The summer before I started high school, we moved to Santa Monica from the Valley to be closer to my dad’s work. I was going to start high school with a totally clean slate. The school district was excited to get me for the effect it would have on the state testing scores and, hence, the holy grail: real estate prices. If I could keep the schools looking smart, people would keep paying crazy prices for houses in Santa Monica. Yeah, no pressure. So a few weeks before the start of my freshman year, the administration was clamoring to meet me. My parents headed the whole thing off at the pass by meeting with the principal and various division heads to ask them to be low-key about my abilities. She will outperform on your state tests, they said, but tell no one and try to treat her like a regular kid in class. All of the faculty agreed to the lie: I was never to have a test handed back to me in public, and my performance on school and state exams would never be highlighted or celebrated. No one would ever have to know.
I also started seeing a hypnotherapist who helped me learn to manage my mind. Through (literally) mind-numbing mental exercises, he taught me how to turn my processing center off when I didn’t want to use it. The trick was to look away before my mind kicked in and to quickly replace what I’d seen with something easy to process, like a perfect circle or a tree. For some reason, asymmetries and irregularities in nature don’t bother me at all. A tree with a missing branch or a tulip with a few missing petals still seems to be in perfect balance. Usually, if a tree is lopsided to the right, the tree on its left will make up the symmetry. It’s easy to see the order if you just keep backing up. By the end of the summer, I got pretty good at controlling myself, but I have to admit it was a lot of work. I managed to learn to deal with uneven acoustic tiles, but I could occasionally become completely unhinged if someone sat down in front of me in a randomly patterned madras shirt.
In the spirit of new beginnings, my mom gave me the extreme makeover she’d always wanted to. She insisted I spend the summer growing out my hair and then took me to her salon before Labor Day for a few highlights. Cheryl, who had been putting these exact same highlights in my mom’s hair for years, seemed thrilled to see me. “Honey, I never thought a girl like you would set foot in this place. You sit down right here and let Cheryl change your life.” I’ll admit that the new ’do beat the mousy bob I’d worn since I was six, but I knew better than to hope it was going to change my life.
The wardrobe portion of the makeover didn’t go quite as well. Mom spent three days scouring the mall for better jeans, cooler tops, and higher heels. What she didn’t understand is that not only is my taste pretty simple, but that I actually can’t wear a stripe or a check or, God forbid, a plaid. The fabrics are never precisely even—made in China, not by NASA—and it’s too much to ignore for an entire day. The shoes killed my feet, so I always went back to the cowboy boots our housekeeper had left me before eloping to Costa Rica. Her name was Milagros, “miracles” in Spanish, and she had always seemed a bit magical to me. I loved to watch her stomp around our house, vacuuming and dusting in her huge denim dress and cowboy boots. And on her last day of work, she gave the boots to me with a secret smile. I tried them on once a week for three years until they finally fit. I’ve been wearing them ever since. But I have to say I adapted to the new jeans, because, let’s face it, better jeans really are better.
I settled into a comfortable rotation of four pairs of jeans and the exact same T-shirt in six colors, and my mom eventually gave up. “If you want to look like you’re in a uniform every day, it’s fine with me. I just want you to learn to express yourself.”
Maybe we’re not all meant to express ourselves,
I wanted to say to her.
Maybe some of us are better off blending in.
Mom always makes me think of the poster in my middle school guidance counselor’s office with the cat dressed in a joker’s hat. The caption read
BE YOURSELF.
(It was right next to the one with a cat desperately clinging to a tree branch:
HANG IN THERE!
). Great message, almost bumper sticker worthy, but the truth is that it’s a lot easier to be yourself in high school if you are five feet seven, 120 pounds, naturally athletic, quick with the funny comments, and good (but not too good) at everything, and if you know where to direct your eyes during a conversation. My mom is that person, and I imagine she was in high school too. She’s always herself, but why wouldn’t she be?
My goal for ninth grade was to ditch Digit and find a new identity. I wasn’t cut out to be Funny Girl, because I’m not funny at all. Sporty Girl was a genetic impossibility, and Slutty Girl? I found out later I don’t exactly have the stomach for it. I resolved to blend in, to be a blank slate reflecting the personalities around me without projecting any defining characteristics of my own. It’s easier than it sounds. Here’s the recipe: I never say anything that would be classified as too smart or too stupid. I never initiate a conversation but respond in a group with “Cool” or “Me too.” My favorite song is whatever everyone else seems to be into, and I’m dying to go see whatever movie you suggest. Honestly, it’s a pretty easy way to live. All you have to do is shut yourself down and become a mirror for whomever you’re talking to. (Also try not to use “whomever,” even if it is correct to use it as a pronoun modifying the object of the verb. It qualifies as Digit-speak.) I’d mastered the habit of responding to an assertion with the single interrogative word “Right?” by winter break of my freshman year. And I found myself well liked for the first time since elementary school. Not exactly happy, but well liked still.
That’s when I met the Fab Four, the It girls of Samohi. They are, in order of supreme coolness: Veronica (varsity tennis, daughter of Hollywood studio owner, legs that go up to my chin), Kat (varsity tennis, famous for shameless drinking and dancing), Olive (varsity tennis, signed up for the Biology Club in tenth grade by accident because she thought it was sex ed), Tish (varsity tennis, owns exactly twenty-six pairs of black Manolos). They seemed so happy in a deep way, like no one could get to them or take away the confidence that they got from one another. They were surprised to learn that their favorite band was also my favorite band and that I, too, dreamed of someday living on the beach in Santa Barbara. And they liked my boots. Seriously. They thought my boots were epic and that I had this earthy sense of style. I was in.
We’ve been friends for almost four years now, and it’s an odd dynamic between us. The four of them have everything in common: their clothes, the tennis team, an obsession with football stud Drew Bailey. I stick to my uniform, wouldn’t be caught dead in a tennis skirt, and can barely keep a straight face when Drew Bailey is speaking. But they like that I join in without making waves, and I like being part of a group. It’s almost as if I have a safe place to hide among them, where I blend in and no one sees me at all. It’s not perfect, but compared to all the other ways a girl like me can get through high school, it works. Well, it worked until I went and got myself kidnapped.
So in early April I was hanging out with the Fab Four watching that oh-too-scandalous Tuesday night teen drama when I noticed some numbers in the bottom left corner of the screen, directly across from the network logo in the right corner. These white, almost clear numbers flashed during the first minute of the opening credits of the show. I knew better than to mention it (remember, I’m masquerading as normal), and then the numbers disappeared. I forgot all about it until the next week when a different set of numbers popped up in exactly the same place. I scanned everyone’s face to see if they noticed. Nothing. The opening scene started and Jessica’s sister was hooking up with her crush, so I moved on.
But the next week a third set of numbers appeared, ever so faintly again, during the opening credits. They were quickly imprinted in my mind, and I felt the process starting. The numbers were lining up with the previous two sets. I was on the verge of slipping into Digit mode right there in front of my friends and in immediate danger of missing the opening scene. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my iPhone, and flipped to the photograph of a perfect oak tree that I keep for emergencies. After about forty-five seconds, I snapped out of it and got back into the show.
But by the time I got home, my willpower was all used up. No tree, no perfect circle, nothing was going to be able to distract me from that number sequence. So I went up to my room and decided to air out that part of me that doesn’t care whether I have lip gloss on or whether my thong is low enough to wear with my new jeans. I sat down at my desk and wrote each set of numbers. The first set was 55431. The second was 23185. Week three was 3211911, making the number sequence all together 55431231853211911. I stared at it until order took over the chaos, mostly. It was pretty basic. The first fourteen numbers are the basic Fibonacci numbers but reversed. A Fibonacci sequence is where each number is the sum of the two numbers before it. So start with 1 and then 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 is a classic one. 1 + 1 is 2, 1 + 2 is 3, 2 + 3 is 5, et cetera. So if you take away the 911, it’s just a reverse Fibonacci. Reverse Fibonacci 911.
That really got me nowhere, so I got in bed. The Fibonacci sequence was pretty remedial, and the only thing interesting about it was that it was backwards. I started thinking that the Fibonacci thing was just to get us to understand the concept of reversal. And then there was 911. Reverse 9/11? Was this some sort of message to honor the victims of the terror attacks? Was there someone at the TV station who was trying to make a political message about terrorists or foreign policy? Sure, that made sense as long as their most sought-after pundits were teenage girls watching weekly beachside hookups. And, oh by the way, if these girls also happened to be mathletes (a phrase that makes me cringe in its sarcasm) who would be able to decipher the code. Unlikely.
It couldn’t be an accident that the code unraveled in a nearly coherent way, but I had no idea what it meant. Surprisingly, I felt pretty relaxed after letting Digit out of the box and giving her a little exercise. I fell sound asleep.
Wednesday morning I woke up with the code on my lips. I walked the perimeter of my room, running my hand along the bumper stickers that covered my walls. I admired my work, the precision with which they were hung corner to corner, almost like bricks stacked to perfection. I stopped at 9/11
NEVER FORGET
. I ran my fingers over the numbers, 911. It’s the number you call in an emergency, of course. It’s a date and a phone number. But why put a reverse in front of it?
With my mind stuck firmly in computer mode, I decided I’d be late for school and just sit down and let it happen. Reverse 911. The numbers flipped in front of my eyes and actually reversed 9/11 to 11/9. November 9. It was now April, so it couldn’t be a date for something to happen soon. Did anything big ever happen on November 9? Not in my lifetime that I remembered, so I grabbed my laptop and Googled November 9.
As I read through the results, I got a lot of garbage like movie openings, appellate court hearings, and celebrity birthdays. There were tons of articles about John F. Kennedy. I guess the most interesting thing that ever happened on November 9 was his election as president in 1960. There were pictures of Jackie and him celebrating, and it all seemed so romantic. Her clothes and her gloves and her hair fascinated me. I ended up spending a half-hour poring through these articles. “JFK: The first Catholic President.” “JFK: How the Celebrities Loved Him . . .”
Finally, my dad knocked on my door. “Aren’t you still enrolled in high school?” he asked, looking at his watch.
“Got distracted,” I said, slamming shut my laptop and shoving it in my backpack. I was really late.
“Anything good?” he asked. My dad is always dying to hear about new theories I am developing or codes I am cracking, but he is careful not to make too much of it. I think that until I am eighteen he’d rather see me as a mall rat than a mathematician. But still, he can’t help but ask.
“Just a number game in my head. I’m making something out of nothing.”
I made it into school by second-period English class. Mr. Schulte doesn’t really like me because he thinks I don’t apply myself in his class. The problem is that I have English with the Fab Four, so I spend most of the time texting them about how hot Drew Bailey looks today or how gross Tessa Jergen’s toes are.
Anyway, halfway into class, Mr. Schulte opened his laptop to look up a quote from a poem he couldn’t remember, and his face totally changed as soon as he hit his homepage. No one said anything. Olive, the cleverest of the Fab Four, texted me:
Boyfriend dump him?
I thought,
Well, maybe,
because when he looked up, I saw a tear in his eye.
“Um, kids . . .” he started. “I just saw on the Internet that this morning there was a terrorist attack on a New York airport. A suicide bomber boarded a plane that was awaiting takeoff. Eight people were killed.”
Did my heart stop? Maybe. My mind started racing. The numbers, the code—were they revealing a target? I think I already knew, but I had to ask the question: “What airport was it?”
“JFK.”
The classroom erupted into a chorus of
Oh my God
s. “Oh my God, who could do something like that?” “Oh my God, my grandparents live in New Jersey.” “Oh my God, are they coming to L.A. next?” Oh my God. I heard them as if through a tunnel, their voices dissolving into a hum. I knew the details of the bombing were about to unfold, and I knew that I was about to freak out. My body somehow got me out of the classroom, into my car, and then home. I raced to my room and slammed the door like something was chasing me. I had the sneaking suspicion that maybe I was going crazy, that maybe this fake life I’d been trying to live had made my mind bend in a way it could not recover from. And who was I going to tell? “Uh, hello? FBI? Listen just as Kayla was unbuttoning Brendan’s shirt in the opening scene of my very favorite show, I noticed some numbers, and, well, I think I know how the terrorists are communicating. Sorry I didn’t call earlier . . .”