Solving Zoe (12 page)

Zoe frowned thoughtfully at the carefully printed shapes. This was that cipher he'd tried to show her in the
cafeteria; she was sure of it now. It didn't look anything like that stuff in his notebook. But she'd read her name in his notebook. She couldn't explain how or why, but she really had. There was no point denying it anymore. If she tried, if she concentrated really, really hard, could she read her name here, too? And if she could—if her brain was damaged the way Lucas's was damaged, if she could actually do this one-in-a-billion incredibly amazing thing, why was she keeping it locked up inside?

The door banged open. It was Isadora.

“Zoe!” she cried. “Someone told me you got kicked out of school!”

“I didn't,” Zoe said firmly. “Big misunderstanding. Listen, I have to do something. If Dad gets back from Isaac's, can you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That I needed to go to Hubbard. I can't explain right now. Sorry!”

Then she stuffed the note back into her pocket and flew out of the apartment.

By the time she got to school, Hubbard was in full after-school mode. Three different singing groups had taken over the lobby, warming up with competing extraterrestrial syllables (“FWA fwa fwa fwa, fwa fwa FWAAA,”
“SKA ska ska ska, ska ska SKAAA”). As Zoe climbed the stairs to the third floor, some kid ran past her in fencing gear, shouting, “I CAN'T LOCATE MY SABER! TELL THEM TO WAIT!” She couldn't hear the response, just violins screeching and trumpets bleating, and tap shoes clattering in near-precision. The whole building vibrated with a strange, incomprehensible energy. It barely even seemed like school.

Signe's classroom door was open. Still, Zoe knocked on it lightly.

“Come in, whoever-you-are,” called Signe's crackly voice.

Zoe stepped inside. Right away she noticed Signe's surprise. For a second Zoe couldn't figure out what she had done that was so shocking. And then she realized:
I'm not supposed to be here. I've been not-exactly-suspended for two weeks.

“Sorry,” Zoe said hurriedly. “I just came back to talk to Lucas a minute. Do you know where he is?”

“Back here,” someone called. Zoe looked. There was Lucas, seated behind a laptop. “Be right with you; I'm just logging off,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Okay.” She stuck her hands into her hoodie pocket, and smiled vaguely in Signe's direction.

“We missed you in class today,” Signe said.

“I wasn't cutting.”

“Yes, I know.” Signe cocked her head. “I hope your time off is productive, Zoe dear. But I also believe that time off for sheer contemplation is time well spent. As the great English poet Milton once wrote: ‘And Wisdom's self / Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, / Where with her best nurse Contemplation / She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings.'”

Oh no,
Zoe thought frantically.
Now Signe was quoting Milton Somebody at her. Next she'd probably start lecturing about School Suspensions in Ancient History! What could possibly be taking Lucas so long?

Finally he shut his laptop and stood. “Hi, Zoe,” he said brightly, as if he'd just noticed she was there.

“Hi,” she said. “Can I talk to you a minute, Lucas? In private?” She said the last two words as softly as possible, because Signe was standing right there, adjusting a paisley shawl. Or maybe pluming her feathers.

“Sure,” Lucas said. “Where should we go?”

“I have a wonderful idea,” Signe said, nodding slowly, as if she were agreeing with herself. “Why don't you come home with us this afternoon, Zoe. My apartment is just eight blocks from here, and it's a lovely day for a walk.”

Zoe looked at Lucas. He shrugged, so she said, “Why not.” Which wasn't very polite, probably, but Signe merely smiled.

The walk to Signe's apartment took forever, both because Signe toddled and because she insisted on pointing out the architectural curiosities of every other brownstone. Most of what Signe was saying Zoe already knew, because Dad was equally enthusiastic about the neighborhood, but Zoe was too nervous to say anything. So she just let Signe explain the buildings and kept her head down, every once in a while stealing a glance at Lucas, who seemed to be absorbed in his own fascinating thoughts.

Finally they arrived at Signe's building, a tiny narrow town house the color of rose quartz. Signe led them through an iron gate and up a dim flight of stairs. “Shoes off,” she commanded as soon as they reached the only apartment on the second floor. Zoe kicked off her sneakers and lined them up outside the door the way Lucas did, and then followed him inside.

If Zoe had ever imagined Signe living anywhere (and right up to this minute, she really hadn't), this was exactly what she would have come up with: a dark but cozy apartment crammed with books and maps and primitive statuettes and eerie masks and complicated rugs. And if it all seemed a little—to use one of Mom's words—
cluttered
, it was supposed to be, Zoe thought approvingly. It was the home of somebody who considered the whole world her
home, who traveled to exotic places, and actually
studied
things, and then shipped home meaningful works of art she'd probably been given as presents.

“Sorry for the mess,” Signe was saying. “I wasn't expecting guests today. Although I probably wouldn't have tidied up, anyway. Ask Lucas. He'll tell you what a wretched housekeeper I am.”

“It doesn't matter,” Lucas insisted. “Nobody cares about that.”

“Aren't you sweet,” said Signe. “You're the nicest guest I ever had, Lucas. I wish you could stay forever, but alas.” She kissed the top of his head. “Well, Zoe, I know you wanted to speak to Lucas
in private
”—she peered over her glasses when she said it—“so I'll be in my library if you need me. And, Lucas, perhaps you can teach Zoe some Pigpen while she's here.”

“Some what?” Zoe asked. “Excuse me, but did you say ‘Pigpen'?”

Lucas smiled uncomfortably. “It's just the name of a very basic cipher, Zoe. When I called you a Pigpen in the cafeteria, I just meant you were a beginner. But you totally freaked out before I could explain.”

“I didn't totally freak out.”

“Oh, yes, you did!”

“Well, lovely, then,” said Signe, who clearly didn't want any part of this conversation. “Why don't you settle yourselves in the guest room—Lucas's room, I mean. Come and get me if you need anything.” She toddled off.

Zoe followed Lucas down the hall to a small denlike room with a massive mahogany desk and a red futon. Lucas went off into another room to get an intricately carved wooden chair, which he brought over to his desk and gestured for Zoe to take. Then he sat in his own much plainer desk chair and looked at her expectantly.

“Um,” said Zoe. “Can I ask you a question, Lucas? Does Signe know I read my name?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It doesn't. She said you should teach me that Pigpen code, so I was just wondering.”

“Pigpen's a
cipher
, Zoe. Not a code. You need to get that straight.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing! And forget about Signe. Did you get that note I wrote this morning?”

“Yes, actually.” She could have told him she'd seen it right before meeting Owen, but suddenly all that seemed irrelevant.

“Well? Could you read the last part?” he was asking.

She pulled it out of her pocket and flattened it on his desk. “That's really what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “I can't, but I feel as if I could. That probably sounds stupid.”

“Not at all.” He reached into his desk drawer and took out two red mechanical pencils and a stack of paper. “Okay,” he said, grinning. “The Pigpen cipher. Very old, not that interesting, but a good place to start.”

Then he hunched over the stack of paper and began drawing four funny-looking grids: two tic-tac-toe boards and two
X
's. He filled each box with a letter of the alphabet, sometimes adding a dot, sometimes not.

“
Now
do you get it?” he asked immediately.

“No,” Zoe answered, feeling alarmed. “Should I? You haven't even explained it yet.”

“Relax. It's very simple.” He raked his floppy blond hair out of his eyes. “You encrypt a message by sketching the part of the grid corresponding to the letter.” He wrote, “A is A, N is N, S is S,” and then said, “See?”

Zoe nodded. She grabbed the other pencil and rapidly wrote, in cipher: “MY NAME IS ZOE. I GO TO HUBBARD. I HAVE TWO BROTHERS, ONE SISTER, AND NO DOG.”

Lucas glanced at her message. “DO YOU WANT A DOG?” he wrote back without even consulting the grids.

“NO, BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO WALK IT AND WE LIVE IN AN APT AND MY LITTLE BROTHER WANTS TO CALL IT SIX,” Zoe wrote.

“I DON'T UNDERSTAND. REWRITE, PLEASE,” Lucas responded in cipher.

“SIX IS ORANGE. REMEMBER THAT WRITING ON MY DESK?” Zoe continued writing.

Lucas crumpled the page and tossed it into a small trash can under his desk. “Enough Pigpen,” he said impatiently. “Way too basic. Look at this.”

“Zoe,” she said, after studying it a few seconds. “It says ‘Zoe.'”

Lucas smiled. “How did you get that?”

“I don't know. It's just obvious, isn't it?” She pointed to the cipher. “The first space is a six.”

“You mean the keyword.”

“What?”

“You call that first space the keyword in this sort of cipher. Gives you information.”

“Okay, the keyword,” Zoe agreed. “So anyway, six means something, right? And if you jump six spaces every time, it spells
Z-O-E
.”

Lucas grabbed the paper back. “Do this.”

Zoe studied the letters. But this time there wasn't a keyword, nothing to give her a hint what to do. “I'm sorry,” she said finally. “I really don't—”

“It's called a Caesar shift,” Lucas said. “Invented by Julius Caesar to send during battles. It's just the regular alphabet shifted over three spaces. So
A
becomes
D
,
B
becomes
E
,
C
becomes—”

“Don't tell me,” Zoe interrupted. She stared at the letters again.

And then suddenly a strange thing happened. The message just seemed to bloom in front of her eyes, as if
it were a big gorgeous flower she had never seen before. “It says ‘FOURSCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO'!” She beamed at Lucas triumphantly.

“Baby stuff,” Lucas said, not smiling now. “We're just warming up. Try this.”

He drew another grid. And another. And then a third one that had parts missing. And then a fourth one that was backward
and
had parts missing. And a fifth one with an encrypted keyword. And then five more, each one crazier than the one before.

It didn't matter.

Zoe would stare at the cipher for a minute or two, and somehow it would just burst into sense. A few times she drew a blank, but then Lucas would say something like “transpose” or “multiple keywords.” She'd follow his instruction, and then suddenly she would be able to see. Even when he showed her centuries-old military codes from wars she'd never even heard of, or variations of those codes, or variations of those variations, within minutes they seemed brilliantly familiar to her, like a language she'd always known but had forgotten. A dazzling, infinitely sensitive language that you couldn't mess up because it didn't need talking.