Edison's Gold (8 page)

As he neared the front of the store, he saw his father through the windows of Kreger & Sons Pawnshop across the street. Tom couldn't make out much, but it looked like his dad was in a deep conversation with Pete Kreger, the shop's owner.

Talk to Pete
, his mom had said.

“I'll meet you back at the car,” Tom yelled to Noodle as he walked out of Lucky Lou's.

“Wait! Tom,” he heard Noodle call back, “you need to see this.”

But Tom was too distracted. He ducked out of sight, then scrambled across the street toward Kreger's.

P
eering through the front window, Tom saw that Pete was inspecting an item of jewelry through his magnifying glass. It was a green emerald ring. And sitting next to it on the counter was the Firestone negative, which had now been enlarged to a photo!

Tom pushed through the front doors.

“Dad! What's going on?”

“Thought I said to meet me at the car.” Tom saw a flash of gold as his dad quickly shoved something small and metal into his pocket.

“When did you have the photo enlarged? And why are you selling it?”

“This morning, and I'm not selling it. I'm just … 
getting it appraised.” His dad looked to Pete, who nodded slightly.

“ ‘Fraid the best I could do is seventy-five,” said Pete. “Even if it's authentic.”

“And what about that ring?” Tom asked. His dad was silent for a moment, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

“Just scraping together a little extra cash for the move.” He looked especially uneasy when Pete pulled the ring off the black velvet cloth and handed it over.

Tom quickly snatched it from Pete's fingers, and his heart began pounding through his chest as he looked closer. Running along the side of the emerald, formed in gold, he saw the entwined rose, the circle … it was the same symbol that had been stamped beneath the riddle. And the painting of Theodore Roosevelt.

Tom's suspicions were right. His father had to know more than he was letting on.

“It's a family piece. Your grandpa gave it to me when I was a kid,” Mr. Edison explained.

“What is it?”

“He called it his ring of the Sub Rosa.”

“What's the Sub Rosa?” Tom asked. “And how come you've never told me about it?”

His dad ran a hand through his shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, and Tom could see something was making him nervous.

“It was nothing. Just some secret club of artists and scientists and people like that.”

“From when?”

“I don't know. It started sometime in the late eighteen hundreds, I think. Lasted for about fifty years.”

One thing Tom knew about his dad: the man was incapable of lying. Even if he was reluctant to divulge the information, Tom was certain he'd eventually get what he needed out of him.

“Was Thomas Edison in the Sub Rosa?”

“Uh-huh.” His dad nodded, relaxing a tiny bit. “And according to your grandpa, who was not the most credible source, mind you, so were all sorts of people along the way: FDR, Henry Ford, even Babe Ruth, at one point.”

“Teddy Roosevelt and Harvey Firestone were part of it, too, I bet.”

Pete gave Tom's dad a wink. “You're just tryin' to jack the price up on me.”

“What was the purpose of the club? Why'd they keep it so secret?” The questions were coming faster than Tom could process them.

His dad let out a heavy sigh as he knelt down to pluck the ring out of Tom's palm. The emerald seemed to wink as he held it up to the afternoon sunlight.

“Well, as the legend goes,” his father continued, “this ring is a symbol of the Sub Rosa's promise to guard the most—” He stopped midsentence, as if he wanted to say more but thought better of it.

“What? The promise to guard the most what?” Tom asked.

“No. Forget it. I don't want to go filling your head with Grandpa's wild dreams. Especially after what you put us through this morning.” His dad's fingers enveloped the ring as he stood up and handed it back to Mr. Kreger. “How much, Pete?”

“Dad, please don't sell it!” Tom practically shouted.

“Your grandfather's imagination is exactly what got him into trouble. Kind of like someone else I know.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, Mr. Edison, but the emerald's fake.” Pete shrugged his shoulders matter-of-factly.

“See? It's not even worth anything,” said Tom. “All the more reason to keep it.” Relief washed over him. “The ring belongs to us, it's our history. Please. I'm begging you.”

His dad wavered for a moment before finally relenting.
“Fine, the ring can stay in the family. Though I don't think you're in a position to be bargaining with anybody.”

“Thank you so much, Dad.”

“Now get going. I'll be out in a minute.”

As Tom exited Pete's store, he bent low out of view, then peered back through the front door to see the golden glimmer of his parents' wedding bands reappear from his father's pocket. He watched in shock as Pete examined the rings through the jeweler's lens. Tom's stomach was now sinking into his knees. Until that moment, he'd had no idea his parents' financial situation was so dire.

Walking back to the car, he was so lost in thought and worry that he nearly collided straight into a breathless Noodle.

“Dude! I was trying to find you everywhere. Check this out.”

He pulled a black-and-white postcard out of a small Lucky Lou's paper bag. “Ebbets Field. Where the Brooklyn Dodgers used to play.”

Tom gave it a quick glance. “Cool.”

“You're not seeing it.” Noodle placed his hand over one side of the postcard, so that only the edge of the stadium's outfield wall was visible. “Now does it ring a bell?”

Tom gave it a second, longer look.

“No way.” He snatched the postcard out of Noodle's hands. “No freaking way!”

But it was unmistakable. The curved, brick edge of the stadium perfectly matched the window's view in the photograph of Harvey Firestone.

It wasn't much, but it was something.

All things considered, their punishments had been tough but manageable. Six p.m. curfew for the rest of spring break. No allowance indefinitely. And the three of them could only spend time at one another's houses under parental supervision. As upset as Tom's parents had been, the family move date had also been set for the end of the month, so they understood his need to spend every second he could with Colby and Noodle.

What they didn't know was the search to find the secret of the Sub Rosa was back on, and it had a new headquarters: Colby's backyard tent.

That way, as she had explained on IM, her nana couldn't barge in unannounced.

Besides, Noodle's house was way too tough a location, thanks to Mrs. Zuckerberg's constant, parole officer–like monitoring of her son's every move.

And at Tom's house, the packing tape and brown storage boxes were already starting to appear, and if there was a worse sight than that, he couldn't think of it.

“You're going to have to make a few choices about what comes with us and what stays behind.” Tom's mother swung into his room as he quickly minimized his IM screen. “And you know what I'm talking about.” She meant his basement lab, of course—since a lot of his stuff might be termed “junk” by the less enlightened. Just the thought of starting a new lab in Wichita gave him the sweats.

After cleaning up the family's lunch dishes as part of his punishment, Tom set off into the clean spring air. He'd been making this walk to Colby's, down Heath Street with a left onto Poplar, since he was seven years old.
The idea that in a couple of weeks he'd never pass this way again was crushing. He knew every pothole and broken sidewalk stone as well as he knew his own face.

Inside the tent they'd pitched in Colby's backyard, Tom found Noodle sitting cross-legged, pecking away on his laptop, with a mountain of snacks, candy, chips, and soda cans splayed all around him.

“I raided the pantry before I left,” he said as Tom zipped open the flap.

“Awesome.”

Tom didn't waste a second tearing into a packet of chocolate chip cookies like a hungry bear. His mom kept the cupboard stocked with dried fruit leathers and organic wheat cereal that tasted like tree bark, so it was always fun to gorge himself whenever he got to sleep over at chez Zuckerberg.

Tom was waiting for it, but Noodle had decided to avoid the subject of Wichita and concentrate instead on his laptop. Still, Tom saw that there were dark circles under his friend's eyes, and he had a feeling Noodle's sleep had been as bad as his.

To temporarily distract himself from family moves and unsolvable treasure hunts, Tom had spent part of the
night sketching a prototype for his new spoon-shaped Q-tip—infinitely more effective for scooping out earwax than the regular kind, and an invention that might, if all else failed, put his family back on the map.

“Find anything on the Sub Rosa or alchemy?” said Tom as he crumpled up and pitched the cookie wrapper before diving into some Doritos.

“No, but I did lay the vocals from
High School Musical Three
over the instrumentals off Lil Wayne's new album. I'm calling it
Reform School Remixed
.”

“Really helpful, Noodle.” Tom opened his backpack and pulled out all his research on
The Alchemy Treatise
and Teddy Roosevelt, plus the sun-and-moon riddle from the camera, a Xerox copy of the Firestone photo that he'd managed to make last night, and the Ebbets Field postcard. It was everything they had, so far.

“I only went on GarageBand because I couldn't find squat online about the Sub Rosa,” said Noodle. “It's either the most secret club in history, or it never existed in the first place.”

“Which is all the more reason this treasure hunt has to be real. Why go through all the trouble unless secrecy was absolutely necessary?”

“So what? You think Edison, like, invented a way to make gold or something?” said Noodle.

“Sure would make all our lives easier.”

Of course, the thought had occurred to all of them in private, but it just seemed too preposterous to believe. Still, the hope of a golden formula or some kind of secret treasure kept nagging at the back of Tom's mind like an invisible mosquito, whispering to him every so often and forcing him to keep digging for answers.

“Sorry I'm late. Nana made me put on SPF-fifty for the five-second walk out here.” Colby's face appeared between the flaps. She was holding a binder of papers in her hands. “I did make a tiny breakthrough, though. It's not a lot, but … I found a blueprint of Ebbets Field online, then did an advanced key-phrase cross-reference in the city archives. Words like
gold, sun, moon, Sub Rosa, Edison—
”