(Jenny's POV)
It's morning break and Frank is showing me around the school as I've finished teaching for the day. But I'm not really listening. I just keep mentally telling myself to never ever judge a book by cover. Frank is certainly not the person I'd thought he would be. He is youngish, probably in his thirties. He's tall and slim, with slick back dark brown hair tied up in a little low ponytail and he wore three-piece rimless glasses (the kind Steve Jobs had), complete with facial stubble. But cute as he is, I couldn't get together with him. Not with the big secret I'm holding. I don't want him to know that I'm…
"Miss Brownstone!" Frank calls me out of my thoughts. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine…" I squeak. I clear my throat. "I mean, I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine."
"You sure?"
"Actually, no." I decide to come clean. "It's just… and please don't take this the wrong way. But it's just… you wasn't how I pictured in my head."
"Oh? How did you picture me?"
"Older… balder… fatter… and pervy."
Frank smiles.
I giggle stupidly. "Pretty stupid, right?"
"If it makes you feel any better, I thought you would be someone that I pictured in my head, too."
"What as…?"
"I thought you were the kind of person that would drink heavily, smoke marijuana and only show movies while sleeping through class."
"Well, I guess that taught us not to judge a book by its cover."
"Yeah."
As we continue to walk around the school, I can feel that Frank is staring at me. I glance at him, but he quickly looks away. It's obvious what he's thinking about.
"She's married to my mum's brother," I say.
"What?" he asks.
"That's how Mrs King is my aunt. She's married to my mum's brother. That's what you wanted to ask me, right?"
"N-no. Of course not."
I raise an eyebrow.
"OK, yes."
"Thought so," I say with a smile. "Look, I know my Aunt 'Mione can be an uptight bitch, but she's like that because she wants what's best for everybody."
I then explain to Frank that when Aunt Hermione was a child, her dad ran out on the family. So since she was the oldest, she had to look after her brother and two sisters while her mum had to work two jobs.
"Oh. Wow, I didn't know that," he says.
"Oh, you weren't meant to know." I wave him away. "But if you repeat what I said to anyone, I will come after you."
"I won't tell a soul. Cross my heart."
I laugh at his comment. We continue to walk around the school long after the bell signalling the end of break goes off. Ten minutes after the bell rung, Frank and I end up by a staircase that leads to caretaker's storage cupboard located on the ground floor of the school.
"Well, that's it for the tour," says Frank. I didn't want it to end. "Since you've finished teaching for the day, what will you be doing for the rest of the day?"
"I suppose I could go into town, do a bit window shopping at Westfield," I say. "Or I could, I don't know… continue hanging out with you?"
Before Frank could answer, his mobile goes off. As does mine. I reach into the back of my jorts pocket and pull out my mobile. One unread message. I unlock my phone and read the text.
Call me by the school gates – Z
I knew exactly what that text meant.
"Who's that?" Frank asks me.
"Oh, it's my sister, Livi," I lie. "She's bored, so she me to go shopping with her. What about you? Who was that?"
"Mr. Flatley," he says. "Says that there's a drain blockage that needs unclogging in one of the toilets."
I wrinkle my nose, not wanting to imagine how bad the blockage is.
"So… I guess I'll see you later," he says.
"Yeah. You, too." I exit the staircase and make my way down the corridor.
I didn't mean to lie to Frank, but it's the only way I could make this excuse for what I was really doing. I haven't being entirely honestly about who I really am. The text message that I received on my phone meant I had to call "Z" about my next mission. Yes, that's right. I'm the Cat. I was the one who stopped that robber and humiliated him last night. I've been doing this gig since I left college. I spent the summer training to become the crime-fighter that I am now. While my mum and Aunt Hermione think that I was searching for jobs during the summer and my four years at university, I was actually busy fighting off the bad guys. The person who trained me is Zeke Williams. That's what the Z stands for in the text. He was a child prodigy who began college at the age of eleven (after completing the Year Six), started graduate studies at fourteen, and earned an MTech (Master of Technology) degree at sixteen. As well as training me, Zeke arranges missions for me, supplies me with various gadgets and arranges transportation.
I come out of the school and jog across the playground to the gates. I flip open the top of my heart-shaped wristwatch (that also acts as a communicator – one of the many gadgets that Zeke has invented) and Zeke appears on the screen.
"Ah, Jenny," he says. "How was your first day of teaching?"
"Zeke, you texted me to come outside the school to ask me that? I'm hanging up," I say, ready to flip the top down.
"Why? So you can go back and hang with your new friend, the caretaker?"
I start to feel hot around the cheeks. I forget that Zeke can hack into anything – including CCTV footage.
"Right. That's it!"
"No, no. Come on, Jen, I was only messing," he says. I reconsider my decision of hanging up on him. "By the way, just the read the paper. You certainly know how to humiliate men, don't you?"
"You don't think I went too far?"
"Pssh, please! Tying a robber up to a tree in nothing but his boxers with a cat face drawn on his torso? No way!"
"I'm sure you didn't text me to talk about last night, did you?"
"No. Take a look at this footage from the Bank of England Museum at five A.M. this morning."
CCTV footage of the Bank's collections display room appears on the screen of my wristwatch communicator. The room contains collections of banknotes and coins, books and documents, pictures, furniture, statues, silver and even real gold bars that are kept in the Rotunda area. The collection are either hanging on a wall, behind a glass case or behind a red velvet rope. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened until one and a half minutes into the footage when in the Banknote Gallery, a black blur snatches the collection of banknotes, leaving behind broken glass cases. What the hell?! Another CCTV footage that shows the Regal Coinage Room, the blurry robber comes back and steals the collection of coins, than the silver and finally, in the Rotunda area, the gold bars. Within minutes, the blurry robber had left the room half empty.
"What the hell was that, Zeke?!" I demand.
"That, Jen… is a robber with incredibly fast feet," says Zeke. "The robber stole a collection of issued Bank of England notes dating from the late 17th century from the Banknote Gallery, a selection of the coins issued by the Royal Mint from 1694 from the Regal Coinage Room, a small collection of silver and the bars of gold from the Rotunda area. The collection that this robber has stole is worth billions!"
"Don't tell me that my mission is to catch this guy? How the hell am I meant to do that?"
A Parcelforce van stops outside the school. A portly man with dark hair with moustache and blue eyes climbs out of the van with a parcel.
"Parcel for Jennifer Brownstone?" he asks. I put my hand up and nod. "Sign here, please."
I sign my name for the parcel.
"Cheers. Have a nice day." The man returns to the van and drives off.
"I don't remember ordering anything," I say, confused.
"Your gadgets are in that parcel," says Zeke. "They contain your jetpack backpack and a little doo-hicky I call the Slo-Mo Bomb. Hollow, cherry-sized spheres that'll slow down anything."
I open that parcel and pull out the cat head-shaped backpack and a small see through bag containing the Slo-Mo Bombs.
"Looks like I better get changed," I say. I press the blue button above the keypads and within a flash; I'm in my catsuit, complete with cat ears, mask and utility belt. I strap the backpack onto my back and pocket the bombs in the canisters of the belt.
"I'm gonna go and check out the museum to see if this speedster left any clues. I don't think the museum will be his only target," I say.
"I'll be checking out any buildings he might try and go for. Be careful, Jen," says Zeke, switching off.
And with that, I pressed the green button of my wristwatch communicator and the airplane wings of the backpack extend outwards. The backpack splits open, exposing the engine and igniting the flames. I launch into the air and I make my way to the Bank of England.
(Frank's POV)
After watching Jenny leave down the corridor, I make my way down the stairs to the storage cupboard, but not to collect the equipment needed to unblock the toilet. There is no blockage. I didn't mean to lie to Jenny, but I couldn't actually tell her what the message on my phone was about. And I couldn't tell her that I'm not actually a caretaker, that's just a cover. I'm really an MI9 agent. The text that I received was from the Head of MI9 saying that there has been a bizarre robbery at the Bank of England Museum and she wants my agents to look into it. My agents are pupils who attend this school – Rose Gupta, Carrie Stewart and Oscar Cole. They're part of an MI9 project called MI High: school pupils, who work as undercover spies, as other spies' covers have either been rumbled, revealed or the spy has retired.
Reaching the door of the storage cupboard, I slide open the light switch by the door of the door, revealing the thumbprint scanner. Placing my thumb on the pad, the small light above it flashes green giving me entry to the room. Closing the door behind me, I reach out for the mop handle by the door and pull it towards me. An alarm sounds for five seconds before the floor underneath me gives out. As I travel down the elevator at a speed of 100mph, my overalls are replaced by a blue suit and a black and white patterned shirt. My glasses are gone and my hair is let down. After my change, the elevator comes to a stop and the doors slide open. Stepping into MI9 HQ, 230 feet below the school, I ring-drop Rose, Carrie and Oscar. After a few rings, I hang up and make up way to the lab to get the gadgets needed for this mission.
After finding the perfect gadget, I sit by the three computer screens and start thinking about Jenny. She's certainly not like any girl I know. The girls during my time in university were a tad too serious. I mean they were pretty and very clever, but they didn't know the meaning of having fun – unless in their own world, their definition of having fun was studying all weekend on that paper on thermodynamics, heat transfer, energy conversion, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning). But Jenny isn't like that. She's cute, smart, sweet, straight-forward, but most of, she's fun. The perfect girl for me.
SWOOSH!
I hear the elevator doors open, breaking my thoughts. I turn on the swivel chair and see that Carrie, Oscar and Rose have arrived, their school uniforms replaced by their black spy uniforms. I stand up, grabbing the remote for the computer screens. Time for the briefing.
"Team, take a look at this," I say, switching the middle screen on with the remote.
CCTV footage of the Bank's collection display room appears on the screen, collections of banknotes and coins, books and documents, pictures, furniture, statues, silver and gold bars.
A minute into the footage, Carrie asks me, "What are we meant to be looking at, Frank?"
"Just keep watching, Carrie," I say, not taking my eyes off the screen.
Thirty seconds later, a strange-looking blur snatches the collection of banknotes.
"Whoa!" Oscar exclaimed.
"What was that?!" Rose asks.
Seconds later, the blur takes the collection of coins, silver and the gold bars. Within a matter of minutes, the room was nearly virtually empty.
"What just happened there?" Carrie asks, not believing in what she just saw.
"That, Carrie was an unbelievably speedy robber making off with valuable possessions worth billions," I say.
"But how did they manage to empty a room in minutes?" Oscar asks.
"My guess is this person possesses a pair of running shoes which allows them to run at an incredibly fast speed," says Rose.
"Precisely," I say. "Your mission is to find out who this person is and stop them."
"And how are we meant to do that, Frank?" Carrie asks. "This person is like Speedy Gonzales."
"I have just the thing for this." I grab two aerosol spray cans from the desk. "This is the Aero-Slo Spray Can – spray and anything or anyone will be slowed down by the particulates."
"Cool!" says Carrie, taking the cans.
"We better head to the museum to see if the robber left any clues," says Oscar.
"I'm gonna stay here and see if I can slow the footage to see who this robber is," Rose suggests.
Nodding in agreement, Oscar and Carrie leave HQ via elevator, while Rose sits down by the computers and starts tapping. Clearing my throat, I move to the lab where I begin to draft new ideas for another pet project. After a few minutes, I realised that all I've drawn on this paper is Jenny's name, hearts and Frank + Jenny in the heart drawings. As much as I wanted to distract myself in work, Jenny is the only thing I can think about. Beautiful, good-hearted and smart. I can't help but wonder what else could make this girl anymore special.