Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? (25 page)

“I can’t believe we did it!” Izzy said, smiling broadly as the five of us slurped our drinks back at the Corporation Street Café and listened as Max told us about his time with Finch.

“How did he get away with it?” asked Tom. “How did he get you there in the first place?”

Max frowned. “I was an idiot. He drove past while I was waiting for the bus to school and he offered me a lift. I decided it would be a good opportunity to confront him about being at the lab, so I got in the car. He was super smooth. Said he could explain everything, but we’d have to take a detour. I wasn’t exactly upset about not getting to school on time, so I agreed.”

“Couldn’t you read his mind while you were in the car?” Heather asked.

Max grimaced. “The leather cord for my hematite skull snapped this morning when I was getting dressed. I’d been planning to fix it when I got to school, so the hematite was in my bag.”

“So you didn’t have it next to your skin,” I said.

“And you couldn’t exactly start fumbling around in your bag for it when the last thing you wanted to do was make him suspicious,” Tom added.

“Exactly,” agreed Max. “In other words, I pretty much sat back and did nothing while he drove me to his house and locked me in a room.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Heather said gently. “I’d probably have fallen for it, too. He seems like a persuasive kind of guy.”

“Yeah. That’s the weird thing. He seemed so nice and so believable — even when I was fairly certain he was up to something shady. I never even questioned how he’d found us in the first place.”

“I bet he kept an eye on your dad for years,” Izzy suggested.

“And then started keeping watch when he saw that Dr. Malone had opened a new lab,” Heather added.

“Probably.” Max thought for a moment. “He was never horrible to me, you know,” he went on. “He didn’t keep me tied up or anything, and he fed me decent food. He was really friendly the whole time. It made him even creepier, in a way. To my face, he was nice — but I was right there when he made all those threats on the video, as you saw.”

“He didn’t need to be nasty to your face,” I said. “He just needed to keep you there long enough to get to your dad.”

“And he failed,” Heather added.

“Yeah. He failed to get to my dad — and we succeeded in doing all this without Dad even knowing a thing about it!”

“We really did it,” Tom mused. “We stopped the bad guy. A bunch of kids against one super-evil brain. Not bad, really.”

Izzy took her glasses off and cleaned them with a napkin. “But did we, though?” she asked. “I mean — have we
definitely
stopped him?”

“Totally!” Tom replied. “We got his stuff, and Nancy told Jess they’ve changed the keycode at the lab. He’s not going to get back in there.”

“And there’s no way
anyone’s
going to give him the number again,” Max added.

“He wouldn’t dare do anything now, anyway,” Heather put in. “He won’t come within a hundred miles of Max, if he knows what’s good for him. As far as he’s concerned, Max could quite easily march up to the nearest police station and have him charged with kidnapping a minor.”

“Heather’s right,” I said, holding up my phone. “We still have the video as evidence, so he
better
not bother
any
of us again!”

Max grinned. “Thanks to you guys.”

“And thanks to the fact that Finch never checked who you’d sent the video to,” Tom said.

“It’s lucky he believed my explanation,” Max added.

“That was a stroke of genius,” I agreed. “Managing to convince Finch that ‘J’ was for James, your dad.”

“Yeah. Thank goodness your name starts with the same letter as Dad’s!” Max said. “If I hadn’t fooled Finch about that, I’d probably still be there now.”

I looked at Max. I realized I’d underestimated him. I guessed most people probably did.

“Thanks,” he said. Then he smiled at me. A real smile. No sarcasm, no jokes, no teasing to cover anything up. “Really,” he said. “I mean it. Thank you. For everything.”

I smiled back. Then I started feeling a bit silly, so I took a sip of my hot chocolate.

When I looked up again, I spotted someone hurrying by the window — someone who happened to glance in at the same moment. Nancy! She must have been on her way to the lab.

She stopped walking as she noticed me. Then she turned and came into the café.

“Hi, Nancy,” I said, giving her my best
I’m-just-having-a-drink-with-my-school-friends-not-discussing-anything-to-do-with-superpowers-or-evil-thieving-kidnappers-who-you-happen-to-know-at-all
smile.

“Hey, Jess. Hi, Izzy,” she said. She glanced around at the others. Then she noticed Max. “Hi, Max . . . I didn’t know you two knew each other.” She raised her eyebrows in a
care-to-explain-at-all?
kind of way.

She knew! We’d been busted! We hadn’t managed to keep this secret for five minutes. Nancy would make us own up and tell everyone. What could I say?

Before I’d thought of anything, Heather burst out, “Science project!”

Nancy turned to Heather. So did the rest of us.

Heather gave Nancy her best smile. “We all got put into groups for a project we’re doing this semester,” she said, slick as anything. Well, who would have guessed that Heather class-president Berry would turn out to be such a good liar?

“And I got lumped in with this lot,” Max added with a grimace and a
well-what-can-you-do?
kind of shrug.

Nancy nodded slowly. Then she smiled. “Well, good for you,” she said. “Enjoy your project.”

She believed us. At least, she was happy to go along with the pretense that she did. Either way, I was fairly sure of two things: one, Nancy wasn’t going to give us away, and two, we now had the perfect excuse to keep on meeting up without any of our parents getting suspicious about the new group of friends we’d suddenly made.

As Nancy left us to it, the five of us let out a collective breath.

“We did it,” Heather said, grinning broadly.

“We did, didn’t we?” Max agreed.

“Incredible,” added Tom, shaking his head in proud disbelief.

Izzy turned to me. “Think we’ve earned the right to call ourselves superheroes yet?” she asked with a smile. “Even just slightly?”

I made a face as I pretended to think about it. “Nah, we’re not slightly superheroes at all,” I said. Izzy’s face dropped, till I added, “We are
totally
superheroes!”

“Right!” Max agreed. He held out his cup, and we each held up our drinks in a toast.

As we clinked them together, Max announced, “To the five of us. Totally superheroes.”

“Totally superheroes,” we all repeated.

And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just the hot chocolate that made me feel warm inside.

On Friday morning, I was up, dressed, and at school half an hour early.

It was weird. In one way, nothing had changed. The day was still going to start with English and end with double geography. It was still going to include being reprimanded by teachers multiple times for talking or not listening or not knowing the answer to something. It would still involve being given homework I’d rather scratch my eyes out than do.

To a casual observer, it was the same as any other day. But, on the inside, everything had changed.

From now on, Heather wouldn’t put up with being worshipped and followed around by adoring fans. She had realized that
real
friends were people who liked you for who you were, instead of who you felt you had to pretend to be.

Tom would hold his head a bit higher and not care about the people who called him a geek, now that he had something that made him, in his words, “approximately a million to the power of a million” times cooler than them.

Max would spend time talking and laughing instead of grunting and scowling with his soccer friends, now that he’d discovered that he had people who cared about him.

Izzy would work just as hard in her classes, but she wouldn’t worry so much about her grades having to be perfect. She’d be too busy grinning at the thought of all the things she could do, now that her biggest fantasy had come true.

And me? Well, yeah, I’d probably still get into trouble at school. I’d still be late for French; I’d still get scolded for passing notes in English or not listening in geography.

But none of it would matter. Because I still had my two best friends, and now we were closer than ever, and I also had a new friend to save me a seat in French and another who knew what I was thinking without my having to say anything. I had four people who would be at my side in a second if I needed them. A group of true friends to hatch plans with, to laugh and joke with, to share secrets with. To be myself with.

Those were the things that had changed for me. The things that mattered.

The things you couldn’t see.