Sitting cross-legged under the desk, he activated the iPhone screen and opened the text messages. He scrolled quickly through them, looking for the name of the girl he was deeply in love with, at least this week (Aidan fell deeply in love a lot). She was a friend of Sarah’s, Amanda Flores. Like Sarah, she was seventeen, and in eleventh grade. Aidan was only fifteen, a lowly ninth-grader. He wasn’t dating Amanda; the truth was, he had never actually spoken to her. But he had hopes.
These hopes had soared a few moments earlier when, reading over his sister’s shoulder, Aidan had spotted a text from Amanda saying—at least this was what Aidan thought it had said—that Amanda considered him cute. He had tried to see more, but Sarah, annoyed at his spying, made the phone’s screen go dark and told him to mind his own business.
So Aidan had snatched the phone and run upstairs. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but now Aidan sensed that it might have been a mistake. First, his sister was really mad. Second, as he scanned the iPhone texts, he realized that Amanda had not been texting about him at all, but about a boy named Aaron. Aidan didn’t know Aaron, but he was pretty sure he hated him.
The study door burst open. Three seconds later, Sarah was crouched in front of the desk, red-faced with anger.
“Give me my phone back right now,” she said, the palm of her hand extended.
“Okay,” said Aidan. “Don’t get—”
“I said give it to me!” yelled Sarah, lunging toward him.
Startled by his sister’s lunge, Aidan jerked back and banged his shoulder and head, hard. Then three things happened.
Aidan said, “Ow!”
Sarah grabbed her phone back.
And a hidden door appeared in the desk.
It was a wooden trapdoor about the size of a DVD case. It hung down between Aidan and Sarah from the underside of the desk, revealing a dark opening.
“Huh,” said Sarah, suddenly more interested in the door than in killing her brother.
“Weird,” said Aidan, relieved that his sister was at least temporarily distracted. Trying to prolong her interest, he said, “What is that, anyway?”
“Duh,” explained Sarah. “It’s a secret compartment.”
“Cool,” said Aidan. He reached up and pushed the door shut. There was a soft click as it latched. The grain on the door matched the surrounding wood exactly; the fit was so tight that the seam was invisible.
“Wow,” said Aidan. “When it’s closed, you can’t even see it.”
“Right, nimrod,” said Sarah, “but you also can’t see inside. Open it back up.”
Aidan tried to pry it open, but his fingernails couldn’t fit into the seam. He banged on it, but nothing happened. He ran his hands over the surrounding wood, but found nothing that would open the door.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
“You are such an idiot,” said Sarah. “Let me see.” She crawled under and felt around the door as her brother had just done, also finding nothing.
“You must have done something to open it,” she said.
“I hit my head.”
Sarah pushed the panels above them. Nothing happened.
“I also hit my shoulder,” said Aidan.
“Where?”
He pointed to the sore spot on his shoulder. She punched it, hard.
“Ow!”
“Not your shoulder, idiot! Where did you hit the desk?”
“Oh…the side, I think.”
Sarah made a fist and pounded it. Nothing.
“I hit it really hard,” said Aidan.
Sarah frowned and gave the panel a karate chop.
The trapdoor popped open.
“Excellent!” said Aidan, reaching his hand up into the hole.
“If there’s money in there,” said Sarah, “we split it.”
Aidan groped inside the opening. “I don’t feel any—wait! There’s something in here!”
He withdrew his hand, which now held an envelope. It was letter-size and yellow with age. Aidan turned it over; it had no writing on either side.
“Open it!” said Sarah.
Aidan frowned. “Maybe we should tell Dad,” he said.
“Absolutely,” said Sarah, snatching the envelope. “After we open it.”
Before Aidan could protest, she slid her finger under the flap and opened the envelope. She pulled out a piece of flimsy paper, folded into thirds. She unfolded it carefully, and Aidan leaned in to look.
The paper was so thin that it was almost transparent. On it, drawn in black ink, were random-looking lines, some straight, some curved, not forming any obvious pattern. Below the lines, handwritten in the same ink, were the words:
“What the heck does that mean?” said Aidan. Sarah was staring at the document. “Magill,” she said. “What about it?”
“I think I know that name.”
“You know somebody named Magill?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I actually know him, but I’ve heard that name somewhere.” She continued staring at the document. Fifteen seconds passed.
“Can I ask you something?” said Aidan.
“What?”
“This guy Aaron? Who Amanda likes?”
Sarah looked up. “What about him?”
“How old is he?”
“He’s a senior.”
Aidan’s shoulders slumped.
Sarah smirked, enjoying her moment of revenge for the iPhone theft.
“He’s also very cute,” she added.
Without a word, Aidan slouched out of the room, heartbroken. Sarah turned back to the document.
“Magill,” she whispered softly.
At 11:40 p.m. that night, she remembered. She had turned off the light and was almost asleep when it suddenly popped into her brain.
“Magill,” she whispered, sitting upright in bed. Fumbling in the dark, she found the switch to her reading light and turned it on. She got out of bed and crossed her bedroom to a shelf jammed to overflowing with books. She searched the titles, stopping finally on a fat hardcover book. She pulled it out and began impatiently turning pages; she flipped most of the way through before she found what she was looking for. She read a passage, then read it again.
“I knew it,” she said. She sat on her bed for a few moments, thinking. Then she returned to the bookshelf and pulled out another fat book. After flipping through it as well, she found a particular passage and began reading.
“Yes,” she said. She bookmarked the page and moved ahead to another chapter, reading with growing excitement. She opened the small drawer on her bedside table and withdrew the fragile document they had discovered in the desk. She reread it, standing as she did, too excited now to sit.
She paced her room for a minute, the book in one hand, the letter in the other. Then she collected both books and, holding tightly to the document, quietly left her room and crept down the hallway to Aidan’s room. She eased open the door without knocking and closed it softly behind herself. She switched on the light.
“Psst! Aidan, wake up!” she whispered.
“What?” he said, squinting and blinking at the unwanted light. “Why are you…?”
“Shh,” she hissed. “Not so loud. You’ll wake Mom and Dad.”