Chapter Twenty-One
A million scenarios rush through my head at once.
Ideally, I was going to pull the wooden box out, slip it into my jacket, then grab Gabriel, Julia, and Sunny and get the heck out of here.
Ideally, I wasn’t going to see Cam at school until Monday, where I would casually mention that, oh, yeah, I found the treasure from Gay Treasures.
Ideally, the whole city would already be in the middle of celebrating me.
I could see the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle as I waved the paper in Cam’s face:
SURPRISINGLY ARTISTIC-MINDED TEEN FINDS LOCAL TREASURE
But Cam’s current presence, his hand mere inches from mine, has forced me back to the drawing board.
I could scream. But then, of course, I would probably have to deal with everyone in the room looking at me.
And the security guard coming over and asking why the heck my hand is halfway inside a pipe on the wall.
Plus, I feel like a screaming person almost always leads to an ambulance, no matter what they’re screaming about.
And I just cannot be responsible for wasting a bunch of EMTs’ time and then being charged hundreds of dollars a few weeks later.
So that’s out.
I could just take the box and run. I know running isn’t allowed in museums, but I’m pretty sure if you do run, the consequence is that you have to leave.
And I would already be on my way out! Unfortunately, I do know that Cam is a way faster runner than I am.
And at this point, he’s already proven that he doesn’t mind yanking something directly out of my hands.
Think think think.
Cam plays dirty. He’s a total Ian. So, what would Ben Gates do?
Someone kneels against my other side.
“I’m open,” Sunny murmurs.
The meaning registers, and immediately I pass the box over to her. She rises and speed walks toward the central gallery entrance.
Cam stands after her. “Hey!” he calls out.
The security guard looks over at us, but Cam hardly seems to notice. He takes off after Sunny. I place the cover back on the end of the pipe and follow him.
“Wait!” I say. “Cam, stop!” I am not even attempting a museum-level volume.
Other people in the gallery, including Gabriel and Julia, all turn away from the exhibits to gawk at us.
Gabriel opens his hands in a question. But I don’t have time to stop and explain myself right now.
By the time I reach the front entrance, I see Cam in a full-out sprint across the plaza toward the new library.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Luckily, Sunny is so far ahead that I don’t even see her.
She must’ve already gone inside. I pause a moment, thinking.
Sunny’s a sitting duck in the library. We have to find a way out of this.
I turn around and see the museum gift shop behind me.
There, in a case over the main counter, is a collection of fancy pens placed in narrow brown boxes.
Another plan B.
“Do the boxes come with those pens?” I ask the person at the register.
They nod, and I grab my bank card from where I jabbed it into my back pocket after donating at the front desk. “Great. I’ll take two.”
I run smack into Gabriel and Julia in the lobby.
“Were you just shopping?!” Gabriel asks incredulously.
“No time!” I yell. “We’ve got to find Sunny. She’s running from Cam.”
“And again,” Gabriel says, “you thought now would be the perfect time to browse for a little keepsake.”
I hold out one of the two slender boxes to Julia. “Here, take this.”
The box I hand her is made of cardboard, not wood like the one hidden inside the Osher Foundation Gallery. Still, the color and shape of the boxes are nearly the same. As long as Cam doesn’t look too close.
Julia takes the box gingerly. “What do I do with it?”
I explain the plan: We have to get back to the new library. If Julia runs into Cam, she has to make sure he catches a glimpse of the gift shop box, then immediately tuck it away and run in the opposite direction. Or if she runs into Sunny first, Julia will trade boxes.
Same plan goes for me.
“What about me?” Gabriel asks.
“You can’t run,” I say. I point to the expensive camera hanging from his neck. “Not with this. Your job is to watch our backs. Try not to let Cam sneak up on any of us.”
We burst through the front doors and jog over to the new library.
“You would think,” Julia says between gasps, “that Sunny would have just gone home.”
“Oh, right,” I say, “and wait fifteen minutes at the Civic Center Plaza for the next bus to come? What was she supposed to do, run all the way across the city?”
“Good point,” Julia murmurs as we slip inside the library.
The building is way too big for us to divide and call out sections the way we normally would. So instead, Julia simply turns right into the shelves of books. I keep left, heading up the stairs and hoping I run into Sunny before I run into Cam.
Now that I’m back in this building, it seems strange that I ever imagined Gilbert Baker hiding something here in the 1980s. This building is so crisp and new. It’s all wrong for a treasure hunt. I creep behind the sleek silver-toned railing and squirm around the smooth, giant columns.
“Psst.”
I turn my head. “Huh?”
I’m looking into the children’s book room.
Giant cardboard cutouts of classic characters are scattered throughout, posted at the ends of every shelf and reading table.
I turn from Corduroy, to Paddington Bear, to Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Elephant and Piggie look suspiciously still next to the checkout desk.
“Psst!”
The sound is clearly coming from behind the White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the chapter book section. I tiptoe over to the taller shelves. Sunny and I will have to make the switch fast.
But when I turn into the aisle, I don’t find Sunny at all.
Cam motions for me to be quiet. As I rear back toward the reading tables, he reaches out for my arm. We both freeze with him holding on to me.
“You were about to trip,” he explains.
I pull out the pen box from the gift shop. I remember plan B so suddenly that my body goes into reflex mode before my brain has time to make sense of what I’m doing. I wave the decoy box back and forth in front of Cam’s face, then stow it under my jacket.
Cam scrunches his forehead. “Um…What was that about?”
Now I run. Run! I think. The plan was to show Cam the box and then run away. But I can already tell we’re off course. For one, he doesn’t seem remotely interested in what I’m holding. And two, he’s not supposed to be after me in the first place. He’s supposed to be after Sunny.
What’s going on?
“I have the box,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he says, but I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
I look around. “Where’s Sunny?”
Cam shrugs. “I don’t know. I was waiting for you.”
“No, you weren’t!” I say. “You ran out of the museum after Sunny.”
Cam rolls his eyes. “I needed to get you out of the museum so we could talk.”
I glare at him. “Well, you’re not getting the box from us. And you still owe me my flyer. I bought that!”
His face softens a little, and he slides down the book spines until he’s sitting on the carpet.
I don’t want to leer over him, so I have no choice but to sit down too.
Our knees brush at first, and I jerk my legs back.
I wish, so badly, that being close to Cam didn’t affect me anymore.
It shouldn’t affect me. After a year of silence, things between us should be beyond stale.
“I’ll give you the flyer,” Cam says, picking at the carpet. He looks up at me. “But I want back in on the hunt.”
“No way,” I say, shifting against the opposite shelf. “You haven’t done a single thing to merit joining the group. Plus, we don’t need the flyer anymore.”
“You need the book, though.”
I shake my head. “We don’t, actually. We found scans of the chapter online. We solved the book cipher all on our own. Treasure Island builder reads—”
“Architecture seven two three.” Cam nods. “I know. But I can still help you.”
“Like you helped me earlier with your stupid Watergate books charade?”
“Hey, you were the one who planted that fake clue in the first place!” Cam says.
He raises his eyebrows and smiles, like the idea of planting fake clues and stealing real clues and general sabotage is all just good fun.
He does not really care about this hunt, I remind myself.
He is only in this to win in his stupid game over me.
“No.” I start to get up. Cam crawls over and reaches for my hand.
“Please, V. Please. Hear me out. That box you have? It needs a key. I have the key.”
I open my hand like I’m supposed to find it there in my palm. Instead, all I see is Cam’s fingers interlocked with mine. I untwist myself from him.
“Then give it to us,” I say.
“Put me on your team.”
“Whose team?” Gabriel asks as he and Julia swing around the corner.
Julia sees Cam and gasps. She holds up her decoy box, then turns and runs headfirst into a life-sized Cat in the Hat.
“Run!” Julia cries, kicking the Cat in the Hat away.
“He doesn’t want the box,” I tell her. I look over at Cam. “He…wants to help us.”
Julia stands the cardboard cutout back up. She turns to Cam and mashes her hands on her hips. “Help? Now? A lot of help he was when he stole our flyer!”
Cam bows his head and stares at his shoes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him properly ashamed like this.
It should be nice. I should be reveling in it.
But for some reason, the moment feels awkward and imbalanced.
No one is on his side right now. Cam is supposed to be the guy surrounded by friends all the time.
Instead, here he is, begging to work with us.
There has to be a catch, I remind myself. With Cam, there’s always a catch.
But even as I think this, my body begins to disassociate from my brain the way it did when I waved the box around in Cam’s face. Something sharp pokes my heart, and though I’m groaning and muttering inside, I know what I’m going to do anyway. He does have the key we need, after all.
Supposedly.
I tug on Cam’s arm so that he stands up next to me, then shift the both of us toward Julia and Gabriel.
“He’s working with us,” I say. “At least until we get to the next step. Now, let’s go find Sunny.”