Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 1

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 2 — Table of Contents The Big Reveal 4 Alice’s Wonders 14 Back to Wonderland 26 Showtime 36 The Third Suit 50 The Lost Boys 57 The Mermaids Lagoon 65 Save the Girl 75 Toad Hall 85 The Grand Battle 94 X Marks the Spot 102

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 3 — The Big Reveal Carter reached out and felt around for his cell phone on the desk by his bed He opened his eyes to slits trying not to let too much morning in Finally his hand hit the phone Who is texting at dawn on a school-free Friday he grumbled as he held the phone close to his nose to read it The ﬁrst thing he noticed was that it was ten o’clock Okay he thought dawn came and went a while ago Carter blinked as he tried to make sense of the message It was from Uncle Dan and looked like random numbers and letters a9i9 3o19e21o35 Carter moaned There was no way he could 4

Big City Blues: Back to Wonderland — page 4 — do this one in his head He’d need paper That meant getting up He closed his eyes for a moment wondering what would happen if he just pretended he hadn’t heard the phone He could go back to sleep Then his stomach grumbled Okay okay he muttered as he sat up He swung his long legs over the side of the bed Carter copied the letters and numbers onto a sheet of paper It was obviously a code Uncle Dan loved codes They fed his need for security and offered a mental challenge Uncle Dan was always in favor of a mental challenge Carter ﬁgured this was probably some kind of substitution code In a substitution code some or all of the letters are replaced by numbers Immediately he noticed that all the letters in the code were vowels That meant the code might only represent consonants Carter chewed his lip as he studied the paper He wrote out the most common substitution code that only used consonants 5

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