Book Scavenger Read online

  Also known for his spirit of fun, Griswold has been affectionately nicknamed the Willy Wonka of book publishing. In 2004 he launched a book trading game called Book Scavenger that has grown in popularity, amassing over 500,000 users in sixteen participating countries, with an average of 100,000 books to be found on any given day. In addition to Book Scavenger, he’s hosted several smaller-scale games around the city and occasionally in farther-off locations.

  Mr. Griswold had also moved to the Bay Area when he was twelve? Emily hadn’t known that. She wanted to cut out Griswold’s profile and photo, but she couldn’t find any scissors. After rummaging through bags and boxes, and yanking open kitchen cabinets and drawers, she sighed to the ceiling separating her apartment from James’s. She bet the Lees had a specific location for scissors. All normal kids who didn’t live like gypsies probably did. She bent the paper over the corner of their laminate countertop to rip it, but accidentally tore off the corner of Griswold’s photo.

  She was about to flick the small piece into the trash bag hooked over a cabinet door but stopped when she saw the Bayside Press logo on the building. She’d ripped right through it—the circular crest with a seagull soaring over water in front of a bridge. The logo wasn’t new to her, but now it was like seeing it for the first time.

  Emily raced down the hallway to find her dad settling in front of the family computer.

  “Dad,” she said, her voice breathless as if her run had been a mile long. “About my typo question—could someone do it intentionally? Publish a book with the typos in it on purpose?”

  Her dad readjusted his glasses as he considered her question.

  “They could,” he said slowly, “although I don’t know why they would. Publishers pay me to keep typos out of books. Why would they want to leave them in?”

  Why would someone want to leave them in? Emily left her dad perplexed by her sudden interest in the editorial process and raced back to her room. She picked up The Gold-Bug from the top of her stack of books, the word belief echoing in her head as she flipped to the copyright page.

  The emblem on the copyright page was nearly identical to the Bayside Press logo, but instead of a seagull there was a black bird.

  “No way,” Emily whispered. This was Mr. Griswold’s book. It had to be. He must have hidden it in the BART station before he was mugged. And there was only one reason Emily could think of that Mr. Griswold would purposely hide a book and not enter it on Book Scavenger.

  To start a game.

  CHAPTER

  10

  EMILY HAD TO TALK to James. She looked to the window where the sand pail dangled, but this was too urgent for that. She bundled The Gold-Bug with her notebook and the news clipping.

  “I’ll be right back!” she called to her dad as she thundered down the stairs.

  She thrust the article at James when he opened his front door. The damp chill of morning fog had Emily hopping from one bare foot to another, and she realized in her haste she hadn’t changed out of her pajamas, but she didn’t care.

  “You’ll never believe this! You know the words you circled in The Gold-Bug?” Her words tumbled out in an excited rush. “I found another one last night. And then, when I was talking with my dad this morning, I saw this.”

  James looked confused and possibly like he’d just woken up, although Steve’s presence plus pajamas could have that effect. He leaned over to study the torn news clipping. “Mr. Griswold?”

  “We found his next game!” Emily blurted out.

  James’s expression reminded Emily of the main character in The Gold-Bug, who thought his friend had gone insane.

  “I guess you should come in,” James said, opening the door wider.

  In James’s room, Emily said, “Look at the logo on the wall behind Mr. Griswold and compare it to this.” She flipped The Gold-Bug to the copyright page.

  James looked back and forth between the two emblems. “They’re almost identical.”

  “Exactly alike, except for the bird. This book is Mr. Griswold’s new game—I’m sure of it.”

  James inspected the emblems even closer, mulling the idea over. “And the hidden words are part of a clue,” he said.

  Emily nodded, her ponytail bobbing encouragingly. She flipped open her notebook and showed James the hidden words she’d found: fort, wild, home, rat, open, and belief.

  “Do you think it’s a puzzle?” James asked. “A word scramble, maybe? Open wild rat home … Rat fort belief…”

  They bowed their heads over the list in concentration. James combed his fingers through Steve, deep in thought.

  “I wonder why Poe?” James asked. “Why pick this story to start his game?”

  “Maybe Poe is his favorite author?”

  James nodded to the newspaper clipping still in Emily’s hand. “What about that profile? Does it say anything about his favorite authors?”

  Emily shook her head. “We could look online. Search both their names and see what comes up.”

  They moved to James’s computer, and he typed in “Griswold and Poe.”

  Emily was surprised to see more than fifty thousand hits. “Well, I guess there’s a connection.” The top one was titled “The Rivalry of Poe and Griswold.”

  “They knew each other?” James asked. “I thought Poe was … dead. Like, a long time ago.”

  “I did, too.” Emily clicked the link, and the two leaned toward the screen and began reading. “Oh, it’s about a Rufus Griswold. Different first name.” According to the article, Rufus Griswold and Edgar Allan Poe were both East Coast writers in the mid-1800s who were familiar with each other but didn’t get along. After Edgar Allan Poe died, Rufus Griswold published a mean-spirited obituary about Poe. It began, Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. And then, to the surprise of a lot of people, he became Poe’s literary executor, which meant he had access to all of Poe’s papers. He later published a biography about Poe that was full of lies and attacked his character.

  “He must be related to Garrison Griswold, right?” James asked. “I mean, what are the chances their last name is just a coincidence?”

  “They must be,” Emily said. “I don’t understand what that means, though. Why hide a Poe book for his game when his ancestor hated the guy?”

  “Maybe Mr. Griswold feels badly about it,” James suggested. “Maybe choosing Poe is his way of making amends.”

  “That’s possible.” Emily scrolled down the web page. “Or maybe he simply likes Poe and doesn’t care what this Rufus guy felt about him. But I’m not sure how knowing any of this tells us how to play Mr. Griswold’s game.” Emily studied the book on her lap, as if the beetle on the cover might start talking and give them the answer.

  “Well…” James twisted his computer chair back and forth as he thought. “Maybe the question to ask is, Why The Gold-Bug? We read ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ last year at Halloween. I’ve never heard of The Gold-Bug before yesterday. So why not use the more popular story? Or any other story of his? There’s got to be a reason why he chose this particular one.”

  Emily flipped through The Gold-Bug again, sorting through what she knew about Mr. Griswold and his games, and the little she knew about Poe.

  “This story is about a treasure hunt. A man finds a gold-bug and a piece of parchment, and then he discovers that when he heats the parchment a cipher appears. He cracks the cipher and it leads him and two friends to buried treasure. So … maybe Mr. Griswold is planning something like that.”

  James’s eyes widened. “And the hidden words are part of a message that leads to buried treasure. Do you think that’s it?”

  Emily’s mouth crooked up in a half smile. “After he organized the life-sized Mastermind tournament at Crissy Field last winter, people kept asking Mr. Griswold what game he had planned next. He said he had something in the works, something major. A secret message that leads to buried treasure sounds pretty majo
r to me.”

  * * *

  Emily returned to her apartment later that morning, still trying to wrap her head around her big discovery. She couldn’t believe she’d found Mr. Griswold’s next game. Ever since she joined Book Scavenger years ago and read all the stories shared on the forums about his San Francisco games, she’d hoped that somehow she’d get to participate in one in person. And now she had not only stumbled across his game, but it was also entirely possible she and James were the only people who knew about it so far.

  As excited as she was that she’d found Mr. Griswold’s game, and her hunch that it would be a treasure hunt like in The Gold-Bug story, she still didn’t know what to do with the hidden words. Puzzling over everything she’d just learned, Emily walked into their kitchen to find her mom knee-deep in shopping bags and cardboard boxes.

  “Do you know where I put that magic unpacking wand?” her mom asked. “I’d like to zap this stuff and have it put itself away. If the dishes could also sing and dance while they’re at it, that’d be great.”

  Emily knew from experience that her parents would be dutiful about unpacking for approximately one or two more days and then something would come up to distract them—work deadlines, a local festival they didn’t want to miss out on since they probably wouldn’t be there the following year, or the urgent need to research an unusual bird they saw. Their possessions would gradually find their way out of their moving containers and be put away—clothes would move to closets after they were worn and washed, that sort of thing. Emily sometimes suspected her parents had an unspoken competition about who could ignore the moving boxes the longest. When they were in Colorado, there was an entire box that never got opened. Her parents donated it without even looking inside when they moved to New Mexico. They figured it must not be important if they hadn’t been compelled to open the box for a whole year, and since they were on a perpetual quest to live with as few belongings as necessary, off went the box. At the time, their decision had seemed logical enough to Emily. But now she wondered what had been in that box. She thought of James’s apartment and all the photos and trinkets. What if the box had been full of old family photos or heirlooms—something special that you wouldn’t technically need for a year, but was still important all the same?

  “Finished!” Emily’s dad announced from the front room. His footsteps echoed down the hallway. He rapped loudly on Matthew’s door before entering the kitchen. “I propose a treat!” he said.

  “A treat?” Emily’s mom asked. “Does it involve leaving the house? Because I would be so sad if I had to stop unpacking right now.” She dropped the spatula she’d been holding and stepped away from the bags and boxes to grab her purse off the kitchen table.

  Flush music amplified as Matthew came out of his room and joined them.

  “Let’s venture down to North Beach,” Emily’s dad said. “I’ve been dying to see City Lights.”

  Emily perked up. “The bookstore?” She remembered reading the name in Mr. Griswold’s profile.

  “The one and only,” her dad replied. “Or I should say, the one and only City Lights. I imagine there are many bookstores in San Francisco. But City Lights is at the top of my list for Jack Kerouac and Beats-related spots.”

  “I’m in!” Emily said.

  “Me too!” her mom said.

  “Can we get lunch?” Matthew asked.

  The family took a bus down their hill to a neighborhood called North Beach. Emily wasn’t sure why it was called North Beach, because there wasn’t a speck of sand in sight. They got off the bus near Washington Square, a flat stretch of grass that sat in front of an old church. That day there was an Italian heritage parade, so the square and streets were filled with people. A marching band, followed closely by floats of Christopher Columbus’s ships, circled the square. Elsewhere in the city was a Fleet Week celebration, and every so often the Blue Angels flew overhead as part of the air show.

  Heading to the City Lights bookstore, the Cranes walked a weaving path around café tables that packed the sidewalk. The sky erupted with another thunderous roar as a pyramid of six jets flew high above the twin white spires of the Saints Peter and Paul Church. Emily and her parents clutched their ears, but Matthew didn’t seem as fazed. Maybe the music that constantly pulsed through his earbuds dulled the sound a bit.

  Her dad, leading the way, turned to them and walked backward. “Only in San Francisco!” he shouted. Her parents said that so often with every place they lived, it had become an inside joke. When their parents made a remark about a sunny day or a sale on tomatoes, Emily or Matthew would say, “Only in … (fill in the blank of wherever they were living).” It usually flustered their mom like she’d been scolded and she’d snap, “Well, not everything can be an enriching experience.”

  They walked under sculptures of open books dangling from wires like birds in flight and soon found themselves in front of City Lights. Emily’s dad wanted a picture taken of him standing under the CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE painted on the front window; then one with him, Matthew, and Emily; then he asked a stranger to take one of the whole family. He was so excited you’d think he was visiting Disneyland.

  They filed through the entrance into a small room shaped like a pizza slice.

  “Amazing to think this room made up the whole bookstore in the beginning, isn’t it?” And it was kind of amazing, since the original pizza-slice-sized store would have fit maybe ten people tops, and that would have been shoulder-to-shoulder. The bookstore was now a hodgepodge of rooms that spanned nearly a whole block. “As other businesses left this building,” her dad explained, “City Lights gradually took over the whole space.”

  They stepped up into a larger room washed in sunshine from tall windows. Matthew nearly collided with a college-aged guy, who did a double take of Matthew’s shirt—the one with five diamond playing cards on it. “Flush!” the guy said, and Matthew said, “Yeah, man.”

  “You hear about the underground concert? At the Fillmore?”

  “Seriously?” Matthew pulled at his Mohawk, trying to play it cool, but Emily could tell by her brother’s bouncing knee that this was new and exciting news. “I knew they were doing an underground tour, but I didn’t know they’d be here.”

  “Yeah, man,” the guy said. “You have to buy tickets for Shoot the Moon, but Flush will be playing, too.”

  Matthew waited until the guy walked out of the store before hurrying to their dad.

  “Dad, did you hear that?” Their dad studied notes written on Post-its tacked to a bulletin board that asked, WHAT’S THE ONE BOOK YOU ALWAYS RECOMMEND?

  “Flush at the Fillmore, Dad. That’s, like, my Jack Kerouac and my City Lights. I have to go to that concert. I’ll never have this chance again!”

  It sounded melodramatic, but her brother was probably right. By the time his favorite band came back to that venue, the Cranes would probably be long gone, living in Ohio or Mississippi or wherever their parents’ whims took them next.

  “We can talk about it.”

  “But it’s Flush!”

  “You’re causing a traffic jam, Matthew,” their mom said. “Your dad didn’t say no. We just need more information. Now’s not the time.”

  Matthew plugged his earbuds back in and stepped through an arched doorway leading to another room of books. The rest of the Cranes split into different directions to explore the bookstore on their own.

  Emily walked from small room to small room, up and down the three levels that made up City Lights. She noted the mismatched flooring; the hand-lettered signs with sayings like A KIND OF LIBRARY WHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD; an oval mirror with a lion’s head on top; framed art, photos, and memorabilia from the Beat poets. Emily trailed her fingers along the varied book spines and thought about young Garrison Griswold, freshly moved to San Francisco, and how this bookstore and its owner had been an inspiration to him.

  She’d hoped coming here might help her understand the hidden words she and James had found in Mr. Griswold’s book. F
ort, wild, home, rat, open, belief, she chanted to herself as she wandered among the bookshelves. No bolt of inspiration struck, and the bookstore didn’t magically offer up a solution as she’d hoped it would, but she was quite content to roam. She passed Matthew sitting on a footstool flipping through a book with black-and-white photographs of musicians. Her mom smiled at a book of poetry. Her dad studied a group photo of his beloved Beats for so long Emily wondered what he must be thinking about.

  If Mr. Griswold hadn’t been attacked, this would have been a perfect first weekend in a new place. Book hunting on a pier with a new friend, discovering Mr. Griswold’s game, and spending an afternoon browsing in an iconic bookstore. She only wished there wasn’t a giant, invisible timer lording over her family, ticking down to when they would inevitably move again.

  CHAPTER

  11

  THUD. Thud-thud-thud. Thud.

  It was Monday morning, Emily’s third day in San Francisco. It was also the Columbus Day holiday, which meant no school. Her first day at another new school would wait one more day.

  Emily slid open her window and listened to the pulley squeak as the bucket was lowered. Even though James had his window open upstairs, too, they seemed to have made an unspoken agreement that there would be no verbal conversations when the message bucket was in use. Encrypted conversations only.

  She unfolded the paper and read:

  ZTFV VX KBQU T HXXO? B OFXZ T CXXQ KBQBFC SJXV.

  She translated the message in no time at all: Want to hide a book? I know a good hiding spot.

  Emily had lucked out moving into James’s building.

  Twenty minutes later they walked up their hill and down the other side, ending up in the middle of a stretch of shops and restaurants. Emily had brought her backpack with her to hold her Book Scavenger notebook and the book they planned to hide (Emily’s second paperback copy of Inkheart, the one she’d found at the Albuquerque Zoo), and at the last minute Emily threw in The Gold-Bug. You never knew when you might have time to sit down and study a book for more typos.