The Unbreakable Code

by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

James looked concerned. They didn’t drive, after all, so she could see how this line of thinking might perplex him.

  “When I asked Charlie why he left the store, he said he had to feed a meter. But I just saw him get into a car parked on this block.”

  James stared down the hill with Emily, understanding now.

  “He lied. Why would he do that?” he asked.

  “Good question,” Emily said.

  * * *

  James came over to Emily’s when they got back to their building. His dad was out of town again on a business trip, and his mother and grandmother were at the flower fair on Grant, shopping for Chinese New Year.

  In Emily’s room, she opened her laptop and pulled up the Book Scavenger website. She and James sat with their backs to the wall under her window, where their message bucket dangled outside. A set of reindeer antlers James had given her and a photo of the two of them on Emily’s first day of school were propped on the sill. The color blobs Emily had painted on her bleak walls before New Year’s Eve were still there, waiting to see which of them would be chosen. She’d kind of forgotten about them—gotten used to them, really—but today they were jarring, like crushed soda cans in a field of snow.

  “The history matches up.” Emily couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing on the computer screen. “Mr. Quisling hunted a copy of Tom Sawyer at the Ferry Building in October, in the Mission in November, and Washington Square in December. The reporter said there was no fire at Mark Twain Plaza, but we took that book after Mr. Quisling found it and re-hid it as Coolbirth at Hollister’s.”

  “So maybe there would have been a fire at the plaza that day, if we hadn’t taken the book,” James said.

  They stared silently at the Book Scavenger screen.

  “Remember what Ms. Linden told us about the unbreakable code?” Emily fiddled with the cuff of her jeans. “About the legend that anyone who tries to solve it will suffer a fire? The curse couldn’t be … That couldn’t be a real thing, right?”

  Hearing Ms. Linden tell the story of the fire curse that day in the main library had been like listening to a ghost story around a bonfire, the kind that gives you shivery arm prickles, but you know deep down it’s all pretend. But today, with the bitter burnt smell of Hollister’s fire smoldering in her memory, the idea of a curse made Emily’s stomach turn.

  “No.” James’s voice had the firmness of a period at the end of a sentence. “A curse can’t post as Coolbrith. A curse can’t hide books on Book Scavenger. This isn’t a legend come to life to haunt us. Something weird is going on with Coolbrith and Mr. Quisling and the fires. If we can figure out why fires are happening in the same places where Mr. Quisling is finding these books, then we’ll probably have our answer.”

  “You don’t think Mr. Quisling could be an…” Emily couldn’t even finish her sentence—it seemed so ludicrous to suggest their teacher might be an arsonist.

  “I don’t think so, but there has to be an explanation,” James said. “If it’s not Mr. Quisling, then maybe it’s Coolbrith? Whoever Coolbrith is.”

  “What if it’s Charlie?” Emily asked.

  “Who started the fire?” James frowned, skeptical of her suggestion. “Why would he do that?”

  Emily couldn’t imagine why anyone would do something as malicious as starting a fire in Hollister’s store. “He did lie about what he was doing when he left the store, and he’s known about the unbreakable code since he was Mr. Quisling’s student. He could be Coolbrith.”

  James waved for the laptop.

  “What are you going to do?” Emily asked, handing it over.

  “I’m logging in as a Book Scavenger admin to find out more about Coolbrith.”

  Emily raised her eyebrows. “Are we … can we do that?”

  “Part of what Mr. Griswold and Jack asked us to do is help monitor the community to make sure it stays a safe and positive environment. I’m going to check Coolbrith’s account registration info.”

  “To see if they list ‘arsonist’ as their occupation?” Emily said wryly.

  “People have been known to do stupider things,” James said. “But if the account shows Charlie’s name, then the mystery is solved.” He typed for a minute more until he found the results he was looking for. He squinted at the screen and chewed on a thumbnail. “This doesn’t make sense,” he finally said. “Coolbrith’s account lists an e-mail for Mr. Quisling.”

  “It says what?” Emily leaned toward the screen.

  “When you register for Book Scavenger, you provide an e-mail and password, right? Admins can’t see the password, but we can see the e-mail that goes with the account. Coolbrith’s is brian.quisling@email.com.”

  “But if Mr. Quisling is both Babbage and Coolbrith, then he would have been trading book cipher messages with himself. That’s … that’s ridiculous,” Emily said.

  James switched over to Mr. Quisling’s Babbage account. “Interesting. The e-mail listed here is different. It’s brquisling@email.com.”

  “He has two e-mail accounts?” Emily asked.

  “He could. He could have fifteen different e-mails, if he wanted to. The question would be why? And why multiple Book Scavenger accounts?”

  “And why have a forum conversation with yourself? Is he trying to make someone else think Coolbrith is real?”

  James drummed his fingertips on the keyboard, thinking. “Or maybe someone else is Coolbrith, but wants it to look like Mr. Quisling, so they registered with an e-mail that uses his name.”

  “But … why?” Emily finally asked.

  “If we knew the answer to that question,” James said, “we’d know who Coolbrith is.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  THE EVENING after the fire, Emily collapsed on her bed, wanting to close her eyes for a few seconds before dinner, but the next thing she knew, church bells were waking her up late Sunday morning. She didn’t want to think about anything related to the day before. She didn’t even want to work on solving the unbreakable code, because that made her think of Mr. Quisling, so Emily walked with her parents and Matthew to Pier 39 to watch the sea lions and eat clam chowder in sourdough bowls. Normally a bookstore or library would be her ideal comfort spot to escape to, but on the day after Hollister’s fire, she shuddered at the thought of being closed in by walls of books.

  On Monday before school, James tottered down their stairs under the weight of two bulging trash bags.

  “What is all that?” Emily asked.

  “Every year at this time, Po-Po goes into a house-cleaning frenzy. She wants the New Year to start on the right foot, without old baggage around.”

  “A fresh start.” Emily remembered standing at the Wave Organ and wanting the same thing, a little over a month ago. For a moment, she wished she could rewind to that day, that perfect first day of the New Year.

  James hurled the bags into the can for pickup, but they piled so high the lid wouldn’t close. He put his hands on top of them and jumped, trying to use his body weight to squash the bags down, and when that didn’t work, he slammed the lid once, then again when it rebounded up. He finally left it hinged open, gaping like a mouth full of food. Emily watched James stomp away and hurried to catch up with him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. It didn’t seem like James to get so frustrated with trash.

  “Yeah,” James said, but his word felt like no. They walked in silence until James said, “Remember when we were talking about what we’d do with the treasure if we found it?”

  Emily nodded.

  “I’m changing my answer. I wouldn’t get a computer. I’d give the money to my dad. He laughed at me this morning when I told him he should get a different job so he doesn’t have to travel so much, and he said, Let me run down to the corner where they’re handing them out. Anyway, it’s stupid. But I’d give him the money so he could quit his job and find a new one. I know that’s boring, but that’s what I’d do.” He gripped his backpack straps and held his head high with determination, l
ike they were on their way to retrieve treasure that very second.

  “It’s not stupid. And it might be boring, but I get it. I’d give the money to my parents, too. So we could stay in San Francisco.”

  James stopped walking. “You’re not moving! Are you?”

  “No, no,” Emily said hastily. “I don’t think so, at least. The extra money would make sure of that, though.”

  “Good,” James said. His mood seemed more upbeat now than when he’d been attacking the trash bags. He started to talk about a show he’d watched the night before about an artist named Aowen Jin who had hand-drawn invisible ink murals depicting scenes from ancient Chinese mythology.

  “If you visit this gallery, you have to carry an ultraviolet torch in order to reveal the pictures,” James explained.

  “What a cool idea! It’s like secret art.”

  They continued to talk about creating invisible art until they rounded the corner onto Hollister’s street and lapsed into silence.

  The bookstore window was boarded up where the glass had cracked and fallen out. The inside looked darker than it normally did in the early morning. The closed sign wasn’t even propped in the door window. Emily hadn’t realized how reassuring a CLOSED sign could be.

  “What if Hollister can’t reopen his store?” Emily asked as they continued on toward school. Her parents had said structural damage to the store would need to be repaired before he reopened, and Emily knew many—if not all—of the books had been damaged from smoke and water. She and James had been talking about fresh starts earlier, and that’s what Hollister would need to do. But fresh start had a different meaning, she realized, when you were coming from a place of loss.

  “It’s not fair, this happening to Hollister,” James said.

  “I know. It’s bad enough if the fire was an accident, but if someone did that on purpose? They can’t get away with that.”

  * * *

  At school that day, some kids were talking about the nearby bookstore that had suffered a fire over the weekend, but nobody seemed to realize Emily had been there, and she didn’t volunteer the information. She didn’t want to talk about it. Mr. Quisling must have sensed this when she entered his classroom, because all he did was pat her shoulder and say, “It’s good to see you, Emily.” He didn’t normally single students out for a greeting, so she read between the lines of his actions and understood this was his way of saying he was glad she was okay.

  She couldn’t concentrate once he began class. Watching her teacher made her think about how the only reason Mr. Quisling had been in Hollister’s store Saturday morning was to find a book she and James had set up to lure him there, and if there was some connection between him and Coolbrith and these fires that happened in the locations of their hidden Tom Sawyers, then she was partly to blame for what happened. She swallowed guilt the size of a peach pit.

  Emily managed to get through almost half the week pretending things were normal, until the dance committee meeting on Wednesday. Mrs. Ortega was on bed rest indefinitely, so Mr. Sloan had taken over as the club advisor and for Mrs. Ortega’s classes.

  “Emily,” he said, his voice soft, “I’m sorry to hear about what happened to Hollister’s bookstore. I understand you were there. That must have been frightening.”

  “Oh.” Emily swallowed, still feeling that lump of guilt stuck in her throat. So word had gotten out that she’d been in the store after all. “It was. But I’m okay.”

  Mr. Sloan patted her back. “It’s okay to not be okay, you know.”

  Emily knew he was trying to be reassuring, so she smiled lightly and took a seat, but his words were a reminder that she couldn’t pretend this hadn’t happened. As much as she hated to think about it, Hollister’s store had suffered a fire and she’d been there. She couldn’t imagine that away. The only way to make things better would be to get to the bottom of the Coolbrith mystery, but she didn’t know how to go about doing that.

  She and James hadn’t been sure if they should tell Mr. Quisling about Coolbrith’s account being registered with an e-mail in their teacher’s name. Now that they knew arson fires were somehow involved, she was even more confused about what to say. She didn’t think her teacher had any clue about these fires, but what if she was wrong? What if talking to him about everything somehow made it all worse?

  All she could think to do for now was keep an eye on the Book Scavenger quest thread between Mr. Quisling and Coolbrith. There hadn’t been any activity there since the breakup message, even with her and James’s attempt to hide a decoy book.

  Once the dance committee had assembled, Vivian clapped her hands and said, “All right. We’ve got a lot to get done, and there’s only one week left until Valentine’s Day!”

  “A week and a half, actually,” James corrected.

  Vivian continued, “First things first, let’s finalize the details of the game.”

  After they hashed out their ideas, Nisha read aloud her notes to review what they’d decided. “Three teams will compete—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. We are planning for ten people on each team based off ticket sales so far—”

  James interjected, “If there’s a jump in ticket sales right before the dance, then we can have two heats so more people can play.”

  “And maybe we won’t even have ten people per team because not every student at the dance is going to want to play a childish game,” Maddie added, her arms crossed.

  “If we agree to put hearts all over the decorations, will you stop being such a whiner?” Devin asked.

  Maddie dropped her arms to her sides and straightened in her seat. “I’m not whining. I stated a fact. Not everyone will want to play.”

  Mr. Sloan raised his hands. “Okay, okay. Maddie and James have both made valid points. It’s good to have contingency plans for all scenarios—too few participants, too many, and just right. Nisha, you want to continue?”

  Nisha cleared her throat. “Kevin and Devin have the costumes their mother lent and donated, and they will borrow more jackets and accessories from classmates so we have enough.”

  The twins both gave a thumbs-up to show they were onboard.

  “The game will work as follows,” Nisha said. “One at a time, each team member will dress up as their president, then race through an obstacle course that consists of hopping from Hula-hoop to Hula-hoop, crawling over and under a crepe-paper web, and finally rolling on a skateboard to the end, where they tie a ribbon attached to a balloon around their ankle. Once they have the balloon on their ankle, the next team member puts on the costume and does the obstacle course. The first two teams to get their balloons on compete in the balloon stomp. The last team standing with inflated balloons wins.”

  “Everyone in agreement?” Vivian asked. The group responded in head nods and muttered yeses. “Okay, let’s get moving.”

  Vivian sorted everyone into different workstations. Nisha and Maddie painted a WELCOME banner. Emily and James cut giant red, white, and blue hearts out of poster board, to be dangled from the gym ceiling. Kevin and Devin experimented with making red, white, and blue lemonade. Vivian marched from station to station, yelling at random intervals, “Valentine’s Day is only a week away, people!” As if her panic and loud voice could help them paint and cut and mix any faster.

  “A week and a half,” James repeated.

  Vivian threw her hands in the air. “This dance is going to be a disaster.”

  Mr. Sloan perched on the edge of the teacher’s desk and looked bewildered by all the noise and activity. “Let’s not throw in the towel yet, Vivian. We can meet next Wednesday as well. This will all come together. Why don’t you help Emily and James with the cutting?”

  Emily offered a pencil in one hand and scissors in the other. “Do you want to trace the template or cut?”

  Vivian plucked up the scissors and flopped into a chair. “I’ll cut out hearts.”

  Mr. Sloan clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Great! That wil
l help speed things along. Nisha and Maddie…” He opened and closed drawers to the science lab until he found what he was looking for. “This heat gun can be used to dry the paint. That way you can get through the posters more quickly without worrying about your colors getting muddy.”

  Nisha accepted the heat gun and plugged it into the nearby outlet. She turned it on to test it out. The tool wasn’t much different than a travel-sized hair dryer, but a little smaller and quieter.

  “And, Kevin and Devin,” Mr. Sloan continued, “maybe the lemonade experiments aren’t the most crucial thing on the to-do list.”

  The brothers stared at the sub through safety goggles, which they’d insisted on wearing even though Vivian had said they were unnecessary and ridiculous. Both boys also wore thick rubber gloves and held chemistry beakers filled with red and blue liquid. Rows of Dixie cups were spread in front of them.

  “Did he just say food and beverages are not important?” Kevin said to his brother.

  “Blasphemy,” Devin whispered.

  “How can we discover the formula for the perfect shade of patriotic blue without experimentation?” Kevin said.

  Devin whipped off a glove and held up a Dixie cup. “Or make sure this lemonade tastes like freedom?” He took a sip and immediately spit it back in the cup. He grabbed a paper towel and rubbed it on his tongue.

  “Not there yet?” Kevin asked.

  “It tasted like being grounded in a one-room house while your little sister watches a Yo Gabba Gabba marathon. That is NOT the taste of freedom,” Devin said.

  “Blech.” Kevin shuddered. “Vivian’s right—this dance is going to be a disaster.”

  Everyone laughed except Vivian, who pursed her lips and sawed her scissor blades more fiercely against the poster board. “Mental note,” she muttered. “No weirdos allowed on the committee next time.”

  After a few minutes of concentrated silence, Maddie piped up. “Did anyone else hear about the fire over the weekend?”

  Nisha said, “I heard it was at your friend’s store, James. The same place where the party was for the Poe book you and Emily found.”