I run smack into Gabriel and Julia in the lobby.
“Were you just shopping?!” Gabriel asks incredulously.
“No time!” I yell. “We’ve got to find Sunny. She’s running from Cam.”
“And again,” Gabriel says, “you thought now would be the perfect time to browse for a little keepsake.”
I hold out one of the two slender boxes to Julia. “Here, take this.”
The box I hand her is made of cardboard, not wood likethe one hidden inside the Osher Foundation Gallery. Still, the color and shape of the boxes are nearly the same. As long as Cam doesn’t look too close.
Julia takes the box gingerly. “What do I do with it?”
I explain the plan: We have to get back to the new library. If Julia runs into Cam, she has to make sure he catches a glimpse of the gift shop box, then immediately tuck it away and run in the opposite direction. Or if she runs into Sunny first, Julia will trade boxes.
Same plan goes for me.
“What about me?” Gabriel asks.
“You can’t run,” I say. I point to the expensive camera hanging from his neck. “Not with this. Your job is to watch our backs. Try not to let Cam sneak up on any of us.”
We burst through the front doors and jog over to the new library.
“You would think,” Julia says between gasps, “that Sunny would have just gone home.”
“Oh, right,” I say, “and wait fifteen minutes at the Civic Center Plaza for the next bus to come? What was she supposed to do, run all the way across the city?”
“Good point,” Julia murmurs as we slip inside the library.
The building is way too big for us to divide and call out sections the way we normally would. So instead, Julia simply turns right into the shelves of books. I keep left, heading up the stairs and hoping I run into Sunny before I run into Cam.
Now that I’m back in this building, it seems strange that I ever imagined Gilbert Baker hiding something here in the1980s. This building is so crisp and new. It’s all wrong for a treasure hunt. I creep behind the sleek silver-toned railing and squirm around the smooth, giant columns.
“Psst.”
I turn my head. “Huh?”
I’m looking into the children’s book room. Giant cardboard cutouts of classic characters are scattered throughout, posted at the ends of every shelf and reading table. I turn from Corduroy, to Paddington Bear, to Clifford the Big Red Dog. Elephant and Piggie look suspiciously still next to the checkout desk.
“Psst!”
The sound is clearly coming from behind the White Rabbit fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandin the chapter book section. I tiptoe over to the taller shelves. Sunny and I will have to make the switch fast.
But when I turn into the aisle, I don’t find Sunny at all.
Cam motions for me to be quiet. As I rear back toward the reading tables, he reaches out for my arm. We both freeze with him holding on to me.
“You were about to trip,” he explains.
I pull out the pen box from the gift shop. I remember plan B so suddenly that my body goes into reflex mode before my brain has time to make sense of what I’m doing. I wave the decoy box back and forth in front of Cam’s face, then stow it under my jacket.
Cam scrunches his forehead. “Um…What was that about?”
Now I run. Run!I think. The plan was to show Cam thebox and then run away. But I can already tell we’re off course. For one, he doesn’t seem remotely interested in what I’m holding. And two, he’s not supposed to be after me in the first place. He’s supposed to be after Sunny.
What’s going on?
“I have the box,” I whisper.
