Chapter Seventeen
We pack up all the forms, ribbons, and photos back into the boxes. Gabriel goes to the front desk and signs us out.
“Did you find what you were after?” the librarian asks.
They must ask everyone this. That’s why people come to a city history center, right? To find some specific piece of history that fits an assignment, or research paper, or whatever. Even so, just the librarian’s question has the four of us vibrating with excitement.
“Oh yeah,” Gabriel answers. “I’m pretty sure we found exactly what we were looking for.”
The moment we’re out of the city history room and in the hallway, we implode into the softest collective scream we can manage.
Here, I think to myself. We’re already here.
TREASURE ISLAND BUILDER READS ARCHITECTURE 723
The Treasure Island builder who reads architecture has to be George W. Kelham, the architect who designed both Naval Station Treasure Island and the San Francisco Main Public Library. As in, the library we’re currently standing in.
“So ‘seven two three’ is all that’s left,” Julia says, studying the cipher solution in her notebook.
“No,” Sunny cuts in, “ ‘Architecture seven two three.’ ”
“But George is the architect,” Julia counters. “He’s a builder who reads architecture…That was the clue to him being an architect.”
Gabriel clears his throat. “I thought the word ‘reads’ was pointing to the main library.”
TREASURE ISLAND BUILDER READS.
“Stop,” I say suddenly.
The others jerk toward me. “We’re not actually fighting,” Gabriel says.
“No, no.” I shake my head. “I meant ‘stop’ as in ‘period.’ I think you need to put in a period to figure out the clue. ‘Treasure Island builder reads.’ We know who the builder is: George W. Kelham—and we know what he designed: the navy building on Treasure Island and here. We’re in his library, right?
So if that’s the next step, and all that’s left in the clue is ‘architecture seven two three…’ ”
Sunny snaps. “It’s a call number! It’s a freaking call number!”
We rush down the stairs to the main collection. Right there, laminated in all its rainbow glory, is an old-school Dewey decimal system poster. Sunny points to the seven hundreds.
“Arts and Recreation,” she reads. “Seven hundreds—Fine Art. Seven tens—Landscaping. Seven twenties—”
She looks back at us. “Architecture.”
“Holy shit,” Gabriel squeals. “This is so legit.”
I gaze around the room, trying to figure out which direction the call numbers are heading.
Finally, I see a cluster of shelves marked as five hundreds.
As the numbers tick up, the shelves get smaller and smaller in the distance, to the point where they almost seem to disappear into the recesses of the far wing.
“This way,” I tell the others.
And even though we’re not underground beneath Trinity Church or sneaking into caves behind Mount Rushmore, I feel exactly like Ben Gates reaching the final step of the puzzle.
We creep past the sea of shelves until we reach the seven hundreds. As I get ready to turn down the next aisle, my chest swells. I don’t know what we’re about to see, but I know it has to be important. I take a deep breath and peer around the corner, and…
It looks exactly the same as any other row of books.
The shelves are the same nondescript metal shelves as the ones in the rest of the library.
The books look like the ones in every other row.
The floor’s the same gray tile—no one square slightly out of place.
There’s not a nearby lamp switch leading to a back room, or a mysterious framed picture of Harvey Milk or George W.
Kelham. There’s not even an old letter stuck to the underside of a shelf ledge.
“Do you see anything?” Gabriel asks from the back of the line.
I inch my way in, holding on to my breath like I can swallow back the disappointment.
The clues in Gay Treasures are hidden. They’re really hidden.
They have to be, or else Gilbert’s treasure hunt wouldn’t have survived for more than a week.
I follow the call numbers until I reach the section marked seven twenty-three.
There are at least a hundred books spanning down the row starting with that same number.
I poke my head over the top of the books and look behind them.
I shove the spines back and look underneath them.
I pick up an older-looking vintage book and leaf through it. Nothing. There’s nothing.
“Well,” Sunny says behind me, “this is definitely the architecture section, at least.”
I’ve gone numb. I missed something, skipped some important piece of the puzzle. But how did I miss something? We found the gay history behind Treasure Island. We made the connection to Harvey. We know the name of the builder who reads. I’ve taken all the right steps to get to this point.
Or have I?
My mind instantly goes to Cam. Would he have sifted through all that crap upstairs?
He never does the “boring research work,” as he called it that summer.
If he were on this team, he would have led us all straight to the real Treasure Island, I bet, where there’s probably a secret, hidden library in the Naval Station building.
And that secret library is probably filled with colorful jewelry and the ghosts of every fabulous gay naval sailor in history, chilling in the afterlife like a haunted Studio 54.
Meanwhile, I’ve followed the boring research route, and now I’m surrounded by a bunch of books on building codes and blueprints. I’m too practical—I’ve always been too practical. How could someone like me ever find a buried treasure?
A tear has already escaped before I can stop it. I become suddenly very interested in the floor.
A hand gently lands on my shoulder.
“Ivy?” Julia’s voice sounds so far away.
I can’t do this. Not here. And for the love of God, not in front of anyone else.
“Sorry,” I huff.
I beeline down the rest of the aisle and make a hard turn toward the back of the library.
More tears are spilling out. I press my sleeves into my cheeks as I walk.
Farther. Farther. I see a corner where the overhead light has gone out, and I sink onto the floor underneath it, my back to the wall, grateful for this pocket of shadow. I pull my legs up to my chest.
After a minute or so, someone else approaches. A thick sweater slides down the wall. I feel a tiny elbow knock into mine.
“I don’t want to talk,” I say into my knees.
“Is it okay if I do?” Julia asks. “Not about you, I mean. But what I was trying to talk about before.”
In an instant I forget how stupid I look, and I lift my head. Julia’s crouched next to me, not a notebook or yellow pencil stub in sight. She must’ve left her backpack behind in the aisle.
“Remember how Gabriel called me a Girl Scout?” Julia asks. “And you saw how it pissed me off?”
I nod.
“I actually was a Girl Scout when I was a kid,” Julia says. “And I really loved it. I wanted to be a Girl Scout for the rest of my life. I kind of remember thinking that when I graduated, all my badges would transfer into police badges or something. And then I could go be a sheriff somewhere.”
I laugh a little. “You thought Girl Scouts were like police officers?”
“Hey!” Julia nudges me and smiles. “You know that if all police officers were former Girl Scouts, the world would be a much better place.”
“Okay, yeah. True.” I bob my head. “So…what does this have to do with the treasure hunt?”
Julia pulls her knees closer and sighs. “Well, I was a kid at the time, right? So everything—fairy tales and real life—was all weirdly conflated in my head. It didn’t make sense that adults said magic wasn’t real but then told so many stories where magic existed anyway.
And getting mysterious gifts from Santa and the Easter bunny sure didn’t help.
It just made everything more”—she shakes her head—“confusing.
“Anyway, when it was time to leave the Daisy level in Girl Scouts and go into Brownies, my mom told me the bridging ceremony would happen in an enchanted forest. And on the day of the ceremony, the whole troop met out in Golden Gate Park, but in a part of the park I had never been in before. It was really mystical and quiet. Our troop leaders laid down a mirror in the long grass and told us it was a silver pond. They said there was a magic elf that would help take us from one side to the other. I still remember standing there, feeling cold and nervous, wondering when the elf would come out.”
I shift over so I can see Julia better. “What happened?”
Julia’s eyebrows furrow. “I was called first. My mom brought me up in front of the group.
The leaders read a poem about how magic was all around us.
And the thing is, I could feel it. I knew the magic was real.
They spun me around three times and had me look into the silver pond and call for the elf.
There was a rhyme, and I was supposed to say the last word.
‘Twist me and turn me and show me the elf,
‘I looked in the water and saw…’
“And the answer is obvious, right?” Julia says. “We were looking in a freaking mirror. But at the time, I was completely focused on finding that elf. I was so frustrated. I started crying and saying that I couldn’t see the elf, and I remember—”
She sighs.
“I remember that everyone, the troop leaders, the other Daisies, even my mom, started laughing at me.”
I put my hand over hers. “Oh, Julia.”
“And they weren’t even trying to get me to laugh with them.” She presses the heel of her other palm into her cheek. “They were just laughing at how stupid I was. That I was dumb enough to believe that elves and magic mirrors could really exist.”
For a moment, I picture Julia as a kid, off in some quiet area of Golden Gate Park.
I can imagine me and Cam just on the other side of a nearby tree, scaling up its winding branches, pretending we were lost in the enchanted woods.
Cam and I believed in magic then too. We believed in magic for a long time. Until one day…we just didn’t.
“You must’ve felt lonely,” I say, staring off into the distance.
“Yeah—I ended up quitting. Sunny once mentioned being a Girl Scout Brownie, and I didn’t say anything at the time, but, gosh, on the inside, I was so angry. I couldn’t believe that Sunny of all people outlasted me in Girl Scouts.”
She lets out a halfway laugh.
“But, anyway, that’s why I’m doing the treasure hunt now,” Julia says. She blinks and looks directly at me. “Because fuck my troop.”
My eyes bug out. “Excuse me, did you just say the f-word?”
Julia raises her chin. “You shouldn’t laugh at people who believe in things. Sometimes, even in the real world, magic can exist. Sometimes fairy tales can be real.”
“Yeah, well.” I sniff and stare off into the distance. “Sorry it didn’t turn out that way for us this time.”
Julia pushes herself from the wall. “Ivy, what are you talking about? We’re doing amazing. This, already, is magic.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, all those books on how to design support beams and retaining walls looked super magical back there. What a treasure trove.”
“Stop it,” Julia says seriously. She pauses, contemplative.
“You know, the reason I wanted to tell you this story earlier was because there was this ugly voice in my head saying you guys would all laugh at me and then kick me out of the group. And I wanted to get that over with before I got too involved.”
I give her a look. “Why would we have kicked you out?”
“I don’t know.” She flaps her hands. “Because you three are cool, and I’m just this nerd trying to do vengeance for my eight-year-old Girl Scout self?”
I laugh. “Are you kidding me? Girl Scout vengeance is probably the best motivation I’ve ever heard of.”
Julia laughs and stands. “So my mean internal voice was wrong,” she says. “I wonder if yours is too.” She offers me her arm.
I take Julia’s hand and stand up after her, then surprise myself by not immediately letting go.
“I feel like I’m going to give you another hug right now,” I say, in the same way a kid informs everyone in a car that he’s about to vomit. Which roughly describes how I feel about hugging.
But Julia doesn’t seem to mind. “Of course you are,” she says cheerfully, and pulls me in, technically beating me to the punch.
The crush of her sweater against my jacket feels strange, and I think boobs should really be strategically placed in a hug to not squeeze the life out of anyone. Still, it’s not bad. For a second I even relax into Julia’s shoulder as she squeezes mine.
We separate and look down the shadowy aisle of the library.
“We’re going to figure this out, aren’t we?” I ask.
“Yes.” Julia flashes a playful, unreserved smile. I can almost see her kid self shining directly through it. “We really are.”
We walk back to the others.