by Mr.
After they had all hugged, Sophie turned off the translation app so she could activate the flash. Leonardo waved one last time and walked to the laboratory so the light wouldn’t hit him. The others gathered around the planetarium as Leonardo hid behind the table.
“I’ll do it,” Lisa said abruptly. Sophie shrugged her shoulders.
Lisa took the phone from her sister and, without the others noticing, swapped it for her own phone. She placed her phone in the panel of the planetarium and pushed the button to set the timer in motion.
“Byyeeee!” they yelled in unison.
“The ermine!” Lisa cried suddenly, running back to the laboratory.
“Lisa!!!” Sophie cried in panic. “Quickly!”
Lisa saw the surprised look on Leonardo’s face as he crouched behind the examination table. She pulled out Sophie’s telephone from her pocket and tossed it into the open backpack she’d left next to the knives.
She gave Leonardo a big wink and pointed to the backpack as she picked up the ermine. Carrying the animal, she ran quickly back to the planetarium. She took her place next to her sister just in time.
FLASH!
While the studio lit up, a deep buzzing sound forced Leonardo to cover his ears. After a few minutes, the light returned to normal and he stood up. His friends from the future were gone.
He picked up the backpack from the shelf. Sophie’s telephone was lying on top. Everything was still there: her geography book, the pills, the printer, the solar charger. He walked back into the studio with the backpack thrown over his shoulder, shaking his head in disbelief.
He knew what he was going to write next, the words were already in his head.
Was it just a hallucination.
They came as four together.
Will they come again?
It is too much, it is too good.
Too good to be true.
Heaven, earth and time.
And I am left behind.
Searching for the divine connection.
Monday, June 23rd, late afternoon
Both Sophie and Tom were lying on the floor in a daze. Lisa sat with her back against the wall with the ermine on her lap. Feeling quite content, she absentmindedly stroked the creature’s stomach. Jack stood in the middle of the secret room dusting his clothes off.
“Everyone okay?” Jack asked, breaking the silence. “Tom?”
Tom pulled himself to his feet and smiled at his brother.
Sophie stood up as well and then sat down against the wall next to Lisa. “What time is it? Do you think they missed us?” she whispered hoarsely.
Tom silently picked up his regular clothes from the ground. He took off the costume and put on his jeans and t-shirt.
“Much better!” he said, relieved, running his hands through his hair. “Come on, you guys need to change back into your normal clothes quickly, too. Before you know it the police will be at the door. Then what would we say? That we were having a fancy dress party and got lost?”
Tom carefully pushed open the bookcase and peeked around the corner. “I don’t see or hear anyone. I’m going to have a look.” He slipped out of the secret room and into the house.
“No, don’t go, we first have to agree on our story,” Lisa called after him in panic.
All three of them held their breaths as they tried to follow the sound of Tom’s footsteps.
Tom returned, panting. “You’re not going to believe this! Time has stood still! The newspaper in the kitchen is from today. I mean, yesterday… yesterday for us, which means today. And the sketch is still lying there...” he said, tripping over his words.
Sophie perked up. “You mean it’s still Monday?”
“Yes!” Tom cried. “Yes! Time just stood still here! We went and visited the past, but no one noticed we were gone, get it?”
Sophie poked her head through the opening and saw the sketch lying on her father’s desk, just as they had left it.
Lisa smiled. “Just like what we wrote down on the planetarium, right? Good to know it actually works, this way we won’t need to make up any excuses. Cool!” Feeling very satisfied, she stood up and carefully put the ermine down, giving it one last friendly pat on the head. “Hurry up, that means Mom and Dad could be home any minute.”
They changed their clothes as quickly as possible.
“Ugh, I think I can still smell dead horse on my clothes and in my hair!” Sophie said disgusted.
“Don’t be such a drama queen, hurry up!” Lisa pushed her sister towards the exit and swept all the clothes into a pile in the corner.
“Wait, my phone!” Sophie shouted.
Lisa bent down, removed the device from the planetarium, and put it in her pocket.
“I’ll give it to you in a second,” she mumbled, ushering everyone out of the secret room. In the hallway they hastily said goodbye to the boys.
“Not a word! We’ll see you tomorrow!”
They hugged each other a little awkwardly and then the boys scurried off home.
Sophie and Lisa sprinted up the stairs. Sophie reached the bathroom first, turning on the shower and greedily drinking from the faucet while waiting for the water to warm up. She spoke with her sister in between gulps.
“The first thing I’m going to do is scrub away the smell… and wash it out of my hair!”
“Me too!” Lisa said, inspecting a long curl of her own hair in disgust.
After showering and drinking loads of water, they both felt a lot better. Refreshed, they went to Sophie’s room.
“Sure we weren’t just dreaming?” asked Lisa, who then sat down on the bed and looked at the clock as if it were lying about the time.
Sophie shrugged her shoulders, twisted her wet hair into a knot, grabbed her laptop, and flopped down next to her sister on the bed.
“What are you doing?” Lisa asked.
“Looking for proof! You wanted to know whether or not we imagined everything, right?” Sophie typed hurriedly, and quickly scrolled down through the various websites until she stopped at Leonardo da Vinci’s Wikipedia page. She placed her hand in front of her mouth in disbelief at what she read.
“Lisa?!” She removed her hand and stared at the screen with her mouth open. “It says it right here!” She pointed to a few paragraphs and read them out loud. “When The Annunciation was x-rayed, Verrocchio’s work was still visible but Leonardo’s angel was not.”
Lisa’s cheeks began to turn hot. Her sister’s ploy had worked. Leonardo, the painting, everything was real. Art historians had discovered the trick a long time ago!”
Sophie was completely in her element now and continued to search enthusiastically for more information about Leonardo. “Here! Here’s some information about The Lost Leonardo, what Dad was talking about.” She carefully read the text. “Leonardo was working on it in Florence in 1505. Dad was right.”
When she heard her mother calling she immediately shut her laptop.
“Okay Lisa, remember, this was just another boring day at school.” Sophie winked at her sister and they both ran downstairs. Their parents might not have missed the girls, but for Sophie and her sister it had been two days since they had last seen them. When they got to the kitchen they hugged their mother warmly.
“Whoa… What’s going on with you two?” she said, pleasantly surprised.
Sophie and Lisa realized their behavior was odd and did their best to quickly regain their composure.
“Nothing Mom, we just thought you deserved an extra hug every once in a while,” said Lisa with a broad smile, before greedily shoving a handful of cashew nuts into her mouth.
After dinner they followed their father to his study. He sat down at his desk and carefully laid out his shiny tools, one by one. His systematic approach had a soothing effect on Sophie. She had adopted his approach to work, too, and made it her own.
He pulled on a pair of thin white gloves and turned up the lamp on his desk. Without saying a word, he carefully lifted the sketch and thoroughl
y inspected the front and back.
He peered over his glasses and quickly glanced at Sophie and Lisa’s tense faces before continuing. He began loosening the back of the frame using an object that was a cross between an ice pick and a screwdriver. He removed the sketch from the frame with the utmost care.
He then picked up a magnifying glass from his desk and, breathing deeply, meticulously inspected the sketch. To examine the material even more closely, he occasionally brought the magnifying glass right up to the paper.
He ran his fingers along the edge and unfolded the sketch. Sophie and Lisa anxiously followed their father’s every move. He turned the sheet over, carefully examined the paper again with the magnifying glass, and then removed his glasses.
“Sorry girls,” he shook his head. “It might look very authentic, but it’s only a copy.”
For a few seconds time seemed to stand still. Sophie and Lisa looked quickly at each other. “That can’t be,” Sophie said. She was shaking her head emphatically. “No, it can’t be. Everything written down there is true. I know for certain, otherwise we couldn’t have done it!”
Lisa pinched her sister on the arm without her father noticing.
“What do you mean?” he asked. Sophie quickly composed herself. This wasn’t the moment to give the game away.
“I mean… I mean, how is that possible, it looks so real?”
Her father nodded. He removed his gloves and picked up the sketch again. He ran his hand slowly over the paper. “I understand, Sophie. I admit, it is a very, very meticulous forgery. It had to be made by someone with a thorough understanding of art, of antiquity, but this…” He shook his head again. “Here.” He handed the sketch to Lisa. “Again, I’m sorry girls, it would have been so much fun.”
Disappointed, Sophie ran upstairs to her room without saying a word and angrily slammed her door. Lisa, who was less intense by nature, thanked her father and walked to her own room, deep in thought. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes without moving a muscle. The sketch being a fake didn’t make any sense. Something about this just isn’t right, she said to herself.
The sketch had frayed edges, just like the pages torn out of the codex. The texts and drawings accurately matched the other pages in the chapter.
Someone had to have seen the real codex pages, otherwise Prattle’s sketch couldn’t be such a good imitation. Someone well versed in art. Someone who didn’t want Prattle’s sketch ever to be identified as an authentic Leonardo. Someone who knew what was written on those pages. Someone who knew about the secret room just like they did. Someone who had had access to the sketch before they did…
As she lay there thinking about it, all the pieces fell into place. How had she not thought of this earlier? She knew who the culprit was. She jumped up from the bed with a smile on her face. She knew who had discovered the secret room before they had, but she decided to keep the discovery to herself for now. Her friends didn’t need to know. She would tell them when the time was right, but not just yet.
Tuesday, June 24th, morning
“And? What did your father say about the sketch?” whispered Jack. Hackett hadn’t arrived yet, but Jack didn’t want anyone in the class overhearing them.
“It’s nothing,” hissed Sophie.
“What’s nothing? What do you mean?”
“He said the sketch is a fake!” Jack looked at her dumbstruck.
“I know, it’s crazy, right? Lisa and I can’t get our heads around it. Everything written on those pages is true… and yet it’s a fake?” Sophie couldn’t accept the fact that she didn’t get it and stared angrily straight ahead.
Jack shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly. “Bummer!” he said categorically after a few seconds. “I mean, bummer that we don’t know how the sketch could be a fake, but the most important thing is that it works!” He looked at her triumphantly. “And in a few days from now we’re also going to Venice!” His eyes sparkled as he took out his notebook and put it on the desk.
“I had expected you to react differently...” Sophie looked at Jack inquiringly.
“Well, okay, I don’t get it, but I don’t want it to spoil anything right now. It’s actually a good thing, because now your father will no longer be interested in the sketch!” Satisfied with his own explanation, he began drawing an ermine in his notebook.
“Give me a sheet of paper. I couldn’t find my backpack this morning. Lisa had it last. She still has my phone, too!”
Jack passed her a page from his notebook.
“Lisa!” Sophie shouted as loud as she could when she saw her sister running with Tom towards their bikes after school. “Lisa, have you got my phone?”
Lisa felt around in her jacket pocket and pulled out her own telephone. “No, sorry, don’t have it,” she said with a goading smile as she put the telephone back into her pocket.
Sophie looked furious. “Give me back my phone! You have your own, don’t be so annoying.”
Lisa raised her eyebrows. “This isn’t your phone, it’s mine.”
Sophie gave her an irritated look. “You took my phone out of the planetarium yesterday, right? That means it’s my phone!”
“Um, yes and no,” Lisa chuckled.
“Lisa, cut it out! Give me my phone, now.” Sophie took a step forward, thrust her hand into Lisa’s jacket pocket, and in one swift movement removed the phone.
“Will you please give me back my phone?” Lisa stood in front of her sister defiantly.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me very well, but like I said… yes and no. Yes, I took it from the planetarium, but no that’s not your phone.”
Sophie now smelled a rat and decided to inspect the phone. She turned it on and immediately saw it was Lisa’s. “But… if this is the phone you took out of the planetarium yesterday… then where’s mine? Lisa!”
Lisa didn’t say anything.
“Lisa!” Sophie looked angrily at her sister. “If it was your phone that you took out of the planetarium yesterday, then that means that was the one you used to transport us back from Florence.”
“Bingo! You’re on your way to winning a washing machine,” Lisa said teasingly.
“That’s why you were suddenly so eager in Florence to put the phone in the planetarium. You switched the phones, but why? Where’s mine?”
“You have only one help line remaining,” Lisa said. “Do you want to use it or do you want to continue playing?”
“Lisa,” Sophie nearly roared, “where… is… my… phone?”
“In your backpack,” Lisa taunted her sister.
“Okay then, where is my backpack?”
“Uh, let me think. Oh yeah, at Leonardo’s place,” said Lisa, taking two quick steps backwards just in case.
“What?”
Jack grabbed Sophie tightly before she could jump on her sister.
“Lisa! What have you done? If my phone’s lost, Mom and Dad will be really mad at me. And I need it for Venice, and it’s really expensive, and, well, I just need it! How could you do this to me?”
“Didn’t you hear Leonardo? He sounded so disappointed when he said he had never managed to use the planetarium successfully. That’s so unfair. He’s the inventor of a machine he can’t even use himself, even though that’s the one thing he wants more than anything in the world. Your phone gives him that opportunity; don’t you think that’s only fair?”
“Okay, totally sad for Leonardo. But if you feel so sorry for ‘Mr. Inventor’ why didn’t you just give him your phone?” Sophie said furiously.
“Mine doesn’t have any apps. It’s completely blank, Leonardo wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. He’s smart enough to figure out how to use the apps, and with the translation app – which is on your phone and not on mine – he’ll be able to go anywhere in the world.”
Even though Sophie was astounded by her sister’s revelation, she felt her anger ebbing away. Jack and Tom, who had been watching the exchange breathlessly, stood by, slightly stunn
ed.
“Fine, that was very kind of you. But I want my phone back before we go on our school trip. I really need it.”
“Oh, really? Then we’ll have to go back to Florence again,” Lisa said, her eyes sparkling.
“Leonardo here we come.” Tom took a step forward trying to reproduce the sound of a flash.
Sophie looked irritated. “Lisa, something tells me that was part of your plan all along.” She rolled her eyes. “And it’s only because you were doing something nice for Leonardo, otherwise…” She clenched her fists menacingly. Sophie gave Jack a steely gaze. “We have no time to lose, we have to go immediately. Tomorrow’s the last day before we go to Venice, and Mom was planning to be home in the afternoon.”
The four of them hesitated for a moment until Tom and Lisa high-fived each other and, feeling very sure of themselves, hopped on their bikes.
“See you later,” Lisa yelled. “We’ll get changed into our costumes.” The two of them set off towards home whooping with excitement. Sophie and Jack got onto their bikes, too, and followed.
Jack moved the bookcase aside with a loud crack.
“Where are we going?” Lisa asked excitedly. “The Jurassic?”
Jack acted as if he didn’t hear her. He waited to see what Sophie would say.
“No, just Florence, I need to get my phone back. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
Jack bent over and began writing.
“Wait,” Sophie said. “What year are you writing down?”
“1475,” Jack answered. “The same as last time.”
“No, wait… give me a second to think.” Sophie closed her eyes and tried to remember what she had read about Leonardo last night in bed.
“Write down 1505! The planetarium is his invention, he should get the opportunity to use it. Lisa’s right about that. If we return the same day we left, he’ll never have that chance and that wouldn’t be fair. We need to go back a few years later. And, before you ask, I don’t know exactly where he was in the years after we left – Florence, Rome, Milan, wherever – but what I do know is that we have to find him. There’s no room for error!” She looked sternly at Jack.