4: for CIA secret writing document #4
boy next door au. partners in crime.
Lollipop stick hanging delicately between hislips and tongue stained sour raspberry blue, he walks up to the house next doorand smiles wide, a lopsided grin full of childish innocence. You’re perched onyour porch, porridge growing cold on the space beside you and a paperback lyingopen-faced on your lap. You’re hardly surprised–a bit amused–when he plantshimself in front of the porch steps, his pocket money still jangling throughhis faded jean pockets.
He’s new.Moved in there–he sticks his thumb out towards the colonialdirectly to your left and his right–two days ago.
You know. Sawhim helping the movers, and quite nearly doubled over laughing when he almosttoppled to the ground, arms giving out under the weight of the boxes. His facereddens at that and he doesn’t comment, instead giving his lollipop a long suck.
“So whatbrings you here? If you wanted to know about school, it’s pretty easy. ‘Long asyou aren’t stupid, that is.”
He laughs andsays he doesn’t care about school. Maybe if there’s a music class, but hedoesn’t want anything to do with books and grades and teachers. Too boring.What he’s here for is to learn about all the knick-knacks, nooks, crooks, andcrannies about the place. He’s from the city–never lived in a town such asthis, so he’s bound to get lost someway or another. Maybe. He puffs his chestout and holds himself in a way that tells you he isn’t the type to admitthey’re wrong.
He is pridefuland impulsive, pretty features and sugary breath, and you find yourself settingaside your novel and dusting off your faded sundress.
“Sure hope youcan walk, kid.”
“The name’sHeejun, actually.”
You establisha secret hideout at the playground, the one tucked away along the far edge of acul-de-sac that even the mailman sometimes forgets about. There’s a secretroute–a shortcut, really–you have to take to get there, and when the two ofyou do, you’re always clambering into the tiny blue plastic tunnel.
“We’re like,spies. This is so cool.”
“But all we dois sit in our hideout and eat snacks,” you remind him. “I don’t think a lot ofspies do that.”
“Okay, well,what kind of spy-ish stuff could we do then?”
You shrug.“Besides hunting down criminals? I guess going undercover. You know, we gottacomplete a mission without anyone knowing.”
Heejun biteshis lip, worries it between his pearly white teeth. “We could pass notes!”
You roll youreyes. “Boring. Everyone already does that.”
“No, no,” hesays. “They’re going to be cool notes. We can write them in invisible ink.”
“Yeah!” Heejunlooks giddy. “You know, to hide our messages?”
“Alright, weshould use code too then,” you add on, nodding. This was beginning to soundinteresting. “But what should our notes be about?”
That’s when heshrugs and shoves another chocolate chip cookie into his mouth. You followsuit, revelling in the dichotomy of the crunchy, rough texture of the cookieand the smooth softness of the chocolate. Delectable.
“Dunno. Wecould play paper games. Talk about anything without anyone else finding out.You know how the typical notes are: we pass them around and can only hopesomeone doesn’t open them up, read them, change what they actually say, thenpass them on again. Like this, people wouldn’t even know where to begin! It’llbe great.”
You nodenthusiastically. “You know, that’s actually a good idea… But what should theink be made out of? There’s always lemon juice, but…”
“Too boring, Iknow,” he says. “But whatever. We’ll figure it out.”
You do,eventually, figure it out. Heejun buys matching invisible ink pens–”Look, iteven comes with a special black light at the end!”–and you both decide on avigenere cipher to encrypt your messages. At first it’s hard because Heejunkeeps getting the vigenere and caesar ciphers mixed up, but once you drill itinto him that a vigenere is basically multiple caesar ciphers in one code word, he getsit.
“Our key wordshould be ammonia. ‘Cause, you know, spies used’ta use that with water in orderto read the special ink the CIA used.”
You roll youreyes but nod your head, and later on regret agreeing to such a long keywordbecause holy crap, the messages are so hard to scramble andunscramble by hand. But you stick to it. If Heejun can do it, you can do it… orso you tell yourself. It’s hard to know if he’s actually, truly breezingthrough it all because he never really admits he struggles in anything.
A note landson your desk. With just a glance, you know it’s from Heejun because of thespecial way he folds it: a small, stiff, rectangle with a pull tab on thefront. Inside there’s a scribbled math equation that you know is just forshow–it isn’t even correctly written, anyway–because the realmessage is hidden.
When theteacher turns their back to the class to mess with the board, you quickly,surreptitiously, shine your light on the letter:
you & me,movies on saturday? it’ll be a date ;)
Mouth agapeand heart pounding, you stare at the paper, then at Heejun, who smirks and tapshis lips with the tip of his invisible ink pen.
drabble game: numbers | closed
