A Girl Named Digit (3 page)

No, that wasn’t going to play. And the whole thing could have been just a coincidence. Although I knew deep down that it wasn’t. The more I know about math, order, and chaos, the less I believe in coincidences anymore. Everything I look back on in life that I thought was a coincidence seems now as if it must have been by design. What I really wanted was for someone to tell me my math was wrong.

There was only one person I could talk to, so I got back in my car and drove a teensy bit too fast to UCLA. I parked illegally in front of one of the fraternity houses and ignored the super-cute shirtless guy sitting on the balcony who was yelling at me to move my car. As I ran, I wondered:
Could that guy be smart? Is it hard to get into UCLA? Maybe he’s from out of state? Isn’t it really hard to get into UCLA from out of state?
I made a mental note to look into this as soon as I relieved myself of the burden of having to save the free world from the bad guys.

I found my dad in his office, meeting with a bunch of professors. Well by “found” I really mean “burst in on and knocked down two.” Aren’t you supposed to know not to stand in front of a closed door? Anyway, I helped them up, apologized, and introduced myself all in one breath. My dad looked at me in horror but quickly realized something was up that was more important than this meeting.

“My wife has been training Farrah to make a grand entrance since she was two. She’ll be very pleased to hear about this.” Polite chuckles all around.

Dad suggested they continue their meeting after lunch, and the professors happily agreed, some of them backing out of the room in a don’t-hurt-me sort of way.

“So what have you got?” Dad asked me as he stretched in his chair.

“Terrorists. I saw the code they were sending on TV, and it was obviously a signal that an attack would be at JFK.” Dad was not exactly springing into action. “Have you even heard about it? Dad, there was a terror attack.” That was the first my dad had heard about the suicide bomber. He was horrified and was certainly paying attention now. He flipped open his laptop and went straight to CNN. Seeing it was so much more intense than hearing about it. The video clip showed Terminal 8 covered in smoke, fire trucks parked in the Arrivals lane where waiting taxis should be. People running from baggage claim empty-handed.

“My God, honey. Seven people. Five passengers and a pilot and a copilot. Plus the bomber.” My dad was shaking a little and sat back down in his desk chair. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I wondered if he trying to rub the image from his mind or if he was hiding a tear. He went back to the news story. “This is awful. It was a businessman from Connecticut, his wife, and their three children. Could have been so much worse if the bomber had been inside the terminal. It says here the airport’s been closed in case there are more attacks. Awful, just awful.”

I sat down on the couch opposite his desk. I don’t know much about shock, but I imagine this is what it was. The only hope I was hanging on to was that my dad would tell me my math was wrong, that I was overreacting, maybe going a little crazy, and that there was nothing I could have done to prevent the scene I just saw.

“Sweetheart, is this why you are here? Did they let you out of school early because of this attack? Do you want me to take you home? And what does this have to do with a TV show?”

I tried to shake my head clear, walked over to his desk, and wrote down the series of numbers. “Over three weeks I saw these numbers flash at the beginning of a TV show. When you line them up, this is what you get.” He looked at them for a long time, and I was starting to get impatient. “Nothing?”

“I see nothing, honey.” Dad looked at me with confusion. I met his eyes with a little hope.

“Okay, let me explain it to you; maybe I have this all wrong.” Even saying it made me feel lighter. Who did I think I was? Ha! It was probably some copyright information, and I was going to need a few more weeks in hypnotherapy. So I worked through the numbers, reversed them, got to 11/9, and then Googled it for him. I slowed down as I got to the end of my case, the dread in the pit in my stomach returning. I knew I was right.

My dad leaned back in his chair, hands folded on his lap, and smiled that I-love-you-no-matter-how-big-of-a-wack-job-you-are smile I always count on. “I see it, honey, but it’s a little far-fetched. I think the truth is that you are stressed out socially and bored academically. Maybe we should work on some college-level stuff at home, not all the time, but just enough to keep your imagination engaged and, well, productive.”

“My imagination? I’m not going crazy. Well, okay, maybe I am going crazy, but it’s not because I’m bored and need to see codes where they aren’t. I’m going crazy because I almost had this figured out at eight a.m., and this happened at ten. Dad, eight people were blown up.” I started to cry.

My dad put his arms around me. “Honey, this has nothing to do with you. This happened three thousand miles away to people you were never going to meet. Think about it. Do you really believe that the U.S. government, the FBI, and Homeland Security weren’t able to stop this horrible attack, but you could have? It’s, well, a little ridiculous, frankly.”

I was crushed. He was the only person in my life that I could count on to take me seriously. “Dad, nothing would make me happier than to be hallucinating this whole thing. Maybe spend a few weeks in a straitjacket or covered in Mom’s crystals and then just move on. But I have the worst feeling that I’m right.”

“This isn’t going to end here, is it?”

I shook my head.

“If you want the cable station that is broadcasting that show investigated, it’s not going to be by us, so don’t get any ideas, Nancy Drew. I’ll take you to the FBI or Homeland Security, but I can’t force them to take you seriously. This theory is a little thin.”

Eighty-five percent of me wanted to believe my dad, wash my hands of this, and watch the tragedy unfold on the news at arm’s length. Sometimes I really wish I were only 85 percent me.

Dad was worried about my mental health, with good reason. I think he wanted me to feel like he was on my side but also wanted someone in authority to tell me how ridiculous my theory was. So Thursday morning off we went to the Federal Building to FBI headquarters to line up with the rest of the fruitcakes who have secrets that may be of interest to national security.

We waited in line for about an hour until we were escorted into the Fruitcake Room. I didn’t see an actual sign calling it that, but you could tell by the way the people were escorted out in a thanks-for-coming-please-don’t-touch-anything-on-your-way-out sort of way that anyone who entered was considered a kook. Trust me, I recognized the look.

We were greeted by a guy, maybe twenty-one years old, in a wrinkled but expensive suit. “Welcome, please have a seat,” he said without really looking at us.

“You’re with the FBI?” Dad asked, horrified by how young this guy looked.

He met my dad’s eye. “Yes, sir. I get that all the time. I was an early matriculate in college and am on an accelerated path in the Bureau. But I assure you that I have adequate training to handle whatever concern you have brought in today.”

“Okay . . . I’m Ben Higgins, and this is my daughter, Farrah.”

“What have you . . . ?” He looked at me for the first time. “Farrah?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s your name?”

“Yes.”

My dad was losing his patience. “It’s her name. Can we move on?”

“Okay, sorry. What have you got for us?” he asked, straightening the already-straight papers on his desk.

My dad answered for me, which was annoying but a relief. “My daughter has run across a series of numbers that she believes were broadcast to signal the site of yesterday’s terror attack.” He laid out the story, wrote down the numbers, and explained what a Fibonacci sequence was in more detail than at all necessary. He can’t help himself when he starts talking about this stuff. He spouted out details including but not limited to the fact that Fibonacci was really named Leonardo of Pisa and wrote a book in 1202. He pointed out that Fibonacci sequences are primarily found in nature, in the way leaves are arranged on a stem or in the way branches form on trees. My dad has often told me that he didn’t go to a lot of parties in high school. Not much of a mystery there. He moved on to the code that I saw and how I connected it to the attack at JFK. My face got hot as I watched the FBI guy reacting to the story. Was he so stony-faced because he realized we had a clue to a terrorist network? Or was he biting the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh?

I knew the answer the minute he stood up, put both hands on his desk, and said, “Well, that’s a very interesting story. Thank you very much for coming in. And if you get any more messages, please give a call. Here’s my card. Goodbye.”

My father was annoyed. I mean, he didn’t believe it either, but I think he wanted the guy to at least give me props for a good story. “You have to admit that it is strange that those codes can be arranged to give such a clear message. Is there anyone available to at least investigate the station that is broadcasting this show?”

“I know a lot of parents have been upset about the inappropriate nature of that program and . . .” What? Was he like eighty years old now?

“Not the program. The codes,” my dad went on. “My daughter believes they’re connected to what happened yesterday at JFK . . .”

“Of course. We will look into it. Thank you for coming in.” Was I paranoid, or did I see a tiny smile in his eyes as he shuffled us out, official Fruitcakes.

“Well, there you have it.” Dad shrugged as he handed me the agent’s card.

John Bennett, it read. My future kidnapper.

I missed school Thursday because of the trip to the FBI. I missed dinner too because I couldn’t bear to make one more trip through the living room, where my parents were glued to the continuing coverage of the attack at JFK. CNN’s commentators confirmed eight dead and ran and reran their biographies. The dad was a wealthy hedge fund manager who had battled with cancer as a child. The wife had been heavily involved in UNICEF and was a great swimmer. The children were beautiful and bright and full of potential. The youngest was a six-year-old girl with black curls and big green eyes that promised a future of mischief and fun. The pilot had just reunited with his estranged wife. The copilot had been a competitive bridge player. Footage streamed of burned aircraft parts being tagged and removed from the scene, and the bodies being carried out in bags, as casually as sofas on moving day. I begged them to change the channel, but there was no escaping it. ESPN ran and reran the story of the basketball team that never made it to Dallas for some game because of the airport’s closing. The local news examined the safety of LAX and ran interviews with the head of airport security and the local Homeland Security chief. CNBC had the financial impact: the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3 percent because of the attack.

My mom led me away from the TV, back upstairs to my room. “Darling, you are going to have to let this go. Just breathe in peaceful energy.” She literally breathed it in, eyes closed, and looking like it tasted good. “And breathe out all that negativity, all the violence.” Yeah, no thanks. It wasn’t quite that simple.

I lay in bed all afternoon and into the night, staring at the ceiling, looking for answers in the words that swam above me. They seemed trivial compared to the tragedy that I could have prevented. What was I doing with my life, hanging out at the mall pretending to shop for stuff I’d never wear? I had always known that I had a gift and had often wished I could return it for store credit. But the truth was that my gift came with a responsibility, and I had completely turned my back on it. I really hated myself at that moment, despised the part of me that wanted to feel safe so badly that I’d disappeared. I stared at the sticker on the ceiling directly above me: “Let him who would move the world, first move himself—Socrates.” Great, now Socrates was mocking me.

My body ached with the desire to fall asleep, but I never did. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the interior of that plane. I tortured myself, imagining the expressions of the waiting passengers at the moment of the explosion. I wondered about the dead and what they had hoped to do when they landed. All I had to do was tune into those codes a little earlier, and the fact was that I hadn’t put it together because I’d been too busy hiding from Digit.

I imagined myself on trial. “And how exactly have you been spending your time, Miss Higgins?” Several scenes passed before my eyes. A carefully worded note passed to Veronica in math class, agreeing wholeheartedly that Julia Garcia had gotten fat. A mad dash to cover my early acceptance package to MIT with a dishtowel when Kat stopped by. When exactly was I going to tell people I was moving to Boston?

Or my personal favorite: The night I was supposed to hook up with Drew Bailey. It bears repeating. At the beginning of our sophomore year, the Fab Four heard that Drew Bailey liked me. They rushed over to me, bubbling with the news. I shrugged and maybe shuddered a little just remembering the time I saw him shove four hamburgers in his mouth at once to impress a cheering cafeteria. But then I saw it in their eyes, total envy and admiration. I was going to have to like him too.

So we all went out that Friday night to a huge party where he said he’d be. And as excited as these girls were, the thought of hooking up with Drew was like the time my mom made me try liver and onions. I was going to have to plug my nose, close my eyes, and get it over with. Of course, everything—including liver and idiots—goes down easier with something to wash it down, so I made a beeline for the keg the second we got to the party.

With three sips of beer in me, I stood casually with the girls, careful not to look around or meet his eye. I’d read that trick somewhere—it’s in a guy’s nature to like to hunt, so you have to make him think he saw you first. I tried to be alluring, a little hair flip, laughing too much at whatever the girls were saying. I repeated my mantra over and over: “Oh my God, me too!”