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It's a couple of days later and things have finally quieted down to something remotely resembling normal.

It turns out the man who was the fake Kellerman is a rogue antiques dealer (my dad particularly loved the idea of a rogue antiques dealer—“That's like being a homicidal Scrabble player!” he keeps saying, to no one's amusement) named Francis Chamberlain.

“Francis?” Caleb exclaims. “We were afraid of a guy named
Francis
?”

“Oh, like
Stan
is such a terrifying name,” Isabel shoots back.

The real Stan Kellerman has gathered the families together to explain that the process of locating the rightful owners of the jewels found in what the media are calling the Nazi Falcon might take years. The gold, however, will belong to me if I want to sell it or melt it down.

“Where did the gold come from?” I ask. Then I quickly add, “I don't really want to know the answer, do I?”

“No, I don't think you really want to know the answer,” Kellerman says. But then, of course, he can't resist telling. “When the Jews were killed in the concentration camps, their bodies were burned, and then gold was taken from the fillings in their teeth. So—”

I hold up my hand. “I don't want it. It's so gross and horrible.”

Kellerman shrugs. “You're half Jewish, right? We are the people of the Book, no? So maybe it would be kind of nice if the money went, let's say, to your education?”

I promise to think about it.

After talking to Caleb and Isabel (and my folks), and doing a little research, I reach a decision.

Most of the money will be split between the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and the 442nd Veterans Club in Honolulu, which is still keeping the memory and history of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team alive.

I should mention that someone lobbied very hard for some of the money to go toward the purchase of a French farmhouse table but was outvoted. Although I have to admit that his compelling argument that as a half-Jewish family we would be honoring the brave French Resistance fighters who stood up to the Nazis was both creative and pathetic.

Now that the whole story has been told, and retold, and arguments settled over who did exactly what, there's one question everyone still has: how did I come up with the proper three-number sequence to open the panel and discover the falcon?

“I knew it had to be something to do with being Japanese,” I finally tell them. “When I scratched my knee, I remembered Mom telling us that the only Japanese she knew was a silly phrase Great-Uncle Ted had taught her to learn the first five numbers.

“If you get a mosquito bite on your knee, it itches, and if you rub sand on it, the itch goes away. So…
‘Ichi ni san shi go.' Go
is ‘five' in Japanese. And what's another way of saying you have no money?”

“Broke,” Caleb suggests.

“Right, so being broke means you have
zero
money, right?” I continue.

Isabel shakes her head in admiration. “Oh my gosh, that's brilliant.”

“Five-four-zero…
Go for broke.
”

They are sitting cross-legged on the brown late-summer grass outside Caleb's house when I pull up on my bike.

Isabel is looking over Caleb's shoulder at a book of drawings he's done.

“Hey, welcome back!” I call out as I get off and join my friends.

“Hello, stranger.” Isabel smiles and motions with her head for me to see what Caleb has done. “Have you seen these?”

Caleb clears his throat. “I, uh…well, Ted, I
was
going to show you, but I wasn't sure how you'd feel, but then Isabel insisted, so—”

“It's okay,” I say. “Now I know what he's been doing all summer. I thought he was just avoiding me.”

Soon after the first news reports of the discovery of the falcon, our story went viral on the Internet. Interviews on morning talk shows followed, which, as Lila so delicately put it, “will look
awesome
on Ted's college applications!”

There was more happy news.

Mr. Yamada, it turns out, suffered a stroke when he realized that the man he had talked to wasn't the real Stan Kellerman. But he's slowly getting better. We wanted desperately to see him, but Donna insisted that as long as his health was still fragile, we'd have to wait until fall.

As for Isabel, Graham had already been planning a trip for her to visit all the cities of Europe she had read about that summer, and a decision was made to go ahead with it, since he felt getting her away from all this was the best thing.

And it would give them some really nice father/daughter time together.

Isabel sent dispatches back, emailing pictures and descriptions, with quotes from books I had never heard of, let alone read.

The one topic she didn't address was whether she was going back to her old school or staying here.

It was clear from her emails that as much as Graham loved having his daughter with him, he felt La Purisma had too many awful memories for her, and she belonged back in her world of New York City, with her old friends and teachers.

And now, with a week to go before school starts, Caleb calls and asks if I can come over.

And here is Isabel, sitting with Caleb.

Is she saying goodbye?

Caleb, as I said, has made himself scarce for most of the summer, not telling me what he was doing, simply making vague comments about “working on something.”

As for me, I managed to convince my parents that because of what happened, instead of going off to computer camp in August like we'd originally planned, I could spend the rest of the summer basically hanging out. I had it all planned that I would spend as much time as possible time playing my favorite escape games, but things didn't really work out that way.

After discovering that I'd “borrowed” Mom's ID and biked to the hospital in the middle of the night, my parents decided the best punishment was to confiscate my laptop for two months.

I think anyone would agree that this was totally unfair.

But since I had nothing else to do, I picked up
The Maltese Falcon
and ended up reading it from cover to cover. I actually got so into it that I went to the library and found other books by the same author, Dashiell Hammett, and read those as well.

As Dad says, it's not Henry James, but it's a good start.

I squat down to sit next to Isabel.

Caleb passes me his sketchbook.

Instead of the usual superheroes, he's worked out an entire story called “Three Kids and a Falcon.” The heroes are a tall blond boy, a pretty blond girl, and a short skinny kid with spiky hair named, well, Ted.

It's in a new style—nothing like the superheroes I saw in Caleb's bedroom when I visited and we called Isabel for the first time, before Kellerman and the douk-douk and the whole crazy experience that almost cost us our lives.

The story of our adventure, in comic-book form. And right under the title, he's written “Amazing Adventure #1.” I guess if he couldn't find a copy of the real comic, he'd make one himself.

“Isn't it great?” Isabel exclaims, looking proudly at Caleb.

“Yeah, but…I'm not really that short, right?”

Isabel and Caleb shoot me a look.

“Dude, you are,” Caleb says.

“Yeah, dude. You totally are,” says Isabel, without a trace of irony.

I clutch my chest. “Did…did…Isabel Archer just ‘dude' me? Have aliens from the planet California infected her brain?”

“Shut up and tell Caleb what a genius he is,” Isabel says, smacking me. Gently.

“I can't do both,” I say.

“You know what I mean, Ted. Be nice,” answers Isabel as Caleb chews on the corner of his thumb. I guess he actually does care what I think.

“You still made me look like some manga or something,” I add, “with those big eyes.”

I point to a picture of Isabel's body and remark, “And you gave Isabel—”

Isabel's eyes narrow. “He gave me
what
?”

I open my mouth and then shut it. “Nothing. It's great, just like you said.”

“It
is
great. And I was about to tell Caleb that as soon as I get back to St. Anselm's, I want to show it to these guys I know who have a webzine and see if they'll put it on their site. And who knows? One of their dads is a big guy in the graphic novel field—”

St. Anselm's.

I see Caleb's face fall, and I'm pretty sure the same expression is on mine.

“So…you're going back to St. Anselm's?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Isabel says simply.

She looks for a long time out at the traffic snaking past Caleb's house. It's impossible to read her face. We all sit silently for what feels like forever.

Finally, Isabel turns to us.

“Of course I'll go back to St. Anselm's—at Thanksgiving, when I go to New York to see my friends and family.”

“Does that mean you're going to La Purisma this year?” Caleb practically yelps like a puppy.

“Yeah.” Isabel grins.

“Wow.” I'm speechless. “I mean…that's nice.”

“I'm glad you're so pleased, Ted,” Isabel snaps.

“I'm completely stoked,” I say. “I just didn't expect you to give up such a great school, and all your friends, and—”

“That's going to be hard, but you know what was harder?” Isabel asks.

Somehow, Caleb and I know enough to just let her talk.

“When I was at St. Anselm's last year, I was the girl who lost her mother to cancer. That's how everyone saw me. And it's not their fault. It's not anybody's fault. But you have to understand. My mother was
loved
at that school. She was one of the school librarians and volunteered for everything, and she's…well, she's everywhere in that place. I need to be somewhere else now.”

Isabel rubs her eyes with the back of her hand. I don't know how to comfort her. I'm pretty sure if I try to hug her I'll get punched. Or maybe not. It's so confusing.

“And La Purisma is just as good as anyplace else.”

Isabel sees Caleb and me looking at her with such sad eyes she shakes her head.

“Let's change the subject, please. I wanted to talk to Ted about his great-uncle.”

“Sure,” I agree quickly. “He seems like he was an amazing dude.”

“Yeaah…” Isabel draws out the word, as if she's going through something in her mind. Then she adds, “Sounds like he was. But there's something I don't get.”

“What's that?” I ask.

“The notebooks. He left you the notebooks. And yet there weren't any clues or hints about the falcon in them, were there?”

“There was the key,” Caleb reminds her. “He did hide the key in one of them.”

“He could have hidden the key
anywhere,
” Isabel insists. “He could have taped it inside
The Maltese Falcon.
”

“That's true,” I admit. “Maybe he just thought the notebooks were interesting.”

“There's some pretty cool stuff in there, I bet,” adds Caleb.

Isabel looks like she's about to burst. “Here's what I think,” she says, then continues all in one breath. “Your great-uncle
knew
that even if you found the falcon, it wouldn't belong to you. He had to know that. So what if that
wasn't
the treasure he was referring to? What if finding the falcon was just a test? What if the treasure is something else? Something to do with those notebooks?”

I try my best to look like this is possible. Caleb is less charitable.

“I hate to state the obvious, but you read too many books,” he says.

“I didn't get that from a book!” fumes Isabel. “It could be true.”

“I guess…so…,” I say, trying to sound positive. “I think the treasure was something else too. But not necessarily the notebooks.”

“What, then, Mr. Know-It-All?” asks Isabel.

“Since you've been gone, and Caleb hasn't been hanging out with me, I've had a lot of time alone to think about things. Maybe the treasure was the
search.
The discovery. I don't know…the adventure, I guess. Learning to not give up. Learning to go for broke.”

Isabel and Caleb look at me without saying anything.

“I guess that sounds pretty stupid,” I finally say.

“Yeah, it kinda does,” Caleb agrees, going back to his drawing.

Isabel kicks him.

“Maybe it's both things,” Isabel suggests. “Maybe you're right
and
I'm right.”

“That doesn't make sense,” says Caleb. “It's either one or the other. He didn't say ‘treasures.' He said ‘treasure.' ”

Isabel shakes her head. “You're thinking so literally. No wonder you're so bad at escape games.”

“I am
not
so bad,” Caleb grouses. “We're talking about being consistent, here.”

“Well, you know what Emerson said,” Isabel sniffs.

“I have
no idea
what Emerson said,” Caleb shoots back.

“ ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,' ” recites Isabel.

“Who is Emerson, anyway? One of the Muppets on
Sesame Street
?” Caleb asks.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson!
God!
” Isabel seethes.

And just like that, I happily see my future. Days to come filled with bickering, clues, and discoveries, with the three of us looking into what's in those notebooks the mysterious Great-Uncle Ted left me. And maybe finally finding out exactly who created those games I SWEAR were on my computer.

Amazing Adventure #2?

I guess life can be like that.

And looking at my two friends, I realize that there are some places you don't want to escape from.

This is one walkthrough I'll happily do myself.