Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter

by Beth McMullen

  We smuggle our sugary haul into the library right under the sign that says NO FOOD ALLOWED. I get the feeling Jin has done this before. There are a bunch of rainbow-colored beanbags near a big window on the second floor. We plop down on two right next to each other and pull out the notebook. But my nerves are jangly, electric. Maybe it’s all the sugar?

  “What?” Jin asks.

  “I’m kind of nervous,” I confess. An idea that I have refused to consider even for a second pushes in around the edges. What if it turns out that I really am an orphan? What if everything those State Department agents told me is true? What happens then?

  “I’m nervous too,” Jin says quickly. “Actually, I’m completely freaking out.”

  Somehow being nervous together makes it seem all right. I take a deep inhale and flip open the cover of the notebook, promptly covering it with red jelly. Great. I’m going to smear up vital evidence with doughnut filling.

  The first page indicates that Dad started using this notebook eight months ago. It includes the expedition name.

  The Hunt for the Stone of Istenanya.

  Huh?

  “Your face is weird and we’re only on the first page,” Jin offers.

  I point to the name. “The story of Istenanya is a fairy tale,” I explain. “The stone is not a real thing. It’s not something you go hunt for because it doesn’t exist.”

  “Maybe it’s code? Read!”

  I clear my throat.

  “ ‘I am far behind. There is much to do if I’m to keep the stone from the hands of the mysterious Shadow.’ ”

  “Stop!” Jin’s doughnut is suspended in midair. “Who’s the Shadow?”

  “How am I supposed to know? He’s mysterious!”

  “Right. Okay. Go on.”

  “ ‘The Task Force did not anticipate this turn of events, so they were woefully unprepared.’ ”

  “Stop!”

  “What now?”

  “Who’s the Task Force?”

  I glare at him. “If you don’t be quiet, I’m going to read to myself.” He crams the rest of his doughnut in his mouth as a deterrent. I continue.

  “ ‘The Shadow is a new adversary, and although no one wants to admit it, he took us by surprise. He seems to have limitless resources and determination. While the Task Force races to identify him, it is up to me to stop him dead in his tracks. Right now he’s breathing down my neck, but I can’t be deterred. I’m organizing and making plans. Everything depends on my success!’ ”

  I glance at Jin. He’s riveted. He has no idea how boring Dad’s expedition notebooks normally are, which makes this one wildly unusual already. A secret Task Force and an adversary called “the Shadow”? But everyone likes Dad. He doesn’t have enemies. And he works for himself, taking on expeditions for universities or museums or whoever is searching for lost things. I have never heard him mention a Task Force. I read on.

  “ ‘The clues I found in the Prague archives were remarkable, my first big break. But there’s no time to bask in the glory. Next I need to get my hands on the maps and notes held at the university in Budapest. I’ve sent word to the librarian that I will be there tomorrow, but if this bad weather doesn’t clear, I’ll be stuck, sinking my efforts before I even get started. On the following pages, I’ve written everything I can remember about the stone from over the years. It’s not much, but it’s a start.’ ”

  Why does he keep talking about the stone as if it’s a real thing? The Shadow is not the only mysterious thing here. Breathlessly, I turn the page, anxious to understand what my father was thinking.

  Imagine my surprise when there is nothing there, no more pages.

  There is something Dad says when things go wrong, like when we run out of gas or the place he thought was a pharaoh’s tomb turns out to be a landfill. It’s not a nice thing, but I utter it anyway. Jin agrees wholeheartedly.

  “But the pages were there when we found the book.” I groan. “It was intact.”

  “Hannah,” Jin snarls.

  “Really? She’d do that?” Boy, if this is true, she might become my nemesis too.

  “Totally. No question.”

  “That’s why my locker was so organized. She stole the notebook and cleaned up.”

  “I can’t believe she ripped out the pages.” Jin fumes. “How dare she violate a book? That’s, like, the worst! I bet she’s at home right now gloating. We need to know who the evil Shadow is! And the Task Force! This is bad. What do we do?”

  We can’t confront her and demand the pages back. She will deny having them, and the only way to prove she does have them will be to reveal the existence of the notebook, which we don’t want to do because that will require an explanation of how we got it. We have no choice but to take back what is rightfully ours.

  “The answer is obvious,” I say. “We steal them back.”

  Surprisingly, Jin grins. “Excellent.”

  Great. I have created a monster.

  CHAPTER 16 BEGINNER’S LUCK

  THE NEXT MORNING AT REDWOOD, I have a half-formed, not very good plan to retrieve the pages when Jin tells me he has it all figured out. “I know exactly what to do,” he says confidently.

  “You do?” I remember that his last plan was, you know, not so amazing. But his confidence is growing like a parched plant that just got watered, so I swallow down my skepticism. “Go on.”

  “I’ve been going over it all night. It’s easy, assuming Hannah hasn’t recycled the pages or hidden them under her mattress, and she really is the one who stole them in the first place.”

  “That’s a lot of assumptions,” I point out.

  But Jin tells me to relax and not worry. “I’ve got this. I promise. I’ll see you back here after final bell.” And without giving me any details, he saunters off to class like he is a master criminal, shoulders back, head high, fist-bumping every kid he passes.

  Later, in ceramics, elbow-deep in clay, I work on a plan B because, while I like Jin’s budding confidence, I estimate his chance of success to be somewhere around 3 percent. My plan involves finding out where Hannah lives and climbing through an open window. Unless she lives on the top floor of an apartment building, in which case I will hang around the entrance until someone comes out and I’ll slip inside. No one is ever suspicious of kids. And I need those pages. What if they have what I’m looking for, a clue to my father’s whereabouts? I’m so preoccupied my pot spins off the wheel and flies into the wall. My teacher is not pleased. My potentially glorious pot is now a misshapen mess. She tells me to stop daydreaming and start over. I take this as a bad omen.

  When the bell finally rings one thousand years later, I leap from my potter’s stool and fly out the door without even washing my hands. There are bits of gray clay under my fingernails and smears of it up my arms.

  Jin waits in the hallway. “What’s in your hair?”

  “Clay,” I say. “What’s the plan? And I want details.”

  “Check this out.” He clears his bangs from his eyes. “Hannah plays chess every Wednesday at Over the Hill Pizza, down in the Mission. It’s, like, her and all these old guys, but apparently, she never misses it. My sources say she goes there a lot.”

  “Chess?”

  “Yeah. The game? Jeez, you have to know what that is, right?”

  Just because I didn’t have an EmoJabber handle until a few days ago does not mean I grew up on Mars. I know what chess is. “Go on,” I say flatly.

  “Anyway, we follow her.” He grins. I think he thinks he’s invented the concept of trailing a person of interest.

  “And?”

  “Think about it.” He arches a single eyebrow. “Most things of value in our lives are stuffed in our backpacks. I mean, I have a toothbrush in there. And extra shoelaces. And a bunch of granola bars. Basically, I could be left on a desert island with only my backpack and I’d be fine. Ergo, the pages must be in her pack. I like that word, don’t you? It means therefore.”

  “I know what it me
ans,” I snap. Jin wants the pages to be in Hannah’s backpack; ergo, he is making yet another giant assumption. I’m developing a stomachache. “So?”

  “So while Hannah is occupied playing chess, we sneak in, take the pack, swipe the pages, return the bag, and leave. Like I said. Easy!”

  He layers on the details. He causes a distraction. I take the pack. I dig through it. I steal back the pages. I return the pack. Do you see where this is going?

  “What do you think?” he asks breathlessly. I think his plan stinks. But is mine any better? It pains me to admit that it is not.

  “Great,” I say with a grimace. “Let’s go get pizza.” We catch a bus, spend the entire time hypothesizing about the true identities of the Shadow and the Task Force, and almost miss our stop on Valencia Street, in the heart of the Mission district. The street teems with people, eating, shopping, hanging around. Everyone seems to have a little dog or a bushy beard. Or both. There is a lot of purple hair and people in tank tops showing off tattoos, even though it is freezing and windy. Four blocks later, we stand in front of Over the Hill Pizza, a shabby restaurant with windows so thick with grime we can’t see inside. Shouts echo from the propped-open door. We peer through, careful to keep ourselves out of view.

  In the back there is a large pizza oven. A fog of cooking smoke hangs low. One woman, in a hairnet and a red shirt, mans the counter and the cooking. She tosses a circle of pie dough into the air, catching it and expanding it a few times before plopping it on a silver pizza pan.

  A narrow hallway runs along the far side of the kitchen, probably leading to the bathrooms. About halfway down the hallway are a row of pegs laden with jackets and baseball caps. In the main section of the restaurant are eight small tables at which sit pairs of people, heads bent over chessboards. Lots of gray hair and wrinkles. And Hannah with her back to us. We ease away from the door.

  “She’s in there,” Jin says triumphantly. “Good intel, right?”

  “You want a trophy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fine. After we get the pages.”

  “That’s the easy part.”

  “Your inexperience is showing,” I say.

  “You’re just jealous because you didn’t think of this plan first.”

  For the record, I am not jealous. Hannah’s Redwood uniform jacket hangs on one of the pegs, her backpack slung over it haphazardly. I nudge Jin and point. If he heads to the counter to order a slice, I can slip down the hallway undetected. My stomach rumbles, excited by the prospect of pizza. Not now, stomach. I’m busy.

  “Act casual,” Jin says as we enter the pizzeria. But his hands are balled into fists and he frowns. He doesn’t move. I give him a shove. Stumbling, he cuts through the tables, headed for the counter. He pulls out his phone, pretending to be immersed in EmoJabber or whatever.

  “Oops,” he says, plowing right into the back of Hannah’s chair. When she reels around to see who it is, I dash into the hallway, swipe her blue-and-yellow backpack, and beeline for the tiny bathroom. Sweat blooms on my forehead. Safely locked inside, I dump the contents of the pack on the gritty floor.

  Wow. Hannah has a lot of stuff. ChapStick, hair elastics, ribbons, a sock, two empty water bottles, a wrinkled hoodie, three textbooks, miscellaneous notebooks, wads of crumpled-up paper, and three small bags of Doritos that I think seriously about eating. She’d be fine on that desert island. I sort through the debris. Nothing. I open all the pockets. Nothing. I turn the pack upside down and give it a vigorous shake. Dust and a few pebbles but no missing pages. Where did she stash them? In her locker? In her house? Jin’s assumptions were dead wrong. Why did I let him run this operation in the first place? Sitting on the closed toilet, I take a moment to wonder why things never break my way.

  “Is it wrong to want just a little luck?” I ask the empty bathroom. I mean, I ruined the sculpture, broke my wrist, and stabbed myself in the butt. Wouldn’t just one of those misfortunes have gotten the message across? Why is my karma so compromised? What does the universe want from me? I resolve to be nicer to Zeus. Maybe that will help.

  I’d like to wallow a few more minutes in my misfortune, but realistically, how long can I leave Jin unattended before something really bad happens out there? Quickly, I stuff everything back into the backpack and zip it closed. Reversing my actions, I return the bag to the peg and slip out of the shop. Or that’s what I see myself doing. Unfortunately, just before my stealthy exit, my feet tangle in a chair and I stumble to the ground. Everyone stares. Jin shakes his head, disappointed. My cheeks flame red.

  “Lola, too? What are you guys doing here?” She glances around, obviously dismayed, as if to make sure there are no other Redwood students lurking in the shadows, waiting to ambush her. Is it because we caught her playing chess? Whatever it is, she’s not happy.

  “Oh, Lola loves chess too,” Jin blurts. “A ton. It’s her favorite.”

  What? No, I don’t. As I slowly return to my feet, humiliation burns inside my chest. This is all Dad’s fault. I would not be here if he didn’t go and get himself disappeared like he did.

  “You play?” Hannah asks skeptically.

  “No,” I say quietly. “I just heard the pizza was… really good.”

  The lady in the red shirt with the hairnet steps out from behind the counter and strides toward us. The name “Maria” is embroidered above her pocket. “You heard right,” she says, smiling. There is a gap between her teeth wide enough to suck spaghetti through. “The pizza is outstanding. Hannah, are these your school friends? Hannah never brings her school friends around. Do you want a slice? It will change your world.”

  Hannah drops her forehead to the table. “Mom.”

  Oh, I get it. Over the Hill Pizza. Duh. Jin is a little slower. “Wait a minute. This is your pizza place? I had no idea.”

  “That’s because Hannah never brings anyone here. I don’t get it. Everyone likes pizza.” Her fingers drift to Hannah’s long hair, unconsciously combing out knots that are probably not even there. But I get it. Sometimes the circumstances of our lives are embarrassing and usually there is nothing we can do about it but hope no one finds out. I’ve been in a lot of places where people looked at me funny.

  Hannah shakes her mother’s fingers from her hair. “These aren’t my friends,” she snaps. “They’re just… kids from school.”

  But Maria isn’t listening. “Did you know Hannah is going to win a trip to NASA this summer?” she says to us. “And then it’s a straight shot to a Stanford scholarship! My girl is going to be a scientist and change the world.” Maria swells with pride. And it’s clear the worst thing Hannah could do is say she wants to make pizza for the rest of her life.

  “Mom.”

  “Oh, I know you don’t like me bragging on you, but sometimes I just can’t help it.”

  “No. That’s not it. Your pizza’s on fire.” Smoke billows from the oven.

  “Oh no!” Maria rushes off to put out the flames.

  As soon as she is out of earshot, Hannah turns to us, stuck somewhere between mortified and furious. “I don’t know what you two are doing here, but you can go now.”

  Jin gives me an enthusiastic slap on the back. “Well, this has been fun, but you’re right, we really should go.” With some overly dramatic waving, he pulls me out of the pizzeria like the place is on fire, which it might actually be. Hannah’s eyes stay on us as we retreat.

  Walking fast, we put space between us and Over the Hill, talking over each other as we go. “Did you know her mom owned a pizza place?”

  “Can you believe she had the nerve to say she didn’t know what we were doing there? I mean, how could she not know?”

  On the one hand, I see why Hannah can’t take her foot off the gas. Maria has expectations and Hannah intends to meet them, exceed them, and then crush them, just to be sure. That kind of effort doesn’t leave much time for fun, outside of chess matches with old guys. But on the other hand, she stole my pages. And we failed to get them back.
>
  Beside me, Jin grins like the cat who ate the canary, although Great-Aunt Irma is not fond of that particular idiom. Why is he so happy? This is no time to be happy. The pages might be gone forever. We might never find out who the Shadow is.

  “Stop smiling. The pages weren’t in her backpack.”

  But he’s not listening. He’s dancing around on the sidewalk like he’s got ants crawling all over him. “You were brilliant!” he shouts. “It’s like you read my mind when you fell on your face. How did you know?”

  Wait. What? I didn’t trip on purpose. I wouldn’t do that. The floor was disgusting.

  “The minute you got Hannah’s attention,” he continues, flushed with excitement, “BOOM! I got the pages!” Jin holds up a wad of papers, my father’s messy handwriting clearly in view. “Took them right from her sweater pocket! She had no idea!”

  Hannah had the pages in her pocket. Jin saw an opportunity and took it. He didn’t get caught. It is not lost on me that I have successfully achieved what I set out to do twice in the past eight months. The first time was the storage unit. The second time was just now. Both times with Jin.

  Beginner’s luck?

  Or maybe he’s just good at this.

  CHAPTER 17 THE STONE OF ISTENANYA

  WITH THE PAGES SECURE, WE set out for Jin’s house, which is closest. I stay quiet as he relives his glory, again and again and again. You’d think two successful heists make him a legend from the way he goes on. He’s not the one who got away with five hundred million in stolen paintings. I wish he’d stop gloating. He’s insufferable. No wonder Paul moved away. When he asks me what’s the matter, I mutter something about being hungry. And annoyed. And possibly just the tiniest bit jealous. The fact that he thinks I purposely fell down so he could snatch the pages undetected just makes me feel like more of a fraud.

  Marco and Bart are at the house when we arrive, playing checkers at the kitchen table. “I have lemon cake,” Marco says enthusiastically. But when he invites us to sit down and talk about our day, Jin waves him off.