were
deliberately trying to cover everything up to keep Terri from
finding out about any of it.
Well, she thought. Not anymore.
She paused for another moment, gazing down
excitedly at the front edge of the briefcase.
Yes, it was exciting.
Exciting to know that, very possibly, all
the answers to all the questions she had were right here at her
fingertips.
And it’s time to find
those answers, she decided.
She slid the black
briefcase out from under the bed, pushed the two black-metal
latches with her thumbs— click-click! —and opened the
briefcase.
««—»»
The first thing Terri saw when she opened
her uncle’s briefcase were several glossy textbooks with very
complicated titles on the covers, titles she didn’t understand. She
wished she could look through the books but she knew there wasn’t
time: Uncle Chuck would be home soon, and so would Terri’s mother.
Instead Terri lifted the books up and looked under them.
A spiral notepad lay there, just like the
kind Terri herself used for her schoolwork. The cover of the
notepad was turned back, and she could see handwriting on the first
page.
Uncle Chuck’s
handwriting, Terri could tell immediately.
And then there was something else in the notepad she recognized
just as swiftly—
The words! she celebrated.
She remembered now; seeing them again
sparked her memory instantly.
The words she’d seen on the computer screen
in the boathouse, plus the words on the glass tanks and the labels
on the weird glass bottles full of gunk.
Here they were again. The first line
read:
LOT 2b: TRANSMISSION FAILURE
Then the second line read:
LOT 3: POSITIVE REAGENT
TRANSMISSION OF GENETIC
CARNIVORE MUTATION.
And written closer to the bottom of the
page, still in her Uncle Chuck’s handwriting, was:
COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED
… and then yesterday’s
date.
Exactly as she remembered from her quick
trip to the boathouse this morning.
Okay, Terri told herself. You’ve finally
found the words, but you still don’t know what they mean,
so—
She took out her Bic pen and the piece of
paper from her shorts, and quickly wrote the words down.
That done, she realized
time was getting short. I’ve got to get
out of here now. She glanced uneasily at
the door. They’ll be coming home any
minute.
Using her good sense, then, she was about to
put the textbooks back and then close the briefcase, but something
made her hesitate. Terri’s curiosity was so strong, sometimes she
simply couldn’t resist it.
Can’t hurt to just take a
quick look, she thought.
She picked up the notepad from out of the
briefcase. Most of the pages had been folded over and she began to
flip through it from the top page.
Pretty much the same thing
as the last page, she concluded as her eyes
scanned down each handwritten line. She also recognized her
mother’s handwriting on some of the lines; Terri didn’t find it
difficult to recognize her mother and Uncle Chuck’s handwriting
because she’d seen it so many times when they left notes for her in
the kitchen, and now she saw that her mother had written in the
notepad just as much as Uncle Chuck had, if not more. But this was
no surprise really, because Terri knew they worked together in the
boathouse frequently.
Terri continued to flip
through the notepad. Still more of the same words,
particularly reagent and transmission, but with different numbers after the word Lot. Another thing she noticed was
that each line had a date after it, and the further she went in the
notepad, the older the dates got.
And this sparked still more of her
curiosity.
How far back do the dates
go? she wondered.
So she flipped back to the very first page
of the notepad, and read the first line.
The date was six months ago.
But that wasn’t all that Terri noticed. She
squinted her eyes, tilted her head.
Something seemed…strange.
She looked harder at that very first
handwritten line.
She stared at it.
And then she
deliberately trying to cover everything up to keep Terri from
finding out about any of it.
Well, she thought. Not anymore.
She paused for another moment, gazing down
excitedly at the front edge of the briefcase.
Yes, it was exciting.
Exciting to know that, very possibly, all
the answers to all the questions she had were right here at her
fingertips.
And it’s time to find
those answers, she decided.
She slid the black
briefcase out from under the bed, pushed the two black-metal
latches with her thumbs— click-click! —and opened the
briefcase.
««—»»
The first thing Terri saw when she opened
her uncle’s briefcase were several glossy textbooks with very
complicated titles on the covers, titles she didn’t understand. She
wished she could look through the books but she knew there wasn’t
time: Uncle Chuck would be home soon, and so would Terri’s mother.
Instead Terri lifted the books up and looked under them.
A spiral notepad lay there, just like the
kind Terri herself used for her schoolwork. The cover of the
notepad was turned back, and she could see handwriting on the first
page.
Uncle Chuck’s
handwriting, Terri could tell immediately.
And then there was something else in the notepad she recognized
just as swiftly—
The words! she celebrated.
She remembered now; seeing them again
sparked her memory instantly.
The words she’d seen on the computer screen
in the boathouse, plus the words on the glass tanks and the labels
on the weird glass bottles full of gunk.
Here they were again. The first line
read:
LOT 2b: TRANSMISSION FAILURE
Then the second line read:
LOT 3: POSITIVE REAGENT
TRANSMISSION OF GENETIC
CARNIVORE MUTATION.
And written closer to the bottom of the
page, still in her Uncle Chuck’s handwriting, was:
COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED
… and then yesterday’s
date.
Exactly as she remembered from her quick
trip to the boathouse this morning.
Okay, Terri told herself. You’ve finally
found the words, but you still don’t know what they mean,
so—
She took out her Bic pen and the piece of
paper from her shorts, and quickly wrote the words down.
That done, she realized
time was getting short. I’ve got to get
out of here now. She glanced uneasily at
the door. They’ll be coming home any
minute.
Using her good sense, then, she was about to
put the textbooks back and then close the briefcase, but something
made her hesitate. Terri’s curiosity was so strong, sometimes she
simply couldn’t resist it.
Can’t hurt to just take a
quick look, she thought.
She picked up the notepad from out of the
briefcase. Most of the pages had been folded over and she began to
flip through it from the top page.
Pretty much the same thing
as the last page, she concluded as her eyes
scanned down each handwritten line. She also recognized her
mother’s handwriting on some of the lines; Terri didn’t find it
difficult to recognize her mother and Uncle Chuck’s handwriting
because she’d seen it so many times when they left notes for her in
the kitchen, and now she saw that her mother had written in the
notepad just as much as Uncle Chuck had, if not more. But this was
no surprise really, because Terri knew they worked together in the
boathouse frequently.
Terri continued to flip
through the notepad. Still more of the same words,
particularly reagent and transmission, but with different numbers after the word Lot. Another thing she noticed was
that each line had a date after it, and the further she went in the
notepad, the older the dates got.
And this sparked still more of her
curiosity.
How far back do the dates
go? she wondered.
So she flipped back to the very first page
of the notepad, and read the first line.
The date was six months ago.
But that wasn’t all that Terri noticed. She
squinted her eyes, tilted her head.
Something seemed…strange.
She looked harder at that very first
handwritten line.
She stared at it.
And then she
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