Lost and Wanted(117)

    Neel looked startled. “How’d he get back in here?”

We hurried around the corner, and found Jack standing just inside the metal door.

“Can you come talk to Simmi?” he asked me.

“How did you open the door?” Neel asked, but Jack was tugging his ears.

“Mom, please—Simmi’s really upset.”

“Upset about what happened before, with the interferometer?” I asked.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so. She was fine, until a few seconds ago. We were just playing on the computer. But then she put her head down, and she wouldn’t answer me.”

I thought then that I understood: Simmi had been frightened by what happened in the lab, and it was only hitting her now. It was a normal reaction to such an unusual event.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me talk to her.”

“You go ahead,” Neel said, unlocking the door for us. “I’ll come in a second—I have to go find Vlad.”

“You think he’s the one who let Jack in?”

Neel made a skeptical face. “I doubt it. That would be against all our protocol.”



* * *



—

Jack and I found Simmi sitting at one of the computers in the control room. When we came in, she swiveled around to face us and rubbed her eyes. Then she smiled.

“I guess I took a nap,” she said.

Jack looked incredulous, and I hoped he wouldn’t argue, especially since everything seemed fine.

“See,” I said, running my hand over the back of his head. “She’s okay.”

Jack still had too much reverence for Simmi to contradict her, but I could tell that her account of the ten or so minutes we’d left them alone in the control room didn’t coincide with his version of events. And I had to admit that it was hard to believe—a nine-year-old falling asleep in an unfamiliar environment, in the middle of the day.

    “I’m fine,” Simmi assured us. “But I need some water.”

“I have a water bottle,” I said, feeling around in my bag for it. “I think it’s empty, but I can fill it up for you in the bathroom.”

“I can do it,” Simmi said.

I didn’t want to let either one of them out of my sight again. “I’ll go with you,” I said.

“I can go by myself,” Simmi said calmly, taking the bottle from my hand. “Really—I remember where it is.”

I gave in, but I opened the door to the corridor and pointed her in the right direction, just in case.

“She wasn’t asleep,” Jack said urgently, as soon as Simmi was gone. His face was determinedly flushed: it was important to him that I understand. “She put her head down, like this—” He demonstrated, sitting on the chair Simmi had recently vacated, hugging his knees and putting his forehead against them.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe she was just recovering. That was pretty scary in there for a second.”

Jack shook his head, clasping the armrests of his chair and tapping a rhythm with his sneakers on the hard floor. “I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t talk to me. She was all curled up. That’s why I came to get you.”

“Did Vlad let you in?”

“No—the door was open.”

“It couldn’t have been—you need an ID.”

Jack shrugged. “It was.”

“Maybe the tech—Eddie—let you in?”

Jack screwed up his face, considering. “I didn’t see anyone. I pushed the door and it opened—I was just looking for you.”

I thought it was possible that Eddie could have heard Jack knocking and opened the door from the inside. Jack, in his hurry to find me, might not have noticed him. But I couldn’t understand why the tech would let Jack into the lab—a child, alone—without alerting us. I was going to ask Jack to start again and explain from the beginning, but just then Neel came back into the control room. He looked perplexed.

    “Vlad’s checking the vacuum pump,” he told me. “I asked him to do it, just to be sure everything’s working the way it should be.”

“And it’s okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Neel said. “But he didn’t let Jack in.”

“It must’ve been someone else.”

“I didn’t see Vlad,” Jack agreed.

Neel glanced down at him. “Vlad’s the only one here, apart from us.”

“And Eddie,” I reminded him.

“No,” Neel said. “Eddie went home. He was on his way out when we saw him.”

“Is there another tech?”

“Not today,” Neel said. He looked around the room, alarmed. “Where’s Simmi now?”

“She went to the bathroom for some water,” I said.

Neel raised his eyebrows at me. “Please, no more excitement.”

“No excitement. I’ll just go check on her.”

“I can stay here with Jack,” Neel offered.

“He can come with me.”

“Hey, you’ll stay and hang out with me—right, buddy?” Neel insisted, and a part of me rebelled—was he trying to practice parenting? But then I saw the pleasure on Jack’s face.