had in her possession the ring of a spy who’d defied her enemies, aided George Washington, and helped found America. Even better, this spy had sent a message with her ring: Find me. This felt like the moment right before the sun poked over the horizon. Or right before a batch of dark clouds dumped buckets of rain. Or right before she bit into a fresh slice of pizza. Taking out the ring, Rachel gazed at the words etched inside the band. What if this really is something? “Nancy wants us to find her.”
Leaning against her knee, Brewster made a whining sound, a plea to go outside.
“Not right now, Brewster. We’re having a Moment.” She could feel it. Fizzing. This was important. After all, it was the story of Nancy and her magic clothesline that had initially inspired Rachel to suggest she and Joon become spies. There had already been spies in Setauket, she’d reasoned—it was time for two more. She slipped the ring onto her finger.
Joon turned back to the computer and typed. “Okay, it says she’s buried in St. George’s Manor Cemetery. Which is . . . Oh.” He sat back again and waved at the screen. “Strong’s Neck. That’s, like, literally right here. Look.”
The red dot pointed to a spot only a couple roads away. Rachel recognized her street: Maple Road. Just follow it down to the end, take a left, then a right onto Cemetery Lane. . . . She’d never even noticed there was a street called Cemetery Lane before—it wasn’t on the way to anything, so she’d never been down it. “That’s really close.”
“We’re neighbors with famous dead people,” Joon said, “and we didn’t even know.” He jumped to his feet. “Okay, let’s go!”
Rachel felt as if the fizzing in her blood wanted her to sprint out the door. “Are people allowed to do that, to just go to a cemetery?”
“Of course they can. People visit cemeteries all the time,” Joon said. “The real question is: What are we going to tell your mom—and worse, my parents? We can’t tell them we want to visit a stranger’s grave for fun.”
Beside them, Brewster hopped up and down like an excited rabbit.
And Rachel had an idea.
“Watch this,” Rachel said to Joon, and then she coaxed Brewster into the hall, raised her voice, and called, “Mom! I think Brewster needs to go out! Want me to take him for a walk?”
At the word “walk,” Brewster promptly lost it. He spun in a circle, as if trying to either catch his tail or twist himself into a pretzel, and then he darted in front of Rachel as though to lead her toward the stairs.
Mom stuck her head out of her bedroom. “Do you mind, dear? You and Joon can go together. Get some fresh air.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“You’re a sweetie.” Mom blew her a kiss. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” Rachel said. “Come on, Brewster. Leash time!”
Brewster tried to weave between her legs as she attempted to walk down the stairs. She held onto the railing. Joon followed.
“Your dog has zero chill,” Joon said. “Cute, though. Also, useful.”
Rachel felt like bouncing too, which she thought was a weird way to feel about going to a cemetery. She should feel somber. But instead she felt giddy. A real-life spy had left a clue. And they were going to see where it led!