“Do you see anything?” Gabriel asks from the back of the line.
I inch my way in, holding on to my breath like I can swallow back the disappointment. The clues inGay Treasuresarehidden. They’rereallyhidden. They have to be, or else Gilbert’s treasure hunt wouldn’t have survived for more than a week. I follow the call numbers until I reach the section marked seven twenty-three. There are at least a hundred books spanning down the row starting with that same number. I poke my head over the top of the books and look behind them. I shove the spines back and look underneath them. I pick up an older-looking vintage book and leaf through it. Nothing. There’s nothing.
“Well,” Sunny says behind me, “this is definitely the architecture section, at least.”
I’ve gone numb. I missed something, skipped some important piece of the puzzle. Buthowdid I miss something? We found the gay history behind Treasure Island. We made the connection to Harvey. We know the name of the builder who reads. I’ve taken all the right steps to get to this point.
Or have I?
My mind instantly goes to Cam. Would he have sifted through all that crap upstairs? He never does the “boring research work,” as he called it that summer. If he were on this team, he would have led us all straight to the real Treasure Island, I bet, where there’s probably a secret, hidden library in the Naval Station building. And that secret library is probably filled with colorful jewelry and the ghosts of every fabulous gay naval sailor in history, chilling in the afterlife like a haunted Studio 54.
Meanwhile, I’ve followed the boring research route, and now I’m surrounded by a bunch of books on building codesand blueprints. I’m too practical—I’ve always been too practical. How could someone like me ever find a buried treasure?
A tear has already escaped before I can stop it. I become suddenly very interested in the floor.
A hand gently lands on my shoulder.
“Ivy?” Julia’s voice sounds so far away.
I can’t do this. Not here. And for the love of God, not in front of anyone else.
“Sorry,” I huff.
I beeline down the rest of the aisle and make a hard turn toward the back of the library. More tears are spilling out. I press my sleeves into my cheeks as I walk. Farther. Farther. I see a corner where the overhead light has gone out, and I sink onto the floor underneath it, my back to the wall, grateful for this pocket of shadow. I pull my legs up to my chest.
After a minute or so, someone else approaches. A thick sweater slides down the wall. I feel a tiny elbow knock into mine.
“I don’t want to talk,” I say into my knees.
“Is it okay if I do?” Julia asks. “Not about you, I mean. But what I was trying to talk about before.”
In an instant I forget how stupid I look, and I lift my head. Julia’s crouched next to me, not a notebook or yellow pencil stub in sight. She must’ve left her backpack behind in the aisle.
“Remember how Gabriel called me a Girl Scout?” Julia asks. “And you saw how it pissed me off?”
I nod.
“I actually was a Girl Scout when I was a kid,” Julia says.“And I really loved it. I wanted to be a Girl Scout for the rest of my life. I kind of remember thinking that when I graduated, all my badges would transfer into police badges or something. And then I could go be a sheriff somewhere.”
I laugh a little. “You thought Girl Scouts were like police officers?”
“Hey!” Julia nudges me and smiles. “You know that if all police officers were former Girl Scouts, the world would be a much better place.”
“Okay, yeah. True.” I bob my head. “So…what does this have to do with the treasure hunt?”
Julia pulls her knees closer and sighs. “Well, I was a kid at the time, right? So everything—fairy tales and real life—was all weirdly conflated in my head. It didn’t make sense that adults said magic wasn’t real but then told so many stories where magic existed anyway. And getting mysterious gifts from Santa and the Easter bunny sure didn’t help. It just made everything more”—she shakes her head—“confusing.
“Anyway, when it was time to leave the Daisy level in Girl Scouts and go into Brownies, my mom told me the bridging ceremony would happen in an enchanted forest. And on the day of the ceremony, the whole troop met out in Golden Gate Park, but in a part of the park I had never been in before. It was really mystical and quiet. Our troop leaders laid down a mirror in the long grass and told us it was a silver pond. They said there was a magic elf that would help take us from one side to the other. I still remember standing there, feeling cold and nervous, wondering when the elf would come out.”
I shift over so I can see Julia better. “What happened?”
Julia’s eyebrows furrow. “I was called first. My mom brought me up in front of the group. The leaders read a poem about how magic was all around us. And the thing is, I couldfeelit. I knew the magic was real. They spun me around three times and had me look into the silver pond and call for the elf. There was a rhyme, and I was supposed to say the last word.
‘Twist me and turn me and show me the elf,
‘I looked in the water and saw…’
“And the answer is obvious, right?” Julia says. “We were looking in a freaking mirror. But at the time, I was completely focused on finding that elf. I was so frustrated. I started crying and saying that I couldn’t see the elf, and I remember—”
