The Alcatraz Escape

by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

  Now the question was, how would you hide a book on a mural? She scanned up and down the painting, then spotted a colorful crumpled plastic bag tucked between a telephone pole and the mural. Emily pulled the bag free and flattened it against the wall. It was an empty, book-sized bag with a front painted to match a portion of the mural.

  Studying the mural like a jigsaw puzzle, she finally spotted the matching location down low. A book inside that empty bag propped in that spot would have blended in with the painting. A small card was taped to the wall:

  “Nuts,” Emily said in a defeated voice.

  “Someone poached it?” Matthew asked. Poaching was the Book Scavenger term for when another player located a book first that you had declared on the website. He clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. Plenty more books in the sea.”

  Plenty more books, maybe, but only a few chances left to get into Unlock the Rock.

  CHAPTER

  6

  ON SUNDAY NIGHT Emily tortured herself by stalking the forums and reading all the celebratory, excited posts of the users who’d already qualified for Unlock the Rock. And that was only a fraction of who’d be going—plenty of people didn’t post in the forums or even use the website very much at all, like Nisha, who had decided to face her fears and go to the event. Of course she’d had absolutely no problem solving her entry puzzle.

  Emily had a notification in her Book Scavenger account—a user named MaddyValentina, who lived in Georgia, had tagged her in a forum post. MaddyValentina had uploaded a scan of a newspaper article and written, Surly Wombat, you’re in our local paper for a series about kids doing amazing things!

  The article recounted Emily and James’s adventure with a historical cipher called the unbreakable code. It didn’t actually surprise Emily to see this—there had been other newspaper articles, too. More than anything, the clipping reminded her of a fight she and her brother had recently had.

  Weeks ago, their dad had taped an article from the local paper to the fridge. That same day Matthew had come home early from hanging out with his friends and scanned the article while getting a snack. He’d said that the reporting was shoddy because he’d been left out of the story. Emily joked back, “Yeah, because watching Flush videos all day long was such critical help.”

  But Matthew didn’t find that funny.

  “Are you serious?” he said. “Who helped you with the black light?”

  “Are you serious?” Emily retorted. “You didn’t even want to be there, Matthew.”

  Before the argument could go further, their mom pulled the clipping off and handed it to Emily to keep in her room. “Enough,” she’d said.

  That fight had stung extra because Emily and her brother had been in such a good place before then, and she didn’t know where his snark had come from.

  Now Emily scanned the conversation in the forum thread about what MaddyValentina had posted. Most of the comments were positive and said things like cool! and Surly Wombat is famous! One person pointed out that Emily was the same Book Scavenger player who’d solved Mr. Griswold’s Gold-Bug mystery, and then someone asked, Is Surly Wombat going to Unlock the Rock? Her profile says she’s in San Francisco. The next user said, I want to be on her team! and a couple of other Book Scavenger players wrote things along the lines of That would be so fun!

  It was weird to read the chain because (1) Emily didn’t know any of these Book Scavenger users—she recognized a few usernames because they posted frequently in the forums, but that was it—and (2) she’d spent years feeling pretty much invisible and like she had no friends until she met James, and now here were all these people who thought she was great. It would have been nice to have known them back when she’d lived in New Mexico and Colorado and regularly eaten lunch at school by herself.

  The positive comments were nice to read, but the words built Surly Wombat into someone who sounded smarter and more clever and all around more awesome than Emily actually felt. But then she read comments from Bookacuda, which made her appreciate that inflated image of herself. He had written, Why are you all making such a big deal about Swamp Bat? No offense, but it sounds like her friend solved it, not her. And with the Gold-Bug, I’m not impressed. Anyone can win a game if they’re the only one playing.

  No offense? Whenever someone started a sentence with no offense, you could pretty much count on whatever followed to be offensive. How about, No offense but you’re a jerk, Bookacuda? Emily didn’t actually write that, of course. She didn’t comment on the thread at all. There were already several users jumping on Bookacuda for being rude and calling her names. One person simply wrote, Jealous.

  Emily closed her laptop. Well, Bookacuda and the others didn’t need to waste their time deliberating over her, because she probably wasn’t going to make it into Unlock the Rock anyway.

  * * *

  All through school on Monday, Emily’s brain was a jumble of spiders and clocks and party hats. She knew there must be a trick she was missing for her puzzle, if only she could see it.

  Last night, after she couldn’t fall asleep, she’d looked again at the map for golden tickets. The one hidden at Grace Cathedral still hadn’t been found. She had stayed up late working out the puzzle for that clue, which hadn’t been as difficult as she’d thought it would be. The clue said, Quiet your mind and look east. Her family had toured Grace Cathedral before, so she knew there were two labyrinths that people walked for meditation. Her guess was that the clue referred to one of those.

  That afternoon, Emily spun the combination on her locker and popped open the door to switch out books. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor. Glued to the page were letters cut out from magazines that formed the message:

  Emily blinked at the paper, trying to comprehend what she was reading. James’s voice greeted her from the other side of her locker door. She wasn’t sure why, but her knee-jerk reaction was to hide the note. Before she could stuff it between her books, James said, “You got one, too?”

  “Too? You got one?”

  James nodded. “Someone doesn’t want us to compete.”

  “Why?”

  James shot Emily a you can’t be serious look. “Maybe because we tracked down a hundred-fifty-year-old lost manuscript and cracked the unbreakable code? We’re kind of a threat. At least other people think so.”

  She could see how knowing Mr. Griswold the way they did and their well-known successes with puzzles and ciphers could make it look like they had an advantage, but Emily had yet to scrape past her entry puzzle, and if and when she managed that, she still had no idea what to expect at the actual event. She was as clueless as anyone else going into Unlock the Rock.

  “Should we be worried about this?” she asked, scanning the anonymous message again.

  James shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was from Maddie. I wouldn’t put it past her to do something like this.”

  “Ouch. I thought she was our friend now.”

  “She is, but she’s still Maddie, and Maddie likes to win. She’d shrug it off as a joke if anyone found out.”

  Emily crumpled up the paper but then thought better of tossing it in the trash. She straightened it out and slid it into her backpack, just in case she wanted to show it to someone later.

  When Emily and James entered their social studies class, Mr. Quisling greeted them with “Two more days!”

  “You’re going to Unlock the Rock, too?” James asked.

  It had taken Emily quite by surprise when she had first learned Mr. Quisling played Book Scavenger. He was a rigid, no-nonsense teacher who stuck to his lectures and lesson plans and was a tough grader. Even his clothes were serious—bland collared shirts, always ironed and tucked in—so there wasn’t anything about him that screamed fun or book-hunting adventurer.

  “Miss Linden and I will both be there,” Mr. Quisling replied.

  Emily and James had befriended Miss Linden, a research librarian for the San Francisco Public Library, when they were trying to solve t
he unbreakable code. They’d inadvertently brought the two bookish, puzzle-loving adventurers together.

  “Oooooh.” Maddie’s voice spoke up from behind Emily and James. “How romantic.”

  Seeing Maddie for the first time since finding that note in her locker, Emily couldn’t help scrutinizing their friend, like she might find some telltale sign that she had been the one to leave it.

  “What?” Maddie said, noticing the extra attention. “Is something on me?”

  “No.” Emily quickly shook her head. “Just daydreaming.”

  As she took her seat, James sat next to Emily and said, “Mr. Quisling and Miss Linden are the duo everyone should be worried about. Not you and me.”

  Their teacher and his girlfriend were the true team to beat—Emily agreed with that. Regardless, whoever was trying to scare her and James didn’t have to go to such extremes.

  Emily was doing a bang-up job on her own of keeping herself out of the game.

  CHAPTER

  7

  UNTIL ERROL ROY stepped through the main entry of the Bayside Press office building on Monday morning, it hadn’t occurred to him that Garrison Griswold might not be in. He hadn’t called ahead or made an appointment, because he knew it was entirely possible, if Griswold was the sort to hold a grudge, that he might not be willing to hear Errol out. It seemed like the element of surprise could work in Errol’s favor. It also allowed him the option of changing his mind at the last second about setting his plan in action.

  As Errol rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, he thought about the one and only time he’d seen Garrison Griswold in person. It was decades ago, before Griswold started Bayside Press. Griswold had written Roy a letter praising his writing and invited him to do an event at the bookstore he co-owned.

  Errol had a budding career at the time, although he never would have used that word, career. He’d simply been amazed he could string together enough sentences to tell a story anyone would want to publish, let alone to be able to do it more than once. He had ignored Griswold’s letter, but the man persisted. They finally spoke on the phone, and Errol told him he’d never done public events before and was uncomfortable with them. He didn’t want to talk to strangers about his books. He was interested in the writing, not the attention.

  They’d keep it simple, Griswold said. Low-key. He told Errol about the impact his books—the three he’d published at that time—had had on his customers. That was a revelation: Errol Roy’s stories lived on in other people. When he was writing, Errol lived each scene in his imagination, but when the book was done, that was it for him. He moved on from the story and recalled the characters and events the way you do distant memories or people you once knew. But the idea that a past experience for him could be a present experience for someone else, intercepting that reader’s life, sometimes in a meaningful way … None of that had occurred to Errol until his phone conversation with Garrison Griswold.

  So he’d agreed to show up at the bookstore and meet some of those readers. What harm could it do? How difficult could it be?

  When Errol arrived on the agreed-upon day, he saw rows of folding chairs and a podium and people milling about. Balloons clustered in front of bookshelves, and a handmade banner read WELCOME ERROL ROY! There were cameras.

  This was as low-key and simple as the Transamerica building was square.

  Errol had realized immediately that he’d made a mistake. He shouldn’t have agreed to this. The hum of people flooded his ears, and he was drowning in the noise until a young man waved in front of his face to grab his attention.

  “Welcome!” the man said. “Sit anywhere you’d like.”

  The word sit was tossed over his head like a life preserver. He knew the man was Hollister, the co-owner. Roy had been a customer in the store many times before—though he’d never introduced himself. There was nothing about Errol that screamed author, and this was a few decades before the Internet. There was no photo on Errol Roy’s book jackets, per his request. He blended in with most of the other men idling around the bookstore that day—a middle-aged guy with a thick beard and mustache. Nonetheless, it was a surprise to realize that Hollister didn’t recognize him.

  He was anonymous.

  Hollister gestured to a folding chair, and this was the moment Errol could have—should have—said he was the author, but instead he sat. What would happen, he wondered, if he remained seated and didn’t volunteer who he was?

  Minutes passed.

  A tall, slender man with curly hair hurried to Hollister’s side, and they held a hushed conversation that involved multiple glances at their watches and then through the large picture window to the street. Errol knew this man was Griswold.

  Garrison Griswold edged toward the front of the mostly seated crowd. It shamed Errol that he couldn’t find it within himself to move, to stand up. Even if only to leave. He was frozen to his chair, waiting to see what would happen. Waiting to see if someone was going to point at him and cry out, “There he is! Imposter!”

  Griswold stepped to the podium, and Errol expected him to open with an apology, explain that Errol Roy hadn’t shown up, and tell everyone to go home. Instead Griswold said in a cheery, theatrical tone, “Greetings, book lovers!”

  People on either side of Errol smiled and murmured replies. Errol watched, stunned and a little impressed, as Griswold spoke about Errol Roy’s latest book and got the crowd involved in a discussion on what made a good mystery. If Errol hadn’t already known he’d stood up his own event, he never would have guessed Griswold was in a tough spot.

  At one point a young man raised his hand and hesitantly asked, “I thought the author was going to be here?” He sounded embarrassed to have assumed such a thing.

  “Ah, yes.” Griswold nodded and looked down to collect his thoughts before gesturing to the hanging banner. “We did invite him, and we hoped Errol Roy would come, but I’m sorry to say it doesn’t look like he will make it.”

  The audience groaned. Errol looked at his neighbors with muted surprise.

  “I know!” Griswold nodded his agreement with their groans. “I’m disappointed, too. I admire his writing greatly, and it would be wonderful to hear from the man himself. But!” Griswold held up his index finger. “I have something fun in store for you all.”

  And then, to make an unexpected day even more so, Griswold led everyone in a parlor game called Murder in the Dark, adapting the players so they were characters from Roy’s latest novel. What Garrison Griswold understood and honored was that everyone had gathered in that space because they loved books and wanted to be entertained or connect with other book people.

  Errol Roy didn’t know it then, but that incident had set him firmly on the path he would take forward as a well-known—and well-known for being highly reclusive—author. It hadn’t occurred to him until just now, recollecting that day as he rode the elevator up to the Bayside Press offices, that it was entirely possible the experience had been a similar turning point for Garrison Griswold, setting him on the path he would take forward as well.

  The elevator dinged its arrival at the Bayside Press floor. The doors opened to a receptionist desk in a room garishly decorated in burgundy and blue everything. Errol Roy approached the kid, who looked to be in his twenties, sitting behind the desk, scrolling through photos on his phone. “Is Garrison Griswold in today?” he asked.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the kid asked, not looking up.

  “Is he in?”

  Keeping his head angled to his phone, the kid rolled his eyes up to look at Errol. “I’m a temp, but I’m pretty sure you need an appointment.”

  “Could you tell him Errol Roy would like to speak with him?”

  The temp’s mouth parted. “No, you’re not,” he finally said. “You are not him.”

  “I am.” Errol pulled his wallet from his pocket and slid out his photo ID.

  “No way! Is this for real? I didn’t think you existed.”

  Errol Roy wasn’t sure how his
books could exist if he didn’t until the kid explained. “I thought there were like ghostwriters or something. Wait.” He narrowed his eyes and then looked over his shoulder and behind the phone on the table. “Is this a hidden-camera show? Are you tricking me?”

  “Could you please just let Mr. Griswold know I’m here and I’d like to speak with him?”

  “Oh yes! Of course.” The temp lifted the phone and pressed a button, then spoke to someone on the other end.

  “… He showed me his ID and everything.… I don’t know why he’s here.” The temp covered the mouthpiece and leaned forward. “What did you want to talk to Mr. Griswold about?”

  “Unlock the Rock,” Errol replied.

  The kid raised his eyebrows and relayed Errol’s answer. Finally he hung up the phone and said, “His assistant will be out in a minute to lead you back.”

  While Errol Roy waited, the temp peppered him with questions about his best-known book, which had been made into an award-winning movie almost two decades ago. That movie had become a cult classic, which was how someone who was probably a toddler when it was made would be familiar with it.

  “Did you meet Clint Eastwood? And that rumor about you having a cameo—was that true? I always thought you were the bus driver, but now that I’m seeing you in person, I don’t think so anymore. Unless you wore a lot of makeup?”

  The kid kept talking even though Errol didn’t answer any of his questions. That was something Errol had learned a long time ago about being quiet. Sometimes the more you stayed silent, the more the other person would blab.

  He hadn’t met Clint Eastwood or had a cameo or even set foot on the movie set. He’d never even seen the movie. The truth was that that particular book was the only one of his that he couldn’t stand, and he did everything possible not to think about it. He’d sold the movie rights because he needed the money back then, and he hadn’t expected it to blow up into a cultural phenomenon or realized how uncomfortable he would be having that particular novel widely known and celebrated. He’d been haunted by a ghost of his own creation ever since, presented to him now in the form of this twentysomething temp who wouldn’t stop talking.