by Will Taylor
“Because it’s a cabin-fort,” Abby said. “Maggie has one too, and we’ll be at Camp Pillow Fort for the rest of the summer.”
“The rest of the summer, huh?” said Alex. He leaned on the doorframe, his arms crossed over his Impressionist Water Lilies apron. “And we only just got you back today. I hope we’ll still get to see you two while you’re attending Camp Pillow Fort.”
“You will,” I said. “We’ll stop by to say hi sometimes.”
“Glad to hear it. But for now, dinner will be ready in five—nope, now it’s four minutes. Are you finished unpacking, Abby?”
Abby yanked a final bundle out of the suitcase on her bed and flipped the lid shut.
“Yes!” she said, raising both hands above her head. “Victory! Done before dinner.”
“Then I’ll see you girls, and your freshly washed hands, at the table in three and a half minutes,” said Alex, and he left.
“That’s just enough time for you to open this,” Abby said, tossing the final bundle at me. I unrolled it. It was a mustard-yellow Camp Cantaloupe T-shirt, with the name of the camp in red letters over half a cantaloupe and the outline of Orcas Island.
“Hey, thanks,” I said, running a hand over the logo and trying to figure out if I felt happy or sad. “Now I can look like someone who went to summer camp.” I turned the shirt around. On the back was a picture of the same goofy-looking moose from Abby’s postcard, with the words Cantaloupe Cantaloupe, Moose Moose Moose in a half circle around it.
“What’s this all about?” I asked, holding it up. After all those boring stories, this looked like it might actually be interesting. This had secret code written all over it.
“Seriously?” said Abby. “Did I not tell you about the moose? I am such a terrible friend. That’s, like, the heart and soul of Camp Cantaloupe. Okay, so apparently years and years ago—”
But the story had to wait, as Alex called out a two-minute warning and we were off, racing Abby’s brothers down the hall to dinner.
We ate out on the patio next to the twins’ broken bike “art installation.” We had grilled pork, corn salsa, red cabbage coleslaw, and sandwiches made of Rice Krispies treats and peach ice cream for dessert. Abby couldn’t stop talking about how good the food was after six weeks of the mess hall, and her dad and brothers pestered her for all the best camp stories, so lucky me, I got to hear them a second time.
Moths came out and fluttered around the table, and the sky had faded from pink to gold to indigo before dinner wound down.
“Can Maggie stay the night, Dad?” asked Abby, scraping up the last bit of salsa with Rice Krispies treat crumbs.
“Sure, if your mom says it’s okay, Maggie,” said Alex.
“She won’t be home until late,” I said. “But I can run over and leave her a note.”
I helped Abby and her brothers clear the table, then went back through the gap in the fence to my dark, empty house. It felt extra dark and empty after Abby’s. I grabbed my toothbrush and pajamas and scribbled a note at the kitchen counter.
Mom, Abby’s home. I’m asking permission to spend the night at her place. Yes, her dad is there. Yes, I said thank you. Yes, I’m bringing my toothbrush. I’ll probably be hanging out with Abby all day tomorrow, too. Have a good night/day at work.
Outside I could hear the birds finishing their nighttime songs, but inside the only sound was my footsteps as I turned off the lights one by one on my way to the door.
“Good night, fort formerly known as Gromit’s Room,” I called as I passed the living room and Fort McForterson. “I’m sleeping at Abby’s tonight, but I still love you and I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I turned off the last light and put a hand on the front doorknob.
There was a soft rustle behind me.
I stopped.
Everything was still.
“Hello?” I said into the darkness.
Silence. One cold finger danced down the back of my neck.
I must have been imagining things. Probably just my shoes squeaking on the floor. No way was it a knife-wielding zombie counterspy, or a giant northwestern shadow leech. No way. I turned and reached for the door again.
A soft, distinct thump sounded from the living room.
I spun around as cold fear leaped out of the dark and wrapped around me like a blanket. All my senses snapped into high gear.
I wasn’t alone.
What should I do? For real? I wasn’t making up adventures here. There was someone in the house with me. And it sounded like they were in my fort. I stood frozen by the door, staring into the darkness, my eyes so wide they hurt.
Okay, what would my mom do? She was always good in a crisis. What had she said on the phone earlier? Deep, slow breath, you’ll be fine.
I forced myself to take a breath and let it out silently. I took another, and a warming spark of irritation appeared along with it.
Why should I be the one scared? This was my house, wasn’t it? And even if someone—or something, said an unhelpful voice in the back my head—was lurking inside my pillow fort, I was eleven and a half years old, and I had a lifetime of experience dealing with crisis and danger.
Okay fine, maybe that had been mostly imaginary, but I still had plenty of practice. This wasn’t all that different from the time last winter when Abby was being held captive in a ski lodge in the Alps and I had to take on a room full of elite werewolf guards single-handed. A big show of confidence saved the day there; maybe it would work again.
I darted across the room in four quick steps and flicked on the overhead light.
“Who’s there? You’re surrounded. Show yourself!”
Nothing. No movement, no sound from the fort.
“Fine,” I said, ignoring my painfully thudding heart. Deep, slow breath. “Then we’re coming in.”
Trying to sound like as many people as possible, I clomp-stomped across the floor to the fort. The sign declaring Fort McForterson was hanging crooked. It looked strange now, almost like a warning. I’d never realized before just how much my fort looked like a nest, a nest for some squirming, overgrown rat-people with poisonous claws and curved teeth and horrible hairy. . . .
Whoa, Maggie, rally. Another deep breath. It was still my overgrown rat-people nest, and no one had a right to be in there but me.
I crouched down, ready to jump back if anything spiny came flying out, and instantly wished I had something more impressive than a sparkly blue toothbrush and a pair of sleepy dinosaur pajama pants to defend myself with.
But hey, maybe I just heard a book falling over. This really could be nothing at all, right?
A slow ripple ran across the fort’s bedsheet ceiling, inches from my face.
Oh. No.
It couldn’t.
Three
There was definitely something. Absolutely definitely an unknown something, inside my pillow fort.
I lifted a shaking hand toward the entrance flap with my breath caught in my throat. But before I could get there, something parted the flap from the inside . . .
. . . and Samson sauntered out.
My mouth dropped open and my butt hit the floor.
Samson banged against my knee, purring. He had a piece of craft paper stuck to his snagglepaw.
“Samson, buddy,” I said, weak with relief. “What are you doing here?”
He head-butted me again. I tugged the paper from his paw, racking my brain for an explanation. Had he followed me over and snuck in behind me? Maybe . . . only no, I would have heard him clattering on the wood floor.
But how else could he be there?
I crawled into the fort to look for clues, the patchwork scarf brushing over my shoulder, and . . . and . . .
Hey, what was going on here?
The pillow Abby had knocked over earlier was lying on its side again, only instead of chair legs behind it there was another pillow. An orange-plaid pillow. With light seeping around its edges. Light coming from . . . someplace else.
As I sat
there, gaping, Samson ambled past me into the fort, headed straight for the crack of light, slipped through it, and vanished.
“Okaaay,” I said to the world at large. “Oh-kay.”
Once more with the deep, slow breaths. Then I followed the cat.
I crawled into the fort, gave the new pillow a push . . .
. . . and found myself looking directly into Fort Comfy.
Ever since we were little, Abby and I had played long, intricate adventure games. In the last one before camp stole her away, we were explorers hunting for giant sapphires in the Lost Temple of the Saber-Toothed Tiger. Everything was going well until we reached the treasury, where we just couldn’t decode the strange stripey markings covering the walls. It wasn’t until I whapped one with a stick and smelled oranges that we realized the entire temple was scratch and sniff. After that, finding the secret chamber of sapphires was easy. Although getting out again wasn’t when Abby accidentally released the Saber-Toothed Guardians from the sleep ray I’d trapped them in when we arrived. Luckily, I had a spare hang glider in my bag, because even in our custom-designed adventures something could always go wrong. And I was nothing if not a seasoned veteran.
But this right here? Right now? To have it happening in real life? To actually be able to reach from my fort straight into Abby’s next door and scratch Samson’s chin? Not even my years of advanced tactical training could prepare me for that. I stared at the space betwen our forts, feeling almost seasick as my brain heaved back and forth between This can’t be happening! and Open your eyes, it is!
I crawled forward, steeling myself for a tingle or shock or shiver of energy, but there was only the soft rumble of Samson’s purring and Creepy Frog googly-eyeing me from under the squashy blanket pile.
Completely dazed, I kept moving and clambered to my feet in Abby’s bedroom. She wasn’t there.
I stepped into the hall. The bathroom door opened.
“Hey, Mags,” said Abby. She’d redone her new side braid. “What took you so long?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again.
“Did you want to brush your teeth?” Abby asked.
I looked down, realizing I still had my toothbrush and pajamas tucked under one arm. How on earth was I going to explain what had just happened?
Answer: I wasn’t.
I grabbed Abby’s arm and pulled her into her room.
“Okay,” I said as she opened her mouth to protest. “Do you remember when we were parachuting into Oldfang Cathedral to find the lost relic of St. Claudia that held the secret code for the bank vault in Switzerland?”
Abby gave a half smile. “It’s kind of late to start a game now, isn’t it, Mags?”
“Do you remember?” I insisted. She frowned a little, fingering her braid, thinking. My heart gave a twinge. Old Abby wouldn’t have had to think. “Come on,” I said. “There were thirty of SCAR’s best secret agents trying to get there before us. . . .”
“And only you knew about the hidden door in the kitchen staircase. Okay, yeah, I remember. Why?”
“Because what I’m about to show you is like that parachute jump,” I said. “I need you to trust me here.”
The corners of Abby’s mouth twitched. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
She crouched down beside me, and I waved her into the fort, following right behind. The little lamp lit up the mounds of blankets, purring Samson, Creepy Frog, and, directly across from us . . .
“Hey!” said Abby, stopping dead. “What?!”
Her mouth dropped open. She looked over at me.
“I know,” I said.
“But—I mean, what?” She crawled through the gap into Fort McForterson, poked her head out of the entrance flap, and crawled back, her eyes shining.
“Mags, this is . . . We’re . . . we’re linked!”
“Uh-huh. And you know what we’ve got to do now, right?”
“Obviously.” Abby nodded. “Test the cucumber casserole out of it.”
So we did, going back and forth between the forts over and over and over. And no matter what we tried—whether the pillows were shut on one side or the other, if we were both in Abby’s fort or mine, if the fort lamps were on or off—one fort always led to the other. We even checked to see if having Samson around made any difference, but it didn’t seem to.
“Okay, I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this,” said Abby as we finally settled down in Fort McForterson, “but this is magic, isn’t it?”
“Oof.” I shook my head. “We don’t know that for sure. And calling it magic makes us sound like third graders. Let’s just call it linking, like you did before.”
“Got it,” said Abby. “So, how do we think this linking happened?”
“Well, let’s start with what we know,” I said. “We know I had a fort the whole time you were gone and it never linked anywhere. Now you come home, we build your fort, and suddenly they’re connected.” I looked at her seriously. “Maybe it’s you.”
“Me?” Abby’s eyes went wide. “We learned a ton of stuff at Camp Cantaloupe, Mags, but we didn’t learn that.”
A loud knocking floated through the link from Abby’s room. “Hello? Girls?”
“Oop!” Abby sat bolt upright. “We’ve got company. Back to Fort Comfy!” She dove through the link. I scrambled after her.
“Hey, Dad. What’s up?” Abby said, poking her head out of the fort.
“Hey,” said Alex, as I smooshed in beside her. “Oh, hi, Maggie. I must’ve missed you coming back over. Were you two telling ghost stories or something in there?”
“Yes,” Abby said. “Ghost stories. Absolutely.”
“Ghost stories,” I said. “Yes.”
“Absolutely.”
“Sounds good,” said Alex. “But I hope they weren’t too scary; it’s just about time for lights-out.”
“I still need to brush my teeth,” I said.
“All right, but five minutes to bedtime, okay?”
Alex left, and we changed into our pajamas.
Abby was already in bed as I came back from the bathroom. I switched off the overhead light and settled into the fort. Abby rolled up on one elbow. “Dude, I seriously cannot wait for tomorrow,” she said. “Can you even imagine how much fun our camp is gonna be now? I was worried the rest of summer might be boring after Camp Cantaloupe, but this changes evvvv-ry-thing.”
I froze, halfway snuggled in. I couldn’t believe my ears. Did Abby really just say she’d thought the precious, glorious half of summer she got to spend reunited with me was going to be boring?
“Seriously,” Abby said, rolling over. “Camp Pillow Fort for the win.”
I clicked off the lamp and lay back, staring up at the ceiling. Old Abby didn’t know the meaning of the word boring, but it looked like New Abby did. She’d really changed a ton at camp, or maybe camp had changed her.
At least we were together now, though. That was the most important thing. And we had weeks and weeks to have adventures in. Just the two of us, like always. Like it should be. New Abby would come around.
I stretched my feet through the link and wiggled my toes back and forth. My house, Abby’s house. My house, Abby’s house. It was just like that time my mom and I drove to Idaho, and I spent a full ten minutes hopping back and forth over the state line. Only this border here included the obvious potential for midnight kitchen raids, neverending sleepovers, and glorious prank wars on cute teenage older brothers.
I rolled over and grinned into the dark. We were going to get into so much trouble.
Four
Alex was leaning against the counter eating cereal as Abby and I stumbled into the kitchen the next morning.
“Hey, it’s my favorite girls!” he said. “You two are up early. Big exciting plans today?”
Abby caught my eye. I tried to hide my smile in a yawn.
“Not really,” Abby said, pulling bowls out of the cupboard. “We’re just going to hang out at Maggie’s and work on our cabins.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re heading back to camp,” said Alex. “Well, I’ll miss you. Don’t forget you promised you’d stop by from time to time.”
Abby nodded. “We’ll be around. Today’s just for setup, anyway.”
“Just reinforcing the links,” I said, getting out spoons.
“That’s very poetic, Maggie,” said Alex. Abby snorted into the fridge.
“Do you have big exciting plans today?” I asked Alex.
“Oh, I thought I’d work on the lawn, and then I’ve got some errands. And, uh.” He looked down. “Tamal’s coming over for dinner tonight.”
“Yeah?” Abby said, her head popping up. “Are you two dating now or something?”
Alex’s cheeks arced into a grin, and he knocked over the cereal box. “Um, yes,” he said, hastily fumbling it back upright.
“Finally,” said Abby, handing me the orange juice. “I like him.”
Alex smiled adorably down into his bowl. “So do I,” he said.
Breakfast didn’t take long, and soon Abby and I were settling into the arts-and-crafts corner of Fort McForterson to hammer out the details of our new game.
“I can’t believe how many postcards you have,” Abby said, running a finger over the shoe box. “Did I really send you all these?”
“Mostly,” I said. “The ones in back are from my uncle Joe. He’s been up in Alaska since April, doing this whale research project.”
“Ooh, cool,” said Abby. “Can I read one?”
I shrugged. Abby pulled out a card with a picture of a snowy mountain range on the front.
April 29th
Dear Maggie, there was a meteor shower last night. The whole top of the sky filled with shining trails of silver. It was unbelievable. If I ever get tired of whales, I’m going to become an astronomer. There’s already a whale constellation, so I could start there, although I would miss writing hundred-page papers about whale poop. I hope you get a chance to come see this place someday. You would totally love it.
Love, Uncle Joe
“Aww, he misses you,” said Abby, shoving the card back into the box. “Do you think you’ll go visit him?”
I handed her a pen and a pad of paper. “Nah, my mom would never let me go. He’s in this remote cabin way up on the edge of the Arctic Circle. He had to take a plane, a ferry, a train, a bus, and a pickup truck just to get out there.”
