Sunlight poured through the closed blinds into the room and across Nolan’s bed, stirring him from sleep. It took a moment for panic to set in. He’d overslept! Mom was going to be so–! Oh, right, it was finally summer vacation. Nolan turned over and closed his eyes again. Middle School was behind him for good. There was no reason to get out of bed ever again.
Except to read, of course. Nolan would, eventually, when he felt like it, get up and maybe take a shower before sitting down to read the rest of the day away. The next day, he’d do it again. And again after that. Summer was beach season for some, reading season for Nolan. He could get through three or four books a week if he was really committed.
A realization threw Nolan from his bed and onto his feet. His mother was hiding books for his birthday somewhere in the house! Now that it was finally summer, he could look for them without someone to catch and punish him for figuring out where they were. It was past noon, but that left plenty of time for him to solve the case.
The door to his parents’ room creaked like it bore the weight of the entire house. It wasn’t that Nolan wasn’t allowed in his parents room, but it had always felt off-limits. That only made going in there to investigate all the more exciting. First, he checked the places that would be too obvious, like under the bed or in the closet or even the bathroom cabinets. A clever opponent used your expertise against you, after all. They also weren’t in the bedside cabinets or behind the mirror or in the sneaky storage bench at the foot of the bed.
A dead end, but he’d been expecting as much. Nolan went into the kitchen and checked the chore list pinned to the fridge. His mom wanted Nolan to clean his room, fill the dishwasher, and vacuum the living room. That meant the books weren’t going to be in any of those rooms. He checked her spots: the laundry room, the shared bathroom, and under the front porch. Nothing.
That only left his dad’s section of the house to check but no guarantee that he had time to search everything before his parents got home. It would be amazing to find his presents on the first day. His mom had been pressuring his dad to clean the detached garage like he was supposed to, so Nolan would check there first. He ran down the driveway and jiggled the handle of the door, using the technique he’d discovered for getting the cheap knob lock to slip and let him inside.
Exercise equipment and old bikes were scattered in between piles and towers of cardboard boxes. Some pieces of grandma’s furniture she couldn’t fit into her new, smaller house were jammed into one corner. More importantly, there was dust everywhere. Nolan’s mother had done a quick sweep of the floor but must have been in a rush, because the cleanest section was by a filing cabinet that was just barely pulled away from the wall. He walked up and pushed it forward a bit to reveal a zipped up cloth bag.
The books inside were unwrapped, and Nolan was able to search for one in particular. He squealed as he pulled out the new Amaranth Jones book. It was in his hands at last! The library had put off buying it for forever even though Nolan was starved for the next installment.
He brought the book to his room and spread out on the bed to devour the first chapter. Amaranth Jones was just a year older than him and spent all her free time discovering the mysteries and secret history of her sleepy little New England town. Girl detective stories were always Nolan’s favorite genre even if he had no idea why. They just spoke to him for some reason.
The first chapter wasn’t even over by the time Nolan heard a car pull into the driveway. He stashed the book under his mattress and quickly changed out of his dust-covered pajamas. After wiping down the bed to hide his crime, Nolan left the room to meet his parents.
“Hey, Mom, what’s for dinner?” he asked when they came in.
“Nolan, your father and I need to talk to you.”
He gulped, excuses and justifications for his actions running through his head even though he had no idea what they were accusing him of yet.
His father adjusted his glasses and said, “We didn’t want to bring this up while you were still doing exams, but a few weeks ago, we had a meeting with your school counselor.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Nolan,” his mother said, “you’re not in trouble. She told us your teachers said you don’t speak up to answer questions in class, that you don’t engage with other students in group projects. You even eat lunch alone!”
Nolan’s breathing grew shallow, and he started to shake.
His mother knelt down. “Honey, you know you can talk to us about anything, right? What’s going on? Are other kids bullying you?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
He shook his head and shrugged. Why were they doing this to him? It was cruel. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Nolan didn’t have to talk to other kids. It wasn’t his fault his throat closed up! That it got hard to breathe!
His mother and father exchanged a look that made his stomach churn before his father said, “Alright. Go play. It’s summer; you should be outside, getting some exercise.”
“I took P.E….”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Nolan slunk back into the hallway leading to his room but lingered to listen just a bit longer. Even though they were being quiet, he could hear the worry in their voices. “It’s not normal for a kid his age not to have friends. Something’s going on.” What was wrong with him wanting to be alone?
Getting further into the book helped Nolan to relax and pretend he’d forgotten the whole thing. That evening, he sat down for chicken parmesan with his parents, and neither of them brought it up again. Relieved, Nolan scarfed down his food like it would disappear if he wasn’t fast enough.
The TV was on in the living room. From this far away, it was hard to see what was happening even on such a big box, but the sound carried. “Larson, South Carolina is exactly what you think when you imagine Main Street, USA, but this little town may just have a big secret that could put it on the map if it ever resurfaced.” The host of the program was standing on Main Street; Nolan could see the library on Jefferson Hill in the background!
He forgot about his meal altogether.
“For generations, rumors have lingered that Kristian Larson, whom the town was renamed after, stashed a valuable treasure somewhere in this very town: one hundred pounds of American Indian gold. We spoke to some of the locals to hear what they knew about this history mystery.”
While the host interviewed a local “alderwoman,” whatever that meant, Nolan turned back to his parents and asked, “Is there gold buried somewhere in town?”
“I remember hearing that all the time, growing up,” his mother replied. “It felt like everyone was looking for it. Teenagers would sometimes go to the park after dark and start digging. The police started patrolling there because it was getting too expensive to fill in the holes.”
His father added, “I was really young at the time, so I thought it would just be hiding in someone’s attic. I checked my own three times just in case I’d missed it. For a while, my friends and I were obsessed with checking every container we found just in case. Never amounted to anything, and eventually we grew out of it.”
“Everyone had a crazy idea about where it could be: the court house, the Larson steel mill, the train platform. A lot of people thought Old Man Wilson was hiding it, but of course nobody found anything after he passed away. Then the train platform got torn up, the mill shut down, and the courthouse was turned into the library, and nothing ever showed up in those places either.”
“Every town has a rumor like this floating around. It comes and goes. Don’t put too much stock in it.”
But Nolan had stars in his eyes.
The very next day, Nolan made the journey up Jefferson Hill to the Jefferson Library and marched straight to the history section. It was uncharted territory for him, and he had to eventually swallow his nerves before asking the librarian for help. She directed him to a computer and demonstrated how to input search terms to narrow down what he was looking for.
“I’m sorry, hon. It looks like we don’t have any books on local history,” she said, scanning through the results. “I guess Larson isn’t really an exciting town to write about. But you can use this computer to look things up on an online database that has a lot of local newspapers in it. It’s still being developed, but it’s a lot more nifty than having to use those big microfilm machines. Newspapers are how you learn real history, anyway. Not books written by stuffy academics.”
“Um, thanks. I’ll try it out.”
“Just don’t stare at the screen too long or it might give you cancer. I swear, the things you can do with technology these days…” She continued talking to herself as she walked off.
Typing in what he wanted was a struggle for Nolan because, for some stupid reason, the keys weren’t in alphabetical order. Each new page took nearly a minute to load, too, turning what should have been an exciting investigation into a boring waiting game. Going back thirty years to his parents’ childhood in the seventies, he was able to find a series of articles, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor about the “gold fever” that had taken over the town. One woman described it as a “Satanic rumor” that would “corrupt the soul of their Godly town.” The three churches Nolan could see just from the library window suggested otherwise.
Some family names came up again and again. Larson, of course, but also Monroe, Smith, Millar, Reed, McKinney, Foster, Jenkins, Wilson. These were old families, most of whom lived in the town back when it was, according to an even older newspaper, the “village of Earnest, South Carolina.” The database also gave him access to a lot of public records, and Nolan was able to confirm that some of these families had moved away, many folks from the era had already died, and only a few descendants were even mentioned by name.
Several hours of research had only left him with more leads and dead-ends than answers. Nolan let out a frustrated groan and sat back in the chair, rubbing his sore eyes. What he wouldn’t give to have Amaranth Jones here to tell him what to do! This was exactly the kind of mystery she loved to solve, and he could be her sidekick! The thought that there might actually be something to discover about his own hometown was mouth-watering. Why wasn’t there a girl detective here to solve the case?!
He couldn’t do it on his own; that much was for sure. There was too much information to narrow down, and he didn’t know the first thing about solving mysteries to begin with. Actually investigating would require talking to people, which was impossible! It was easier with adults than kids for whatever reason, but Nolan had still spent years getting comfortable enough around the librarian to be able to speak in full sentences without stammering.
It wasn’t like he could just put on a dress and be the girl detective that Larson needed.
…Oh no, that was a terrible idea.
But it was an idea.
Maybe the real treasure all along were the trans girls made along the way!
This might be the most a protagonist has endeared themself to me in the first chapter! The premise is very cute, I'm excited to see where it goes.
Boxcar children gang high five! ✋️
Oddly enough, a fair amount of Nancy Drew novels were "hey let's wear a disguise!"
Judy Jones I think was the books I liked as a kid :P
He could get through three or four books a week if he was really committed.
i used to go threugh 1--2 books a day, while in school... i dont think i read that much anymore but i still read a lot
for some stupid reason, the keys weren’t in alphabetical order.
ah! but "alphabetical order" is arbitrary, so they may very well be!