Strong Like the Sea, стр. 20
A = B
B = C
C = D
“I had to work out how to shift the alphabet. Left, right, how many spaces—like that—before I found real words.”
“You got it?” Jack slides into the seat beside Malia and picks up a page.
“I think so. Shift all letters one space to the left, and that TUBOET word turns into STANDS.”
Ekolu—or maybe Kase—slurps loud as they wolf it down.
“Can you guys even taste your shave ice?” Malia asks, but the boys barely give her a glance, their eyes locked on each other as they shovel spoonful after frozen spoonful into their mouths.
I pass my new, corrected card to Jack. “But some words still don’t make sense; like, who is Janob? And why spell KOOL with a K instead of a C? Plus there’s the AND with the initials S and T over that.”
I shrug. “There’s got to be a second code or cipher or something, but—”
Shrill squawking erupts, and Ekolu and Kase jerk their feet out from under the table like the floor turned to lava.
In a blur of feathers, a speckled hen flaps her wings and clucks like crazy-pants as she rushes past us with ten fluffball chicks scurrying along behind.
“What the—” Kase stands and watches the feathered train dodge from table to table to the feet of the tourists with the pizza. The hen’s squawks change to contented clucks as she gathers her brood around a pizza crust.
Leave it to tourists to feed chickens in the middle of a restaurant patio. More chickens here just means more poo. The safari hat man rips off more crust and drops it on purpose.
Malia and I share a look with Kase, and he raises a brow. “Tourists. No regard at all, eh?”
I open my mouth to tease him back, but a weird, slurpy-sucking sound rises behind us.
“Hey!” Kase yelps and grabs for his shave ice as Ekolu raises his bowl to his lips and slurps the last of it down. “No fair!”
“Boom!” Ekolu throws a double shaka. “Totally fair. No one said stop. Who’s the best? Me. That’s right. I’m awesome.” But like a glitch on a screen, Ekolu’s smile cracks and he gasps, drops the spoon, and grabs the sides of his head. “Gah! Ow—brain freeze! Aagh!” He pants with his mouth wide.
Jack snickers but barely looks up from my clue card. “Told you to slow down, brah. You need every brain cell you got.”
“Hold your tongue against the roof of your mouth. It warms up faster.” Malia half turns in her seat.
Eyes shut tight, Ekolu snaps his mouth shut and grits his teeth.
“I’ll get you some water.” Kase jumps up, dodges a couple more tourists, and ducks into Angel’s again.
I can’t help but feel bad for Ekolu, his face brighter than ginger flowers. “You okay over there, Ekolu?”
Teeth gritted, he shakes his head and whimpers. “Ugghhh!”
Kase bursts out of the shop and hands Ekolu a cup of water. “Here. This’ll help.”
Ekolu grabs the glass and gulps it down, the red in his face draining almost as fast as the water. With a cough, he gives a weak shaka. “Mahalo, brah. That was bad.”
“Yeah, that’s what you get for cheating.” Kase swirls the last of his shave ice around his bowl. “And you suffer for nothing, because that win doesn’t count.”
“Does too count. I won,” Ekolu pouts.
“Did not.”
“Did too. Keep talking and we’ll have to duel it out at Castle Tree.”
“As Loremaster of Castle Tree, I declare your challenge invalid.” Kase licks his spoon.
“That was just a title we made up for you because you’re new here. It doesn’t mean you get to ‘declare’ things forever,” Ekolu grumbles.
“Sure it does.” Kase grins. “No one else wrote anything down. I’m grandfathered in as Loremaster.”
“What? ’Cause you brought a notebook to a tree fort? Who does that?” asks Ekolu.
Who knew that by letting him write down our made-up lore about the coolest banyan tree in town, the rest of the Castle Crew and I were forever handing all the power to Kase—all because he was the first kid who thought to bring a notebook and pencil.
Jack turns the corrected clue card to face me. “Were you being serious about not knowing what any of these mean?”
“Yeah, I don’t know, but I can figure it out.” I always do. At least, I hope I can. “I’m missing another layer, another code . . . or something. It’s complicated.”
“Maybe you just think it’s complicated; simple answers can be right too.”
“Mom doesn’t do simple. I mean, she works in counter-intelligence. She breaks codes in her sleep faster than I can read them out loud. I just have to try harder.”
Jack sets the card on the table between Malia and me. “Well, then I think you should stand in the corner until you figure it out. Get it? Stand in the corner?” He snickers, but then quits when I don’t join in.
“Rude. Thanks, but no thanks.” Can’t he be serious even once?
Jack taps the corner of the card. “No. Fo’ real. Stand is in the corner. See?”
“What?” Malia and I lean over the cement table—and he’s right. The letters all together spell STAND—bent in half and tucked in the corner. Like shave ice sliding down my neck, shivers prickle my skin. “The words aren’t in a second code—they’re word puzzles!”
I hug Jack around the shoulders, and he grins even wider. Leave it to Jack to remember the fun stuff. Silly fun and games, that’s Jack—so different from my mom.
But it was Mom who made the clue. “Wait, my mom sent me word puzzles?”
“Sure. Why not?” Jack shrugs. “You gotta have fun too, right? Change it up.”
Would Mom be disappointed if I got help to figure it