The Map of Stars, page 6
“It’s not a stomach bug. It’s emotional malaise. It’s ennui,” Tess said from beneath the covers.
“Ennui?” said her mother.
“More like an existential crisis,” Theo said helpfully.
“That sounds serious,” said their father. “I brought you a mug of chicken soup. Chicken soup is excellent for treating existential crises.”
“Oh, and Jaime called,” said her mother. “I told him you were sick, but—”
Before her mom could finish, Tess threw off the sheets and ran downstairs, her mother’s voice following her. “Tess! You have your own—”
In the kitchen, Tess scooped up the receiver of Aunt Esther’s ancient wall phone and punched in Jaime’s number.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
Silence.
Tess said, “My mom bought me a phone. But I forgot. So I ran all the way downstairs to use this one. The house one. My aunt’s. It’s on the wall. Isn’t that weird?” She was babbling, but she couldn’t help it.
Silence.
“Jaime?”
Jaime said, “I’m still mad at you. You should have told me. You should have trusted me.”
“We do trust you!” said Tess. “We didn’t have anything to tell.”
Jaime went on as if Tess hadn’t spoken. “But I think we should solve the Cipher. Once and for all.”
“Okay,” said Tess.
Silence from Jaime. And then: “Is that the only thing you can say?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Tess waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. And she didn’t. Each of them listened to the other breathing.
Theo came into the kitchen, Nine at his heels, and the two of them stared at her, their eyes asking, What? What’s happening? What’s he saying? Tess held up a finger. To Jaime, she said, “Do you want to come over? Maybe look through the stuff we have from the trunk?” She gripped the phone, waiting for his answer.
“Okay,” said Jaime.
Tess let out a breath, nodded at Theo. Theo said, “Woot!”
“Did Theo just say ‘woot’?” said Jaime.
“No,” said Tess.
“Somebody said ‘woot.’”
“Maybe it was the mechanical spiders,” said Tess. “You know spiders. They like to celebrate.”
“Okay,” said Jaime.
“Maybe you can come over at lunchtime?”
“Okay.”
“Is that the only thing you can say?” Tess joked.
“No,” said Jaime.
She thought she detected a smile in his voice, but she couldn’t be sure. “Uh, see you soon.”
“Right,” he said.
“Right.”
She hung up the phone. A sense of relief washed over her like a wave. No, things weren’t perfect, and yes, Jaime was still mad.
But he was coming over to see her, to see them, and that was not nothing.
“Woot,” she said.
A few hours later, Jaime arrived. When Tess opened the door and saw him standing there, she blurted, “You look taller.”
“I saw you at the Morans’ two days ago. I’m not taller,” said Jaime.
“Yes, but you look it.”
From behind Tess, Theo said, “He looks the same to me.”
Jaime smiled half a smile. “You haven’t changed, either, Theo.”
“I actually am taller,” Theo said.
“Your hair is taller,” said Jaime.
“Ha-ha,” said Theo. “Like I haven’t heard that before.”
“So, are you going to let me in?”
“Yes!” said Tess, and stepped aside to let him enter. Nine charged at Jaime, mrrowing wildly, nudging his knees until he crouched to hug her and scratch her ears. Her purr was so loud, the spiders tending to Aunt Esther’s houseplants started to giggle.
Ono popped up from Jaime’s pocket.
“Hi, Ono,” said Tess.
“To the Land of Kings,” Ono said.
“Nice to see you, too.”
Jaime seemed to remember himself, remember that he was still angry. His half smile fell. He stood, suddenly all business. “We should go look through that stuff you have.”
“Wait just one minute, young man!” Aunt Esther came into the front room with a plate of Fig Newtons. “First, you must sit and have a cookie.”
“Hello, Ms. Esther,” Jaime said, his voice warm again.
“Hello, dear Jaime. And it’s Aunt Esther. Now sit, and take a cookie. I’m going to bring you some iced tea.”
They sat and ate cookies and drank iced tea as Aunt Esther told them about the time she’d spent as a snake researcher in Florida. “People buy baby boa constrictors and then are surprised when the cute little snakes grow into big snakes. So! They release the snakes into their backyards or along the side of the highway or wherever. And then the giant boa constrictors slither around and constrict everything there is to constrict. Quite a problem, as you might imagine. There was one time we found an eighteen-footer curled up in a golf bag. That golfer did get quite the shock.”
“When was this, Aunt Esther?” Jaime asked.
“Oh, some time ago,” said Aunt Esther. “There was a lovely young woman who came on one of our expeditions. A writer. Her name was Kate, I believe. Kate Messner? She was very interested in all the snakes. And insects! Wrote a book called Chirp. Anyway, this was all before I was in Sudan.”
“Wait,” said Tess. “When were you in Sudan?”
“After I was in Florida,” Aunt Esther said, as if the question was silly. “A beautiful country.”
“My dad was in Sudan,” Jaime said.
“Was?” said Theo.
“He’s back now,” Jaime said. “For good. He got a job in New Jersey, so . . .”
Tess remembered all the pictures of Jaime’s dad around Jaime’s old apartment, remembered the drawings that his dad had sent Jaime from Sudan. “Jaime! That’s so great!”
“It is,” Jaime said, smiling. But his happiness seemed to war with his hurt as his smile crumpled and his brows caved over his nose. Tess wanted to fix it, but she didn’t know how. One more “sorry” wasn’t going to do it.
Aunt Esther took the now-empty plate and stood. “I’ve chattered at you long enough. I’ll let you get back to doing whatever it is you need to do.”
She started to walk into the kitchen, stopped, turned. “Jaime, dear. Don’t stay away so long. We missed you.”
Jaime’s mouth worked, but all he could get out was “Okay.”
CHAPTER SIX
Theo
Theo felt odd.
Well, odder.
But he wasn’t the only one.
Tess was looking at Jaime as if he’d figured out how to fly, Jaime was looking everywhere but at Tess, and Nine couldn’t figure out whose knees needed licking, whose fingers needed nibbling the most, so she sat down on the floor and groomed herself.
Usually, Tess would be charging around, directing everyone, but she seemed to have lost all sense of purpose. Jaime would have made some suggestions in his amiable Jaime way, but he seemed to have lost all his amiability.
“So,” Theo ventured, “let’s maybe look for some clues?”
Neither Tess nor Jaime answered the question, but they followed him upstairs.
In the twins’ room, Jaime took in the mess of artifacts and papers on the floor. “It looks like you’ve been working hard.”
“Not really,” said Theo. “Tess has been having an existential crisis.”
“Theo!”
“Well, you have!”
“It was malaise!” Tess said. “It was ennui.”
“What’s the difference?” said Theo.
Jaime sat down on the floor. “I guess I might have an existential crisis, too, if I’d just found out I was a Morningstarr.”
Found out. Tess said, “So . . . you believe us? That we don’t know any more about that photo than you do?”
Theo continued, “That it’s not what it looks like? That it’s impossible?”
Jaime ran his hand through his ’locs. “I don’t know what I believe. But it doesn’t matter now. Let’s figure out where we need to go next.”
“But—” Tess began. Theo shook his head at her—Don’t push it.
So she didn’t, for once. Instead, they explained that they’d gone to the address on the Trench & Snook business card and found only a deli.
Jaime examined the card, turning it over in his hands. “Why do you think this is the next clue?”
Theo stuck his fingers in his hair. Tess put on a sweatshirt and then took it off. Nine mrrowed. None of them said anything about living puzzles that operate on faith.
“Well, did you look up Trench and Snook to see if they’re a real business?”
“We did!” said Tess, as enthusiastically as she did when they were in school and she knew the answer to the teacher’s questions. “Trench and Snook was an architecture firm active in the mid-nineteenth century.”
“And you looked up all the buildings they designed in the city?”
“Uh . . . ,” said Tess.
“Funny!” Theo said. “We completely forgot to do that!” He was proud of himself for not going to the nearest wall and banging his head against it.
Jaime said, “So maybe we should do that first?”
“Okay,” said Tess.
Tess waited. Theo did, too.
Jaime said, “I thought your mom got you phones. Don’t you want to try them?”
“Oh!” said Tess. “Well. I guess I could. But you’re so good at, um . . .”
“Looking things up on phones?” Jaime finished for her, brow raised. “Yes, that’s my superpower. Phone research.”
Tess suddenly found the end of her braid fascinating. Theo felt even odder. Jaime was here and he was talking to them, but the Morningstarr twins and hundreds of years of history were sitting between them.
Still, Jaime did pull his phone from his pocket and looked up Trench & Snook. “Okay, so these guys built a lot of stuff, especially in SoHo, around where their office was, I guess.”
“SoHo? But the address on the business card isn’t in SoHo,” Theo said.
“This website seems to think they had offices in SoHo,” said Jaime. “But it’s not like people on the internet haven’t been wrong before.” He thumbed through the search results, silently reading.
Tess dared to sit on the floor next to him the way she would have before that impossible photograph ruined everything. She looked over his shoulder as he read, and he didn’t move his arm, or inch away from her, or glare, or make gagging noises, or any one of a million other things he could have done, maybe things that Theo would have done, if Theo were Jaime.
Which was why Theo groaned when Tess did push it, blurted, “Have you seen Ava?”
“Oh no,” said Ono.
Jaime stiffened, stopped thumbing. “Where would I have seen her?”
“I don’t know. I just thought—”
“That she’s my friend now? That she wants to hang out with some kid who draws comics?”
“You drew her, though,” Tess said. “Before you ever saw her.”
Jaime shook his head and plowed on as if Tess hadn’t said anything goofy. “Here’s a list of the buildings that Trench and Snook worked on. A lot of them have been torn down, but there are some still standing.”
“What?” Tess said. It seemed she’d already forgotten what they’d been looking for in the first place. “Which buildings?”
“There’s 280 Broadway, sometimes called the Sun Building or the Marble Palace. Built in 1846.”
“The Marble Palace. That seems like a possibility,” Tess said.
“Why?” said Theo.
“I don’t know. Because it’s a palace?” said Tess.
Jaime said, “And then there’s Odd Fellows Hall.”
Something in Theo’s brain itched. “What’s that one?”
“It’s 165–171 Grand Street. Built in 1848. A New York City landmark.”
“Look at the card!” said Tess. “The last line. ‘Grand Design for the Unexpected.’ Maybe that’s a clue? Grand Street? And ‘unexpected’ meaning ‘odd’?”
Jaime went back to thumbing through his phone. “You tell me. You’re Tess Morningstarr.”
She shook her head. “I’m Tess Biedermann. I’m the same person I was a few weeks ago.”
“None of us are the same,” said Theo.
For the first time since coming through the door, Jaime looked straight at him.
Theo said, “I think we should try Odd Fellows Hall.”
Jaime stood. “Odd Fellows for odd fellows. Sounds about right.”
They walked to the Underway station and took the N train, then caught the 6. It took only a few minutes from Canal Street to make it to 165 Grand.
None of them said a word the whole trip.
Odd.
But even with the silence, traveling together, the three of them and Nine, felt familiar, felt right, not odd.
So Theo was more optimistic than he’d been in a while when they stood in front of Odd Fellows Hall, a blocky brown building with just enough architectural flourishes to make it interesting but not enough to make it busy. And he happily used his brand-new phone to look up the Order of the Odd Fellows.
He read aloud, “The mission of the Order of Odd Fellows is ‘Visit the Sick, Relieve the Distressed, Bury the Dead, and Educate the Orphan.’”
“Huh,” said Jaime. “That sounds altruistic and creepy at the same time.”
“That’s our jam, though,” said Tess. “Altruistic and creepy.”
Jaime made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost.
“Funny,” said Theo.
“Their acronym is OOF,” Jaime said. “That’s funny.”
Theo consulted his phone again. It really was quite useful and convenient. “According to this article, the building has a library and reading rooms, space for natural history, science, and art exhibits, and lots of meeting areas. The laying of the cornerstone in 1847 was this big party, but also contentious, because of what was—and wasn’t—deposited in the stone.”
Tess, who apparently found her own phone equally convenient, read, “The name of the architect was hidden in the stone, but instead of Joseph Trench, they put the name Joseph French. And Snook wasn’t mentioned at all.”
“Poor Snook,” Jaime said.
“He was snookered,” said Theo. At Tess’s wince, he said, “Oh, come on! That’s hilarious!”
“If you say so,” said Jaime. “But that sort of fits with the other clues. Snook being forgotten and all.”
Tess pointed at the cornerstone, which was marked with a plaque. “I think we need to find out what’s in there.”
Jaime said, “I don’t know how we’re going to do that.”
“Maybe Ono can punch his way in,” said Theo.
“Oh no!” said Ono.
“Ono can’t punch his way in,” Jaime said. “We’ll have to do something else.”
“Hammer and chisel?” said Tess. But that wasn’t going to work, either. Even if they could hammer their way into a huge block of stone, it was broad daylight, and the streets were crowded with people.
“Wait, show me the card again,” Theo said.
Tess slipped her phone back into her pocket and handed him the business card. Stiff, yellowing vellum. Very stiff. Almost like plastic.
Theo said, “If Trench and Snook had offices in SoHo, why does this card have an address in the East Village?”
“Maybe that’s not an address,” said Jaime.
“Maybe,” said Theo, “this isn’t a business card.”
“Hmmm,” said Tess.
Without consulting one another, they walked to the cornerstone of the building. There was a modest metal plaque affixed to the stone that read Dedicated on the seventh of June, in the year 1847, for the Order of Odd Fellows.
Jaime said, “They named themselves the Odd Fellows because so many people thought it was odd to do good for others.”
“People still think that’s odd,” Tess said.
“This is also odd,” Jaime said as he ran his fingers around the frame of the plaque. “There’s a small slit here.”
“Let me guess,” Theo said. “It’s about the size of a business card.”
“Or a key card.”
Aware that they were feeling up a building in the middle of the day, in the middle of the crowds that were passing by, Theo, Tess, and Jaime each took out their phones and stared at the screens, as if the excitement of finding another clue hadn’t hit them. Because it had hit them. Theo’s hair felt as if it was practically standing on end (even more than usual). Tess was nearly tap-dancing. As cool as Jaime was acting, as closed up as he was trying to be, he couldn’t help his jangling knees and the fingers typing against the leg of his jeans.
And when Ono whispered, “To the Land of Kings?” Jaime patted the little robot and murmured, “Kings, dude, kings.”
“Everybody look casual,” Theo said.
Tess muttered, “As if you ever looked casual in your whole life.”
But Jaime stepped in front of Theo, hiding everything but Theo’s hair from the people walking by. And Tess stood next to him, pointing out something on her phone, shielding Theo further. Quickly, Theo shoved the card into the slot Jaime had found.
Click!
The plaque wasn’t a plaque—it was a door. Theo opened it just enough to reach inside, remembering only as he felt around the small chamber that it could be booby-trapped with anything—mechanical snakes, mechanical scorpions, mechanical fire ants, mechanical snapping turtles.
A small voice at the back of his mind said, If you are Theodore Morningstarr, would you set a trap for yourself?
I might, he told it.
No, you wouldn’t.
“Shut up,” Theo muttered.
“We didn’t say anything,” said Jaime.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Theo said, his hand falling on something metal—a gear or something—and some papers. He scooped them out of the chamber, checked to make sure there was nothing else left inside, and shut the door. He shoved the items into his front pocket and turned around. He fully expected to be met with a phalanx of camera phone–wielding blond women in red dresses, all of them accusing him of theft, but New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, ignored the kids hanging around the corner of this historic city building, too intent on getting coffee or getting to work or getting ahead to care what Theo, Tess, and Jaime were doing. Only Nine got any attention at all, a quick “Hello, kitty” or “Nice cat” before the speaker disappeared around the corner.
