by Will Taylor
“Ow! What was that for?”
Charlene was pointing frantically toward our sofa forts at the back of the cabin. I looked and saw a girl wearing silver sunglasses and a baseball hat over her cloud of curly black hair getting to her feet.
Carolina! Wow, she’d really grown over the last year.
My eyes zoomed to the grown-ups, but they hadn’t spotted her. Carolina looked around, taking in the chaos of the room, then turned her sunglasses to the window. I raised my head a fraction of an inch higher and waggled my eyebrows. Carolina stood there, cool and calm, then gave a brief nod, ducked down, and disappeared from sight.
Charlene and I ducked down too.
“That was close!” she said. “Who was that?”
“Carolina. She’s from the Forts of the Eastern Seaboard network. Well, she runs it now, I guess, which means she’s on the Council of NAFAFA. She must have come to get us for the meeting.” I frowned, angling one eye over the windowsill again. “She probably went back to tell everyone how we’re trapped out here.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to help?” asked Charlene.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I mean, the Council can’t just crawl out of our forts and politely ask Ms. Sabine and the director to leave, can they?”
“Nope. So that means it’s up to us to get those two”—Charlene pointed a thumb at the window—“out of there.”
“Totally. We need that good distraction you mentioned.”
“Or just a decent plan,” said a voice. And with no warning at all, Carolina materialized out of the night between us.
Charlene screeched.
“What was that?” Director Haggis’s voice said.
The three of us pressed our backs to the wall as footsteps crossed the cabin to the window. “Just an owl,” said Ms. Sabine. “Anyway, as I was saying . . .”
The footsteps moved away, and we relaxed. I turned to Carolina.
“How on earth did you get out here?” I whispered. “How did you get by the grown-ups?”
Carolina shrugged. “I told you last summer I was training to be the world’s best secret agent,” she said. “This was a chance to practice. I think I’m getting pretty good.”
“Super good!” said Charlene. “Hi, I’m Charlene.”
“I’m Carolina. Nice Safety Monitor sash. Ben would really like that.” They shook hands.
“So, yes,” I said. “Hi. You said we need a decent plan. Do you have one?”
“Yep.” Carolina leaned in close. “That man in there sounds like he’s more worried about finding Abby Hernandez than anything, because a missing kid will ruin his camp. So you and your responsible sash”—she pointed to Charlene—“are going to knock on the door and tell them you saw her from your cabin window.”
“Ooo, and I bet they’ll want to go see!” said Charlene. “Yes!”
“Perfect!” I said. “You lead them into the woods, and by the time you decide you didn’t see anything after all, we’ll be long gone.”
“I can do that.” Charlene nodded. “And then I double back here and come to this meeting with you?”
Hmm. Carolina and I couldn’t wait around for Charlene to do all that and get back. There wasn’t even a guarantee she’d be able to get away from Ms. Sabine and Director Haggis. It was a bit unfair, but she’d have to miss the trip to the Hub.
“Actually, what we need most is someone to hold things down here at camp,” I said, thinking fast. “It might take us a while to find Abby, so someone will have to cover for us and get in the way of the authorities. Obviously you’re the best person to be in charge of that. You’ll be the only one here who knows the truth about Abby, and the Shipwreck Treehouse, and the forts and letters and all of it. Plus no one knows Camp Cantaloupe like you. No one could do it better!”
Charlene smiled. “I am good at fooling grown-ups,” she said. She agreed to the plan, and after a last-minute conference with Carolina, she got to her feet, rounded the corner of the cabin, and knocked on the door.
The conversation went down just as we’d predicted. Charlene told Director Haggis that she’d gotten up for a glass of water and was sure she’d seen Abby wandering through the woods near camp. Director Haggis was overjoyed, and he and Ms. Sabine agreed it would look best if they rescued Abby themselves. Pausing only to grab the emergency flashlight and turn off the lights, they hurried after Charlene.
“Oh, this is all awfully dramatic, isn’t it?” I heard Ms. Sabine say happily as they ran past.
“I’ll show that sheriff who’s really dedicated to the welfare of my campers!” cried Director Haggis.
Carolina and I watched until their flashlight beam was a safe distance away, then crept into the cabin. “Thanks for coming to help us out like that,” I said as we picked our way through the knocked-over easels and splatter-painted chairs. It was kind of a miracle I got only a few smears of glitter paint on my pajama pants. “I’m pretty sure you’re a great secret agent already.”
We crawled into my fort, and I had a sudden flashback to the summer before, when I’d followed Carolina into the Hub for the very first time, the night my whole world changed.
I smiled. My summer at Camp Cantaloupe might be in total chaos, but at least this time as I headed into the Hub, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.
At least I thought I did.
Thirty
Abby
I lay back, gasping in the darkness, finally releasing my death grip on the faded brown pillow.
That. Was. Way. Too. Close.
Gradually my heart stopped hurling itself against my ribs, and I felt around in the darkness. Wooden slats and panels, cold floor, squashy pillows. Victory! I was back under the First Sofa, and without the backpack it was a lot easier to navigate. Although the wings on my hat were kind of a nuisance as I scooched my way out.
The room was dark, but a bright sliver was coming from behind one of the curtains. I headed over and pulled it open. A line of medium-quality sunlight sauntered through the dirty window, and I got my first look at le Petit Salon.
And yup, that was it. A small, dusty room with marble floors, paneled walls, a carved door on one side, curtains and windows on the other, and the poor, lonely, sagging sofa. The First Sofa. The source of all this pillow fort nonsense. And, if I was lucky, my missing key.
I knelt down, fumbling under it as best I could. My fingers found cold marble, dust bunnies, and a couple curled-up dead spiders, but no key. I searched again, and again, and again. Finally I had to face facts: if I really had dropped the Oak Key under there, it looked like somebody else already found it.
Disappointment punched me in the stomach. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
I got back to my feet, staring down at the sofa. Who had the key? Only pillow fort kids could get in here, and it sounded like only Council members ever bothered. Maggie had said le Petit Salon was something most pillow forters saw on their first day and never visited again, like a hometown tourist attraction. And I couldn’t blame them. Who would want to hang out in here? There wasn’t anything to do. They couldn’t even open the door.
But hey . . . I could. . . .
I looked over. The grimy sunlight had reached the handle, highlighting the keyhole and the legendary lock. A tingle ran down my spine.
Should I . . . ?
Yes. The answer was yes.
I pulled out the Iron Key, crossed the room, and fit it neatly into the lock that hadn’t been opened in almost three hundred years.
I took a deep breath. I turned the key.
The lock clicked open.
For five long seconds I stared at it, then laughed. I was acting like Maggie, expecting something dramatic to happen. So much for the prophecy about the person who opened this door. So much for step seven of Maggie’s big summer plan, ushering in a golden age and revealing the deepest secrets of pillow forting and all that. In the end it was just plain old me.
Although, to be fair, I was wearing a very fancy hat
.
I pressed down the handle and pulled. With a creak that sounded like a scream in the silence, the door eased open a few inches, then a few more. Light stabbed me in the eyes. I squinted out into a wide hallway full of white marble, gold detailing, and beautiful silver dangling lights. I’d seen my fair share of palaces in the last twenty-four hours, and I could tell this one was a stunner. It almost put the Winter Palace to shame. I looked both ways down the hall, but there was no one around. A metal sign standing beside the door read LE PETIT SALON in swirly writing.
So, yes, more victory. I’d opened the famously closed door. Whee. Maggie would probably have made a speech to mark the occasion, but since I was all on my own, there wasn’t much point.
I returned to the room and eased the door closed, trying to minimize the squeaking. It had just clicked shut when a loud clunk sounded behind me. And the only thing behind me was the First Sofa.
Someone was coming into the room.
I yanked the Iron Key out of the door and stared around wildly. Where on earth was I going to hide?
Turned out I wasn’t. Before I could take my third step toward the curtains, a girl launched herself out from under the sofa and got to her feet. She was about my age, with golden-brown skin and a sleek black ponytail. She wore trendy jeans, silver hoop earrings, and a ferocious gaze.
“Hello,” she said, looking me up and down from hat to slippers. “Who are you supposed to be?” Her accent was hard to place.
“I’m Abby,” I said. “Abby Hernandez.”
“Oh,” said the girl, as if that explained anything. “Did Ben send you? Is he not willing to show his face?”
“Ben?”
“Your Council member. The overalls one.”
“Oh, that Ben.”
“Yes, that Ben. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
The girl exhaled angrily. “Well, when you see him tell him he’s in trouble with the entire European network. I told everyone how rude he was at our last meeting, and they are furious.”
“What happened at your last meeting?” I asked. So this girl was from the European pillow fort networks. Interesting.
“It was appalling! I was here—early, of course, because that is polite—and I heard Ben coming through the sofa, only he stopped halfway through and screamed.”
“Screamed?”
“Like a peacock! And then he came bursting out of the sofa with the lost key in his hand, waving it like an Olympic torch and running in circles, laughing.”
Ugh! So Ben had found the key. That was a real worst-case scenario. If what I’d heard last summer was still true, that key was his entire world, and he wouldn’t give it up easily.
“I don’t know how he found it under there,” Europe Girl went on. “It’s been missing so long. But before I could get any details, he declared that our meeting was canceled, crawled back under the sofa, and linked away. I never even found out what he wanted to meet about, apart from there being some big emergency in your Hub. The whole event was an insult to every single member of the European networks!”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
Europe Girl drew herself up. “An apology is not good enough, Abby Hernandez. A breach of protocol between Continental Councils is a serious offense. Ben will have to appear before our Council and admit that he was rude.”
“Okay,” I said. Why did I keep running into people so obsessed with protocol?
“And wrong.”
“Got it.”
“And promise never to do it again.”
“Sounds great.”
She peered at me. “You are not bothered by this?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Ben’s not my favorite member of NAFAFA.”
“I take it you are not in his network, then?” Europe Girl said, a smile tugging up the edges of her frown.
“Oh, I’m not in any network,” I said. “I’m just sort of visiting.”
The smile became a look of horror faster than I could blink. “You—you are not a member of a proper network?” The girl staggered to the First Sofa and leaned on it for support. “You’re just . . . just nobody? And the North American Council is letting you wander around playing dress-up? Here, of all places?”
“Well, it’s not like that,” I said, frowning. “See—”
“No!” the girl cried, dramatically. She was starting to remind me of Maggie getting way too into one of her adventure games. “No, I will not see! This goes against . . . this is utterly . . . I won’t hear any more! You are all in trouble with Europe! All of NAFAFA is in trouble now!”
And she flung herself under the sofa and crawled out of sight.
Well. That had happened. What did I know now?
I was alone in le Petit Salon again.
And the European networks were mad at us.
And Ben had the Oak Key.
I had two choices. I could go back through the hidden panel to the island, tell Antonia and Helene how I’d tried and failed, and face their anger over my ruining things with the German palace and their disappointment at losing the Oak Key forever.
Or I could go after Ben myself. Right now. I could link into the NAFAFA Hub, track him down, and figure out some way to get the key off him.
One choice was sensible and responsible. The other was risky and reckless. I could practically hear Maggie screaming at me to take the second one. It was exactly the sort of secret-agent spy adventure she’d always dreamed of, and here was a real-life opportunity staring me in the face.
Well, hey, I’d come this far. How much more could go wrong?
I crawled back under the sofa and came face to face with my first problem: which pillow led to the Hub?
Maggie had told me the NAFAFA pillow linked in from the Hall of Records, which, if I remembered her story right, was full of pale blue walls, marble pillars, mirrors, and golden lights. So all I had to do was look behind the pillows till I found that combination.
I started on my left, pulling the pillows aside one by one. The first led to darkness, the next to a science lab, and the next to a sort of lounge full of sofas and books and green and silver banners and pictures of snakes and skulls. Weird. I kept going, but nothing even came close to what I was looking for until I hit the seventh pillow.
Bingo! Golden light, marble columns, pale blue walls; this had to be it. It seemed brighter than I’d imagined, but that was probably just from me being in the dark for so long. I squeezed myself through the link and got to my feet, brushing off my dress and straightening my hat.
There was a dramatic gasp, and I looked up. A crowd of people, from wrinkly seniors to little kids in strollers, stood staring at me, their mouths hanging open. A red velvet rope hung between us. Oh, cantaloupey doom. This wasn’t the NAFAFA Hall of Records. Where was I?
My eyes darted around. The columns and mirrors and golden lights were there all right, but judging from the padded window seat I’d just crawled out of, the ornate dressing table, and that huge four-poster decked in velvet, I was in some sort of ultra-fancy bedroom.
So why did I have an audience?
I turned back to the crowd, all talking and pointing now, and . . . smiling. They were all smiling. With absolutely no idea what else to do, I called up my palace protocol, forced a princessy sort of smile onto my face, and gave them my best curtsy.
And the crowd broke into applause.
Thirty-One
Maggie
No words could ever describe how ridiculously happy I felt slipping through the link into the Hub. I was back in the game! I was back where I belonged! I got to my feet behind Carolina and looked around.
Whoa. My happiness burst like a popped balloon.
Things in the Hub had changed.
Last summer the NAFAFA Hub had been a chaotic wonderland of kids running wild through a maze of pillow forts, sofas, bookshelves, and tangly pathways, all lit up by the sunlike glare of the massive chandelier hanging in the center of the room. But now the golden chandelier wa
s . . . off. It was dark. Dead. The Hub was stuffed with shadows.
A few lamps and twinkle lights dotted the main floor, just enough to show that the maze had been tidied, squeezed into a grid system radiating out from the Council platform like spokes on a wheel. A few kids bobbed in and out of the forts, and a few more walked the aisles, but there was a distinct hush over everything. It felt like a strict, unpopular library.
“What happened to this place?” I said, turning to find Carolina pulling a headlamp on over her baseball cap. She clicked it on, angling it down when the light hit my face.
“Ben happened,” she said. “He had this big idea to put a dimmer switch on the chandelier a few weeks back. The idea was to save energy during quiet hours when no one’s around. Of course it totally messed up the wiring. Repairs are taking forever.” Her eyebrows rolled between her sunglasses and cap.
“Seriously? That’s awful. And wait, hang on, what are quiet hours?”
“Another Ben innovation. He had plenty of conditions for finally voting Miesha in as head of the Council.”
I looked at the chandelier, hanging like a dead squid in the gloom above the network banners. “So you’ve all been wandering around in the dark for the last few weeks?”
“We turn on track lighting for the aisles and everything during regular hours,” Carolina said. “But it’s definitely been annoying getting around.”
“Why are you still wearing your sunglasses, then?”
Carolina gave me a flat look. “Because, Maggie Hetzger—”
“You’re the Council of NAFAFA,” I finished. “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
I followed her down the nearest path, heading for the platform, staring around at the unhappy transformation. It was incredible how different it felt.
The massive patchwork dome of sheets and blankets curving overhead was visible only right at the bottom edges, leaving a well of chilly darkness above us. On the far wall I could just make out the garage-door-size cushion that led to the collecting fort, where the NAFAFA kids gathered huge vats of coins—and, weirdly, Cheerios—that got lost in sofas. A little past that was one of the six huge tapestry doors, set at intervals among the pillow links lining the walls. Last year I’d learned that the tapestries weren’t links like the pillows, but normal doors, leading to more spaces branching off the Hub. One of them led to the Hall of Records, which had the link to le Petit Salon. I’d never found out where the other five went.
