Free Jump Start by Susannah McFarlane Page B

making things make sense. One plus one was two. It was always two—it didn’t just sometimes decide to be three or maybe four and then say ‘only joking, two really’. Five times five had to be twenty-five, not 467 or 34,589! It would be twenty-five tomorrow and the next day and all the days to infinity. It didn’t matter what you were wearing or whether you invited it to a sleepover or not, it would always be twenty-five. Emma wished that some of the girls at school could be that reliable.

    It was actually maths that started it all—‘all’ being the one thing that was not so average about ten-year-old Emma Jacks. Emma was a secret agent. She was EJ12, a field agent and code-cracker in the under-twelve division of SHINE, a secret agency that protected the world from evil-doers.
    Emma was selected to join SHINE when she won a primary school maths contest. SHINE needed clever thinkers, especially people who loved maths,and didn’t seem to mind if they were still in primary school. SHINE needed agents to help them crack the codes and thwart the missions of evil agencies like SHADOW. SHINE tried to defeat SHADOW by intercepting their secret messages and foiling their dastardly plans.
    In some ways, Emma would have been just as happy simply cracking the enemy codes and letting some other field agent go on the missions, but that was not how it worked. SHINE had a motto (quite a lot of mottoes actually), ‘If you crack the code, you take the load.’ So Emma, or EJ12, or just EJ, as she was called when she was on duty, would be sent on missions all over the world.
    When she was EJ12, Emma seemed to be able to do incredible things. She could scale high walls, fly hang-gliders and skate across glaciers. She remained calm under pressure and always seemed to know what to do in a crisis. In fact, she seemed to be able to do things that would completely freak Emma Jacks out—why was that? Was it the specialequipment SHINE supplied? Emma wasn’t sure but she often wished EJ12 could sometimes go to school instead of her and she wished EJ12 could be the one who had to do gym comps!

    Emma pulled her mobile phone out of her gym bag. She flipped open the screen, hoping for a message. Nothing. It was a very cool phone though, a cross between a game console and a phone, with lots of applications. Many of the apps were top-secret, hiding behind the normal ones on the screen. When SHINE wanted Emma for a mission, her phone would vibrate and the screen would flash aqua. (You could select your own alert colour and Emma had, of course, chosen her favourite.) But right now the phone wasn’t doing anything. It was most definitely, unfortunately, doing nothing at all.
    Well, at least she had a mobile phone now, even if it wasn’t flashing. At first, Emma’s parents had beenfirmly against letting her have one.
    â€˜You don’t really need a mobile, do you Em?’ her mum had said. ‘Why can’t you just use the home phone?’
    Use the home phone? Really, was she serious? Emma loved her mum, but she did wonder about her parents sometimes. Why did they think that mobile phones were just for calling people? What about music, photos, text messages, apps and joining the twenty-first century.

    Suddenly there it was—saved by the flash! (A nice aqua flash.) Mission alert! Excellent, thought Emma. No more no-jumps today!
    â€˜Sorry Lauren, I’ve got to leave early,’ said Emma, grinning at Hannah as she headed towards the door.
    â€˜But you’ll miss your next turn on the beam,’ said Lauren.
    â€˜Oh, what a pity but sorry, can’t help it, got to go,’ called Emma as she grabbed her bag and rushed out of the gym.
    Not for the first time a mission alert from SHINE had saved Emma’s day!



Emma ran to girls’ toilet block, quickly checked that no one was there and turned on the hand-dryers. The noise of the hand-dryers would be important in