The Secret Cipher (6 page)

There were so many things I wanted to tell him. Luckily, Mom was already asleep. So I started writing.

FROM: Jacqueline Malone

TO: Isaac Romero

SUBJECT: Re: Hello

Dear Mr. Romero,

It is nice to hear from you. I never knew your name or anything about you. Great-Aunt Juniper gave me the box that you made. It was really nice. We figured out how to open it. Thank you for making it. I am twelve years old
now, but you probably know that. Why are you in prison? And when do you get out?

The response came quickly.

FROM: Isaac Romero

TO: Jacqueline Malone

SUBJECT: Juniper

Dear Jacqueline,

You are very welcome for the box. I am glad that your great-aunt sent it to you. She is a very nice person. I enjoyed working for her. I would like to talk to her. Where is she?

Where is she? I sat back in my desk chair. Should I answer that question? Great-Aunt Juniper and the urn were the biggest secrets of my life. Just because Isaac Romero and I shared DNA didn't mean I could trust him.

I could never tell Mom that my father was emailing me. She was still mad at him and at Juniper. And she was mad at me because, a few weeks before my birthday, I'd gotten caught shoplifting a candy bar. I'd just wanted to see if I could get away with it and
I was going to put it back on the shelf, but I wasn't quick enough. Mom kept lecturing me about fighting my urges to steal. I told her I didn't have any urges to steal, which was the truth.

I would never follow in my father's footsteps. I wish she'd get that out of her head.

But there were certain things I couldn't get out of my head. Like . . . did I look like him? Did I act, talk, or walk like him? And why, after so many years, was he finally writing to me?

I did know that Great-Aunt Juniper trusted him. She'd told us as much. But I needed to check with her first. She was in hiding, after all.

FROM: Jacqueline Malone

TO: Isaac Romero

SUBJECT: Re: Juniper

Dear Mr. Romero,

I can't tell you where she is but I am going to see her tomorrow. I will give her your email address. I have to go to sleep because we are leaving early. Bye for now. Jax.

FACT:
Zombies are scientifically impossible.

I
n theory, zombies are animated corpses, which means that the person dies and then some magical force reanimates the body and makes it walk around. But even though the body is technically dead, it still wants to eat. That doesn't make sense. Tyler used to talk about the zombie apocalypse. It's supposed to be caused by a plague that spreads all over the globe and turns us all into a mass of mindless undead. But we'd still be hungry.

It annoyed me when the reporter used the term “zombies” to describe those people inside Excelsior
Bank. No one had died during the robbery, so no one had been reanimated. Therefore, they couldn't be zombies. I wish news people would check their facts before scaring viewers.

It was Saturday, the morning after the robbery. I'd barely slept because I'd been watching my phone all night for updates. If the robber had Juniper's urn, this could be the beginning of a crime spree the likes of which had never been seen. Or
felt
. As my English teacher would say—a dark foreshadowing of things to come.

Why did Jax always drag me into these things?

Before we picked her up, Tyler stopped at Starbucks and got a triple-shot latte. I'm not a coffee drinker, and the last thing Jax needed was caffeine, so I bought two Italian sodas, raspberry flavored. Tyler didn't say much. He yawned between sips. Maybe he hadn't slept either. Maybe he'd been awake all night, reliving that moment in the Jefferson Memorial. When he started talking, it was all about the girl.

“Why didn't I ask her name? Maybe she'll show up at the next Magic tournament. Oh, I bet the guys at Merlin's would know who she is. Let's go ask.”

“We don't have time,” I said. We were already fifteen minutes late. Jax would be waiting.

My mom, the psychologist, would probably think it was a good sign that Tyler was showing interest in a girl. He'd never had a girlfriend. Neither had I, unless you counted the two days in sixth grade when Anna Marie Bacon pretended to be my girlfriend to make this guy named Max jealous. We were all in the same social-skills workshop. She kept hugging me and clinging to my arm. I told Anna Marie that she was breaking the personal-space rule, but she didn't care. She made me so nervous, I stayed home the rest of the week with a fake stomachache. When I came back to school on Monday, she told me she didn't want to be tied down to one guy and that she was breaking up with me. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

I think the main reason Mom agreed to let Tyler drive us on this latest quest, despite his recent illness, was because she wanted Tyler to get out of the house more often. She told him this all the time. “Why don't you go do something?” was one of her favorite things to say.

Ten minutes after leaving the Starbucks parking lot, Tyler pulled into Jax's driveway. We waited while she hugged her mom good-bye. Then she tossed her purple jacket and backpack onto the car floor. “You
guys are totally late,” she grumbled as she climbed in next to me. “I've been waiting for hours.”

“Twenty-five minutes,” I corrected, double-checking my phone. “Okay, twenty-six.”

Tyler rolled down the driver's window and had a long discussion with Aunt Lindsay, assuring her that he would drive carefully, that he wouldn't let us out of his sight, and that he'd call her with updates. Aunt Lindsay handed Tyler a box of day-old pastries from the diner. He immediately shoved an almond Danish into his mouth. Then Aunt Lindsay tapped on the back window. Jax rolled it down. “Don't worry,” my aunt said to me. “Jax won't leave your side.” She smiled in a motherly way. “Have fun!” she hollered as we backed out of the driveway.

“Leave my side?” I asked as I handed Jax an Italian soda.

“She was totally suspicious,” Jax explained. “Why would I want to go to a comic-book thingy? Mom knows I never read comic books. So I told her that you'd begged me to go because you were freaking out about the huge crowd. She knows how you get.”

“Oh.” I guess that was a good excuse. Everyone in the family knew I hated crowds.

“Thanks for the soda.” She took a long sip. “You
guys didn't tell your parents anything about Juniper, right?”

“Not a word,” I said.

“Nada from me,” Tyler said.

Jax swirled her straw. The raspberry syrup turned the whipped cream pink. “I don't like all this lying.”

I didn't like it either. I was the world's worst liar. It was hard enough to make eye contact during a regular conversation. When I lied, my mouth started to fill with spit so I had to swallow really fast. I think that looks very suspicious.

“So, what's the news on the robbery?” Jax asked.

I'd been checking my phone all morning for updates. “Excelsior Bank is under quarantine,” I said. “The shops around it are also closed. At first they were worried about radioactivity, but now the police suspect a biological weapon. But they can't explain the wind. The security cameras recorded the storm before they were shattered. The Center for Disease Control is sending in investigators.”

“They'll never figure it out,” Tyler said. “How could they? They'd have to think outside the box.”

Jax set her soda into the cup holder. “Even if they caught the thief and opened the urn themselves, they'd never guess it was made by Zeus.”

“Maybe it would be better if the police had the urn. Then at least it wouldn't be in a criminal's hands,” I said. Once again, I was trying to be the voice of reason. “They would treat it as a terrorist weapon. They'd lock it up so it couldn't hurt other people.”

“Maybe,” Jax said. “But if the government knew about it, they could use it for political reasons. And what if a terrorist got his hands on it?”

“War,” Tyler said. He gripped the steering wheel. He was the only one among us who knew how it felt to be completely hopeless. “Someone has to destroy it,” he said, his voice cold.

He was right. But did that someone have to be one of us?

We were on the freeway, with a three-and-one-half-hour drive ahead of us. I kept checking to see if anyone was following. The Camels were in prison, in England, so they couldn't bother us anymore. But they could send someone else. I was too nervous to read the book I'd brought—the latest edition of
Guinness World Records
.

“How did the bank robber get the urn from Juniper? That's what I want to know.” Jax grabbed a powdered-sugar doughnut from the box. “We've got
to talk to her. Can't you go faster?”

I cringed. Tyler could drive a virtual vehicle through any kind of obstacle course, but in the real world, it had taken him three tries to pass his driving test. “CNN said that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers,” I pointed out. “Besides, if he gets a ticket, he'll lose his driving privileges. Mom and Dad are still mad about that broken window.” During our trip to Washington, DC, Mr. and Mrs. Camel stole the secret box from Tyler's car by breaking the window.

Jax groaned. “When is someone going to invent a faster way to travel?”

“The fastest way to travel on land is on a rocket sled,” I said, taking full advantage of this factoid opportunity. “It's pretty cool because it slides along a set of rails, like a train, but it's propelled by rockets. It holds the land-based speed record at Mach eight point five.”

Jax slumped against the seat. “Whatever. Just make sure we don't take a wrong turn, okay?”

“Okay.” As usual, I was in charge of the mapping. Tyler's car was too old to have an onboard navigation system. That was fine by me because I don't like that lady's voice. Even though I know it's prerecorded, it
still sounds like she gets mad if you miss a turn. And if she gives you the wrong directions, you can't correct her. “Two hundred and thirty miles to go,” I said. Jax groaned.

Then, to my surprise, she pulled a book from her backpack. She wasn't a big reader. The only books she carried around were travel guides she'd collected from garage sales. She liked to fantasize about all the places she'd visit when she was rich and famous. But this book's title was
A Collection of Greek Myths
. “I've been reading as much as I can about Pandora and her family.” She opened the book to an illustration of a woman in a toga, holding a box. “Here she is,” she said. It looked more realistic than the comic-book picture we saw back at Merlin's. She held it up so Tyler could see it in the rearview mirror. Then she turned the page to a woman with snakes growing out of her head.

“Medusa,” Tyler said, his gaze darting between the road and the mirror. “She turns people to stone.” He knew everything about Greek myths. Jax turned another page. “That's Pan. He's a Satyr. Half goat, half human. He was the demi-god of the woodlands.”

Jax leaned over the front seat. “If Pandora and her family really lived, does that mean that all these
stories are true? Does that mean that Pan is real? And Cyclopses too?”

“
Were
real,” I corrected.

“What do you think, Tyler? Do you think they had green blood, just like in your game?”

Tyler reached for another pastry. “If Cyclopses are real, little cousin, then the line between fantasy and reality will need to be redrawn.”

“
Were
real,” I said again. Why couldn't they get that straight?

“Verb tense is the least of our worries,” Tyler said. Then he shoved half a croissant into his mouth.

I mumbled to myself that verb tense was important. It was difficult for me to accept that what I had once considered to be fiction might now be fact. I frowned, then checked my phone. “Two hundred and twenty more miles.”

Jax groaned and sank low on the seat. “Where's a rocket sled when you need one?”

F
inally! After a million hours in the car, we reached the Sisters of Mercy Convalescent Center.

Ethan almost drove me crazy. Don't get me wrong, I really love him. He is my best friend. But four hours of trivia made my brain feel like it had been pricked with needles. Tyler finally snapped. “If you don't shut it, I'm going to stuff a day-old doughnut in your mouth.” Ethan grumbled something about how no one ever appreciated him, then he plugged earbuds into his phone and listened to the news. It wasn't true. I appreciated him. Except for all that sneezing and nose blowing.

Tyler took forever to find a parking spot. I think he was stalling. I didn't blame him for not wanting to see Juniper again. For almost a month, he'd been a different person, and the urn had been to blame. But it had been my birthday present; so, in a way, I was also to blame. Sometimes I was angry at our great-aunt for sending me that urn. And other times I was grateful, because now I had proof that magic truly existed. I'd always suspected as much.

Without the urn, I might have never learned the truth about my dad.

Sisters of Mercy was a small brick building. The walkway was lined with blue pansies and the lawn was bright green and perfectly mowed. A bronze statue of a nun stood in the center of the yard, her palms pressed together in prayer. A few patients sat in the shade of a big oak tree. They'd fallen asleep in their wheelchairs.

“I can't find a place to stay,” Ethan said as Tyler set the parking brake. “Every hotel and motel is booked. The only vacancies are penthouse suites or bridal suites and they're super expensive.”

Thanks to the comic-book festival, a rock concert, and a car show, Boston was packed. “Don't
worry. I told Mom we had a room at the Best Eastern hotel,” I said.

“Uh, they are called Best
Western
hotels,” Tyler said.