She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

Author:Marcus Sedgwick [Sedgwick, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781596438033
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

354

It’s a pretty weird number to choose if you’re setting out to choose a lucky number, but Dad says that’s not what it is.

For ages, he’s had this thing about the number 354. He says he first started spotting this number years ago, when he was a teenager, that he sees it again and again, so often that he decided it had to mean something.

He calls it his number, or sometimes just the number. As if there are no other numbers in the world, which is obviously far from the case. There are an infinite number of numbers, or so our maths teacher would have us believe.

A while back, Dad decided to record every instance he comes across of this number. It was on his first trip to New York as a published writer when he started thinking about it again. He was up for some book award, and there was a big dinner happening in Manhattan. His publisher sent a limo to collect him from the airport, and it had a three-digit number on it: 354.

He checked in at his hotel—a hotel his publisher had booked for him—and the girl behind the desk handed him his key—yes, that’s right: 354.

Since then, as we found out in the Black Book, he’s recorded every single time he’s seen it since; it goes on for four closely written pages, according to Benjamin. It’s as if he’s collecting them. Like, I suppose I have to say it, he’s obsessed.

It’s appeared in phone numbers, on lockers, in limited-edition prints, as page counts in books, as flight numbers, as the price of things, as house numbers, and software versions. In short; it’s appeared in every single way a number can appear, frequently more than once.

Dad believes this number appears more than any other number, and he also believes it means something.

I told him he only thinks he comes across it more often because he’s looking for it. And that if he concentrated on some other number, he’d see that one more often instead.

“I know what you’re saying,” he said. “Every day, you’re bombarded by numbers, usually long strings of phone numbers. And yes, you’re right, occasionally I see 354 in the middle of those numbers and they’re the ones I focus on. But tell me why it is I see this number all the time when there are only three digits in question? The chances of seeing 354 when given a three-digit number should be about one in 899, right? In 899 times, every number from 100 to 999 should come up once. Yes?

“I promise you,” he said. “I see 354 way more than once every 899 times.”

I thought I had him then.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “If there were an equal chance of each number coming up. But there isn’t.”

“No?”

“No. Like the lockers at the swimming pool. I always go for the one on the end if I can so I know where my stuff is. But Benjamin goes for the highest number there is, but that’s only two hundred and something.

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