“Are you sure you’re okay?” his dad asked. “You look . . .”
“What? I’m fine.” Fine. FINE. FIIIIIINE.
“You seem distracted.”
“I’m almost a teenager, Pop.”
“What’s your point?”
“Teenagers are distractible.”
“Good to know,” said his dad, his expression a combination of confusion and amusement. Comusement. Then, to Jaime’s grandmother, “He is distractible.”
Mima said, “You think?”
“Maybe he’s hungry?” said Jaime’s dad, as if Jaime weren’t standing right there. “I’m hungry. I could use a snack.”
“I might be able to whip something up for you,” said Mima.
Mima’s idea of a snack: the tamales she’d just made that morning, plus beans and rice, Cuban sandwiches, and extra pickles. Normally, Jaime would have devoured everything in sight, but he only managed half a sandwich and a couple of forkfuls of rice.
“So where are the twins you’ve been spending so much time with?” said Jaime’s dad, pointing with a pickle.
Jaime put down his fork. “They’re . . . around.”
“Around?”
Jaime shrugged. Again. (Teenagers! Always shrugging!)
“Did you guys have a fight?” his dad asked.
“Not exactly,” Jaime said.
“But sort of?” said Jaime’s dad.
“Well,” Jaime said, “they lied to me.”
“About what?”
Another shrug. This was what he had become. A big shrugging shrugger.
“Okay, did you ask them why they lied to you?”
“Not exactly,” Jaime said.
“Ah,” said Jaime’s dad. “Okay, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything.”
“You always mean something,” said Jaime.
“Do I?”
“Yes!” said Jaime. “Yes, you do!”
Jaime’s dad tossed the end of the pickle into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “I mean, the heck with them, am I right? You don’t need liars in your life.”
“I don’t,” said Jaime.
“Right,” said Jaime’s dad.
“I really don’t!”
“That’s what I said.”
Jaime opened his mouth to argue some more, but it was hard to argue with someone who was agreeing with you. But then why did he still feel like fighting?
Jaime ate some more of his sandwich in the hopes that he really was just hungry and the sandwich would fix him. And he went to the paint store with Mima and his dad and tried to pay attention when they picked out colors for the apartment—soothing blues and greens, mellow yellows and sunset oranges. He helped push all the living room furniture into the center of the room and cover everything with sheets. And, after a while, he forgot that he was a liar and a thief, he forgot about the Cipher, he forgot about the churning city across the river, chugging along without him. Jaime had the steadiest hand, his dad said, and Mima agreed. High on a stepladder, armed with a small bucket of paint and a thin, slanted brush, Jaime edged the wall where it met the ceiling, then all around the window frames. Mima and his dad chattered away in Spanish, and their words fell on him like a gentle rain, calming and cleansing. Pues, le dije yo al hombre, ¿Qué haces? Eso no forma parte del plano. Y me dijo: ¿Cuál plano? Me pidieron que me quedara tres meses más, pero les dije que no. ¡Tengo que regresar a mi familia! Y con eso, me pidieron que fuera a Singapur. A ella le hubiese gustado este apartamento, ¿no te parece? Le hubiese gustado cualquier lugar donde estaban Jaime y tu, mi’jo.
Pop is home, Pop is staying, Jaime told himself. And that fact was bigger and more important than some stupid puzzle, bigger and more important than the Morningstarr twins and the Biedermann twins and all the other twins with their secret languages and their secret secrets. Bigger than a mysterious woman named Ava who might or might not be a superhero, might or might not be a ghost.
Two whole days passed like this. Jaime and his dad and grandmother painting the apartment to life—yellow in the kitchen, orange in the dining room, green in the bathroom. As soon as the paint was dry to the touch, Jaime helped his dad unpack the boxes of photos and hang them. Here was Jaime’s dad as a boy, perched on a white horse; here was Jaime’s mom as a girl, standing next to her prize-winning science fair exhibit; here were both of them on their wedding day, beaming bright enough to shame the sun.
“She was brilliant, your mother,” said Jaime’s dad as he checked to make sure the wedding photo was level.
“I know,” said Jaime.
“I was so proud when she became my wife, prouder when she became Dr. Renée Cruz. One of the first black women to get a doctorate in physics. She would have changed the world with her work. Was actually changing the world when she . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Jaime did, in his head. She was actually changing the world when there was an accident in her lab. She was actually changing the world when there was an explosion. She was actually changing the world when she died. She was actually changing the world when she died, and left the world a sadder place than it had been before, and still was now, because there was no one like her anywhere, in any world, and would never be again.
Jaime’s father stepped back from the wall of photos. “She loved you, hijo. Never forget that.”
Jaime tried to speak but found himself unable to do anything but nod. He busied himself with another box, and found an origami woman made out of bronze paper. The figure had been given to him by a scientist-turned-artist his father had taken him to see when Jaime was six. The artist had told him that origami was a lot like math, a lot like science, and even more like magic. Ever since, when his fingers got tired of holding a pen or pencil, Jaime sometimes liked to fold paper into crickets, into hearts, into stars. But nothing he made was as beautiful as this bronze woman made of bronze paper, a woman who reminded him of his mother. Gently, gently, he tucked the figure onto a shelf, right next to a photo of his mother holding a toothless, grinning baby.
They finished hanging photos in the kitchen and dining room. Despite the lingering sadness over his mother, Jaime was happier than he’d been in a while, making this sterile apartment into a home. They had just started the second coat of robin’s-egg blue in the living room, Jaime edging and his pop and Mima keeping up a steady stream of chatter, when Jaime heard a name that cut through his pleasant daydreams.
“Slant knows the Old York Cipher is just a story,” his pop was saying. “He’s playing a game with people.”
Mima said, “He’s not playing. He already bought up all the Morningstarr buildings. He’s gotten so many tax breaks that the city is going to owe him money. He’s running for mayor, and there’s chatter about him running for governor after that.”
“He’s having too much fun doing interviews and movie cameos,” said Jaime’s dad. “He doesn’t want to be mayor.”
“No,” said Mima. “He wants to be king. And if the Old York Cipher is real, and the treasure is real, and he finds it, maybe he’ll get his way.”
“Oh no,” whispered Ono from Jaime’s pocket.