The Secret Cipher (2 page)

“Turn on the hose,” I told Ethan as I dragged the plastic pool onto the grass.

“Why don't we go swim in my pool?” he asked. A few years ago, his parents had installed a pool
with a deep end and a diving board. It was super nice but I didn't feel like riding all the way over there. I set the hose inside.

“This'll work just fine.” I sat in the pool in my shorts and T-shirt, my legs hanging over the edge. “Ahhhhh,” I said, as the water poured in. “That's better.”

July is the worst time to be stuck in Chatham. The humidity makes everything wilt. Mom and I usually went camping by the lake, but she was working extra hours at the diner, so I was stuck. Other than our bikes, the only way to get around was to beg my older cousin, Tyler, to drive us. But ever since our trip to Washington, DC, he'd been holed up in his room,
recovering
.

“You know, I've been thinking,” I said. Water began to spill over the top of the pool, so Ethan turned off the hose. “If Juniper hadn't disappeared, we could have become really famous. I mean, we have proof that the Greek gods existed.”

“
Had
proof,” he corrected. “We don't have the urn anymore.”

I'd spent a lot of time thinking about what might have happened. “We could have been on magazine covers and morning talk shows. We could have
gotten a million-dollar book deal.” I smiled dreamily. With that much money, I'd build my own pool with a diving board and deep end. “They'd make a movie about us. They'd call it
The Secret Box Adventure
. We'd have a red-carpet premiere and wear gowns. Well, I'd wear a gown.”

Ethan didn't smile back. It was easy for me to read his thoughts. We'd spent so much time together, I could practically see inside his brain.
Jax spends too much time imagining things. She makes up too many stories, like the ones where she pretends that her father is an astronaut or a rock star
.

“They can't make a movie about us because we can't tell anyone about the urn,” he said.

Ethan, Tyler, and I had agreed on the following fact: if the world knew about the urn's power, then we'd all be in danger. Someone would ultimately use it for evil. There is no positive reason to suck hope from a person's soul.

I sighed. The imaginary opening credits to my movie faded before my eyes like smoke. “I know it's a secret. You don't need to remind me.”

Ethan sat on the grass and took off his black Converse sneakers. Then he dangled his feet in the plastic pool. I splashed water on my face. “How hot
do you think it is in Hades?”

“Hades?” Ethan held back a sneeze.

“Yeah. The Greek underworld. It's their version of hell. I've been reading about it.” Usually I read travel guides. They're my favorite books. But I went to the public library and got this book about Greek mythology so I could understand more about what had happened to us. “How hot do you think it is down there?”

“What do you mean
is
?” he asked. “The Greek gods are gone. So if they're gone, then their underworld must be gone too.” He was always trying to be logical.

“Okay, fine.” I flicked water at him. “How hot do you think it
was
in Hades?”

Ethan thought for a moment. He was super good at collecting facts. “Well, Death Valley is the hottest place on earth. Its record temperature is one hundred thirty-four degrees. The surface of the sun is somewhere around ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. So I'm going to guess that Hades is between those two.” Then he shook his head. “I can't believe we're having this conversation.”

Until a month ago, Ethan would have said there was no such place as Hades. He would have told
me to go talk to Tyler. Tyler's obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology. He designed a multiplayer combat game called Cyclopsville, where the players search ancient ruins and fight mythological beasts. I have to admit that the exploding cyclops heads are pretty cool.

Even though my butt was going numb from the cold, I sank lower into the water. My thoughts turned to our great-aunt, who'd taken us on this amazing adventure, and then disappeared. Since then, the only message we'd gotten from her was a single email that I'd opened on my computer.

TO: Jacqueline Malone

FROM: Juniper

SUBJECT: How Are You?

But there'd been nothing in the email—no message, no photographs. Zero!

“I think Juniper's being rude,” I grumbled. “We saved her from kidnappers. She should at least give us a call. We deserve to know what's going on.”

“I'm glad she hasn't called,” Ethan said.

Maybe he was right. Because of our great-aunt, Tyler, Ethan, and I had almost been killed by a pair
of international felons named Martha and George Camel. They'd kidnapped Juniper. Then they'd chased us through Washington, DC. Mr. Camel had pointed a gun at Tyler's head, and Mrs. Camel pointed a gun at Ethan and me!

“It would definitely make a good movie,” I said. “And if we had more adventures, there'd be a sequel.”

“A sequel?” Ethan sneezed. “Are you serious? A sequel has to be even more exciting than the first movie. That would mean something even worse would have to happen.”

I sat up real straight. “What if something even worse
already
happened? What if Juniper's been kidnapped again and that's why we haven't heard from her?”

“The Camels are in prison,” Ethan said. “Besides, there's no reason to think Juniper's been hurt. She's probably too busy to call.”

I fidgeted. I hate waiting for anything. I always open the microwave before the popcorn is fully popped. And I refuse to get milk shakes at Pete's Soda Fountain because they take too long making them by hand. So waiting a whole month for a message was driving me crazy. “But what if she's
in trouble and that's why she hasn't called? What if—”

A phone rang. We both turned around and stared at my house. Mom still kept a landline in the kitchen. It rang again.

I grabbed the edge of the pool. “Do you think . . . ?” Water splashed over the sides as I scrambled out. “Please be Juniper, please be Juniper,” I chanted as I ran across the freshly mowed grass. After flinging open the kitchen door, I hurried inside, reaching the phone on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Hello,” a woman said.

I sighed. The voice didn't belong to Juniper. Once again, total disappointment. I was ready to hang up, because that's the best way to deal with a sales call, when the voice said, “I'm not sure if I have the right number, but there is an elderly woman in our care and we found this phone number written inside her bandana.”

FACT:
The immune system is supposed to stand guard and protect against dangerous invaders, like the bird flu and the bubonic plague. But sometimes it overreacts to things that aren't dangerous, like tree pollen and cat fur. The result—itchy eyes, sneezing, and inflamed sinuses, which is what always happens to me at the beginning of summer. I'm an immune system mess.

Oh, and then there are the stress-induced nosebleeds. I've been getting those all my life. Jax never makes fun of me, but Tyler always does. He calls me an inferior life form.

M
e and my allergies waited by the pool while Jax answered the phone. It was probably a sales call. But what were the odds that it was our great-aunt? If I wanted to calculate the actual number, I'd have to ask Tyler, captain of the high school's Math Olympiad team.

“Ethan!” Jax frantically waved at me from the doorway, the phone cord stretched tight. Then she disappeared back into the kitchen.

Uh-oh.

Jax's house had no air-conditioning, so the kitchen felt stuffy. Fruit flies fluttered around a pair of overripe bananas and a pile of dirty dishes filled the sink. Jax stood at the counter, the phone pressed to her ear. Water dripped off her shorts and pooled around her bare feet. I wiped my feet on the mat, leaving behind a bunch of grass blades. “What's going on?”

Jax pressed the phone's speaker button. The voice on the other end was female. She was in the middle of an explanation. “The Sisters of Mercy treats elderly patients suffering from dementia and memory loss. This particular patient was found at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She couldn't remember who she was or how she'd gotten to the museum. Massachusetts
General Hospital treated her and diagnosed her with having suffered a cerebrovascular accident.”

“A what?” Jax asked.

“A stroke, which means that the blood supply to her brain was cut off for a short period of time, causing damage.” The woman cleared her throat. “She was brought to Sisters of Mercy a few days ago but we still don't know who she is. She has no identification and no family member has claimed her. We're calling her Jane Doe. As I said, your phone number was written inside her bandana.”

Jax and I shared a look. The last time we saw Juniper, she'd been wearing a bandana.

The woman continued. “She's elderly, probably in her eighties. And she has long white hair. It was in a braid when they found her.”

“Braids and a bandana?” I said. “That sounds like—”

Jax grabbed my arm, silencing me with a squeeze. “Don't say anything yet,” she whispered. “We don't know what's going on.”

“So?” the woman asked. “Does she sound familiar?”

Jax pursed her lips together and tapped her fingers on the counter. “I might know her,” she said cautiously. “She sounds like a lady who lived down the street.”

Jax was protecting our great-aunt. For many years, Juniper had been hiding from the world. She'd had herself “erased” from the internet. She'd come to us only because she'd needed help. So until we knew the whole story, we'd continue to keep her secrets.

“Can we talk to her?” Jax asked.

“I'm afraid Jane Doe is not allowed to make calls right now. The police are here and . . .” She paused.

“Why are the police there?” I asked.

“It's complicated. Will you come and see if you know her? It's important that we contact her next of kin. We are the Sisters of Mercy Convalescent Center, in Boston.”

“Okay.” Jax grabbed a pad of paper and pencil and wrote down the address. “Thank you. We'll be there as soon as we can.” Then she hung up.

“I hope Juniper's okay,” I said, remembering our neighbor Mrs. Purcell, who'd suffered a massive stroke. It had left her paralyzed and unable to speak. One year had passed and Mrs. Purcell still couldn't walk.

“Juniper's faking,” Jax said with total certainty. “I just know it. Something happened and she needed a place to hide. What better place than a hospital where no one knows you?” She hurried from the kitchen.

“Uh . . . you can't fake a stroke,” I pointed out. “They would have done a CAT scan on her brain. Where are you going?”

“I'm gonna change into some dry clothes. We've got to figure out how to get to Boston.”

A knot formed in my stomach. I was happy that we hadn't heard from our great-aunt. It was nice not being chased by villains. It was nice not carrying around an urn that could suck hope from people's souls. I'd been looking forward to a predictable summer without any more Greek god activity. But Jax wanted to jump right back in while I wanted to go back outside and rake grass.

Fact: Each of us shares about 99.5 percent of our DNA with everyone else on the planet. And if you're closely related, like a brother or a cousin, then you share even more.

So why were Jax and I so different?

I'm not an adventurous person. I'm happy to read and observe. I'll probably go into some kind of research, like my dad. Test tubes don't look at you weirdly when you try to say something appropriate but it comes out as a list of facts.

I walked out of the kitchen, then stood at the bottom of the stairs. Jax's bedroom was on the second
floor. “I want to point out that we are forbidden to have anything to do with our great-aunt,” I hollered. “If our parents find out that we met her, we're gonna get grounded or worse.”

We weren't supposed to know Great-Aunt Juniper because she'd been shunned by our parents. Before Jax was born, Aunt Lindsay had gone to visit Juniper, who'd been working in Washington, DC, for the International Society of Archaeologists. During the visit, Aunt Lindsay fell in love with a man who was working as Juniper's intern. Aunt Lindsay got pregnant with Jax, and Lindsay and the man were going to get married but he disappeared. He didn't leave a note or an address. Jax was raised not knowing anything about her father.

But last month, when we met Juniper for the first time, she confessed that the man hadn't been an intern. He was actually a professional thief and an expert on breaking codes. He'd been hired by the society to retrieve a stolen artifact. He'd gone into hiding and Juniper couldn't reveal his whereabouts. Aunt Lindsay had felt betrayed. She'd said Juniper should have warned her not to get involved with this man. She'd told Juniper to never contact our family again.

I think Aunt Lindsay was embarrassed that she'd fallen in love with a criminal. She'd trusted him and he'd abandoned her and her baby. She didn't want Jax to know the truth, so it was easier to blame everything on Juniper. That's why Jax grew up without a father and why we never knew about our great-aunt.

“Jax?” I called. “Are you listening to me? Boston is almost two hundred and fifty miles away and neither of us is old enough to drive.”

“I don't care if Boston is a million miles away. We have to get there.” She raced down the stairs in new, dry clothes. Then she grabbed my cell phone. “I'm calling Tyler.” She bounced on her toes while the phone rang. Tyler's voice boomed from the speaker.

“If you're calling the New Jersey Math Olympiad champion and the co-creator of the mind-blowing game Cyclopsville, then you've reached the right number. Unfortunately for
you
, I'm currently engaged in activities that your puny mind cannot comprehend, so leave a message, dude.”
Beep
.