Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins?

by Liz Kessler

  As soon as the bell rang, Izzy and I made a dash for the girls’ bathroom nearest to his office. I almost walked into someone on the way through the door.

  “Oops, sorry,” I said automatically. Then I looked up. It was Heather Berry. She had a couple of her minions in tow, following behind her like obedient lapdogs.

  For a millisecond, Heather’s eyes met mine. They looked different from usual. They didn’t quite have their usual shiny confidence. They held my gaze, and just briefly, I thought Heather was actually going to speak to me. A second later, the minions caught up with her and she sniffed, stuck her nose up as usual, and turned away.

  As she turned, she pulled her bag over her shoulder and I noticed something on her hand. A ring. I’d never seen that before. It was bright yellow and flashed in the light from the corridor. I don’t know why, but it made me catch my breath.

  A moment later, Heather and her minions had gone. Before they rounded the corner at the end of the corridor, Heather turned quickly back to me and — well, I was probably imagining it, but I think she might have smiled. She was probably just sharing a secret joke about us, as usual.

  “Snobby socks,” Izzy said under her breath.

  “Ignore her,” I said. “She’s not worth it. Come on.” I headed toward one of the stalls and put Heather and her minions and her super-flash ring out of my mind. I locked the door behind me, then took a few slow breaths. Think about nothing, I told myself, and waited for my body to disappear.

  I gave it a minute, then opened my eyes. I was still there! What was going on? I’d become pretty smooth at it after nearly a week of practicing, but for some reason, it wasn’t happening. Probably the nerves.

  I tried again. Closing my eyes, I tried to clear my mind. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  It still didn’t work. What was wrong? Why wasn’t anything happening?

  “Are you ready?” Izzy’s voice hissed through the toilet door.

  “Two minutes,” I hissed back. Try harder. Breathe. Relax.

  It didn’t work.

  “Come on, Jess.” Izzy’s voice again. “We’re going to run out of time.”

  I took a long, slow breath, closed my eyes, and tried one final time.

  Nothing.

  I opened the stall door.

  “At last,” Izzy said, already halfway to the door. “Come on, we’re — ” Then she turned around and saw me. “Jess, you’re . . .”

  I nodded glumly. “I know.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  Izzy was about to reply when a couple of tenth-grade girls came in. We slipped out of the bathroom and went outside. We passed Tom on the way. “Hey, guys,” he said with a smile. “What are you up to?”

  For a moment, I almost wanted to answer him honestly. I mean, this was Tom. He was virtually like a brother to me and a best friend to Izzy. If anyone could be trusted to share all this weirdness, it was Tom. And, actually, if anyone had a brain wired up in the right way to have bright ideas about what was going on, it was probably Tom, too.

  I opened my mouth to reply.

  Then I thought about what I might say. “Well, we were planning to do this trick where I turn invisible and then pretend to be the principal and send an e-mail to the entire school — but for some reason, it went wrong.”

  Yeah. Not sure that would go down too well.

  “We, er, well . . . nothing much,” I said in the end.

  Tom nodded. “See you at chess tonight, Izzy?”

  Izzy nodded and Tom left us to it. We headed over to our favorite spot in the school yard.

  “So,” Izzy said, once we were on our own, “why do you think it’s not working?”

  I had no answers, only guesses. “Maybe I was too nervous to empty my mind,” I suggested.

  “Maybe a bit of you knew it was wrong, and that part of you wouldn’t let you do it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like when you get hypnotized,” Izzy said. “You can’t do anything under hypnosis that you wouldn’t be prepared to do in real life.” Both Izzy’s parents were therapists, so she knew things like that. “Perhaps this works the same way.”

  “Could be,” I said. “Or maybe I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe whatever made me able to do it only lasted a short time, and now it’s back to normal.”

  I couldn’t help feeling sad at that thought. I mean, I knew that only a week earlier, the idea of turning invisible had completely freaked me out. But I’d gotten used to it now. I liked it.

  Izzy shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know,” she said.

  The bell rang for the end of break. “Look, come over tonight and we’ll try it again,” I said. “If it was just because I was nervous, I should be able to do it. If I can’t, we’ll know that it was something else and we can forget all about it.”

  Izzy picked up her bag and we headed back to class.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “I’ll be by after chess club. Oh, and I guess I’d better bring my geography stuff with me. We’ll have to study now, after all.”

  I sat up and opened my eyes for the fifth time. “Enough,” I said with a sigh. “I can’t do it anymore. Let’s just accept it and be done with it.”

  “One more try,” Izzy pleaded. “I’ll watch more closely; see if you’re doing anything different.”

  “I’m not doing anything different,” I insisted. “I’m doing exactly the same thing I’ve done before, and it’s not working. It’s over.”

  Izzy ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Why would it just stop like this? It’s not logical.”

  Izzy loves things to be logical, loves theories and explanations. I could have pointed out that if we were going to get hung up on what was or wasn’t logical, we might have to rethink the whole “turning invisible” thing altogether. I didn’t, though. Partly because I didn’t want to upset her and partly because when I got up off my bed, something caught my eye as it glinted in the setting sun.

  My necklace.

  The necklace I’d worn every day since my birthday, until yesterday. The one thing I could think of that I had done differently. I hadn’t turned invisible since I’d taken it off.

  Could the necklace have anything to do with it?

  It was just a coincidence, surely. I mean, it wasn’t possible. It was ridiculous. How could a piece of jewelry have anything to do with turning invisible?

  Even so, without saying anything, I found myself reaching out for the necklace, putting it on, and closing my eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Izzy asked. “I thought you’d given up on . . .”

  Her voice trailed off as she let out a breath. And I knew why. I knew because when I looked down, what I saw took my breath away, too.

  I had turned invisible.

  “The necklace makes you go invisible,” Izzy said. When I became visible again, Izzy stared at the rose quartz dangling around my neck and shook her head. “That’s, like, wow, I mean, that’s . . .”

  I knew what she meant, even if she hadn’t actually managed to utter a complete sentence. “Yeah, it is,” I said.

  We checked and double-checked the theory. I took the necklace off and put it back on. Each time, without it, I couldn’t turn invisible, and with it, I could. Then I had a thought. I unclasped the necklace and handed it to Izzy. “You try.”

  Izzy’s eyes opened as wide as they might have if I’d handed her the crown jewels and suggested she try being queen for the day.

  She took the necklace from me and fastened it around her neck. “What do I do?”

  I laughed. “Come on, you’ve watched me do it about a thousand times. You know what to do by now. Close your eyes, relax, and clear your mind. Let’s see if it works.”

  We spent about an hour trying to turn Izzy invisible. She tried the thing with the cars zooming over the horizon. She tried another o
ne her mom had taught her for falling asleep — imagining fluffy clouds gliding across a big blue sky. She even tried counting sheep and turning her mind into a huge meadow. Nothing worked. Nothing even came close.

  “Maybe you just haven’t gotten the hang of it yet,” I suggested as Izzy unclasped the necklace and took it off.

  She shook her head. “My mind was as blank as that time the substitute teacher asked me the square root of 729. It couldn’t have been any more empty if I’d been knocked unconscious.” She handed me the necklace. “Whatever it is about this necklace and turning invisible, it only works for you.”

  I put the necklace back on, fastened it behind my neck, and slipped it under my clothes, out of sight, close to my skin.

  “Where did it come from?” Izzy asked.

  Which was when I realized I’d been avoiding thinking about that question. Nancy. She’d bought me the necklace.

  And then I thought about the other thing I’d been avoiding thinking about. The conversation I’d overheard between Nancy and Mom.

  Did Nancy know what the necklace could do? Was that possible? Surely Nancy would never spring something like that on me. Would she?

  Several hours after Izzy had left, nearly bedtime, I left Mom and Dad watching Supercook: The Final and headed into the kitchen to make some hot chocolate. While I waited for the kettle to boil, I sat down and tried to put my thoughts into some sort of order.

  My necklace enabled me to turn invisible. Nancy had given it to me. And then she had acted a bit strangely, asking my mom how I was and if I liked the gift. Was she just asking out of interest? I mean, surely it would be normal to ask if I liked a present she’d bought. Was it possible that she knew what it did? And how could I find out?

  Well, obviously, I could ask her. Hey, Nancy, don’t suppose you know that the necklace you gave me has made me a superhuman freak who turns invisible, do you? No, that wouldn’t work. If she didn’t know anything about it, her next conversation with Mom would probably include a discussion of the quickest way to get my head examined. And if she did know . . . Well, that thought freaked me out so much that I wasn’t prepared to go there. Not yet. I needed more information first. But how to get it?

  I went to get some milk for my cocoa. And that was when I spotted the magnetic reminder on the fridge. Tomorrow was the town’s monthly recycling day. I suddenly had a thought.

  The necklace had come wrapped up in some purple tissue paper stuck down with a label. I couldn’t remember exactly what the label had said, but I knew it had writing on it, and I was pretty sure it was the name and address of the shop it had come from. If I could find that, perhaps I could track down where the necklace had come from without having to confront Nancy. And, given that a month’s worth of our discarded paper was going to be taken away in the morning, tonight would be my only chance.

  I could hear the Supercook closing theme song in the family room. Then Mom came into the kitchen. “All right, that’s it. I’m calling it a night,” she said, giving me a kiss.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” Dad replied as Mom headed up to their bedroom.

  One down. Dad would probably spend another ten minutes channel surfing. He wouldn’t be far behind her.

  I’d go up to my own room, give them half an hour to get into bed and nod off, then all I had to do was go downstairs, sneak outside, rummage through a month’s worth of recycling, find a tiny label on a scrunched-up piece of purple tissue paper that might or might not have the store’s address on it, get that address, get back inside and up to bed, all without being found out.

  Simple.

  I could hear Dad snoring. I was listening outside the door. I couldn’t hear Mom hissing at him to stop snoring, which meant she was probably asleep, too.

  I tiptoed past, avoiding the squeaky floorboard, and crept downstairs. I sneaked across the hall, through the kitchen, and onto the back porch, where I carefully slid the bolt and slipped outside.

  There was just about enough light from the streetlamp at the front of our house to see what I was doing. The recycling was in plastic bins at the side of the yard. I opened the first bin I saw. It was full of plastic bottles. Carefully pushing it aside, I moved on to the next one. Paper. Yes! I crouched down and began to rummage my way through four weeks’ worth of cereal boxes, junk mail, packaging, newspapers, and magazines.

  This wasn’t going to be easy.

  Eventually, I reached the bottom of the bin. No tissue paper at all. I looked around. There were more bins. I opened a couple more. Cans in the first; glass in the second. Then I came to the final one, right in the corner of the yard. As soon as I opened the lid, the first thing I noticed was a whole bunch of “happy birthday” wrapping paper. Bingo!

  I rummaged through the wrapping paper. Come on, come on, it must be here somewhere. I was starting to get a cramp from crouching down next to the bin when I spotted it. Tissue paper! Scrunched up into a ball inside a piece of wrapping paper. I opened it up and studied it as well as I could in the dim light. Yes! A label! I ripped off the label and shoved it in my pocket. Then I straightened my legs and went to stand up. Only, I lost my balance and fell onto the bin behind me, which I’d piled on top of another one. Unfortunately, I hadn’t stacked it properly, and it fell with a clatter, tin cans spilling everywhere.

  Nooooooooo!

  I held my breath again and listened. Nothing. I was safe. I just needed to —

  Wait. A light had come on in the kitchen. Someone was coming. I didn’t have time to run away, and the bins were too small for me to hide behind. There was only one thing I could do. I closed my eyes, cleared my mind, and turned invisible.

  “Hello?” Dad was standing in the back doorway in his pajamas, his hair sticking up in a sleepy mop. He was holding a rolling pin. “Who’s there? I know there’s someone out there. You’d better show yourself or there’ll be trouble.”

  If I hadn’t been so concerned with making sure Dad didn’t notice me, I might have laughed. I mean, did he really think any serious burglar would be afraid of a middle-aged guy in striped pajamas trying to sound tough as he stood yawning in the doorway with a rolling pin in his hand?

  “I’m warning you.” Dad raised his voice and held the rolling pin a bit higher. I crouched low and focused hard on keeping myself invisible. I mean, I know he wasn’t exactly scary in his PJs and holding a kitchen utensil, but I wasn’t a hardened criminal and Dad was never in a good mood if he was woken up. Plus, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come up with a decent explanation for why I was crouched down among the recycling bins in the middle of the night.

  And then, just as I was starting to get a cramp in my knees and wondering how long this standoff was going to last, something wonderful happened.

  The neighbor’s cat, Monty, leaped across the fence into our yard.

  Dad jumped so hard he dropped the rolling pin. Then he peered into the darkness. “Monty, is that you?”

  Monty skipped over to the shed next to the back door. Dad stepped out to pick him up. Monty purred like a motorcycle engine and rubbed his head against Dad’s chest.

  Dad tickled Monty under his chin. “Darn cat. You had us worried for a minute there. Darn Christine, too, forgetting to lock the back door,” he said. “All right, be off with you, now. I’m going back to bed. And, unlike Christine, I’ll lock the door behind me. What do you think, Monts? That a good idea?”

  Which was when I realized I had to act fast. If I didn’t get into the house before Dad, and he locked the door behind him, it could be a long, dark, cold night for me out here in the backyard.

  Dad was still tickling Monty’s neck. I seized the moment. Extricating myself from the bins with a light-footedness a ballerina would be proud of, I tiptoed across the yard, edged past Dad, and zipped through the back door, seconds before Dad bent down to put Monty on the ground. With a final pet of the cat’s head, he turned and came back in the house.

  I was halfway across the kitchen as I heard him close the door behind him. I
ran upstairs as quickly and as quietly as I could, crept into my bedroom, and finally let out the breath I’d been holding since I’d made a dash for the back door.

  I listened as he crossed the landing and closed his bedroom door behind him. Only then did I feel safe to put on my bedside light and pull the label out of my jeans pocket. I held it up to the light.

  Tiger’s Eye, it said in a fancy, swirly font. That must be the name of the shop where my necklace had come from. There was an address under the name — 132 Beacon Street, Penbridge.

  My heart took a leap. I didn’t recognize the address or the shop name, but at least it was in Penbridge. It couldn’t be too far away.

  It took me hours to fall asleep after that. My mind wouldn’t switch off. All I could think was that maybe Izzy and I could go to Tiger’s Eye over the weekend. And that perhaps it would finally lead us to some answers.

  On Saturday morning, I was at Izzy’s before she was even dressed. I waited for her to wolf down her breakfast and throw on some clothes, then I dragged her out of the house.

  I’d checked out the route on my computer before leaving home, and I ran it by Izzy as we walked up to the bus stop at the end of her road. “We get the number seventeen into town and get off at the Memorial Gardens. Then we hang a left up Waterloo Road, and Beacon Street should be the third on our right.”

  Half an hour later, we were turning onto a long street with houses at each end and a row of stores in between; Beacon Street.

  Tiger’s Eye was right in the middle. We stopped outside and peered in. The window was filled with glass cases of jewelry, shelves of wooden animal ornaments, and colorful silk scarves. A smell that I recognized as incense wafted out onto the street, together with a tinkly tune that might have been panpipes.

  I looked at Izzy and swallowed. “I’m nervous.”

  “Me too,” Izzy replied. “But we’re here now. And, anyway, what’s the worst that can happen?”