Except when Professor Reese teleported herself, Baxter’s ears were messed up and he couldn’t hear the humming, so he couldn’t follow the bounce.
So the fact that the microchip number written on the vet’s form matched where we last sent the hat might be a coincidence (which Professor Reese said happened a lot in scientific experiments). But it might be cause and effect.
“And the way to find out is to scan Baxter’s microchip again,” I said.
TJ looked at me for a minute. Then he said, “Huh?”
“If his microchip number changes every time Professor Reese plugs a new number into the teleporter, then the microchip won’t have 45530313 on it anymore. It will have a new number now, and that will be the latitude of where she landed!”
“Oh! OK!” TJ said. Then he frowned. “But how can we scan it? We don’t have a scanner.”
But I was already working on a plan, which I figured I’d have figured out by the time we got to the vet’s, or figured out enough that I’d just have a little bit more to figure out on the spot. So I just yelled, “Come on!” and grabbed Baxter’s leash, and we all ran over there.
The receptionist remembered us from Wednesday. “How’s your dog feeling?”
“Thank you for asking,” I said, because it’s always a good idea to be polite when you want something, plus it was just nice of her to ask. “He’s doing a little bit better. But since we were in the neighborhood, we thought we’d stop in and have Dr. Sheffield check his ears again.”
She looked at the appointment book. “Oh. Well, he does have a full schedule for the rest of the morning, and we close at noon on Saturdays—”
“Tell him it’s the girl who wants to be a vet,” I said, because I wanted to get that in before it sounded too officially like a no. “And it will just take a minute,” I added, because I’ve noticed grown-ups have a harder time saying no when you tell them it’s short.
TJ looked at me. “How will looking in his ears help us—” but I stomped on his foot, and he shut up.
“And it’s for a report for school, and it’s due Monday, so I have to do it now,” I told the receptionist, because I’ve also noticed grown-ups always help you more if it’s homework than if you just want to do something. “Please?”
She called back to his office, and he said he could squeeze us in. First we looked in Baxter’s ears (which were getting better). Then I said, “So it’s Career Day at school on Monday, and I have to write a report on my career, and as you know I want to be a vet” (which technically wasn’t true—the report part—but I really did want to be a vet, so . . .). “And I need to do three things myself which relate to my chosen career—”
And by now TJ was just goggling at me with his eyes huge because he knew I was making everything up as I went along.
“And I can’t just watch someone do them, I have to do them myself.” (I said that part again.) “I have already looked in Baxter’s ears with an otoscope, and I have been putting ointment in them at home, so that’s two things I have done myself. I need to scan his microchip for the third thing,” I said. “And then I’ll leave.”
Dr. Sheffield must have decided it would be the quickest way to get back to his other appointments because he pulled the scanner out of the drawer and handed it to me.
TJ crowded in as I waved it over Baxter’s shoulder blades.
I read out, “45509091.”
“Ah!” TJ yelled.
I was practically screaming, too, because that meant that it wasn’t a coincidence and me and TJ had maybe discovered our first cause and effect, which is huge if you are a scientist and pretty huge even if you aren’t.
But instead of screaming, I just wrote the number down. “For my report,” I told Dr. Sheffield, even though secretly I was screaming inside the whole time.
TJ was staring at me with his mouth hanging open because my plan had worked. I figured we’d better leave before something dumb came out of it to give us away.
“Thank you,” I said to Dr. Sheffield. Then I hustled TJ out of there.
We ran home. I tucked Baxter into Professor Reese’s house and kissed him a million times. “Be right back!”
Me and TJ went back to our house so we could look up the latitude on our computer (since Professor Reese’s was password protected). TJ searched the internet and found a latitude-longitude site where you could just plug the number in. He even remembered the decimal.
“Uh-oh.” TJ shook his head.
“Oh no!” I’d forgotten until that second that the latitude line cut across the whole planet—through the whole United States, plus France, Romania, and Mongolia.
“Do you think she went to Mongolia?” TJ asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, because it was Professor Reese, after all. “But I’m pretty sure she was planning to be home for dinner.” I grabbed the mouse. “Let’s see where it cuts through in Portland.”
I zoomed in on the map. “The latitude line cuts through the university where she works,” I said to TJ.
“And it’s right by the zoo,” he said back. “That would be fun—to teleport to the zoo.”
We printed out the map and drew the dots where the line was, and then I yelled to Mom, “We’re going back over to take care of Baxter!” and we ran out of the house.
Back in the lab, we put yellow pins (so we wouldn’t mix them up with the green and red ones) across the map of Portland, showing 45.509091.
I shook my head. “It’s still a big place to search—it stretches across town. And since we don’t know what longitude she’s at, she could be anywhere along that line.”
“Yeah,” TJ said. “That’s going to make it a lot harder to find her.”
And
