Sticky removed his spectacles, polished them, and replaced them. After a moment’s consideration, he removed them and began polishing again. There seemed to be a speck on the lens he couldn’t remove.
“Quit stalling,” Milligan said. “Nothing’s going to harm you in that room.”
At last Sticky nodded, settled his glasses on his nose, tucked away his polishing cloth, and passed through the door. Milligan closed it behind him and went away without a word.
“How do you like that?” Kate said. “He didn’t even tell us what to do, or how long it would take, or anything.”
“Big surprise,” said Reynie.
Soon Milligan came back and announced that it was Reynie’s turn. He gave no hint about what had happened to Sticky.
“See you on the other side,” said Kate. “Wherever that is.”
Reynie took a deep breath and went in, the door closing behind him. He found himself in an empty room. On the opposite wall, above another closed door, hung a large sign that read: CROSS THE ROOM WITHOUT SETTING FOOT ON A BLUE OR BLACK SQUARE.
Reynie looked down. On the cement floor just inside the door, where he now stood, was a large red circle. On the other side of the room, by the opposite door, was another red circle. Between these circles the floor resembled a giant checkerboard, with alternating rectangles of blue, black, and yellow. Reynie studied the pattern. There was far more blue and black than yellow. So much more, in fact, that he soon realized it would be impossible to cross the room without stepping on blue or black. The yellow parts were so widely scattered that he doubted even a kangaroo could hop from one to the other. He looked at the sign again, and after a moment’s consideration, he laughed and shook his head. Then he strode confidently across the room, into the other red circle, and out the far door.
Sticky and Milligan stood waiting for him beyond the door. They had been watching him secretly through tiny holes in the wall. Sticky looked confused and started to ask Reynie something, but Milligan shushed him. “You boys can watch, but you must be quiet,” he said. He went away to tell Kate it was her turn.
Moments later they saw Kate step boldly into Room 7-B. After reading the sign, she studied the floor, considering whether she might manage to leap from yellow to yellow. At last she shook her head, rejecting the idea. Next she looked from one door to the other, gauging the distance. Then, taking the length of rope from her bucket, she fashioned a loop at the end, and with one expert throw lassoed the doorknob at the far side of the room. Fastening the other end to the doorknob behind her, she pulled the rope tight, knotted it securely, and climbed up. “Now, if I only had that paddle,” she said aloud to herself as she walked along the rope, “I could hold it out in front of me for balance.”
Indeed, a paddle might have helped, for halfway across the room she nearly fell (the boys caught their breath), but after wobbling back and forth and wheeling her arms around, she recovered. After a few more careful steps, she hopped down into the other red circle.
“Wow!” Sticky whispered. “She did it!”
But before Kate could join the boys, Milligan appeared and took her back to the starting point to try again, this time without her rope, which he informed her would be returned upon completion of the test.
“That’s hardly fair,” Sticky whispered. “Nobody told her she couldn’t use a rope.”
Kate, meanwhile, was removing all the items from her bucket and stuffing them into her pockets. When she’d finished, her pockets bulging ridiculously, she unscrewed the handle from her bucket and tucked it through her belt. Then she was ready. Kicking the bucket onto its side, she hopped onto it and began rolling it forward with her feet, like a circus bear balancing on a ball. Rolling first this way, and then that, she zigzagged across the room to the other red circle.
Reynie and Sticky looked at each other in awe. Who
Yet once again, as Kate reattached the bucket handle and emptied her pockets, Milligan entered the room. He returned her to the starting circle, this time taking away her bucket and tools, which she handed over with evident reluctance. She recovered quickly, however. Before Milligan had even closed the door behind him, Kate shrugged and cracked her knuckles, flattened her palms against the cement, and lifted her feet into the air above her. And this was how she crossed the room, walking on her hands, not once setting foot upon the floor.
“Never mind,” said Milligan when she opened the door. He handed her bucket back. “You pass.”
“What I don’t understand,” Sticky was saying to Reynie as they followed Milligan down a dark stairway, “is how you passed that test. I’m glad, of course, but I don’t see how you did it. I crossed on my hands and knees so my feet didn’t touch any blue or black squares, and Kate did her acrobat tricks, but you just walked right across the room. You were stepping on dark squares left and right!”
They had reached the bottom of the stairs now. Milligan ushered the children into a damp, dimly lit underground passage, where centipedes twisted away at their approach and other slithery creatures they heard but didn’t see retreated into the shadows. By this gloomy route, he was leading them to what he had called their “final testing place,” which struck Reynie as having a particularly ominous sound.
“Just walked right across?” said Kate. “Reynie, how did you get away with that?”
“It was another trick. Those weren’t squares on the floor — they were
“Gosh, that’s true,” Kate reflected.
Sticky slapped his forehead. “I got my pants dirty for nothing? I crawled across the floor like a baby for
“You’re hardly stupid,” Reynie said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Just where is here, anyway?” Kate asked. “Hey, Milligan, where are we?”
Without looking back or slowing down, Milligan said, “Right now we’re passing under Fifth Street.”
“I don’t suppose we could walk above ground, could we?” Sticky asked. “Where there’s sunlight and the path isn’t wet? Where it doesn’t smell like spoiled fish?”
