The Alcatraz Escape Read online

  “Homework?” Matthew asked.

  Emily shook her head. “It’s…” She’d been reluctant to admit to her friends that she was having trouble, but this was Matthew. There was less to lose confiding in her brother, and he wasn’t into Book Scavenger anymore, so he wouldn’t think less of her for not being able to solve a puzzle. And even if he did, she was used to him teasing her. “It’s the puzzle for Unlock the Rock.”

  “Seriously? It’s that hard?”

  Emily was touched that Matthew would assume the puzzle must be hard rather than she wasn’t smart.

  “Want me to take a look?” Matthew asked.

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Very funny.”

  Her brother might have liked doing puzzles for fun, but he wasn’t competitive about them like Emily. She doubted he’d take it as seriously as she would. Besides, if she couldn’t solve this puzzle on her own, then she didn’t deserve to go to Unlock the Rock.

  She was halfway back to her room when Matthew called out, “You know I was serious, right? About helping?”

  “I only have two more chances to solve it. I can’t blow it by goofing around.”

  She looked back, surprised to see a hurt expression on Matthew’s face, though it was quickly replaced by his normal, easygoing smile. He shrugged. “Suit yourself. There’s more than one puzzle person in this family, you know.”

  Ignoring him, Emily slipped back into her room. She woke up her laptop but couldn’t bring herself to try again just yet. Instead she went to the forums to see what people were saying about the game.

  Skimming the new messages posted in the “Unlock the Rock” thread, her eyes landed on a username she recognized: Bookacuda.

  “He’s coming?” Emily muttered to herself. Bookacuda was the youngest Sherlock-level player in the United States. Also the most arrogant and obnoxious. He didn’t live in San Francisco—he didn’t even live in California, if she remembered correctly. He was an eighth grader who lived in …

  Nebraska? Emily squinted at her screen to make sure she was reading Bookacuda’s profile right. He was going to travel all the way from Nebraska for the game? It wasn’t unheard of for people to do that for one of Mr. Griswold’s games, of course, but since this game was the lead-up to the grand reopening of Hollister’s store, it seemed like more of a local thing.

  Emily scrolled through the various messages in the forum about Unlock the Rock. When she got to a post from a Nancy Drew–level player—the second lowest level—exclaiming The entry puzzle was so much FUN!!!!!! Emily slapped her comforter. “That’s it!”

  She opened the Unlock the Rock entry page and clicked “yes” before she could overthink it any more.

  A ten-minute timer started the countdown. She saw the same puzzle as before. Emily knew there were other people who probably copied theirs down or took a picture in order to work on it outside the time limit, but Emily wasn’t that kind of player. If the challenge was to solve a puzzle within a given amount of time, that was what she was going to do. It felt like cheating to do it any other way.

  When she’d first attempted to solve this the other day, Emily had gotten the answer 15. The puzzle had seemed so easy, but when she’d submitted her solution, the computer had spit out the message: I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. You have two chances remaining.

  Reviewing the puzzle again with fresh eyes, Emily still couldn’t believe fifteen wasn’t the right answer. She walked through her logic.

  “Three spiders equals twenty-four,” she muttered to herself. “Which means a spider stands for the number eight. If eight minus a clock is five, then the clock is equal to three. Three plus three plus a hat equals ten … so the hat must be four. Which means three plus four plus eight equals…” Emily scribbled the math in her notebook.

  “Fifteen.” She sighed. What was she missing? This seemed so simple. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyeballs, and when she released them, her vision blurred for a second. When she could see straight again, she studied the problem, and this time—

  “Ha!” She’d misread the bottom line. It wasn’t three plus four plus eight. It was three plus four times eight.

  “I can’t believe I skimmed over that.”

  The first time she did the math, she got the answer 56. She was about to press submit for her new answer when she remembered the order of operations. You were supposed to do multiplication before addition.

  “Multiply,” she scolded herself. She redid the math:

  3 + 4 x 8 =?

  4 x 8 = 32

  3 + 32 = 35

  “Thirty-five! Thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty-five,” Emily started chanting to herself in a made-up tune. She double-checked her work, but she knew it was right this time. She couldn’t believe she’d missed that multiplication symbol. That was what happened when you were overconfident and rushed through a problem.

  Emily typed 35 into the answer space and pressed “Enter.” The computer replied:

  I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.

  You have one chance remaining.

  CHAPTER

  4

  THE ELEVATOR in Errol Roy’s apartment building was old and narrow and dark. The door was an elaborate iron gate, like something you’d see in front of a haunted mansion, and it made him feel trapped in a cage. For years he’d taken the stairs instead, but that was harder at his age. Today he carried a large sack piled high with cans of cat food and towed a rolling cart holding multiple containers of kitty litter, so he rode up the elevator with his eyes closed and pictured a beach he used to visit in Brazil.

  When he arrived at his floor, he slid the metal grate open, which made a terrible racket echoing down the hall. Hoisting the paper sack up an inch, he dragged his squeaking roller cart to his apartment two doors down.

  Errol fumbled to get his keys out of his pocket. The door across from his opened, but he acted like he hadn’t heard a thing.

  “Oh, hello, Ernie!” His neighbor Valerie called to him like he was across a gigantic room instead of only a couple of feet away. Long ago, before he’d moved to this apartment building, he’d blurted out the name “Ernie” in a moment of panic when he’d been worried someone might connect his name with his books. From then on he’d stuck with “Ernie” for any in-person encounters, to help keep his privacy.

  “Stocking up on kitty supplies?” Valerie asked.

  He didn’t have to face her to know his neighbor had stepped from her apartment and was craning her neck to see in his bag. Valerie seemed to feel a kinship with Errol/Ernie because they were the oldest people in their building. At least he assumed they were—he didn’t make it a point to seek out his neighbors.

  Errol unlocked his front door instead of greeting Valerie, hoping to signal that he wasn’t interested in a chat.

  “Did you hear they’ll be repainting our hallway next week?” she asked.

  He reluctantly turned. As much as he wanted to disappear, it felt too rude even for him to enter his apartment without so much as acknowledging her question. Today Valerie wore a green sweat suit. She rotated among the colors of the rainbow. Not that Errol was one to comment on clothing. He always wore what he considered his writer uniform: loose pants cinched by a belt under his rotund belly and one of five San Francisco sweatshirts he’d picked up at the souvenir shops that populated Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “I hope the fumes aren’t too bad,” Valerie said. “I asked the super if they’d be using low-VOC paint, because you know I get those headaches.…” She prattled on while Errol stared at a scuff mark shaped like Oklahoma on the beige walls. He hadn’t known their building would be painted, but now that he studied the walls, it seemed long overdue.

  “… and so if you need any broccoli, I have plenty extra.”

  Errol darted a look to Valerie’s wide, encouraging smile. He wasn’t sure when or where the one-sided conversation had jumped tracks to vegetables.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Errol turned back to his door, restraining himself from shoving
it open and hurrying inside.

  Valerie meant well. He thought she worried about him because he didn’t have family and spent most of his time by himself. And Errol supposed he should be glad for that—to have somebody check in on him every now and then. But what he really appreciated was that Valerie, for the most part, understood he liked to be left alone.

  “All right, dear. Let me know if you change your mind.” Valerie called him dear even though he was likely older than her. It was actually one of her quirks he was fond of.

  He opened his door and wheeled the litter in ahead of him.

  “Did you get another cat?” Valerie asked. “That’s quite a lot you have there.”

  “No, I’m…” Errol studied the litter, not yet wanting to tell her he was planning a trip. Orchestrating something in real life was more complicated than he’d expected. He was used to controlling fictional characters and outcomes.

  “Must have been on sale,” Valerie said, finishing his sentence for him.

  Errol nodded and smiled absently in her general direction, then stepped into his apartment.

  CHAPTER

  5

  BY SUNDAY MORNING, Emily was beginning to panic. She needed to earn her way into Unlock the Rock before Wednesday, which left her with three days and only one last chance to solve that stupid puzzle. What if she couldn’t figure it out? What would she do then?

  She hated to admit it, but she needed to find a golden ticket. At least to hang on to for backup—to make sure she’d be participating in Unlock the Rock one way or the other. If she solved the entry puzzle, then she could give the golden ticket to Devin and act like that was why she’d found it in the first place.

  Win-win.

  But when Emily clicked on the golden-ticket map, she discovered there were only nine left, and several were not in the city. The two closest were hidden at the Grace Cathedral and in the Mission. The clue for the book hidden in the Mission looked like the easier of the two to solve, and she’d had enough of challenging puzzles, thank you very much, so she went with that.

  O N Y Z L F G E R R G I V P G B E V B A

  Hint: A = N = A

  Using the hint, Emily started by plugging an A where she saw an N, and N where she saw an A.

  O A Y Z L F G E R R G I V P G B E V B N

  The change wasn’t drastic, but she realized that swapping the same letters for each other was probably significant. It made her wonder if this substitution cipher could be like one she’d seen before, where you folded the alphabet in half to create your key:

  Emily plugged in the letters to decode the following message:

  Balmy Street Victorion

  It worked! Emily did an online search for “Balmy Street” and, sure enough, one existed in San Francisco. A Victorian was an old-fashioned building style, so a house on Balmy Street must be where she had to go to find the golden ticket.

  Now all she had to do was convince her family of the urgency of the situation.

  Emily ran into the family room and announced, “We need to go to the Mission!”

  Matthew was bent over a folding table, carefully maneuvering LEGO characters into a beach scene he’d set up on the makeshift white background that he used to film his stop-motion videos. Mr. Crane was stretched out on the couch under the bay window and flipped a page in the book he was reading. Mrs. Crane studied photos she was editing on the computer.

  Emily cleared her throat. “I said: We need to go to the Mission!”

  “We’ll go one day soon,” her dad replied.

  “I mean now. Can we go now? There’s a book I need to find before someone else does,” she pleaded.

  “You’re still declaring books on Book Scavenger?” Matthew asked. He lowered the swing-arm lamp to focus the light more closely on his miniature movie set. “I thought you already advanced to Dupin level.”

  For a while Emily had been obsessed with trying to advance from Miss Marple level to Auguste Dupin level, and the speediest way to do that was to declare books on the website before you downloaded a clue. Declaring a book made it worth double the points, but the downside was that declared books were flagged on the website so everyone knew they were now worth more to whoever found them first. Matthew was right—she’d already advanced to Dupin, and it would take a long time and a lot of found books before she moved to the level above that.

  “This isn’t a declared book. It’s for something else,” she said. “The book is near someplace called Balmy Street and—”

  “Balmy Street?” Their mom looked up.

  “Yeah,” Emily said hesitatingly, not sure if the fact that her mom recognized it was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “That’s been on our list for ages, David.” Emily’s parents maintained a blog and were writing a book about their goal of living once in each of the fifty states.

  “It is?” Emily asked. “Why?”

  “Street art,” her dad replied. “It’s an alley lined with murals by a variety of artists. The Mission is known for having a lot of murals, but Balmy Street is one of the most famous spots.”

  Matthew nodded. “Sweet.”

  Mrs. Crane stretched her neck side to side and pushed back from the computer. “I’ve been sitting way too long. I can take a break.” She tugged her camera bag free from under the computer table, double-checking that the equipment she wanted was inside.

  “I’m going, too,” Matthew announced.

  “I’ll check the bus schedule!” Emily ran back to her room and laptop, relieved that her family was on board. She tried to ignore the chip of guilt she felt about avoiding the entry puzzle and doing this instead.

  She wasn’t giving up. Finding a golden ticket was simply good strategy.

  * * *

  The first thing Emily noticed about the Mission was how flat the neighborhood was compared with the steep hill her family lived on. Walking down a sidewalk pocked with blackened chewing gum, they passed buildings with colorful storefronts at street level and bland apartments on the second and third stories above. Emily’s dad tilted his nose as they approached a taco bar. Emily could smell the scent of roasting pork.

  “Mmm,” her dad said. “Maybe we should get lunch here.”

  Emily steered her dad straight. “Focus.”

  One lone palm stood out among the leafy shade trees that lined the sidewalk along with parking meters and lampposts. The palm tree marked the corner of Balmy Street, which felt more like an alley than a street, with backyard fences and garage doors butting up to it. Almost every vertical space was painted over in elaborate murals. Bricks were laid in a stripe down the middle of the road, like a red carpet stretching from one end of the block to the other. People wandered up and down with cameras at the ready. A tour guide was speaking to a small group at the opposite end of the block.

  Emily’s mom adjusted the lens on her camera and began taking photos, focusing on a fence painted with a picture of a group of women holding up their fists in front of a mountain range. Emily’s dad pulled out the small notepad and pen he kept in his back pocket and started writing.

  “Where is the book supposed to be?” Matthew asked.

  “The book?” Emily said, studying the buildings around them. It was hard to tell from the back sides if any of these houses was a Victorian.

  “The reason we’re here?” Matthew said. “Remember Book Scavenger? The game you obsess over?”

  Emily flushed. She’d been so busy thinking about the golden ticket that she’d forgotten she had led her family to think this was a regular book hunt.

  “I don’t obsess over it,” she said. “And you don’t have to pretend to be interested. Just text your friends or listen to Flush’s new album or whatever.”

  Matthew frowned and flipped his sweatshirt hood over his head, then walked to inspect a mural a few garages down. Boy, did Emily feel like a jerk. Her brother didn’t deserve any of that. She wasn’t even mad at him. She was supposed to be this Book Scavenger whiz, but she couldn’t even solve a simple entry
puzzle. And now she was a crummy sister, too.

  She went after her brother, who was now standing in front of a mural that showed the character Max from Where the Wild Things Are sailing in a boat.

  “Hey, we found that book once playing Book Scavenger,” Emily said. “It was a long time ago—you probably don’t remember.”

  “Of course I do,” Matthew said. “We were in Mitchell, South Dakota. It was the same day we visited the Corn Palace. The book was hidden by that giant smiling corn sculpture.”

  “That’s right,” Emily said. “And we passed those enormous tractors on the drive there, remember? They were as big as a three-story house.”

  Matthew nodded. “From far away they looked like giant mutant bugs crawling down the road.”

  They studied Max in his boat for a bit longer; then Emily asked, “Do any of these houses look like they’d be a Victorian to you?”

  “A what?” Matthew asked.

  “You know, like those famous San Francisco houses that were in the old TV show Mom and Dad made us watch before we moved out here?”

  “Full House? Oh yeah, I know the type of house you’re talking about.”

  They eyed the buildings up and down Balmy Street. Matthew turned in nearly a full circle until he stopped, facing the next mural over.

  “Did you say you were looking for a VictoriAN or a VictoriON?” Matthew asked.

  “Victori—” The mural her brother was looking at was of an enormous robot, made up of San Francisco buildings, stomping through a neighborhood. There were all sorts of crazy things around the robot, like a flying cable car, a giant yellow bunny, a car with feet, and a guy on a skateboard holding a scared dog. It was a lot to take in. Matthew kicked his foot forward to underline the name of the mural with the toe of his sneaker: Victorion.

  “Victorion!” Emily exclaimed. She wasn’t supposed to find a house; she was supposed to find a mural. She must have read the clue too fast and missed the odd spelling. Emily hadn’t written the clue down because it had seemed simple enough to remember. But this was clearly what she was after.