by Will Taylor
The question I’d asked in my first-ever visit came bounding back: Where was this place? Like, in the real world, where was it? Under an airport? A secret government bunker? An abandoned mine? It would have to be a huge space, and right now it really did feel like we were underground. Or actually, with the dead-squid chandelier glinting in the darkness, like we were underwater. . . .
A sudden shout bounced down one of the aisles as we passed, and next second I was almost knocked off my feet by a hug from a very short astronaut.
“Maggie! Maggie! You’re here!”
It was Kelly, wearing a homemade space suit, complete with helmet.
“Oof! Hi!” I said, hugging her back. “How’s it going? And what are you wearing?”
“My space suit!” said Kelly, pulling off the helmet. Her face was shining as brightly as Carolina’s headlamp. “Can you believe this place? It’s so cool! I’m pretending we’re in outer space. Look, those lights are the stars, and this is the alien planet, and the chandelier is the stealth spaceship trying to sneak up on us. Quiet hours are so much fun!”
“You like the Hub like this?” I asked, surprised.
Carolina waved a hand to keep us moving. “She’s never seen it any other way. Kelly’s only been in NAFAFA a few days.” She smiled at the little astronaut. “But I think she’s introduced herself to every single kid already.”
“I love it here!” Kelly said, literally jumping along beside me. “I thought this summer was gonna be the best ever just ’cause I got to spend it at home! And then Abby was like, wanna look after Samson? And I was like, yeah! And now this is happening! I’m so sorry about losing Samson, though,” she said, her face dropping. “He’s here somewhere, but it’s too dark to find him. Bobby says it could be bad for the forts if his snagglepaw gets caught on an important pillow or blanket or something. And Miesha and a couple of other kids are pretty allergic. I should have thought of that.”
“It’ll be fine,” I assured her as the three of us reached the platform steps. “Samson always turns up.”
“Come on, Maggie Hetzger,” Carolina said. “Meeting time. And I think you should come too, Kelly, since you know Abby Hernandez. Maybe you can help us find her?”
“Yeah! Okay!”
Kelly skipped up the steps beside me to the Council table, where a cluster of desk lamps gave a decent amount of light. The four chairs were the same as I remembered, along with the banners for three of the four North American networks: the midnight-blue banner with its silver ship for the Forts of the Eastern Seaboard; the blue-and-green stripes and castle of orange pillows for the United Southern Gulf-Pacific Fortresses; and the polar bear on a mound of white pillows under a pink-and-purple sky for the Northern & Arctic Alliance.
The fourth banner was new. The Great Plains Sofa Circle’s green banner was gone, and in its place was something only Ben could have designed. Massive blue-and-white waves were crashing in from the left of the banner, meeting a wall of wheat and long grass sweeping up from the right. Together they formed a ridge of mountains down the middle, with snow-covered peaks framed against a golden pillow radiating like the sun. In each corner was an elaborate ornamental clipboard.
“Wow,” I said.
“I know, right?” said Carolina.
“What was this new network called again?”
“The Really Enormous Great Plains-Pacific Sofa Realm.”
“Wow,” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
Carolina took her seat under the Forts of the Eastern Seaboard banner just as Ben appeared, stumping up the steps on the other side, a stack of clipboards in his hands.
I froze. The Oak Key was dangling from a shoelace around his neck, glinting in the light of the desk lamps.
This was too weird. I’d had that key in my hands only two nights before. That key had kept me going all through my first year of middle school, when it lived in a secret envelope in a secret box in a secret corner of my room. It made my stomach hurt to see it hanging around someone else’s neck. Especially Ben’s.
“Hello, Maggie Hetzger and everyone else,” he said, dumping his clipboards on the table and barely glancing around. “I’ve got fifteen new members to impress, seven fort designs to approve, and a protocol presentation to prepare by this time tomorrow, so let’s get this over with.” He turned his sunglasses on Kelly. “Why are you here?”
“I invited her,” said Carolina. “And I know she’s in your network, not mine”—she held up her hands—“but she knows more about Abby Hernandez and the missing cat than any of us. Except Maggie Hetzger, obviously.”
“Fine, fine. I’ve got too much else to deal with to argue about it,” said Ben. He arranged his clipboards into a neat pile and looked around the platform. “But wait, where’s Miesha? And Murray? Regulations say we can’t have a meeting without the whole Council present.”
There was a piercing whistle from somewhere behind me. Everybody’s head swiveled. Way out in the darkness, one of the tapestry doors was partly open, with Miesha framed in the light pouring through.
“I have been trapped in here for twelve hours now!” she shouted across the Hub. “Is that cat still loose?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Carolina called back, ignoring Ben, who was making shushing noises. “Sorry!”
“Boo!” yelled Miesha. “Then on your feet, everyone. I’ve already got Murray with me. We’re having this meeting in the Archives where it’s safe from cats!”
“What?” Ben said beside me. “But protocol requires—”
“And is that Kelly in the space suit?” Miesha shouted.
“Yes! Hi!” screamed Kelly.
“Can you find Bobby, please, and get him here too? I need him to translate something!”
“Sure! Fun!”
“Will everyone stop yelling!” Ben yelled. “It’s quiet hours!”
“What?” shouted Miesha.
“Quiet hours!”
“Hey, Carolina,” Miesha called. “What’s Ben saying?”
“He says it’s quiet hours!”
“Quiet hours?”
“Yes! Quiet hours!”
“Oh! That’s cool!”
“Yeah!”
“Hi, Maggie Hetzger!”
“Stop it stop it stop it!” shouted Ben, going past his usual pink to bright red.
Miesha waved and disappeared behind the curtain. We all got up, and while Kelly went to find Bobby, the rest of us tromped back down the steps, Carolina in the lead, and headed across the Hub to the tapestry door.
I’d seen the Hall of Records the year before—a beautiful, marble-floored hall full of golden light and famous pillows—and I was expecting something just as grand for these Archives I’d heard so much about. But I got a serious surprise when we arrived and Ben yanked aside the tapestry.
I saw right away why Miesha was so sure she’d be safe in there: no cat, not even one as good at finding trouble as Samson, could possibly get past the massive floor-to-ceiling iron door barring our way.
Thirty-Two
Maggie
“What’s this all about?” I asked as Carolina heaved on a three-foot-long handle and the iron door groaned open.
“What?” said Ben.
“The door.”
“What about it?”
“Why is it so . . . fortressy?”
He stared at me. “Because these are the Archives.”
I stared back at him. “Oh.”
And that was the end of that discussion. Carolina waved us through, and I took my first steps into the Archives of NAFAFA.
One of the things I loved most about the Hub, and the whole pillow fort world, was that every single space—fort, room, whatever—was different. Like, really different. Last summer I’d gotten to see the gilded Hall of Records, the noisy forest of pipes in the Collecting Fort, and the quiet calm of Bobby’s den, with its blue sheet walls, neat books, and starry twinkle lights. Every fort, wall pillow, and tapestry out there on the floor of the Hub led to some place comple
tely unlike any other.
But I doubted any of them could top the Archives.
The iron door clanged shut behind us, and I gaped like a third grader presented with a lifetime supply of ice cream.
We were standing on the edge of an Olympic-size swimming pool, stretching away to a pair of diving boards over the deep end. There were benches lining the room, and tile floors, and paintings of blue and white waves stretching from the floor to the heavy industrial lights hanging from the ceiling.
It would have been an impressive sight all on its own, only this pool wasn’t filled with water. It was packed wall to wall with shelves, and the shelves were packed from end to end with papers, scrolls, and books.
“What the . . . ?” I said. I turned to the others, gesturing at the sunken library. “How is . . . ? I mean, what?”
Ben gave a sarcastic sigh, but Carolina answered.
“This is the Archives, Maggie Hetzger,” she said. “The quick story is that a Council back in the 1960s decided to add a pool to the Hub, and they built this place. Apparently it was fun at first, but pretty soon they realized it would be tricky to keep filling it with fresh water and chlorine. Plus it meant someone always had to be on lifeguard duty. Some of the older kids started pushing to make it an over-ten-only pool, and added that big door as security, but the younger kids said that was a terrible idea and broke in and peed in the pool in protest. In the end they just drained it and gave up the whole thing.”
“Wow,” I said. “Also ew. So why did it get turned into the Archives?”
“Because the Archives were overflowing their last home,” said Ben, deciding to join the conversation. “And once the pool was drained, someone from my network realized all this empty space was equipped with a natural filing system.”
He walked over to the edge and tapped his toe on a patch of tiles reading 1.2 METERS.
“The depth markers,” he said in full, classic Ben explainy mode, “crossed with the lane markers running long ways along the bottom, let us organize the archived materials on a grid. Older materials up here”—he pointed to the shallow end—“newest materials down there”—he pointed to the deep end. “It’s the Archives, it works, it makes sense, it’s old news. Now, where is Miesha?”
A sandy-haired head popped into sight climbing up one of the ladders halfway down the pool. A pair of silver sunglasses followed, and then the rest of what turned out to be Murray, a bundle of papers and a giant bag of gummy bears clutched awkwardly under one arm.
His milky-pale face went deep pink when I waved, and he hurried over to us.
“Hi, Maggie!” he said, fumbling the gummy bears. “Hey, I wanted to say . . . I’m really sorry if I sounded bossy in those letters I left you in your new fort.”
Aw, Murray had been obsessing about his letters.
“You didn’t, and it would be okay anyway,” I said. “There’s a lot going on!”
“Speaking of, do you know where Miesha is, Murray?” Carolina said.
“And where we’re holding this totally against regulations offsite meeting?” added Ben.
“Both in the hot tub.” Murray pointed with his head. “Come on.”
Okay, both in the what? I was starting to feel as clueless and wrong-footed as I had on my first trip to the Hub almost a year ago.
Murray led us around the pool into a small side room, where the same industrial lighting lit up a raised hot tub that could have fit twelve, filled to the brim with adorable stuffed animals, rainbow-striped pillows, and Miesha, reading an ancient-looking book. She had a bowl of grapes and half a dozen soda cans lined up on the hot tub wall beside her, along with more books and stacks of papers. And hanging over all of it was a drooping canopy of honest-to-goodness Lisa Frank bedsheets, complete with multicolored turtles, kittens, pandas, and dolphins.
“Hi, everyone,” Miesha said, barely looking up. She’d grown over the last year, too. She had a new pair of clear frames under the Council-member silver sunglasses gleaming against her deep brown skin, and her hair was up in rows of wavy braids. There was a sparkly green unicorn perched on her shoulder. “I’m almost done here. Take your shoes off and come on in.”
“What . . . what is all this?” said Ben, setting down his clipboards.
“All what?” said Miesha.
“This!” He waved his hands. “I mean—all this . . . this!”
Miesha turned a page of her book. “Carolina, what’s wrong with Ben? Is he gonna be okay for the meeting? Oh, hi again, Maggie Hetzger! How was your year?”
“Hi! Good!” I said, while Ben spluttered. “I like your hot tub!”
“Thanks. I’ve been hiding in here for so long, I decided to fix the place up. I sent some of my network helpers to get supplies.”
“You’re still doing that Lisa Frank thing, then?” I said, slipping off my shoes and perching on the side, my feet swallowed by squashiness.
Miesha put down her book and stretched, reaching her arms up and smiling around at the bright sheet canopy and the rainbow puddle of pillows and stuffed animals. She shrugged. “Yeah, I keep thinking I should grow out of it, but then I remember how into Lisa Frank stuff I was when eight-year-old me started here. And if eight-year-old me knew she was going to become head of the Council someday, this is exactly what she would have wanted to do. So I do it for her.”
Murray and Carolina kicked their shoes off, too, and we all sank into the pile, spreading out comfortably.
“Are you just going to stand there and frown?” asked Carolina as Ben stood there, frowning.
“I want to say for the record that I am completely against us having a meeting under these circumstances,” he said grumpily.
“Got it,” said Miesha. “And as head of the Council, I’m starting the meeting anyway. And since you’re not getting in the hot tub, you can be in charge of the whiteboard.” She waved a hand at the opposite wall, where, sure enough, a whiteboard on a rolly stand stood waiting, complete with markers. “I thought we might need one,” she informed us as Ben plodded over to fetch it. “In case things get complicated.”
“They always do,” I said.
“Can we please start?” said Carolina, who had burrowed in up to her neck. “This is totally comfy and I might fall asleep here otherwise.”
Miesha sat up, brushing away her unicorn. “Yes, definitely, time for business. I officially call this meeting to order.”
“Real quick,” said Murray, raising his hand. “Is anyone else on Snack Committee?”
“Oh, I think I am,” said Miesha. “There’s more sodas over on that side.”
When everyone had a soda, and the bag of gummy bears had been passed around twice, and Ben was stationed sullenly by the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker in his hand, Miesha got right to the point.
“We are here,” she began, “to discuss the disappearance of Abby Hernandez into the global pillow fort networks. Now, we all know the basic facts: two days ago Abby Hernandez, carrying the Oak Key, fell through the trapdoor of a treehouse and disappeared, and no one’s seen her since.”
“And yesterday I found the Oak Key under the First Sofa in le Petit Salon,” said Ben.
“Which is proof that that’s where Abby Hernandez ended up,” Miesha said. “So there are only three possible routes she could have gone from there.” She jabbed a finger at the whiteboard, and Ben grumpily uncapped his marker. “Route one, she found the link back to the NAFAFA Hub and is somewhere in one of our networks.”
“But that’d be super weird,” I said. “Wouldn’t she have made contact and tried to get in touch with me so I’d know she was okay?”
“Yeah,” said Miesha. “Meaning we can pretty much rule that one out.” Ben crossed out everything he’d just written.
“Route number two,” said Carolina. “Abby Hernandez could have picked the wrong link and ended up in another Continental network’s Hub instead.”
“That one seems more likely to me,” said Murray, around a mouthful of gummy bears.
&n
bsp; “Me too,” said Ben, still scribbling on the board. “It would explain why she’s managed to completely disappear. Only it raises two more questions.”
“Like which Continental network is she in,” said Miesha, nodding.
“And why haven’t they sent her back,” said Ben.
“What’s the third option?” I asked, raising my hand.
“The third option is the worst,” said Carolina. “There are still one or two pillows under the First Sofa from King Louis’s original network, sometimes called the Royal network. They lead to pillows in furniture in places kids are really, really not supposed to be. And if Abby went through one, and grown-ups caught her . . .”
“She could be in serious trouble,” said Murray.
“She could be stuck somewhere with no chance to escape,” said Miesha.
“She could be in jail,” said Ben.
I choked on a gummy bear. “But we’d know, right? We’d know if Abby ended up in one of those places.”
“How would we know?” Murray said.
“Well . . .” I wasn’t actually sure. “We just should, is all. Doesn’t anyone monitor those old links? Or check to see if someone’s stuck in them? What’s the point of having them at all if they’re off-limits and dangerous? Why not take them down?”
“Because they’re historic!” said Ben, looking scandalized. “They’re part of our global pillow fort history.”
“They’re also the property of the European Continental network,” added Miesha. “We can’t touch them.”
“Fine—let’s ask the Europe kids to check them, then!” I said. This was exactly like last summer. All these layers of tradition and rules and regulations. When it came down to it, we were just a bunch of kids running around in pillow forts! Why did everything have to be so complicated?
