Sunny huffs as she pulls a book down from the top of the tallest stack, which currently ends at her waist. The books are sticking out in every direction, precariously holding together while they pull a slow-going Leaning Tower of Pisa. But the pile near Gabriel, I notice, is meticulously stacked.
Sunny and Gabriel are sorting the books.
“It might be a third option,” I offer.
Julia shakes her head. “Nope. No…only those two. Jenga or cityscape.”
“Oh! 1979,” Sunny reads from the inside jacket.
Gabriel holds out a hand. “Give it here.” He carries the book to his pile.
“You’re pulling all the titles that were published beforeGay Treasures,” I say.
Sunny already has her nose in the next book. “Ding ding ding.”
“Dang.” Julia snaps her fingers. “Ivy wins.”
I walk over to the pile near Gabriel. “Anything interesting?”
“Sadly, no,” Gabriel says. He makes a frame with his thumbs and index fingers. “But I’m still waiting for a pattern to spring out at me.”
“And we’re not done,” Sunny calls. She nods at the rest of the books over her shoulder. Julia dutifully pulls the next book down and checks the copyright year.
I tilt my head sideways to look at the titles in Gabriel’s stack. An unpleasant feeling is gnawing at my belly. There’s an unspoken agreement here, I think. If you’re playing a game, you assume the game is fair. If you’re answering a riddle, that means the riddle must have a proper answer. Doing a treasure hunt is like the extreme version of that. It’s the ultimate trust fall. There has to be some kind of stability to the clues, because otherwise, the entire concept disintegrates in your hands.
“Let’s pause a second,” I say uneasily.
Sunny glares at me. “Says the person who literally got here one second ago.”
“Okay, fair! Yes, I just got here. But hear me out: I am seeing a pattern.”
Gabriel whips his head around. He looks again at his stack of books. “What’s the pattern?”
“The pattern is, books circulate between library branches,” I say. “And I’m pretty sure they always have, even in the 1980s. So it would be a terrible idea for Gilbert Baker to put a clue in a single book, even if it did manage to stay in circulation until now.”
“So, what?” Sunny says icily. “You’re saying this is all useless?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m not saying that. Nothing you’re doing is useless. I was the one who walked away and made Julia go after me. And the whole time, both of you were working your asses off. No one has acted useless in this group except me.”
Sunny snorts. “Say it louder for the people in the back.”
“I’m useless!” I call out in the loudest stage whisper I can manage. I mean, we’re still in a library, after all.
“All right.” Sunny sets her book down. “So what do we do now?”
I look around at the shelves. “Julia, can you get your notebook out? I want to see the history center notes again.”
Julia hops over a stack of books to her backpack at the far end of the aisle. She pauses a moment, staring down into the open compartment.
“Did one of you open my backpack?” Julia asks.
Sunny and Gabriel shake their heads. The three of us zigzag around the maze of books and stand next to Julia. She carefully extracts her notebook, which now has some kind of laminated page peeking out over the top.
“I didn’t put this in here,” she says quietly.
I hold out my hands, and Julia passes the notebook over. I open it to the insert, which turns out to be three different brochures stacked on top of one another. But they’re not actually brochures. They’re more like…Oh no.
I take a sharp breath.
