Following Baxter

by Barbara Kerley

  The computer sent reconfiguration instructions to the hat molecules via radio waves.

  Baxter’s microchip number was also transmitted to the vet’s scanner via radio waves.

  Baxter’s microchip was the programmable kind.

  So maybe when Professor Reese’s computer beep-beep-booped, Baxter booped back because his microchip was being activated and reprogrammed with a new number—the latitude for where the hat was—and the computer was telling the microchip where it needed to go.

  “Wait. What?” TJ interrupted.

  I stopped pacing. “I think every time she teleported the hat and the computer sent out radio waves, Baxter’s microchip number changed to match where the hat was sent.”

  “Oh,” TJ said. “So 45530313 matches 45.530313—the latitude number of the hat’s coordinates from the last time we helped her teleport.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded.

  “How come the microchip doesn’t show the longitude, too?”

  “There’s not room for all that on the LCD screen,” which I just sort of made up that second, but it made sense so maybe it was right.

  “Oh,” TJ said.

  “OK.” I started pacing again. “Now, here’s where it gets even crazier—”

  “Good,” TJ said, “because it wasn’t crazy enough yet.”

  “So maybe,” I said, “when the chip is activated, that’s what makes it start humming.”

  “The microchip hums?” TJ asked.

  “Oh! I forgot to tell you that!” I said. “Put your ear there.” I pointed to Baxter’s shoulder blades.

  TJ did. “OK. I can hear it.”

  I nodded and got back to figuring things out:

  And if the humming grew louder the closer it got to the hat (and I’d need to test that part of my theory out), then maybe Baxter used the hum getting louder and louder to help him follow the bounce all the way across town.

  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 as I kept looking at the map, I noticed all the other things the yellow line of pins cut across, and my stomach started to tighten into a little ball.

  Because Professor Reese might accidentally have teleported herself onto the freeway, into the river, or onto the railroad tracks (depending on how hard she bounced). And I really didn’t want to think that getting hit by a truck, drowned in the river, or r
un over by a train was the reason she didn’t come home.

  24

  3:42 A.M.

  For the rest of the afternoon, TJ asked over and over, “So what are we going to do?” and I said, “Shhh! I’m thinking!” the sixth time, too.

  All during dinner, TJ stared across the kitchen table at me. Every time Mom looked the other way, he made a face like, Well?, and I shook my head like, Shut up or Mom will see you.

  We were so busy making faces at each other that Mom finally said, “I thought you guys liked lasagna,” and I realized we hadn’t been eating.

  “We do!” I stuffed a big bite in my mouth, and when Mom looked away, I pointed my finger at TJ’s plate like, Eat!

  After dinner, we all, even Mom, took Baxter for a walk. I was still thinking, and, for once, TJ wasn’t blabbing because he was waiting for me to finish, so Dad just whistled a tune as we walked.

  “Everyone’s so quiet tonight,” Mom said.

  Then we sat on Professor Reese’s porch, while Dad played his guitar.

  But this time, Baxter didn’t snooze. He seemed to know that something was going on, only he didn’t know quite what—which made two of us.

  I looked in his eyes and whispered, “I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out, OK?”

  I nodded, and he nodded back.

  Then finally it was time to kiss him good night. Dad carried his guitar back to his part of the house, and me and Mom and TJ went into Mom’s part.

  TJ went over to his desk and just stood there, looking at Caveman and Zombie Cheerleader. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. When I came out, TJ was still looking and thinking hard, it seemed, because Dad was right—a movie was a story, and TJ was figuring out how to tell it.

  I went into my room. I pulled my dog books off my bookcase and sat down on the bed, wondering if they had anything in them about what it was like for a dog to miss people and to sleep in an empty bedroom listening to his own snoring when he was used to listening to someone else’s.

  The books said that if you wanted to understand dog feelings, you could learn a lot by looking at the behavior of wolves in the wild because dogs were descended from them. Wolves lived in packs, led by a dominant male and female. But it wasn’t like they bossed everyone around. It was more like they took care of everyone and made sure they were OK. The wolf pack was a family.

  Every afternoon, me and TJ and Baxter and Professor Reese were sort of like a family. We were a pack—and one of the pack was missing.

  And that’s when I figured out what me and TJ and Baxter needed to do.

  So while Mom was getting ready for bed, I went into TJ’s room and whispered it all to him:

  In the morning, we’d get up superearly—before it was even light out—and leave a note on the counter for Mom, saying we were taking Baxter for a walk, and then we’d sneak out of the house. When she woke up a few hours later and saw the note, she’d hopefully think we’d just left (because she knew TJ didn’t like to get up early). So we’d have a lot of hours—maybe three or four total—to get Baxter and walk or hopefully even gallop along 45.509091. Then we’d let the hum of the microchip getting louder lead us to Professor Reese.

  TJ said, “Yeah. OK.”

  I said, “Don’t put on your pj’s. Just sleep in your clothes,” which half the time he did anyway, so I figured Mom wouldn’t even notice.

  I put on my pj’s and went into Mom’s room to kiss her good night. I went back into my room and quickly wrote the taking-Baxter-for-a-walk note so it would be ready in the morning. Then I turned off the light and sneaky changed back into my clothes again.

  I sat on my bed, sitting straight up so if I did fall asleep, I’d wake up when I fell over.

  I looked out the window at Professor Reese’s house. There was no red glow coming from the lab. There was no glow at all. It was just quiet and dark, with only Baxter all by himself, probably walking around the empty rooms sniffing how empty they were.

  I looked and looked, and the street sounds got quiet. After a while, I didn’t hear any cars going by anymore. Sometimes my head would start to droop, and I’d pick it back up, and then it would droop again. But I didn’t fall all the way asleep because when my head konked over too much, it would wake me back up.

  Then I’d look out my window again, wondering where Professor Reese was and—

  I sat bolt upright in my bed. Ever since Thursday afternoon, I’d been thinking about where she was. But I hadn’t spent any time wondering how she was—wherever she was.

  Was she scared? Was she hurt? Because maybe she took a hard bounce. Maybe she needed help.

  She needed us.

  And even though I couldn’t tell Mom about it, it was about the greatest opportunity I could ever imagine to be dependable, if I had the guts to do it:

  Me and TJ couldn’t wait until morning to head over to 45.509091 and turn right or left and listen for the hum and hope Baxter got magical again.

  If she was hurt, we had to find her now—and there was only one way to do that.

  I looked at my clock. It was 3:42 a.m. I’d never left the house in the middle of the night—but we couldn’t wait any longer.

  I climbed out of bed and sneaky quiet put on my sneakers (which I had never thought about until that very second, but maybe that was why they were called that).

  I picked up the Baxter note.

  I tiptoed past TJ’s room. I didn’t want to wake him until the last second because he is not exactly light on his feet. So I snuck past him on into the kitchen and laid the note on the counter. I opened the cupboard under the sink and slid out the first aid kit. Then I snuck over to TJ’s bed and clamped my hand down on his mouth.

  TJ’s eyes flew open. I leaned in and whispered, “We have to leave now. Quiet.”

  When he pulled off his blanket, I saw that his shoes were already on.

  We ooched the front door open and then ooched it closed. Then we snuck down the porch stairs, into the dark.

  TJ whispered, “Why are we—”

  But I whispered back, “Shh!” and we didn’t talk until we were standing in Professor Reese’s kitchen, with Baxter sleepy happy to see us and doing his just-got-out-of-bed dog stretching.

  TJ pointed to the first aid kit. “Why do you have that?”

  “I realized that Professor Reese may be hurt.” I rummaged around the kitchen until I found a box of granola bars. I put two in my back pocket. Then I grabbed another water bottle. “I don’t think we should wait all the way until morning.”

  TJ nodded. “OK.”

  “Let’s check the map again.” And we hurried down to the lab.

  We studied the row of yellow pins where the latitude line cut through. “If she went to the zoo, she might have landed in the woods,” TJ said. “So no one would see her.”

  “Right. There’s a train station there, too, so she might have planned to get home that way.”

  We studied the map some more. TJ said, “But she probably went to the university.”

  “Yeah. ’Cause it was Thursday morning and she did have to go to work,” I said. “Maybe she aimed for a little group of trees on the edge of campus or something.”

  I took a deep breath. “So you head to the university—the latitude line crosses at the corner of Sixth and Jackson. And hopefully, when you get there, the humming of the microchip will be loud enough for Baxter to hear—and he’ll know whether you should turn right or left,” I told TJ. “But if he can’t hear it yet, you’ll have to put your ear down by his shoulder blades and listen to help him.”

  “OK,” TJ said. Then he scrunched up his face. “Wait a minute. What will you be doing?”

  “Hopefully, I’ll be helping Professor Reese.”

  “Oh. OK.” Then his eyes bugged out. “Wait! You’re not going to—”

  “I have to, TJ!” I said. “We don’t even know for sure if you’ll be able to find her—and if we wait much longer, it might be too late!”

  “Why don’t you just teleport
the first aid kit to her?”

  “I thought of that,” I said. “But what if it lands where she doesn’t see it? Or she can see it but can’t reach it? Because it’s been almost three days! Who knows what kind of shape she’s in?”

  I knelt down in front of Baxter and pressed my forehead against his, breathing in his sleepy-dog smell. “I’ll find her, Baxter.” I gave him a quick kiss for good luck, right between his ears, which were starting to get better, and his kiss back landed on my cheek.

  TJ shook his head. “I don’t think you should do this, Jordie.”

  “I have to!” I marched over to the teleporter. “And I need you and Baxter to help.” I opened the lid and put the water bottle and first aid kit at one end. “Because once I’ve found Professor Reese, I’ll need you guys to help me get her home.”

  I climbed up into the teleporter, and it was like our waffle iron—ridged and hard and metal. “When you get to the latitude, if you can’t find us, come home and tell Mom and Dad everything.”

  “Wait! Jordie!” TJ said.

  I looked at TJ and Baxter. Everything felt way too big, and I felt way too small. But I didn’t want my half of Baxter to worry about me for the next few hours—I needed all his whole self to get magical so he could find Professor Reese (and me too). “You help TJ, and I’ll see you soon,” I told him, as I lay down on the hard, metal rods. “You’re a good boy!” I nodded.

  Then I said what maybe Professor Reese said when she set off on her own adventure. “Here I go!”

  And Baxter was still nodding as I pulled the teleporter lid down over me and clicked it closed.

  25

  A Hard Landing

  As soon as the lid to the teleporter clicked shut, the space around me filled with a red light, and the whole teleporter began to buzz.

  A warm beam started inching from the top of my head down my face. I shut my eyes and held as still as possible, because I knew that the teleporter was scanning my molecular pattern, and I didn’t want to be blurry when the instructions put me back together. It inched down my neck to my shoulders—

  “Are you OK?” I heard TJ yell, over the buzzing.