Laughing a little and shaking her head, Dimple untied the book from the rope and flipped it open. “Hey, that’s weird.”
Rishi’s frown matched her own. “Yeah, it is.”
The book was completely blank. There were no words on any of the pages Dimple riffled through. About a quarter of the way through, though, she found something. On top of one of the blank pages was a handwritten message: Dear Armand, it said. Please give this book a second look.
“Okay…” Dimple kept riffling through the pages, but there was nothing else. She looked up at Rishi, whose eyes were wider than she’d ever seen them, even wider than the time she’d surprised him with a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. “I don’t get it. I gave it a second look.”
“This is like those spy magazines Ashish used to read when he was little,” Rishi said, almost choking on his own spit in his excitement to get it out. “I bet there’s a message written on there in invisible ink!”
“Hmm.” Dimple opened it back to the page with the handwritten message. “Could be. How do you reveal invisible ink?”
“Put it over a heat source,” Rishi replied immediately. He looked around the dim room. “Which would be fine, except these candles are LED. Damn. Maybe it’s not invisible ink like I thought.”
Keeping a finger in the book so as not to lose her place, Dimple did a slow circuit around the ship’s deck, peering at all four of the candles as she went. “Not so fast. Come look at this one.” She pointed to the candle farthest away from where the coil of rope had been.
Rishi bounded over to her, his face agog. Dimple hid a smile; this was one of the sides of Rishi she loved the most. He was like a little kid inside, all innocent and fresh-eyed in a way she could never hope to be. “Oh my God!” he said, so loudly that the others looked over at him for a minute before going back to their own puzzles. “That one’s different!”
“Mm-hmm. I think it’s incandescent, disguised to look like an LED.” Dimple leaned over the side of the ship to take a closer look. Yep, definitely incandescent. She opened the book and held the page with the handwritten message over the bulb as Rishi watched, breathless. Slowly, slowly, a message began to appear. “Yes!” Dimple said, feeling a swell of exaltation. Yes, she was competitive even when it came to stupid escape rooms.
“ ‘Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same,’ ” Rishi read slowly. “ ‘Dear Armand, do you know the author who penned those beautiful words? They make my heart flutter in my chest.’ ”
“That’s simple. Emily Brontë,” Dimple said, straightening.
Rishi grinned at her. “See? You’re a genius!”
“No, it’s not that.” Dimple felt her cheeks heat and looked away, adjusting her glasses just to have something to do with her free hand. “I, um, sort of have a special relationship to that quote.”
Rishi was looking at her with interest now, the clue forgotten. “Really? What kind of special relationship?”
“It’s really vivid in my mind.” Dimple realized she wasn’t able to meet his eye for longer than a second at a time. It was ridiculous; they were engaged. Surely she shouldn’t feel so shy around him still. But Rishi… Rishi made her feel brand-new all the time. “It was right before our ‘non-date.’ We were in that lecture hall at SFSU, and the quote just popped into my mind. I think it was the first time I could, you know, see myself falling for you even if I couldn’t admit it to myself yet.”
Before she knew what was happening, Rishi had taken her into his arms. His lips near her ear, he whispered, “I agree, Dimple Shah. Our souls really are made of the same stuff.”
Dimple laid her head on his firm chest and breathed him in, smiling a little. In these moments—and there were so many of them with Rishi—she really knew everything was going to be okay. Every single one of her anxieties melted away when he held her. Finally, coming to her senses, she pushed him gently away. “Hey. No PDA. We’re in an escape room.”
He smiled, his eyes crinkling. “You’re right. Back to the clue.”
Dimple nibbled her lip. “Yeah, speaking of… was that it? The paper didn’t say anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Rishi replied. “Why?”
“Well, we solved it, but… now what?” She looked around as if the answer might materialize behind them. “What do we do with it, exactly?”
Rishi’s face cleared. “Oh. I hadn’t really thought of that. I’m… not sure.”
They stood there, looking down at the blank book, wondering how to proceed.
Twenty-seven minutes remained.
Pinky & Samir
Pinky and Samir puttered, just poking around their area of the room, not really saying much except to argue about ridiculous things (for example, do otters really hold hands while asleep, or is that a myth?) for about ten minutes while the other teams seemed to race ahead. If Pinky had to guess, Samir was just as annoyed/uncomfortable at having to be on a team with her as she was with him.
Samir rattled the padlock on the treasure chest. “Wow. It’s deceptively heavy. I thought it was going to be one of those cheesy Halloween things.” He frowned at it. “Looks weird, though.”
“So, I guess we begin by trying to unlock it?” Pinky tapped her foot, then put her hair up in a bun using the hair tie on her wrist before undoing it again.
Her level of discomfort at this whole situation was making her sweat. It wasn’t like Samir was a creep or anything. Actually, it was the opposite. He was so chivalrous and gentlemanly, she wanted to vomit. Or run away. Pinky wasn’t sure what to do with a chivalrous boy. Her boyfriends were always rough around the edges, like twenty-year-old cars that backfired and made strange grating noises when you shifted gears. Whereas Samir was more like a reliable, solid, shiny Volvo.
Not that he was her boyfriend. Or that she was even thinking of him as a potential boyfriend. God, could you imagine what a disaster that would be? Ha.
Samir chose that moment to look up at her, oblivious to her internal turmoil. He frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. Why? What do you mean, ‘What?’ ” Pinky heard the defensive lilt in her voice.
“You’re staring at me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m staring… over you.” She looked desperately at the blank wall beyond him. “At the patterns in that wall. Pretty sure I saw a face—a creepy one.”
Samir raised one thick eyebrow. “Okay…” He stood and brushed down his dark jeans. “I don’t see a way to unlock the chest. So maybe we should be looking for clues.”
“Right. Clues.” Pinky studied the setup around the chest. It sat on a small platform, on which were piled several layers of velveteen fabric in various jewel tones. All around the platform were LED candles, flickering moodily and throwing shadows everywhere. Behind the chest, against the wall, was a set of three bookshelves, which contained a few dusty volumes of books, small potted fake plants, more LED candles, and random trinkets of decor like her mom had at home, although these were all nautical-themed. “There’s not a whole lot to go on.” Pinky walked toward the bookshelves and studied a ship in a bottle. Her dad had gone through a phase where he’d made, like, thirty of these in a month, given half of them away to friends and relatives (the other half Pinky’s mom had banished to his study), and then never made one again. “These shelves all have red stickers on them, though. Amy said not to touch anything with a red sticker on it.”