Solving Zoe

by Barbara Dee

  6 V B T H T Z 2

  A R H 7 O C 5 I

  L 3 E Y O X V M

  “Zoe,” she said, after studying it a few seconds. “It says ‘Zoe.’”

  Lucas smiled. “How did you get that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just obvious, isn’t it?” She pointed to the cipher. “The first space is a six.”

  “You mean the keyword.”

  “What?”

  “You call that first space the keyword in this sort of cipher. Gives you information.”

  “Okay, the keyword,” Zoe agreed. “So anyway, six means something, right? And if you jump six spaces every time, it spells Z-O-E.”

  Lucas grabbed the paper back. “Do this.”

  IRXUVFRUH DQG VHYHQ BHDUV DJR

  Zoe studied the letters. But this time there wasn’t a keyword, nothing to give her a hint what to do. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I really don’t—”

  “It’s called a Caesar shift,” Lucas said. “Invented by Julius Caesar to send during battles. It’s just the regular alphabet shifted over three spaces. So A becomes D, B becomes E, C becomes—”

  “Don’t tell me,” Zoe interrupted. She stared at the letters again.

  And then suddenly a strange thing happened. The message just seemed to bloom in front of her eyes, as if it were a big gorgeous flower she had never seen before. “It says ‘FOURSCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO’!” She beamed at Lucas triumphantly.

  “Baby stuff,” Lucas said, not smiling now. “We’re just warming up. Try this.”

  He drew another grid. And another. And then a third one that had parts missing. And then a fourth one that was backward and had parts missing. And a fifth one with an encrypted keyword. And then five more, each one crazier than the one before.

  It didn’t matter.

  Zoe would stare at the cipher for a minute or two, and somehow it would just burst into sense. A few times she drew a blank, but then Lucas would say something like “transpose” or “multiple keywords.” She’d follow his instruction, and then suddenly she would be able to see. Even when he showed her centuries-old military codes from wars she’d never even heard of, or variations of those codes, or variations of those variations, within minutes they seemed brilliantly familiar to her, like a language she’d always known but had forgotten. A dazzling, infinitely sensitive language that you couldn’t mess up because it didn’t need talking.

  She was ecstatic. And very calm, too, somehow, because everything was finally adding up. I can do this, she told herself, over and over, clutching the red mechanical pencil. It’s like this is the deep water, and I’m not even drowning!

  But Lucas, it seemed, was getting tired. He kept yawning; maybe he was bored. “Show me something else,” Zoe urged him. “Show me that thing you’re working on for those archeologists!”

  “You mean the Mayan glyph? Way too hard.”

  “How do you know? At least let me try.”

  “No. I mean way too hard for me, Zoe.”

  “Really? But I thought you’re, like, this genius.”

  “I’m not.”

  “But Signe said—”

  He groaned. “I told you to forget about Signe. She’s like family, so she’s not exactly objective.”

  “Oh, come on,” Zoe said, smiling. “Signe told me you were doing Morse code when you were five years old. You think that’s normal?”

  He got up from his desk chair and flopped on the futon. For a few seconds he sat there scowling. Finally he crossed his arms and said, “All right, Zoe. I’m good at typical cryptanalysis. That’s because I’m good at recognizing patterns. So are you.”

  “Thanks!”

  “But I’m…well, faster than you, anyway. So basically I can look at any cipher or code and just kind of read it. Because even though it’s supposed to be secret, it’s almost always modeled on standard language patterns, you know? But ancient Mayan writing…” He shook his head.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. It’s just not a code. It’s really more like a private language with its own private patterns. So you can’t just pick it up and think, okay, I’ve seen this before, I know exactly what I’m looking at.”

  “But why?” Zoe persisted. “I mean, if you’re so incredible at reading things, why can’t you just figure it out?”

  He got up from the futon and started to pace. “Because the system is always changing. I can’t describe it. It’s, like, I don’t know, a kaleidoscope instead of a picture.”

  Zoe nodded excitedly. “But a kaleidoscope just makes its own patterns, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s why it’s so beautiful.”

  “So beautiful?” Lucas snorted. “What does beautiful have to do with anything? You don’t know a thing about deciphering Mayan.”

  “I know that, Lucas.” She flashed her eyes at him. “But I’m really, really trying to understand. So just re-explain your point.”

  He sat down again in his desk chair. He picked up his mechanical pencil, clicked it a few times, then put it down. Finally he spoke.

  “Those guys were obsessed with numbers, okay? And one single glyph could mean some animal god plus some number he’s associated with, even though they also had a completely separate numerical system. Or it could mean King X and Historical Event Y, plus some random verb, like ‘to rain’ or ‘to fish.’ Or maybe a phonetic syllable nobody can translate, or a color. And then the colors and shades all mean different things. Like if the agriculture god Chac is written in red, that means east, but if he’s white, that means north.”

  “That’s absolutely fascinating!” Zoe exclaimed. “What’s south?”

  “Yellow, I think.”

  “And west?”

  “Black. Usually. What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know,” Zoe said. “I’m just curious. Can I at least see this glyph?”

  “Whatever,” Lucas said. He got up from his desk and came back a minute later with his laptop. Then he logged on to to his e-mail and opened an attachment. Instantly a smudgy charcoal drawing filled the screen: a flat, shadowless profile of a bird-woman or bird-man, it was impossible to tell which. But whatever it was had long, flowing hair. And a hawk’s beak and a big stomach with four perfectly round dots lined up in a horizontal row. And an eye that was unusually large—not scary, really, but just kind of watchful. Almost like a lizard’s eye, but not like one she recognized from Isaac’s.

  Still, she was positive she’d seen this creature before. Oh, right, she thought. The spiral notebook. Those weird drawings in the back.

  “Whoa,” she said softly. “It’s amazing, Lucas. And you’re supposed to decipher it? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. The standard strategy would be to compare it detail by detail to other known glyphs. But as far as I can tell, this one is completely unique. Freakish,” he added, glancing quickly at Zoe.

  She pretended not to notice. “Then how can you know what you’re even looking at?”

  “Right. Exactly. I’ve been trying to research it electronically, but I’m not getting anywhere. And the Hubbard library sucks, to be honest. So I’ve been drawing it a lot, hoping maybe that’ll trigger something. But really, the only way to decipher it would be to see it in context.”

  “In context? You mean like going to Guatemala?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what I’m doing here, anyway.”

  “Lucas,” Zoe said impulsively. “Why exactly are you here?”

  He shrugged. “Signe convinced my parents that I should try a real school for a little while. As an experiment.”

  “And…what do you think?”

  “I think it’s been a rousing success, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, well.” She tried to smile encouragingly. “Maybe you need to give it a little more time.”

  “Maybe,” Lucas said. “But Owen knows I sent the notes, so who knows how much time I’ll even have. He’s put me on probation. He says if I commit any other ‘offense
against the Hubbard community,’ I’m out.”

  “But can’t Signe talk to him? And explain how you were just trying to help me? And how you didn’t know how to act because you never went to school before—?”

  “She’s not omnipotent, Zoe. Even if she thinks she is.” Lucas stood up and stretched. “Are you hungry? Signe’s a terrible cook, but she can manage spaghetti.”

  Zoe glanced at her watch. It was six thirty-five. She hadn’t fed the lizards yet. And her parents had no idea where she was. “Thanks, but I have to go. Can I have one of those pictures you drew?”

  “You mean of the glyph? What for?”

  “Just to have. Something to think about the next two weeks.”

  “You’re not going to solve it, Zoe.”

  “Oh, I know that.”

  He opened his desk drawer and took out his little spiral notebook. Then he ripped out a page from the back and handed it to her.

  “Thanks a lot,” Zoe said sincerely. “And for the cipher lesson. And everything else.”

  He grinned. “No perspiration,” he said, which was such a demented thing to say that it made Zoe laugh out loud.

  23

  The next two weeks flew by. Every morning Zoe took the subway with Mom to Grand Army Plaza, to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. (Zoe had argued that she was old enough to take the train by herself, but she was secretly relieved that Mom had insisted they go together.) Mom’s orthodontist office was just a few blocks away, so after a long morning of exploring the shelves in the Codes and Ciphers section, Zoe would meet her for lunch at one of the nearby cafés. Mom didn’t really understand what Zoe was researching, but she asked a lot of smart questions that showed she was interested. And she always let Zoe order something gooey for dessert, even though, according to her, it was nothing but fat and cavities.

  After lunch Zoe would return to the library and focus on pre-Columbian civilizations. She took down book after book about the Mayans, scribbling down all the notes she could. She even surfed the Internet, Googling “glyphs” and “Mayan writing” and then, finally, desperately, “Guatemalan temples.”

  Lucas was right, she quickly realized. The Mayans were completely crazy. They were obsessed with writing, apparently, but they clearly hated reading. How else could you explain the hundreds of glyphs that meant a bunch of different things depending on—well, who knew what. But it was just as Lucas had told her: One simple Mayan glyph could mean five different things. Or just one thing. Or not even a thing: just a sound, sometimes.

  Plus, deciphering the glyph wasn’t like sitting in Signe’s guest room and staring at one of Lucas’s ciphers, which all of a sudden, if you transposed a few letters, or messed with the keyword, you could comprehend. Because with the Mayans every boxy little glyph was crammed with private symbols, private meaning: mythology and history and mathematics and religion, all tangled up with strange and gorgeous geometric designs, and jaguar heads and snakes. And unless you were a Maya scholar, or an archeologist, or whatever kind of symbol-comparing expert Lucas’s parents were supposed to be—unless you had some sort of magical key that would let you unlock the whole complicated, mysterious world packed into that private language, you couldn’t possibly just spend a few afternoons in the library and have the faintest clue what you were looking at. You couldn’t will yourself to understand, even if you had some gift or brain damage or whatever it was that let you read your name on a page of Lucas’s notebook.

  And of course, Zoe reminded herself, Lucas’s glyph was a freak—it wasn’t even like the known glyphs. So if the regular ones were impossible to read, then this one was—well, what? A kind of sick Mayan joke?

  But whatever it was, she refused to give up. She sat in the library until her eyes hurt and her back ached, taking so many notes that by the end of the day her fingers felt like claws. And then at precisely five o’clock, Bella and Spencer would meet her outside the library to take the train, Spencer shouting “CHOO-CHOO-CHOO” the entire ride home.

  Once Bella asked her what she was working on.

  “Everything,” Zoe replied tiredly. “Ciphers and codes in general, one ancient Mayan glyph in particular. But I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “You’re amazing, Zoe,” Bella said as she grabbed Spencer’s hand out of her backpack. “I mean, your whole family is amazing, but you’re the coolest one.”

  “I am?”

  “Oh, definitely. I’ve always thought so. I mean, Izzy and Malcolm are great, I love them both. But they’re so out there, you know? It’s like, ‘Look at me, look at me’ all the time! And don’t even get me started on you-know-who,” she added, rolling her eyes in the direction of Spencer.

  Zoe had to smile at that.

  “Anyway, you’re different,” Bella continued. “You’re so private; I didn’t really notice you at first. But I mean, that whole color theory of yours, and now this code stuff. Spence, I said no lipstick.” She snatched it away before he could draw on the train seat.

  “The color theory is completely separate,” Zoe said softly. “It has nothing to do with deciphering glyphs.”

  “Well, whatever it has to do with, I just think it’s very cool.”

  “Thanks, Bella.” Zoe looked out the train window at the blurry rooftops. If you squinted, they all ran together in a kind of medium-grayish purple. A nice, peaceful kind of color that didn’t really have a name. Or a number. Or maybe it did but her brain was just too jumbled and exhausted to think of it.

  When she got home, she dumped her notes onto her desk and then went over to Isaac’s. By now Isaac was back in Brooklyn, but he was spending so much time at the gallery fixing his wire installation that Zoe just kept the regular feeding and watering schedule. She still loved it at his brownstone, and she was attached to the lizards, especially the shy golden gecko and Ruby/Winona, safely back from the vet. Besides, Dad was over there every day painting the bedroom walls, and she loved seeing the way he made the deserts and savannas and woodlands bloom, inch by exotic inch.

  One late afternoon, about a week and a half into her not-exactly-suspension, Dad finished a particularly tricky bit of vegetation and then put down his paintbrush. “So, Zozo,” he said. “I had a phone call from Owen today.”

  “Owen?”

  “Remember him? Remember school?”

  “Of course I do! What did he say?”

  “Well, the first part was a question. He wanted to know if you intended to come back.”

  “To Hubbard?”

  Dad smiled patiently. “Have you given it any thought?”

  Here was the funny thing: For the past week and a half, she hadn’t. She’d just assumed she was going back. That’s why she hadn’t called Lucas. She wanted to walk into the building after two weeks of glyph research and report to him what she’d found. Or hadn’t found (which seemed likelier). It never even occurred to her that she wouldn’t return to see him in the cafeteria, or at least in Ancient Civs. Because if Lucas belonged at Hubbard, well, obviously so did she.

  “I want to go back,” she answered. Then she added, “If they’ll let me.”

  “Yes, well, that’s where it gets interesting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been put on academic probation. That means unless you start working and stop doodling, you’re out.”

  Zoe nodded. Lucas was on probation too. A different kind, a don’t-write-anonymous-notes-or-else kind. But now they were both just hanging on by their fingertips, it seemed. “Okay,” she said solemnly.

  Dad wiped off his hands on a paint-spattered rag. “You’re really lucky,” he said. “From what I could gather, it sounded like the main reason you’ve been given another chance is that Signe stepped up for you.”

  “Signe?”

  “She offered to be your special faculty adviser. You’re going to have to talk to her about schoolwork on a daily basis. Think you can handle that, Zo?”

  “I guess. I mean, I’ll try to, Dad.”

  “I k
now you can,” he replied seriously, putting his hands on her shoulders. Then he winked at her. “And they expect you back on Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  Three days, she told herself.

  From then on she spent every minute she could at the library, not even taking a break on the weekend. But she wasn’t researching the whole time. Now she was also drawing the glyph over and over, just the way Lucas had in his little spiral notebook. And the amazing thing was, every time she drew it, she saw the color blue. This was very strange, because she was using a normal lead pencil, and the actual glyph had been written in black charcoal. So where did blue come from? she wondered. Why blue?

  It was Sunday night, and she was lying in her bottom bunk staring up at Isadora’s bedsprings when it finally occurred to her: Blue because of the four dots. Blue because 4 = Blue.

  She immediately told herself she was being stupid. The number-color thing was her own personal theory. It was just the way she saw things, like a kind of mental doodling. Really, it was only a feeling; it wasn’t anything she could ever prove or could even use. So it couldn’t have anything to do with deciphering the weird, impossible language of some ancient civilization. Because it had nothing to do with reality. It had nothing to do with anything. It was just Zoe being…Zoe.

  She huddled under her blanket and shut her eyes tight. But that night the color blue was so brilliant and beautiful that she never fell completely asleep.

  24

  On Monday morning Isadora and Malcolm walked Zoe back to school. They didn’t make a big thing out of it. They just waited for her to brush her teeth and then casually picked up their backpacks and followed her out of the apartment. Isadora was in an especially good mood, having decided, as of Friday afternoon, to assistant stage-manage the musical. “It’s incredibly fascinating,” she chattered happily. “Maybe even more fun than performing. Okay, not more fun, but close. And to tell you the truth, Zoe, I didn’t realize it, but I was practically starving for a challenge!” Meanwhile, Malcolm was going on and on about how many points he’d scored in the last Math Olympiad, but Zoe was only half-listening, anyway. Mostly she was thinking about what she was about to tell Lucas, and what, if anything, she would say to everybody else.