by Will Taylor
Carolina shot Ben a look. “We would, but the European reps are refusing to talk to us right now. Ever since a certain someone walked out of his meeting with them three seconds after finding the Oak Key under the First Sofa.”
“I was distracted!” said Ben, clutching the key in his free hand. “You couldn’t expect me to sit through a meeting after that. It’s not my fault those Europe kids are so obsessive about manners and formalities.”
“You mean protocol?” said Carolina. “Dude, you have a literal clipboard covered in rules as part of your new banner! You are not one to talk.”
“At least I know how to get things properly—”
“Hey! Hey!” Miesha said, waving a hot-pink giraffe over her head. “No fighting in the hot tub!”
“I’m not in the hot tub,” said Ben. “And it’s Carolina who—” The giraffe hit him in the face.
“Okay, seriously!” I said. This meeting was going nowhere. “Abby’s still lost, we’ve got no clue where, and you’re telling me no one here has any real leads at all?”
“We were kind of hoping you did, Maggie Hetzger,” said Miesha. “You’re the one who asked for a meeting with us. Although I did just find a tiny lead, maybe. We keep a bunch of King Louis’s old papers in the Archives, and I might have found something about le Petit Salon.” She nodded at the pile on the edge of the hot tub. “But it’s in French, and I need Bobby to get here and translate it before we know if it’s anything useful.”
“See?” said Murray, smiling at me. “You’ve got all of NAFAFA running in circles again.”
“And that brings me to a big point of order,” said Ben. “Why should we care about this at all?”
Everyone blinked at him. Murray put down the stuffed hippo he’d been playing with.
“I mean it,” Ben went on. “If she’s lost, she’ll find her way back eventually. Abby Hernandez isn’t a member of NAFAFA. Her being missing doesn’t really matter to us.”
“It totally matters!” I said, shocked. “If we don’t get her back, then Camp Cantaloupe will get shut down, and her dads will have to come home from their honeymoon early, and they’ll search and search but they’ll never find her. And everyone will be worried and scared and I’ll know the truth but not be able to tell anyone and that will be awful!”
“So what’s your plan to find her, then?” Ben demanded. “Why were you so insistent on having this meeting?”
“My plan was to come here and ask you all for help!” I might have been yelling now. I wasn’t sure. “Do you even know how hard it was to get here from camp tonight? How smart I had to be? How many obstacles I had to get past? I’ve got nothing to work with back there, but I thought here we could at least do something!”
Ben held up both hands. “But it turns out we can’t, because your missing friend is your problem, not ours! Our only problems are finding Sprinkles”—Ben’s anger gave way long enough for him to flash the dreamy smile he always got at the mention of Miesha’s dog—“and getting rid of the cat that shouldn’t have been here in the first place. We don’t owe you anything.”
“Hey now, that’s not fair,” said Miesha. “I did give Abby Hernandez and Maggie Hetzger that key last summer. NAFAFA is at least a little responsible for where things have ended up.”
“You mean you’re a little responsible,” Ben shot back.
Miesha chucked a cupcake pillow at him. “I’m also head of the Council, and you know what? I say we’re going to help find Abby Hernandez.” She clapped her hands. “So—let’s start by making extra-super sure she’s not in our networks. That way when Ben goes and apologizes to the European reps—oh, yes, you will!—and asks them to search the Royal networks just in case she took route number three, we can say we looked everywhere before bothering them.”
Miesha had stepped into full command mode.
“Murray, Carolina, Ben,” she said. “Rally your troops and organize a search of your forts in the Hub and the closest branches of your networks. I’m still stuck in here thanks to that cat, so someone else will have to start the search in mine.”
“Ooh, why don’t I do that?” I said, my hand in the air. “I can totally help!”
Miesha’s eyes flicked over to Murray. His face fell as he glanced back.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
“Miesha and I were, uh, talking,” said Murray. “Before you all got here.”
“Yeah? And?”
“And we came to a decision, Maggie Hetzger,” Miesha said, “about you.”
I blinked. “Okay . . .”
“What you have to understand,” said Murray carefully, “is that Ben is kind of maybe right about some stuff. You and Abby Hernandez seriously shook up our networks last summer. I mean, you remember, you were there.”
“And now you two are at it again,” said Miesha. “So Murray and I decided this time we’re going to be clear about boundaries, before this gets even more out of control. And since Abby Hernandez and that cat are already running around in the networks or just plain missing, the only person we can still put boundaries on is you.”
My heart suddenly felt like it was being squeezed between Director Haggis’s eyebrows. What were they saying?
“So we decided—and I’m really sorry, Maggie,” Murray said. “We decided that no matter what plan we came up with at this meeting, we can’t actually let you help. We know from experience what happens when all three of you start running around. We remember.”
The Lisa Frank canopy swam in front of my eyes. This was a bad dream. It had to be.
“So . . .” My voice cracked. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, Maggie Hetzger,” said Miesha, “as head of the Council, that your part in all this ends here.” She gave me an apologetic half smile. “I’m sending you back to camp.”
Thirty-Three
Maggie
“No!” I yelled, the sound echoing off the tiled walls of the hot tub room.
“Maggie—”
“No!”
“Mag—”
“No!”
“Maggie Hetzger, please sit down.”
I looked around the Lisa Franked hot tub. I didn’t remember getting to my feet.
“I am not going back to camp,” I said, making each word echo around the little room. “I didn’t sneak past counselors, teachers, and real-life professional search and rescue officers just so you could make your own plans and kick me out! That’s not how this is going to work!”
How could Murray and Miesha think I would be okay sitting this out? I’d been planning all year for the adventure Abby and I were going to have through the trapdoor of the Shipwreck Treehouse. I’d imagined every epic, outrageous thing that could possibly happen, and mentally prepared for all of them. And fine, the plan had gone all wrong, and Abby had gone off on her own and I’d been left behind to catch up, but I was still more prepared for a high-stakes rescue mission than any other person in this room.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this before,” said Ben, “but I agree with Miesha and Murray. Maggie Hetzger and Abby Hernandez caused enough damage to our networks last year. We can’t risk having them both running loose again.” He set the dry-erase marker on the whiteboard tray and crossed his arms, clearly fighting back a smile. “I vote to expel Maggie Hetzger, too.”
“No!” I shouted again.
“‘Expel’ is a strong word,” objected Murray.
“Kind of accurate, though,” said Miesha.
“But Maggie can still help,” Murray said, a plea in his voice. “She can run the base of operations back at her camp. That’s important, isn’t it, Maggie?”
“Charlene is already doing that!” I snapped. Man, I wasn’t used to being angry at Murray. I turned to my last hope. “Carolina, please! Tell them I have to stay here. I can’t go back without Abby!”
Carolina tugged on her baseball cap. “Nothing I can do, Maggie Hetzger. Even if I thought you should stick around, they’ve got three votes.” She
nodded at the others. “That’s a majority.”
This could not be happening.
I’d been cut off from my dream summer adventure when the treehouse shattered. I’d been blocked from entering the Hub when I made contact with Ben. And now the whole Council was voting to send me back to summer camp without any say at all.
I felt utterly betrayed. I felt achingly furious. I felt broken, abandoned, and shipwrecked.
And darn it, standing knee-deep in all these pillows and stuffed animals was making my feet sweaty.
I was opening my mouth to do some more shouting when the squeal of the iron door echoed through from the main room. There were running footsteps; then a boy sprinted into the hot tub room, stopped dead, and gave a scream of happiness.
“Maggie! Yay! Maggie Maggie Maggie!”
“Bobby!”
Finally, a real friend! Bobby’s shiny black hair was longer than it had been last year, almost down to his shoulders. He pushed it out of his eyes and stretched over the little wall to hug me, smiling so big it filled the room.
“I came as fast as I could,” Bobby said, waving at the others with both hands. “Kelly said it was urgent. I love that space suit she’s wearing, don’t you? Did you know the helmet really works? She made it herself. Ooh! Gummy bears!”
“Thanks for coming, Bobby,” said Miesha. “There’s something I need you to translate. But first we have to say goodbye to Maggie Hetzger.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “I’m staying put.” Bobby was here now. He’d back me up, and I knew Carolina was wavering. Maybe I could still swing this.
“Oh?” said Ben. He came over and sat on the edge of the hot tub, crossing his arms. “Well, then so are we. Right, Miesha? Murray? If Maggie Hetzger refuses to listen to the Council and go home, then we refuse to search for Abby Hernandez or ask the other Continental networks for help finding her.”
Bobby looked confused, but Murray, Miesha, and even Carolina exchanged frowns, then nodded. “Yeah,” said Miesha. “I hate to agree with Ben, but he’s right. If you insist on staying here, Maggie Hetzger, then so do we.”
“But . . . but don’t you care?” I said. “Don’t you care that if I don’t get Abby back soon, Camp Cantaloupe is gonna be closed and all those kids’ lives are gonna be ruined? Especially mine and Abby’s?”
“Of course we care,” Murray said gently. “And we want to find Abby Hernandez. But it’s your decision now, eh?”
I stared around at them as the reality washed over me. If I stood my ground, Abby was guaranteed to stay lost, and Camp Cantaloupe was guaranteed to get shut down, and everything was guaranteed to be ruined. If I left, they would start the search, and there was at least a chance of getting Abby back in time and avoiding disaster.
They had me cornered.
Slowly, more reluctantly than I’d done anything in my whole life, I nodded.
“Thank you, Maggie,” said Murray.
“I promise we’ll get her back,” Carolina said.
Ben smirked. There was a very prickly silence.
“I’m, uh, not super sure what’s happening here,” said Bobby. “And sorry to change the subject, but Miesha, I have some good news from the Hub: we found Sprinkles fast asleep in my fort. He looked so cute we left him there.”
“Thank goodness for that!” said Miesha, as Ben squealed with delight. “Any sign of the cat?”
“Not since two minutes ago.”
“Ugh. You and I will get to work in here, then. You three”—she pointed a stuffed silver dolphin at Ben, Murray, and Carolina—“will walk Maggie Hetzger home, and then Ben will go to le Petit Salon and beg the European Council for a meeting. Now get going.”
Murray, Carolina, and I got up and put on our shoes, as Ben, scowling and grumbling, collected his clipboards.
“Thank you for understanding, Maggie Hetzger,” Miesha called from the hot tub. “I really mean it.”
I gave her a heavyhearted nod, waved goodbye to Bobby, slung my supply pack back over my shoulders, and turned away.
We were almost out of the room when I remembered.
“Oh, hey, Miesha,” I said, stopping and swinging my pack around to dig in one of the pockets. I realized with a jolt that it was the first time I’d used it. “These are yours.”
The silver sunglasses Miesha had dropped in my fort the summer before flashed through the air as I tossed them back to the hot tub. Thorough testing by Abby and me had revealed they didn’t work as a token to new links, and I’d thrown them in my supply pack and more or less forgotten about them. But since I was here . . .
Miesha caught them one-handed. “Ha!” she said. “Thanks for bringing these back! I don’t really need them, but it’s good to have a backup, I guess.”
“Can I have my patchwork scarf, now?” I asked. The fiasco that had left Miesha’s sunglasses stranded in my fort had also resulted in me losing the scarf Abby had made me in her first week at camp. The scarf that had started this whole saga. “I mean, you still have it, right?”
“Of course we do, Maggie Hetzger.” Miesha waved a hand toward the big room. “It’s filed in the Archives.”
I blinked at her. “My scarf is in the Archives? Why?”
“Because it’s a historical artifact. The network you and Abby Hernandez started was the very first ever on the west coast. Since we had no way to get the scarf back to you, we catalogued it and filed it away. It’s kind of an honor, you know.”
“Oh.” Maybe these kids thought having my scarf in the Archives was an honor, but I sure didn’t. This felt like just one more example of them saying they had the right to make decisions for me, whether I liked it or not. “Well, I want it back,” I said, loudly. “It’s my scarf, made for me by my best friend. Who’s gonna help me go get it?”
“No one!” snapped Ben, his toe hammering the tile floor. “I don’t have time for this. I have so much work to do!” He rattled his clipboards with each word. “And filling out the paperwork for a withdrawal from the Archives is not getting added to my to-do list! Neither is standing around here arguing!”
“Please, just head back to camp, Maggie Hetzger,” said Miehsa, showering stuffed animals as she got to her feet. “And I promise you I’ll see what I can do.”
I looked around for backup, but Bobby, Murray, and Carolina were all avoiding my eyes. Ben was glaring. Miesha gave me a smile that looked like a shrug. The decision had been made.
With my jaw clamped so tight I thought it might break, I reshouldered my pack and stalked out of the Archives, Ben and Murray following after.
Carolina came last, pulling the iron door closed with a clang like a bell signaling the final end of all my hopes and dreams for the summer.
The Hub looked extra dark and gloomy after the bright fluorescents of the Archives. It fit my mood. My guards switched on their headlamps, and we set off across the floor, marching along the wide, empty paths until we reached a golden wall pillow on the far side.
Carolina tugged away the pillow. “This is your stop, Maggie Hetzger.”
I stared into the dark opening. On the other side of that pillow was the arts and crafts cabin. Camp Cantaloupe. Director Haggis. The search and rescue teams. Lights-out and morning roll call and cucumber casserole. And no Abby.
Somewhere in the darkness behind us there was a thump, then a muffled shout. Murray looked around.
“Come on, Maggie Hetzger,” said Ben, clacking his clipboards. “The longer you stall, the longer it will take us to get started with our search.”
Ugh. Ben was the worst. But he was right. I stepped toward the open link.
Another shout floated through the gloom. Then raised voices. Carolina turned, her headlamp beam joining Murray’s.
“Hey, Ben . . . ?” she said.
“You just sit tight in your little fort,” Ben said to me. “Maybe do some arts and crafts, and let the professionals handle this one.”
“Ben,” said Murray. There was definite yelling across the Hub, now, and th
e sound of running footsteps.
“I’ll handle the European networks,” Ben continued. “And we’ll send Abby Hernandez back to you, and everything here can go back to being calm and orderly like it should—”
“Ben!” shouted Carolina, whapping him on the shoulder.
“What?” Ben snapped. “I’m trying to make sure—”
“Look!”
Ben looked, and I looked too.
A gap had appeared in the wall not far from the tapestry door to the Archives, and something was pouring through the gap into the Hub. Something white, and foamy, and bubbly.
There sure was a lot of it.
“Soapsuds?” said Ben. “The Arena! What the—” More kids were appearing now, popping out of forts, running down the paths, some yelling, some laughing.
Memories of my second visit to the Hub the summer before leaped into my brain, and the kid named Connor we’d seen emerging from a wall pillow, covered from the waist down in soapsuds after winning some kind of sporting event. If this was the same link, it was definitely malfunctioning. The foam was avalanching through in waves and already reaching the tops of the closest pillow forts.
“Back to camp, now!” Ben said over his shoulder, clamping his clipboards under one arm and darting for the aisle.
“We’ll be in touch soon, Maggie!” Murray called as he and Carolina raced after Ben. “I promise!”
Ben was already shouting orders, and I heard every word loud and clear as the Council members reached the foam.
“The link! Shut the link!”
“What happened to the door pillow?”
“It’s gone!”
“I’m in charge here!”
“Ouch! Where is it?”
“Who’s in there? Ow!”
“Murray, go back, I can’t—”
“My clipboards!”
“Why are you just—”
“Somebody find that pillow!”
The mountain of silver-white foam was growing bigger and taller every second. Unless they got the link shut fast, they’d have a major crisis on their hands.
But what could make a wall pillow open with no warning, then disappear? I mean, it didn’t just run away on its . . . own. . . .
