Grab the shovel to anoint
If you seek the lock and key
You will have to dig down deep
Chapter Twenty-Four
Julia’s voice carries an eerie echo as she finishes reading the poem aloud. The five of us sit in silence, quiet and contemplative. Finally, after a minute or two, Gabriel speaks up.
“So…this definitely isn’t the treasure, then?”
I look over at the necklace hanging limply in Sunny’s hands and sigh.
“No,” I say. “I guess it’s not.”
Sunny shakes her head and mutters something under her breath.
“What do we do?” Julia asks.
Cam clears his throat awkwardly. “Well, I think we should—”
“No.” Sunny whips her head toward him. “Youare not a part of group decisions right now. In fact…” She turns to the rest of us. “I think Cam should be out.”
Cam’s jaw falls open. “What?”
“We only let you open the box with us because of the key,” Sunny says. “Now you’re out again.”
Gabriel sucks in air through an awkward, full-tooth grimace.
“Um.” Julia leans into Sunny. “Maybe now’s not the time to throw anyone out.”
“But he’s not a part of this!” Sunny stands in the middle of the circle. “Ivy, back me up here.”
“I…I think…we should…”
I can’t put the words together.Things are complicated, I want to explain. I feel like I’m caught between two different treasure hunts. If we were in any otherGay Treasurescity, we would have found the treasure by now. And all thanks to the yearbook crew. Sunny was the one who first found that photo for the yearbook dedication page. Julia snapped a picture of Harvey’s birthday party flyer before Cam stole it. Gabriel made every fuzzy internet document readable so we could decipher it. We all went through the archives, followed the changes in the city, found a single spot from some vague words and a number. When I look back at how far we’ve come, I see Sunny’s point—Cam’s not a part of it.
I think of the photo on my phone background.
It’s strange and infuriating…but I can’t get away from seeing Cam, from knowing that even if he’s right outside the frame, he’s still a part of the bigger picture. He’s the unspoken subtext. The origin story buried underneath it all.
“Maybe we need a break,” Julia says quietly. “All of us,” she adds.
Sunny looks at her. “What do you mean?”
Julia sighs and scans the decrypted poem in her notebook.
“This is…a lot. And we’re already running on fumesfrom the earlier clues. Let’s just take photos of everything and lock it up until Monday. We can meet after school and discuss what to do next. If anyone has an idea, great. If not, we’ll get started together. Or…mostly together, if it’s what the group decides.” She can’t quite make eye contact with Cam as she says this last part. “But at least until Monday afternoon, we’re all in.”
Cam swallows and nods solemnly.
“Who’s keeping the box?” he asks.
“Obviously not you,” Sunny says. “We already decided it’s Ivy’s. I don’t think that’s changed.”
Sunny sets the necklace down into the box and closes the lid. My cheeks are warm as she passes the box over to me.
“Wait,” Gabriel says. He turns his camera on. “I need to take photos of that.”
