Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? (17 page)

Max clutched the cord on his neck. “I’m not parting with this one,” he said. “Not now.”

“I’m sure they won’t notice if just one of the crystals is still missing,” I said, compromising. “But we take all the others back. Maybe put them somewhere different — scatter them on the floor or something — so Nancy will just think they dropped them and didn’t notice. They probably won’t worry about yours too much as long as they’ve got all the others.”

Max scowled. “Really? You think that’ll work?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

Max shook his head. “OK.” Then he smiled at me. “Thanks,” he said.

I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t too awful-looking when he smiled.

“Sometimes it’s fun reading people’s minds,” he added shyly, and I felt my cheeks heat up.

We headed for the hallway. “What’s your cell phone number?” Max asked. He got his phone out and punched my number in as I gave it to him, putting in my name as “J.” I guess he didn’t want his tough-guy friends to tease him about being friends with a girl.

“I’ll text you if I can’t make it to lunch tomorrow, but I will try,” Max promised.

“OK,” I said. As I turned toward the door, I noticed a photo on the mantelpiece of a woman with a baby. “Is that your mom?”

Max looked at his feet. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Aww, cute,” I said, smiling. “Don’t tell me that’s you! I can’t believe you were ever a sweet little chubby-cheeked baby!”

Max didn’t reply. When he looked up, his face had clouded over. “I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?” he said.

“Oh, OK, right,” I faltered.

I stepped outside and turned to say good-bye, but he’d already shut the door.

And just when I’d been on the verge of thinking that Max Malone wasn’t too bad after all.

I scarfed my snack as quickly as I could and went up to my room to call Izzy. She listened in silence to the whole story.

“That is totally awesome!” she said when I’d finished.

“Which part? The mind-reading boy, the self-healing cat, or the fact that Max Malone had a conversation with another human being that involved actual sentences and not just grunts?”

“All of it! This just gets better and better. And guess what! I finally pinned Tom down and made him talk to me. He says he’ll come tomorrow at lunchtime.”

“Great! How’s he doing? Is he feeling any better about it all?”

“He’s getting there. He said he’s decided to treat it like an algebraic equation.”

“How on earth does that work?” I asked.

“Well, he said that in algebra, you have to equalize two sides of an equation by matching up the quantities of the variables — or something.”

“So he just has to establish how to match up potentially having a superpower with his fear of being even more different?” I mused.

“Exactly. Now that he’s approaching it like a math problem, I think he’ll be a hundred percent on board soon.”

“That’s a relief. I hated seeing him upset.”

“Yeah, me too,” Izzy agreed.

“Tomorrow at lunchtime, then,” I said as my stomach did a couple of cartwheels and a backward flip. One day from now, exactly how much deeper into this crazy stuff were we all going to be?

On Wednesday at lunchtime, Izzy, Max, and I sat in silence in the art room. Max said he was there because he’d had nothing better to do. I didn’t really care what he said; I was just glad he’d turned up.

I looked at my watch for the millionth time. Twenty-five to one. Five minutes into lunch.

Max pushed back his chair and stood up. “They’re not coming, are they?” he said. “We’re wasting our time.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but something stopped me — a knock on the door, followed by a face peeking around it. Heather!

“You came!” I burst out before I could check myself and act cool.

She smiled shyly. “Can I come in?”

“Of course!” I shuffled up to make space beside me and pulled another chair in.

I must have been right that Heather had already discovered that she had a power of some kind — I was sure of it now. Why else would she have agreed to spend time with someone she’d looked down her nose at for the last two years?

A moment later, there was another rap on the door. Tom stuck his head around and came in. “Sorry I’m late. I had to grab some lunch.” He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he shut the door behind him and grabbed a chair. I guessed he was still feeling unsettled by it all. But he’d come, and that was what counted.

This was it, then. We were all here. It was time to get started.

While I was trying to figure out where to begin, Max got up and shoved a chair against the door handle. “So we don’t get disturbed,” he mumbled by way of explanation. Then he looked at me. As did the others.

I cleared my throat. “Um. OK, so thanks for coming,” I said nervously. “Some of you might be wondering what this is about.”

Tom looked down at his feet. Izzy smiled encouragingly. Heather’s face didn’t give anything away. Max tapped his fingers on his knee.

“OK, so, well, the thing is . . .” My voice trailed away. How on earth was I supposed to say all of this?

Max saved me. “Look, there’s no point in beating around the bush,” he said. And before I had time for one last change of mind about leaping into the unknown quite so spectacularly, he went on. “There’s some weird stuff going on. It’s top secret, and if you don’t want to know about it or don’t think it applies to you, then feel free to leave now.”

No one moved.

“If you stay, you have to promise not to breathe a word outside this room,” Izzy added. “Whatever is said from here on in is top secret. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Max and I said.

“Agreed,” echoed Tom and Heather a little nervously.

“Good. All right.” Izzy looked at me. “Back to you, then, Jess.”

I paused while I tried to summon up the nerve. Then I decided we were halfway there already and so I might as well go ahead and jump off the cliff.

“OK, see, the thing is, we wanted to talk to you about some stuff,” I began. “Weird stuff. Right now, it’s only weird for me and Max — as far as we know.” I paused for a moment and looked from Tom to Heather. “But we think that it might be weird for you, too. We think you’re like us . . .”

Before I could say any more, Heather had gotten up from her chair.

“Wait! You’re leaving?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m going to make this easier for you. There
is
something weird going on with me. I don’t really know how to put it into words.” She walked over to the corner of the room, turned back, and looked at us all. “So I’ll show you instead.”

She opened the door to a walk-in closet, full of paints, brushes, canvases, and crayons, went inside, and shut the door.

I looked around at the others. They were all staring at the closet door.

And then Heather came back into the room and the four of us gaped, openmouthed. See, there was one weird thing about the way she came back in.

She didn’t open the door.

She walked through the wall.

I stared at Heather. Then I stared at Max and Izzy. Then I allowed myself a glance at Tom, who seemed to have stopped looking awkward and nervous and instead was looking completely stunned. His mouth was so wide-open, I was concerned he might dislocate his jaw.

Max was the first to recover. I say “recover,” but that might be an exaggeration.

“That — that . . . you . . .” was what he actually said.

Heather crossed the room and sat back down. She fiddled nervously with the edge of her sweater, then looked up at me. “You said something the other day that made me think you might be able to do this, too,” she said. “Can you? Please tell me I’m not the only one. Tell me you’ve got some sort of explanation.”

“You’re
not
the only one,” I said.

“Well, you’re the only one who can do
that
,” Max put in. “That is a seriously awesome power!”

“So I
am
the only one?” Heather asked in a high-pitched voice.

I shot Max a look, then turned to Heather. “No. You’re not.” Then I took a huge breath and added, “We’ve asked you guys here because we think we all might have some kind of superpower.”

“Well, not all of us,” Max said, looking pointedly at Izzy.

Izzy blushed and looked down.

“OK, maybe not all of us,” I agreed. “But Izzy is my best friend and she knows everything that’s going on, and she’s part of this, OK?”

Why was he being so difficult? As if this weren’t hard enough already!

“I’m not being difficult,” Max said, annoyingly reading my thoughts. “I’m just being honest.”

“She never said you
were
being difficult,” Heather told him, a confused frown scrunching up her forehead.

“No,” Max said. “She didn’t say it. She thought it.”

“She
thought
it?” Heather laughed. “How on earth do you know what she . . . ?” Then she stopped. She looked from me to Max.

“Yeah,” Max said. “I read her mind. That’s what
I
do.”

Heather mouthed the word “Wow!” although no sound actually came out.

She looked at me. “What can
you
do?”

“This,” I said. Then I turned myself invisible. I watched Heather’s face drain of color as I disappeared. I only stayed invisible for half a minute, then made myself visible again.

Tom broke the silence. “And you seriously believe that I could have one of these powers, too? I mean, as in actually for real?”

“Yeah, we do,” I said.

Tom breathed out heavily through his nose, and nodded as if agreeing to a life-changing deal. Which, to be fair, wasn’t too far from what he actually was doing. When he spoke again, he sounded like the main character in a film who was about to take the first steps on a new planet. Knowing Tom, he was probably imagining that
was
who he was.

“All right, let’s do this,” he said. “I want to find out.”

“You’re sure?” Izzy asked.

Tom nodded. “I haven’t thought about anything else for the last two days. I need to know.” He looked around at us and allowed himself a small smile. “And anyway, I don’t need to worry about standing out. If I can really do something like you guys, then we’d be the same. I wouldn’t be the odd one out at all. Come on, let’s go for it. How do I do it?”

I smiled back at Tom, and, mainly to hide the fact that I suddenly had a lump in my throat, I started rummaging in my bag. I pulled out the cloth bag with the two crystals I’d bought at Tiger’s Eye: the howlite and the turquoise. I opened it, picked up the crystals, and held them out for Tom to see.

“You need a crystal, like one of these.” I pointed at Heather. “Heather’s is . . . what was it again?”

Heather held out her hand to show us her ring. “Citrine.”

I pulled my necklace from under my shirt. “Mine’s rose quartz. Max’s is hematite. Each one does something different.”

Tom nodded seriously. “OK.” He reached out an arm.

I stopped him. “Wait! Once you’ve used one and it works, that’s the power you have. As far as we know, you can’t swap it. That’s it.”

Tom tilted his head to the side and pulled at his thick curls. They bounced back up as he let go.

“No, that’s not a moldy Life Saver,” Max said. “It’s a crystal.”