“He likes you?” Theresa asked.
“I don’t think so,” Lucy said. “But he gave me a pair of shoes.”
“Um…shoes? What the hell?”
“Are you cooking while talking to me?” Lucy asked when she heard pots and pans rattling in the background.
“I’m a kindergarten teacher. I can multitask like an octopus. Tell me.”
Lucy told her everything that had happened so far—the coat, the lawyer, the “spoiled brat” remark, Dustin, the rescue, the shoes.
“He likes you,” Theresa finally said.
“You think the shoes were flirting, not pity?”
“Martin bought me a fish tank when he was trying to get with me. Men are crazy when they’re crazy about a girl. He gave you his shoes. You give him your panties.”
“You teach kindergarten, Theresa.”
“I also have a husband. Get him.”
“I’m not here to get a husband, remember? You’re supposed to tell me to keep my eyes on the prize. I’m doing this for Christopher.”
“Honey, if anybody deserves two prizes, it’s you. Win your game. Get your boy, then get your man. The end.”
Lucy rubbed her forehead. “Theresa. This is not helping.”
“Call up someone stupid then. I’m too smart to tell you not to flirt back. Flirt back. Hard. Make him give you a fish tank, baby girl.”
“I love you,” Lucy said. “You’re insane, but I love you. Thank you for making me feel slightly less like shit.”
“You don’t feel like shit. You are the shit, baby. Don’t you forget it. And I love you too. Be good but not too good, okay?”
“You too.” They hung up.
Talking to Theresa had helped. Lucy took off her old Converse sneakers and tossed them under the bed. She found her thickest pair of socks and put them on. The boots fit pretty well. Traipsing all over the island would be much easier now with a pair of almost-new hiking boots. She looked herself over in the mirror. They looked great with her red skinny jeans—a Goodwill find—and her favorite black crewneck sweater, an old gift from Sean.
After she brushed her teeth, it was almost two o’clock. She walked to the picnic tables at One O’Clock.
Andre and Melanie were there. No Dustin.
“Take a bow, Lucy,” Andre said, giving her a golf clap. “You figured out the puzzle this morning, and you got rid of Dustin.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Take it as a compliment,” Melanie said. “He didn’t try to cheat with us, just you.”
“Yeah, lucky me.” But it was, in a weird way, a compliment. Lucy had won the first game, and she did guess what the puzzle meant this morning too. If she won the next game, she’d be nearly halfway to victory and only on day two.
Jack came up the path and stood in front of the picnic table. Ms. Hyde stood at his side clutching a leather portfolio.
“Hello again, kids. As you’ve seen, we’re down a player,” Jack said. “Dustin left an hour ago. He told me to pass along his sincerest apologies to you, Lucy. Apparently, he’s suffering from what he calls S.L.S.D.—Student Loan Stress Disorder.”
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “I forgive him.”
“Let me remind everyone,” Ms. Hyde said, “cheating—or attempting to cheat—in any form or fashion will have you disqualified immediately.”
“Which is a shame,” Jack said. His tone was melancholy. “Personally, I’m all for cheating, lying, and stealing. Where do you think I get all my book ideas?”
“That was a joke,” Ms. Hyde said. “No credible accusations of plagiarism have ever been lodged against Mr. Masterson.”
“I believe they knew I was joking,” Jack said. Then he clapped and rubbed his hands together with fiendish glee. “Now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, let’s play a new game.”
Ms. Hyde opened her portfolio and passed them each a single sheet of paper.
“What’s this list?” Andre asked. “The Utterly Impossible Scavenger Hunt? Seriously? We have to do a scavenger hunt that nobody can do? How’s that supposed to work?”
Lucy took her sheet of paper and glanced at the items on the list.
A wheelbarrow for a fairy garden
The wind under a kite
A solid-black checkerboard
“A jar of nine-legged spiders?” Melanie said. “Are you kidding? Either I’m having a stroke, or this list is crazy.”
“Both, possibly,” Jack said. “I’d bet on both, myself. Two points if you can divine the secret of the hunt. No points for second place on this game.”
“We gotta get a hint, Jack,” Andre said. “I can’t spend all day chasing down an origami salami or a damn fish with a secret!”
“Please,” Melanie said, her eyes pleading. “I felt so stupid after the last game. I know it will be something totally obvious when we find out. Could you make it a little more obvious before we begin this time?”
She smiled, but it was a shy and nervous smile. Did Melanie need to win the book as much as Lucy did?
“Ah, but that’s how life is,” Jack said. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, they say, and they aren’t wrong. We only know the right thing to do after we’ve done the wrong one. To quote the supposedly great but mostly incomprehensible S?ren Kierkegaard—‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.’ Or, as all writers know, you can’t understand the beginning until you’ve read the end. And those are all the hints you get. Happy hunting, children.”
* * *
—
The three contestants read the list over and over again.
A crying wolf
An assortment of octopi
A ray of darkness
Lucy wanted to laugh, but the stakes were too high. The first two games had seemed so easy that a small part of her believed she had a shot at winning. Now her stomach sank. She had no idea what to do.
“There has to be a trick here,” Melanie said. “Right?”
Ms. Hyde cleared her throat before turning on her heel and following Jack back to the house.
“Right,” Melanie said. “No colluding. I’ll go figure this out somewhere else.”
Lucy watched her head off down a random path. Andre, looking too sure of himself for her liking, took a separate trail. Although the day was bright and breezy, the ocean gentle, and the sky filled with birds floating on the air currents, they had eyes only for the list.
Lucy stayed at the picnic table, re-reading the clues. Melanie was right, of course. There had to be a trick, a double meaning, something obvious she was missing. Her first instinct was to get on her phone and google some of these phrases, see if they meant anything. But that would be cheating.
Also, Lucy highly doubted the internet would be much help. This game seemed like something Jack had invented all on his own, like something from one of his books. And if it was like something from one of his books, it meant it was a game even a child could figure out.
So what was it? What was the secret of the list?
A scavenger hunt was like a treasure hunt, wasn’t it? Lucy decided a visit to the City of Second Hand was in order. Redd Rover’s Treasure Hunt Supply Store was housed in what looked like a cartoonish version of an old miner’s shack from California’s Gold Rush days, complete with a slanting roof, mismatched boards, and hand-painted signs. But when she peeked into the windows, she saw that all the shelves were empty. No help for her here.