Free The Red Blazer Girls by Michael D. Beil

Margaret. “Give it here.”
    “Are you crazy?” I immediately have this vision of the painting catching fire. There has to be a special place in hell for people who burn religious paintings—even mediocre ones. “And hey, how come you have a lighter, anyway?” I hiss at Raf. “Are you smoking again?” When we were in the sixth grade, Raf stole a pack of cigarettes from his uncle and went through this “I am cool, therefore I smoke” phase. His mom found out and told him that if she so much as ever
smelled
a cigarette in his vicinity, she would kill him more painfully than the cancer ever would.
    Margaret has her entire head behind the painting, moving from one side to the other. “Hey, I think I found something. Raf, do you have a knife?”
    I think I might just explode. “What! A
knife?
Oh my God.”
    “Oh, relax, Soph. I just need to pry something out. There's a thumbtack stuck into the wood in the back, and it looks like it's attached to something.”
    “How about a nice, nonlethal nail file?” I suggest.
    “That'll work.”
    I hand it to her and she disappears behind the painting again.
    “Got it!” She comes out holding a folded piece of yellowed paper, about one inch square, with a red thumbtack stuck through the center of it. “Let's take it out where there's better light. There's something written on it, but it's really tiny.”
    Almost on cue, more lights come on in the church as preparations are made for the five-thirty Mass. As a group, we move directly beneath a light fixture, and Margaret holds out her palm so we are all able to read the paper as she unfolds it.

    On the back, the lettering is in the opposite direction. It looks like this:
    S
IE
AR
IS
OV
LE
RB
MA
HE
RT
DE
UN
OK
LO
    Oh, come on. I mean, the first clue is X? Who but a math teacher would make that an
answer?
Don't get me wrong, after English, math is probably my next favorite subject. I absolutely hate all those otherwise intelligent kids who insist that they're just no good at math, when the reason they're no good at math is that they sleep in class and then don't do the homework and—surprise!—they don't understand it and, gee, I wonder why they're having trouble. And yes, I know that is a run-on sentence, but I am trying to make a point.
    “You know, when you think about it, the X has animportant place in the history of the treasure hunt,” Raf says. “X
always
marks the spot, right?” He checks his watch. “Hey, it's been great, but I gotta run. So, see you Saturday, ya losers?”
    “Saturday, dear butthead,” Margaret says. “At noon, on the Met steps.”
    As we turn for the back of the church, I catch a glimpse of a man exiting through the heavy carved wooden doors. I looked around the church just a few seconds earlier, and I swear he wasn't there. The hair on the back of my neck stands up—a terrible and ominous sign.

In which the astounding shallowness of
my character is revealed
    Rebecca calls me at home that night to hear about the meeting of the minds at Perkatory and to share her doubts about the whole thing.
    “But it's not just that the
ring
might be gone. It would take a miracle for all six clues to still be there.”
    “True. But finding that thumbtack comes pretty close to proving that nobody else knew about the ‘buried treasure.’”
    “Have you figured out what the deal is with the two equations? I don't get how filling in the blanks in those two problems is going to lead you to the treasure.”
    “No idea. Margaret and Raf think that when we
need
to know, we will. Until then—”
    “And speaking of
your friend
Rafael, how is he?”
    “What do you mean?” I say defensively. “He
is
just a friend.”
    “Uh-huh. Sure. Well,
if
that's true—tell me again,
why
is that true? Jeez, Sophie, he is like, better looking every time I see him.”
    Et tu, Rebecca?
    “Yeah, well, apparently you're not the only one who thinks so. You should have seen Leigh Ann flirting with him.”
    “Leigh Ann?