The Jump, page 8
That’s how it feels sitting in here. I feel relief. Some days are bad days, where I can’t get out of bed, or where I want to be in a cave where nothing happens. And some days—like today—are good days. Days when I just need a minute. I stand up, fold my arms across my chest, and head for the door, ready to make the jump back into the puzzle.
The sounds of traffic greet me, and it’s nearly nighttime now, even though it only felt like I was in there for a few minutes. My eyes find Yas’s abba’s store, lit up outside, and Abba—we all call him Abba—standing just inside at the counter stretching his back, probably sore from bending and putting labels on things and stocking shelves.
I know that look. My dad comes home with the same one every night.
Tired.
Unappreciated.
I feel bad for both of them.
But I can’t think about that now. I have a puzzle to solve. I have a security room to get to. Kyler works in the tiniest room in the quietest corner of South Lake Union, right outside of a Roundworld building, in an alley just around the corner from here. I could walk the four blocks to his “office,” or I could take the shortcut through the loading dock behind this garage that’s supposed to be impassible due to the padlock on the fence. But it’s after six p.m. and before eight p.m., which means the padlock is unlocked. There are so many delivery guys for the Roundworld salad bar and vending machines that they don’t even bother locking the fence during those hours. I’ve sat here and watched them come and go for hours while waiting for Kyler to get off work so he can drive me home, when there was nothing else to do.
Now my spying has proven useful.
I step through the fence and shove my hands in my pockets, walking, walking, walking. I keep my head down and focus on the darkness around me as the sun disappears and takes the brilliant orange sky with it. When I get to the end of the dock, I look around the corner and see the faint glow of the door opening, and Jax, Yas, and Spider stepping inside.
Perfect timing, Han, as usual, I tell myself.
The team’s lucky to have me.
I step right up to the door and knock.
No answer.
I knock again.
No answer.
They have to know it’s me, right?
“Yes?” comes a voice on the other side.
The thing about being nonverbal is that it’s not an all-the-time thing. Sometimes I do talk. Sometimes I can talk. But other times, I just can’t. I don’t know why. It’s like my brain just… decides it won’t talk anymore. No signals to the rest of me with the speaking function. I know I can at other times. But… nope. Nothing. Like right now. How easy would it be to just respond? How easy should it be to respond?
I guess I’m still figuring it out.
I just stare at the door, hoping they’ll know it’s me. And then the knob turns, startling me back a few steps. Jax peers out and a smile spreads across his face.
“Thought you’d never turn up!” he says. “We might have found something.”
“How’d you know it was him?” comes Yas’s voice from farther into the room.
“Sensed his aura,” says Jax with a smile and a wink in my direction. “All… lurky.”
He ushers me into a dimly lit room bathed in yellow, and Yas and Spider are hovering over a standing computer desk where a super-tall, lanky-as-me guy dressed in a T-shirt and cargo pants is examining the screen with his face resting on his free hand.
“Oh hey, bro,” he says, too engrossed in his computer to look at me. I nod up at him anyway. “Dad said to tell you we’re ordering out tonight. He’ll be home late from work.”
A strange chill of disappointment—I don’t know what else to call it—flickers up my spine. Dad’s been working longer and longer hours lately. “Late” from work means very late. Like, two-in-the-morning late. Kayaking lessons all day, accounting all night. That’s his life now. And all for nothing if this refinery goes up.
Probably.
Unless I can help it.
Kyler seems unfazed and clicks through black-and-white screenshots from footage of the alley around the corner.
“What even is a ‘lurky’ aura?” asks Spider. “I thought auras were supposed to be different colors. ‘Lurky’ isn’t a color.”
“Okay, a vibe, I guess? I don’t know. Mama’s better at this stuff than I am.”
“Oh hey, look, bros,” says Kyler. “I did find something.”
We all lean in close to see several shots in rapid succession of Red Cap Guy—although his hat is now dark gray on the footage—sprinting down Mercer before ducking into the alley between Terry and Westlake. Yas follows him with even more speed and finesse. He had planted his left foot firmly on the ground to propel himself to the right into the alley. Yas leaned right and turned her foot to step with only the ball, making for a smoother rotation.
Impressive.
I look over at her and smile, but she’s too focused on the screen, brows furrowed. Eyes narrow. Angry-looking, even. I wonder if she’s upset that she let him get away.
She shouldn’t be.
“There!” cries Jax suddenly, startling me. I wish he wouldn’t do that. “QR code! On the poster! Can you zoom in on it, Kyler?”
Kyler does as he was asked, and the picture grows huge on the screen. Jax’s phone is out faster than all of ours, and the scanned code goes through, opening a browser window with plain text. We all study the screen like it’s second nature to us. And I guess, in a way, it is.
The message says simply:
A CAFÉ AT THE PENTAGON.
FIND A BIN. LOOK AROUND.
ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS.
IT TOLLS FOR THE TOWN.
Jax
The Pentagon—the headquarters for the United States Department of Defense—is 2,745 miles away from here, in Arlington, Virginia. The only address I’m seeing in Seattle with a 2745 number is Luna Apartments, with a café next door called Freshy’s.
Which is only a bus ride away.
Easy to get to.
We could go right now.
But the bell part.
The bell part is what’s making me hesitate.
“I say let’s get to that café before ROYAL steals another clue!” says Spider once I’ve explained all my findings to the team. We’re all standing inside Abba’s shop where it’s warm, since Kyler had to get back to closing up his office down the street. I lean against the counter and scroll, searching for more clues.
“Whoa, whoa,” says Yas, holding up a hand for silence. “Team JERICHO does not fall. Especially not to manipulation. I won’t be rushed through this by some clue-stealing amateur. They should’ve been booted from the puzzle by now anyway.”
When I first started the forum, I decided that each host team should enforce the rules of their own puzzle, since I’m in high school and don’t have time to be policing dozens of teams hosting dozens more puzzles. So, if ROYAL is breaking the rules, it’s up to the Order to wave the timeout flag and give them a warning. Sure, I still have the authority. I stepped in when ROYAL put that “fire” clue on that hot sauce bottle. But if I step in and get in the way of the Order…
“Enforcing the rules of this puzzle is up to the Order,” I say.
Yas levels her eyes at me.
“And if they don’t? Would you ever boot the Order, Jax? We all know how much you love them.”
That sparks a defensive fire in my chest.
If I step in and get in the way of the Order, I lose the opportunity to boot the refinery for all of us. It’s not just about me here.
“What are you saying, exactly? That just because I want to join them at the end, I won’t enforce the rules?”
“All I’m saying is that you’d better,” she says, arms folded tightly.
“Hey, hey, hey,” booms a voice from behind me. I feel a huge hand clamp down on my shoulder, and I flinch and look up to find Abba staring past me at his daughter. “Jax is your friend,” he says. “Your brother. You’re on the same team. Now, what’s the problem here?”
He unclamps his hand from my arm and steps past me into the big open space in front of the counter, right in front of the heat-and-eat food in the fridges. Then he folds his arms and looks at each of us in turn, finally landing on me.
“Uh…,” I begin, glancing at Yas. How do I explain to this man that his daughter just accused me of selling out to a social-justice vigilante organization bent on bringing down the establishment, without telling him that we’re solving a puzzle posted by a social-justice vigilante organization bent on bringing down the establishment? “We just disagree about where to go next for a clue,” I say. She’d better be grateful I spared her the lecture that would’ve come from her dad later.
“Oh?” he asks, leaning on the counter and smiling at me. “Where to next?”
I smile. He—all of our parents, actually—may not “get” the whole cryptology thing—how it works, or why we’re all so into it, but at least Abba takes interest. And Mama and Zaza. They try to understand, and they let us be free. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s thinking through my thoughts out loud with someone.
So, I dive in headfirst.
“I’m not sure, but I think the phrase ‘A café at the Pentagon’ means we need to go to Luna Apartments, because the address number matches the distance between here and the Pentagon in DC. But those last two lines: ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for the town.’ I just don’t know what it means.”
“And every part of every clue has to mean something,” says Yas. “Unless the Order is breaking the rules.”
“Which they’re not,” I say, a little too fast. Abba raises an eyebrow at me and then looks at his daughter.
“Rules or no rules, it sounds like the Order is about to come between you two. Never let ambition ruin a friendship.”
Han picks up a bag of chips off a nearby rack of snacks and begins turning it over in his hands, crinkling the foil between his palms.
“Okay, so if the clue is leading us to Luna Apartments, why aren’t we going?” asks Spider, growing increasingly pressed. “I don’t understand, Jax—help me out here, please.”
“Like I said, it’s the bell part for me. Help me figure out the bell, y’all, and then we’ll talk about whether we should go to Luna Apartments.”
I can’t think of a single famous bell in all of Puget Sound. I think there’s one on UW’s campus? Or maybe one up north in University Village? I take to Google.
“Famous bells in Seattle.”
Oh right! The Ballard Centennial Bell Tower. So the “town” in question is… Ballard, then? Sounds too simple. I keep scrolling. Apparently, UW does have a carillon with forty-seven bells on their Seattle campus in the U District. But then the “town”…
What would the “town” part mean?
“Jax?” asks Spider. “What if ‘for whom the bell tolls’ is a reference to Hemingway’s work of the same name? He died here in Washington, after all—didn’t he?”
“That’s true,” says Yas, also scrolling. I look back down at my phone, reading and rereading the words. It’s gotta be simpler than this. Simpler, and obvious to people who know Seattle. Which, we all do in our own way.
For whom the bell tolls.
…tolls for the town…
My eyes go wide.
Belltown.
My heart is racing. My eyes are flying across the words for the five hundredth time.
“Jax?” asks Yas. I can feel her staring, and the gazes of Spider and Han follow. “What did you find?”
This is my job. Puzzler extraordinaire. Unraveler of clue-filled tapestries, detangler of complicated webs, and sorter of the unsorted. Here I am with a single word—“Belltown.” Until I read the first part again.
A CAFÉ AT THE PENTAGON.
Pentagon, pentagon, pentagon.
A five-sided shape.
A café with five sides?
Or… five points?
I dive for my backpack, sling it over my shoulder, and dart for the door.
“Jax, wait!” calls Yas behind me, grabbing her own bag and following. “Where are we going?”
No idea what we’ll find when we get there, but we’re going to the 5 Point Café.
I steal a smirk at Spider before swinging open the front door and turning west, keeping the Space Needle in my sights until I hit Dexter and hang a left. I hear fast footsteps behind me, and I hope we get there first.
* * *
Zaza used to take Ava and me to the 5 Point Café every year, the day before Father’s Day. Why? Because there’s no such thing as “Parent’s Day”… yet… so we made our own. And since it was the Saturday before Father’s Day, the cafés were empty. We usually had the place to ourselves. Now we make breakfast at home, because when you source your ingredients from such a place as Mama’s garden, where your own blood, sweat, and tears grow life from the soil, cooking becomes a spiritual experience. Hard for any restaurant to top that.
Apparently, the place opened in 1929, the year of the stock market crash that fueled the start of the Great Depression. In fact, there’s a big green neon sign out front that explicitly states: WE CHEAT TOURISTS ’N’ DRUNKS, SINCE 1929.
It always makes me laugh.
Here we all stand, staring at the front door in silence.
“Jax,” whispers Yas. “Are we really about to do this?”
And I know what she’s asking without her having to ask it.
It’s dark out here. The streetlights are on. White people walk past us on this sidewalk, holding hands, walking dogs, laughing half drunkenly, texting, carrying grocery bags, and wheeling strollers. We, four kids—three of us people of color—are standing here in the dark, backpacks on, sneaking around a restaurant none of us have any intention of buying anything from that doesn’t close until two in the morning, the outside of which is mostly lit by neon signs in the windows. And we’re looking for clues to a cryptology puzzle posted by a cryptic social vigilante organization that’s basically said, in nonspecific terms, fuck the police.
Not a good look.
Not the safest look, at least.
I turn to her and see the neon green lights reflecting in her glossy brown eyes. She’s asking me to decide not just as a friend but as our leader. The leader of the Vault forum, and the captain of Team JERICHO.
I think for a moment as Spider’s and Han’s gazes follow hers, landing on my face.
Is this safe? they ask.
Find a bin. Look around.
I know what this looks like—three kids of color and a white guy creeping through an alley, looking between garbage cans and uglying up these white-owned businesses. Not that I have anything against the owners of the 5 Point. I’m sure they’re cool. But nobody’s immune to bias. Especially at night. Not even me.
That’s when I see it go by.
The black-and-white car on the other side of the alley, cruising past at a cool ten miles per hour, the officer in the driver’s seat leaning on the window, staring straight at me.
I freeze.
His eyes meet mine, cool and knowing, as if issuing a warning. I’m not even doing anything. I’m just a kid standing in front of a restaurant with my friends.
I remember what Mama said earlier.
For protection, she’d said. Just a feeling. There are a lot of protests going on downtown today—okay, Juju-bean? Be careful.
I shut my eyes and breathe, suppressing the adrenaline rising in me. I’m more afraid of the cops than I am of protesters. Hell, I want to be a protester. I should be more afraid to not fight for what I want. Justice. Peace. For Roundworld to get their oily claws the hell up out of my mama’s garden. I want them gone. And if it means I have to lead my friends through a dark alley hunting through trash to do it, even with cops on patrol, so be it.
“Jax?” Yas asks. And then I remember she’s just asked me, Are we really about to do this?
“Let’s go,” I say. A nonanswer. I don’t know if this is safe. Depends on how bored the cops are. But we have to do this.
I have to do this.
So, yes. We are.
I step forward first, pulling my hood over my head in case there are cameras. I know hoods are against Mama and Zaza’s formula for keeping their little Black boy the safest they possibly can. Hands on the wheel. Yes sir, no sir. Ask before doing anything.
No phone.
No music.
No hoods.
I hope this alley is dark enough that it won’t matter.
We cross the street and I get a clearer view of this stretch of alley, and my heart sinks. There must be at least a dozen trash bins back here! How many businesses share this one spot? What is this, Belltown’s communal dumping ground?
“Which one?” asks Spider. Yas joins me to my left and says, “Maybe they’re labeled somehow?”
Han’s phone flashlight brightens to life somewhere behind me, startling me. I look back at him, for a moment expecting to see a cop’s flashlight in my face. Okay, be cool, Jax, be cool, I tell myself. Even though my hands are shaking. No one seems to notice. The flashlight turns to the bins, where we all lean in and see numbers written on the top of each. 410. 415. 445.
“5 Point Café’s address is 415 Cedar,” says Yas, holding up her phone to me. I grin up at her and nod.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t mention it,” she says flatly.
I feel like I should say something to mend what we both said in Abba’s store just now. I hate this. Yas and I have been best friends for years. We know not to let a cryptology puzzle come between us, no matter how vital it is for us to win.
“Hey,” I say, “I’ll always do what’s best for our team. You know that, right?”
She purses her lips and stares at the ground in silence as Spider opens the trash can lid and peers inside.
“Let’s just find this clue,” she says, stepping forward and joining him. Okay, now I’m mad. First, she accuses me of playing favorites with the Order, and now she won’t tell me why she’s got this chip on her shoulder?
