Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? (4 page)

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 disappeared. 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.

Izzy had tears streaming from her eyes. “That was so funny!” she said. “Did you see those boys actually check out the mannequin’s butt?” She burst out laughing all over again. “This is too much fun.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to the town center and see what else we can do.”

Over the next hour, I discovered I had a particular affinity with pets. One little boy had quite a lengthy conversation with his dog, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to discuss the latest computer games with a Yorkshire terrier.

My favorite moment was when I knelt next to a German shepherd, and, in a deep voice, politely asked when the next bus was due. Then all twenty people waiting at the bus stop turned, as one, to stare at the dog. It was the way he stared back at them that cracked me up. His expression seemed to say, “Yes, I did ask about bus times. You have a problem with that?”

Unfortunately, the dog didn’t actually say that, because I was laughing too much to make him say anything at that point.

I even managed to do something slightly superhero-y.

We were cutting through Bertram’s to get back to the town center. As we passed the jewelry department, I spotted a little girl checking out a stand of watches while her mom talked to a shop assistant.

“Mommy, I like this one!” the girl said, holding up a watch with a hefty price tag.

Her mom didn’t even look up. “Annabelle, leave the watches alone! If you break one of those, you’ll be paying for it in allowance for the next ten years,” she said, and went back to her conversation.

I watched Annabelle put the watch back in its box. The only trouble was, she didn’t put it in correctly, and as she raised her hand to hook it back on the stand, the watch slipped out of the box.

Without stopping to think, I bent down and caught the watch, a millisecond before it would have smashed to pieces on the floor.

Still invisible, I stood up and placed it carefully back in Annabelle’s hand. The girl gazed at the watch in her palm, her mouth open. Then she glanced at her mom — who was still talking to the shop assistant. Without missing a beat, she quickly reached up and, more carefully this time, put the watch back in its box.

A decade’s worth of allowance stayed intact. Perhaps a young girl’s belief in magic did, too.

And I had done my first heroic deed.

We had come out the other end of Bertram’s and were heading back through the square when we spotted a crowd of people.

Wondering what was going on, we squeezed our way through the crowd, until we were stopped from going any farther by a thick rope and some security guards in front of the Penbridge Hotel.

“What’s happening?” Izzy asked.

“Hang on. I’ll find out.” I glanced around to check that no one was looking. All eyes were fixed firmly on the hotel doors, so I quickly turned myself invisible. Then I slipped under the rope and went right up to the hotel doors to see what all the fuss was about.

Two people were coming out of the hotel. Instantly, the crowd started roaring and holding out books and photos for them to sign.

I recognized the couple right away. Andy and Celia Fairhurst — one of those athlete-marries-model celebrity clichés. What on earth were they doing in Penbridge? Other than standing on the hotel steps flashing toothy grins at the crowd?

Actually, I didn’t really care what they were doing here. They’d been on
Celebrity Marriage Wars
last year and had come across as the rudest, nastiest, and most unpleasant couple in the world. Why people were crowding around to get their autographs I had no idea.

I slipped past and headed back to the crowd. Just when I was almost near enough to touch them, and blinking in the glare of all the cameras flashing as everyone took pics of the celebrity couple, I was suddenly overcome with an urge to tell them what I thought of them.

Obviously, I was invisible, not un
hear
able — and with so many people around I didn’t want to get caught — so I did the next best thing. I stuck my tongue out at them.

I mean, it wasn’t as if anyone could see me do it, right?

Wrong.

It was at approximately half past seven on Monday morning, as I was in the process of washing down two slices of toast and marmalade with a swig of orange juice and sitting opposite Dad as he read the newspaper, that I discovered quite
how
wrong I’d been. And quite how visible!

Andy and Celia were pictured in full-color glory on the front page of our local paper.

Directly behind them, thumb on nose, fingers waggling in a childish wave and tongue sticking out, so was I.

To be fair, the main focus of the picture was the happy couple, and I was completely blurry behind them. If I was lucky, no one would even recognize me. But
I
recognized me — and someone who knew me well might recognize me, too! How had it happened? I’d been invisible at the time. Hadn’t I?

I didn’t have time to ponder any more questions. I had about three seconds to do something. Dad was holding the paper up in front of him. Luckily, in his opinion the most important news is what’s happening with the local sports teams, so he always starts with the back page. But his fingers were starting to twitch. Any second now he would turn the newspaper over and see me — possibly.

I wasn’t prepared to take the risk. Dad runs a real estate agency in town and is vice president of the Penbridge Chamber of Commerce. He’s always telling me this means it’s important for us to set a good example. To whom, I’m not sure. I’m also not sure what difference it makes to him selling houses if I get into trouble from time to time. (Which I do. Quite a bit.) But, either way, he’d go crazy if he saw me sticking my tongue out at celebrities. Plus, how on earth would I explain it?

I thought quickly, and then I did the only possible thing I could do. I leaned across the table and knocked my orange juice over.

It flooded the table and, more important, it caught the front page of the
Penbridge Chronicle
.

“Dad, watch out!” I screamed, jumping up and grabbing the newspaper off him as I did. While he was busy leaping off his chair and looking down at his pants to make sure they were dry, I gave the newspaper a quick rub in the orange juice, just to be on the safe side.

“Jessica, you clumsy thing,” Dad said. “Look what you’ve done to my paper.”

I looked at the sodden newspaper. “Dad, I’m
so
sorry,” I said with a crestfallen frown. “I’ll go out and buy you a new one.” It was a gamble, but I had to sound sincere.

Dad looked at his watch. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s never much of interest in that local rag anyway.”

“True,” I agreed as I took the soggy paper to the trash can.