Chapter Six
The only sound louder than the car alarm is Sunny’s scream as she essentially jumps out of her skin.
Julia dives behind the next car over. Gabriel clamps his huge hands right over his hood and pulls it down over his face. For my part, all I can do is look back over my own ass at the source of the alarm.
An old man with shock-white hair stands at the other end of the car I’m currently crouched in front of. He clicks his key fob again, and the alarm stops with a single chirp. Despite the over-the-top reactions from Sunny, Julia, and Gabriel, the man’s focus is directed entirely at me.
I stand up straighter.
“I’m so sorry,” I say quickly. I realize then that I sound like I’m saying sorry for trying to break into the man’s car. I motion toward the tree. “I was actually looking for…I didn’t mean to get close to…”
The man blinks at me. He walks around the car to my side.
“I know you,” he says, his voice tipping into surprise. “You’re that kid from the museum.”
I consider responding that, actually, I’m seventeen, and there are tens of museums in this city that I’ve visited many times. I am simply not that kid from the museum.
But then I recognize him too. He’s an Asian American man with perfectly arched eyebrows and rounded cheeks. He grins, revealing the same brilliant, boxy smile I remember from two years ago.
“You’re the volunteer,” I say, “at the GLBT Historical Society Museum.”
The man points to his chest. “Mr. Wong.”
“Mr. Wong,” I echo. I motion toward the cluster of hunching teenagers. “I’m Ivy. This is Sunny, Julia, and Gabriel.”
Mr. Wong looks at the group, then turns back to me. “Where’s the other girl?”
“No,” I snap impulsively.
My chest tightens. I never know how to react in situations like this.
I haven’t mastered the art of correcting someone in the kind of easy way where the conversation can move forward immediately after.
I tend to face-plant right back into my own past, circling through the same unresolved feelings of stupidity and humiliation.
Despite everything that Cam’s done to me…
I still have this horrible lump of guilt for not realizing he was, of course, transgender all along.
Not that Cam gave me much of a chance to support him.
He came out a whole year after ending our friendship.
Even so, I feel like such an idiot whenever I have to address this.
How could I not have seen? Why was I such a dumbass when it came to my own best friend?
The questions begin to spiral like a whirlpool, and then I’m standing there, drowning in yet another internal crisis, while the other person looks on, utterly flabbergasted.
Which is about the way Mr. Wong looks at me right now.
“He wasn’t a girl,” I say finally.
Mr. Wong nods slowly. “I understand. My apologies. But I do remember you both. Very passionate. Very intelligent. Looking for some kind of clue from a book, if I remember correctly.”
If Cam were here, we’d do the thing where Cam would raise his hand for “passionate” and I would raise my hand for “intelligent,” because that’s just how we tended to look at almost everything. We split the world in half, divvying every attribute between us.
But today I don’t want to be Cam’s other half. Today I’m with a whole team of people that doesn’t include him. I get to be both passionate and intelligent this time.
“We’re still looking for that clue,” I tell Mr. Wong.
I pull out my phone and open a screenshot of the flyer.
Gabriel and the others gather around as Mr. Wong looks it over.
“We found this in the background of an old photo,” I say.
“I think this might be what my—what Cam and I were looking for when we met you.”
Mr. Wong leans in until he’s only an inch or two away from my screen. He squints at the text. “Oh my,” he says softly. “This is about Harvey.”
“For his birthday, right?” I ask.
Mr. Wong hands the phone back to me. “It was for the first birthday after his death, actually.”
Julia gasps. “He died?”
Gabriel looks over his shoulder at her. “He was born in 1930, Julia. Get a grip.”
“He was only forty-eight when he died,” Mr. Wong says. “Harvey was assassinated while in office as city supervisor.”
“Everyone knows that,” Sunny says, squinting hard at Julia and Gabriel.
“Not everyone.” Mr. Wong gives a pained sort of smile. He points at my phone. “And a lot of people don’t know about the party.”
“Why not?” I ask.
Mr. Wong lets out a long, heavy sigh. “This is not a conversation for a parking lot,” he says finally. He points toward Castro Street. “Walk with me.”
We turn out of the alleyway and head south on Castro.
Mr. Wong gestures at the buildings around us. “Look around,” he says. “Look at all the streetlights and walls and windows.”
We do.
“Harvey’s party never happened,” Mr. Wong tells us as we walk. “At least, not in the way we had wanted. When you have the time, take another close look at that old photo you found—the one with Harvey’s flyer. Right away, you’ll know when that photo was taken.”
“How will we know?” I ask. “And why didn’t the party end up happening? Why were people throwing a birthday party for Harvey after he died in the first place?”
Mr. Wong presses his mouth tight. He draws himself up with a breath, then turns to us.
“Do you know who killed Harvey?” he asks.
Julia and Gabriel glance uneasily at each other. Even Sunny doesn’t answer. But I remember my research with Cam from two summers ago. “Wasn’t it another member on the board of supervisors?”
“Dan White,” Mr. Wong says. His teeth grate on the name.
“The killer’s name was Dan White. He jumped through a window into city hall to avoid security.
He walked into Mayor Moscone’s office and shot him point-blank.
Then he turned for Harvey’s office and did the same to him.
That was in November of 1978. On May first, 1979, the case went to trial.
There were a lot of people in the neighborhood who didn’t know how to keep going—”
Mr. Wong chokes up for a moment.
“We were trying to wrap our heads around the grief. We didn’t want Harvey’s death to shake us from his mission.
So the Gay Democratic Club planned a huge celebration to remember Harvey on his birthday: May twenty-second.
We thought the trial would be over by then.
We thought the verdict would come out, and the party would help us all move on.
But then White’s lawyer came up with some ridiculous argument about junk food… ”
“The Twinkie defense,” I say. For a moment I have that game-show rush of adrenaline from knowing the right answer. But then I look over at Mr. Wong and realize—this isn’t some fun fact or trivia. This is something real.
Mr. Wong shrugs. “That’s what the media called it.
I don’t know what medical-sounding term they used in court.
But the defense meant a long line of bogus experts, and the trial kept getting pushed out and out.
Tension in the city was building. People were starting to worry about the timing of everything.
The jury had been deliberating for days, and we didn’t want the verdict to come out on Harvey’s birthday. ”
“Did it?” Sunny asks.
Mr. Wong shakes his head. “It came out the day before. They found White not guilty of murder.”
Gabriel’s mouth falls open. “What? But the evidence—”
“Manslaughter,” Mr. Wong says, nearly whispering. He clears his throat. “They found him guilty of manslaughter, which means the unlawful killing of a person without premediated thought.”
“But he snuck into city hall to do it,” I say. “He knew he couldn’t get past security. That’s all premeditated.”
Mr. Wong raises his palms. “That verdict wasn’t decided because of the facts,” he says.
“It came on the shoulders of bias and homophobia. Which we all well knew. So that night, we didn’t hang streamers or set up games or prepare food for the potluck.
That night we marched to city hall and battered it like it was a ship in a storm and we were the ocean.
We crashed into storefronts and parks. We wrote on buildings.
We shattered glass. We needed every scream to come with a mark so that the next morning, San Francisco would see the pain we all felt. ”
He sits at a bench and stares at one of the hanging rainbow flags.
“That’s why I said to check your picture,” Mr. Wong says quietly. “And you’ll know whether it was taken before or after the White Night riots.”
I look at the others. Suddenly, the treasure hunt seems so shallow within the wider context of Mr. Wong’s story. People fought and bled on these streets. And here we are, looking for a silly treasure like little kids.
But then I think back to that summer with Cam.
I remember the feeling we got as we read through Gay Treasures.
Gilbert Baker made this book because he wanted people to remember gay history.
He buried treasures and made a hunt based on real people because he wanted to make sure the truth itself wouldn’t get buried.
Maybe unearthing the treasure would mean unearthing all the stories like this behind it.
We can make people pay attention to the past if we can show them how truly valuable it is.
“That’s it,” I whisper.
Julia looks at me. “What’s it?”
“Our yearbook’s mission statement,” I say. I turn to the group. “The clues are based on important parts of gay history that have been largely forgotten—like Harvey’s birthday party. We have to find this thing. We can’t stop looking in a parking lot.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Gabriel asks. “There’s not a logical next step.”
“No, there’s not,” I say. I pause a moment, thinking about all the number grids Cam and I found in the chapter, all the puzzles we never got around to solving.
Suddenly the answer bursts into my head.
It’s a key! The flyer must be a cipher key for another puzzle in the book.
I snap my fingers and turn to Mr. Wong. “We need to find the full version of the flyer. Would the GLBT Historical Society Archives have it?”
Mr. Wong winces. “Hmm. Not likely.” He rubs his chin. “But there’s a used bookstore not too far from here—Bolerium Books. They carry a lot of vintage political memorabilia. I’ve seen some of Harvey’s old campaign signs there.”
“Bolerium Books…” Gabriel types the words into his phone. He looks up. “It’s eight blocks east. And there’s a bus line on Eighteenth.”
“Well? Let’s go!” Sunny barks.
I look over at the bench. “Let’s walk Mr. Wong back to his car first.”
Mr. Wong shakes his head. “You go ahead,” he says, waving us on. “I’d like to sit with my memories a while longer.”
We each thank Mr. Wong. I glance back at him as we rush away toward the next bus stop. He’s already staring off into nothing, clearly in some other place and time. His mouth twists into a strange shape that somehow looks both wistful and devastated. I know that combination of feelings all too well.