“No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “I get it. I’m vice director. I should go first.” Abby lowered her eyebrows and sat back.
I took a deep, slow breath, preparing for the worst, and crawled forward into the mysterious fort.
And immediately almost threw up, because I was facing the wrong way.
From my perspective, I’d just pushed forward into a gray cushion standing on its side. But it turned out that from the perspective of the new fort, I was actually under the cushion, meaning my entire world gave a quarter turn up and back in the space of about two seconds. It was not my favorite sensation.
“How-nuh-whaha?!” I said, clutching at the pillow.
“What is it?” asked Abby behind—or, no, beneath me. “Is it a spaceship full of oxygen crabs? Are you dead?”
I ignored her and tried to get my bearings.
I wasn’t in a spaceship, or in an underwater trench, but I wasn’t in a pillow fort, either. I was on a sofa, under a musty-smelling blanket that seemed to be just lying there normal style. Light was seeping through around the edges, but no sounds were coming from the room or spaceport or whatever was outside to give me any clues. It was just me and the sofa and the blanket and silence.
It was strange. Very strange. Without a pillow fort how had I linked to wherever I was? I left my legs dangling back in Seattle in case I needed to make a speedy getaway and felt around carefully in the gloom. My hand hit something: a small, stiff piece of paper.
“I think I found a clue,” I called back—or down, heaving myself all the way up through the link. I sat beside the gap, squinting at the paper in the dim light, and my stomach gave a happy lurch as I recognized the last postcard I’d sent Uncle Joe.
“Hey, you were right!” I called. I tucked the card back between the pillows, slipped out from under the blanket, and emerged into what was absolutely without a shadow of a doubt my uncle’s cabin.
Okay, this was awesome.
The cabin was small, just two rooms. The one I was in held the sofa, a desk covered with notebooks and electronic equipment, and a twin bed. The other had a basic kitchen setup with mini appliances, two folding chairs, and a tiny table. The place smelled old and musty and might have been completely boring, except for the whales plastered over absolutely everything.
Poster-size glossy photos covered the walls: whales diving, whales swimming, whales leaping, whales slapping the water with their fins. There were smaller photos tacked up between them, filling every corner, and even more piled on the table and spilling onto the floor. Most of them had official-looking numbers across the bottom, so they were probably important scientific documents, but Uncle Joe had them pinned up on every surface like a teenager obsessing over a favorite band.
I felt a rush of affection for my dorky uncle. If I had to share Abby and our linked-up forts with someone, he was the only acceptable choice.
“Well, I almost puked,” said Abby, clambering out of the sofa. “We could totally charge kids good money for that ride! How weird that your fort just linked to a regular sofa, though.”
I looked back at the sofa. It definitely was weird. How on earth did a cushion with a blanket over it count as a fort? And what was making it all work? We had to figure it out soon. We’d been lucky to end up somewhere safe, but if the rules were this loose, well, things could go wrong—very, very quickly.
Abby whapped me on the arm. “Dude, stop staring at that sofa like it’s possessed,” she said. “We can figure it out later. C’mon, we’re in Alaska!”
She ran around exploring every corner of the cabin, discovering a closet full of cold-weather gear and a door to a tiny bathroom papered with more photos. “I guess your uncle’s not that into whales, huh?” she said. “I wonder where he is, anyway.”
“Out researching, I guess.”
We went to the window over the desk.
“Whoa, that view,” said Abby. “I would love to work up here.”
It was a bright, clear day. The window in the main room showed rocky arctic tundra turning into craggy hills, then snow-covered mountains in the distance. We ran to look out the window over the kitchen sink and saw more of the same, plus a rusty red pickup truck and a shed that looked like it might hold a generator. But it was the window in the front of the cabin that had the real view: a beach of black rock and silver-blue ice curling around a dark, gleaming, wave-flecked bay.
“It’s just like the pictures on his postcards,” I said, drinking in the light and the water and the great big sky. My heart began pumping hard. For the first time all summer I was free. No more filling in time, no more bumming around my house and yard waiting for Abby to get back and my summer to start. I was stepping out into the wide world. I could already see myself striding across this beach, my head held high, seagulls flocking to my call, and the sun shining down as I went to meet my destiny with the wind blowing through my hair.
“Look, there he is!” said Abby, pointing to a motorboat bobbing out in the bay.
She pulled open the front door, and we ran down the steps, shouted in shock, and ran right back in.
“Man! It’s freezing in Alaska!” Abby said. We raided the closet, bundling up in coats and hats and sweaters at least three sizes too big, and headed outdoors again. The air was fresh beyond belief and smelled like seaweed and stone and cold
