Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins?
Read Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? Online
Authors: Liz Kessler
As always, this book could not have been written without the help and support of some very special people. So I would like to say a special thank-you to the usual suspects — you know who you are. (And in case you don’t, you are mostly Laura, Mom, and Dad. Oh, and not-so-usual suspect John Dougherty, for the fab title!)
I would like to give a big thank-you to my publishers, Orion and Candlewick, and my agent, Catherine Clarke, who all went above and beyond what anyone would expect in terms of support and patience as I battled to get this book written. You all knew that I would get there in the end, even if I wasn’t so sure! I hope that you’ll all think the final result was worth it.
But the biggest thank-you of all is reserved for Amber Caravéo. Amber, you sweated over this book almost as much as I did — and to show my gratitude for your extreme commitment, hard work, and loyalty to your authors and their books, this one is dedicated to you.
It was during a Friday afternoon double geography class that I first discovered I had superhuman powers.
I bet you think that sounds exciting. Well, if it’s never happened to you, then take it from me: it isn’t. It’s scary. And weird. And, if it involves not knowing the answer when the teacher asks you to explain the effects of coastal erosion on prehistoric rock formations, it can also get you into a lot of trouble.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. So let’s start from the beginning. Well, not the
actual
beginning. That’ll come later. But let’s at least get back to geography class.
It was mid-April and an unseasonably warm day. I’d spent the lunch break swapping gossip, weekend plans, and chocolate cookies with my best friend, Izzy Williams, and was settling down to geography when three things converged to make me tired.
Thing one: the chocolate cookies. Chocolate
always
makes me sleepy.
Thing two: the sun had crept out from behind a bunch of clouds and was beaming like a spotlight through the window and straight onto my desk.
Thing three: Ms. Cooper announced that today’s lesson would be about coastal erosion and prehistoric rock formations.
I think you’ll agree that the odds were stacked against me.
I could hear Ms. Cooper’s voice in the distant background of my mind, saying something about cliffs and rocks and tidal patterns. A minute later, I was halfway into a dream in which I was lying on a sandy beach at the bottom of the cliffs. A savage prod in my ribs jolted me off the beach and back into the classroom.
I glared at Izzy. “What was that for?” I hissed.
She didn’t reply. Instead she nodded toward the front of the class. Ms. Cooper was staring at me, her mouth pursed in a frown, the word “Well?” dripping from her lips. I wiped away a tiny bit of drool that was dripping from mine and glanced helplessly around the room.
A few sympathetic faces were turned toward me. The others were mostly looking away. They knew what it was like.
“I — I’m sorry, Ms. Cooper. I didn’t quite understand. Could you please repeat the question?” I tried.
Ms. Cooper pursed her lips even tighter so that her mouth practically disappeared. “See me after class,” she said, then snapped her head away from me and pointed at Heather Berry in the front row. “Heather, perhaps you can answer?”
Typical.
Let me tell you about Heather Berry. She’s kind of the opposite of me.
Me: small and nondescript. Long brown hair, which never seems to do much except hang there, and greenish-gray eyes that you have to stare hard at to even notice.
Heather: tallest girl in the class, ridiculously skinny, amazingly shiny blond hair, and eyes that are so perfectly blue I have occasionally wondered if she wears those specially colored contact lenses.
Me: usually seen in scruffy jeans and random tops, like combat jackets or baggy sweaters discovered while browsing around thrift shops on a Saturday afternoon.
Heather: always sports the latest designer clothes — so trendy she’s often seen wearing the “in” thing before it’s even in.
Me: shortish attention span and tendency to pass notes with Izzy rather than
always
listen to the teacher — hence my tendency to get scolded a lot. Except in English, which I love. The English teacher, Mr. Martins, is cool. He has the longest handlebar mustache in the world, a completely bald head, and a million earrings in each ear. Plus, he occasionally makes his classes interesting and seems to think I’m not stupid.
Heather: probably every teacher’s favorite student. Always listens, always volunteers to help. Captain of the volleyball team and class president. Always surrounded by about five girls who hang on her every word and copy her every move, as well as at least five boys who want to be her boyfriend. Looks down her nose at anyone who isn’t part of her group of friends/worshippers.
You might have gathered that Heather is not my favorite person in the world.
She glanced around at me, glaring as if I were a piece of dirt that had accidentally gotten stuck on her shoe, then turned back to the teacher.
As Heather calmly explained the finer details of coastal erosion on a local prehistoric site, I breathed out and tried to think up some strategies for staying awake till the end of class.
I tore a piece of paper from my notebook, scribbled
What did I miss?
on it, and passed it to Izzy under the table.
Izzy opened the note and read it. She started to write something on it. Then she scribbled it out, scrunched the paper into a ball, and chewed on the end of her pen.
Uh-oh.
See, Izzy and I go back as far as I can remember. I know her about as well as I know myself. Better, sometimes. And I know that when she chews the end of her pen, it means she’s worried about something. The only thing that indicates even more trouble than chewing the end of her pen is if she takes her glasses off and nibbles the end of them. Izzy has about fifty pairs of glasses and changes them whenever she changes her outfit. Today was a school day, so she was wearing her blue ones, to match our uniform.
I tore another piece of paper from my book.
What’s up?
I wrote.
Izzy read the note. Then she took off her glasses and nibbled on the end of them.
Double uh-oh.
Finally, she put her glasses back on, scribbled something on the piece of paper, and passed the note back.
Can’t explain now. Tell you on the way home
.
And I don’t know why, but something about her words made me feel even more nervous than the thought of my appointment with Ms. Cooper.
Izzy was waiting for me in the coatroom.
“What did she say?” she asked as she passed me my coat and we made our way across the school yard.
“Just the standard ‘You need to take your work more seriously’ lecture,” I said, pulling on my coat and slinging my bag over my shoulder.
“Could be worse,” Izzy said.
“Yeah.” Ms. Cooper had been known to keep students behind for an hour, copying out articles from
National Geographic
and rearranging the objects on her nature table, so I’d gotten off easy.
“So what’s the thing you couldn’t tell me earlier?” I asked. Izzy hadn’t met my eyes since we’d come out of the school building.
She glanced furtively around, as if we were being watched. Nudging her head toward the park, she pulled me across the road. “In here,” she said.
We often went home through Smeaton’s Park. In the summer, there was usually an ice-cream truck outside the gates, and there was a lake in the middle of the park where we’d throw the crusts from our lunch boxes to the ducks that gathered there.
We sat down on a bench at the edge of the lake.