Read Online Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? by Liz Kessler - Free Book Online Page B

. . she . . .”
    “Yeah,” Izzy replied. “She turned invisible. Just like she said.”
    I made myself visible again and sat down. “Now do you believe us?” I asked.
    Tom swallowed and nodded.
    Izzy reached for her laptop and clicked on her e-mail. “Now that we’ve got that settled,” she said, “take a look at this. See if you can make any more sense of it than we could.”
    “OK,” he said. His voice was a bit shaky. “I — sorry, Jess. I mean, I didn’t think you were actually lying, I just found it a bit hard to believe.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “So did I at first!”
    “But, I mean, how is this even possible?” he went on. “Like, scientifically? Mathematically? Logically?”
    “Maybe not everything is logical and mathematical,” Izzy countered.
    Tom gave her the kind of look most people would give you if you’d suggested that the moon had turned orange and had cows grazing on it.
    “
Everything
is mathematical,” he insisted. “Even things you can’t see, like atoms. Even nature. The tides, the moon, the petals on a flower. All of it is — ”
    “Look, we can’t explain it,” I said, waving a hand to stop Tom before he got going on his favorite subject and we ended up straying too far from what we were here to do. “Not yet. That’s why you’re here. To help us figure it all out.”
    Tom cleared his throat and leaned toward the laptop. “OK,” he said. “Let’s have a look at this picture.”
    The three of us stared at it in silence for a couple of minutes.
    Eventually, Tom sat back and shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “I mean, obviously, it’s a classic database-oriented spreadsheet, but too much of it is using unidentifiable markers. Without being able to quantify the algorithm, it’s almost impossible to identify the linear dependence among the variable data to provide a valuable analysis.”
    I tried to look at Tom in a way that implied I had a clue what he had just said.
    “Come again?” Izzy asked.
    Tom thought for a moment. “Sorry. I forgot we speak different languages.” He slowed down, as if talking to someone who’d only just learned to speak English. “Basically, a lot of this is in code, and until we can crack the code so we understand what all the initials refer to, this chart doesn’t give us much to go on. Does that make more sense?”
    “I think so. Do you think you could crack it?” I asked.
    Tom shook his head. “To be honest, from this picture alone, I doubt it. There just isn’t enough information to go on. I can give it a try, but don’t hold out too much hope. E-mail it to me and I’ll study it at home tonight. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”
    Izzy tapped a few keys on the laptop. “OK, done. Thanks, Tom.”
    I thought for a moment. “All of which leaves us no closer than we were before we found the lab.”
    Tom looked at me. “You know, there’s another way you can find out what’s going on here.”
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “You could ask the man.”
    “The man from the lab?”
    “Uh-huh. The scientist, or whatever he is. He’s the only person you know who could definitely give you some information.”
    Izzy nodded slowly. “Tom’s got a point — except I can’t exactly see him opening up to us after we’ve already annoyed him.”
    Izzy was right. She couldn’t knock on his door for a third time, and there was no way I was going on my own.
    I had another thought. “Wait! Didn’t you write down his phone number as well as his address?”
    Izzy rifled in her bag and fished out her notebook. She flipped it open and showed me the page with the man’s details on it — address and phone number.
    “You’re right. We can’t go back there,” I said. “But we could call him and get him to meet us. He won’t know it’s us from a phone call.”
    “Make sure you meet him somewhere neutral. And public,” Tom said. “Just to be on the safe