The Friendship Riddle (29 page)

We arrived at the trolley stop just as Nelly was approaching. We crashed into our seats at the back of the car, and the book Mr. Douglas had given me dug into my side. I unzipped my backpack, pulled the book out, then slid it back in between two of my binders.

“That looks like an old copy,” Lucas said. “You should be careful with it.”

“It's just another copy of
The Fellowship of the Ring
,”
I told him. “He's as bad as Mrs. Abernathy, trying to get me to read Tolkien.”

“Maybe if you just read some, everyone would leave you alone.”

“Guys! The clue! The clue!” Lena reached for my bag, but the clue was in my pocket. I slipped it out, then pulled the clue from its orange envelope. “Ohh,” Lena breathed when she saw the card. Ten asterisks danced along the bottom. A set of stairs looped around the edge of the card in an impossible circuit, like something out of an M. C. Escher drawing. Ms. Tudor, our math teacher, had them all over her classroom, and sometimes I got lost in their illusions during class.

“Clock,” I said. “It's the clock tower.”

“How'd you get that so fast?” Lucas demanded. He flipped the clue over as if maybe it was written there.

“I've read it before.” And I had. In Harriet Wexler's book. It was the clue that turned the troll into nobility, and ruined the whole stinking series. It was a weird coincidence, but fortunately there were no troll-disguised noblemen around. Only Lucas.

“Well, then,” Lena said. “I guess I know what we're doing tomorrow.”

The clock tower sat on top of town hall. It was white clapboard on top of the brick building, and the chimes rang out so loud that some days I could even hear it miles away at our house.

We had planned feverishly during lunch, with Dev writing everything down and Coco making sure we stayed on task. It was Friday, so if we didn't get into town hall that day, we'd have to wait until the next week—spelling bee week. The only way into the clock tower was through a door at the end of a hall on the third floor of the building—the floor with all the public town offices on it like the Recreation Department and the tax collector. We had all been there at one time or another with our parents, whether to sign up for a
rec program or to wait while they registered their cars. It always seemed to be buzzing with people, and we hoped that would help to mask our activity.

We chose to go through the door on the side of the building rather than the grand one out front. It seemed less showy, I guess. Coco held the door open for an older woman clutching envelopes. She thanked him in a clipped voice. “Headed up to pay the taxes,” she said. She pushed the button on the elevator.

“Let me go with you,” Adam said. He tilted his head a little toward her.

We all turned to him. Helping little old ladies wasn't exactly in his wheelhouse.

“In fact, we will all go in the elevator with you,” Adam went on.

So we all climbed into the small space. The woman chattered as the elevator went up. “I've lived in Promise for all my life. That's eighty-nine years. You'd think after a certain amount of time they'd say, ‘Yep. Good and done. Consider your tax bill paid in full from here on out.' But it doesn't work that way.”

“The only two things that are sure in life are death and taxes,” Adam said. Lena elbowed him hard in the stomach.

“Death, taxes, and arthritis,” the woman replied.

“My grandmother has arthritis,” Lucas told her. “She soaks her hands in warm water to keep them loose.”

“I'll think on that,” the woman told us. “What are you all here for?” she asked. She looked each of us in the eye, hers wizened and yellow on the white part. “I was a teacher for thirty-nine years and I can smell when something is up.”

“We're working on a project,” Adam said. “Maybe you can help us.”

“This isn't one of those interview-an-old-person projects, is it? I can't stand to tell another story to another kid angling for a good grade.”

“No,” Adam said. “It is a school project, though. Sort of.”

“It is or it isn't?”

“Extra credit.”

“Grade grubbers. I knew it.”

“Not me,” Lucas said. “I just get good grades naturally.”

“Worst of all,” she told him, which made Lena laugh.

“You, I like,” the woman said. I thought she was talking to Lena, but she stared right at me. “You look earnest. Earnest is good. Are you earnest?”

“Sure? I guess so?”

“You don't sound so sure. Maybe I was wrong.”

Dev slid his foot against mine. “I have the courage of my convictions, if that's what you mean,” I said.

She smiled. “And what are those convictions?”

“They're a bit complicated to get into on an elevator ride.”

“I see. The best convictions are complicated. Like stories.”

“The truth is, we need to get into the clock tower.”

She didn't ask why. She said, “You know where the door is?”

“End of the corridor,” Dev told her. He'd studied the floor plan on the town's website. “You have to go right by the tax collector's office to get to it.”

“I see,” she said. “I don't suppose there's any harm in you helping a woman to the office.”

The door to the elevator opened, and we all emerged. Adam put his hand under her elbow. She shook it off, but then let him take it again. “For show,” she whispered. “I certainly don't need your help. Don't think for a minute that I do.”

“No, ma'am,” he said.

“And don't
ma'am
me. No one in Maine says ‘ma'am' to you unless you're dying or mean.”

We all shuffled down the hall with her. When we got to the tax collector's room, she looked over her shoulder. “None of you fall off,” she warned. We nodded. She turned back to the office. “Alfred!” she called. “You take a seat, young man. We have some talking to do about this tax bill. And let me tell you, mister, that this is going to be worse than learning the states and capitals.”

“Mrs. Valentine,” we heard from inside the office. “Lovely to see you as—”

“North Dakota!” she called. Behind her back, she gestured us to keep going.

“Dakota City,” the man said.

“Bismarck,” Lucas said, probably too loudly. But it didn't matter. We were clear.

You don't realize how big the insides of a public clock can be until you are right up beside them. The main gear was nearly as tall as me, the cogs slipping into place with three other gears. Long, heavy chains hung down and down and down into the dark below.

Outside, we could see the whole town. In the distance was our school, its flat roof covered in snow. And there was the Salt and Sea Shack. A ferry boat puffed along in the water. Closer, we could see the library: a messy, muddy gray smudge across the white snow.

The sun was setting. “Hurry up,” Dev said. “Someone might have seen us.”

“Hurry up who?” I asked.

“You,” he replied. “Find the clue.”

Lucas started to giggle.

“It's not funny just because it rhymes,” I reminded him. “Anyway, why do I need to find it? Any of us can find it.”

Dev frowned. “Isn't that why we're here? To help you with your quest?”

“It's not just my quest, is it?” Was I as alone as Taryn in the Forest of Westbegotten, after all?

Lena put her arm on mine. “The quest!” she called out.

“The quest!” the others replied, and our voices echoed around the chamber of the clock tower.

“Now, what did the clue say?” Lena asked.

Coco read from the paper: “
 
‘Climb my stairs and have no fears, all that threatens are my gears. Tucked beneath the mighty wheel, an envelope shall truth reveal.'
 
”

“The mighty wheel,” I said, looking at the gears. I didn't see an envelope. “Maybe this is another one that's gone missing. I mean, I'm sure this has been cleaned.”

Lucas shimmied around behind the gears. His feet were on the window ledge, his hands above the gears.

“What are you doing?” Coco reached out to grab him, the clue from his hand fluttering to the ground. Dev bent over to pick it up.

“I'm looking for the next one,” Lucas said. “That's why we're up here, right?”

Lena dropped down to her hands and knees and crawled under the mechanism. She sat up on the other side. “It looks the same from over here. Just gears, gears, gears.”

“Beneath,” I said. “How far beneath?”

We all looked down.

I was the first one down the stairs. Adam stumbled behind me. I caught him by the arm. “I'm okay,” he said. “I'm okay.”

We kept going down and down and down past the door to the town hall, and lower still. The only light came from the top of the tower, and it was growing scanter by the minute. “Go, go, go!” Lucas called.

We made it to the bottom of the stairs. A small chamber that the chains from the clock dangled into. There was nearly no light. Dev had a tiny flashlight on the pull of his coat's zipper, just in case he was ever caught in a cold, dark space, I guess. He held it out and scanned every corner, every inch.

Even though we'd stopped descending, it was like we were still sinking down.

“Another miss,” Coco said.

“It's okay,” I said. “I mean, we have a later one. The one about looking up in the library.”

“But you wanted them all,” Lena said. “Right?”

I kicked at the ground. “It would be nice to see how all the pieces went together.”

“Go back!” Lucas called.

Dev swung the tiny beam of light back, and I saw a glint. “There!” I said.

“Where?”

“There!” I said again.

Lucas, too: “There, there, there!”

It was a tiny metal box, like the kind you might get mints in, leaning up against one of the wall boards. It was cold in
my hands when I picked it up, and I had to really force it to get the rusted hinges to open. But inside, there it was. One yellow envelope.