“What?” Abby asked.
“I’m blocked too.”
“Oh no,” Abby said, running her fingers through her hair. “It’ll take days to get your access back.”
Derick paced for a moment. “But we need this. We could try studying it on our rings, but maybe a clue is in the actual Bridge entry.”
Abby stood there in silence as her brother still walked back and forth.
“What are we going to do?” Derick asked.
After a moment, Abby smiled. “We have to ask someone else to let us use their Bridge code.”
“We’re in too deep,” Derick protested. “We can’t tell anybody else about this.”
“Precisely,” Abby said. “Someone else already knows quite a bit.”
“Rafa?” Derick asked.
“No,” Abby said. “I’m not sure we can trust Rafa. I was thinking of someone blonder.”
“Carol,” Derick said. “Do you think she’ll help us after she freaked out in the avatar lab?”
Abby smiled again. “I think we have a good chance if
you
ask her.”
• • •
Carol opened the door to her dorm, and her eyes immediately went wide.
“Hey, Carol,” Derick said.
“Derick!” she blurted out and hugged him like a long-lost friend. “I’m glad you’re not kicked out of school. That would be terrible. It would be a waste of a great mind and a great face. I guess neither would really be
wasted
, but I wouldn’t get to see your face, so that really would be a waste, at least to me.”
Derick awkwardly hugged her back. “I’m glad I’m not kicked out too, and that my face isn’t ... wasted. So far, no one has said a thing.”
“Good,” Carol said, letting go of him, “but I couldn’t be involved. I hope you understand. That was just crazy.”
“Yes, it was. And I’m sorry,” Derick apologized.
“I mean, I guess you guys must have your reasons, but I don’t know what they are, so to me it just didn’t make any sense. I was thinking that—”
“I’m going to tell you those reasons,” Derick said.
“You’re opening up to me? That’s awesome!” Carol said, grabbing his hand. Derick had to fight his reflexes not to pull away. “I didn’t think we were at that stage in our relationship. After you, I’ll be sharing something super personal, like how when I was nine, I ... Oh, I almost told you. That would have been embarrassing, especially if it was worse than—”
Derick pulled back his hand and pretended he needed it to pick an eyelash out of his eye. “My grandpa and parents have been kidnapped.”
“I heard they were missing, but kidnapped? That’s super terrible, awful stuff. Are you okay? I’m here for you,” Carol said. “I’ve been really worried about you and Abby. Speaking of Abby, where is she? Not that I don’t love this alone time with just me and you.”
“My grandpa had some sort of secret,” Derick said. “And we think some people have kidnapped him for it. We still haven’t figured out how my parents fit in. Maybe they knew the secret.”
“I’m so sorry,” Carol said, and hugged him again. “That’s scary.” She squeezed him tightly and then settled back.
Derick shuffled uncomfortably. “I need to ask a favor.”
“You need a girlfriend to get you through this difficult time. We’re probably too young to start dating, but I’m really good at comforting. I’ve learned a lot about that. I had a dog, and her name was Cleopatra. She was part-poodle, part-Maltese, which made her a short, black thing with curly fur. But anyway, when I was sad, she used to be able to just tell—like dog sense or something—and she’d snuggle up close to me and—”
“I was wondering if we could use your Bridge code,” Derick interrupted.
Carol let go of him. “You came here to ask if you could use my code?”
“Yes,” Derick said. “Both mine and Abby’s have been blocked, and we think we’re on the trail to helping our parents and our grandpa, but we really need to use the Bridge to figure it out.”
Carol opened her mouth. Derick could tell she was poised to say yes, but she stopped and said something else. “I know you’re in a really difficult situation, but it does sound crazy that looking at the Bridge is somehow going to help your family. Aren’t the police already on it?”
“Yes, but the bad guys posed as the police before we got to the real ones, so they know more than they should. And I don’t think the real police will be helpful. This is beyond them. That’s why my grandpa left
us
the clues. We need to follow the clues to find him. But we can’t go any further without your code.”
“Hmmm,” Carol said. “That sounds crazy. Which, don’t get me wrong, you’re very cute when you’re crazy, and I know that you’re in quite the emotional state right now, which also makes you a mopey kind of attractive. I’ll do it, if—”
“If what?”
“If ...” Carol got up and walked to her closet. She pulled out a rolled-up white T-shirt. “If you wear this,” she said. “For a whole day.” She tossed it to Derick.
“Uh ...” Derick floundered. He was about to quickly accept but decided he’d better look at the shirt first. He unfolded it and gazed at big, bold red letters that said, “I’m in love.” Beneath the words was Carol’s face, smiling, her blonde hair in pigtails. He flipped the shirt over.
Popuhilarity.com
was printed on the back.
Derick had no idea what to say. Carol apparently did.
“They made them up for a promo for this web series pilot I was in—Popuhilarity. It’s the words
popular
and
hilarity
mixed together. I think they were trying to be clever, but most people didn’t get it. Anyway, I was this love-crazy girl. They said I was a natural. I was always saying ‘I’m in love.’ The pilot never got picked up by any of the prime networks, so they gave me the extra T-shirts. For some reason, I’ve never been able to persuade anyone to wear them except my mom.”
“Okay,” Derick agreed quickly, trying not to imagine what people might say. He started to put the shirt on.
“You can wear it right now if you want, but the deal is for a whole day, to classes and everything. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, because it’s such a good-looking shirt. Since today’s almost over, if you wear it now, you’ll have to wear it another day too.”
Derick froze. “I’ll just wait until I can do it all at once,” he said, then realized it could hurt her feelings and tried to recover. “Just because it doesn’t really go with my ... shoes.”
Carol looked down in thought. “You’re right. I should get you some bright red shoelaces to go with the shirt.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out,” Derick said. “So we have a deal?” He offered his hand to shake and seal the agreement.
“Definitely,” Carol said, and shifted to his side to hold his hand, not to shake it. She intertwined her fingers in his.
Derick couldn’t believe he’d left himself so open. They walked out of her room a few steps hand in hand before Derick pretended he had to look something up on his rings and wriggled his hand free.
• • •
By Endurance We Conquer.
That was the motto. And it was put to the test.
Shackleton drove screws through the bottoms of his boots to make them into improvised ice-climbing shoes. Two other men did the same; their thick clothes, covered in dirt and grime, weren’t enough to keep out the cold as they completed their task.
From the Bridge, Abby, Derick, and Carol watched them shiver in the arctic air.
One of the men looked up at the frozen mountains, then at their only map. “It only shows the coast. We have no idea what’s ahead,” he said.
“Whatever is there,” Shackleton said, “we have to cross it.” He had a full beard and wore some sort of hat wrapped around his head. “We’ll make it. We’ll wait until the middle of the night when the snow is frozen and easier to walk across. We’ll travel light. No sleeping bags. Nothing we don’t need. We have to make it by the following night.”
Carol fast-forwarded the Bridge event to get through the long wait. She slowed it down again about 3 a.m., when the men grabbed some rope and a few rations and began to hike across the first ice field. A plateau, then a series of snow-covered peaks lay ahead of them. It was one giant frozen obstacle.
“I don’t know if I could do that,” Abby confessed.
“Me neither,” Carol added. “I get cold when the air conditioner is on too high. I don’t think I’d last a day in Antarctica, let alone with only a rope and a little food. These guys haven’t eaten a good meal in forever. I wouldn’t want to even try a day hike on an empty stomach.”
“But they have to, or their friends are going to die,” Derick said.
Sick and freezing comrades were depending on Shackleton to reach them. The three men hiked the wind-raked, icy ground, their feet crunching in the frozen snow.
“This doesn’t look safe at all,” Abby said.
“It isn’t,” Derick agreed. “They have no idea where hidden crevasses are under the snow. With any step, they could fall to their deaths.”
Carol giggled.
“I didn’t think any of that was funny,” Derick said.
“You ...” Carol giggled again. “You said
crevasses
. I used to think that was a swear word, so now every time I hear it, I laugh.”
Abby smiled, welcoming a break in the tension. She couldn’t believe this whole ordeal. They’d watched Shackleton’s expedition for over two hours now, and still had no clues.
First Shackleton and his crew of twenty-six adventurers, plus one stowaway, launched for Antarctica. They traveled through ice-riddled waters until, during the night, the water had frozen around their ship, trapping them in the middle of a huge ice sheet. Abby heard the cracks and groans of the ship as ice grew, expanded, and eventually crushed the boat. It sounded like a war, with explosions and counter fire. The broken masts and sunken hull left the men stranded on a huge slab of ice hundreds of miles from land and without a way home.
The men salvaged three small lifeboats and supplies and marched across the ice. At one point, the ice became too thin, and a man fell through. Shackleton reached into the frigid waters and pulled the man back to safety.
Then they rowed in their lifeboats for seven days straight. Sometimes huge waves crashed over them. They were soaked through with freezing arctic water. Abby felt cold just watching it. When the men traded rowing shifts, their hands were often frozen to the oars—they had to chip them free from the wood. Their ears were covered in frostbite.
Finally, they found land—Elephant Island. Abby had thought that was the end—the ordeal had already lasted months—but it was a desolate island. Other boats never visited it, so there was no hope for rescue without moving on. By then, most of the men were freezing and sick.
Shackleton handpicked a few of the best sailors, and together they headed out eight hundred miles to South Georgia Island, to a whaler’s station. Abby could hardly believe it—traveling eight hundred miles in a makeshift sailboat. The men talked about their chances, knowing they wouldn’t be able to see much over the waves to chart their course, and if they were even a degree off, they could miss the island by sixty miles, and sail out into the open ocean. If that happened, all of them—on the boat and back on the island—would either starve or freeze to death, whichever came first. Carol fast-forwarded through their chilling journey. Abby saw blowholes of killer whales nearby as they struggled through the icy ocean.
The men barely managed to land on the other island, but their boat could no longer sail, and the whaler’s station was on the other side of the frozen land.
Abby watched the three men take step after step into unknown terrain, moving forward and upward—the same repetitive motion over and over, their breath escaping in little clouds. They talked little.
“How long have they been lost now?” Carol asked.
“Looks like”—Derick flicked his fingers, searching the net for a few moments—“whoa ... about a year and a half.”
“You’re kidding me,” Carol said. “And I think I have it rough when I have to wait in a long line to get French fries. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still a pain, but it’s nothing compared to this.”
Abby had never really thought about how much some people had gone through to survive.
Carol moved the image forward until the next evening. The party had been hiking since three in the morning, walked all day long, and yet they still moved forward as it neared midnight. Abby calculated the time in her head—twenty-one hours of straight hiking—hard hiking, trekking up and down mountains without trails. They were nearing the top of another peak, with wind whipping at their faces.
“We’ve got to get down soon,” one man said, panting.
“You’re right,” Shackleton answered. “We can’t be caught up here during the night.”
“We’ve got no sleeping bags to fight this cold off,” the other answered. “Not that we planned on sleeping.”
“We’ll get down,” Shackleton said and approached the peak. As soon as the view down was visible, none of them spoke. The mountain dropped so steeply, it was impossible to walk down. The men paced along the top, looking for a safer way down—nothing. They met back together.
Shackleton looked at the other two. “We’ve got to take a risk. Are you game?” The men didn’t answer. “We’ll slide,” Shackleton said. He took their rope and coiled it up so they could sit on it, kind of like a saucer-type sled.
After a few moments, the men agreed.
“They have no idea what’s down there,” Carol said. “I mean, there could be, like, sharp rocks, or huge cracks in the ice, or a giant cliff. They don’t know.”
“They have to try something,” Derick said. “Or they’re all dead.”
The men sat on the rope, latched to one another, and slid off the top of the mountain. They tried to brace themselves against the snow to slow themselves down, but they rushed down the mountainside. The wind pulled at their clothes and faces. They leaned and twisted, trying to stay together to keep the rope sled beneath them. A bump nearly sent them sprawling, but they regrouped as they continued to careen out of control down the slope. Finally, they crashed into a snow bank. A moment later, all three men stood and brushed themselves off. There were no screams of delight; there was no celebration. The nearly broken men solemnly shook hands. Their gamble had paid off.