The Folded Password

Ages 12-15

Orit crosses out OCTOPUS.

Too easy. Noa gets that one before Orit finishes the second clue. She gets CROCODILE too, and she doesn't even have to ask how many letters.

Orit turns the scrap of paper over. Across the clean side she writes CHRYSANTHEMUM. She checks the spelling in the dictionary.

Down the hall, Noa's door is open. Her slippers stand side by side beneath the chair. She is already in bed with the book she brings home from the library.

The knock is three quick taps, a pause, and one more. Noa is supposed to answer with two taps from inside. Then Orit gives the clues through the door. If Noa gets the password, Orit opens it and comes in. If she doesn't, she can buy another clue with a riddle of her own.

Noa invents that part when she is seven. For three nights, every riddle is about a banana.

Now she is ten. Orit is fourteen, and sometimes the game takes longer than Orit wants it to. Noa asks for one last clue. Then she has a much better riddle. Then she thinks of a word Orit will never get.

Yesterday Orit had ELEPHANT ready.

Noa said goodnight before she knocked.

Orit stood in the doorway with the paper behind her back. Noa turned a page.

"No riddles?"

"I'm reading. Goodnight."

Orit said it back. At her desk she unfolded the elephant and used its blank side for a spelling list.

Tonight she writes three clues beneath CHRYSANTHEMUM. Something you can grow. Something you can cut without hurting it. Something Bubby has in a pot by her steps.

The last clue gives too much away. She crosses it out.

She leaves two clues.

In the kitchen, Mommy turns off the light over the table. Orit hears Totty putting the last cups away. Noa calls down the hall to ask where her blue bookmark is.

"On your chair," Orit says.

"Found it."

Orit folds the password twice and carries it down the hall.

Noa is sitting against her pillow. The blue bookmark sticks out beneath her thumb. She laughs at something on the page and goes back to the top to read it again.

Orit stops outside the open door.

She taps three times on the frame. Pauses. Taps once.

Noa looks up.

"Goodnight, Orit."

Orit's thumb works beneath the folded edge of the paper.

"This one's harder."

Noa moves the bookmark down a page.

"Goodnight."

She presses the folded edge under her thumb. Her hand closes around the paper.

"Goodnight, Noa."

She takes one step down the hall, then another. Behind her, a page turns.