“Be careful as you move things around,” Professor Reese said as she slid the books off the bottom shelf of the bookshelf, handful by handful, to check behind them. “Cockroaches can fit into very small spaces.”
I knelt down by Baxter. “We need to find Spike, OK?”
I nodded, and he nodded back.
I started peeking under the small cracks beneath things and between things, and Baxter stuck his nose next to mine. But even though he was magical about finding hats, he wasn’t as magical when it came to cockroaches, so we all just crawled around.
“Let’s take a break for a minute and think this through.” Professor Reese stood and leaned up against a desk to rest. “I’m guessing he’s still in the lab. Maybe instead of trying to find him, we could coax him to come to us.”
“Here, Spike! Here, Spikey Spikey Spikey!” TJ called. “Come here, boy!”
Professor Reese smiled. “I don’t think we can call him like we call Baxter. But we could put out some apple slices. I think he’ll come looking for something to eat.”
“Yeah, he’s probably hungry by now!” TJ said.
So me and TJ ran upstairs and cut an apple into slices and put them on a bunch of little plates. We carried the plates downstairs and stuck them all over the lab.
“How about we get to work,” Professor Reese said. “I bet Spike will be eating an apple slice by the time we get back.”
“OK!” TJ looked happier.
“Good!” Professor Reese’s eyes got all sparkly. “I thought up a different approach to our experiment that I want to try.”
“Yay!” I said, and I wondered if maybe when you are a scientist, starting a new experiment feels like your birthday right before you get to open your presents.
Professor Reese’s eyes kept sparkling as she explained her plan:
At exactly 3:00 p.m., me and TJ would teleport the hat, and Professor Reese would be waiting at the spot where the hat was supposed to land. She wanted to see if she could see, taste, hear, touch, or smell anything that would help her figure out how Baxter always knew where the hat actually did land. “It’s a good thing I have lab assistants,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to do this on my own.” Which meant we really were helping her—she wasn’t just pretending like some grown-ups do when they say what a big help you were, but you know you really weren’t.
Me and TJ were doing science.
We looked at the map and chose a spot to send the hat. Professor Reese deleted the old coordinates on the main computer, and TJ read out the new ones for her to type in. “45.530313, –122.696471.” Professor Reese left to walk to the landing site, and me and TJ and Baxter sat in the lab, waiting for three o’clock.
But the closer it got to three o’clock, the louder the clock on the wall ticked. Pretty soon, me and TJ couldn’t talk anymore over the tick-tick-tick, and I started thinking that being a lab assistant was maybe not so great after all.
Because even though by then we’d seen a bunch of teleportations, it was still scary to think about clicking down the lid of the teleporter and having the whole room start buzzing, angry-bee style. Even though it hadn’t blown up before, what if for the first time it did?
At 2:59, I said to TJ, “So if you want to put the hat in, go ahead,” like it was a really hot day and I was generously handing him the last Popsicle in the box. He said, “That’s OK, you can do it,” like he was pushing the Popsicle box right back at me. But by then it was 3:00, and we didn’t have time to argue about it. So I grabbed his shirt and pulled him up out of the chair, and we got the hat off the bookcase and stuck it in the teleporter. Then we clicked the lid down together, so we’d blow up together.
Everything started buzzing and shaking, and it all seemed even louder with Professor Reese not there. And when the POP popped, I screamed a little bit, even though I knew it was coming.
But we didn’t blow up. After the last computer powered down with a final beep-beep-boop and Baxter booped back, I pushed off the big red button, and we headed out.
Even though we’d just teleported the hat, for once Baxter wasn’t really galloping. He stopped between gallops to look around. Sometimes he shook his head or stopped to scratch his ear with his hind leg. Then he looked around some more.
I figured Professor Reese’s half of Baxter must be looking for Professor Reese (even though my half was fine) and wondering where she was. I knew dogs loved their owners best of all because I’d been reading about dogs ever since me and Megan started planning our vet/beauty parlor, and I’d been reading even more about dogs since Baxter.
Me and TJ followed Baxter, who was sort of galloping all the way over to where we’d tried to send the hat.
Professor Reese was sitting on the curb. “Nothing,” she said, but she didn’t seem sad about it. “All right. That’s good information to have—I’ll have to think about that.”
“How can you think about nothing?” I asked because when nothing happens that means nothing happened.
“Ah—but it’s not nothing.” She stood and smiled.
“Huh?” TJ said.
“The fact that I couldn’t see or hear anything is new information. I need to see how it fits in with what I already know.”
“So when you’re a scientist, nothing is something?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
When Baxter found the hat lying on a hedge two blocks south, Professor Reese just nodded. “We need to think this through some more.”
TJ picked up the hat and plunked it down on his head.
And that’s when I saw something slip down from beneath the edge of the hat, by TJ’s left eyebrow: the hard brown tip of a gross bug
