“Where are we going?” TJ finally asked. We’d been walking a long time.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought Baxter would have found her by now. But it doesn’t even seem like he is looking.” I wasn’t sure Baxter was even magical anymore, except maybe it was because he wasn’t feeling well.
I leaned over to hug him, and when I did, I noticed the microchip humming louder than when we left the house. And by the second hug a few blocks later, it was even louder, which was weird and made me think I’d need to tell Professor Reese if we found her—when we found her—that maybe she should get it removed after all because it sounded completely broken.
We walked and walked until our feet were sore.
“Maybe she teleported herself to Disneyland for vacation,” TJ said. “That’s what I’d do.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think she’d be thinking about vacation for her first teleportation. She’d want to get back home and write up her notes.”
We kept walking until I didn’t see any point to walking anymore. “Let’s go back to the lab—maybe we missed something.”
So we trudged back to Professor Reese’s house. TJ grabbed a carrot for Spike and we went down into the lab.
We poked in drawers but just found office supplies. We looked through files, but none of the papers said, “For my first experiment in human teleportation, I will send myself to . . .” though I was a teeny bit hoping.
“The computers are still on,” TJ said. “Maybe we can look at the coordinates she used and find it on the map.”
“Great idea!”
But when he tried, we found the screen password protected, so we couldn’t see what she’d typed in. TJ tried to guess her password. He tried 654321, then 123456, and then even Baxter. But none of them worked.
Finally, TJ slumped down in the spinny chair and spun it slowly. I slumped down on the floor and leaned against a desk. Baxter slumped down next to me and put his head in my lap. And we all just slumped for a while, which didn’t help anything.
Then the doorbell rang. Me and Baxter and TJ ran upstairs, and I think we were all half expecting to see Professor Reese standing there, even though I knew that was dumb because why would you ring the doorbell of your own house?
But instead it was Detective John Jacobs of the Portland Police Department. He scowled. “You again. Figures.” He squinted at me. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jordie Marie Wallace,” I said. “This is my brother, TJ. Did you find Professor Reese yet?”
“No.” He scowled harder. “And guess whose butt’s in a sling now?”
“Um, yours?” I said politely, because when a grown-up asks you a question you are supposed to answer it.
He glared at me (even though I’d been totally polite and he had asked). Then he put his hands on his hips and asked the same two questions over and over—had the professor come home, had she called—and I said no the fourteenth time, too.
He turned around and stomped down the porch steps, muttering, “. . . finally track down the daughter, and does she know anything? Of course not—”
“Wait!” I hurried after him. “Professor Reese has a daughter?” And I wondered if maybe she was in fifth grade like me.
He wheeled around. “Yes. A daughter. An expert in international banking who lives in Australia—”
Which made me realize that she must be a grown-up.
“Who is flying in on Sunday and expects results!” He put his hands on his hips again and glared at me and TJ and even at Baxter. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can tell me?”
The situation was feeling more serious than when he’d asked me the day before. It made me even less sure of what I was supposed to do about the whole secret we weren’t supposed to tell, but I didn’t know if that meant even to the police.
So I tried to figure it out:
I’d just noticed the glowing red button a couple of hours ago. But even if I did point it out to the detective, I’d have to convince him it meant she’d teleported herself.
And then, of course, he’d ask us to prove it.
But if we tried to show him teleportation was real, all we could show him was the hat disappearing. We couldn’t show him the hat landing on the other end because me and TJ couldn’t see the password-protected coordinates, so we wouldn’t know where we’d sent it. Plus, Baxter was sick, and he wasn’t being very magical, which meant the Baxter part of teleportation wasn’t working right now.
Besides, all the glowing and vibrating and popping and screaming might just make the detective think the teleporter was a hat-destroying Weapon of Mass Destruction. He might lock up the lab completely, and I didn’t think that would help us find her.
I looked at TJ. He just shrugged. He didn’t know, either.
But Professor Reese was missing, and everything felt too complicated, so I thought maybe I’d try a little bit, one more time. I took a deep breath. “Well, remember I started telling you yesterday about Baxter being magical—”
“Unbelievable!” Detective Jacobs turned and charged toward his car.
“Hey,” TJ called after him. “Do you think I could ride in the police car with the siren going?”
Detective Jacobs barked out a laugh as he opened his car door. He climbed in and slammed the door closed.
TJ winced. “I didn’t think so,” he said as the detective drove away. Then he turned to me. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know.” My shoulders slumped, and suddenly I sat down in the grass and buried my face against Baxter’s side. For the first time, I realized I wasn’t jealous of Megan and her million lessons anymore.
I only had this, but this was all I wanted.
I loved Professor Reese, and I loved having her live next door. But even more than that, I needed her.
If I was a
