Mom’s right: It’s way easier for me to be practical than conceptual. But I’m sure as hell going to do my best to be both anyway.
Chapter Sixteen
We merge into a single-file line up the stairs and to the sixth floor. Gabriel checks us into the San Francisco History Center, and the librarian on duty brings us over to one of the rows of long, narrow tables that stretch across the room end to end. Two cardboard boxes sit in the middle of our assigned table.
“This is it,” Gabriel says. He reaches for one of the lids.
“Ahem.” The librarian slides a much smaller open box toward us. Inside is a stack of white cloth gloves.
“To protect the documents,” they say. Julia starts writing this down. “Also, no pens.”
Julia looks up, startled. “No pens?”
The librarian points again at the box. I move the gloves to one side and find a set of stubby yellow pencils, the same kind the library puts out on reference desks for taking down call numbers.
“Here.” I hand Julia one of the stubs. She narrows her eyes at it as though I’ve handed her a used cigarette from a parkinglot. Then she lets out a deep, unappreciative sigh and finishes the line in her notebook with the pencil.
“You can photograph whatever you’d like,” the librarian tells us, eyeing Gabriel’s camera. “And if you need any full-resolution scans, I can send you downstairs to collect them at the end of your appointment.”
“Thank you,” I say.
The librarian leaves, and Gabriel puts on the first pair of gloves. He places a hand on either box and takes off both lids with a flourish.
“Ta-da!” he says. We all lean over to peer inside.
Julia gasps.
Sunny shakes her head. “Holy hell.”
I don’t know what I was expecting—maybe a collection of labeled files we could sort through the way I’ve seen people do at law offices. We’d find everything written about the island, sorted out year by year. Maybe there would even be a file labeledHarvey Milk, and we’d start there.
In reality, the boxes are less like the inside of a filing cabinet and more like the box someone brings home from work right after they’ve been fired on the spot. Piles of photos tip over in every direction, crushed alongside county fair ribbons, a tiny bowling trophy, and random wrinkled pages that probably haven’t seen the inside of a folder in their entire existence. A few of the papers look way too much like empty hamburger wrappers for my liking.
“Welcome to city archives.” The four of us look over at the front desk. The librarian gives us a tight smile. “Good luck.”
Gabriel winces. “Glad I’m wearing gloves for this.”
I take a deep breath.
“Okay,” I say. “This is salvageable. Gabriel and Julia, you two take the first box. Sunny and I will take this one. Try to divvy up the contents as best you can.”
“What about those?” Sunny asks, tipping her chin at one of the suspiciously garbage-looking bundles.
I roll my eyes. “I’ll take those. Let’s just get started.”
Load by load, we slowly empty the contents of both boxes in front of us. Things get easier as we sort. Photos from certain events and time periods start coinciding. Most of the loose papers turn out to be government forms, and we stack the same types of forms together until our own filing system emerges.
“They should be paying us for this,” Sunny murmurs next to me.
The first hour flies by as we sort and organize, searching for clues. Every time I check the clock over the librarian’s desk, my heart starts racing. It’s entirely possible we’re going to reach our appointment time limit, and then what? We book another appointment? I’m not waiting a full week to come back here.
Luckily, not long after hitting our halfway point, Sunny triumphantly holds up a sheet of paper.
“I found the architects of two buildings on Treasure Island,” she says. She reads off the page in front of her: “Court of Honor and Court of the East.”
I drop my pile of ceremonial-tree-planting photos. “Amazing! So, who are they?”
Sunny shrugs. “Just some random dudes,” she says, and hands me the page to look over.
