Warning! Warning! Cover blown! “Is he?” I said. “I guess. I mean—why would I know?”
Abby’s smile definitely qualified as a smirk. “Just thought I maybe saw you looking during dinner tonight is all.”
I lobbed Creepy Frog at her. She caught him one-handed and tucked him behind her pillow.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Night, Mags. Sweet dreams.”
“G’night, you complete menace.”
I flicked off the lamp and stretched out, smiling. Abby was right: it had been a day. I mean, Alaska! Alaska-Alaska-Alaska! That bay was seriously the most perfect place ever. A whole big playground of land and water with only one friendly grown-up in it. One friendly grown-up who specifically refused to find out what we were up to. It couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d dreamed it up myself.
And it changed everything. Fort McForterson, Fort Comfy, and Fort Orpheus: that was our summer now. Sleepovers at Abby’s, mornings in our forts, afternoons in Alaska escaping the heat, dinner with the twins, and all the very best games ever. Abby would come around. She’d realize soon that there was no point hanging on to her camp obsession when what we had was so much better. And I hadn’t even gotten started yet. I was going to plan and direct and organize and make this the greatest summer vacation in history, just for her.
I closed my eyes, completely content, and was about to drift off when a soft, distinct thump sounded from behind the pillow that led to Fort McForterson.
I sat up, squinting blearily into the dark. Ugh. Not this again.
“Samson?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
Silence.
“Um, Uncle Joe?”
More silence.
“. . . Mom?”
Nothing.
Frowning, I crawled through the link, switched on the light, and got the fright of my life. There was someone in the fort with me.
But it wasn’t my mom. And it wasn’t Uncle Joe.
It wasn’t even Samson.
Seven
It was a girl, younger than me, with a baseball cap over her wavy black hair, sitting calmly in the center of the fort with her arms crossed, looking for all the world like she owned the place.
“Whoa!” I said. “What? Hi?”
“Maggie Hetzger,” said the girl. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes . . . ?” I’d never seen this girl before in my life. How did she know my name? And how long had she been here in my very own personal pillow fort? And hey . . . where had she even come from?
I started with the obvious question. “Who are you?”
“My name is Carolina,” said the girl. She pronounced it the long way: Cah-roh-LEE-nuh. “I’m here to escort you to a meeting.”
“A meeting?”
“A meeting. You need to come with me, Maggie Hetzger. Now.”
We stared at each other. This was too weird. Thirty seconds ago I was half asleep in Fort Comfy, and now here I was being ordered by a perfect stranger to attend some sort of meeting in the middle of the night.
The secret-agent corner of my brain kicked slowly into gear, analyzing the situation. Hmm. Based on the available evidence, this might be some type of adventure.
“Well, we should go then,” I said, deciding to roll with it. “I’ll just get Abby.”
Carolina shook her head. “Only the leader of your network is invited to the meeting.”
The what? The leader of our network? If she meant our linked-up forts, then that meant me, but Abby definitely wouldn’t want to miss this.
Except, said a quiet little voice inside me, you missed out on camp. Why shouldn’t Abby stay behind this time? She got her solo adventure. Why not you? Isn’t it your turn to come back with stories to tell?
“That’s me,” I said, swallowing hard. “I’m the leader.” My stomach swooped—my first solo adventure!—but my heart gave a twinge. Abby hadn’t left me behind on purpose; she’d had no choice. This wasn’t quite the same. Then again, it didn’t sound like I really had a choice either. Right?
“We know you are,” said Carolina. “This way.” She reached out and seized a blue-plaid wall pillow. It was one of the ones Abby had pulled down the day before, so I knew for a fact it led nowhere. I was just about to tell her so when Carolina yanked it aside, and a shining gold cushion appeared behind it.
I felt my jaw drop straight through the floor.
Carolina pushed the metallic cushion out of her way and crawled into the impossible link. I followed, dragging my jaw along with me . . .
. . . and staggered to my feet amid clamoring voices and a dazzling golden light inside a massive, gargantuan, how-am-I-not-dreaming-this pillow fort.
“Whaha—?” I said intelligently. “Whohow—?”
Whoa.
It was cavernous, at least five times bigger than the cafeteria at school. There was enough room to fly a helicopter. Carolina and I were at the outer edge, standing against a wall of mismatched pillows that curved away to either side, pillow after pillow after pillow circling the entire space. A bright patchwork bedsheet-and-blanket dome arced above our heads, rising to at least sixty feet high in the center, where a chandelier the size of a house shone like a sun made of fireworks, filling the whole place with that shimmering golden light.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and looked down from the ceiling to the jam-packed floor beneath. And oh, that floor.
It was full to overflowing, a packed maze of sofas and pillow forts of every shape and size, with little paths and roads cutting between them. My eyes pinged around, trying to see everything at once. A fluorescent-teal sofa palace! A double-decker fort with a swing set! A row of minifridges! An avenue of bookshelves! An actual ball pit! And hey, it was the middle of the night—how were there kids everywhere?
Kids were chasing each other along the narrow paths, crawling in and out of the forts, pulling books off shelves, jumping on sofas, and clambering out from behind pillows, all as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
And just like that I was nervous. This was my first day
