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“I
told
you I was leaving in five minutes.” Dad's fingers are drumming on the steering wheel.

I jump into the passenger seat, simultaneously trying not to choke to death on a major bite of toast and texting Caleb to let him know we're on our way.

I barely have enough time to slam the car door before Dad pulls out of the driveway.

“You know I have to get to the office. The 405 gets totally blocked, especially on hot days,” Dad says, easing into traffic. As usual, it's slow going, even though it's already after ten.

“Well, you're not going to like this, but—”

“I'm
not
going to stop for breakfast.”

“Sorry, Dad. Caleb's dad stranded him, so we've got to swing by and pick him up.”

“
What?
Oh…okay…” My dad's face sets into a hard expression. I think he's a little fed up with his friend, but he won't say so in front of me.

As Dad turns off the freeway and heads toward Caleb's house, I see something that fills me with happiness. “A doughnut store!”

“I guess I could use some more coffee,” sighs Dad, slowing down at the entrance.

A little while later, goodies in hand, we swing into Caleb's driveway.

“Doughnuts! Awesome!” Caleb declares as he slides into the backseat behind me. He reaches for the bag and peers in. “Chocolate cream! My favorite!” He leans back against the seat, eyes closed, mouth full of doughnut, then smears some of the chocolate icing on his upper lip. He pushes his glasses down his nose and says in his best (in other words, worst) English accent, “My eternal gratitude, good sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar. And now, to the apartment, I say!”

Even Dad has to smile.

Seeing Caleb in such a silly mood is so great. And thus the gauntlet has been thrown. I look into the now-empty bag and see the powdered sugar that has settled at the bottom. I pour the bag on my head, dusting my hair white. “Now, now, no need to hurry, Jeeves. This whippersnapper needs to learn to slow down!” I croak.

I am a riot.

Caleb cracks up as Dad shakes his head in disgust. “All I know is you're cleaning all that mess off the seats,” he says as he pulls into the dusty parking lot.

We pile out of the car, Caleb with his chocolate mustache and me with powdered sugar in my hair.

Which wouldn't be embarrassing in the least if a certain young woman in spotless khaki pants and a perfect button-down weren't waiting for us by the steps leading to the apartment.

“Isabel!” Dad says. “We weren't expecting to see you today!”

“So it seems,” says Isabel, trying her best not to look at me and Caleb.

I quickly shake the white stuff from my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Caleb frantically wiping his upper lip with the bottom of his T-shirt, leaving a lovely brown stain. Somehow, even though I know it's just chocolate, it's gross. I silently point this out to Caleb, who hurriedly tucks his shirt into his pants.

Dad, master of small talk, brings up exactly the thing I wish he wouldn't. “Ted mentioned last night that you're going back to your old school in the fall—”

Isabel shoots me a look. It's the first time she's even glanced my way, and it isn't the cheerful greeting I hoped for.

“I'm so glad your son has figured that out for me. To be honest, I haven't decided yet.”

I'm not sure if being discussed in the third person while standing right here is worse than being ignored. I decide it is.

“That's not exactly what I said. I said you're
probably
going back. Sorry if I misunderstood you. Oh, and good morning.”

Isabel smiles and shrugs. “No worries. Just wanted to clear it up. And good morning to you too.”

Dad looks at his watch and sighs. “Terrific. Now I'm never going to get a space on campus.” He makes a small bow. “I hope you don't mind my saying that I think it's wonderful you're named after a character in a Henry James novel!”

“It was my mother's idea, actually,” Isabel says in a soft voice.

Clueless, Dad continues, “Your mom sounds like she's— I mean, was…I mean—”

Isabel lets my dad off the hook. “Yes, I consider it a gift.”

“As well you should!” my dad calls as he heads back to the car. He gets in and drives off.

I stand there trying to decide whether to ask Isabel why she came back.

Maybe it's better to just leave it be.

Caleb has other ideas. “Thought you were outta here.”

“My father kind of strongly suggested I come back and help you. He thought I was being rude.”

“You weren't being rude!” Caleb yelps. “I just assumed that was your personality!”

I can definitely do better than that.

“It's great you're here!” I say brightly. “I mean, it'll be great to have an extra pair of lips.”

Isabel stares at me.

“What?” I ask.

“You just said it's great to have an extra pair of lips,” Isabel says, trying to keep a straight face.

“I did not! I said ‘an extra pair of hands.' ”

“Dude,” Caleb chuckles, “you totally said ‘an extra pair of lips.' ”

“Will you two excuse me?” I ask. “I'm going to go upstairs to the second-floor balcony and throw myself to my death.”

“Is he always this dramatic?” I hear Isabel ask as I'm heading away.

“Not usually. That was pretty lame, right? I mean, if you threw yourself off a second-floor balcony, you wouldn't die anyway. Maybe break a few bones…”

“Are you two coming up or what?” I yell.

“You
do
have the key, right?” Isabel says as they climb up behind me.

“Of course I have the key. I did say ‘the key,' right? Or did I say ‘the lips'?” I mutter, opening the door.

And I see my great-uncle's apartment again, looking just the way it did in the game I played last night.

The game.

“Ted! What's up?” Caleb asks as I stand there, mouth open, not moving.

I must have fallen asleep. Dreamed the game up. Sure. I
was
exhausted….

“My dad's coming back in a few hours,” Isabel says. “Shouldn't we get to work?”

I am standing, frozen, still staring at the corner of the room, as if something is going to jump out of the refrigerator.

“Ted, you're weirding us out,” Caleb says.

I would have seen it yesterday, right? Then again, I didn't move all the bags out of the way yesterday. Maybe…
It's easy,
I tell myself.
I'll just move the last bag, and there won't be a coin taped to the bag, and then I'll know I was dreaming.

Caleb and Isabel watch as I slowly move bags of rice out of the way until I get to the one leaning against the wall.

I feel my chest tighten.

The bag has a logo printed on it, under the words
Tokyo Fine Rice.
A small circular logo with a carp in it. But this logo has something else. A coin is taped over it.

A small silver coin with a sheaf of wheat, a shield, and the word
Italia
on it.

I take the coin off the bag and move into the center of the room.

“Wow! That's kind of random,” Isabel remarks.

“Weird…but I guess old guys do weird things, huh, Ted?” Caleb adds, trying to snap me out of it.

“I wouldn't necessarily call it weird,” I answer, heading for the old desk. It's covered in clutter, everything from old broken watches and coffee cans filled with pennies to dried-up soy sauce containers.

“Let's just imagine,” I begin, “that this is a game. You know, something my great-uncle set up. There's always something in the desk, right, Caleb?”

I push the chair out of the way and pull at the first drawer. It's locked, as it's supposed to be. And I know what I'll find under the second drawer. I pull it out and feel underneath. There's a second coin taped there. I hold it up and show the others. This one is a dull silver color, with a double-sided ax on it and the words
Etat Français.

Isabel's eyes widen. “How did you—”

Caleb nods. “Ted just knows these things. But, Ted, you really think that…?”

I walk to the opposite corner of the room. “And where there's a rug, there's usually—”

I reach under a tatty shag rug covering the stained floor.

Both Isabel and Caleb can see a third coin. “Whoa,” Caleb breathes. I look at Isabel, expecting her to be impressed at my brilliance.

Isabel's cheeks are reddening. For the first time, there's a crack in her composure. “But how did he—”

“Ted is the best there is at these kinds of games,” Caleb says, his eyes glued to me as I head into the bathroom.

“What kind of games?”

“Escape-the-room games. You have to figure out how to get out of a locked room by collecting items hidden around the place. If his uncle made something like that, Ted will figure it out.”

I flush the toilet.

I emerge with a fourth coin.

“Oh, gross,” Isabel says, making a face.

“What? All I did was flush so that the water would empty the tank behind the bowl, and then reach in and see if anything was there,” I tell them, holding up the fourth coin. “And it was.”

“That is disgusting,” Isabel says. “I hope you washed your hands.”

I put the last coin next to the other three. Each is from a different country, and the last one has a large eagle on its back, with a swastika above it.

“These are from World War Two, aren't they?” asks Isabel.

“I think so,” I say, clearing the debris from the desk.

“Maybe they're rare coins!” suggests Caleb excitedly. “Maybe this is the treasure we're looking for!”

“C'mon, Caleb. If he set the room up like a game, would that really be the end of it?” With that, I pick up the last newspaper on the desk. There are four neat flat, rounded grooves carved in the desktop underneath, just big enough to put the coins in. Caleb's eyes get wide as he sidles closer to see what I'm doing.

Carefully, I place the coins in the graves. I have to make this look convincing. Like I'm doing it for the first time. So I do it wrong on purpose. Austria…France…Germany…Italy.

“Why are you putting them like that?” demands Isabel. Clearly she gets a little snippy when she doesn't know something.

“I just noticed these grooves in the desk,” I lie, peering intently at the desktop. “See how the coins fit?”

“So he's trying alphabetical order,” Caleb says, peering over my shoulder.

Nothing happens.

“I'll try another combination at random,” I say.

This time I do the right combination: Italy…France…Austria…Germany…

I put the last coin in. There's a soft
click
and the top of the desk releases, on a hinge. I lift it up. Underneath is a small chrome lamp.

“Cool,” says Caleb, his eyes bright with excitement.

Isabel backs away. She holds her arms tightly across her chest, looking back and forth between me and Caleb.

“Okay, you've had your fun. I guess you had a real blast thinking this one up.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“This whole thing,” Isabel continues. “You know, acting strange…and then the whole trick with the coins. How long did it take you to rig that? I've got to hand it to you, you had me going for a while.”

I roll my eyes. Two can play at this game. “Why the heck would we plan to prank you when you
told
us you weren't coming back? That makes no sense.”

Isabel sits looking at the floor for what feels like forever. Then her arms relax.

“I…guess that's true…,” she says in a small voice.

“Hey, I was freaked out too, if that helps any,” Caleb chimes in.

Isabel looks at me searchingly. “So…if you didn't plan all this…how did you know about the coins?”

Now is the time to tell them about the game. Normally, I'd tell Caleb in a heartbeat. But Isabel…well, I don't know her. What if she doesn't believe me? What if she thinks I'm crazy? Tells my parents? Yeah, she's the type who would. Better to keep it to myself for now.

“Like I said, Great-Uncle Ted even mentioned puzzles in the will. I know it sounds crazy, but I woke up this morning and I just wondered if—”

“—your great-uncle set up the room like a puzzle to be solved!” Caleb finishes my thought, his voice rising.

“I dunno…I just started looking at the room the way I look at the games I play on the computer, and started thinking about what it would be like if it
was
a game, and—”

“You mean you were able to figure out where the coins were, and where they were supposed to go and everything, just because you play a lot of these games?” Isabel says breathlessly.

“Yep. Ted really is like a genius at these games. He hasn't lost one yet.”

“Wow,” Isabel says.

I decide I like the look on her face. Not admiration, exactly. Not yet. No, it's more like the kind of look you get when you watch a clip of a dog opening a refrigerator on YouTube. Like you can't actually believe a creature that dumb is doing something that smart.

Like I said, not exactly admiration, but I'll take what I can get.

I hold up the chrome light.

“No bulb.” I turn to Caleb. Why not make him look smart too, right?

“Probably a bulb somewhere in a locked drawer or something?” He starts pulling drawers open.

“Maybe…” I squint. I pretend to look around the room, knowing full well where the bulb is and how to get it. The hard part is making it look convincing. “But I just got one of the coins from a drawer.”

Caleb stops and fills in the rest of my thought. “And they never repeat the same gag twice within five actions.”

I look around the room, hands on hips. Finally, I let my gaze settle on the calendar tacked to the wall. The image up top is titled
The Beauty of Hawaii.

“That's kind of strange,” I muse out loud.

Caleb shrugs. “So what? It's a calendar. Lots of people have calendars.”

Isabel approaches it. “It's from 1986! Why keep a calendar from 1986?”

“That's what I was wondering.” I nod.

“And not a speck of dust on it! June eighteenth is circled in red, and in the circle are the letters ‘NG,' ” Isabel reports. She looks at me like I will know what that means.

Like I'm smart.

It's a great feeling, I decide.

Caleb starts guessing. “ ‘NG' could mean a lot of things, I guess….No good, need gas…or just the initials of someone he was meeting.”

“Yeah…but if it
was
some kind of clue, it would refer to something in the room,” I hint, trying hard not to blurt out what the answer is.

“The calendar's hung right next to the sink. Maybe something in the kitchen? Nut grater?” Isabel starts going through the cupboards, pulling out gadgets. She even checks under the drawers.

All of a sudden, she looks up, alarm written on her face. “Oh, no! I just realized something! What if whatever we're looking for was in the fridge! Your mother threw everything out!”

“Yikes! That's right!” Caleb looks panicked.

Isabel's eyes narrow at me. “Wait a minute. How come you don't seem disappointed?”

“It's just that I don't think he'd leave it in the fridge. He'd have to have set up the game a long time ago, so it can't be perishable. We're ignoring the most important part of this. It's a calendar. From 1986. There has to be something else in this room from 1986.”

Caleb and Isabel look around the chaos of the apartment.

“Half the stuff here could be from 1986,” Caleb moans.

“Yeah…but it would have to be marked from 1986 for us to find it, right?” Isabel answers, scanning the room. Suddenly, her eyes light up.

“Magazines and newspapers! You think?”

She looks at me for approval. This is far more fun than I ever expected. I smile. I have to admit, Isabel is pretty good at this.

A look of hopelessness fills her face. “It would take weeks to go through all these….”

Caleb catches me smirking. “He's already figured it out. I know that expression.”

“Well…,” I say slowly. “Most of this stuff is kind of random. When we were going through everything yesterday, I noticed only one group of magazines that was carefully in order.” I oh-so-casually shift my glance to a tower of yellow.

“ ‘NG.'
National Geographic,
” Caleb groans. “Of course. It's so obvious.”

“You
actually
think your great-uncle went to all this trouble?” Isabel asks skeptically.

“Only one way to find out,” I say, putting my finger on the spines of the magazines. “1984…'85…'86…January, February…June! Here it is.”

The two others crowd around me as I pull it out. There's a beautiful orchid on the cover, along with the legend
This Issue: The Flowers of Hawaii.

Isabel laughs. It's not her grown-up laugh either. It's more like she's a kid, just like us. “Wow. You'll make a believer of me yet.”

Caleb grabs for the magazine. “Let me guess! June eighteenth was circled. So try page eighteen.”

I pull it away from him and thumb through the issue to the right page. There in ink, in the margin, is written “9554.”

Caleb looks back at the calendar and smiles. He maneuvers his way over to it and carefully removes it from the wall. Behind it is a small safe. With four numbered wheels.

He enters the code into the wheels and the door swings open.

“Uncle T, you made this too easy. Even I knew that one,” crows Caleb. He reaches in and pulls out a bulb and a scrap of paper. Examining the paper, Caleb looks annoyed. “It's blank.”

“Bring them here,” I instruct Caleb. Carefully, I plug the lamp into the wall and screw the bulb in. It glows with a faint purple light.

“I should have known,” Caleb groans.

“What is it?” Isabel asks, looking down as I hold the paper under the light.

Like magic, a series of numbers appears.

“UV light,” Caleb answers. “You see it in games all the time. The ink only shows up under ultraviolet light. That's like the easiest thing in the world and I missed it.”

“ ‘475, 570, 400, 510, 650,' ” I read off. “It's a series of some kind….”

“What has three numbers?” Isabel asks. “It's not a date. Could be a serial number or something? Maybe on one of these old radios?”

“I got it!” Caleb says proudly. “You move the hands of that clock on the wall to all these times, in sequence. That's so old. It's like in practically every other game!”

Oh, poor, sad deluded Caleb.

I break it to him gently. “Only one problem. There isn't any time that's 475…or 570.”

Isabel peers closely at the page. “Turn it over,” she suggests. “There!” She points. “There's something else written on the back!” Unlike Caleb, Isabel doesn't seem to miss a thing.