by Ryan Graudin
Three, really. Marisol’s knuckles brushed the diamond when she pulled the walkie-talkie from her pocket. “We can meet up when you guys are finished at the Library of Alexandria. We’ll fix the cracks Christopher made, and then we’ll go home!”
“It makes sense.” Their great-uncle smiled. “Lucy always suspected you inherited her powers. She’d be proud that you’re using them.”
Marisol smiled back. For the first time in several days, she was happy. Hopeful.
Just like the Curators, they could find a way to save everything.
Leaving Jake—and Oz, and Christopher, and the rest of the explorers—behind in the jungle felt strange. And, if Marisol was being completely honest, kind of scary. She’d never really felt lost with her cousin beside her. Jake’s steady hand and sturdy grin made everything okay, even when it really, really wasn’t.
Marisol liked having him in arm’s reach.
But this was the route she had to take: back to the edge of the desert, and an hour’s hike later, onto Amelia’s airplane, which found a strip between the dunes to land on. Together, the two of them flew to a phantom island that had appeared above the underwater cities. After a quick dive to Kitezh, where Curator Horace waved them straight through customs after Marisol’s promise of a perfect ten rating, they managed to get Hazel on board the Flying Laboratory too.
“I thought you said this was a laboratory!” Hazel climbed inside the plane with a confused expression. “I don’t see any microscopes or test tubes or bubbling smoke.”
“I should hope not,” Amelia muttered.
Then it was back to the scene of the crime, where this entire mess began. . . .
The Crystal Palace glittered beneath the late-afternoon sky, almost as bright as the bling in Marisol’s pocket. She didn’t dare admire the real jewel up here. What if Hazel accidentally opened the rear hatch thinking it led to a bathroom and Marisol had to drop her treasure to keep the woman from falling? This wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded. Christopher’s true love was adrift now that she’d left the ocean behind: unbuckling her seat belt, wandering from wall to wall, touching levers and buttons and requiring constant attention.
Even after Amelia landed the plane in a field behind the Crystal Palace they had to keep an eye on Hazel. The Flying Laboratory’s shiny surface helped, distracting the nurse with her own reflection.
“I like that lipstick.” She waved at herself. “Where did you get it?”
Amelia pulled down her goggles to study the Curators’ storehouse. They were close enough to see the shelves through the windows—and the many, many white-clad officials tending them.
“I’ve never been part of a heist before,” the pilot said excitedly.
Marisol wasn’t exactly an expert either, but she was in charge. First things first—collect the easiest ledger entry. She turned to Hazel. “Is there a piece of paper in your jacket pocket?”
The nurse looked more solid out of the water, her colors crisper. Concentration gathered inside her eyebrows as she rooted around the old-fashioned uniform. These were the same clothes she’d been lost in, Marisol realized. The same type of outfit Nana wore such a very long time ago.
“Aha!” Hazel cried out in triumph, producing a folded page.
The paper crinkled just like Nana’s maps when Marisol opened it. Sure enough, their names were inked at the top:
Marisol Contreras Beruna
Jake Beruna
Kraken
She pointed out the final entry as Hazel and Amelia leaned in over her shoulders. “That’s how Christopher distracted the Curators and got them to leave the Crystal Palace last time.”
“He set a kraken free?” Amelia whistled. “Hot dog, I’d have paid to see that.”
“Who did?” Hazel pursed her oh-so-red lips.
“Chris-to-pher,” Marisol enunciated.
The nurse fished out her necklace, pointing to a set of dog tags. “The dancing man told me this was my name. . . .”
It was CREATURO CHRISTOPHER J flashing on the steel. He must’ve given Hazel his dog tags to help keep their love from fading. There was a second set beneath her great-uncle’s ID: CLIVE HAZEL S.
“No, no.” Marisol pointed to the other letters. “Christopher is the dancing man. You’re Hazel.”
“Hazel,” the nurse repeated. “I like that name. It fits so much better than Christopher. Hazel. HazelHazel-Hazel.” She glanced back at her airplane reflection. “Oh, hello! I’m Hazel! What’s your name?”
Marisol’s stomach tightened. So did her fingers—though she tried not to crush the paper. Seeing Jake lose a memory was hard enough, but this was extra awful. It helped her understand why Christopher had risked so much.
She cleared her throat and looked back at the Crystal Palace.
Still swarming.
“We’ll need another decoy to clear out the Curators so I can slip inside,” Marisol said to Amelia.
“Hmm.” The pilot squinted thoughtfully. “And we’re all out of krakens.”
“We need a different stunt this time. . . .” Marisol trailed off.
Amelia’s eyes brightened. “Stunt! Gee whiz! That’s it, Marisol! You leave the distracting to me and the Flying Laboratory. Though”—the pilot glanced toward the plane’s tail, where Hazel kept waving at herself—“it’d probably be best if she stayed here. Aerobatic flying requires a tight seat belt.”
Marisol hung back in the gardens, exactly where she and Jake hid only a few days before. It was Hazel hunched next to her now, both of them watching the silver dot that was Amelia’s airplane.
“When the people in white suits come out of the building, I’m going to sneak in.” Marisol clutched the back of Hazel’s jacket—hard. “You can’t follow me.”
“Why not?”
“These ledgers are off limits to citizens of the World Between Blinks. You’ve been cataloged, so an alarm will sound if you try to enter the building.” Hazel looked like she’d already forgotten the start of the conversation, so Marisol doubled back. “Only I can go inside. You have to stay here, or you’ll set off an alarm.”
“Oh.” Her companion looked crestfallen. “That wouldn’t be good.”
“I need you to stay outside and keep watch,” Marisol instructed. “Make sure the Curators are distracted and I don’t get caught. Do you think you can do that?”
Hazel nodded.
“Bueno.”
Across the harbor, the Lockheed took a sudden dive. Marisol’s heart swerved with it—back and forth—as she watched white smoke plume from its tail.
Was Amelia Earhart about to crash?
No!
The plane pulled up well before the city’s hodgepodge buildings. The smoke had disappeared too, starting again when the Flying Laboratory made a giant loop. . . . An O, Marisol realized.
“She’s skywriting!” she whispered to Hazel. “That’ll get the Curators’ attention for sure!”
SOS. Amelia’s final letters were perfect and urgent. There was only one problem: the Curators inside the Crystal Palace didn’t notice the clouds. Their noses were stuck deep in their books. So deep, that Marisol maybe didn’t even need a distraction to slip in. . . .
But before she could make a new plan, Hazel acted on the old one.
The nurse slipped free from her jacket and leaped across the garden, rapping against the palace’s glass panes. “Yoo-hoo! Look, Curators! There’s writing in the sky!”
Startled, the officials looked up. Monocles dropped, books shut. White suits began filing to the door.
“Is that supposed to spell sauce?”
“Come now, don’t you know your acronyms? Those clouds say save our souls.”
“Whose souls? The clouds?”
“Actually, SOS isn’t an acronym. It’s a Morse code distress signal—”
“That sounds serious. Boss, you’d better come and look at this!”
As the Curators milled and debated and rated the danger from one to ten, Hazel shot a big ol’ wink tow
ard the bush where Marisol was hiding. Smooth. At least the World’s caretakers were moving now. Half of the officials whipped out their clipboards and began to trickle down the hill.
The other half stayed.
Maybe the Curators had learned their lesson after the first break-in, or maybe Amelia’s skywriting just wasn’t monstrous enough. Whatever the reason, the rest of the Curators shrugged and went back to shelving.
Marisol felt her lungs squeeze dry. There were still too many eyes. Climbing the overhead trees wouldn’t work this time around.
What in the worlds was she going to do?
“Yoo-hoo!” Hazel ran to the other side of the massive building, smudged her face against the glass, and started blowing giant raspberries. It was easy to see why she’d been Nana’s friend. . . . Marisol could imagine her grandmother doing the exact same thing in an otherworldly emergency.
Nana would also, probably, actually flex her magnet fingers.
Marisol took a deep breath and channeled everything into a single wish: I need to find the best way to Christopher’s ledger . . . and then the Great Mogul Diamond’s.
Her hand moved to point out a spare shelving cart—yes, perfect! The cart had two shelves for holding books, one above the other, and was mounted on a set of wheels. There was room between those shelves for a girl, if she made herself small.
Marisol dashed over and climbed inside, using Hazel’s jacket as cover when she curled onto the cart’s lower level. Fabric was much less noticeable against the books than elbows and knees. Also, the leftover Curators were too mesmerized by the nurse’s window faces to notice.
Now came the really tricky part: moving without being seen.
Hazel couldn’t make pig noses forever, and some of the bookkeepers were already back to their tasks. Marisol peered out beneath the jacket, scooting the cart forward with her arms when the coast was clear. Whenever it wasn’t, she retreated like a turtle into its shell. White pants strolled by. Marisol held her breath and counted to sesenta before inching out again.
One foot. Stop!
Two feet. Stop!
Forget turtle. She was as slow as a snail.
It took forever to reach the shelf that held Christopher’s ledger. The book was on the bottom, thank goodness! Her fingers turned into fireworks when she grabbed the volume, flipping through pages to make sure she had the right entry.
Sure enough, her great-uncle’s name was there.
Marisol swallowed when she read the date beside it.
Christopher Creaturo had entered the World Between Blinks on July 4, 1949.
The Great Mogul Diamond had vanished a long, long time before that. Hundreds of years, according to Queen Nefertiti. If the Curators’ records really were kept chronologically, that meant the next shelf was too far away to wheel to.
Should she get out and make a run for it?
Before Marisol could decide, another flash of white caused her to shrink into a ball. There was some orange in the mix too—bright, flaming hair.
It was Red Bun.
The strictest, meanest of the Curators who’d sent them on this quest in the first place was standing right there, her hair still pulled back so tight the sight made Marisol’s eyes water.
“What is an east wing cart doing all the way over here?” The Curator walked right up to the cart, grunting. “Min-jun! Do we have to review the filing systems again?”
“I didn’t do this.” Marisol recognized the soft, kind voice of the man who’d given her and Jake the money and the monocles.
“So the cart sprouted legs and walked here by itself, did it?” Red Bun sighed. “Never mind. Take it back to where it belongs. Please and thank you.”
Marisol hugged Christopher’s ledger to her chest—roly-poly style—as Min-jun pushed her back the way she came. They zoomed past rows and rows of records and dozens and dozens of feet. Min-jun didn’t stop by the entrance where she’d found the cart, either. He kept wheeling well into the east wing.
Toward the next ledger. Yesssss!
Marisol couldn’t reach out yet, but the tingling in her fingers confirmed she was close. Min-jun parked the cart and gave it a pat.
“Stay put!” he said, before returning to his other shelving duties.
She counted to sixty again. Her fingernails burned.
She was so, so close.
When the coast was clear, Marisol steered down two more aisles. ¡Aquí! The book her fingers picked looked much older than Christopher’s tome. Its leather was cracked, and for a second she feared the pages would crumble when she opened them.
“Please be here, diamond! ¡Por favor!” Marisol whispered as she flipped through entries from 1747. There! The Great Mogul Diamond. Her insides went all sparkly when she read it.
Now her family could keep the beach house!
Now everything was perfect.
The feeling lasted as long as it took Marisol to hide the second ledger under her jacket. Then it trembled, along with the rest of the Crystal Palace’s glass, rattled by a high wail: WARNING! UNAUTHORIZED SUBJECT HAS ENTERED THE PREMISES AT THE SOUTH TRANSEPT. CHAOS COULD ENSUE! PLEASE TAKE NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS.
She peered past the shelves to see Curators flocking to the building’s central fountains. Hazel, who was greeting her reflection in the water, hardly even noticed the frenzy. Or the alarm she’d triggered.
“Arms up!” the closest Curator—Droopy Moustache—yelled. “Please identify yourself!”
Hazel blinked. Obviously, she’d forgotten Marisol’s warning.
Along with everything else.
Red Bun glared through her monocle. “This is one Hazel Clive. She slipped through the Unknown on January 12, 1945. Data suggests she spends most of her time in Kitezh.”
“So what is she doing here?” Min-jun wondered.
“What indeed!” exclaimed Droopy Moustache.
“I . . .” Hazel frowned, scraping through dust-mote memories. “I’m helping a friend. I think.”
“Friend?” Red Bun’s eyebrows shot up.
Min-jun glanced over his shoulder, straight at the shelves Marisol was spying through. She dropped back behind some books. Her stomach followed.
What a gigantic mess. . . .
“Oh dear.” Hazel’s voice rang hollow. “I’m not sure I was supposed to tell you that.”
“This alarm is giving me a headache,” Red Bun complained. “Min-jun, escort this resident into the gardens, will you? We can question her better out there. The rest of you! Sweep the shelves! Leave no page unturned!”
Blow on a dandelion and its seeds will find more directions than a compass. The Curators exploded just as fast. Spilling everywhere.
If Marisol stayed put, she’d get caught for sure.
The east entrance wasn’t far, but it was difficult to run with two ledgers. Marisol nearly dropped both books as she rushed through the doors and dove into the garden. Crawling through the bushes wasn’t much easier. Gravel bit her knees and twigs snarled her hair. Her arms ached, holding on to so much.
How was she supposed to rescue Hazel too?
Min-jun, Red Bun, and Droopy Moustache had the nurse cornered by a Maui Ruta Tree—or, as the brass plaque read, the MELICOPE HALEAKALAE, 1919, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. Hazel danced over its roots, squirming at the Curators’ many questions.
“What is your friend doing?”
“Where is your friend now?”
“Do you know who was flying that airplane?”
Hazel shook her head over and over until she looked dizzy.
“We might have to consult her hourglass in the Great Library of Alexandria,” Droopy Moustache said.
No! Marisol grit her teeth to keep from crying out. If that happened, Jake and the others could get caught too! She had to find a way to divert the Curators. Things were desperate enough to call in a backup kraken! Marisol rifled through her pockets, on the off chance that they held a pen.
They didn’t.
There was only one thing she could part wi
th. . . .
Only one thing the Curators might chase.
Marisol’s fist froze around the Great Mogul Diamond—knuckles burning. She’d wanted to hold on to so much, so tightly. She’d wanted to hold on to the beach house, hold on to the crowded bookcases and the splashy wallpaper and the porch lined with conch shells and sharks’ teeth.
She’d wanted to hold on to the sun-warmed water from the garden hose, splashing over her bare feet to wash off the sand, and the chatter around the breakfast table as everyone planned their day’s adventures.
But what Marisol was really trying to hold on to was her family’s togetherness, and you couldn’t keep that in your hand any more than you could catch a puff of smoke from the Berunas’ backyard cookouts.
You couldn’t use a particular thing or a certain place to make your life just the way you wanted.
But you could hold on to love.
Christopher had been fighting for decades with everything he had to hold on to Hazel.
You could hold on to the things that made you you.
The explorers still chased the horizon and all of its new discoveries, but they didn’t mind whether they had stuff.
And in the end, stuff—even big things, like the beach house—wasn’t what made you happy.
For a moment Marisol thought of the scavenger with the colander on her head, barely looking up as she waited, waited, waited for the next piece of treasure to emerge from that thin spot, wanting more, always more, but it was not enough.
It was never enough.
And suddenly Marisol knew the beach house wasn’t what mattered. Nana had filled the place with shark’s teeth and photos of adventures, but each of those things had been carefully chosen, and the real treasure had been the stories Nana had told over a glass of sweet iced tea. The way she’d laughed and put her wrinkled hands over theirs and said te amo with a slight Southern twang . . .
Love was worth more than the things that reminded you of it.
