The History Mystery

by Ana Maria Machado

  Sonia got goosebumps all over again. Feeling a bit awkward, she made a suggestion. ‘Should we maybe tell the police? Instead of trying to figure this out ourselves.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Pedro said hesitantly. ‘They might not take us seriously. I mean, it does sound very weird. They might just laugh at us.’

  Sonia nodded. Very likely.

  ‘But, listen, I have another idea,’ Pedro said. ‘I thought of maybe talking to Colin and showing him everything. He’s experienced – he’s a lawyer – so maybe he could help us out, give us a few tips.’

  ‘Who is this Colin?’ asked Matt.

  ‘That lawyer who’s dating Sonia’s sister. He’s the one who sent us a copy of the message that a clerk in their office found, all mixed up with a legal document. Actually, he left a message for us, saying he wanted to have a chat about it. I’d forgotten that.’

  Matt thought it over. ‘Yes …’ he said hesitantly. ‘I suppose.’ But he did not seem convinced.

  He thought a bit more and then he said, ‘What if it’s not that at all?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Sonia. ‘Not what?’

  ‘Do you have a better suggestion?’ said Pedro.

  ‘No,’ said Matt. ‘I can’t say I have a suggestion or that it’s any better than your ideas. But I just keep thinking it may not be a hacker or a criminal or anything like that. Maybe it’s just a cry for help. Like this is someone who needs help and has been gradually trying to gain our confidence, to make friends with us.’

  ‘Yeah, right, so they can use us later!’ said Sonia.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t see any sign of that. I think this person is trying to get to know us so that he or she can open up and tell us what they want. I honestly don’t see them using us. In fact, I think it’s the other way round – we’re the ones who used that first message to get a good grade on the history paper.

  ‘And by the way, we’d definitely lose that grade in a second if we went around telling people that the famous project that got all those compliments from Mr Costa wasn’t done by us, but was actually plagiarised from Nefertiti or somebody else who sent us everything ready-made and full of details.’

  Silence.

  ‘See, I read these messages quite differently,’ Matt went on. ‘I mean, I do agree with all that stuff you two wrote in your list: it’s someone who’s proud of knowing how to read and write, who has lived in different places and through different times and all that. But I also see someone who is polite, who apologises for butting in, who treats us with respect. And it’s someone who’s really hooked on this idea of how important it is to study.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sonia agreed.

  ‘But it’s also someone who’s trying to communicate,’ Matt said. ‘Desperately trying, actually, in any way and over a long time. Someone who sends one message after another. Someone who says they are suffering, who needs to be set free from some kind of a sentence. Someone who hopes that we can give them a little help. And what is our response? We couldn’t care less. Or worse: we think they’re a criminal.’

  Silence again.

  Pedro and Sonia hadn’t seen things from that angle. They remained quiet, thinking. Since thoughts don’t make noise, there was no sound to be heard.

  The person who finally spoke was Carol. They had all forgotten she was there. She was usually very nosy, but on this occasion she’d really been trying to control herself and not ask too many questions, so she wouldn’t get kicked out by the older kids.

  It was Carol, though, who summed up the situation, saying, ‘Cool! It’s a bit like a message in a bottle, like you see in cartoons, floating in the middle of the waves until it reaches a beach and someone opens it. And we are the ones opening it, right?’

  What if this were true?

  8 – Model What?

  They managed to make an appointment with Colin for the following day, in his office. They would stop by in the afternoon, they’d said, all three of them, because Matt was constantly stuck to the other two now.

  Sonia thanked her lucky stars that she had managed at least to get rid of Carol, who loved Colin and had tried to tag along with the group. But that would have been a bit much. She wasn’t in their class and Sonia felt that having one sister hanging around this meeting was more than enough.

  That was Andrea, of course, who worked with Colin. Andrea greeted the three kids with a complaint that none of them understood: ‘You can’t manage to arrive on time even for important meetings, huh?’ she said as soon as they arrived. And then she was gone, disappearing through the door, leaving the others in the waiting room outside the office.

  They couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. They weren’t late. In fact, they had been so excited about the meeting with Colin that they had arrived more than twenty minutes early. What on earth did Andrea mean, telling them off like that for being late?

  The three friends stayed sitting in the waiting area, flicking through old magazines and hearing the receptionist answer one phone call after another. It was only when Andrea opened the door again and gestured for someone to leave the other room that Sonia realised what had happened. The person who was leaving the office was Faye.

  And Andrea was saying, ‘I thought you were all together. I just assumed you were here for that earlier meeting. What a coincidence – everybody coming over on the same day.’

  So that explained why Andrea had thought they were late! Faye had made an appointment just before the others were due to meet Colin. And Andrea, who was always a bit scatty, obviously thought it was all the same meeting. Faye sat down to chat with Matt and Pedro and Sonia.

  ‘So, did you manage to sort out whatever it was that you had to discuss with Andrea?’ Sonia asked.

  ‘Yes, I did get some advice from her on this contract I needed to have looked over, but then I was telling her this other stuff, and then Colin came in and heard what I was saying. He seemed to find it interesting, and next thing he suggested I should stay for this meeting he’s having with you lot.’

  Sonia looked at Matt and Pedro. Why would Colin invite Faye to join in their meeting? Not that they minded, of course, she was their friend, but it seemed a bit odd.

  ‘So, anyway, Andrea and I talked over this contract a bit more and –’

  ‘What contract?’ asked Matt, interrupting so suddenly that Sonia was startled.

  Faye looked at him and gave a bright smile that lit up her beautiful face. Her hair was so soft and silky that it looked like it belonged in a shampoo ad. All that was missing was the slow-motion camera and some classical music playing in the background. At least, that was more or less how Matt always thought about Faye.

  Matt was living with a permanent dilemma: either he should put Faye out of his mind once and for all (because he knew she was so gorgeous that she was way out of his league), or he should not forget about her even for a minute for the rest of his life (because he couldn’t even if he tried, because she was the most special person he had ever met, or simply just because …).

  And now, here she was, all of a sudden, right in front of him, unexpectedly, and outside class hours. A total surprise.

  He listened as she explained, in her soft voice. ‘Well, as you’re all aware, I’ve always known what I wanted for my future: I –’

  ‘Wanna-be-a-model!’ The other two finished her sentence.

  This was an ongoing joke in their class. Matt didn’t find it so funny. But Faye had a good sense of humour and smiled. That smile. Again!

  ‘That’s right! I want to be a model. It’s always been my dream.’

  Nothing new so far. But then came something the others didn’t know.

  ‘Right, but then something happened, see? A few days ago, I was coming out of this shop and a woman approached me. Such a coincidence: she said she had been watching me for a few minutes, she thought I looked interesting and decided to ask if I would be up for doing a modelling audition, and if I had ever thought of
anything like that.’

  It would make more sense to ask if she had ever thought of anything else, thought Pedro. But he didn’t interrupt.

  ‘Then the woman said I should take some pictures and make a book and that she would help me –’

  ‘You want to be careful with these things,’ Matt cut in. ‘It could be a scam. There’s this stuff in the news all the time. They have criminal organisations that specialise in recruiting girls to exploit.’

  Faye shook her head, but Matt was really on a roll now.

  ‘They even kidnap girls,’ he was saying now, ‘then they take them abroad, make them do all sorts of horrible things. They keep promising work, fame, money, but it’s just exploitation. You shouldn’t trust these people, Faye. I think you should report this to the police.’

  ‘Oh, Matt, you’re so sweet. It’s great having a friend like you who cares about me and watches out for me.’

  Ah, the flicker of those beautiful eyelashes made him melt on the inside. And that lovely smile. And her voice that carried on, soft but firm.

  ‘But there’s no need to worry, Matt, I wasn’t born yesterday. Since I’ve always wanted to be a model, my parents have warned me about all that stuff. I would never follow up this kind of contact without talking to them first.’

  ‘Good,’ said Matt, relieved.

  ‘I didn’t give her my number. See? I know the rules! And later I got my dad to ring her. But I love seeing that you’re an angel who cares for me.’

  (Love? Angel? He was almost dizzy.)

  ‘Anyway,’ Faye continued, ‘the woman made a couple of proposals and a few days later she sent the draft of a contract for us to look over.’

  Matt nodded.

  ‘There were lots of technical terms in it, though. My parents said that it seemed cool, but they’re not experts, so we thought it would be good to get a lawyer to look it over. But that’s expensive, so when I remembered your sister is in law school, Sonia, I thought I might ask her to take a look. That’s all.’

  So that was it. That’s why Faye had this mysterious need to talk to Andrea to discuss legal stuff. One mystery solved.

  ‘But you know what?’ said Pedro. ‘I don’t get why Colin wanted you to stay on for the meeting with us. We’re here to talk to him about this virus that has been appearing in some of our computers lately. Or it could be a hacker, who knows, someone who invades people’s inboxes with weird messages and nobody knows where they’re from.’

  ‘The same one from the history project?’ asked Faye.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why, of course … I get it now. See, remember I said how Colin came into the office when I was telling Andrea about something that happened to me, something a bit like that, actually, and he overheard me.’

  ‘What? A bit like what? Have you been getting messages too?’

  This was new!

  ‘Yeah, I was telling Andrea about these weird messages I’ve been getting.’

  Pedro took a deep breath and asked, very calmly, ‘Could you please explain, Faye? This could be important.’

  ‘Well, it all started with some text messages ..’

  Matt, on the other hand, wasn’t calm at all. First, he had just discovered that Faye let herself get approached by random people when she left shops, just like that, people who could drag her halfway across the world and take her far away from the classrooms at Garibaldi High. Never again that smile, that dark, shiny hair, those long eyelashes that blinked slowly as if they were dancing in slow motion. And now it seemed the girl was getting strange text messages. They could be dangerous! Threatening, perhaps. In any case, they seemed to bother these lawyers, and these were people who were experienced in dealing with criminals and felons.

  But he shouldn’t really be surprised. Of course, the whole world was probably dying to send text messages to Faye’s mobile, to ask her out or simply to tell her how beautiful she was. Not everyone was like him, too embarrassed to say how he felt. What if she accepted one of these invitations?

  ‘What did these texts say?’ he asked.

  ‘The first one didn’t really say anything, it just asked a question.’

  ‘Well, what did it ask, then?’

  ‘“What is this book that you want so badly?”’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Pedro.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Sonia. ‘We didn’t ask for any book.’

  Faye smiled. Smiled! And said, ‘Right, I didn’t get it either for a moment. There was no number, no identification, I didn’t know where it was sent from or who was asking. Or what book they were talking about. Not at first.’

  ‘But why were they asking about a book?’ asked Sonia. ‘Were you at a bookstore and some guy wanted to approach you with a gift?’

  Bless her. That’s exactly what Matt had been wanting to ask, but he couldn’t even set his thoughts in order.

  ‘No, not at all. Actually, I was at home, alone, locked in my room, dancing and singing that I was going to make my modelling portfolio.’

  ‘You dance alone locked in your room?’ repeated Matt, trying to picture the scene.

  Sonia cut in. ‘Of course, Matt, everyone does that. In front of the mirror. Especially when we’re happy and we know that nobody’s watching. Are you saying you never dance with happiness?’

  Matt suddenly felt like an alien from a different planet because he had never in his whole life stayed alone in his room, dancing in front of the mirror.

  ‘I don’t dance either,’ protested Pedro, coming to Matt’s rescue.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Sonia assured them.

  It was probably a girl thing. Come to think of it, Matt remembered seeing his sister dancing alone at home more than once, though she wasn’t locked in her room at the time.

  Pedro brought them back to the subject. ‘Go on, Faye. So, you were dancing alone, you heard the phone beep, it was a text message asking which book you wanted …’

  ‘That’s right. And of course I didn’t get it right away. But then I realised what it meant.’

  ‘And what was it?’ The question came from all three, almost at the same time.

  Colin came into the waiting room just at that moment. But when he saw that they were deep in conversation, he gestured to them to carry on talking, indicating that he didn’t want to interrupt.

  Faye went on explaining, all practical now. This side to Faye sometimes caught her friends off-guard, because she was usually pretty vague.

  ‘Obviously, somebody must have heard what I was singing, someone who knew that I was excited about getting my book done – my modelling book, that is. It’s someone who must live on another planet, because they don’t even know that a model’s book is her picture portfolio. Nowadays, everybody knows that: it’s in the newspapers, in magazines, on reality TV shows.’

  It was an intelligent enough deduction. Except for two details. The first was that not everybody lives in this world of modelling and photographs and wouldn’t necessarily connect these things. The second was exactly what Sonia asked.

  ‘Somebody? But who? And how could they have heard you if you were locked in your room?’

  ‘You’re right, it’s a mystery. But I was so distracted and happy, dying to share my joy with somebody, that at the time I didn’t even worry about that. My mum had just told me that she thought my father was going to let me make my book. So I was super-excited, and I was singing. And as soon as I realised that was the book that this person was asking about, I replied.’

  ‘You replied?’ asked Pedro. ‘But you didn’t even know who’d sent you the message!’

  ‘I know, but at the time I didn’t think about it. I just got caught up in the moment. I typed a message in reply, explaining what a model’s book is, and pressed send. And hey presto! It disappeared from the screen. And the person obviously received it, because they soon sent me another message, saying “Oh, so you want to be a model!”’

  ‘Then what?’

  Colin had been
listening quietly all this time, not wishing to interrupt Faye, but when the conversation was running on, he decided to butt in. He greeted Sonia warmly and introduced himself to Pedro and Matt. Then he suggested they move to his office, in the next room, where they could talk privately.

  As he asked the secretary to bring some tea and coffee for everyone, he could hear Pedro asking again: ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then I replied what you all already know …’ answered Faye, starting to laugh. And the chorus all chimed in with Faye, as she said, ‘I-wanna-be-a-model.’

  They all laughed. She really did take this teasing from her friends in good humour. Still laughing as they sat around a desk in the office, Faye added, ‘What got me curious and made me think was the next message, though. Actually, the two messages that came next. Two questions, which arrived one right after the other – I hadn’t even had time to reply to the first one when I got the second.

  ‘If it’s a hacker, as you guys say, they must be a very curious hacker. First, he or she asked, “Why not an artist?” And when I was about to reply that I don’t really have the talent for the stage, that I’m not very good at singing and don’t feel like memorising all those lyrics and stuff – I’d prefer photography studios and the catwalk – I got another message, saying “Model what?”.

  ‘I tried to reply, to explain that I want to be a fashion model, to do ads and catalogues, of course – what else could it be? But I couldn’t any more. I only answered the first question. After that, it was useless. The message couldn’t be sent. Something had gone wrong. I could see that I’d lost contact with the person: it had all disappeared from the phone’s memory.’

  There was a short, frustrated silence. They were all wondering whether there was a connection between these text messages and the virus or hacker they had come to talk to Colin about. He must think so, anyway, because otherwise he wouldn’t have asked Faye to join in the conversation.