“It’s out,” I said, batting at the collapsing ceiling sheet with my arms. “The rat’s out! Quick, close the link!”
“Kinda busy here,” said Abby. “Samson, let go!”
“Ugh, rats!” said Miesha. “Achoo!” She scrambled away on her hands and knees, making a beeline for her link. “Only thing worse—achoo!—than cats!”
“Mags, grab that alley pillow.”
“I’m holding the ceiling up!”
“Achoo!”
“Miesha, wait, you’ve got my scarf—”
“Ouch! There, you’re back home, Samson.”
“Miesha, stop!” I yelled.
Abby looked up at the panic in my voice and spotted what had made my blood go cold: my patchwork scarf was wrapped around Miesha’s right ankle.
“Nope, you’ve got your—achoo!—instructions!” Miesha crawled faster, her head and shoulders already back through the link. “I’ve had—achoo!—enough of this—achoo!—zoo. This is like being in the worst—achoo!— Lisa Frank—achoo!—picture ever!”
“Miesha!” Abby yelled as I threw myself across the fort, reaching desperately—but it was too late. Miesha’s feet slipped neatly into the NAFAFA Hub, and the colorful tangle of my patchwork scarf went with her.
A gentle breeze swept through the fort as all the links snapped shut, and the ceiling settled over us like a soft and terrible cloud.
Twenty-Six
It was Abby who finally pulled the sheet away. My mom stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed, watching.
“Is that it, then?” she asked as we emerged.
Abby nodded.
“No more magic pillow forts?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, kids.” She watched us for another moment, then slipped quietly down the hall.
We sat together in the ruins of Fort McForterson, grieving and silent, until Abby clambered to her feet and reached out a hand. She had some impressive new scratches on her forearms, and her fancy braid was coming undone. I let her pull me up.
“So, they took away my scarf after all,” I said. “We’re back where we started.”
“Yup,” said Abby. She sighed. “But hey, at least we had some adventures in the real world for once.”
I gave a half smile. “Eh. It could’ve been better. More chase scenes. And a volcano would have been nice. And would it kill us to finally get to ride in a helicopter?”
Abby forced a laugh. “Oh, hey,” she said, bending down and pulling something out of the remains of the fort. She handed it to me. It was Miesha’s silver sunglasses.
“Huh, it must have been all the sneezing,” I said. “Hope she’s got a spare pair. Do you want them?”
“Nope.”
“Same.” I turned them over in my hand. They didn’t mean much now that we’d never get to be on the Council. I looked around, then leaned down and put them on Creepy Frog.
“Ha,” said Abby. She gazed at the fort, stirring the mess of fallen blankets with her foot. “Why did you call it Gromit’s Room, again?” she asked.
I looked at her. “Seriously? Welcome home, finally.” Abby had the grace to look a little embarrassed.
It was weird. With the loss of Fort McForterson, I’d gotten everything I’d spent the summer wishing for: my best friend all to myself, with no one around who might take her away from me. Only I wasn’t feeling even the teeniest bit happy. We’d lost our whole glorious, tangled, oddball new world just as I’d been getting the hang of it. And with our only scrap of First Sofa trapped somewhere we could only reach with a working link, there really was no way back.
“I can’t believe those Council kids are making everything so messy and complicated,” said Abby. “We’d do such a better job if we were the ones in charge.”
“Obviously,” I said.
She grinned. “Hey, can I see this super-mysterious key?”
I pulled it out. The metal gleamed in the late-morning light, the oak leaves curling around the sun shining in the center.
“So this,” said Abby, taking it and weighing it in her palm, “this is from France?”
“From le Petit Salon in the palace of Versailles. Yes.”
It was a strange thing to hear myself say, standing there with Abby in my quiet Seattle living room.
“But it doesn’t work in the door there?”
“Right. No one knows what lock it really goes to. Or why Louis hung on to it. It’s been a mystery for centuries.”
Abby held the key up to her nose. “This is a big deal, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, didn’t you say—” She stopped and narrowed her eyes, squinting. Her hand shot out and whapped my arm. I yelped.
“Ouch! Dude, what—? Again with the hitting!”
“Mags! Mags-Mags-Mags-Mags!” she said, batting me on the shoulder. “Remember the tree house, the one at Camp Cantaloupe I told you about? Made of driftwood and stuff that washed up onshore?”
“Vaguely,” I said. “What—”
“Remember how I said it had a trapdoor, but it didn’t open? The trapdoor was a solid piece of wood, an old one, with these metal bands across it, and a big heavy lock holding it shut. . . .”
“And?”
“And the lock was decorated with a sun surrounded by oak leaves.”
Abby held out the key. I looked at it. I shook my head. “No. No way. That is too much of a coincidence. It’s probably just similar.”
Abby’s eyes were as wide as moose nostrils. “I spent a lot of time trying to pick that lock, Mags. This key . . . it’s identical.”
My heart began to race as bits and pieces from the last few wild days whirled through my mind, stories and phrases reshaping themselves into brand-new patterns and puzzles. The storm on Orcas Island. The shipwreck tree house. The unknown ambassador. The sun-carved lock.
“So . . . ,” I said, my stomach doing a series of giddy backflips. “So, what do we think might happen if you and I go to Camp Cantaloupe, open that lock, and climb through the trapdoor of the tree house?”
Abby handed me the key and looped her arm through mine. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” she said, and she marched me down the hall and knocked on my mom’s bedroom door.
My mom appeared, carrying an armful of tangled sheets and towels. Abby grabbed my hand.
“Hey, Ms. Hetzger,” she said. “Sorry to bother you, but here’s the
