A Girl Named Digit

by Annabel Monaghan

  My dad said, “Poor guy, it must be a lot of work to live a lie.”

  Mr. Bennett, John, and I all responded at the same time; “It is.”

  The World is Coming to an End. Please Log Off.

  With Steven’s dead body lying in the middle of my living room, we all sat around and contemplated what to do. Dad immediately suggested we call the police or the FBI to get his body out of the house. I couldn’t have agreed more, but Mr. Bennett reminded us of the bigger issue.

  “There’s another terror attack planned for today at two p.m. We have seven minutes until we receive a call that will reveal all of the details. No one must know that Steven is dead.” Mr. Bennett and John were fully in charge now, barely keeping my parents and me in the loop. They were pacing next to one another, nodding and talking. Danny and I were more than a little freaked out by the dead body and gave up listening early on.

  We all jumped when we heard a knock on the kitchen door, followed by the sound of the knob turning and footsteps across the linoleum floor. John drew his gun but stopped when he saw Olive bouncing into the living room, clad in running shorts, a tank top, and my bikini. “What? Danny? Aren’t we going—” First she saw me, then she saw the dead body. “Farrah! Oh my God! I knew you were okay. Who’s . . . ? What’s going on here?” She stood there with her hands on her hips, as if the explanation that we owed her were the most urgent thing we had to deal with.

  I tried to explain. “Yeah, we’ve had a bit of a situation here and I’ve had to hide, but it seems like it’s going to be okay now. Well, not for him. He’s dead. But he’s expecting a call . . .”

  Danny stopped my rambling by leading her over to the couch and sitting her down. “She caught some bad guys; he’s one. She’s safe now, but the really bad guys are about to do something worse.” I marveled at his simplicity. That would have taken me twenty minutes to explain. But if I’d been doing the explaining, I wouldn’t have been holding her hand. What’s been going on around here?

  Steven’s phone rang just as I was about to ask. Mr. Bennett flipped it to speaker and answered with an indistinct “Yeah?”

  “Okay. You got a pen?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  John actually did have a pen and scribbled as the voice on the phone read from a list of letters: MODMIYKIFDBTAPZMDIBIVHY.

  “Got it?” the voice asked.

  Mr. Bennett looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and hung up.

  “Great. Another code. Like we have time for this. We have four hours until a major incident, and the guy can’t just spit it out.” John was finally losing it.

  Mr. Bennett kept his cool. “Steven must have known how to crack this code. Farrah? Ben? Does this mean anything to you?”

  Dad shook his head. “Not right off the bat. Farrah, let’s get to it.” We got up and walked instinctively to the game table, the same table that we sat at doing puzzles when I was two, solving differential equations at five. It was our table, a sacred space of thought. John handed us the sheet of paper and backed away, respectfully. Four hours and counting.

  MODMIYKIFDBTAPZMDIBIVHY. We each sounded it out on our own. Mod Mike if the Beta Pez Midy Bivhy? We sounded it out backwards. We converted it into a numeric value using the alphabet, where A is worth one, and Z is worth twenty-six. Nothing.

  Three hours and counting. The letters spun in circles in front of me, and the order was not coming. I didn’t know if it was the exhaustion, the stress, or what, but the part of my mind that normally takes over was not kicking into gear. I arranged the letters vertically, took out the repeating letters. Nothing.

  Two hours and counting. I was starting to panic. It was like my computer was frozen, but this wasn’t a game. I’d be like the game show contestant who spits out the answer just after the buzzer goes off. But instead of a lovely parting gift, I’d have “casualties in the hundreds” on my conscience. I’d never sleep again.

  John was pacing, playing the role of coach. “What do we know about these guys?” he asked. “You cracked their last code practically in your sleep, right? Maybe you’re over-thinking this. Could it just be another Fiorucci?”

  “Fibonacci,” my dad corrected him. And he slowly lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Ever since The Da Vinci Code,” he said, smiling, “everyone’s a . . .”

  “ . . . genius.” we said together. It was an old joke between us. My dad and I had been working through ancient puzzles and mysteries forever, but as soon as The Da Vinci Code was published, everyone in the world thought that they were a cryptologist. Jonas Furnis was a fan of Fibonacci for sure.

  “I checked that. There’s no Fibonacci sequence in the numbers that corresponded to the letters, no matter how I arrange them.” But I figured I’d give Fibonacci another try. I started to plow through it, step by step. “Okay, try this. We take the basic Fibonacci sequence, under 26, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and convert it into letters using the 26-character alphabet: AABCEHMU. Right?”

  My dad nodded and went on. “AABCEHMU. It could be a series of Caesar shifts. Write it vertically.” So I took the paper and wrote:

  A

  A

  B

  C

  E

  H

  M

  U

  And then filled in the alphabet using a series of Caesar shifts, which begin the alphabet at the letter that begins each row on the left:

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA

  CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAB

  EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCD

  HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFG

  MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKL

  UVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST

  “So, let’s apply the key of the correct alphabet and see if it gives us anything . . .”

  John paced, as my mom, Danny, Olive, and Mr. Bennett sat on the sofa, watching. John stopped behind my chair and put his hands on my shoulders, offering a supportive rub. No one seemed to notice or care but me. He couldn’t stand being in the dark anymore. “Please, Digit, explain it to me.”

  “Sure.” I slid the paper with the letters in the Caesar-shifted grid so he could see them. “I’m hoping that if I place the alphabet in its correct order above my grid and use it as a key, I can decode this by finding the code letter in each row and then marking the corresponding letter in the key above.”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about.” You could really love a guy who was that honest.

  “Try it,” I said. “The first two rows were identical to the key so ‘M’ is ‘M’ and ‘O’ is ‘O.’ But in the third row, if you find the ‘D’ and go straight up to the key it’s really ‘C.’ Go to the fourth row and find the ‘M’ and go straight up, you get to ‘K’ and so on.

  Key: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ M → M

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ O → O

  BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA D → C

  CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAB M → K

  EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCD I → E

  HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFG Y → R

  MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKL K → Y

  UVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST I → O

  John stared over my shoulder as I worked through the grid. The answer was MOCKERYO. John was confused. “So that’s the attack site? Mockeryo? What’s that?”

  “I’m not done. There are fifteen more letters in the code, FDBTAQZMDIBIVHY, so we have to repeat the grid twice.” I copied it again.

  Key: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ F → F

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ D → D

  BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA B → A

  CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAB T → R

  EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCD A → W

  HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFG P → I

  MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKL Z → N

  UVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST M → S

  Key: ABCDEFGHIJKLMN
OPQRSTUVWXYZ

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ D → D

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ I → I

  BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA B → A

  CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAB I → G

  EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCD V → R

  HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFG H → A

  MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKL Y → M

  “MOCKERYOFDARWINSDIAGRAM,” I read. “Mockery of Darwin’s Diagram.”

  My dad had been watching me work from across the table, reading upside down so he was a little behind. “What does that mean? Is it something about natural selection?”

  When I looked up, I had tears in my eyes. “I have no idea. We’re almost out of time. We’re not going to make it.” I’d used up a lifetime of mental energy decoding their string of letters and now this? Darwin? I knew next to nothing about Darwin.

  John was pacing behind me, making me anything but relaxed. “Mr. Higgins? Does it mean anything to you? Where would we find a Darwin diagram?”

  My dad was studying the decoded message when Olive popped off the couch, raising her right arm, like she was desperate to be called on to be the snack helper. “I know this!” She came over to the table, dangerously close to being within smacking distance.

  “Olive, seriously, this is really important.” I was pleased with my restraint.

  “No, really.” Hair flip over the shoulder. “I am in the Biology Club, you know.”

  “Still?” I’d thought that was a one-semester boo-boo.

  “Yeah. And last fall we did a whole month called ‘Digging on Darwin.’ We all read On the Origin of Species and did a project on it. We made a Tree of Life out of the lids of my old shoeboxes. It was in the front hall of our school for a whole semester. Farrah, where have you been? It’s like you don’t even know me.”

  Is it possible to be so busy thinking people are stupid that you forget to notice that they’re not? Is it possible that we were having this conversation when there were forty minutes to stop a bombing? “I’m sorry, Olive. Go on.”

  “So the display we made was exactly like the diagram in Darwin’s paper. It’s the only diagram in the whole thing, and he uses it to describe how all of life is connected. The Tree of Life has ‘ever branching and beautiful ramifications.’ That’s a quote.” She raised both of her eyebrows at me for emphasis. I’m sorry, who are you, and what have you done with my blond friend?

  My dad had no problem taking help from Olive. “That’s exactly what it is. The Tree of Life. Where would there be a mockery of it?”

  Olive was on it again, arm raised and waving. “I think I know that too. When we were designing the project, I researched other drawings and sculptures of the Tree of Life. The coolest one was at the Animal Kingdom at Disney World. But I didn’t have enough shoeboxes to pull it off. Hard to believe, right? Anyway, it’s this huge concrete and plastic tree that’s supposed to have a representation of every animal in the world. Like a fake tree would be a mockery, wouldn’t it?”

  I made a mental note to look into the existence of parallel universes, because I was pretty sure I’d slipped into one. My dad was nodding at her. “That has to be it. Imagine how Jonas Furnis would regard a plastic tree that purports to be a symbol of the connectedness of the natural world.”

  That was enough for Mr. Bennett. “We’ll have to have to send a squad to Disney World immediately. But we’ll work through the CIA. We cannot risk tipping off the FBI in case Steven had an accomplice there.”

  He got on the phone and in a slow and measured voice described only the most pertinent details: There was good reason to believe that Jonas Furnis was planning to attack Disney World in the next thirty minutes, and there was no time to explain. A full debriefing would follow after the crisis was averted.

  This was background noise. I got up from the table and hugged Olive. “I don’t know who I thought you were.”

  “Uh, same here? And why is everybody calling you Digit?”

  “Danny can explain it to you. And, Danny? My kid brother? Really? What’s with you two?”

  “He’s an awesome guy.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I curled up in my mom’s arms on the couch, physically and emotionally wiped out. Maybe I was a little out of shape. I closed my eyes and prayed that we were right and that they could be stopped in time and captured and that this would be over. At some point my mom got up and John took her place, holding me and stroking my hair. I guessed the cat was out of the bag about us, and it seemed not to matter, anyway. I snuggled up to his chest, feeling like I never wanted to move again.

  I didn’t lift my head or open my eyes until I heard Mr. Bennett answer a call and say, “Got ’em? How many? Great? Uh-huh. Okay, great work, that was close. Tell Jameson I’ll call him in a few hours and give him the whole story. In the meantime, I need an unmarked car and a body bag at the following address . . .”

  “Hey, Digit.” John was holding me tight. “It’s okay. It’s over. You did it. They’re safe.” Relief poured over me. I wiped my eyes.

  Steven’s body was carried out by two plainclothes CIA agents and tossed into the back of a Chevy Suburban. My mom busied herself in the kitchen, searching for appropriate post-terrorist-catching snacks. Seemed like an occasion for a nice Chex Mix.

  Danny came over and kissed the top of my head. “Nice work, Digit.” He and Olive looked a little freaked out and went up to his room, presumably to process what they’d just seen.

  “I want that bikini back . . .” I called after them.

  My dad sat in his favorite chair, still and silent, watching John and me curiously. I felt like with all we’d seen in that room today, coming clean about a little romance wouldn’t be such a big deal. I decided to open the lines of communication.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, with smiling eyes and a little nod. “It’s okay. I think it’s okay.”

  “Thanks,” John said, understanding the meaning of the moment much sooner than I did.

  Mr. Bennett rushed into the room, phone in hand but away from his ear for the first time in an hour. “John, we’ve got to get going. We have two senior CIA agents and a representative from the Homeland Security office meeting us at the FBI in fifteen minutes. We’ll retrieve Steven’s file on Jonas Furnis and then meet with Damage Control.”

  “Damage Control?” I asked. “For what?”

  “A media-savvy team is meeting already to figure out how to unwind this whole lie. We need to get you unkidnapped and into your normal life but keep it out of the press so that Jonas Furnis will continue thinking you are dead until they are shut down and have bigger problems. When they find out we have all their financial records and hopefully taped correspondence, they’re not going to worry about one girl who can identify one operative.” Mr. Bennett was already walking out of the room as he finished his sentence. “John, come on!”

  John got up and started to follow his dad out, as if by habit. He stopped and turned back around to me and took my hand. “I’ll come back later.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t get up. Was he really leaving?

  He walked over to my dad, who stood, and shook his hand. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Higgins. I’m really glad we could bring her back safely.” He blushed a little at his understatement. He started to say something else to my dad but changed his mind. Then he turned to me and started to say something and again changed his mind. Finally he turned and left.

  My dad came over and sat by me, a little smug. “So, you’re in love. It’s about time.”

  I shoved him a little. “He said he was coming back, right? I heard him say that—did you?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, but probably not tonight. He lives here, doesn’t he? He will probably take his dad back to his apartment and come back in the morning. Are you hungry?”

  “No, I’m going to bed.” I walked up to my room and did a nosedive into my bed. I imagined I could still smell John there, feel his imprint from the night before. But I really couldn’
t. That annoyed me. In the movies, people are always sniffing stuff to catch a whiff of their absent lover. In real life, things just smell like Bounce dryer sheets.

  I got in bed, my own bed, for the first time in what felt like months. I stared up at my bumper stickers, all so familiar but new somehow. Everything was new, but it was as if hunting terrorists, cheating death, and falling in love had changed my very DNA. And now all that was nearly over, except for the John part. That was just starting. Right?

  I sat up in bed. What now? I wondered it for the first time. Life had been so minute to minute, everything changing on a dime, and I hadn’t really thought through to next week and next month. This thing between John and me wasn’t going to be like a wartime romance, over when life was back to normal, was it? I mean, I was probably going back to school on Monday. He was going to go back to managing the Fruitcake Room. Would I see him at night? Talk on the phone? Then it would be summer and I’d have lots of time, but he had a job. We could figure it out, I guess. The thought of spending this whole night without him was excruciating, and the idea that I’d be at school all day with him working nine to five was more than I could consider.