“Keep it in your pants, Gia. What about your new guy?”
She flipped her hair, now back to its usual honey-blonde shade, off her shoulder. “Yes, but he’s not my boyfriend. Until he is, I reserve the right to ogle freely.”
“Do you want him to be your boyfriend?”
Shrugging, she opened the door to my room and walked inside. She flopped on the bed and sighed. “Maybe. He’s weird about communication, though. And if a guy can’t check in with me every day, he’s up to something.”
I snorted, and Gia sat up with a huff.
“I’m serious, Quinn! Are you seriously trying to tell me a man can’t find two seconds in his day to send a good morning or good night text? No one is that busy or important. And we all scroll our phones when we use the bathroom, so I make no excuses for men. If he can go that long without checking in, clearly, I’m not a priority.”
She pursed her lips and arched a brow, as if I might argue.
Conceding her point, I tossed the diary and paddle on the floor with the rest of my clues. “You’re right. Okay, let’s get ready for this shindig so I can work on my clues until we go.”
Once I was primped and polished, I sat cross-legged on the floor. When the black light yielded nothing extra on the diary pages, I looked through my clues and cyphers and wrote out where each clue led.
- Lockbox—>Photo—>Paint Thinner?—>?
- Paddle—> ?
- Riddle—>Magnifying Glass—>Map?
- Diary—>?
“I still don’t know what the paddle adds, but maybe it tells me which of the two options is the right one? I might need to use one of my Secret Questions if I can’t figure it out myself.”
As I pulled it towards me, the splintered wood dragged on the carpet. Breaking free from the paddle, it left a small hole.
A flash of white stuck out. “Hey! Something’s in here!”
Without fully thinking it through, I slammed the broken edge of the paddle onto the carpet. It cracked further, and I dug my fingers inside to dig out the small scrap of paper.
“Holy shit!” Gia came up behind me, her face flushed with excitement. “What does it say? What does it say!”
I shot her a look over my shoulder as I unfolded the paper. She mimed zipping her lips and bounced beside me.
The paper contained nine boxes, all filled in.
“It looks like a shift cypher.” I picked up one cypher I’d gathered during the Obstacle Course and showed her. “But based on this example, it’s wrong.”
“What the heck is a shift cypher?”
“It changes the letters in a code, so a scrambled group of letters turns into a word. Normally, the boxes would be blank, and one box would have the new order of the alphabet.”
I grabbed the flashlight and held it over the cypher.
“Look!” Gia squealed as three letters appeared, glowing under the black light over the middle box. KLM.
After writing the rest of the alphabet over the other letters, I glanced at the list I’d made and compared. “If this is the right way to do this, L for lockbox becomes J, R for riddle becomes P, D for diary becomes B. That can’t be right.”
Gia put her hands up in front of her, palms out. “You’re the expert. Don’t look at me for help. I thought you switched the top one with the bottom letter.”
I studied the cypher. “Well, in that case, L becomes N, R becomes T...”
Gia scanned the list. “Are you sure you have the right words to start?”
“Not at all.” I huffed a laugh. “This whole thing has been an exercise in winging it.”
