Cheerful music mixes with the squeals of children racing around the park. The sun shines directly on my music stand, almost blinding in its noon-time brightness. I guess it's a good thing that I'm just playing the same note. My bow brushes back and forth on the C string, switching between my middle and ring fingers every few bars. My eyes wander to the playground, where kids whoosh down a plastic green slide into the wood chips below. I then glance at Emi and Martin. Both of their bows bounce between strings, occasionally holding longer notes that are punctuated with vibrato.

Irritation prickles on the back of my neck, where baby hairs cling to my sweaty skin. It's easy for them to have fun when they're playing than Es and f-sharps. This is the most boring, the most infuriating, the most frustrating, the most...

Arpeggios bounce through the air beside me. Shoot. That's my cue.

My eyes jump to the last three measures. I try to lock into their playing, but my fingers are two beats too slow. I drop the last few beats, landing on a low F-sharp. The final chord lasts for three seconds before we release in sync. Light clapping sounds from the gazebo, where a few parents sit around plastic picnic tables.

Viola tucked under my arm, we stand and bow. Emi gives me the side-eye, so I focus my attention on our five-person audience. The applause is short-lived, lasting perhaps ten seconds, before the buzz of voices and the creak of the swingset dominate the air once more.

"Seriously, Cerise?" Emi chides, turning to me. "You had to ruin the ending?"

"I'm sorry; I zoned out. It's hard to think when I'm hungry."

Emi's eyes drift to her watch. "It's only twelve-eleven."

"I should've had a bigger breakfast. Eggos just don't cut it."

"Well, next time, try to think ahead." Emi sets her violin in her case before twisting the tiny, silver knob at the end of her bow to untighten it.

"I don't know about you, but I think today's Trio in the Park was a tremendous success." Martin zips his cello case, then stands up. He has a tall, limber frame to rival Emi's. His elongated neck swivels as he surveys the park with a deep, contented sigh.

Emi and I exchange glances. Martin has always been more optimistic about these sorts of things.

"What would make you say that?" Emi slowly says.

Martin's hand sweeps outward. "Look at this place."

I take in the children gallivanting in the play area, the parents deep in conversation. Martin must be peering into a different park because the one I see here contains a crowd of about fourteen people, none of whom are interested in our music.

This is only our second Trio in the Park. We started it back in March, on a less frigid Saturday morning, as a way to gain traction for our group. We missed a couple weeks, but to be honest, I don't think it makes much of a difference. The response to our efforts this week is the same as two weeks ago.

Martin threads his arms through the straps on his cello case. "Well, I'm off. I will see you both on Monday." With that, Martin walks down the sidewalk to his car in the parking lot.

Emi whirls to face me. "Cerise, we'll never get gigs if you keep up this attitude of yours. You have to focus."

"I'm sorry!" I say.

"That's what you always say." Emi folds up her music stand, and I move to do the same. "Would it kill you to smile a little?"

"Maybe I would if I weren't playing the same notes all the time," I mumble.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

Emi zips the folding stands up in a long, cloth bag, swinging the straps over her shoulder. "Let's get some food."

═════∘✧◦ 🎻◦✧∘═════

An hour late, I bite into a sub sandwich. Ranch dressing dribbles down my chin and onto the paper wrapper on the table, forming a make-shift, disposable plate. Across the table in our kitchen, Emi nibbles on her garden veggie and tofu wrap. Her brow is furrowed, her gaze set on the wooden splinters forming the table's surface.

"So... plans for the day?" I ask after a long stretch of crunching lettuce.

Emi looks up and gives a resigned shrug. "None. My Saturday student canceled."

I clear my throat, gambling on what to say next. "And practice?"

Emi's eyes drift to her hands holding her wrap. "I guess a break wouldn't kill me. I mean, if five hours of practice can't land me a job, I don't know what will."

Emi looks exhausted. Dark circles hang underneath her brown eyes. Even now, just holding a garden vegetable wrap, her wrists slightly tremble. She shouldn't be pushing herself past the breaking point like this. A tendril of guilt snakes its way into my belly.

Maybe she wouldn't be stuck in this routine if you pulled your own weight, didn't waste your money.

Before the guilt can harden into a sickening knot, I shove it aside. This is why I'm doing the treasure hunt. We can't keep doing the same thing day-in and day-out, hoping for a different result. It's time to shake things up and finally dig ourselves out the monetary hole we've been sinking into.

"Want to play some more Silverenn?" I ask.

Emi shrugs. "Sure. Why not?"

I leap up from my chair, darting into my bedroom. A moment later, I spread the folio of music on the table.

A slight smile edges Emi's lips. "Just don't drip ranch on those."

"I won't." I wipe my fingers on a napkin, then open to the first page. "The next clue reads: Eight reveals the parchment's tomb. Step coda left into its room."

Emi wrinkles her nose. "That last line just sounds weird."

"Agreed." I stare at the paper for a moment. "But then again, if it sounds off, it might be easier to interpret since it's very clue-specific, rather than broad and applicable to anything."

"Fair point." Emi scooches her chair closer beside me. "So part one, eight reveals the parchment's tomb. It sounds like we're looking for some sort of document."

"Yeah." I frown. "But how do we figure out which music score correlates with this clue?"

Emi shrugs. "Let's look at them all first, then go from there."

We spread the scores out over the tables. Titles stare back at us with big bold letters at the top of every page: Sans Conductor, Glittering Indigo, Enlightening Stroll, Habitual Bother, Crypted Keystone, The Wistful, In Lace, and The Sixth. Most of them only contain a solo line for viola, though two have a piano accompaniment. The first piece has the most parts to the score, including a piano part, viola part, and vocal line.

My eyes skim the pages. Some of these pages make me cringe at the thought of playing them. Tiny notes populate the pages along with passages in treble clef that seem impossibly high on the viola. I also spot some fun Sul G and C passages which should probably be played on the D or A strings.

I rest my chin in my hands. "How on earth are we supposed to figure this out?"

"You're the one who wanted to do the treasure hunt," Emi says.

I shake my head, staring harder at the pages. Then I spot it: a pattern that might just be the clue I'm looking for.

"Emi, look! Only one of the scores has measure numbers."

Emi brightens. "Maybe 'eight' refers to the eighth measure." Her brow creases. "But wait. How do we know it's the piece with the measure numbers? That could refer to another piece."

My mouth twists to the side. "Good point." My eyes drift to the clues, then the titles of the pieces. So far, the only one we've been able to match is 'Sans Conductor' with the first clue.

Start the song that rings the rhyme. Click the clock to find the time.

What's the next one? Eight reveals the parchment's tomb. Step coda left into its room. Which one might that correlate with? Enlightening Stroll?

I shake my head to clear it. Frustration wells inside me. "I don't get it."

"Is there even something to get?" Emi questions. "Maybe we're just supposed to go through and try each score until we come up with something that works."

"That would take forever." I flop against the back of the chair. "Besides, Silverenn isn't random."

"Then maybe the clues correlate with the titles."

I blink at the scores, the words bolded in black at the top.

Sans Conductor. Start the song that rings the rhyme. Click the clock to find the time.

Enlightening Stroll. Eight reveals the parchment's tomb. Step coda left into its room.

SC. ES.

"Emi, you're a genius!" I exclaim.

"Huh?"

"I think the first two letters of the titles correlate with the first two letters in the clues. See?" We compare each of the clues with the music titles. None of the clues start with the same two letters, and each one matches with one of the clues.

"Well, that's a good thing figured out," Emi says. "So on to measure eight."

I frown down at the notes. "C double sharp, ? What is this?"

"And just a few notes before, the C has a natural sign on it." Emi shakes her head. "Clearly, Silverenn doesn't understand how key signatures work."

"Unless the C double sharp is important and she's using the natural sign to emphasize it." I squint at the score. "C double sharp is D." The crease between my brows deepens. "We need a notepad."

Emi's chair screeches against the floor. She hops off the seat, returning a moment later with her tablet in hand. She pulls up a notepad and quickly uses her finger to write C double sharp D. The letters are far more neat than I could've ever managed, even with pen and paper. Years of experience has granted Emi the superpower of writing on a tablet without purchasing an expensive, electrical pen.

After a moment of staring at the glowing words, Emi presses her finger again to the smooth glass screen, scrawling a few more combinations.

C##D

C XD

See double sharp dee

C cross D

See cross dee

See ex dee

See XD

"It's a message," I say at last. "We need to see double sharp dee."

"Who's double sharp Dee? Is Dee a nickname?"

"Could be short for Deirdre, or really any name starting with D."

"That narrows it down." Emi sighs, pressing her finger to the home tab and pulling up Google. "I guess it's time for some research." She types 'Double Sharp Dee' into the search bar. All the results that return relate to music theory, not a historical person.

"Maybe she just played with a jazz musician named Double Sharp Dee who wasn't very well known," I say. "He or she might not be on Google."

Emi sighs, then searches again using bouillon operating terms. "No results at all." She tries again, this time just 'sharp dee.' "There was an R&B singer from the 1960s named Dee Dee Sharp." One of her eyebrows lift. "She's still alive."

"You think we're supposed to contact her?"

"Doubt it, but who knows?"

"Let's go back to the clue. Something is off here," I say. Emi returns to her notepad. "I doubt it refers to XD. That's more a modern term, isn't it?"

"Perhaps." Emi does a quick search of the phrase's history. "User experiential design has been around since the 1940s."

I lean over, peering at the history section on Wikipedia. "But it really became popular in the 1990s. I think that's a little bit after Silverenn's time."

"She died at some point in the late 1980s. So, not too far ahead of her time."

I shake my head. "This isn't a digital tech search. She wants us to go old school with the scores."

"You sure about that?"

No. "I just think there could be another solution." My eyes fall on the phrase 'See double sharp dee.' "Maybe we're just supposed to see the double sharp d. Maybe the clue is the double sharp d."

"How?"

C cross d. "Are there any letters that are a cross between C and D?"

Emi opens a keyboard, scanning the options. After a moment of looking, our eyes meet. "Nope."

The same conclusion I came to.

I plop my elbows on the table, resting my chin in my hands. "This is hopeless." That's when I glance back at the original clue. Eight reveals the parchment's tomb.

"Emi, I think we've been going about this wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"The clue says that the measure will reveal the parchment's tomb. I think the CXD points to a location."

"Maybe coordinates?" Emi and I both look down at the score, which is between us. "Unless Dee Dee knows where it's located."

"You think we can just call up Dee Dee Sharp?"

"Maybe there's a phone number hidden in the score."

"No way." I point to measure eight. "There's only seven notes in the measure, including the final one. Too short for a phone number."

"I believe phone numbers were shorter in the 1980s."

I sigh. "Fine. But how do we assign digits to these notes? There's both a D natural and a D sharp, along with a G natural and a G sharp. We couldn't possibly go based on scale degrees."

"Maybe we're supposed to count by half-steps."

The sequence is: G D F# D F# D# G# C. After counting the half-steps, we end up with the number sequence: 615152711

I blink down at the numbers. "Doesn't... doesn't that sequence seem oddly familiar?"

"Yeah, it's very similar to our current zip code. The only difference is that the ending is different." She rubs the back of her neck. "This is so weird, but I'm getting a strange sense of deja vu from looking at that."

"Deja vu?"

"Yeah." Once again, Emi pulls up trusty-old Google and types the numbers in along with 'zip code' in bouillon search terms. A second later, the page loads. "I knew it! This used to be Dewhurst's zip code."

"Great, so wherever we're supposed to go, we know it's in Dewhurst." This just feels more and more hopeless. We can't just wander through the town until the ghost of a parchment pops out of its tomb to haunt us.

"Oh, shoot! They have a map." An image fills the screen, showing a historic blueprint of the town. "So apparently, Dewhurst was too small to have its own zip code, so it was split three ways between others. The red lines on this map show where each zip code was."

I squint at the tiny letters along the lines. "Can you make out the street names?"

Emi zooms in. Three streets seem to be near the zip code's border: Chester Way, Central Crossroads, and Winded Avenue.

"One of these has to be the clue," I say, leaning closer. My eyes flick between the three streets, all converging near the red zip code border, and the clue in the music sheet. "Oh my gosh! I've got it."

"Got what?"

"It's the crossroads," I say. "See? The double sharp stands for X and C double sharp is a D. XD is the abbreviation for crossroads."

"It is?" Again, Emi searches up my claim. A moment later, she shakes her head. "It's actually XRD."

My mouth sets in a frustrated line. Then, I brighten, pointing to the double-sharped note. "Tell me that doesn't look like an R?" Emi looks skeptical. "Oh, come on! An eighth note sort of resembles an R."

"Not really..."

"It does! We need to figure out what location on that street we need to go to."

"Cerise..."

"Go back to the map." Reluctantly, Emi pulls up the map again. There's one place right on the zip code border on Central Crossroads. "That's it," I tell Emi. "We need to go to the library."

"There's stores all along there," Emi says.

"But the library fits. It's a tomb for parchments." Emi raises an eyebrow. I let out an exasperated sigh. "It's a place where books are laid to rest. It makes the most sense."

"You may be right," Emi reluctantly agrees. "But how do we even know if it's still around?"

"With all the research we've been doing, we can definitely find out if an old library still stands."

One search later, and another piece of the puzzle slots into place. In just two hours, the Dewhurst Public Library, founded in 1911, will close. I just hope we can find the next clue before then.