I slumped down in my seat, wondering if it was too late to pretend I hadn’t seen him. But just as the streetcar started to move, TJ stood up, waved both arms above his head, and cried, “Hey! We found her!”
Detective John Jacobs’s eyes practically popped out of his head, and I knew at that moment that he’d be waiting on Professor Reese’s front porch when we got home, and that meant we only had a short streetcar ride to figure out what in the world we were going to tell him.
27Mutant Frogs and Nuclear Ants
The rest of the way home on the streetcar, we tried to figure out what to tell Detective John Jacobs—because we knew he’d be expecting answers.
Professor Reese said, “Maybe I should tell him I got so busy at work that I didn’t notice the time.”
“But for three whole days?” I said. “It doesn’t seem believable that nobody else at work would have seen you when they were all worried and looking for you.”
“Wait! How about this!” TJ said. “We say you were kidnapped by bandits who came in on a helicopter while you were going to work on Thursday morning. They grabbed you from behind and tied you up and stuffed a sock in your mouth.” He sat up a little bit more in his seat. “Yeah, a sock. A dirty one. They flew you to their secret hideout in the jungle with vines growing all over the front of it so no one could see it. There were snakes in the vines that could kill you in a single bite and spiders—big spiders—” He spread his hands wide to show how big. “No, wait, tarantulas, the big hairy kind, crawling all over the walls inside the hideout. And that was only if you could get past the attack Dobermans whose fangs were dripping blood from their last victims . . .”
TJ went on and on as we got off the streetcar and walked through the neighborhood back to Professor Reese’s house, but his idea didn’t seem very believable, either, and by the time he was finished telling it to us, we were out of time.
But as we helped Professor Reese up the front walk, with Detective John Jacobs standing on the porch with his arms crossed, glaring at us—I suddenly knew, and I whispered, “Don’t worry, I have it all figured out.”
I’d figured out that the best thing to tell him was the truth because you should never lie to a policeman, even one as crabby as Detective John Jacobs. Besides—when Detective John Jacobs barked out, “Just where have you been? I have a report to fill out, you know!” and I said, “Professor Reese teleported herself to the science museum, and my magical dog helped find her,” and Professor Reese smiled and said it was true, he muttered, “Unbelievable!”
Then he stomped to his car and drove away. Just like I thought he would.
I helped Professor Reese upstairs. While she was in the shower, I came back down and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cut up apples, and TJ made cracker stacks for everyone, even Baxter.
And then Professor Reese came downstairs looking better, and we ate together. First Professor Reese told us what it was like when she teleported and landed in the pitch-black storage room. “At first, I must admit, I panicked because I couldn’t see anything, and I wondered if teleporting made you blind,” she said. “But after I calmed down and explored my surroundings, I realized that I might just be in a dark room. I crawled until I found the wall and then felt around for the door, and then I stood up and found the light switch.” She shook her head and smiled. “I felt much better after that.”
I told her and TJ what it felt like when I teleported, and Professor Reese and I agreed that the landing was pretty hard. “We’ll have to work on that,” she said.
We all ate a little bit more, and suddenly I remembered, “Oh! Your daughter is flying in from Australia this afternoon.”
Professor Reese got all excited and happy, and then we noticed the light on her answering machine was blinking, and it was six calls from her daughter, each one sounding more worried and the last one saying she was flying to Portland and landing on Sunday at 2:47 p.m. and would take a cab straight over.
“Are you going to tell her what really happened?” TJ asked.
Professor Reese nodded slowly. “I suppose I’ll have to. She’ll be angry that I took such a big risk teleporting myself—but she’s my family. She loves me, and she deserves to know.”
“Professor Reese?” I said. “When you tell your daughter, can we tell my parents, too, even though it’s supposed to be a secret? ’Cause they’ll be mad that me and TJ didn’t tell them what was going on, and that I teleported, and that TJ walked across town in the middle of the night and snuck into the science museum to get us—” And when I listed it all in a row like that, I started getting nervous at just how mad Mom and Dad were going to get.
“They love you,” Professor Reese said, “and they deserve to know, too.”
I nodded.
And so we worked it out that when Professor Reese’s daughter got there, Professor Reese would invite me and TJ and Mom and Dad over, and we could tell everyone at the same time and all get in trouble together instead of each of us getting in trouble separately, which always feels worse.
“And now, my dears, I need to lie down for a little while.”
TJ looked at the clock. “We’d
