Cracking the Code

I sat in the kitchen with my grandmother on a sunny day listening to her tell stories from her youth.

“Oh dear, back when I was younger we did all kinds of “wild” stuff,” she said using air quotes around the word wild.

As I sat there listening to her “wild” stories that paled in comparison to some of the shenanigans I had pulled when she causally mentions a little black book with a code in it that she was never able to crack. This peaked my interest and I asked, “Grandma, do you still have this little black book?”

She started fumbling around in a drawer beside the fridge and didn’t answer me.

“Grandma!” I exclaimed louder thinking that she had maybe not heard me.

She snapped around and shot me a look that I knew all to well. Grandma had given me that look many times in my short 20 years on this earth. I knew not to press my luck by asking again. Grandma resumed her fumbling and I sat quietly wondering what she was doing.

“Ahh!! There it is!” she exclaimed as she held up the little black book.

“You found it!” Grandma looked at me with a halfhearted grin forming on her lips and I knew I was in for an adventure.

She opened the book and started to tell me about the code. It was odd that there was only one code in this book and she couldn’t figure it out. She told me of all the different ways that she had tried to crack the code and how she had failed miserably each time she had a new idea. She spent about and hour turning pages and explaining why none of her attempts worked but she just had to try.

I asked if I could take the book home to study it for a few days and bring it back once I was done. Grandma, of course, told me no. She had not ever let anyone take the book and she wasn’t going to start now. I told Grandma she now had a house guest and that I would be there as long as it took to crack the code.

I stayed up most of the first night going over the code, the sequencing, any little thing I could find to help make sense of this code. It finally hit me at 2 am that what I thought I was looking at was not a code for actual words like Grandma has thought but it was a code that would lead me to the most interesting place I had ever been.

“Grandma! Grandma! Wake up! I think I solved it! I need you to look at this and tell me if I you agree with me.”

“Atalynn, dear…do you realize what time it is?” Grandma was giving me that look that I knew all too well and I knew at that moment I had pushed her too far.

“I’m so sorry, grandma. I was just so excited that I may have cracked the code and I lost track of time. I will go back to my room and we can discuss it in the morning.”

With that I left Grandma’s room and knew I was going to have to do something big to make it up to Grandma. I spent the next hour trying to figure out what exactly that would be. I knew she didn’t sleep well and I had just ruined it for her. I decided I would get up before her in the morning and make her favorite breakfast. That should do the trick. Grandma never stayed mad at me for long though. She always said I reminded her of herself at my age and I think deep down she wished someone had treated her as she treated me. I fell asleep thinking about how much Grandma and I were alike. It felt like I had just fallen asleep when I was thrust out of sleep to the sound of a wailing alarm. I reached out to turn it off and fell hard on the floor. I finally rolled from my back to my knees just in time to catch a glimpse of Grandma standing in my doorway.

“Atalynn, what happened? Are you alright? Do you need me to help you up?” Grandma didn’t even pause long enough for me to answer her. She’s always been like that though. I lifted myself to my feet and that was all the answer Grandma needed.

We headed into the kitchen where I tried to make Grandma her favorite breakfast but she was already at the stove by the time I made it to the kitchen. She had the pan out, bacon grease melted, and was cracking an egg on the rim of the pan.

“Grandma, I was going to make you your favorite breakfast this morning to make it up to you for waking you last night. Can I please do that for you and you can just sit with me while I make us breakfast?”

“Nonsense, Atalynn, you know no one cooks in this house but me. It’ll be over my dead body that anyone cooks in this kitchen but me. So what was it you were rambling on about last night? I didn’t quite understand you as I was half asleep.”

“I was trying to tell you that I think I’ve cracked that code in your book. I think it is a location and not a reference to words like you had originally thought. The numbers are coordinates in longitude and latitude if I’m not mistaken.”

“Well where is this location?”

“I don’t know, I was so excited that I came running in your room last night to tell you and didn’t look it up to find out. I can look it up now.”

“I would have figured that would have been the first thing you did before you came to wake me last night. You know, see if your theory might be right?”

Grandma always had a way of making me feel a little less smart than I actually thought I was but I ignored her and found my laptop instead. As I punched in the coordinates I asked “Grandma, where exactly did you get this book? Was it from someone special in your life before Grandpa or was it Grandpa?”

“I acquired this book from my first boyfriend. He gave it to me on our second date and told me if I cracked the code I would be greatly rewarded. I spent so much time trying to crack it that he eventually broke up with me. I was spending every free second working that code and he just wanted some of my attention. Night after night he would ask me to go out with him and I would refuse saying I was still trying to figure out the code. He was so mad at me I wouldn’t be surprised if he took back whatever reward it was he was planning on me finding. It’d be a miracle if it was even still there. I mean it’s been almost 40 years since I got that book.”

As Grandma finished her story more questions came flooding to me because of where the coordinates said her reward was located. There was no way that a 17 year old boy would be able to pull this off.

“Umm, Grandma, where was your first boyfriend from exactly? These coordinates can’t be right. There’s just no way,” I said as I shook my head in disbelief.

“My first boyfriend was from McMurdo Station.”

“Where is that?”

“If I remember right it is a small research station on Antarctica. He said his parents were scientists that were sent there for 5 years and his mother had him while they were stationed there. The family eventually moved back to the states and settled here to finish raising their family.”

“So I guess the coordinates are right. They lead to a specific building. Grandma, what if we went to Antarctica and tried to find this reward he spoke of?”

That night we began our journey to Antarctica. We first caught a plane that took us from Miami Florida to Argentina. From there we had to sail to McMurdo Station on a seven day cruise one way.

It was the most amazing journey I have ever been on. Our attention was called to a whale by the captain. It was amazing to see it glide through the water and jump in the air landing hard enough on the water to create waves that crashed into the boat. We saw a few seals the closer we got to land but at that point they were not as impressive as the whale was to me. Once we made it to land we were able to see some penguins running around and honking like crazy. No one knew why they were honking like they were but it was still comical to watch.

We stepped off the boat and began to ask if anyone knew where this building was located. We asked for what felt like hours when we finally came across someone that knew where it was. It was their home and they agreed to show us to our destination as we told the story of how we ended up there. It became clear to us that this person knew who we were talking about and said that Chris often would stay the night with them when he was little. He told us that Chris always insisted on staying in one room in the house and they never could figure out why he was so insistent. Then they said that Chris had returned some years after his family had left and had stayed with them for a month until he finally departed for the States again.

We finally reached our destination and we were lead to the room Chris had stayed in when he visited. We looked around at a mostly empty room and thanked the guy for showing us. We couldn’t figure out what could possibly be stashed in this room or where. Eventually the man left us there sitting on the bed. As Grandma and I sat there we started to question if making the trip was a foolish decision since it looked like there was nothing there or that Chris had removed whatever might have been there when he figured out she couldn’t crack the code.

“Wait a second!” Grandma exclaimed. “If I know anything about Chris, I know that he wouldn’t leave anything in plain sight for just anyone to find. He would have hidden it under something and possibly even under something inside of something else. GET UP!” She shouted at me.

I quickly jumped to attention with my heart in my throat. Grandma had never spoken to me like that before. I couldn’t tell if it was from the terror I felt with her crassness or if it was the excitement of the moment and possibly finding this hidden reward. I stepped to the side with my heart pounding hard in my ears. I thought I was going to pass out with excitement.

Grandma moved the bed from against the wall and there it was. You could see that one board on the floor was loose and sticking up a little higher than the other boards. Grandma bent down and pulled the board from the floor. She fished around in the hole for what seemed like an eternity before she pulled out a rolled up wad of cash held together with a rubber band. Grandma’s eyes became the size of the moon as she looked in amazement at the wad of cash. She pulled the rubber band off the cash and started counting. She counted one thousand, three thousand, ten thousand, until she finally reached twenty thousand dollars.