Jaime said, “I wouldn’t say no to a cupcake.”
Mr. Biedermann pulled up some chairs for Edgar and Omar and introduced them to Mrs. Cruz. Without asking, Mrs. Cruz piled plates high with chicken and rice and set it in front of the men. “This looks delicious,” Edgar Wellington said.
“It is delicious,” said Mrs. Cruz.
Omar sampled the rice. “You are right about that,” he said, smiling. Mrs. Cruz beamed.
To Mr. Biedermann, Omar said, “We managed to catalog some of Benjamin’s items today. Not as many as we wanted to, of course. His collection is magnificent.”
Tess didn’t want to hear about what they were doing in Grandpa’s apartment. She busied herself with the box of cupcakes.
“We found opera glasses that likely date back to the nineteenth century,” said Edgar. “But the glasses can be transformed into a small pellet gun.”
Vanilla, chocolate, red velvet, carrot.
“And a lipstick case that doubles as high-powered microscope,” said Omar.
Lavender, caramel, peach, something beige and unidentifiable.
“Oh! And what appear to be the original plans for the Morningstarr caterpillar.”
Tess plucked the beige and unidentifiable cupcake from the box. She imagined her grandpa’s opera glasses and his lipstick case and his plans for the Morningstarr caterpillar in the display cases at the archives and popped the whole cupcake into her mouth.
Later, she didn’t remember what the cupcake tasted like.
That night, Tess pretended to sleep. Her mom came home after eleven, rummaged around in the kitchen, and went to bed. When she heard the soft snores coming from her parents’ room, Tess crept from her room to Theo’s, where he was turning the pages of Penelope and picking at the Morningstarr seal on the window.
“Are you actually reading that book?” Tess asked.
Theo turned a page. “It was good enough for Ava Oneal.”
“If you keep playing with that seal, Mrs. Cruz will have to fix it. Or Stoop and Pinscher are going to come up here and steal it for their collection.”
“You really want to lecture me about the seal?”
“Have you found anything else in that book?”
“Not yet.” When Tess didn’t leave, Theo sighed. “I’m going to finish this chapter. And then I’m going to get some sleep. You should, too.”
“I can’t.”
“You’ve got that zombie look. Like your eyeballs are going to cave in and your face is going to fall off.”
Standing there, all gushy and loose on the outside, all tense and hungry on the inside, Tess felt like a zombie. It wasn’t always this way. When they were little, Theo was the zombie, so plagued by nightmares that he used to come into Tess’s room in the middle of the night and curl up on her floor, soothed by the sound of her breathing. She didn’t know how they’d switched places, when exactly she’d become the nervous one and he’d learned to calm himself, learned to read nineteenth-century novelists with their nineteenth-century worries until his mind quieted and he could drift off, content that things were better now. She wondered if they would switch places again and again the whole of their lifetimes, which of them she’d rather be, if she even had a choice.
Nine nudged Tess’s fingers, and Tess’s own insistent, zombie energy nudged her out of her reverie. “I’m getting a snack,” she told Theo, who merely turned another page in the book.
In the living room, the light of the moon shone through the windows, illuminating the streamers of toilet paper that festooned the furniture. Beneath those windows was Lancelot, who was “sleeping” in a pile of towels, looking a lot like Theo had when he was curled on her floor, stunned silent by his latest nightmare.
Lancelot didn’t stir when Tess entered the space or when she rummaged in the box for one of the leftover cupcakes. Every once in a while, he’d let out a sigh so human that it froze Tess in her tracks.
“You miss him, don’t you?” Tess whispered.
Her answer was a tiny metallic creak as Lance shifted slightly under the towels.
“I miss him, too. I miss the way things were.” She went to Lancelot and pulled one of the towels up to his chin. She had no idea if this would soothe the machine. What soothes a machine? The question sounded like a clue to one of Grandpa Ben’s crossword puzzles. Puzzle makers believe in misdirection, Grandpa said—was the clue “dentist’s number” talking about the dentist’s phone number or her social security number or her license plate number or her anesthetic? Number or NUMBer? NUMBer or number? You need to look at the clue from every angle, consider every possibility. When he worked the Sunday puzzle, he told Tess how to do it: Write in pencil; pick out plurals and fill in all those easy s boxes. Relax—how can you think, he’d say, if you’re wound up tight? When the puzzle stops being fun, walk away, come back to it later, sleep on it, you’ll feel better in the morning.
But when she woke up, she didn’t feel better. And she didn’t feel better the next night, or the next. They scoured every page of Penelope but found no more information, and they still didn’t know where in the building to look or what to look for. After being so sure that they were on the right track, so sure that the Cipher was both reading them and guiding them, Tess now felt farblunget herself, lost and confused, even abandoned. Maybe the book wasn’t a clue. Maybe a story was just a story. And the more time went by, the harder it was to believe that they’d ever found anything of significance, that the Morningstarrs would have hidden clues in a letter that could be lost or a chair that could be misplaced or a painting that could be destroyed. Her mood only worsened when she went out to take a walk with Nine and came back to find some random guy, white and round and bald, slapping a notice to the front door of the building: THE CITY OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF INSPECTIONS
THIS BUILDING IS CONDEMNED
FOR THE PURPOSES OF PUBLIC SAFETY, A CONDEMNED BUILDING MAY BE ORDERED VACATED.
THIS BUILDING LOCATED AT: 354 W. 73RD STREET IS TO BE VACATED BY: JULY 31ST
DO NOT OCCUPY
PERSONS OCCUPYING THIS BUILDING PAST JULY 31ST OR REMOVING THIS NOTICE ARE SUBJECT TO A $1,000 FINE OR 90 DAYS’ IMPRISONMENT OR BOTH.
“What is that? What are you doing?” Tess demanded.
The man barely glanced at her. “I’m knitting a sweater. What do you think I’m doing?”
Tess’s chest heaved as if she’d just run a marathon. “This building is not condemned.”
“Whatever you say, kid,” the man told her. “I just hang the signs.”
“It’s not!”
“So, call city hall and argue with them.”
“Take that sign down!” Tess shouted, but the man was already marching off, as if Tess were about as consequential as a stain on the sidewalk.
Tess ripped the sign off the door, balled it up, and threw it to the nearest Roller tidying up the street. She didn’t want to go back to her apartment, so she went to Jaime’s apartment instead. It took only one knock for Mrs. Cruz to throw open the door and say, “What is broken?”