Chapter Twenty-Two
After searching the entire second floor for Sunny, we head upstairs to the third level of the library and creep into an empty circular room across from the elevator. Everyone scatters, checking behind tables and chairs, whispering Sunny’s name.
“Hey, Ivy. Look at this.” Gabriel calls me over to an open space in the middle of the room. The whole thing looks sort of like a flying saucer, with recessed lights along the outer edge and a dim concave arch at its center.
“Ho-ly,” I murmur as we step under the circle of lights. We tilt our heads back and stare toward the gently arched ceiling at one of the wildest murals I’ve ever seen.
The center of the sepia-toned mural opens into a swirling, ephemeral sky, where a waterfall of books tumbles down onto a group of builders. They lift posts and hoist blocks and carve and chisel at a wall along the perimeter of the mural. On the wall itself are names, hundreds of names. I recognize a lot of them—Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, ColePorter—because they’re famous gay writers. Several figures in the painting proudly wave Pride flags at the top of the wall. One man pushes all his weight against a giant globe, trying to get it to budge.
“Is this the gay Sistine Chapel?” Gabriel asks.
It may as well be.
This is one of those paintings that makes you feel like you’ve been given a glimpse into something so much bigger than you’ll ever be able to wrap your head around. The beginning of the universe. The start of mankind. But it’s also not that exactly, because it’s clear that this is a very specific world we’re looking at. In the Sistine Chapel, God touches Adam’s hand, and the world begins. There doesn’t seem to be one God figure in this painting. No one to jump-start this particular world into being. Instead, it’s the people who are hard at work creating this space for themselves. The only sign of heavenly intervention is the collection of books raining down, penned by the people who used to be on the ground working.
Cam leans close to me.
“V, you’re crying.”
“No, I’m not,” I snap, wiping my eyes anyway.
Cam looks at me and smiles that same impish smile from when we were younger. He steadies my shoulder. “I think it’s cool to cry at something like this.”
I sniff. “Not crying,” I mumble.
“I’ve been staring at it forever,” a voice croaks from the floor.
Julia screams. Gabriel whoops and leaps into the air. Ijerk to my left, which unfortunately lands me directly into Cam’s chest. His arms come down over me on instinct, tight and protective. The physical contact gives my heart a second jump scare.
Sunny pokes her head out from under a reading table.
“Hey,” she says.
Gabriel clutches the collar of his hoodie. “Maybe start with that when you first see us next time? Why didn’t you come out earlier?”
Sunny crawls from underneath the table and stands, brushing herself off. I tap Cam’s forearm gently, and he lets go of me. We take an awkward, wide step apart.
“Because,” Sunny says, “I was worried Ian over here had you hostage or something.”
“Ian?” Cam scrunches his eyebrows in confusion. His eyes widen as understanding takes hold. “You showed themNational Treasure?”
I hold up a hand in defense. “No, I merelytoldthem aboutNational Treasure.”
“I watched it,” Sunny says, and both Cam and I turn to her.
“You did?” I ask. “When?”
Sunny shrugs. “Earlier this week.”
“Because of me?”
“Because you called me Patrick Gates on Monday,” Sunny says crisply, folding her arms. “And I wanted to know if I was being insulted. For the record, I think Patrick had the right idea all along. It was stupid to squeeze lemons onto the freakingDeclaration of Independence and then scorch it with a blow-dryer. Treasure map or no treasure map, that old paper would have disintegrated in five seconds in real life.”
Cam looks at me. “You said I was Ian?”
“Um…not exactly,” I explain. “Imighthave said I was like Benjamin Gates. And, really, you’re the one who stole our flyer and refused to give it back. So if anyone set up that parallel, it was you.”
Cam sighs. “You’ve been treating me like an Ian way before I took your flyer. Basically from the beginning.”
