You will need this to communicate with me.
The magazine was what she’d needed all along.
With a forehead slap and renewed enthusiasm, she got out a notepad and pen and wrote out the coded text from Ryan. She noticed, looking at the numbers, that the first set in the group of three could get as high as 34, the second number in the set not as high and the third numbers were the lowest.
Jaz opened the magazine and started to turn the next page, her finger about to cover the page number when it dawned on her. She flicked to the end of the book, forty pages in this magazine. She was onto something, she could feel it.
The first number was 16, so she turned to that page. Next was 9, so she counted down nine lines in the text. Then a 4. She counted in four words.
Meet
She tried the next lot of numbers in the bracket.
Me
‘Well, look at you working hard…oh you’re reading a magazine. And here I was thinking you were actually doing real work,’ laughed Anna.
Jaz smiled and shrugged. ‘What can I say…I got distracted?’
Anna rolled her eyes before sitting down with a new pile of books and getting out her notepad and pen.
Jaz quickly got back to the next set of numbers.
Outside
Meet me outside. Yes, she was sure this was right. But it seemed so simple.
She found the other three words and read it all together.
Meet me outside school twelve tomorrow.
Holy cow, she’d done it. Twelve tomorrow, that’s today. Jaz checked her watch, fifteen minutes to twelve. Well, she was cutting that a bit fine.
What could she say to Anna? If she went now she wouldn’t be here for lunch and there’d be too many questions to answer. Jaz looked at her phone. ‘Oh, I got a text from Ryan; he wants to take me out for lunch and talk.’ The lie slipped like warm butter from her tongue.
Anna’s eyes grew large. ‘Well what are you waiting for? You’ve been dying to talk to him for ages. Go see what he wants.’
Jaz gave Anna a funny look. ‘So you’re actually agreeing to me sneaking out of school and wagging?’
‘What can I say, it’s romantic.’
‘OMG, Anna, I worry about you,’ Jaz laughed as she threw all her stuff back in her bag, relieved the lie was easy. Well there was some truth in there, plus she knew what Anna would read into it.
‘Okay, I’ll catch ya later.’
‘Yes, I want to hear all about it,’ whispered Anna as she waved her goodbye.
Jaz had to contain herself, she felt like skipping out of the library. So not a good look and it would draw attention to herself.
She carefully walked the corridors, ducking under the widows into classrooms as she headed along her normal escape route. The doors at the front of school were always monitored, so she’d figured this way out her first year here. She crawled past the teachers’ lounge and through their exit door to the balcony. After a quick scan for witnesses, she made her move onto the roof and across to the wall. She jumped down between the two pines, pulled her hoodie out from her bag, and put it on before stepping out.
As she looked up, she saw Ryan watching her from further up the road, expecting her to come from the front of school. He was leaning against his car wearing jeans and a black singlet, smoking a cigarette. She walked up to him casually.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
Ryan shrugged as a smile tugged at his lips. ‘Not really, it’s more for camouflage uses. You can get away with standing in some places if you’re smoking. People tend to think that’s the norm.’
‘Hah, I’ve never thought about it before but I guess you’re right, you just assume they have stopped for a smoke.’ Jaz stood opposite Ryan as he put out his cigarette. She realised just how much she’d missed him, from his mysterious eyes to his short cropped hair.
‘Wanna jump in before you get busted?’
Jaz smiled and headed for the passenger door.
‘So you figured out the code?’ he asked as he drove away from St Christian’s.
‘Yep, eventually and I didn’t even ask Anna for help. I just needed to put the two bits together and when I finally figured that bit out, it was easy.’
‘It’s a simple code but effective as only you and I have the magazine and if we thought it was compromised we would just need to destroy the magazine and change it to something else.’
‘Cool. But…’
Ryan glanced across the car at Jaz, his eyebrow raised again. ‘But?’
‘How did you get my number? Do you have secret satellite stuff or programs that hack into phone data bases?’ Jaz asked while Ryan laughed. ‘What?’
Ryan smiled. ‘Jaz, I asked Taylor for it.’
‘Oh.’ Then Jaz felt like a twit and laughed at herself.