by Cacey Hopper
I toss the book aside and fall back onto the bed, suddenly very tired. I’m still holding the photo in one hand, but I can’t bear to look at it. For the first time since I left home, I’m beginning to question myself. Why did I suddenly think this was the right thing to do? I’ve spent my whole life doing exactly what everyone, namely my dad, expected and asked of me. If I was going to choose a moment of rebellion why did it have to be this? A big part of me had assumed I would find Jason safe and sound in his apartment. He would have laughed and explained that the whole situation between himself, his father, and Mr. V was one big misunderstanding. Then I would have gone home feeling like I had some sort of adventure and at least had a decent explanation for my dad.
But now, sitting alone in my hotel room, my longing for adventure fades. Jason is gone, and I have no idea where he could possibly be. As more time passes this is looking like far more than just a simple misunderstanding. Still, I remind myself that Jason had taken the trouble to lead me to this book for a reason. My earlier suspicions of him leaving me a trail of clues are now confirmed. I have the next clue in my hands. That alone should be of some comfort to me, but the book seems as useless as the other clues had been in the beginning. Which can mean only one thing; there has to be more to it, something else I have to decode or reveal.
Again I find myself facing yet another challenge I’m not so sure I’m able to meet. I’m still pondering all the possible secrets the book might hold and clutching the photo in my hand as I drift asleep.
I dream of Jason that night, and the first time he kissed me. We were racing from his house to mine through the pouring rain. I can still feel the wet blades of grass between my bare toes and his hand in mine. I pull up to a stop suddenly, momentarily distracted by flash of lightening. He slips in the wet grass and we both go crashing down together. Before we can get up he leans over and kisses me just as the thunder rumbles across the sky. Nothing since then has ever been the same.
I wake up just as quickly as I had fallen asleep with his name dying on my lips, drenched in a cold sweat that feels too much like the cool rain from that night. Rolling over I find the photo and hold it tightly against my chest. It doesn’t help much, but eventually I’m able to calm my racing heartbeat and fall back asleep.
The next morning I’m still in the same position, fully clothed and photo in hand. I get up slowly because I’m stiff from having slept in an awkward position. I order some breakfast up to my room and take a hot shower while I ponder my options. Yesterday hadn’t been a complete failure. I had succeeded in getting the package from the car. If my suspicions were right, there has to be some sort of clue in the book. It’s just up to me to figure it out.
I’m combing the tangles out of my hair as my breakfast arrives. I sit down at the table to eat and pick up the book once again. It’s not really all that surprising to me that it is in Latin. Languages are another of Jason’s many hobbies, and he especially loves ancient languages. Nibbling on a piece of bacon I flip though the pages.
Suddenly I realize all hope is not lost as I notice markings on the pages. It looks as though he had written notes to himself in book. Holding my breath for a moment I flip through the rest of the pages somewhat frantically. Of course, there’s more, a lot more. Almost every single page contains lines of untidy scrawl in the margins, or words highlighted and underlined. Immediately I know this has to be it. I have been operating under the assumption that there would be a note or clue tucked inside, but the book is the clue. Still, it has several hundred pages and Jason’s writing is almost unreadable. I realize with a pang of fear that if this is the next clue; it’s not going to be easy for me to figure out.
One glance at the clock tells me it’s still far too early to be calling the east coast, but I need fresh perspective. I dial Alexa’s number and wait impatiently for her to answer.
“H’lo?” she grunts.
“Hey, Alexa,” I begin, feeling energized now that I’ve discovered something of use. “I found the next clue. It was in his car after all. I found a book and I’m pretty sure there’s a clue inside it somewhere.”
“Wait, what book?”
She still sounds half asleep so I talk slower. “The book that was in Jason’s car, it’s the Aeneid in Latin.”
“The Aeneid in Latin,” she repeats slowly back to me. “What was he thinking?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” I admit. If I knew what he had been thinking when he left the book in the trunk I wouldn’t have called her. “But it’s full of writing, notes and stuff. I figure the clue has got to be in there somewhere.”
“It’s another code?”
Even at five AM she is completely brilliant.
I take pictures of several different pages with the camera on my phone and send them to her so she can enlarge them on her laptop screen to get a better look. While I wait for her to find something I continue flipping though the pages.
“Wow, that is some wicked handwriting,” she murmurs over the phone.
“Tell me about it,” I sigh, trying to decipher a sentence on one page.
“This can’t be it,” she decides with a huff.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why would he leave you a clue you can’t read? If he was going to do this, don’t you think he’d make it a little more obvious? The text, the lunchbox, and the car, those were pretty simple weren’t they?” she says.
“Easy for you to say,” I huff irritably. But I understand what she means, even though I don’t like the idea of being back at square one again.
“Did you find anything else in the car?” she questions.
I hesitate, and because she’s my best friend, Alexa picks up on it right away.
“Kit, what else did you find?” she repeats.
“Just a picture,” I respond.
“Of what?” she presses.
“Of us, when he left I gave it to him and now I found in the trunk of his car with the book.” I’m frustrated now, because it doesn’t make any sense either.
Alexa remains silent for a moment, and then I hear her take a deep breath. “Then it has to be here somewhere,” she says finally.
“But you just said—”
“Forget what I just said. Don’t you realize what this means?”
“No.”
“It means you’re right, about all of this. What you told me before you left. He’s left you a trail, Kit, for you and you alone. I didn’t want to believe it at first because it sound so crazy, but that’s Jason for you.” She sighs heavily. “You know he wouldn’t have done any of this if he didn’t think you could figure it all out. The book is meant for you, that’s what the picture means.”
Closing my eyes, my dream from last night flashes before my eyes. If she is right, then maybe I hadn’t imagined it. There has always been something enduring between us, and now Jason is reminding me. I have to find him.
For several long minutes I continue to send her new pictures and wait while she examines them.
“Wait, I think I’ve got something!” Alexa finally says.
“Where?” I’m already flipping through the pages.
“Page sixty-two, about halfway down, there’s a word with a single letter circled.”
I spot the word she’s talking about, but it doesn’t stand out to me in any way, other than the fact that one letter in the word is circled.
“So? There are markings everywhere in the book, what makes you think this one is significant?” I ask.
“Because it’s only one letter, since when is one letter relevant to a story or translation?” she asks and then answers her own question. “It’s not. I’m pretty sure even in Latin only endings are important. So this must be it.”
She always was the smart one out of the two of us.
“So what does it mean?” I’m staring at the letter now, the letter C, as if it holds all the answers to my questions.
“It means we look for more of the same. With any luck we can put them together
and spell out a word and you’ll have your clue,” she states matter-of-factly.
“You make it sound so simple.” The last forty-eight hours have taught me to be a little more cautious.
“What makes you think it isn’t?” she defends. “His last clue was in a Star Wars lunch box.”
I frown. “This is a bit of a step up from that, don’t you think?”
“Oh, it’s clever. I’ll give him that, especially in that book. No one would ever notice it unless they knew what they were looking for,” she admits. “Well,” she says with a yawn. “You’d better get started finding the rest of the letters in the book.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Me?” She laughs. “I’m going back to bed.”
With a groan I look down at the book in my hands. I have a long way to go. Before I can get discouraged, I quickly remember Jason and the danger he is in. A sense of urgency overtakes me instead.
“Call me when you’ve got something concrete,” she says before she hangs up.
It doesn’t take me long now that I know what I’m looking for. I put together the first word easily, finding three more circled letters over the next dozen pages. True to form, it doesn’t clear anything up at all.
“Cave?” I say aloud. Maybe Mrs. Barron hadn’t been joking about Jason spelunking after all? However, I can’t think of any caves in the area. It just doesn’t make sense.
I call Alexa back, knowing I have barely given her enough time to fall back asleep.
“What, Kit?” she sighs when she answers.
“The first word is cave,” I say.
“Never mind what I said about him being clever. He really does suck at these clues, doesn’t he?” she grumbles.
Before I can defend him, my mind is already spinning in another direction. I look back down at the book, remembering that it’s in Latin, which could mean that the clue is also in Latin. Suddenly I’m wishing I had paid more attention in class last semester.
“Wait, not cave.” I pronounce it differently this time. “Cah-way, it’s Latin.”
“Of course it is,” she groans. “So what does it mean?”
I wrack my brain for a few seconds before I remember. “Beware.”
We’re both silent for a moment.
Finally Alexa speaks, “Okay, maybe he doesn’t suck at this.”
Working furiously now, I search for the next word, though I’m not sure where it ends exactly. I give it my best guess. “Virorum?”
“Come again?”
“The next word!” I exclaim. “Do you still have your textbook?” Alexa and I had been in the same class.
“Right, textbook, give me one second.” There’s a rustling sound and a loud thunk before she comes back. “Got it. Okay, vir means man.”
“Okay.” I’m thinking hard again. “Isn’t orum some kind of ending?” Mentally, I vow to pay attention in all my language classes from now on.
“Uh… yes!” she says victoriously after I hear her flipping through the pages. “It’s a noun ending for genitive plural,” she quotes from the textbook. “What does that mean?”
I seem to be getting better by the minute, or at least remembering what little I learned. “It means of, of the men. Beware of the men.” I put the sentence together.
“That sounds ominous,” she replies.
“No kidding,” I agree. “We already knew V’s men were after him. So that’s really not much of a clue.”
“Find the next word then,” she suggests.
“Alright.” I flip though the well-marked pages, searching for tiny circled letters. It takes me a while this time to find anything that remotely makes sense, even in Latin.
“What have you got so far?” Alexa asks impatiently after about a minute or so of silence on my end.
“The letters V, B, P and R,” I say.
“Wait,” she says quickly.
“I know, it doesn’t make any sense, there can’t be any words that begin with VB.”
“No, what was the name of the man at the party, the one who wants the jewels?”
“Mr. V,” I say quietly. “That’s it, beware of Mr. V.”
“Yeah, but you said men plural, who else?”
“The men he sent after Jason?” I ask, looking at my paper again where I have copied down the letters. “But who’s B?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Mr. Barron,” she states.
“Do you think so?”
“Look at it this way; Jason stole the jewels from his dad, which caused Mr. V to send his men after Jason. He wants you to know you can’t trust his father either.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s one of the bad guys.” For some reason I have never really considered his father’s involvement in all this. But it sort of makes sense. Why else would Jason be stealing from his father unless he thought he was doing something illegal?
“Well, it makes sense to me. Mr. Barron didn’t exactly call the cops and tell them his son was in trouble now did he?” Alexa points out.
This line of thinking brings me back to something I have been wondering all along. “So you think Jason stole the jewels from his father because Mr. Barron was planning on selling them to Mr. V illegally?”
“That sounds about right, doesn’t it? I mean, Mr. Barron works for the Met for crying out loud. It probably wouldn’t have been hard for him to get his hands on something priceless without anyone noticing. Mr. V is probably some black market antiques dealer.”
I have to admit, it makes sense, but I’m still having a hard time swallowing the whole story. “That doesn’t explain why Jason would get involved.”
“Of course it does,” she begins. “He obviously found out what his father was planning and either wanted to protect him from doing something illegal or he wanted to keep the jewels off the black market.”
I sigh, it does sound exactly like something Jason would do.
“Is he completely insane or what?” she asks finally.
When I don’t respond she presses on. “No time for speculation now, what’s the next word?”
I’m working faster now as I grow more desperate to get to the bottom of all this.
“Proxima,” I say at last. That at least sounds right.
“Proxima, proxima,” Alexa mutters under her breath while I wait for her to look up the word. Finally she says, “A lot of these words have more than one meaning.”
“Then just read them all,” I answer quickly, hoping one of the definitions will stand out.
“Nearest, adjoining, next—”
“Next!” I exclaim.
“Okay, most recent, following—” she continues.
“No, the word is next,” I say, cutting her off again.
“Alrighty then.”
I’m already flipping through the pages again. My eyes darting through the lines of text rapidly, scribbling down every letter I spot until I’ve formed a word.
“Mica.”
“Um, not in here,” she says at length.
“What?”
“It’s just a high school textbook Kit, not an exhaustive dictionary.”
“Find a Latin dictionary online then,” I insist, growing more and more impatient.
“Now you’re talking,” she says and I hear another thunk as she tosses the book aside and the tap-tapping of her fingers on the keyboard. Seconds later she calls out her discovery. “It means crumb.”
“Of course, next clue.” At least this is making sense so far.
“Get back to work,” she insists. I guess I’m not the only one growing impatient.
“Okay, okay,” I say, and a minute later I’ve got our next group of words. “Aeris? Aerisportus?” I spell it out for her, hoping she can figure out the translation. But before I can ask, she’s laughing.
“Oh my…what a dork,” she giggles.
“What is it?” I question.
“Airport.”
I can’t help but laugh along with her at this discovery. Trust Jason to get so caught up in w
riting a code in Latin and not even realize he’s just made up his own Latin word for airport.
“The next clue is at the airport then?” she asks.
“Heathrow,” I say, remembering where I flew in yesterday.
“Is there anything else, anything to tell you where to look or what to look for?”
I spot another circled letter. “There seems to be more.” Sure enough, there’s one final word, but I don’t need any help to translate this one. This one I actually remember the meaning of.
“Vale,” I whisper. “Goodbye.” I have that hopeless, sinking feeling again, and my breath seems to catch in my throat.
“Now wait a second, Kit,” Alexa is saying.
I can barely hear her, my mind has already gone to a different place, a place where fear once again has me in its grip.
“Why is he saying goodbye?” I ask weakly.
“Don’t panic!” she insists. “Let me look it up, just to be sure.”
I force myself to take a deep breath and wait, stomach churning. I hear her sigh, but I don’t know if it’s a good sigh or a bad one until she speaks.
“It has another meaning besides goodbye, Kit,” she says. “And personally, I think this one is far more likely to be what he meant.”
“What is it?” I hold my breath.
“Be strong.”
The room is spinning now, and I have to lay my head on the table before I can manage to speak. Finally it stops. I pick up the phone and let out a long, shaky breath.
“Are you okay?” Alexa asks.
“I think so,” I say with a small laugh. “I’m just—” I hesitate for a moment, not sure if I’m willing to admit my deepest fears. “I’m afraid they’ve already got Jason.”
“The guys that Mr. V sent after him?”
“Yes.” Yesterday I told her I was hopeful he had gotten away. But now as the hours tick by and I’m still not any closer to finding him I’m beginning to lose hope.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” she says confidently. “You just need to get to the airport and find—”
“What?” I cut in sharply. “Find what?”
