Joon was grinning enormously as they trotted past the library toward Setauket Elementary School.
“What?” Rachel asked as she tugged on Brewster’s leash. So far, he’d sniffed every fence post and telephone pole along the sidewalk.
“Remember when school ended, and we were so happy that we wouldn’t have to go back until September that we danced in the bus circle? And now, ta-da!”
Reaching the front of the school, they both stopped. Setauket Elementary School sprawled symmetrically on either side of an empty flagpole. Most of the school was brick, but the fancy front entrance (which no one ever used) had white pillars and a white bell tower with a clock. On the right side was the gym. On the left was the auditorium. Colonial figures were perched at the peaks of both, like figureheads on ships. All the classrooms were laid out in parallel corridors by grade. Next year, Rachel and Joon would be sixth graders, dominating the hallways at the front of the school. It would be their job to ring the bell at the start and end of the school year, to lead the Flag Day Parade, and to be buddies to the new kindergarteners. She’d always imagined she’d be doing all those things with Joon. They were supposed to be the big kids together this year.
“Looks closed,” Rachel said.
“Let’s try the bus circle doors.”
They trudged around the side of the school to the bus circle. A few cars were parked in the lot—two up the hill near the playground and a pickup truck in the staff-only area. Maybe someone was inside? They tried each of the doors at the bus circle—all of them locked, which wasn’t a surprise since the lights were off and no one was at the welcome desk. They knocked as loudly as they could, but no one came to answer.
Joon yanked on the cafeteria doors. Also locked.
Rachel peeked through the windows of the cafeteria at the silent, empty tables and wondered if it still smelled like stale chicken nuggets in the summer. She half expected to see leftover trays of uneaten meals, but it looked sterile and still.
They kept circling the school.
At the back of the school, they heard faint music from a radio, fuzzy with static. They pounded on the door. “Hello?” they called. “Is anyone there?” Rachel heard footsteps, combined with the clunk-clunk of a cart with a wonky wheel, came closer.
Suddenly, a massive bearlike shape appeared in the window in the door.
Rachel shrieked.
“Charlie!” Joon waved.
A large custodian opened the door. He had a fluffy beard that had swallowed his chin, as well as scruffy hair that poked out at all angles from beneath a Mets baseball hat. He looked a bit like a bear who liked baseball. “Hey, Joon, my man. I didn’t think I’d see you until September.”
Joon shrugged. “I couldn’t keep away.”
“Let me guess—you forgot your oboe for the summer,” Charlie said. Joon was constantly forgetting his oboe at school. As the custodian, Charlie always helped Joon retrieve it. Now Charlie knelt in front of Brewster, holding out his hand to be sniffed. “And who’s this good boy?”
“Brewster,” Joon said. “And this is my friend, Rachel.”
“Hi,” Rachel said.
“We were actually hoping we could get into the auditorium,” Joon said. “We, ah . . .”
Rachel jumped in. “It’s for a game we’re playing.”
“Like a scavenger hunt,” Joon said.
She nodded. “We just need to look at the murals.” She felt a twist of guilt, wondering what Nancy would have thought of hearing her clues called a kids’ game.
Charlie grinned at them. “Sure thing. Can’t stand in the way of a good old-fashioned scavenger hunt.”
Grown-ups believed things like that so easily. They just can’t imagine we’re doing something important, like following real clues left by an actual spy, Rachel thought. She wondered what he would have said if they’d tried the truth.
“Come on,” Charlie said. “You can bring Brewster. There’s no one here for him to bother.” Whistling, he pushed his cart down the corridor, and Rachel, Joon, and Brewster followed him into the school.
Rachel wished she could apologize to Nancy. Maybe Nancy would have understood. After all, she’d disguised her own spy activities as household chores.
She liked that thought.
It felt strange to be in the school in July. The hallways looked as if they’d been abandoned. Half the bulletin boards were naked—only plain brown paper with a few leftover staples. Some staples had tufts of colorful construction paper stuck to them, like bits of party food caught in one’s teeth.
As they passed the cafeteria, Rachel saw a menu from the last week of school still taped to the wall, next to a collage of smiling photos of kids holding library books.
“How are there no teachers here at all?” Joon asked. “It’s a school. This is, like, where teachers are. Can this even be a school if there aren’t any teachers in it? Hey, it’s like that Zen thing: When a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there, does it make a sound?”
Charlie laughed. “Do you kids think teachers live here?”
“Sort of?” Joon said.
Charlie laughed harder. When he recovered, he said, “They’re on vacation. Like I’ll be, as soon as I’m done here. Come tomorrow, I’ll be hitting the water.” He made motor sounds with his mouth.
They passed classroom after classroom—all empty, silent, and dark, with closed doors. No one was at the front desk. No one was in the resource rooms.
Third-grade hallway.
Fourth grade.
Fifth . . .
Reaching the sixth-grade hallway, Rachel peered into one of the classrooms.
All the desks and cubbies were empty. Even the teacher’s desk was spotless. Above the windows were posters, one about the steps of the scientific method and another about primary sources versus secondary sources, but that was it. It was strange to see a classroom without any students in it, in addition to the empty halls. It felt as if the whole school were holding its breath.
She hurried to catch up to Joon. Up ahead were the music practice rooms. And then there it was: the auditorium she’d sat in hundreds of times without ever paying attention to what was painted on the walls.
“Here we go,” Charlie said proudly.
Color filled both walls of the auditorium all the way to the stage. On the right side was a single continuous mural that began with Native Americans—a man carried a dead deer, a woman ground grain with a pestle and mortar, and two boys played with a pair of dogs in front of their huts. This scene blended into a painting of a wheat field, where two oxen pulled a plow guided by two white farmers while a woman in an apron watched. Next, a grist mill on a river with a waterwheel dipped into the froth, then a blacksmith at his forge, followed by a ship being built. Last . . . What were they doing? Sawing ice? Yes, men in heavy coats and scarves were sawing through thick slabs of ice, exposing the water underneath, and then hauling the blocks away using horses. Cool, literally, she thought, but not the information we need.
On the left side of the auditorium, the mural was split into scenes, with windows between each panel. The first section showed settlers in Pilgrim-like garb meeting with the local indigenous people. “Let me guess,” Joon said. “They’re giving them smallpox.”
After that, there was a scene showing two British officers in uniform on horses in front of a crowd of men. A church steeple rose behind them. No one looked happy. And then . . . Patriots Rock. Three men worked a brass cannon next to the rock, while a man with a rifle lay on top of it, where Rachel had stood. They were all aiming at a church beyond a dirt road and across an expanse of grass. But it wasn’t Caroline Church. It was the other one, the Setauket Presbyterian Church. Fort Setauket.
“Hey, no trees,” Joon said, pointing at the Patriots Rock mural. “They had a clear view of the other church in the Battle of Setauket because all those trees weren’t there yet. I forgot that trees can grow over two hundred fifty years.”
But Rachel’s eyes were already caught by the next panel.
It showed two men in Colonial outfits: blue coats with fat golden buttons, white blouses, puffy ties, and those trifold hats that looked like hamantaschen cookies. They were leaning close together, in conversation, with a book between them. Behind them was something that looked like an overly large rowboat. A whaleboat? She didn’t know what a whaleboat looked like, but it could be one. Several men were in it, one with oars and one with a musket. Another man was carrying a pirate-like treasure chest on his shoulder. And next to the boat, directly behind the two men with the book and partially in the water, was a large boulder.
She stared at the two men in the foreground, exchanging secrets, with the boat and rock behind them. One of the men had to be the whaleboat captain Caleb Brewster . . . which would make the other Abraham Woodhull, the head spy who passed Brewster secret information for George Washington.
And they were standing by a rock.
“That’s it,” she said, pointing at it. “The Culper spies, with Nancy’s stone.”
Joon whistled. “You know, I think you’re right.”
Brewster perked his ears up at Joon’s whistle, and he thumped his tail on the carpet. Rachel drank in the painting. The spies were standing on the beach with the stone in the shallows looming over them, but there were no other landmarks in the scene. She supposed she and Joon could walk along the entire Setauket shore to search for it, but that could take forever. “Any idea where that is?” Rachel asked.
“Charlie, do you recognize it?” Joon asked.
“Oh! That’s Devil’s Rock. Back then, they used to call the Long Island Sound ‘the Devil’s Belt.’ Devil’s Rock is off the northern tip of Strong’s Neck,” he said. “I’ve jet skied past it.” He made more motor sounds with his mouth, this time miming jet skiing.
Rachel wanted to say thank you, but she was stuck on imagining the bearlike custodian riding a jet ski, his beard fluttering in the wind—and she was flooded with the certainty that they’d found the location of the next clue.
“Let’s go!” Joon shouted as soon as they were outside.
Rachel wanted to run all the way to Devil’s Rock. If it would’ve worked, she’d have flapped her arms and flown.
Cutting across the Village Green, they headed back to Strong’s Neck. Brewster slowed as they passed Rachel’s house, expecting his Big Walk to end, and for an instant, Rachel was tempted to stop. But she didn’t know how much time they’d have before Joon’s parents texted him to come home. The closer they got to the Move, the more packing and sorting and whatever he’d have to do, until the day he was gone. We need to keep going. Joon, she could tell, felt the same way. He was practically jogging.
At the tip of Strong’s Neck, they followed a dirt path along a fence.
Soon, the path widened onto a beach of pebbles. Clumps of seaweed were strewn about, with a stink that was halfway between the sea and rotten carrots. Waves lapped the shore in little curls. Across the water was a ribbon of sand-covered land squeezing the current between it and the pebble beach.
“Let’s try that way?” She pointed east.
After walking for a few minutes more and sidestepping a beached horseshoe crab, they rounded the corner and saw, in front of them, a boulder, almost the size of Patriots Rock, half in the water and half on the shore—exactly as it had been pictured in the mural.
“We found it!” Rachel said.
“Yes!” Joon punched the air.
Sensing their excitement, Brewster danced in a circle. Taking off her shoes and socks, Rachel handed Brewster’s leash to Joon and waded into the water. Pebbles rolled under her feet. Brewster splashed in the foam as the waves crashed lightly. Examining the rock, she waded up to her knees.
“Don’t get caught in the current,” Joon cautioned.
She wasn’t going to go any deeper. Besides, Nancy wouldn’t have wanted to get swept away either, Rachel thought. She imagined her here, standing on this same shore. The clue had to be somewhere Nancy could have reached. Except Rachel didn’t see anything but the boulder and the waves. “Do you see anything?”
“Nope. You?”
She waded back to shore. Sitting on the pebbles, she tried to dust off the sand that stuck to her wet feet. She half dried them with the outside of a sock, her feet feeling gritty as she pulled on her socks and shoes. She probably should have thought it through before she went into the water. “I’ll climb it. Maybe I’ll be able to see—”
Joon’s pocket chirped a bing. Pulling out his phone, he checked it. And Rachel saw him deflate, like a balloon pricked by a pin.
“What is it?” Rachel asked.
“It says . . . they found a house,” Joon said. “A potential new house. It’s . . . not near here. They want me to go with them tomorrow to see it.”
Tomorrow wasn’t now. They could still—
“And they want me home right now. I have to help pack.”