Once I’m safely on the train, I look around, expecting to see him in one of the seats. But the entire section is empty save for an older woman surrounded by three crates of recycled plastic bottles. I glance at my phone and sigh. The next train doesn’t come for another fifteen minutes. I’ll have to wait around Union Square for him.
Except, as the train pulls to the stop at Union, I see thatCamis already waiting forme.
“Good morning,” Cam says cheerily.
“You’re too early.”
“Wowza. Didn’t realize that was a crime.”
I squint at him. “How long have you been here?”
Cam hitches his thumb over his shoulder. “Not long. I just did a little exploring around the neighborhood.”
My eyes widen. “Excuse me—‘a little exploring’? Why not explore the entire city without me? What the heck am I doing here, Cam?”
“Relax, Goldilocks,” he says, even though he’s the one with springy blond hair and I probably look like Wednesday Addams in comparison. “I’m not too early. You’re not late. Everything is just right. Now let’s go!”
I huff and sigh, then follow Cam up the next few blocks toward Chinatown. We each reveal the book, flyer, and box in turn as we walk, but agree to keep them all sealed away in my backpack unless we find something really, really good. In the meantime, we work off the photos Gabriel sent us digitally. Cam zooms in on the bottom left section of the scroll.
“Look at her,” he says, pointing at the drawing of a woman in a long, boxy floral dress with her arms outstretched. “I saw a statue up here that reminds me of her.”
He leads us into St.Mary’s Square. We walk through basketball courts and past rows of flagpoles until we’re standing right across from a tall metal sculpture.
“Dr.Sun Yat-Sen,” I read from a plaque in front.
Cam and I take a long step back to study the sculpture next to the drawing.
“Well…” I say. “The robe is similar. Ish. But this is of a man, not a woman.”
“The point of the picture is to disguise the landmark, V. He can’t just draw the same statue exactly.”
“Right, but there has to be a clear connection somewhere,” I argue. “The robe isn’t as boxy as the dress. The hands in this sculpture are folded rather than pointing. It’s just not the same.”
Cam looks back and forth between his screen and the figure of Dr.Sun Yat-Sen in front of us.
“It’s not the same,” he says finally. “Dang. I was sort of hoping we could solve this part and skip the rest.”
I look at him, surprised. “How could we have skipped the rest?”
He points at a small oval pendant hanging around the woman’s neck in the picture, with the tiniest charm key dangling next to it.
“It’s the necklace from the box,” Cam says.
I blink at the detail. He’s totally right—this is our necklace. Gilbert Baker wouldn’t put it on this particular figure unless she was important to the ultimate solution. Crucial, even. I stare at the woman, trying to see something in the pattern of her dress, which is crawling with flowers, vines, and random fruit buried in the center. I look at the woman’s arms, at her face…but there’s no recognition there. I haven’t seen a single statue around the city that looks like this.
We head up Kearny Street and stop for dumplings in the middle of Chinatown. I’m always so fascinated by the combination of shops here—the mix of bakeries and restaurants that look like they could have been around forever, alongside strange, shiny art galleries with human-sized Transformers and giant knock-off balloon dog sculptures. The new crowdsin on the old, less a harmony of different stores mixing and more like a wrestling match of stores vying for the heart of the neighborhood. One type speaks to the past, the other to a cold, garish future.
We finish the dumplings and toss the empty bag into a trash can outside of Portsmouth Square.
“Oh, here’s something,” Cam says, pulling his phone back out of his pocket.
He brings us over to a narrow boulder with a small three-dimensional house chiseled inside. We look over the inscription below the house.
“The first public school in America. That’s cool.” He begins searching around the drawing on his phone, scrolling and zooming into different parts.
“I don’t think it’s in here,” I say, looking at the image on my own phone screen.
Cam sighs. He checks over his shoulder, then does a double take. “Hey!”
