Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? Read online

  I think they had this idea that Tom and I would get married one day if they took us to playgroup together often enough. Tom is cute. He has gorgeous brown skin, big brown eyes, and crazy black, ringletty hair. He’s smaller than me. Actually, he’s the smallest boy in the class. He makes up for his small body with a big brain, though. He’s into gadgets and computers and math. And he loves chess. Which is cool, because it means I don’t have to go to chess club with Izzy. It also means that they’re good friends, too, so the three of us hang out together a lot.

  Anyway. Izzy had gotten a notebook out of her bag, opened it, and written — and underlined — the date in the top right-hand corner.

  Izzy likes to do things properly.

  “Let’s start with a list,” she said. “Or maybe a flowchart.” She smiled. “Yes, a flowchart. That’ll be fun.”

  “My limbs are disappearing, one by one, and you think we could describe this as fun?”

  “Absolutely! Once we’ve established why it’s happening, you just need to figure out how to harness it so you can control when it happens.”

  “Oh! Is that all? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

  “Come on, think about it. You’ve got a superpower!”

  I laughed. “Superpower? I wouldn’t exactly call it — ”

  “Jess, you can turn invisible! What’s that if it’s not a superpower?”

  “Well . . . OK, I guess.”

  Izzy grinned. “See! And once you’ve learned how to control it, who knows what you could do? You could go around the world doing good deeds. You could be a superhero!”

  “Whoa! Hold on. Let’s take it a step at a time, OK?”

  “OK,” Izzy agreed. Then she added something that made me feel better about the whole thing. And reminded me why she was my best friend. “You won’t ever be on your own with this,” she said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. I’m going to help you figure it out. Whatever happens, it’ll all be OK. OK?”

  I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice.

  “And once we’ve gotten to the bottom of it, we’re going to have some fun,” she went on. “And maybe do some slightly superhero-type stuff, too.”

  I thought about what she was saying. Perhaps she was right. If I could somehow learn to control this thing, make myself invisible whenever I wanted to, then perhaps we could have some fun with it. And perhaps I could do a good deed here and there.

  Izzy was scribbling in the notebook. I read over her shoulder. “ ‘Slightly Superhero Strategy’?”

  Izzy shrugged. “It’ll work for now.”

  I took the notebook from her and scribbled some notes of my own.

  “See?” Izzy said with a smile. “You’re thinking like a slightly superhero already.”

  I opened my laptop again and pulled a second chair over to my desk.

  Izzy sat down next to me. “What are we doing?” she asked.

  “Step One.” I opened a search engine. I stopped for a moment while I thought about how to word it, then I typed “turning invisible” into the search bar.

  “Whoa!” Izzy exclaimed as we stared at the screen. There were 57,843,521 results. “Where on earth do we start?”

  I shrugged. “With the first one?”

  I clicked on the first link. It took us to a page called “How to Become Invisible.” Not strictly necessary, as I’d already done that part. But maybe it would tell me if there was something I’d done without realizing.

  The page talked about advanced camouflage methods, as used in James Bond films. I didn’t exactly feel like an international superspy, so we moved on to the next link, “Being Invisible: Tips and Techniques.”

  “This says it takes a lot of mental effort to do it. That doesn’t seem right. I wasn’t even trying,” I said after reading a few paragraphs.

  “Hmm. Maybe the writer uses a different method,” Izzy said.

  I stared at her. “A different method from what? I don’t have a method.”

  “OK, look. He’s explaining how to do it.”

  We read the instructions. Basically, I had to close my eyes, imagine my body becoming transparent, repeat the word “invisible” silently to myself over and over again, and get my “invisibuddy” — aka Izzy — to write down as a percentage how visible I was.

  “I think you’d know about it if you had been visualizing yourself becoming transparent and saying the word ‘invisible’ over and over again,” Izzy pointed out. She was right. We moved on.

  “Forget about the how-to ones,” I said as we scrolled down. “We don’t need to know how to do it. We need to know why.”

  “Good plan,” Izzy agreed. We scanned the list.

  “How about that one?” Izzy pointed to a title halfway down the screen.

  “ ‘Incredible accounts of people who suddenly became completely invisible,’ ” I read out loud. “Sounds promising.” I clicked on the link.

  We read the first paragraph together.

  A woman named Melanie in Ventura, California, had a strange experience while sitting on her own living-room sofa. While just staring at the wall, she became, she believes, invisible. Her husband walked around the house looking for her. He even walked right by her, just a few feet away, and did not see her. The episode lasted about ten minutes, then suddenly she was visible again.

  I looked at Izzy.

  “You’ve gone white,” she said.

  At least I haven’t gone invisible, I thought.

  We read on. There were several accounts of people who discovered that they had become invisible. It never lasted long, and they’d had no warning. It just happened — generally when they were at a party where they felt they were being ignored. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced by the stories. Neither was I terribly convinced by the scientist who had apparently invented something he called an Electro-Helmet. He put the helmet on, stepped inside a closet, touched some “contact gloves” on the ceiling, and — presto! — when he came out of the closet, he was invisible!

  “I saw someone do something like that in a magic show once,” Izzy said.

  “Exactly. This is a magician’s trick, not someone who goes invisible without knowing why or how.”

  We clicked on page after page. We read about witches’ brews and invisibility paint; we watched videos of people fading away, pickpockets stealing purses without being noticed — in other words, a bunch of phonies, cronies, and criminals.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said with a sigh.

  Izzy picked up the pad. “I agree. Look, why don’t we forget about Step One for now and move on to Step Two?”

  “Learn how to control it?”

  Izzy nodded.

  “How are we supposed to do that?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  We sat in silence for a while. Then I had a thought. “How about I go through all the things I did and felt as I was falling asleep and you make a list? Then perhaps I can try to do all the same things, but without going to sleep.”

  Izzy’s eyes widened. “Jessica, you’re a genius. That could work.”

  I thought about the process. “OK, so I guess I closed my eyes first of all.”

  “Closed eyes,” Izzy repeated, scribbling on the pad.

  “Then I felt sleepy.”

  “Felt sleepy.”

  “I think my heart rate probably slowed down a bit.”

  “Heart rate slowed,” Izzy repeated.

  I thought about what else I’d felt. “I think that’s all.”

  Izzy finished scribbling and looked up. “So we’ve got closed eyes, felt sleepy, and heart rate slowed. Anything else?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t think of anything.”

  Izzy chewed the end of her pen. “Nothing at all?”

  I thought a bit more. “Wait! That’s it!” I said.

  “That’s what?”

  “Nothing at all! I was thinking about nothing. Maybe that’s the thing I have to do. Empty my mind. Think about nothing. Perhaps tha
t’s how I go invisible!”

  Izzy stopped chewing her pen. “Try it,” she said. “Can’t do any harm.”

  I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. Think about nothing, think about nothing.

  The problem was, the more I tried to think about nothing, the more I realized how full of thoughts my mind actually was. There were thoughts in every nook and cranny of my brain, whizzing around so quickly I couldn’t even catch them and tell what they were, never mind stop them. My brain felt like the fast lane on the highway. Geography lesson. Rock formation. Homework. Worries about turning invisible. Questions about why it might be happening.

  “Try to relax.” Izzy’s voice filtered through the fast lane.

  Try to relax? Sure! I bet everyone who’s just discovered that they can turn invisible feels really relaxed.

  The thoughts whizzed by even faster.

  Then I had an idea. I pictured each thought as a car on the highway, speeding by. As each car zoomed past, I imagined it going off into the distance and disappearing over the horizon. I did it over and over, until, after a while, there were no more cars. My mind had gone blank.

  “It’s happening!” Izzy squealed.

  My eyes flicked open. “Really?”

  Izzy pointed at my foot. “It started there about ten seconds ago. It’s stopped now.”

  “Izzy, we were right,” I breathed. “I just have to empty my mind and I turn invisible.”

  Izzy looked at me, a sparkle in her eyes. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s practice. See how much of you we can get to disappear.”

  I met her eyes. Did I really want to do this? What if I disappeared altogether? What if I never came back?

  My head was full of questions again. But that was the whole point. All I had right now were questions, and we needed some answers.

  “OK,” I said, lying down again and closing my eyes. “Let’s do it.”

  We spent half the evening practicing. Every time I managed it, Izzy let out a shrieking squeal of excitement and broke me out of my concentration with a start. After a while, she managed to control her squealing and I managed to control my mind and something began to change. Once we’d been working on it for about two hours, I found I could even open my eyes without affecting my invisibility.

  “Izzy, look!” I said. I was staring down at my body. Correction: I was staring at my shoulders, which were hovering in the air with a big, blank, me-size space below them.

  Izzy clapped. “That’s amazing! Now see if you can do it without closing your eyes at all.”

  I took a breath, kept my eyes open, and did the thing with the cars disappearing over the horizon, leaving an open space behind them. It was like I sectioned off a part of my mind and emptied it out while keeping the rest of me functioning at the same time.

  My toes and fingertips tingled softly, as though someone were gently pouring sand over them. I watched them disappear. Then my arms and legs went. Soon, my entire body had vanished. But I was still there. I could see Izzy, staring at me — or at the space where I’d been a moment ago.

  I reached into the empty part of my mind and switched it back on. As I did, my body came back into focus.

  Izzy took her glasses off and rubbed them. Then she put them back on and let her breath out in a whistle. “That was quite something,” she said.

  I nodded. “It totally was.” My mind was far from empty now. It was filling with a hundred ideas. The fun we could have, the mischief we could get into. The stunts I could pull.

  “Know what?” I said. “I think I’m starting to like this invisibility thing.”

  We practiced for another hour or so, until I could switch the invisibility on and off at will and still see, talk, and even walk around the room. That was the most fun: creeping up behind Izzy and tapping her on the shoulder when she thought I was sitting in front of her.

  We had a bit of a close call at one point. Mom came up while I was invisible. “Come on, girls, it’s way past bedtime. Time to — ” She stopped. Looked around the room. “Where’s Jessica?” she asked.

  “Um. She’s . . . she’s, er, in the bathroom,” Izzy stammered.

  At which point, I sneaked silently past Mom — making sure not to brush against her. I was invisible, after all, not untouchable. Then I ran along the landing and into the bathroom, carefully pulled the door closed, flushed the toilet, turned myself visible again, and ambled back toward my bedroom just as Mom was turning back onto the landing.

  “There you are,” she said.

  “Oh, hi, Mom,” I said casually.

  “I was just telling Isobel that I think it’s lights-out time. It’s nearly midnight!”

  “You’re right. We’ve been working pretty hard,” I said. “I’m tired.”

  Mom kissed my head as she passed me. “You’re such good girls,” she said.

  I bit my lip. I felt a little guilty, but mostly I felt excited. I couldn’t wait to start practicing my new superpower out in the real world.

  The next morning, I was awake early. I leaned over in bed to see Izzy in her sleeping bag on the blow-up mattress, reading a book.

  “You’re awake,” I said.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me neither.”

  I jumped out of bed. “Come on, then,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

  An hour later, we were showered, dressed, breakfasted, and ready to catch the first bus into town.

  Mom came to the door with us. She was wearing exercise clothes. Mom works up at the rec center. She manages the reception desk and runs a few classes, too. Saturday is Dance for the Over-50s.

  “Have a lovely day,” she said. “Don’t be back late.”

  “We won’t,” I called as we skipped down the driveway.

  Half an hour later, we stepped off the bus and walked along the main street. Izzy stopped outside our town’s one and only department store.

  I stopped beside her. “Bertram’s? What are we doing here?”

  “It’s the busiest shop on a Saturday morning. Might be a good place to test your powers in public for the first time.”

  I looked in the window. It was full of mannequins dressed in all sorts of different outfits. I suddenly had an idea for how we could make it fun.

  We wandered around the store for a bit. Once I had located the best spots for our first public experiment, I grabbed a couple of sweaters off a rack. “I’ll go and try these on,” I said.

  Izzy nodded. “So you can make yourself invisible in the changing rooms.”

  “Exactly. Not advisable in the middle of a busy department store.”

  The woman at the desk handed me a tab without even looking at me. “Cubicle number eight,” she said in a bored voice.

  As soon as I was in the changing room, I hung the sweaters up, sectioned off a bit of my mind, made it go blank, and waited.

  A minute later, I was invisible! My stomach tingled with a whisper of anxiety as I slipped out of the changing rooms. What if I couldn’t keep it up with all these people around? What if I got so distracted I became visible again without realizing and someone saw it happen?

  I shook my head. No. I’d be fine. And, anyway, that’s what we were here for. If I was going to become so expert at using my power that I was going to do good with it one day, I’d have to start somewhere, and a department store on a Saturday morning was as good a place as any.

  Izzy was waiting just outside the changing rooms. I sidled up to her. “Hey, Izzy,” I whispered.

  Izzy jumped. “Jess, is that you?” she hissed.

  “Er, no, it’s the other person who has just turned invisible and also happens to know your name,” I said. “Of course it’s me! Come on, let’s go.”

  Beside the changing rooms, a pair of mannequins faced each other. A man and a woman. The man was dressed in a suit, the woman in a soft flowing dress. Before doing anything else, I touched one of the mannequins to double-check it didn’t turn invisible. It didn’t. Good. It was definitely just me and my clothes that di
sappeared. OK, time to have some fun.

  “Watch this,” I whispered to Izzy.

  I raised the female mannequin’s arm up to her mouth before letting out a huge sneeze.

  A woman walking past with a stroller nearly jumped out of her skin. A man in a suit hurrying by said, “Bless you,” without breaking his stride. A couple of young girls just stared. Izzy guffawed.

  I looked around the store. “I’ve got another one,” I said. We headed over to the sportswear department and I took my place behind a female mannequin wearing a tennis outfit.

  A few minutes later, two bored-looking teenage boys were heading toward me, both wearing low-slung jeans and baggy T-shirts. One of them was lanky and tall; the other was shorter, with an acne-covered face and a backward baseball cap.

  I cleared my throat and put on a super girlie voice.

  “Hey, guys, does my butt look big in this?” I asked.

  The two boys stared at the mannequin. The tall one turned bright red and clammed up.

  The one in the cap tried to speak: “Umm, do you, does your, did you . . . ?” he said.

  “I said, does my butt look big in this?” I repeated. This time I even moved the mannequin’s arm so she was pointing at her little tennis skirt.

  The tall boy turned to his friend. “The . . . the . . .” he said, pointing at the mannequin.

  “Yeah,” his friend replied.

  They both stared, openmouthed, at the mannequin for another couple of moments. Then, at the same time, they both suddenly remembered they were supposed to be cool and pulled themselves together.

  “Obviously a marketing stunt,” the cap boy said.

  “Didn’t fool me for a second,” the other one agreed as they turned around and walked away.

  “We should get out of here,” I whispered to Izzy. “Or someone’s going to catch us.”

  We made our way out of the store and ran around the corner into a deserted alleyway, where I turned myself visible again.