This was a third code, one that Finn had seen only once before, when they were practicing.
This code meant, Come back immediately! We found something!
Two
Emma, Moments Earlier
The cop had rung the doorbell, stepped back, and then stood perfectly still, like a statue dropped from the sky onto Mr. Mayhew’s doorstep. Emma let out a deep sigh as she watched through Mr. Mayhew’s security system—which she’d called up on her laptop the instant she heard a car outside.
“Police, but . . . just one,” she reported to Chess and Natalie beside her. “And he’s so young I’m not even sure he shaves yet. His uniform looks like this is the first time he’s wearing it. So . . . this is an Officer Nice Guy. Not anyone with actual news about Mom and Ms. Morales.”
Emma could have gone on with the details that made her sure this was just a rookie checking in, not a top detective who’d found an important clue. The cop kept his eyes trained directly ahead, not darting around watching for potential danger. His police car was neatly parked in the driveway, as if the cop had taken the time to aim for an invisible box with exact, ninety-degree angles. (Emma really would have preferred to see a cop car driven hastily over a curb, and abandoned in a rush.)
But most of all, she knew this cop didn’t know anything because . . . he couldn’t. All the cops thought the kids’ missing mothers were somewhere on planet Earth, in the same dimension as the cops themselves. So that was the only place the cops knew to look.
If she’d been in a more playful mood, Emma might have enjoyed imagining the cops’ reaction to the news that they needed to extend their missing persons search to an entirely different dimension.
But Emma hadn’t been in a playful mood in two weeks. Not since she’d turned around in her own basement and seen a wall of broken shelves and dirt in place of the tunnel that, as far as Emma knew, might have been the only route between the two worlds.
What if the kids themselves had destroyed the only route for getting back into the other world to rescue their mothers?
Or, if another route existed, what if they never found it?
“It’s . . . nice that the police want to make us feel better,” Emma’s older brother, Chess, said faintly, from his spot curled up with a different laptop in Mr. Mayhew’s La-Z-Boy recliner. Chess had spent so much time lately cooped up inside staring at computers and codes that his skin had taken on the same pallor as a mushroom. Even his voice sounded slightly mushroomy.
At the other end of Emma’s couch, Natalie only snorted.
“Finn’s not here, you know?” Emma said. Usually Finn was the one they dispatched to speak to the cops, or grown-ups in general. As Mr. Mayhew put it, Finn “could charm paint from a wall.”
“Fine,” Natalie huffed. “I’ll send the cop away.”
Natalie unfurled herself from the couch. She’d been lying upside down, her neck bent back over the edge of the couch, her dark hair streaming down like a flag behind her, her own laptop held downside up at eye level.
“Um, Natalie?” Emma said, pantomiming smoothing down her hair, because Natalie’s was flipped around so wildly.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Natalie muttered, though she did comb her fingers through her hair as she headed for the front door.
The day Emma first met Natalie, Chess had said she was a Lip Gloss Girl—one of those older girls who cared a lot about how she looked. The world really had gone crazy if Emma had to remind Natalie to pay attention to her appearance.
But as soon as Natalie pulled open the door, she transformed into Natalie the Imposing, Natalie in Charge. In spite of herself, Emma listened and watched carefully, as if she were observing a science experiment. Once they got their mothers back, Emma fully expected to go back to her original lifetime goal of making as many mathematical and scientific discoveries as possible, just for the fun of it. She didn’t envy Natalie’s very different talents. But Emma was curious—how exactly did Natalie do it?
“Oh, Officer . . . Dutton!” Natalie exclaimed, adding the name so quickly that the poor cop probably thought she remembered him, not that she’d looked at the name badge pinned to his uniform. “Do you have news for us? Did you find my mother? Or Mrs. Greystone?”
“N-N-No,” the cop stammered, as if Natalie were his boss and he was terrified of being scolded. “We’re trying, though. I promise, we’re trying.”
Emma felt kind of sorry for the cop. She knew what it was like to try your hardest and still fail.
“Oh,” Natalie said, visibly deflating. Emma knew Natalie well enough now to see: This was Natalie being kind. What Natalie really wanted to do was stomp her feet and scream at the top of her lungs and demand her mother’s return.
Emma knew, because that’s what she wanted to do every time she talked to a cop about her own mother’s disappearance.
The cops can’t do anything, Emma reminded herself. It’s all up to Chess, Finn, Natalie, and me.
“I’m sorry,” the cop said. “I just came to bring you these.” He held up two large white garbage bags, both full to the point of bulging. “I know you and your dad said to donate all the flowers to charity, but people keep leaving stuffed animals and toys at the explosion site, too. And, well, the guys down at the station thought the little kids might want to pick out a few things for themselves before we give the rest away . . . I can come back tomorrow for anything they don’t want . . .”
He thinks I’m a little kid, Emma thought. When he talks about “little kids,” he means me and Finn.
That made Emma want to stomp and scream, too.
She was not used to being angry all the time. Before her mother disappeared, Emma could have counted on one hand the number of times she’d been really mad. Now the fury popped up at the weirdest times.
Sometimes Emma even got mad at numbers. Twelve—that was how many days had passed since the last time Emma had seen her mother. Three hundred and seventy-two—that was the number of attempts Emma had made at solving the secret code her mother had left behind.
And . . . one. That, Emma was convinced, was the number of right answers waiting out there. One, out of an infinity of possibilities.
No wonder she was furious.
No wonder she was having trouble eating and sleeping and . . . even doing math.
Emma heard the front door shut, and she realized she’d zoned out and missed the rest of the conversation between Natalie and the cop.
“Okay,” Natalie said, dropping the garbage bags to the foyer floor and starting to dig through them. “Humor break. One for you—” She tossed something yellow and orange toward Chess. “And one for you.” Emma saw a blur of purple and pink headed her way.
Emma held up her hands to fend off whatever it was. Something bounced from her fingertips just as she saw Chess snatch a little toy tiger cub from the air.
“Oh, er, thanks,” Chess said, blushing. He tucked the stuffed toy into the chair beside him as if he intended to treasure it forever.
Seriously? Emma thought. Ohhh . . . because Natalie picked it out for him?
Sometimes Chess could get a little weird around Natalie. Sometimes Emma wanted to shake him by the shoulders and shout, Snap out of it!