by Will Taylor
Ben looked like he wanted to laugh and scream and cry all at the same time. “And what makes you think I’m willing to do that, Maggie Hetzger?” he said, his voice going squeaky. “You lost my key! Why should I do anything for you at all?”
“Because Abby is missing in some sort of . . . I don’t know, other network because of that key. You’re the ones obsessed with it, so you should help find her! Get your members to search the forts. Check with the other Continental Councils. Dig through the Archives for leads on where she went. You can’t just do nothing!”
“And you can’t just expect NAFAFA to drop everything and look for her!” Ben shot back. “This is not my responsibility. And believe me”—he flapped his overstuffed clipboard in the air—“I have plenty of those these days!”
“But what if she’s hurt? Or trapped? Or in mortal danger?” I said. “What if she fell into an undersea bunker full of armies of diamond-plated scorpion crabs, and they made her talk and found a pillow fort to break into, and now they’re only minutes away from a full-scale invasion of the Hub? I don’t understand how you can possibly believe this isn’t your problem!”
“Because it’s not, Maggie Hetzger.” Ben pushed his sunglasses up firmly. “I’ll let the rest of the Council know that you’ve lost the Oak Key and inform you when we make a decision. I’ll even allow you to keep this new network up until then. But that’s all.”
“No, no, no!” I was already shaking my head. “Not good enough. I know Miesha will want to help find Abby. Tell her I want to talk to the whole Council face to face.” I pointed a finger at him. “I mean it. Go tell her now.”
Ben smiled. It was the same unpleasant I-know-better-than-you smile I remembered from the summer before. “The thing is, Maggie Hetzger,” he said, “your little fort here is in my network’s territory, so I control what access you get to NAFAFA and the Hub. Even Miesha would back me up on that. And I’m saying no.”
Ugh. He was so smug. I couldn’t even look at him.
But the truth was I did need him on my side. He could ruin everything if he wanted. He could shut down my new network. And I had no backup plan if this didn’t work out.
“Fine,” I said, trying to keep my face calm while I strangled one of the pillows. This was so unfair. I hadn’t even gotten to use any of the gear in my supply pack tonight! “If that’s how things are, I guess I’ll just have to wait to hear back from you.”
“That’s how things are,” Ben said. “I’m glad you recognize the situation. And since you don’t have my key, there’s no point in wasting any more of my time with this conversation. Come on, Kelly, let’s go. We’ve got incident reports to write.” He nodded to Charlene and me and backed out of the link, still smiling smugly.
“Kelly,” I whispered as she pulled me into a goodbye hug. “Make sure Miesha finds out about this. Tonight. Please. Abby’s my best friend in the whole world.”
“You got it,” she whispered back, her eyes wide. “I don’t want Abby to be lost either!”
I gave her a silent high five, and we pushed our pillows into place together. I looked at the closed link, my stomach knotting.
For the second night in a row, events had not gone how I’d planned. I’d never imagined I’d make contact with NAFAFA but be denied entry to the Hub. Why on earth did I keep ending up still stuck at camp?
I crawled out of my cramped fort into the darkness of the cabin, and Charlene followed. The moonlight had moved, splashing over a macaroni-and-seashell portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall.
“So,” Charlene said. She cleared her throat. “Now what?”
“Now we wait, I guess. We just have to hope Kelly tells Miesha. She can handle Ben.”
Charlene stared at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I mean we’re hoping the girl we just met tells this other girl who outranks Overall Boy what’s going on, so she can make him do what we want and help us rescue Abby.”
“Oh, okay,” Charlene said. “Sounds good. Should we take the forts down now and set them up again tomorrow?”
I shook my head. “They need to stay up so Miesha can contact us through the link. We’ll have to convince Ms. Sabine to leave them alone somehow.”
“That’s easy,” said Charlene. She crossed to the supply shelves and grabbed two pieces of paper, scribbled on them with a marker, then returned and pinned one to each fort.
“ART IN PROGRESS,” I read. “PLEASE DON’T TOUCH. MAGGIE AND CHARLENE.”
“She’ll never take them down now,” said Charlene. “We can tell her it’s a conceptual installation piece or something. She’ll love it.”
“Perfect!” I said. “Thanks.”
We looked at each other in the darkness. We’d definitely covered some ground tonight—shared experience and all that. Things between us were . . . different.
Charlene scuffed the floor with her shoe. “So, back to the cabin now?” she asked. I nodded. “You’d better let me climb out first then,” she said. “I don’t think that window likes you.”
Outside, the moon was sliding behind the trees, camouflaging us in dappled silver light as we made our way along the edge of the field.
“Hey, what were you doing on that golf cart?” I said after a minute.
Charlene stopped. So did I. I could almost hear her deciding whether to trust me.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “But you have to promise not to tell anyone.” I raised my hand and promised. Charlene took a deep breath. “I was on the golf cart because I was stashing all those confiscated cantaloupes in the moose trap I’ve got hidden in the woods.”
A strange feeling swam through my brain, like I was going backward through that spinny link from my old pillow fort up to Uncle Joe’s in Alaska.
“Will you say that again, but slower?” I said. Charlene repeated her unbelievable sentence. “But . . . but what? Why? How? Explain.”
Charlene sighed. “Way back when I started here, I didn’t know a single person, and camp was so big, and I was so little, and I was totally scared. I know I said I wasn’t earlier”—she raised a hand, cutting me off—“but I was, okay? Then they told us the ghost moose story at the end of the first day and I was like, yes, I am so here for this. The idea that there was this big, fuzzy, friendly moose patrolling the woods and keeping watch over my cabin at night was what got me through. It became like my personal guardian, even though I’d never seen it. I believed so hard.
“After a while I made real people friends, and by my second year I was a pro Cantalouper and on Litter Patrol and everything. I still wanted to see the ghost moose—like, I really, really wanted to see it. But I never did. Friends of mine claimed they’d seen it, and we heard all the stories over and over about the campers it’s rescued, and I was always like, ‘Why not me? Why am I not getting to see it? I’m the perfect Cantalouper! I want that spot in camp history too! I need it!’ So near the end of my third year, I got this idea and started building a moose trap hidden in the woods.”
“When you say ‘moose trap,’” I said carefully, “do you mean an actual trap? Like with a snare or something?”
Charlene’s bangs bounced as she nodded. “Yeah. Well, not a trap that could hurt the moose, just somewhere it would get stuck so I could see it. It all started when we were out doing science drawings and I found this little hill with a big tree on top. The dirt was all washed out from under the tree, making a tiny cave, and I thought if I lured the moose in there, its antlers might get caught in the dangly roots. Then I could say hi and maybe get a photo. I started sneaking out at night to work on it—digging out the cave, making it more of a trap—and stashed at least one cantaloupe in there the whole time I was at camp. More if I could get them.”
“But no sign of the moose?”
“Nope. By the start of my fourth year, I was getting super frustrated, so I tried staying in the cave at night, acting lost. I danced the camp dance in there. I retold the legend of the ghost moose word for word. But still, nothing.”
�
��You’d think just the cantaloupes alone should get it to show up,” I said. “That’s how the story goes, anyway.”
“Right?” said Charlene. “But nothing. That’s why this year I was like ‘You’re twelve. Let the ghost moose go, Charlene.’ And I almost did. Only when Director Haggis announced he was confiscating everyone’s cantaloupes, eight-year-old-me took over my brain and yelled, ‘That means every cantaloupe in this camp is about to be up for grabs!’ And I was like, sure, why not? Give it one last try. Go for maximum impact. So I volunteered to help collect them, spied on how that teenage counselor drove the golf cart, snuck out tonight, and brought the entire rolly bin of cantaloupes right to the cave.”
Holy. Turtle. Poop. Rule-following, counselor-helping, tattletale-ing Charlene Thieson was actually a superspy-level secret rebel.
“And you know what’s surprisingly hard?” Charlene went on. “Stacking cantaloupes. That was annoying. But they’re in there, and I’m going to check the trap in the morning and see what I’ve got.” She shot me a glance. “The thing is, I’m not sure I really believed it would work. After all this time, I’m kind of used to being disappointed. But now I know all this weird pillow fort stuff you’re doing is real, then maybe that means . . .”
“The Camp Cantaloupe ghost moose is real,” I said firmly. “I’ve seen it. And I bet you will to. It definitely sounds like you’ve earned it.”
Charlene’s expression was hard to read, somewhere between relieved, excited, and uncertain.
“Thanks,” she said.
A soft whispering began as the breeze picked up, shifting through the trees, curling through my hair and ruffling Charlene’s bangs.
We stood in silence just long enough for things to get uncomfortable. Was I supposed to say something now? Was she? Then an owl hooted overhead, and we both jumped like frightened bunnies, and together we headed for the cabin.
I smiled a little as we tiptoed through the door. I still had plenty of headaches to deal with here at camp, but after tonight, being stuck with Charlene as a buddy didn’t seem like one of them. After tonight, I didn’t mind quite so much.
Back in my bunk I used a splotch of moonlight on the wall to write two postcards’ worth of updates to Abby.
Dear Abs,
Okay, first things first—I’m sorry you’re not rescued yet. I’m working on it!
I tried out Plan Patchwork tonight to try and get to the Hub for backup, and you’ll never guess what happened. KELLY turned up! She’s in NAFAFA now because Creepy Frog had a feather stuck in him! (Will fill in details when I see you. Bad news update, though: Ben got the west coast, so she’s in his network. Good news update: Miesha is head of the Council, and Kelly’s gonna tell her what happened and that I need help finding you. Hopefully they’ll check in somehow tomorrow. Ben tried to ruin everything AGAIN, of course. He wouldn’t even let me in the Hub. He’s so much worse than last year.
Also Charlene caught me sneaking into the art cabin so I had to let her in on everything. I’M SO SORRY. Turns out she’s actually okay, like you said. She told me she’s got this secret cave out in the woods that’s also a trap for the ghost moose, and tonight she stole that rolly bin full of everyone’s cantaloupes and drove them out there to use as bait. So that’s pretty cool.
I hope you’re safe, wherever you are, and not too bored and lonely. Keep hanging on—I’ll get you back soon.
Love,
Mags
Twenty-One
Abby
Morning on the island came way too early. It started with Antonia singing a jaunty sea chantey at the top of her lungs, then dropping a basket of homemade Cheerios on my bed and demanding I get up and help Joe feed the chickens.
There were puffy white clouds clumping like popcorn along the horizon, and the morning wind was brisk off the sea. The chickens stayed close to Joe as we did our walk from the boulders to the Ship Door and back.
Antonia had tea and toast waiting for us. She was wearing gray slacks and a fitted emerald-green jacket today, with her hair in an elaborate twist. For someone who lived alone in a basement in the middle of the ocean, she sure did know how to dress.
Helene arrived just as we were finishing. “Excellent,” she said, at the sight of us. “Mama . . .” She smiled nervously. “Are you ready to go below?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?” said Antonia, all business. “Shall we take the elevator?”
Helene blinked. If she’d been hoping for some sort of mother-daughter moment, it didn’t look like she was getting it.
“How long has it been since she went below?” I whispered to Helene as we followed Antonia and Joe out the double doors.
“Thirty-five years,” she whispered back. “All because of me. I grew up in the Palace, and Mama expected me to live there forever and take over after her, keeping the old traditions going. But I had other plans, and when I turned seventeen I moved below. She’s never forgiven me. I come up every week to visit and help clean the parts of the Palace she uses—that’s why I came up yesterday—but Mama’s refused to leave the surface even for a day.”
“So this is a really big deal,” I said as she tugged the doors closed behind us.
“You have no idea,” said Helene.
I’d expected Antonia and Joe to be climbing the steps up through the rocks, but they were standing at the other end of the courtyard beside the bench.
“I called it already,” Antonia said over her shoulder as we approached, and a moment later there was a faint ping, the rock face slid smoothly to the side, and there was a shiny, perfectly normal elevator waiting for us.
“Howza-who now?” I said.
“Yes?” Antonia said. She looked at the elevator. “I’m sorry, do you not have this technology where you come from?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Of course. But not in boulder piles. And why’s the door hidden if there’s no one else here? Who’s it being hidden from?”
Antonia and Helene shared a look of surprise.
“It’s just the way things were done,” said Antonia. “To retain the island’s natural beauty.”
“No expense was spared on any aspect of the Island Underneath, Abby,” Helene said, as we filed into the elevator. The door closed. “The crew had centuries of palace loot piled up, and building a secure, sophisticated, attractive new home under the island wasn’t something they were going to cut corners on.”
“So this place we’re going is pretty fancy, then?” I asked.
“That’s one word for it,” said Helene.
The elevator hummed to a gentle stop and the doors pinged open, revealing a long stone hallway.
Helene took the lead. I counted twenty-three bluish white lights set into the stone walls before the hall ended and we stepped out into a shimmering, wonderland that made my heart do fifteen backflips and my brain parachute right down into my feet.
We were underwater.
When Helene and the crew kept referring to the Island Underneath, I’d been picturing fancy caves. And I was partly right. The rock wall of the island curved away on either side, elaborate doors and windows and balconies cut right into it, all linked together with a network of rope ladders, plank spiral staircases, and catwalks. It looked like a cross between a jungle gym, an old-timey ship, and a city set into a cliff. I craned my neck way back. Actually, it looked a lot like the Shipwreck Treehouse.
But that was nothing compared to the forty-foot-high glass wall rising from the carpeted floor in front of us, curving up and back to connect with the cliff face overhead. Because on the other side of that wall was the entire ocean.
Sunlight danced through the shifting currents, full of seaweed and jellyfish and bubbles. Schools of bright fish curled past the glass. A hammerhead shark swam past the glass! There were rays and octopuses and sunfish and eels, barnacles, anemones, and turtles. It was magnificent.
Between that and the marble statues, curvy armchairs, and tropical plants filling the area between the walls like the lobby of the w
orld’s fanciest hotel, this was up there with the NAFAFA Hub for the most epic, awesome, amazing, spectacular, unbelievable place I’d ever seen in my entire life.
“Oh,” said Antonia, scuffing vaguely at the floor with the toe of her shoe. “I see you’ve changed the carpeting.”
A few crew members scattered around the armchairs and catwalks waved as I turned in circles, trying to take it all in. I waved back.
“Welcome back, Mama,” said Helene. She was watching her mother warily. “Do you, uh, want to take a look around, or . . . ?”
“I want to be sure we have everything we need for today’s mission,” Antonia said. “I didn’t come down below for the first time in half a lifetime to be caught unprepared.”
“Of course,” said Helene. “I’ll get someone to show you to—”
“I remember the way,” interrupted Antonia. “I will see you at the doors shortly.” And she swept off along the rock wall, heading for the closest spiral rope staircase.
“Oh. Good,” said Helene. “Bye, Mama.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Um, I’d like someone to show me around,” I said brightly, trying to shift the mood. I elbowed Joe.
“Yes! Me too!” he said. “I still haven’t had the full tour yet.”
Helene sniffed, forced a smile, and nodded.
“We don’t have time to see everything,” she said. “Because this”—she waved around at the underwater glass cavern-lobby-atrium—“wraps all the way around the island. But I will show you the highlights.”
We put the glass wall on our right and started on our way, Helene pointing out rooms in the rock wall as we walked. We passed a library, a game room, a whole long row of sleeping quarters. It was all cool, but it was hard to tear my eyes away from the three-dimensional underwater dream world happening on our right. Especially when more sharks showed up.
