The Great Escape

by Kate Biberdorf

  Memito opened his eyes extra wide. “I’m looking!” he shouted.

  “Hey, what about that telephone?” I said, pointing to the old black phone with a rotary dial. “Maybe it’s not a phone, but a safe.”

  “Yes!” agreed Elijah. “It’s got to be here for a reason.”

  I lifted up the phone and examined it. “This could be a lock. What was that number again? The one on the blank paper?”

  “I’ll read it,” said Phoenix. “020-7111-2413.”

  “That’s too long for a combination lock,” said Jeremy. “Remember?”

  “What if it’s a phone number?” said Phoenix, her voice growing excited.

  “Okay, um, how do you dial one of these?” asked Memito. “It kind of scares me.”

  “It’s easy,” said Elijah. “My grandpa has a bunch of old phones. He keeps them for fun. You dial with the wheel. And pick up this thingy from that thingy.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, wow. You and directions.” Elijah was notorious for throwing away his Lego set directions.

  “It’s called removing the handset from the cradle,” said Phoenix. “I know because when I was younger, I read old Nancy Drew books.”

  Memito put the handset up to his ear. “It’s still dead.”

  “Put your finger in the hole of the number you want to dial,” explained Elijah. “Then make the dial thingy go clockwise until it hits the metal thingy.”

  Memito started dialing as I called out the numbers.

  Then we all held our collective breath.

  “Nothing,” said Memito. He looked up with his hands raised in the why me position.

  “Maybe it’s the wrong number,” said Elijah.

  “Let Phoenix try,” said Jeremy. “Since she’s old-timey.”

  Phoenix marched up to Memito, swung her waist-length hair, and grasped the phone. “Thank you very much,” she said in her polite manner. She lifted up the handset very slowly and dialed the number. Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Then she nodded. “Uh-huh.” She nodded again. “Thank you very much,” she said, putting down the phone.

  “Were you actually speaking to somebody?” asked Elijah.

  “Well, yes,” said Phoenix.

  “Who?” asked Jeremy, his voice rising in excitement.

  Phoenix smiled serenely. “Rosalind Franklin, of course.”

  “You can’t listen to the real Rosalind Franklin,” said Memito, shaking his head. “She died a long time ago.”

  “It could be her ghost then,” said Elijah in a spooky voice.

  Memito blew out his cheeks to make creepy wind sound effects. Even though it was a joke, a tingle crawled up my spine.

  “True, it could be a ghost,” said Birdie. I love my best friend, but that’s an area where we disagree. And while I don’t believe in ghosts, I still don’t want to think about them.

  I must have been wincing, because Jeremy wiggled his fingers and started going, “Booooooooooo. I’m going to haunt you, Kate.”

  “Ha ha ha,” I said. “You’re so hysterical.”

  That’s when Phoenix waved her hand. “Confession. The phone was dead. I was just saying that to have a little fun. Maybe it won’t work since my grandma said that a long time ago, phone numbers in London were shorter and had letters.”

  Jeremy gave a bark of a laugh. “Wow. I didn’t know you made jokes, Phoenix. I thought you were serious all the time.”

  “That’s because you’re seriously unobservant,” said Phoenix, her lips curving up into a gloating sort of smile.

  “Actually, I’m very observant.” Jeremy folded his arms. “During the Science Challenge, I held on to the water bottle for like two seconds, and I got slammed for it.” He glared at Phoenix. “When you throw a napkin, what happens? Nothing.” He shook his head.

  “Can you guys stop this?” begged Elijah. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

  “It’s sort of hard with Jeremy,” I confessed. “If it were up to him, we’d be locked in detention instead of an escape room. That’s just plain weird.”

  “I almost wanted that detention because I wanted to see Phoenix get in trouble for once,” huffed Jeremy.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.

  Phoenix swished to stand closer to Jeremy. “If you have something to say to me, Jeremy, you should just say it. Just be direct.”

  “Okay, fine,” he replied.

  “Thanks for at least telling me how you feel,” said Phoenix.

  Jeremy said under his breath so you could hardly hear, “Yeah, well, I’m glad you at least listened.”

  I could feel the tension in the room start to lift away, sort of like effusion in chemistry. That’s when gas particles escape and go somewhere else.

  “We’re supposed to be a team. So let’s do that,” I said.

  Suddenly, Phoenix snapped her fingers. “The numbers on the back of the note! That’s how you call Great Britain from the United States. You dial the 011 to exit the U.S., then 44 to connect with Great Britain, then we dial the regular phone number.” She shook her head. “How did we miss that? We just learned about exit codes and country codes in social studies!”

  “The country code, 44, for Great Britain makes sense,” I said, “since that’s where Rosalind Franklin was from!”

  “Exactly.” Phoenix held out the receiver. “I have an idea. Let’s try the phone again. But this time let’s add in the country code for Great Britain. And the exit code, 011, from the U.S.”

  “Brilliant!” I grabbed the receiver. “I’ll listen, but why don’t you dial, since you know what to do, Phoenix.”

  “Sure.” Phoenix shrugged.

  “We’re wasting time,” moaned Jeremy. “We’ve already gone over this.”

  “Third time’s the charm.”

  “We don’t have time to do this over again. We don’t need to do things double,” grumbled Jeremy.

  “It’s good to be sure,” stated Birdie.

  “No, it’s good to move on,” huffed Jeremy.

  “Yeah,” said Memito, glancing at the egg timer, “because now we only have twenty-two minutes. I don’t know if we can make it, guys.”

  “Everyone, please stop just standing around watching.” Jeremy glanced at the ticking timer. “We’re wasting time.”

  I bounced on my toes impatiently while Phoenix once again dialed. I had to hold myself back from yelling at her to hurry.

  Suddenly, Phoenix was handing me the phone. And I put the earpiece to my ear. It was as cold as ice on my skin.

  And that’s when Rosalind Franklin started speaking.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  On the Table

  The Periodic Table (noun). A chart listing elements in order of their atomic number. The atomic number is the number of itty-bitty particles called protons in each atom. And just like fingerprints are unique to each human, the atomic number is unique for each element.

  A VOICE I ASSUMED WAS ROSALIND FRANKLIN’S was whispering in my ear. But no, it couldn’t be. Because the voice coming from the handset sounded creepy and said, “Hellooooo. I must warn you there’s a ghost. A ghost in the WC. Be very careful.” I set down the receiver. My heart beat a million times per second.

  “So?” asked Phoenix. “Did you hear anything?”

  “Something that could help?” asked Birdie.

  “Not to me,” I stated.

  “Figures,” said Jeremy.

  Then I motioned Phoenix and Birdie to follow me over by the corner. “Look, I heard a voice on the phone. A really spooky one,” I whispered. “And it gave me the creeps. But I think that was the only point.”

  “What did it say?” asked Phoenix.

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “That there’s a ghost in the lab. And for us to be very careful. Actually, it said
the ghost was in the WC.” I shrugged. “Whatever that is. I bet the idea was just to scare Dragas. You know, that bad guy.”

  “But what’s a WC?” asked Birdie.

  “That’s what people in England call the bathroom,” said Phoenix in a loud dramatic whisper. “It stands for water closet!”

  Jeremy stomped over to us and stopped in front of Phoenix. “I heard everything you all were saying,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Elijah, and his voice sounded a little hurt. Memito nodded.

  “You shouldn’t keep secrets,” said Elijah.

  “I think Kate should be the one to go into the haunted water closet,” said Jeremy. “To check it out.”

  “Fine,” I said, but I didn’t feel fine. My heart was pounding. And my mouth felt dry.

  “I’ll go with you,” whispered Birdie, who could obviously tell I was just a little freaked out.

  A moment later, we creaked open the door to the water closet. Birdie shone a light so it wouldn’t be so dark.

  “I hear something,” I said, whirling around.

  “It’s called pipes. It’s normal,” said Birdie as she flicked on the light switch. The cramped WC remained dark.

  “Of course there’s no light bulb,” I said. “The idea is to completely terrify us, so our brains don’t work. Birdie, I’m so glad you’re with me right now. I hope you’re no longer mad at me.”

  “Me mad at you? What gave you that idea?”

  “You’ve just been so quiet and acting a little different.”

  “Because I’m afraid of small spaces,” she whispered. “And we’re locked in an escape room.”

  “Then why are you here with me right now?” I asked. “The WC is extra small.”

  “Because you’re my best friend and you’re afraid of ghosts. And we’ve got to catch one in here.”

  “Aw, Birdie,” I said, giving her a hug. “You’re the best, seriously.”

  “Thanks, Kate. Right back at you. If anything, I thought you might be upset with me.”

  Birdie opened the drawers under the sink. “It’s probably dumb to look since Elijah and Memito were already here.” She shrugged. “But they might have missed something.”

  I shone the light over a roll of toilet paper that was randomly covered in plastic wrap. “So please explain why you think I might possibly be mad at you?”

  “Because I’m the one who got us in trouble. I spent all the time picking out colors and got us behind during the Fall Science Challenge. If we hadn’t been behind, then you wouldn’t have gotten in a mood and done the tug-of-war with Jeremy—”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re not to blame.” I tapped my chest. “Me. I’m the one. I totally forgot the most important rules in a lab: be careful, and no fighting. I have to learn to be patient.” I wiped my forehead. I was actually sweating as if I had been running. “I’m really nervous,” I admitted.

  “Me too,” said Birdie.

  “That’s because you believe in ghosts.”

  She shook her head. “No, because I was worried about . . . us.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “No way. We’re best friends and—”

  “What’s that?” asked Birdie, pointing to a small gray appliance sitting on a shelf across from the faucet.

  I strode over and cautiously picked it up. “Looks like a cross between a hair dryer and a watering can.” Running my fingers along the base, I found an on-off switch. “I wonder what it does?”

  “I’m not sure.

  “It looks familiar. And yet not so much.”

  Birdie snapped her fingers. “It’s a steamer. My nani uses it to quickly dewrinkle her clothes when she travels for work.” Nani is Birdie’s grandma on her mom’s side. She’s an economist and sometimes travels to conferences. Economists use numbers to predict trends in the economy, like sales.

  Right now, if I had to make a prediction based on numbers, I’d say things were looking shaky. And then Memito shouted, “Fourteen minutes!”

  That didn’t give us much time to figure things out!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ghost Busters

  Distilled Water (noun). Steam that has been trapped from boiling water and then condensed back into water. This water is super pure because it doesn’t have stuff like calcium and iron in it. Basically, all the minerals are heavier than water so they stay in the pot of boiling water.

  NEXT TO THE STEAMER WAS a giant bottle of distilled water. Distilled water is frequently used in science labs. “I bet that’s why Ms. Daly had a bottle on her desk. Remember? We need to use it to turn water into steam.”

  With my fingers, I traced along the body of the steamer to see if anything easily popped open. With a snap, the top came off. “Oh, there’s already water in here,” I said, feeling excited.

  Grabbing the plug, Birdie jammed it into the outlet. A blue light turned on.

  “Hurry up, hurry up!” I cried. “We only have about thirteen minutes.”

  “Did you find anything?” asked Jeremy, peeking through the doorway.

  “We’ve made a discovery,” said Birdie. “This thing should only take a minute or two to heat up. We need it.”

  “It’s a steamer,” I explained.

  The steamer began sputtering and coughing.

  “Oh no. Is it broken?” asked Jeremy.

  “It does that right before it’s ready,” said Birdie.

  Steam puffed out, curling upward. “It’s like a ghost,” I shrieked. “Oh. Wow. This is the ghost. A ghost is in the WC!”

  “Great,” said Jeremy. “We already did the Ghost demo.” He waved his flashlight so a disk of yellow light bobbed up and down.

  “Wait,” I said to Jeremy. “Do that again.”

  “Do what again?” he asked.

  “Wave the flashlight over the mirror. I thought I saw something.” He stepped farther into the WC. And there on the mirror was a secret message. It said 2 pockets.

  “Wow. That’s cool,” Jeremy said.

  Birdie and I looked at each other in pure astonishment.

  “The steam revealed the letters!” I cried. “Someone must have written the message with their bare hands, and then the steam condensed around the oils left from their fingers! Just like the phone said. A ghost in the WC! We found another clue.”

  “That’s great,” said Jeremy. “We’ve got to find two pockets!”

  The three of us raced back into the lab. “We’ve got to find pockets,” Birdie repeated.

  Everyone checked their lab coat pockets. But nobody found anything. We even checked our jeans pockets. I spun around the lab, “Does anyone see any pockets?”

  “I think I might,” said Memito. He pulled out a little green spiral pad from the bookshelf. “A pocket notebook.”

  Jeremy high-fived him. “You rock.”

  Memito flipped through the pages. He shrugged. “I dunno. Just a bunch of equations that make no sense.”

  “Those numbers could be the key to cracking the code.” I waved at the lock on the front door. “And getting us out of here.”

  Elijah flipped through some more pages. “Hey, there’s a message.” He held it up and in big block letters it said, YOU’LL NEVER FIND THE IMAGE OF THE VIRUS.

  “That’s not a happy thought,” said Birdie, glancing longingly at the very locked front door.

  “Wait. What if that message wasn’t for us?” said Phoenix. “What if it was for the bad guy, Dragas? Rosalind Franklin left clues for us so we could hand the image of the virus over to Blanche before Dragas gets here. But she couldn’t make the clues obvious. Otherwise—” she shook her head. “The virus could get into the wrong hands.”

  “Wait. Hold up,” said Memito. “On the very last page, there’s one word over and over.” He jabbed his finger onto the paper. “Tube.”

  I
snapped my fingers. “Like test tubes, I bet.” Then I groaned. “But I’ve checked every test tube in the lab.”

  “Yeah,” said Elijah, staring at the cardboard tube he had kept for a drumstick. The one he had spotted by the telephone. “Guess what, I think I just found something!” He opened the cardboard tube by pulling off the plastic cap, then pulled out a rolled-up something white. “I didn’t see it before because it’s so thin.” He flattened the image, which looked like a photograph, and Jeremy shone the flashlight on it so we could see even better in the dim room.

  There was a gray image of what looked like a pile of some weird sticks.

  “The image of the virus!” I shouted, high-fiving Elijah. “You’re a genius.”

  Birdie gazed at the image with a look of wonder. “Who knew that viruses could look like . . . art.”

  Then Elijah flipped the image over. “Look, there’s a code on the back, just like the note!”

  “Read it aloud!” shouted Phoenix. “And I’ll write it on the whiteboard.”

  “32-73-5-57-19-3-52,” called out Elijah, and then rolled the image back into the tube. “I’ll put it here for safekeeping.” He stuffed the tube back in the right pocket of his lab coat.

  “We did it!” I shouted.

  “Not quite,” said Jeremy. “We still need to get out of here. And the clue in the WC said two pockets. We need to find another pocket.”

  Memito held up the stopwatch. “The clock is ticking. We now only have ten minutes!”

  “We’ve got to get going,” I admitted.

  But Birdie didn’t move from her spot. Instead, she stared dreamily at the periodic table on the wall. “You know, I think it’d be cool to have one of those in my room. But to make some art project out of it.”

  “Okaaaaay,” said Jeremy. “I think we’re getting way off track here.” For once, I knew exactly how Jeremy felt. Right now was not the time to think about room decorations.