by Will Taylor
“To what?” Ben said.
“—to surprise us.” I took two steps forward. Ben and Sprinkles both looked where I was looking.
Two men holding hands, one short and muscly, the other tall and slender, were walking past us in the crowd. They were wearing matching jerseys from the game at the stadium.
And I knew both of them very, very well.
Thirty-Seven
Maggie
“So, how’s the conference going?” I asked.
The tour had been canceled, and all the tourists whisked away as first the security guards, then a pack of palace historians, then the media crowded in. After being asked dozens of questions none of us knew how to answer, Uncle Joe, my mom, Samson, and I were sitting on a bench in the hallway while the historians—whose boss, it turned out, was the tour guide lady—examined every inch of le Petit Salon. We weren’t officially under arrest or anything, as far as we knew, but they weren’t letting us go, either.
“How’s the conference going?” repeated my mom. She laughed, a bit hysterically. “The conference is going fine, Maggie. Thank you for asking. There’s lots of interesting medical research being discussed. And we had a free morning today, so I thought, ‘Hey, why not go on a tour of Versailles? That will be wonderfully relaxing!’”
I adjusted my lapful of Samson. “Sorry it’s not.”
“I’ll survive. But now my turn.” My mom faced me. “So, how’s Camp Cantaloupe going, Maggie?”
Uncle Joe and I grinned.
“It’s going okay, thanks,” I said. “The art teacher likes me, and I met this girl who was sort of my biggest enemy, but now I think we might be friends. We’re doing a scene together for drama class, and we’re supposed to start doing this big letter-writing project with some younger kids when I get back.”
“When you get back,” said my mom, fixing me with a very parental look. “Which will be soon, right? You’ve been counting the minutes to that camp all year. I can’t imagine Abby is glad you’re gone like this.”
“Oh, well,” I said, and Uncle Joe shifted on the bench beside me. “Abby still has to, um, sort of . . . get back to camp, too.”
My mom put her face in her hands.
“I wonder what they’re all looking for in there,” said Uncle Joe, peering over at the historians in le Petit Salon taking photos and measuring and elbowing each other for spots. “It’s not that big a room.”
We could see right into the room from where we sat. The historians were definitely being thorough, and they seemed to be focusing on the walls and windows. They probably thought we’d snuck in through some secret panel or hidden door and were racing to find it. They all seemed scared to go near the sofa, like they were worried it might collapse into dust if they even breathed on it.
My mom looked up. “Joe,” she said, “I love you, but I think the real question here is how we’re going to get Maggie—and Abigail, wherever she is—back to summer camp. Not to mention there’s this cat to deal with. And if I remember last summer correctly, the way to do that has something to do with that sofa over there. And . . . well . . .” She gestured at the packed little room, and the hallway full of palace officials, police, security guards, and reporters, all clutching cameras, phones, and notepads.
Getting back into le Petit Salon and slipping discreetly under the sofa was looking less and less possible.
“We either need a really, really, really good distraction,” I said, remembering the last time I had to get grown-ups out of my way, “or a plan to make all these people do what we say.” I did a quick mental search through my inventory of secret-agent plots and schemes, but nothing came to mind that would help in this situation. Well, not without me finally having my own helicopter.
It looked like we were well and truly stuck.
But as I slumped back on the bench, something inside le Petit Salon snagged my attention. A flash of silver . . . under the sofa.
I sat up, staring. There it was again. Then a face, for the briefest of seconds, and a hand, only visible from where we were sitting, beckoning me over.
“Wait here,” I said, getting to my feet.
My mom looked up. “Maggie, they said to stay. Please don’t make it worse.”
I ignored her and headed for the room. Head Historian lady blocked me in the doorway.
“No, mademoiselle,” she said firmly. “It is our turn to explore the room, yes? You have had yours, I think.”
“But I—I lost my necklace!” I said, improvising. Ooh, actually that worked! The necklace Abby had made me was hidden under my shirt. I put on my best sad-little-kid face. “It’s my very favorite. I’ve had it since forever. I think it fell off near the sofa.”
“Then we will find it. And return it to you when we have completed our survey of the room.”
I looked up at her, thinking hard about all the awful things that would happen if we didn’t find a way out of this mess. The trouble I would be in. The trouble Camp Cantaloupe would be in. The trouble my mom and Uncle Joe would be in. The trouble Abby and Samson would be in. I felt my eyes fill with tears. Success!
“Ah, no! Oh, no, okay,” Head Historian lady said. “No tears, please. Yes, you may go find your necklace. But quickly, and be very careful around that sofa!”
I gave her a watery smile and ducked past before she could change her mind. Some of the other historians in the room rounded on me, but she held up a hand and stared them down. I crossed to the sofa, made a big show of patting around the edges of the seat, then peered underneath.
And there were Miesha, wearing Kelly’s space helmet over her silver Council sunglasses, and Bobby, wearing his usual massive smile.
“Maggie!” Bobby whispered. “Hi! How are you? Are you having fun?”
“I guess so,” I breathed back. “Why are you wearing that, Miesha?”
“It was Kelly’s idea,” she said, her voice slightly muffled. “To let me leave the Archives without having an allergy attack. So far it’s working, although don’t ask me how.”
“Awesome!” I said. “Hey, so you’re probably wondering why I didn’t go back to camp.” For some reason the sight of them cramped under the sofa filled me with a deep need to explain myself. “Everyone was just so busy with the foam fountain thing, and then I spotted Samson’s trail and followed him here. He’s out in the hall with my mom and uncle now. Oh, wait, you don’t know, my uncle showed up too, and—”
“That’s not important, Maggie Hetzger,” Miesha interrupted. “What’s important is that there are grown-ups inside le Petit Salon! How exactly did you unlock that door?”
“I didn’t!” I protested, going flat on my belly, pretending to dig around under the sofa. “We were listening to the tour guide and the handle just turned! Like it wasn’t locked at all!”
Miesha looked over her sunglasses at me for a long moment. “Hmm. Well. Maybe it’s a good thing you were here, then. If the door was already compromised, we might have shown up and found the room full of grown-ups with no warning. But whatever. Bobby and I are here to rescue you.”
“Yay!” said Bobby.
“Thanks!” I said.
“Thank Carolina,” Miesha said. “She’s the one who saw Ben run out of here crying and came to see what had happened.”
“Carolina’s here, too?” I said. “Where?”
“Over there.” Miesha pointed past my shoulder. I glanced back and saw Carolina sitting on the bench in the hall beside my mom and Uncle Joe, chatting away. She was wearing a silver baseball hat that matched her sunglasses.
“But—how did she get out there?!” I whisper-yelled.
“Secret-agent stuff,” Miesha said. “We were getting cramped, and she wanted to stretch her legs. She’s good, isn’t she?”
That was the understatement of the entire summer.
“Okay, so what’s your rescue plan?” I said. I’d been pretending to search the sofa for a while now. I wouldn’t have long before the Head Historian lady kicked me out.
“W
e’re going to take back control of le Petit Salon and this sofa,” said Miesha.
I blinked. “How are you planning on doing that?”
“With this.” Miesha turned to Bobby, who handed me an ancient-looking piece of paper covered in old-fashioned writing. I had trouble making out the letters, but it looked to be in French.
“This is our secret weapon,” Miesha said. “It’s that lead I found while I was stuck in the Archives. Bobby just finished the translation. It’s pretty perfect.”
“What’s it say?” I asked. They looked at each other. Bobby suppressed a giggle.
“It’ll be more fun if we don’t tell you,” said Miesha. “Just give it to that lady in charge. The rest will take care of itself.”
I looked back down at the paper. “Just give it to her? That’s all?”
“Yup,” said Bobby. “You can say you found it under here.”
“And it will get us out of this?”
“It should,” Miesha said. “If you don’t get carried away trying to control everything. Just let the document do its work, smooth out any little bumps with those improv skills of yours, and we’ll be fine.”
“You’ll do great, Maggie!” said Bobby, giving me two thumbs-ups.
Well. Okay. I guess this was what we were doing. I got back to my feet and approached Head Historian lady, pulling the necklace out from under my shirt.
“Well,” she said, not looking at me. “Did you find your necklace?”
“Yes,” I said, patting it. “Thank you. But I found this, too, sticking out of the bottom of the sofa. I thought it might be important.” I held out the paper. She glanced at it briefly, then did a double take and turned her full attention on me.
“Oh,” she breathed. “An artifact!” She took the paper, holding it by the edges. I watched as her eyes flashed across it, apparently having no problem with the old-fashioned writing. Her beautiful, framed face shifted wildly as her expression went from reverence, to confusion, to blank shock. She stopped at the bottom of the paper, then went back to the top and read the whole thing over again.
“Excuse me a moment, please.” She stepped to one side and spoke in French to the rest of the historians. They gathered around her, all reading the document together in a clump.
Out in the hall, Uncle Joe and Carolina had swapped hats and were chatting happily. My mom was watching me, frowning. She tilted her head in a question, and I gestured to the knot of historians and shrugged.
Suddenly the knot broke apart, all talking at once. Some of the historians pointed angry fingers at me; others pulled out cell phones and began shouting into them; and a couple went straight to the gaggle of media types waiting with their cameras in the hall. If I’d thought things were confusing before, everything seemed a hundred times worse now.
What had Miesha and Bobby gotten us into?
The storm of yelling grew. People were running in every direction. Reporters were hurling questions at the historians, security guards were practically spitting into their walkie-talkies, and the piece of paper was getting passed from hand to hand and shouted at too.
And then the Head Historian, who had her phone pressed to her ear, hollered at the top of her lungs over the din. Everything went quiet. She beckoned me with an impatient gesture, still speaking into the phone. I walked over, glancing behind me at my backup. My mom and Uncle Joe looked worried. Carolina was smiling.
Samson was playing with his tail.
Head Historian lady was listening and nodding, nodding and listening. She shook her head. She nodded again, her eyes on the far wall. I stood beside her, shifting from foot to foot, aware that every freaked-out grown-up in the vicinity was watching the two of us. Waiting.
The lady spoke two words. There was a pause, then, “Oui.” She pressed her thumb to the side of the phone and lowered it. She looked at me. She looked around at the crowd.
“This, ehm, document,” she said, so everyone could hear. “This document is an early historical draft of legal language that Louis the Fifteenth had placed in the constitution of the nation of France as he ruled it.”
There was dead silence in the room, and in the hallway outside.
“It details certain . . . conditions, for the achieving of a certain . . . position within the government of France.” She paused. Whatever she was getting at, it was clear she didn’t want to say it. “These conditions center on this room, le Petit Salon, and by tradition have been included in every version of the French constitution for the past three centuries as a nostalgic nod to the history.”
More silence. “So?” someone burst out. “What does it say?”
“It says,” the lady said, raising the paper, “and I have here spoken personally with the president as well as experts in the historical archives and received full, legal confirmation . . . ahem. ‘If, by some condition, the door to le Petit Salon should be opened from without, and persons are discovered to be within, let the first person to have entered therein, even should they appear unusual in dress and appearance, be recognized legally and royally as the sole and rightful head of state of the nation of France, and be treated as such, with all due rights and privileges therein pertaining.’”
There was a pause like a bubble filling up, and then absolute chaos erupted. The media was going wild, and the historians were jockeying for position in front of the cameras. Head Historian lady was suddenly being interviewed by five different journalists at once, and camera operators were running laps inside le Petit Salon, gathering background footage.
“Do you want to hear the rest?” said a voice in my ear. I jumped. It was Carolina, wearing Uncle Joe’s feathery pirate hat.
I nodded, and we slipped back to the bench.
“Miesha found that document in one of Louis’s old journals. Apparently there was only ever one key to this room, and Louis was constantly almost losing it. He made them put that bit in the constitution so if he ever came back through the pillow fort links and realized it was gone, and someone seized the throne in his absence, he could pound on the door until the guards broke it down, the statute would go into effect, and he’d be king again.”
“He thought someone might take the throne while he was stuck in here?” I said. “That doesn’t sound like a super likely problem to have.”
Carolina shrugged. “Louis was a king; he was paranoid. Plus he spent a lot of time in disguise, running around with his friends. He thought maybe one of them would try to take his place by pretending to be him someday. This was his backup plan.”
“Attention! Attention everyone, please!” Head Historian lady was clapping her hands again. Cameras swiveled and voices faded as everyone focused on her. “Many people are asking me, ‘Who is now the head of state for France?’ and I am sorry to say I am not yet able to tell you.”
“But you said you were the one who opened the room!” shouted one of the reporters. “Are you changing your story on us? Are you trying to suppress the facts with a cover-up?”
The lady fixed the man with a look, and he shrank back.
“It is true,” she said, “that I was the one to turn the handle, as I have many times tried to do before, and this time I succeeded. But the document refers not to the opener, but to who is found inside the room, and inside the room I found not one person, but two.”
She looked at me, then at Uncle Joe, who definitely fit the unusual in dress and appearance description, especially since Carolina’s silver baseball hat was way too small on him. All the faces and cameras looked with her.
“So the answer to the first question,” she finished, “lies in a second one: Who was first to arrive in le Petit Salon?”
Uncle Joe and I locked eyes. I could almost hear him thinking the same thing I was. He had arrived in le Petit Salon after me, but I hadn’t been first in the room. Not technically.
Wordlessly, moving as one, Uncle Joe and I raised our arms . . . and pointed straight at Samson.
Thirty-Eight
Abby
“Ben
, shhh! They’ll hear you!” I hissed, peering out from behind the plastic tablecloth at the two men we’d so expertly followed.
Maggie would have been proud of the way we’d secret-agent-trailed them for three blocks, ducking behind cars and fading into the crowd. But sitting crammed together under the table of an ice cream stand was turning out to be a lot more challenging.
“You be careful!” Ben whispered back. “I wouldn’t have to keep saying ow if you’d quit jabbing me in the eye with your hat. Hey, ow!”
“Shhh!” I whapped him on the arm. “Put your Council sunglasses on if it’s a problem.”
“I had them on! You keep knocking them off! Sprinkles, no!”
Sprinkles had already sniffed out every ice-cream-cone crumb within reach and was making it very clear he wanted to go out and search for more. Ben latched his arms around him, trapping him in cuddle prison.
We looked back out at our targets. Oof. I’d been through some weird stuff the last couple of days, but this was the most unbelievably wild thing of all.
Because the man on the left was my dad, Alex. And the man on the right was my new stepdad, Tamal.
And oh my goodness, they were so freaking cute, sitting with their elbows touching, talking and laughing over their ice cream.
I would have given all of Antonia’s tiaras to hear what they were saying. But the radio on the ice-cream truck was blasting music, and there was no way we wouldn’t be spotted if we tried to get closer. It was just gonna have to be enough for me to sit here, miraculously somehow on the same street of the same city at the same time, and watch a piece of their honeymoon.
I snorted. Good thing it was me here and not my brothers. They would have snuck up on Dad and Tamal from behind and hug-tackled them, probably singing wedding songs at the top of their lungs and throwing rainbow sprinkles around like confetti.