Chapter Twenty-Two
After searching the entire second floor for Sunny, we head upstairs to the third level of the library and creep into an empty circular room across from the elevator. Everyone scatters, checking behind tables and chairs, whispering Sunny’s name.
“Hey, Ivy. Look at this.” Gabriel calls me over to an open space in the middle of the room. The whole thing looks sort of like a flying saucer, with recessed lights along the outer edge and a dim concave arch at its center.
“Ho-ly,” I murmur as we step under the circle of lights. We tilt our heads back and stare toward the gently arched ceiling at one of the wildest murals I’ve ever seen.
The center of the sepia-toned mural opens into a swirling, ephemeral sky, where a waterfall of books tumbles down onto a group of builders.
They lift posts and hoist blocks and carve and chisel at a wall along the perimeter of the mural.
On the wall itself are names, hundreds of names.
I recognize a lot of them—Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Cole Porter—because they’re famous gay writers.
Several figures in the painting proudly wave Pride flags at the top of the wall.
One man pushes all his weight against a giant globe, trying to get it to budge.
“Is this the gay Sistine Chapel?” Gabriel asks.
It may as well be.
This is one of those paintings that makes you feel like you’ve been given a glimpse into something so much bigger than you’ll ever be able to wrap your head around.
The beginning of the universe. The start of mankind.
But it’s also not that exactly, because it’s clear that this is a very specific world we’re looking at.
In the Sistine Chapel, God touches Adam’s hand, and the world begins.
There doesn’t seem to be one God figure in this painting.
No one to jump-start this particular world into being.
Instead, it’s the people who are hard at work creating this space for themselves.
The only sign of heavenly intervention is the collection of books raining down, penned by the people who used to be on the ground working.
Cam leans close to me.
“V, you’re crying.”
“No, I’m not,” I snap, wiping my eyes anyway.
Cam looks at me and smiles that same impish smile from when we were younger. He steadies my shoulder. “I think it’s cool to cry at something like this.”
I sniff. “Not crying,” I mumble.
“I’ve been staring at it forever,” a voice croaks from the floor.
Julia screams. Gabriel whoops and leaps into the air. I jerk to my left, which unfortunately lands me directly into Cam’s chest. His arms come down over me on instinct, tight and protective. The physical contact gives my heart a second jump scare.
Sunny pokes her head out from under a reading table.
“Hey,” she says.
Gabriel clutches the collar of his hoodie. “Maybe start with that when you first see us next time? Why didn’t you come out earlier?”
Sunny crawls from underneath the table and stands, brushing herself off. I tap Cam’s forearm gently, and he lets go of me. We take an awkward, wide step apart.
“Because,” Sunny says, “I was worried Ian over here had you hostage or something.”
“Ian?” Cam scrunches his eyebrows in confusion. His eyes widen as understanding takes hold. “You showed them National Treasure?”
I hold up a hand in defense. “No, I merely told them about National Treasure.”
“I watched it,” Sunny says, and both Cam and I turn to her.
“You did?” I ask. “When?”
Sunny shrugs. “Earlier this week.”
“Because of me?”
“Because you called me Patrick Gates on Monday,” Sunny says crisply, folding her arms. “And I wanted to know if I was being insulted. For the record, I think Patrick had the right idea all along. It was stupid to squeeze lemons onto the freaking Declaration of Independence and then scorch it with a blow-dryer. Treasure map or no treasure map, that old paper would have disintegrated in five seconds in real life.”
Cam looks at me. “You said I was Ian?”
“Um…not exactly,” I explain. “I might have said I was like Benjamin Gates. And, really, you’re the one who stole our flyer and refused to give it back. So if anyone set up that parallel, it was you.”
Cam sighs. “You’ve been treating me like an Ian way before I took your flyer. Basically from the beginning.”
“No, I haven’t!”
“Excuse me?” Sunny cuts in. “But what exactly is Mr. Ian-not-Ian doing here anyway?”
“He has the key,” I say, “for the box. We need his help to open it.”
Sunny pulls a face. She side-eyes Cam.
“You are such a liar.”
“I’m not lying,” Cam says. But he doesn’t seem particularly surprised by Sunny’s reaction. Almost like he knew it was coming.
I step across the raised floor and stand next to Sunny. “What’s going on? Why do you think he’s lying?”
“Because of this.”
Sunny digs into her bag and pulls out the box from the Osher Foundation Gallery.
I can’t help gasping when I first see it.
The wood is pale and damp, maybe aspen or pine—that’s Mom’s favorite choice for flooring.
There’s an elaborate inlaid design on the latched lid.
No wonder Cam didn’t care when I waved the pen box around.
You can’t really mistake anything for this.
As I look over it now, details and all, I see what Sunny’s referring to.
“It doesn’t have a lock,” I say. I turn to Cam angrily. “You tricked me!”
But he still has that same calm expression. He points at the box.
“According to the book, there’s a message in there. It’s coded with a simple substitution cipher. I have the key to read it.”
I shake my head. “There’s not a clue or cipher in here. This is the treasure. We solved the clues and found the treasure. This is it.”
“Okay.” Cam shrugs dramatically. “I mean, you can go tell Gilbert Baker’s estate that, I guess. The book said you need a key word, and I have the key word. So why don’t you open it and find out what’s inside?”
I look over at Sunny. She gives me a tiny nod.
I turn to Gabriel and Julia. “You think we should?”
Julia smiles. “Hey, it’s not every day you get the chance to open something from a forty-year-old treasure hunt.”
“I say we open it too,” Gabriel says. He motions toward Cam. “Then we’ll know if our Ian can pull his weight in this group or not.”
“I’m not an Ian!” Cam yells.
Sunny shushes him and sits right there on the floor.
I sit next to her, then Julia, Gabriel, and Cam sit on Sunny’s other side.
The five of us come together in the middle of the room, right under the epicenter of the gay heavenly clouds.
We form our own little incantation circle. Sunny carefully hands me the box.
I hold it closed for a moment, as if the lid will pop open and ruin the surprise for me.
Julia tilts her head. “What is it, Ivy?”
“What if…” I pause. “What if whatever’s inside here doesn’t split four ways?”
“Five.” Cam coughs conspicuously.
Sunny holds up a finger. “Absolutely not,” she says in warning. “If anything, you’ve only slowed us down thus far.”
Cam scowls at her. He draws his knees toward himself and hugs them as he gazes across the circle.
“I say we split bragging rights,” Gabriel offers. “All four of our names in the papers. Or a group name. Sunset Yearbook? Yearbook Crew?”
“I mean, it’s better than Dyslexic Stoner,” Julia says, chuckling.
“Who?” Cam asks.
“I’ll explain later,” I say, waving him off. I hold up the box. “Okay, we split bragging rights. But what about this?”
Gabriel shares a look with Sunny, then Julia, in turn.
“You should keep it,” Sunny says to me. “You’re the one who spotted Harvey’s flyer. You told us about the hunt in the first place. You deserve it.”
My ears feel warm. I close my eyes, too nervous to chance making eye contact with Cam.
I can still picture the way he somersaulted into my room through the window two years ago.
His hair wild and staticky, like he had just touched something electric.
How he placed Gay Treasures in my lap like it was a precious gift.
I open my eyes, and the memory of the book transforms into the slim wooden box in my lap now. I trace my finger over one edge, thinking of everything that could be inside.
Sunny leans over my shoulder.
“But maybe at least open the damn treasure chest in front of us,” she says.
“Right,” I say, snapping out of it. “Of course. Right.”
I unlatch the clasp and press my thumbs into either side of the lid. The hinges creak in protest, then seem to exhale as they give way.
The box swings open.