Julia lifts her palms. “For what?”
“For—” I nod to the machine again, like it isn’t completely obvious. “We need a bottled water.”
“There’s a fountain right there.”
“To use as a MAGNIYFING GLASS,” I spit out. Sheesh. Sometimes it really does seem like I am the only person in the entire universe who’s watchedNational Treasure.
In a pivotal scene that follows the main characters buying some clothes at an Urban Outfitters (which admittedly is about as random as it sounds), one of the characters rushes in with the next clue, except it’s missing something—a specific time. Just as everyone is stumped, Benjamin freaking Gates whips out a hundred-dollar bill and a nearby water bottle. He frames the bottle over his already ginormous eyeball until—BAM!—lo and behold, it becomes a magnifying glass and reveals there’s actually a clock on the back of the bill with the exact time they need to get to the next step.
It’s genius! It’s inspired! It’s…maybe a little too conspiracy-theory driven, but I don’t have time for that TEDTalk. Either way, it’s the kind of energy I’m trying to channel in this moment. I have a plan. I’m going to get us all to the next step of this hunt.
I just need a goddamned Dasani to get us there.
Julia watches me scrounge around for another minute as I turn my backpack inside out. Now that I’ve spoken the plan aloud, the stupidity of it seems to be slowly oozing from it, like a cracked egg on the floor between us. My amazing idea is…a water bottle? I feel like a person could use a flashlight and squint and it would be a better strategy than looking through a water bottle. I might as well be out here looking through a Fanta Orange for how far that’s going to get us.
Julia’s eyes remain trained carefully on my pack. Finally, she clears her throat.
“I don’t think you have any money in there.”
My shoulders sag. “I don’t. And the water bottle idea is—”
“Isfine,” Julia says, her voice straining up an octave. She shrugs. “It might be a little impractical, though.”
“Yeah,” I say, grateful she’s sparing my dignity from total impalement. “I…Yeah. Oh, wait!”
I run down the hallway toward the locker bays. 505…506…
“507,” I say out loud.
“What are you doing now?” Julia asks. “This isn’t even your locker.”
“It was—” I stop myself before I sound like a complete idiot and say this used to be halfway mine. Cam and I wereassigned lockers on either side of the school. We used to split both of them so each of us could stash books in them for the nearest classrooms. But the locker was never actually mine. It’s always been Cam’s.
“Cam keeps a magnifying glass in his locker,” I say. At least, he used to.
The metal door squeaks as it opens. I’m not prepared for the sudden smell of Cam—sandalwood and Old Spice. It makes my head dizzy and my knees inexplicably weak.
At first glance, the contents inside his locker look relatively normal. There’s a messy stack of notebooks, binders, and a few textbooks trying to hold on to their peeling spines. No magnifying glass. I sigh, ready to close the locker door again. But then I notice a piece of paper poking up from one of the binders with a message written on the top.
A Giant Btwn Streets
I pull the page the rest of the way out. Underneath the line, I see that Cam’s been trying to unscramble the letters, as if the message were an anagram.
SWAN BETTERING STAT
ENTREATS BATT WINGS
WATERGATE INT BTNSS
I smile at the last line, then reach into my backpack and pull out a pencil and my own scrap of paper. On the paper I write down:
Watergate Internal Business
Then I stuff my note, along with Cam’s, back into his binder.
“What was that about?” Julia asks as I shut his locker door.
“Just planting a fake clue,” I say. “Maybe Cam will come across it and think he’s onto something with Watergate. Or at least the coincidence will throw him off.”
