The Friendship Riddle (30 page)

Back up the stairs and down the corridor, we tried to walk, but it was like the race walking we had to do in gym class.

In the tax collector's office, we heard Mrs. Valentine. “Really, Alfred, how can you be a civic employee if you don't know basic civics? The Preamble to the Constitution. Again.”

We crammed into the elevator.

“
 
‘We the People of the United States,'
 
” Lucas murmured, “
 
‘in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty—'
 
”

“You can't help it, can you?” I interrupted.

“What?”

“Answering the questions?”

He shook his head. “
 
‘To ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'
 
”

“Read the note,” Adam said. He clapped his hands together in anticipation, his leather gloves muffling the sound. “It's going to lead us to the treasure!”

“To victory!” Lena added.

“Outside,” I told them. I turned back to Lucas. “You could write it down,” I said. “The things you want to say. The answers and the things you think of. Maybe if you wrote it down, you wouldn't need to say it, and people wouldn't be so mean about it.”

“Maybe people just shouldn't be so mean.” It was Coco who said it. His cheeks were flushing like maybe he was afraid he'd embarrassed me.

“You're right,” I said. “People shouldn't be.” But what I meant was,
I
shouldn't be. I'd been as annoyed by Lucas as anyone, and it turned out he was one of the people who had helped me the most—helped
us
the most.

The elevator doors slid open, and I handed the envelope to Lucas. “Your turn,” I said.

Dev pushed open the door and we stumbled out into the cold air. The temperature had dropped and our breath seemed to freeze as soon as it came past our lips and noses. The envelope shook in Lucas's hand. “I've never been a part of anything like this before.”

“None of us have,” Coco told him.

“No, I mean a team like this. At my last school, the food was good, and none of the kids were really mean, but I never found a group to be a part of.”

“You don't say,” Adam said, and Dev elbowed him hard in the side.

“I feel the same way,” I told him, then I glanced at Lena.
“When I first found the clue in the library, I wanted to do it myself. Or maybe with Charlotte—”

“Charlotte Diamond?” Adam asked.

“Yes,” I sighed. “She found some, too. And I thought maybe it would, you know, bring us back together. It was stupid. Anyway, I didn't want to tell anyone about it, but I told Lena, and she told—”

“Everyone!” Lena said.

“Right,” I agreed. “So now here we all are.”

“Here we all are,” Lena echoed.

We all looked around the circle, our puffy breaths making a cloud between us. “It matters,” I said. “This quest, it matters to me. That's all I'm trying to say.”

“It matters to me, too,” Coco said.

“And me.”

“And me.”

“And me.”

We all turned to Adam, the only one of us who hadn't spoken yet.

“Jeez!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “It matters! It matters! So let's read the clue before we freeze and they make us a sculpture like that fish lady.”

I peered over Lucas's shoulder as he read. This card had a Celtic knot at its top center that had tails that reached down to encircle the card. Along the bottom edge of the card were eleven asterisks.

“It fits!” I cried out. “I found the clue in the mythology section.”

“The two ninety-twos,” Lucas said. “Greek and Roman religion.”

“You memorized the Dewey decimal system?” Adam asked him.

“Just the things I care about. Five ninety-two, invertebrates. Seven ninety-two, stage presentations. That's usually where you can find books about magic.”

“And you looked up?” Dev asked me.

“Yeah,” I said, and the truth of it came crushing down on me: we'd been all over this town chasing clues, and they led me right back to where I had started all by myself. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing'?” Lucas asked.

“I mean I looked up at the ceiling, I looked all around the shelf it was on. There was nothing there. And now the library is gone.”

In the fading light I could see all their faces looking tired and pulled down. This was my fault. I had gotten them all involved, and really, hadn't I known from the start that it wouldn't lead anywhere? I just didn't realize it would be over so soon. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“You don't need to be sorry,” Coco said, but his voice had that low and hollow foghorn quality.

“Yeah,” Lena said. “It was fun while it lasted, wasn't it, guys?”

No one answered.

Lena patted me on the back.

“We were so close,” I said. “Just two more—that's what it says.”

“Come on,” Coco said. “We need to get back to Lena's house. Our parents will be waiting for us.”

“Sure,” I said. And everyone agreed.

“It was fun,” Dev said to me as we walked along. “Isn't that the point of a quest?”

I thought of Taryn Greenbottom. Fun wasn't what she
was after. Satisfaction. Completion. I shook my head. “No. The point of a quest is finishing it.”

“There will be other quests,” Coco said.

Which was easy for him to say since he had a whole life planned around adventures digging up bones.

“But not this quest,” I said. “Not these clues. I just wanted to see it through. I wanted to see where it led and I wanted—” I had already told them so much—too much, maybe. “I wanted those answers.”

“What was the question?” Lucas asked.

“I guess I wanted to know that, too.”

We came around the corner to Lena's warm house, all lit up from inside.

No finish. No prize. No nothing. Without those last two clues, the rest were just slips of paper.

Mum's plane was delayed again, until Monday, the day before the bee. “Big bummer, I know,” she said over the computer. “But the snow is coming down in pellets, is what I heard.”

I looked out the window, but it was hard to tell if the snow was any different. “You've been gone over a month,” I told her.

“Don't I know it!”

I'd been counting on her to distract me from the stupid, pointless circle I had made with the clues. I'd led my friends all over town when there was no way we could have solved the final riddle. Some quest; Taryn Greenbottom never would've gotten caught up in something so foolish.

“What did you do for underwear?” I asked her.

“Underwear?” She laughed. “You can drop off your laundry at the hotel.”

“Laundry. Room service. It's no wonder you don't want to come back.”

The screen flickered and when it un-pixelated, Mum's face seemed to have been cast in shadow. “Ruth, you know that isn't true, don't you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Of course. I'm just suffering from angst.
A-N-G-S-T
. Angst.”

She didn't smile, not even a little at the corners of her lips. “It'll be different when I get home. You'll see. I'm working on some changes and—”

The screen froze with her face contorted like a Halloween mask: eyes looking up, eyebrows to the sky, her lips pressed forward like she was chewing something really tough.

“Mum,” I said. “Mum? Can you hear me? You're frozen.”

Her goofy-twisted face stayed on the screen. “Well, if you can hear me, I love you. See you soon.”

I waited another moment, and when she made no noise, I clicked on the red button to send her back into cyberspace.

Mum and Mom made plans for me to go to Lena's after school on Monday while Mom went to the airport, but when Mom came to pick me up, she was alone. The spelling bee was the next day and Mum's flight had been delayed again. My mind
started jittering on the car ride home from Lena's house. It was like I had a whole bunch of letter tiles in my head and they were all bouncing around. “She'll be here,” Mom said. “In the morning, when you wake up. She'll be here.”

“Sure,” I said.

“She's at the airport. They haven't canceled the flight yet.”

“Sure,” I said again, and watched the snow fall onto our windshield.

We talked to her on the computer again when we got home. She sat on the floor in the airport in front of the big windows that looked out on the tarmac, so it looked like she was floating in space.

“I will be there,” she insisted.

“It's supposed to snow again,” I told her.

“I will be there,” she promised. “If I have to commandeer a pack of sled dogs, I will be there.”

Mom sat next to me, her knees drawn up toward her chest with a cup of tea resting on them. She was wearing a purple robe that was made of fleece at least three inches thick. On her feet she had bunny slippers that Mum gave her as a joke, but which she had worn so much, the bottoms were nearly gone and the bunnies' pink noses had turned a grayish brown. “And I will definitely be there. I have the day off of work, and Margie knows not to even think of calling me.”

“Tenet,” Mum said.

“Tenet?” I repeated back to her. A tenet was a belief or principle. Was she trying to tell me it was a matter of
principle that she would be back? Beliefs can't control the weather.

“It's on the Words You Must Know list, not to be confused with ‘tenant.'
 
”

“
T-E-N-E-T
,
 
” I said. “Tenet.” I had studied the word with Coco—the whole list, actually. “I'm all set, Mum. I've been studying like crazy.”

“With Coco,” Mom said. “I can't wait to meet Coco. I could stay awake at night wondering what type of parents named their child Coco.”

“It's not his real name. That's Christopher.”

“Oh. That's a bit of a disappointment.”

“Well, I'll have to thank Christopher for filling in for me. Tomorrow. When I meet him. Because I will be there.”

The snow in the backyard weighed the boughs of the pine tree down so far, they touched the ground. Could someone make a home under there? “A tree fort,” I said. “We should make a tree fort when you get home. Instead of a snow fort. A snow tree fort.”

“Okay,” Mum said. Her eyes flicked over to Mom's face.

“Something we talked about,” Mom said.

“Let's talk about your birthday,” Mum said. “If this friend of yours is really a foodie, we ought to go down to Portland. The airline magazine had a whole feature on the restaurants of Portland. I had no idea! It's a real food paradise.”

“Sure,” I said, as if that hadn't been the plan all along. Mum was too far away to know what was going on anymore.

“I'll send you a link to the article, and you pick one. We'll go Saturday.”

“Okay,” I said again. I still thought it would be fun to have a party with everyone—Lena, Coco, Dev, Adam, and Lucas—but didn't feel much like celebrating. Anyway, I didn't want to start the inevitable discussion broaching such an idea would bring. Their joy would be just a little too much to bear.

“
 
‘Nauseous,'
 
” Mum said.

Coco and I had wondered why this was on the commonly confused word list. It was the definitions that were the problems. Most people say they feel nauseous when they are feeling sick, but really “nauseous” means “
causing
nausea.” “Nauseated” is the word you should use. Maybe Mum would find this interesting. Maybe she already knew. “Nauseous.
N-A-U-S-E-O-U-S.
Nauseous.”