Austensibly Ordinary by Alyssa Goodnight

Probably not a plausible explanation for the missing words. I blinked and looked again. With a little zigzagging, scanning top to bottom, putting it all together, it read at times the answer is hidden in plain sight, and that had potential written all over it. My mouth dropped open and I heard my own audible gasp of astonishment. This really was a message. A secret message to me . . . A small voice in my head whispered, “Or, more likely, the journal’s previous owner,” but I shushed it.
    For one fleeting moment, I imagined this was a philosophical truism posed by the universe and magically appearing in the book like an image of the Virgin Mary in the rind of a cantaloupe. Good sense quickly took over and just as quickly subsided when I succumbed to the power of wishful thinking as my eyes widened in mingled excitement and disbelief. Clearly this was some sort of wonky spy gadget!
    As far as I was concerned, this was as good an explanation as any, and further, it was the one I wanted right now. Beyond that superior logic, everything was nebulous, but I had a good feeling about this. Questions and possibilities flooded through my mind and left me clinging urgently to this solution.
    Was this like Gharlie’s Angels? Would I be messaged instructions for secret missions via this book? Would I need to learn some karate kicks and maybe the wuxi finger hold? Was I ignoring a completely obvious explanation, letting my imagination spin away from me, altering reality to fit my daydreams? Was I hallucinating the whole thing? Mom had made grilled vegetable sandwiches for lunch—had she been experimenting with questionable outsourced mushrooms?
    Okay, wait! What about the dedication—how did that fit in? Could Jane Austen be the key? Were the remaining words some sort of book cipher key that used one of Austen’s novels to send a secret message? That would be freakin’ awesome! But which one? And how the hell was I going to figure out how to do that?? I was a British lit major. My code-breaking skill was limited to figuring out which of my students read the assignments based on their answers in class and which chose the Dark Side. And even if this were true, who the hell was sending the code?
    And let’s not even forget the personal questions: Why me? It was pure coincidence that I was at Torchy’s Tacos Thursday night, that I sat at that table and knocked the book from its hiding place. Was it meant for me to find? This was sounding embarrassingly ridiculous, even within the confines of my own mind, but how could I not ask these questions?? This stuff was always happening in books . . . Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan . . . And probably plenty of modern fiction as well, which I’d be up on if I weren’t so enamored with classic British lit. So why couldn’t it happen to me?
    A squeamish little shiver ran up my spine, and I felt compelled to rain on my parade a little. Did I really want any of this to happen to me? Did I want the responsibility involved with quests, secrets, and missions?
    It took me all of two seconds to decide.
    Hell yeah, I did!
    Still . . . I didn’t have a lot to go on. Other than at times the answer is hidden in plain sight. Right. I guess I’d figure it out. Or maybe an experienced sidekick would show up with all the answers.
    The sudden knock on my door was way too clichéd, but it sent my heart ricocheting around cartoon-style all the same. I slid my cagey little spy book under the couch and answered the door.
    Of course it was Ethan.
    I knew that. I’d been expecting him. I just hadn’t been expecting him to show up at the precise moment I was itching for a sidekick. I gave him a quick once-over, getting momentarily hung up on the slope of his biceps in the short-sleeved, oil-stained Austin City Limits T-shirt he had on. Ethan could be great sidekick material if he wasn’t always treating me like I needed to