The Mummy's Curse (4 page)

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“And now, students,” Ms. Stad said, “I'd like you all to create your own picture. Feel free to use the computer. Just remember to include a hidden message inside. Once you're all finished, we'll line them up along the whiteboard and try to decipher what they mean.”

Cody looked back at M.E. and smiled. This was going to be awesome!

C
ody began her picture by drawing seven stick figures, each standing in different positions. Next, she added a prop to each one, to make the figures look as if they were doing something. In the first figure's hand, she drew a stop sign. In the second, she added cheerleader pom-poms. She made the third one look like it was walking a couple of dogs attached to leashes. For the fourth one, she
wove a long string through both its hands, leading to a flying kite. The next figure looked as if it were reaching for something. The one after that held a long stick with two pails balanced at each end. And the last one appeared to be walking on a balance beam.

Satisfied with her simple drawing—and the coded semaphore message it contained—she wrote a cryptic title for the picture:

artistic –talented –inspired images

She was careful to write all the letters in lowercase, and made sure the dashes were attached to the beginnings of the words
talented
and
inspired.
She deliberately left off the period at the end of the sentence, to avoid confusion.

When she was finished, she double-checked her work to make sure the message was accurate. She
was pretty sure that only one person in the class would be able to decipher the hidden message in her artwork: M.E. Her friend was as good at cracking codes as Cody was. That's why they had joined Quinn and Luke to form the Code Busters Club.

“All right, class,” Ms. Stad announced. “You've had plenty of time to design a picture with an embedded message. Bring your pictures up to the front, one row at a time, and tape them to the whiteboard. Then we'll see if we can find the hidden message in each picture.”

In an orderly fashion, the students brought their artwork to the board. After everyone had returned to their seats, Ms. Stad pointed to the first picture and asked who had made it. M.E. raised her hand. Cody knew her friend's hidden message would be a challenging one to solve.

At first glance, it looked to Cody like a bunch of alphabet letters in the shape of a tree.

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Then she began to see words within the tree—
clay, lines, red yarn.
She quickly realized that most of the words were related to art in some way.
Cool!
Cody thought.

“Does anyone know what the hidden message is?” Ms. Stad asked after a few minutes.

Hands shot into the air, but Cody hung back to give the others a chance to answer. Ms. Stad called
on several students, who announced the words they saw in the letter tree. But Cody had a feeling there was more to it than just art-related words. M.E. must have hidden something else.

“Did they figure out your message, MariaElena?” Ms. Stad asked, calling the girl by her full name.

“Only part of it,” M.E. replied with a grin. “There's more.”

I knew it!
Cody thought. She studied the letters and wondered why M.E. had arranged them in that particular design. Why a tree and not a spiral or a box? And although the words were related to art, they still seemed kind of random. Red yarn? Art colors? Hue glue blue? Why didn't M.E. just write a continuing sentence using the tree shape?

Because, Cody realized suddenly, M.E. had spelled out a message that read
down
, not across!

Cody jotted down the message and raised her hand before anyone else.

“Cody?” Ms. Stad said. “Do you know the answer?”

Cody stood and approached the picture. “The message is actually written down the middle of the
tree letters.” She ran a finger down the letters in the center as she said the words aloud.

The class voiced a collective “Ahh!” as they finally recognized M.E.'s concealed message. Cody turned to her friend at the back and grinned. M.E. gave her a thumbs-up.

“Good job, Cody!” Ms. Stad said, looking pleased as Cody returned to her seat. “All right, class. Are you ready for the next one?” Cody's teacher indicated a drawing that looked like a maze.

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This is an easy one
, Cody thought. All she had to do was follow the letters to make a word, then
follow the words to make a sentence. Moments later she raised her hand, along with M.E. and several other students. Ms. Stad called on Lauren, who went to the board and pointed out the hidden message as she read it aloud.

“Excellent, Lauren,” Ms. Stad said. She pointed to the next picture, composed of three drawings. To Cody, it looked like a bunch of fancy squiggles.

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Cody concentrated on the first drawing. After staring at it for a few seconds, she saw the shape of a letter begin to emerge. Figuring the other two drawings were also letters, she focused on the second one until she recognized it, then studied the third one. Together the three letters formed a word!
Cool
, Cody thought. She liked how the student had made each hidden letter look like a work of art.

“Whose picture is this?” Ms. Stad asked the class.

To Cody's surprise, Matt raised his hand. Wow. She never knew he had such talent. Most of his artwork was monsters and dragons.

“Nice job, Matthew,” Ms. Stad said.

The picture puzzle activity continued through the rest of the student drawings. Cody was able to decipher all of them, although a couple were harder to crack than others. Finally, Ms. Stad came to Cody's picture, which was next to last.

artistic –talented –inspired images

“Who drew that one?” Matt the Brat said loudly. “It's just a bunch of stick figures. There's no hidden message. It says right above: ‘artistic, talented, inspired images.' That's lame.”

Ms. Stad glared at Matt, who sat in front of Cody. “Matthew, if you speak without raising your hand
one more time, you're going to Mr. Grant's office. Do you understand?”

Matt slunk down in his chair, red-faced, and stared at his desktop. Ms. Stad often had to send Matt to the principal's office for misbehaving in class. Cody wondered if Mr. Grunt—er, Grant—was sick of seeing him every week.

“Now,” Ms. Stad continued, “does anyone see a hidden message in this picture?”

A few hands went up. Cody listened to some of the wild guesses about her drawing.

“Are the stick figures supposed to be shaped like letters?” Annika asked.

“Do the words at the top have words inside them?” asked Liam.

“Is the message written in invisible ink?” said Thomas in the front row.

“It seems to be very complex,” Ms. Stad said, staring at the picture. She looked out at her students. “Whose picture is this?”

Cody raised her hand.

“Cody, are any of those answers correct?”
Ms. Stad asked.

“Nope,” she said, feeling proud that no one had cracked the code yet.

“Could you give us a hint?” Ms. Stad suggested.

“Okay, well, the stick figures don't form letters, but they do stand for letters.…”

“They're semaphores!” announced a boy named Connor after Ms. Stad called on him. “They're supposed to be holding flags, but if you look at the position of their arms, you can figure out what each letter is. The first one is
b
—”

“Don't tell!” Ms. Stad said. “Let the rest of the students try to decode the letters by themselves. Everyone, use your semaphore decoder card to find the answer.”

The students pulled out their decoder cards from their desks. As part of their language unit, Ms. Stadelhofer had made decoder cards for the students for each new code they were learning. The kids thumbed through their packs until they found the one with semaphores. Moments later, most of the students had translated the stick figure message.