Capture the Flag (2 page)

If there had been an appropriate number of electrical outlets at Gate B-16 of the Washington, DC, airport, Anna, José, and Henry probably would have stayed strangers.

But there weren't enough outlets. Not even for a regular day. And for sure not for a day when half the flights were delayed because of a freak snowstorm that had started after midnight and grown in intensity through the morning.

Anna was tired of the kid with the video game hogging all the electricity.

“Hey! What do you think you're doing?” he yelled.

“Sorry, but I thought you'd be done by now, and I really need this outlet.” She had already unplugged his game and plugged in her laptop. “I have so many ideas right now, I'm about to burst, you know?”

The boy in the University of Vermont baseball cap apparently didn't know. He glared at her as if that would make her surrender the outlet. Anna was impressed; it was a good glare, not unlike the one her math teacher gave kids who forgot their pencils. And even aside from that, this kid looked familiar.

“Hey! I know you. You were at the museum last night!” She'd noticed him on the bench next to the other kid, who had been reading a book.

What luck that he was from Vermont, too! She could interview him about the museum thing and add to her story. Anna double-clicked and opened up a word-processing document. “What's your name?” She looked up at the boy, tapping her fingers on the space bar.

“Henry Thorn. Why?”

“For my notes, obviously.”

“What notes? I don't wanna be in your notes.” Henry reached up and pulled his baseball cap lower over his eyes. The screen of his SuperGamePrism-5000 flickered.

“But I'm a journalist.” Anna tipped her head in what she hoped was a journalistic way. He didn't need to know that the interview she was supposed to get at the museum reception had fizzled out. She still felt deflated. The reception had been fun, and she'd loved listening to Sounds for a Small Planet, that orchestra made up of musicians from all over the world. Anna had written down the names of all the different instruments and used her new mini video camera to shoot footage of the big poodle that danced along to the tunes, but she had promised her school newspaper an interview with someone famous.

Henry wasn't famous, but at least he'd be another interview. “Is there an
e
at the end of
Thorn
? Or is it just
Thorn
, like the prickles on a rosebush?”

“There's no
e
, but —” His screen flickered again. “Get your dumb laptop outta here. That was my outlet!”

“Shhh.” The voice came from a pile of luggage next to them.

Anna kept typing.

Henry spun around. “Who's shushing me?”

“Sounded like that big black backpack,” Anna said.

“Listen, I don't know who you think you are, squeezing in here with your fancy computer, but I need to charge this thing because I have a flight soon, and —”

“Ah! Don't count your owls before they are delivered,” the backpack said.

“What does
that
mean?” Henry asked.

“It means that it's unlikely you'll be going anywhere today.” A head popped up from behind the luggage pile. It sported wire-rimmed glasses and had hair that stuck out around the ears. “So you should probably settle down and relax.” Then the head disappeared behind a thick book.

“Hey!” Anna said. “You were at the museum last night, too, reading on the bench!”

The boy held up a copy of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
, whose pages appeared to be on the verge of spilling out all over the terminal. The cover was worn and torn, loved to death like Anna's copy of
Harriet the Spy
. The boy grinned. “This one's my favorite.”

“So what's with counting owls?” Anna tipped her head. “Is that from your book?”

The boy nodded. “From one of them. It's a quote from Albus Dumbledore. I'm quite fond of him. And all the world's great philosophers, really.” He held up a black-and-white marble notebook with
Wisdom of the World
written in messy red marker on the front. “I kind of collect quotes, the way people collect baseball cards and stuff.”

Henry tipped his head. “What do you
do
with them?”

“I just … keep them and … read them over, I guess.” The boy shrugged.

“I see.” Anna wrote that down. It wasn't how she would choose to use a good notebook, but to each his own. She flipped to a new page of notes. “Could you tell me your name and spell it, please?”

“José McGilligan. J-O-S-E …”

“Does the
e
have one of those little slashy lines over it?”

“An acute accent. Yes.”

“Got it.” Her fingers sounded like little bird beaks pecking at the keys.

“Dude, you don't have to tell her everything, you know.” It seemed to bother Henry that José was being a good interviewee.

José shrugged. “Might as well get to know one another. We're going to be here a while.” He nodded up at the arrivals and departures screen, where flight statuses were switching from delayed to canceled.

“Aw, man!” Henry stomped up to the TV screens, took off his hat, and threw it to the floor. It landed next to a big brown cowboy boot.

“Well, my good young man, that's no way to act.” The cowboy boot belonged to a big man with wavy dark brown hair and a white cowboy hat with a sky blue band that stretched around the rim. Tucked under the band every few inches was a Tootsie Roll — one of the big ones that rich families gave out at Halloween. Not those little ones that are always stale.

Anna gasped. She unplugged her laptop and scurried over to the man. “Excuse me, sir?”

Like José, the cowboy-hat man had no reservations about introducing himself. He stuck out a giant hand for Anna to shake.

“Hello there, young lady. I'm Senator Robert Snickerbottom. I bet you've heard the name.”

She nodded. She remembered him not only from his campaign commercials but also from the three hours she spent chasing him around the museum, trying to get an interview last night. And here he was!

“It's an honor to meet you, Senator Snickerbottom,” Anna said, edging in front of Henry. “I'm Anna Revere-Hobbs with the
Carter Creek Gazette
, and I was hoping you might have time for an interview.”

He chuckled, and Anna smelled chocolate. Evidently, the Tootsie Rolls weren't just for decoration. “Oh, no, little missy,” Snickerbottom said. “I need to get a move on. Campaign keeps me busy. Earl! Where are Chuck and Joe? And when's our plane boarding?”

Earl stepped forward, wearing an oversize cowboy hat that kept sliding down over his eyes. “They're getting food.” He pointed toward two burly men over at the Cinna-Bunny stand nearby. “As for the flight … not any time soon.” Earl pushed up his cowboy hat, and then Anna could see his face. He looked a lot like Snickerbottom, only shorter and scrawnier. Like Snickerbottom might look if he shrank eight inches and went a few weeks eating nothing but salad.

“We'd better reschedule some of my appointments in Vermont.” Snickerbottom turned back to the kids. “Here's a treat for you.” He pulled three Tootsie Rolls from his hat and handed them out. “Y'all have a safe trip.” He walked off with Earl at his heels, down the hall to Cinna-Bunny, the cinnamon bun stand with the little rabbit in the apron on its sign.

“Do you know who that
was
?” Anna squealed.

Henry shrugged. “I dunno. When are we going to leave?” Up on the departures screen, the last delayed flight flashed over to canceled. Henry looked ready to punch it.

José looked up from his book. “Tomorrow night at the earliest.”

“What are you, some kind of expert?” Henry scoffed. He looked back down at his video game, now running on batteries, and jabbed at some buttons. “Ha! Shot another one.”

“Actually, no, but my father is a TV meteorologist in Vermont.” José nodded toward a tall, thin man with red hair, red cheeks, and glasses like José's, rushing toward the CNN monitor near the ticket counter. “We just moved from San Francisco, and he's been waiting all season for a good snowstorm.” He looked back over at his father, who was bouncing like a kid on Christmas morning as he watched the storm move across the satellite map.

“He looks like my dad when he gets a new piece of legislation to review.” Anna pointed to a man in a charcoal gray suit that matched his short curly hair perfectly. He leaned against the ticket counter, talking on a cell phone, and gave Anna a quick wave.

“Anyway,” José went on. “This is a huge storm. Dad says we'll be stuck until tomorrow, at least.”

“Aw, man!” Henry kicked one of the seats.

“How poor are they that have not patience,” José said.

Henry scowled at him. “Did your man Dumbledore say that, too?”

“No.” José shook his head. “That one's from Shakespeare.”

There was a gasp from near the TV set then, and more people rushed over.

“Storm news?” Anna asked.

“No, looks like something else. Let's go see.”

“No!” Henry shouted. They stopped. He looked up at them. “Oh. Not you. It's just that I got killed again.”

“How many lives do you get?” Anna asked, walking again.

“Six.”

That seemed like more than he deserved, she thought. But she kept it to herself as she looked up at the television.

“… no leads at this point,” the anchorman was saying, “although police say they have reason to believe that the theft may have been an inside job.”

“Dude! That happens in my Super-Heist video game all the time.” Henry's thumbs twitched as he talked about it. “You get these crimes to solve and half the time it's an inside job. Like this huge bank robbery … it turned out one of the tellers did it.”

“… interviewing all possible witnesses.” The shot on the TV cut away to a picture of a gigantic flag spread out on a tilted table behind glass. Anna gasped. It was the flag they'd just seen at the Smithsonian!

It was really, really old — she had notes somewhere on exactly how old — and there were rips and holes and everything, and the stars were sort of yellowy instead of white. But somehow, it looked even more beautiful than the brand-new flag that hung outside her father's senate office back home. Not as crisp but more … dignified. How could someone steal it?

Anna imagined her mother watching this news at home, fingering the silver jaguar at her neck as she always did when she read about an art theft or something. She'd keep her phone with her every second. Sometimes, nothing happened at all. But sometimes, it would ring, and there would be a flurry of clothes and suitcases and calls to figure out who would pick Anna up from school while her mother was away. It had been happening as long as Anna could remember.

Whenever Anna asked about it, all her mother would say was that the jaguar necklace, passed down from Grandma Revere, meant she was part of a group called the Silver Jaguar Society, whose members were descendants of the world's most creative minds, and who had accepted a promise to protect the work of their ancestors however they could.

Anna always wanted to know more.
Who else was in this society? Were there meetings? What did they do on those trips?

But the questions piled up like snowdrifts, unanswered. Her mother promised Anna would learn more when she was older. For now, she said, Anna's job for the society was to be good and do her homework and help Dad clean up after dinner. If anyone asked, her mom was on a business trip.

So Anna would do her homework and help with dishes, but she also kept a special notebook for those times. Since her mom never shared details of her secret trips, Anna made them up. She filled pages with her own imagined Silver Jaguar Society missions, chasing down bad guys through the streets of exotic cities like Paris and Rome or wherever she guessed her mom might be. Sometimes, Anna wished her mom would just quit — even though it was an honor, nobody
had
to be in the society, her mom said — but mostly, Anna wished she were old enough to be packing secret suitcases, too.

Anna looked out the airport window, where the world swirled in white. Her mom certainly couldn't travel in this weather. She turned her attention back to the TV.

“… and officials at the Smithsonian are asking anyone with information to come forward immediately.”

A woman with long black hair appeared on-screen looking all teary.

“Mom!” José whipped around to his father, who held up a finger for him to wait.

“We are hoping that the person or persons responsible for this crime will come to understand that they possess an irreplaceable piece of America's history.” A label came up on the screen while the woman spoke.
MARIA SANCHEZ MCGILLIGAN
,
HISTORICAL TEXTILES EXPERT
. “It could be destroyed very easily if it's not kept under certain atmospheric conditions. Time is important. Please …” She looked directly into the camera. “Return the Star-Spangled Banner to the American people.”