We start down the winding path that cuts across the grass.
“You know,” Cam says. “You’re not the only one who did research that summer.”
“Is that right?” I ask.
Cam nods. “The reason I kept bringing us back here to look is because of Harvey, actually.”
I stop walking. “What?”
“Yeah. He took a famous photo right…about…here.” Cam hops off the path and draws a circle in the grass with his shoe. “It was a publicity stunt to help get public parks cleaned up in 1978. Harvey invited a reporter to Duboce Park, and then, during the photo shoot, he stepped in dog poop ‘by accident.’ But, really, he wanted to make a point about how gross the parks were getting. It helped pass his bill.”
I pin my hands over my hips. “Are you saying you thought the treasure would be buried under a pile of dog poop?”
“Historically significant dog poop!” Cam says.
He pauses and looks at me, and after a full second of silence, the two of us completely break down in laughter. We’re each doubled over, tears streaming. Several of the dogs hear us and bound over, thinking we’re playing some sort of game. One jumps onto my side, and I tumble forward into Cam. He catches me around the middle and we land on the grass, still laughing and breathing heavily. Another dog comes over and licks Cam’s cheek.
The owners whistle and wave their dogs away, leaving Cam and me tangled in the grass. For a moment, I don’t want to move. My limbs are sleepy and heavy against Cam’s body. The warmth of his chest feels like gravity pulling me closer. We got into this configuration purely by accident, but now any move either of us makes feels like a decision.
I have no idea what Cam’s thinking next to me. I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, wild and thrumming, then slowly coming back down to a steadythump, thump, thump. We both gaze up at the sky.
“I didn’t know you did your own research,” I say.
“I like doing research,” Cam answers.
The clouds slice through the sky like ships. The combination of wind from the ocean and the cross breeze from the bay moves them so quickly that it’s like watching a time-lapse video. I keep my thoughts up in the clouds, far away from my body, trying to figure out this whole situation.
We could keep wandering through the city like this, checking behind trees and buildings again, the way we did that summer. Or, now that we have the images in front of us, we could speed things up. I know Cam and this hunt—he’s like me. He doesn’t want to wade through it. He wants to get right to the end.
“The San Francisco History Center opens on Tuesday at noon,” I say aloud. I remember Gabriel telling us the hours, then explaining how we couldn’t possibly cut school to go before Saturday. I remember how frustrated and lonely I felt right then, like no one cared about the hunt the way I did. “It’s filled with old photos of landmarks and monuments around the city. If you like that kind of research.”
Cam twists toward me without untangling us.
“I like that kind of research,” he says steadily.
And to my credit—even though his voice is low and sounds like velvet, and he’s giving me that same deep look and stretching those words into things I’m certain he doesn’t really mean—I simply nod and sit up in the grass.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Let’s make our case to the group tomorrow. We could find the exact answer to this whole thing by Tuesday night. We could actually do this.”
Cam smiles and sits up with me. “Let’s actually do this.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mom and I juggle the coffeepot in the kitchen the next morning, passing it nimbly back and forth without making eye contact.
“Have a day,” she says as she leaves.
It would be a funny mistake if she meant to say “Have agoodday,” but with Mom, I never can tell what she really means, so I say nothing.
At school, Cam catches me after lunch, clasping me gently around the wrist as I walk past him in the hall. I stop at the touch and backtrack until I’m right in front of him.
“Yes?” I ask.
“What are we saying at the meeting?”
“We tell them about what we found,” I say evenly. “The fountain. The octopus. They’ll have to agree to come back to the history center tomorrow to figure out the rest.”
“And if they don’t?”
