Cape Read online

  “Toby Hunter made me do it! Did you hear him? He was teasing Baby Lou, and then he sto—”

  Tut-tut-tut. Harry made a clicking noise that cut me off. “Don’t blame someone else. I expect more from you, Josie. We all do.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have poked him with my broom,” I mumbled, grabbing a few orders from the counter and getting ready to carry them over to the tables. “But I tell you what, Harry, I’m not going to stay quiet anymore. I can’t.”

  Harry shook his head, clearly disappointed in me. “You can’t lash out like that. Use your brains, Josie. Don’t outrage an opponent, outsmart them—like that caped hero you’re always going on about. What’s her name?”

  “Zenobia,” I answered, happy to note that Harry had been paying attention to our conversations. “Zenobia could outsmart anyone in the universe. But since she’s gone missing for so long now, people are starting to wonder if she was even real. If superheroes are even real.”

  “We have a saying in Germany: Selbst ist die Frau. ‘You’re the woman. It’s up to you.’ Not your friends or your family or your favorite superhero. You’re the one who decides what kind of person you’ll be, Josie. Someone who follows her temper and chooses to be cruel? Or someone who chooses to be kind?”

  He shoved my broom into the closet, then turned to the sink to wash up. “Selbst ist die Frau. You’re the one, pal.”

  The morning rush was on, so I delivered the plates of eggs and pancakes where they needed to go. Usually, I’d be hurrying out the door for school. But today I had time to make the rounds of the tables—pouring coffee into cups, clearing dirty dishes into the sink—and replay this morning’s fight in my mind.

  When I circled back to the long white counter half an hour or so later, Gerda was behind it sorting silverware. Harry came over to join us, slipping a fresh-baked pie under the glass dome of a display plate.

  Gerda’s cuckoo clock on the wall above our heads began its hourly routine, chiming nine times.

  “It’s already nine o’clock? I have to take off in a couple minutes,” I said, climbing onto one of the high stools.

  I pulled my comic book from the pocket of my dungarees, along with a newspaper clipping tucked inside it, and laid them on the counter. Unfolding the clipping and smoothing the creases flat, I pointed to the important details.

  “This is where I’m going today. I cut it out of the Inquirer,” I said, my voice a little hushed. The newspaper felt like a pirate’s map, and I was pointing to the treasure. “Look right here. It’s an advertisement for puzzlers. The government needs puzzle experts to help fight the Nazis. And that’s me!”

  “It is you, Josie,” said Gerda, leaning in closer to read the fine print. I inhaled her fresh-baked-bread smell and tried to make the irritation of the morning disappear. “Look what it says: ‘Are you a pro with puzzles? A wonder with words? A master at mathematics?’ They’d be lucky to have you!”

  My eyes devoured the advertisement again. Here was my big chance. I was too puny to enlist in the army—plus, as a girl, I wouldn’t get past the first doctor’s exam. And I was too young to get a job in an aircraft factory and build planes like Rosie the Riveter. Or at the naval shipyard and build battleships like Wendy the Welder and my mom.

  But puzzling? This was the job for me.

  “I’ll try to come back in time for the supper rush,” I said, scooping up the clipping and my comic book and leaping off the high stool. “And I promise not to quit my job here, no matter what they pay me as a puzzler!”

  Gerda laughed as she wiped up the countertop, wishing me luck. And Harry tapped his temple again and called after me.

  “It’s up to you,” he said with an encouraging wave. “You’re the one, pal!”

  Five

  I COULDN’T HIDE THE LITTLE skip in my step as I headed off toward the Carson Building. The newspaper advertisement was meant exactly for me. I just knew it. I’d spent years playing math games and word scrambles, and Emmett and I had egged each other on to make our messages more complicated and harder to solve.

  “He meets Mat,” I mumbled. “She met mate.” A grin took over my face at the thought of Emmett and our scrambled names. I couldn’t help but mix up the letters a few more times. “Sam met thee. She ate temm. . . .”

  “Sam? Mat?” came a voice suddenly beside me. “Are they friends of yours?”

  Whipping my head around, I discovered my cousin Kay McNulty. She nudged me playfully with her left shoulder as she bit into what looked like an apple turnover. The flaky pastry crumbs scattered behind us in the breeze as we made our way down the block together.

  “You look hungry,” I said, dusting a few flakes from her pretty blue jacket. Kay was good at sewing, and she made the most beautiful clothes. “Are you heading into work or just getting off?”

  “Mhhst httng fff,” she answered. Then, after a moment to chew, she translated: “Just getting off. I’m starving. It was another late night—so exhausting, but so interesting. I’m going to sleep for a few hours, then head back in again this evening.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what Kay did. Mam told my brothers and me once that it had something to do with a nearby store, Caruso’s Market. I think Kay’s job was to ring up groceries—apples and milk and bread and things.

  I’d never really thought about it. Funny that she’d find a cashier’s job “so interesting.” Or that it would sometimes keep her up all night and through to the morning.

  “Hey,” I began slowly, “why is it you work so many hours when—”

  But Kay jumped in with her own questions.

  “Where are you off to, my dear young cousin? You don’t appear to be headed for school. Are you playing hooky? Skipping the last few days before summer vacation?” And in a low voice she added, “Does your mother know?”

  I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up. Kay lived with us and helped Mam pay the rent—just like I did with money I earned from Gerda’s Diner. Kay may have been only a cousin, but I loved her like a sister. And while she was a puzzle solver like me, she was much better. Kay was a mathematician, with a college diploma framed on the wall and everything.

  And a mathematician was great to have around when I needed help with homework.

  “Mam knows I want to try out. She just doesn’t know exactly when,” I explained, hiding my smile. “I want to surprise her.”

  She raised a single eyebrow.

  “The tryout,” I reminded her, another skip in my step. “Don’t you remember, Kay? I’ve only talked about it a hundred times. The puzzler tryout is today—this morning—at the Carson Building. I’m heading over now.”

  “Right-e-o!” she said, jumping over a low garden railing to reach a trash can. “You’ll do great, Josie!” Kay was always jumping over things, from fences to park benches to garden sheds. They were never obstacles to her, just little diversions along her path. Kay was funny that way.

  But she wasn’t exactly funny. Kay had a look about her that was all business: tallish with high cheekbones and fast blue eyes. Her brown hair had a shimmery, golden quality. And the way she carried herself reminded me of my favorite movie star, Katharine Hepburn.

  What I loved best about Kay was the way her mind worked. Her thoughts seemed to speed along about twenty miles per hour faster than most people’s, which made anyone speaking with her have to run to keep up. And which made good entertainment for me, Vinnie, and Baby Lou when she got going. Smart and tough, that was Kay’s way.

  “Keep focused, Josie. No distractions!”

  But there was a softness to Kay too. She was patient and kind and always encouraging. Maybe it was all that sewing she did that made her so calm, taking each part of it step by step by step. Collars, sleeves, buttonholes. One stitch at a time. That’s how she helped me with my math homework: Take it one step at a time, Josie. Did you do the first thing correctly? The second?

  Or it could have been her Girl Scout training that made Kay so patient and encouraging, working with little pain
-in-the-neck kids like my brothers and me. Whatever it was, I adored Kay. And when she headed out the apartment door in her sharp work clothes, her hat a bright blue or a vivid red, she seemed fearless—like the best comic book heroes all wrapped up in one person.

  Kay was the whole reason I thought I could even be picked as a puzzler.

  “Okay, Josie, impress me,” she urged. “Get me from cat to dog in three steps. Go!”

  “That’s easy.” I smiled. “Let’s see. Swap the A, and cat becomes cot. Flip the C, and cot turns to dot. Change the T, and dot becomes dog!”

  She nodded her approval.

  “Not bad,” she said as we quickened our pace. “But keep in mind they might throw trickier bits at you: complicated sequences, codes, patterns, odd-one-outs.”

  “I’ve got this, Kay. No problem,” I said, tucking in the tail of my white blouse with GERDA’S DINER embroidered in bright green thread. Hopefully I sounded confident. I just needed Toby Hunter’s voice to stop playing over and over again in my head.

  Stupid girl.

  “I’ve got as good a chance as anyone else,” I whispered. “Right?”

  As we reached the fancy revolving doors of the Carson Building, Kay turned to face me. She wasn’t one for hugs or making a big to-do. So when she focused her eyes on mine, I couldn’t help but pay close attention.

  “Now listen, Josie. You can do anything you set your mind to.” Kay peered down into my face, our noses inches apart, and I could see the fine needlework she’d sewn at her collar. “You just have to approach it in a deliberate way. Stitch by stitch by stitch.

  “Got it?”

  “I—I do, Kay,” I stuttered a little self-consciously. Kay seemed to have faith in my abilities, even when I wasn’t so sure. “Stitch by stitch by stitch.”

  She smiled and gave a quick nod, her eyes encouraging. “Every problem has a solution. Just remember that.”

  I gave her the most confident smile I could muster. Then, at the last second, I threw my arms around her shoulders and squeezed as tight as I could, stealing a hug before racing through the revolving wood-and-glass doors and into the Carson Building’s lobby. I wanted to bottle up Kay’s confidence and hold on to it.

  “Thanks, Kay.” And throwing one of her own favorite expressions over my shoulder, I called, “Right-e-o!”

  Six

  I WAS THE FIRST ONE to finish the exam, so I walked up to the instructor’s desk and set my paper down. He slid it to his left, then let out a sniff that, I quickly realized, meant I should go sit down again.

  When I got back to my desk, I stared up the row at him. Hank Hissler was his name, and he wore round wire glasses that made him look like a professor. His mustache sat above his lip in a perfectly straight, thin line—like something I could have drawn with a pencil. And his bald head was round as a grapefruit, ending in a pointed chin where a deep dimple in the middle looked like a baby’s bottom.

  The thought of it made me laugh, which I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I clamped a hand over my mouth to trap it. But still, it fizzed up like soda in a bottle that’s been shaken.

  After a moment or two, the mouth breather seated behind me got up to turn in her exam. I’d listened to her noisy wheezing for the past two hours, so I didn’t exactly smile as she passed me by.

  Ah-choo!

  A mouth breather and a sneezer.

  I watched as two boys got up from different sides of the room and reached the instructor’s desk at the same time. Mr. Hissler took their exams and placed them in a pile on his right side.

  The girl seated just beside me got up next, and she walked up the aisle to Mr. Hissler’s desk like she was in church. With a curtsy that seemed overly formal, she passed him her test. I watched Mr. Hissler add it to the left-hand stack—the one that had my exam and the mouth breather’s. Three more boys turned in theirs, and he put them in the right-hand pile.

  What happened next made me rub my eyes, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Because that Mr. Hissler put one hand on the left-side pile, and he slid it into the garbage can at the same time as he took two more exams from a couple of gangly boys. He added theirs to the remaining pile, the one on the right side.

  “Hank Hissler, what is happening in this room?”

  He jumped as if there were a buzzer in the seat of his chair. And whirling around, he faced an angry figure standing in the doorway, her arms planted on her hips. I might not have recognized her at first if it hadn’t been for the brown-and-white dog who trotted in beside her. That dog looked like Astra.

  They were the pair from the diner this morning!

  “Mrs. Boudica! No need for alarm,” he said, though he was clearly alarmed. He seemed to be caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be. “Just a quick exam for my next project.”

  “Your project? Why haven’t I been informed about your project?”

  “I’m sure I told you about it,” he said, scooping up the tests turned in by the men and boys and tucking them into a leather briefcase. “Now, applicants,” he called out, addressing the rest of us, “thank you for your time. Should Room Twelve need your services, we will be in touch. Good day. The elevators to the lobby are down the hall and to the right.”

  Slowly we looked around the room, all of us a bit stunned. I knew I’d done well on this test. Really well. But was that Mr. Hissler even going to consider my exam? Should I race to the trash can and pull it out? Shove it into his hands?

  And what did he mean by “room twelve”? I’d touched the brass numbers on the door myself when I’d arrived. We were in room seven forty-five.

  “Josie!” hollered a familiar voice. “What are you doing here?”

  I turned in time to see Emmett filing toward the door with some of the other test takers—a couple of white-haired men, a woman who looked a little bit like my mom, and another boy of about sixteen. They all handed in their tests to Mr. Hissler as they passed up the aisle. Mrs. Boudica glared.

  “Well, of course you’re here,” Emmett said, answering his own question with a goofy shrug as more test takers pushed out of the room. I laughed, realizing his secret morning appointment had been the same as mine. “You’d make a perfect puzzler! We can talk later today—same time, same place!”

  I waved goodbye as he headed down the hall with the others. On my feet now, I gazed over at this Mrs. Boudica and her dog, who seemed to be growling at Mr. Hissler’s knees. Should I tell her what happened to my exam? And to the other female test takers?

  I took a few timid steps toward them, but as I got closer, Mr. Hissler looked up from his stack of tests and eyed me. He was wearing his hat now, a gray fedora with a black band. The brim looked stiff and somehow dangerous, glinting like a razor’s edge.

  “You there,” he snapped, his yellowish eyes locking on mine. “I have a question. You were speaking to that young man. Does he go by the name”—and he looked down at the top exam, then back at me—“Emmett Shea? Quite bright, that one. I’d like to catch up with him.”

  Mr. Hissler held me in his snakelike gaze. I was mesmerized, paralyzed. I stared back at him, unable to utter a word.

  “You seem to be an acquaintance of his. Is that right?” And now Mr. Hissler attempted to smile. Evidently it was not something he did very often, so the effort looked painful. “Perhaps you could tell me how to find him?”

  I glanced beside me, at the mouth breather, who seemed too stunned to walk away from the desks, and at the overly polite curtsy dropper. We were the last three people from the puzzle tryout left in the room, besides the wirehaired pooch and his owner.

  “Emmett Shea’s not just an acquaintance. He’s my best friend,” I said, a little unsure of how many beans I wanted to spill. I was thinking about my exam in his trash can. “So I know where and when anybody can find Emmett. We have milkshakes together at five o’clock every afternoon—root beer floats with chocolate ice cream, to be exact. I know because I make them myself.”

  I hiked up the waistband of my dungaree
s and tried to look confident. But my knees were starting to shake as this Mr. Hissler kept his beady eyes on me.

  “And where is this milkshake establishment, miss?”

  I gulped. Now Mrs. Boudica was staring at me too. And she was pretty angry-looking as well, though I couldn’t tell if she was mad at me and the last two test takers or only at this Mr. Hissler, who seemed to have gone behind her back about something.

  “After the way you treated our tests today,” I said, nodding toward the trash can, “I don’t think it would be right for me to tell you where to find him. You might have to puzzle that out yourself. Sir.”

  He gave another little sniff. Then he shoved a few more puzzler exams into his briefcase, flipped a latch to fasten it, and tugged down the brim of that dangerous-looking fedora hat. In an instant, he disappeared through the door without another word. I wanted to grab my exam and wave it after him, but there was no need. Mrs. Boudica had already plucked it out of the trash, along with the other ones.

  “Hmmm.” She turned them over, studying our work.

  “Pfff.” She sniffed, then went on reading.

  “Well,” she finally said.

  I peeked over at the mouth breather, who peered at the curtsy dropper. What were we supposed to make of this lady?

  Finally, her dog let out a few barks and raced around us.

  “Good work, girls.” Mrs. Boudica smiled, tucking the exams under her arm and calling to Astra. “Just as I’d suspected. Come back at two o’clock sharp. We have a great deal to talk about.”

  Seven

  WE DRIFTED OUT INTO THE hall together until we found ourselves at the elevator, and a moment later we were stepping inside. The elevator operator tipped his hat, then silently pushed the button. L was for lobby, I assumed.

  Ah-choo!

  “My name is Akiko,” the mouth breather said in a voice like sandpaper. And she stuck her hand out first for me to shake, then for the overly polite girl. “Akiko Nakano. I’m allergic to dogs, along with just about everything else.”