Abby shook her head, smiling, and trotted back to me. “This place is so great!” she said, turning and waving at the badminton girls. They waved back. I hesitated, then gathered my courage and waved too, but they were disappearing into the maze and didn’t see. I looked around to find Abby and Noriko already several pillows away. I had to jog to catch up.
At last we reached the enormous pillow with the metallic clinking sounds behind it, and Noriko stopped and faced us. Just down the wall a round pillow covered in clear plastic swung open, and a boy wearing swimming goggles and a tank top stepped into the Hub. He was covered from the waist down in thick soap bubbles. Abby giggled.
“Hey, ma’am,” the boy called, waving at Noriko.
“Hi, Connor,” she said. “How was the match? Are you still undefeated?” Connor grinned and gave a double thumbs-up, then strutted out onto the main floor, where he was immediately hit by a badminton birdie.
“Okay,” Noriko said, turning to us again. “Business, Maggie Hetzger. What did Murray tell you about this room?” She put a hand on the massive pillow door.
I pulled my question-packed brain back to what we were doing. The Hub was very distracting. “He told me this is where you collect all the coins that fall down the back of sofas,” I said.
“Basically correct,” said Noriko. “Which means the room is a little noisy. Get ready.”
She gave a push and the pillow swung open, releasing a solid wall of sound. We followed her inside.
It was like stepping into the engine room of one of Kelly’s spaceships. A forest of gleaming metal tubes stretched far overhead and descended in a tangle through a metal-grating floor at our feet. The noise coming from them was incredible: an echoing roar of clinking, clanking, plinking, banging, and clanging.
Noriko led the way through the maze of twisting pipes to a wide hole in the floor with a railing around it. Below us the tubes were spilling out a steady stream of shining coins into huge vats. We all put our elbows on the railing and leaned over to look.
“So,” said Noriko, shouting over the noise. “I’ve asked you here today because this is the only place I can speak freely without potentially being overheard.”
Abby and I exchanged a look.
“This isn’t just about coin collecting, then?” I asked.
“No. That part’s pretty obvious, I think.” She gestured to the vats below. “This is a much bigger issue.”
“Ooh,” said Abby. “Intrigue!”
“First of all,” said Noriko, “I want to apologize for the attack. I didn’t want it to happen. I thought what you did for Kelly should have counted as a good deed; but others on the Council didn’t and they forced my hand and I’m sorry. I kept the attack as mild as I could, though.”
“Mild?” Abby said, her smile dropping. “You call that mild? My dad said he never thought he’d be this disappointed in me in his entire life!”
“You seriously damaged our relationship with our parents,” I said.
“Well, yeah,” said Noriko. “That is the point of our attacks, Maggie. I told you that going in. Anyway, I did my best to minimize it and now I’ve apologized, so let’s move on.” She straightened up. “Okay, so the super exciting secret you two don’t know yet is that you’re actually caught up in the middle of the biggest power struggle NAFAFA has ever had. Things are changing fast around here, and with your help I can make sure everything turns out the way it should.”
“A power struggle over what?” asked Abby.
“Territory,” said Noriko. “And this is important, so pay attention, please. Right now, the four major NAFAFA networks each control a different section of North America. The easy way to explain is to say I control the right-hand side of the continent, Murray controls the top, Miesha controls the bottom, and Ben controls the middle. You might want to close your eyes and picture that.”
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “No way am I getting Lisa Franked again!”
“Ooo, good save!” said Abby, nudging me with her elbow.
Noriko snorted. “Oh, come on, that’s Miesha’s trick, not mine. I promise I’m not going to start talking about teal zebras and magenta glitter kittens. You can keep your eyes open, just picture the continent like I said. Notice anything unaccounted for?”
I spread out a map in my brain, plugging in the Council members where Noriko had said, then nodded. “The left side.”
“Exactly. And that’s because for the entire history of NAFAFA there’s never been a functioning network on the west coast. Until yours.”
Abby straightened up too. “Wait, for real?” she said. “How is that possible?”
“No one’s sure,” said Noriko. “We keep an eye out, obviously, but we’ve always just assumed scraps of the First Sofa never made it that far. You two total novices are officially the first, and according to the NAFAFA charter that means once you’re accepted, you automatically get a seat on the Council and every pillow fort built along the west coast of North America from now on will be under your control. That, Maggie Hetzger, is why your group is a special case. Congratulations.”
Abby raised both hands above her head. “Whoo!” she said. “Go, Camp Pillow Fort!”
“Huh,” I said. “Wow.”
“And after we join, can we add new forts?” Abby
