Chapter Thirty-Eight
I’m squished into the corner of my room with another flower in my hand. This one’s from our side yard, not the park. But I hope it will do the same job, will be my little oracle and tell me what I should do now.
Tell him how I feel.
Let him go for good.
Tell him.
Let him go.
Tell him.
“Let him go.” I sigh and drop the now-bare flower stem next to me. “Fine.”
I let my head fall back so it’s resting on the mattress. There’s the ceiling, and there’s Cam’s curling hair, and he smells so good, and he’s kissing me hard, drawing my mouth open and closed like he’s coaxing something out of me. And then I have to go and ruin it like a complete dumbass.
I groan and snap my head up. I keep ruining things. Maybe it’s best to leave Cam alone for good, like the flower said. Then I can’t hurt him anymore. Then he can find another girl to start over with. And maybe I can start over too.
I study the flower stem a moment, then pick myself up off the floor.
“Screw oracles,” I say. “I’m telling him.”
I find myself in the mirror across the room and lock onto my reflection. It’s not my job to decide what’s best for Cam. He can be the one to decide that for himself. I think about what Sunny said at The Beanery. This is about me clearing my own head. This is about my real truth.
The truth is…maybe I’m not the exact kind of gay I thought I was two years ago.
Maybe I was too chickenshit to tell Cam I liked him directly, so I sidestepped and made the smartest move I could think of at the time: come out as a lesbian with the hope that Cam would put two and two together.
But it’s never actually been about being a lesbian, I realize.
It’s about liking Cam. It’s always been about my feelings for Cam.
Cam has always been himself—goofy and charismatic, eager and sincere.
I’m guilty of so many things when it comes to him…
but calling him Cameron that day in my room doesn’t mean I don’t know who he really is.
It was a miscommunication, not a misgendering.
And I would hate for him to walk away from all this thinking we didn’t work out because I secretly wanted him to be someone else.
I want him, exactly the way he is.
And this time I have to tell him that. To his face.
I start riffling through my things, searching for Harvey’s flyer, for Julia’s notebook, for the box with the necklace and scroll. They all belong to Cam. I want him to have them, to decide what he wants to do with them. It’s time for him to get to hold all the pieces of the puzzle.
I find the flyer and put it on my desk. Julia’s notebook goes on top. I open the box to make sure everything’s inside: the encrypted poem, the drawing on the scroll, the necklace with the key—
Wait a second.
I bring the oval pendant closer and inspect it. On the left side there’s a tiny lump of metal sticking out. It looks almost like…a hinge.
“Holy hell.”
This isn’t just a pendant. It’s a locket.
I flip open Julia’s notebook and find the last two transcribed lines of the poem:
If you seek the lock and key
You will have to dig down deep
Lock and key. The necklace has both a key and a locket.
I shake my head. “Gilbert Baker, you tricksy minx.”
I slide a fingernail between the thin layers of metal on the right side of the oval and pop it open, expecting to find another note or maybe even a photo of where to dig. But instead, inside the locket itself is…a mirror.
“If you seek the lock and key,” I say, studying the locket. “So you need to see the lock and key before you know where to dig. But the locket is a mirror. Which means…to know where to dig…you have to look in…”
I lay the necklace down on my desk and pull out the scroll. But this time I don’t look directly at it. I unroll the page in front of my mirror and study its reflection.
Nothing jumps out from the picture at first. It’s still the same woman in the boxy floral dress pointing. The same bear and snake battling the octopus. The clock, the sink, the Shades…
The two boys with sailboat hats.
“Golden Gate Bridge,” I say.
The craziest idea comes over me. Slowly, I rotate the scroll clockwise, still looking into the mirror. If the sailboat hats are the Golden Gate Bridge, then that clock-shaped fountain on the Greenwich Steps should be…
“Here,” I say, pointing exactly where the grandfather clock falls in the picture.
The Union monument is just south of the steps, matching up with the drawing of the bear, snake, and octopus perfectly. And there’s the Legion of Honor in the northwest corner, where The Three Shades are depicted in the corner of the scroll.
I can feel the little hairs rising on the back of my neck. Goose bumps travel down my arms, from my shoulders to where my fingers are now digging into the paper.
“Holy shit.” I shake my head.
Gabriel and the others were right. The scroll really is a map of San Francisco.
Cam and I just had it backward.
We needed to look in a mirror to see it properly.
I look over at the woman in the floral dress, and suddenly, as if it only appeared in the last ten seconds, I notice it. Within all the flowers roping across her dress is a single strawberry over her rib cage. Exactly where Strawberry Hill is.
The woman is the aerial view of Golden Gate Park.
I read through the whole poem again.
Congratulations! You have found
The San Francisco Bonus Round
For of my treasures, far and wide
My home imbues the deepest pride
No added ciphers, codes to break
Ground yourself for what’s at stake
Read the map, find the point
Grab the shovel to anoint
If you seek the lock and key
You will have to dig down deep
“Read the map, find the point.” I start pacing back and forth across my room. “Find the point. Find the point…”
The woman’s arms are outstretched, pointing in two different directions.
There are two points on the map. So we have to figure out which one is the correct “point.” Her right arm points directly at The Three Shades.
I think of the actual The Three Shades sculpture within The Gates of Hell at the Legion of Honor museum, and the inscription just below them:
Abandon Hope
“It’s the wrong way,” I tell myself. “That’s the clue.”
I lean closer into the mirror, squinting at the object in the woman’s right hand. It’s not a mask. Not binoculars, exactly. But maybe some kind of fancy binoculars. I remember seeing them in a movie once.
Opera glasses!
But why would she be holding opera glasses?
I mean, she would need them, I guess, to see all the way from Golden Gate Park to the Legion of Honor.
But everything on the map is spread out.
It has to mean something else. She needs to get a good look at something.
She needs a good view, a great view, of—
I freeze, completely mid-thought. The next word explodes in my head like a camera flashing. I can barely breathe as I rush over to my desk and flip my laptop open.
San Francisco, I type into the search bar. I click on the maps tab.
I study the north end of the bay, checking over all the landmarks featured in Baker’s clues.
But the place I really need to be checking isn’t marked on Gilbert’s map.
It falls just outside the boundary. I tilt my head and imagine Golden Gate Park as the long floral dress, superimposing the woman from the drawing onto the map over my screen.
I follow the direction of her left arm as I scroll farther down, moving just south of Golden Gate Park and deeper into my own neighborhood until I see…
The exact same stick figure from the locket.
I knew I had seen that shape before. I had just never recognized it as a person.
Grandview Park. A GIANT BTWN STREETS.
“There it is,” I whisper.
The place where Gilbert Baker buried his treasure.