“So where are the other five treasures?” Sunny asks me.
I shrug. “I don’t know. There are a lot of theories about the other icons and cities. But we do know that San Francisco is a pretty good bet.”
Sunny swivels around in her chair. “Gilbert invented the rainbow flag when he lived here. You think he might’ve buried a treasure in honor of himself?”
“Nope!” Gabriel says before I have a chance to answer. He slides to one side and shows us his screen, where he’s been cleaning up the background flyer from the yearbook dedication page. The flyer that’s changed everything.
“Whoa,” Julia says.
The transformation is definitely impressive. Gabriel has dialed out the shadows and pumped up the contrast to get the words “brate,” “vey’s,” and “Birthday” sharp enough to read. But all my focus is on the last line, which has been surprisingly clear from the beginning.
btwn 17th & 18th Streets
In the end, despite hundreds of hours combing through the book, Cam and I managed to solve only one cipher inGay Treasures. The answer we came up with wasA GIANT BTWN STREETS. Which, of course, is nonsense without any context. A giant could be anyone. “Between streets” could mean anything. Without the next step, we were lost. We needed the right clue for everything else to unlock.
“Vey’s birthday,” Julia says, her voice lilting as she tips her head to one side. “Who do we think is Vey?”
“It’s cut off,” Gabriel says. He types something into the search bar and grins as the results load. “Harvey Milk was born on May22, 1930. He was famously known as the Mayor of Castro Street. That’s pretty giant-like, if you ask me!”
I do a quick map search on my own computer.
“Oh my gosh,” I say under my breath.
Julia’s by my shoulder in an instant. “What is it?”
“Look at this,” I say as Gabriel and Sunny cram next to Julia on either side. I point to a satellite map of the Castro neighborhood. “There’s Seventeenth Street, and there’s Eighteenth Street. See where they each intersect with Castro? Now, look right in the middle.”
I draw my finger down the road, pausing at the exact midpoint between Seventeenth and Eighteenth. A tiny alley juts out from Castro Street and ends in a cluster of trees. If the Mayor of Castro Street is our giant…and there’s a perfect hideaway just off Castro between Seventeenth and Eighteenth…
“The treasure has to be there,” I say. The clues match up too well for this to be pure coincidence.
The verdict sets the team in motion, and in a moment everyone is scrambling madly around, grabbing their bags and shouting out directions for how we should get our asses over to Castro. But I linger on the map in front of me.
I don’t want to admit it out loud…but it feels wrong, somehow, to be doing this next step without Cam. He’s the one who always said Harvey Milk had to be the gay treasure of San Francisco. We even went to Harvey’s old storefront, Castro Camera, a few times, as well as the GLBT—Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender—Historical Society Museum on Castro and Eighteenth Street to look for clues.
I can’t believe we were so close.
But even more than that, even if Cam had never figured out the Harvey Milk thing…he was the one who squeezed in through my window with the book. This was his hunt first.
No, a voice in my head pipes up.
This wasourhunt. I was the one dragging Cam to museums and libraries. I was the one who wanted to talk about the gay rights movement. It shouldn’t matter who found the book first. What matters now is that I’ve found the next clue. And it’s not my responsibility to drag along someone who ghosted our friendship just to finish something we started so long ago.
In the end, Gabriel, Julia, Sunny, and I agree to grab the train over to Market Street and then ride it down to Castro. When we get on at Irving and Sixth, we can barely contain our excitement. Sunny keeps asking how much the treasure isworth and how we’re going to split it four ways. Gabriel starts counting the trees in the satellite map so we’ll know which one to look under. Julia wants to know what our cover should be if the cops show up. Everyone has their own ideas and questions, but overall we’re collectively buzzing. An hour ago we were mere yearbook staff editors. And now we’re like Benjamin freaking Gates heading down the mine shaft in Trinity Church. The intoxication of treasure hunting isreal.
By the time we get off at Market and Castro, however, the vibe has shifted considerably.
“We didn’t bring a shovel,” Sunny says in a monotone as the train clangs on behind us. She looks around at the group. “We literally just hopped on the train to go dig up treasure, and we don’t even have ashovel.”
“We could buy a shovel,” Gabriel offers.
Sunny narrows her eyes. “Where?”
“I don’t know…” Gabriel gestures down Castro Street. “Maybe there’s a hardware store around here.”
“I have a clipboard,” Julia says, pulling her backpack to her front. “That could make a decent shovel.”
I hold up my hands. “Let’s go check things out first,” I suggest. “Make sure we’re on the right track.”
