by Will Taylor
“Um, no.”
One by one we crossed off everything on the list, until Uncle Joe woke up with a snort and we had to stop with the fort talk. Pretty soon it was time to say good-bye, and I made Uncle Joe promise to stay off his foot and not go out researching for a while. He agreed, but as Abby and I slipped into the fort, I couldn’t shake a nagging prickle of worry about leaving him up there, injured and housebound and alone.
Luckily there were other things to think about as we got back to Seattle.
“Did it work, did it work?” asked Abby. “Did we pass the test?”
“Look for a silver envelope,” I said, peering around.
But there was no sign of a silver envelope in Fort McForterson or in Fort Comfy.
“Cucumber casserole!” said Abby. “I was sure that would be enough.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It was a nice try, though, and at least we made Uncle Joe happy.” And me, actually. That was the best afternoon I’d had in a long time.
We ate dinner at Abby’s again that night—black bean burgers and coleslaw—and after a push-up contest between Tamal and the twins, and a pileup in the living room for the next superhero movie in the series, Abby and I headed for bed.
I was curled in my usual spot, drowsily dreaming up an arctic-themed sky-versus-ocean game for us to play, when Abby sat bolt upright in the darkness.
“Oh, no!” she said. “We forgot to clean your house!”
I groaned and threw my arms over my face. “Ugh! But we folded the laundry, right? That was the main thing. My mom won’t be mad if we do the rest of the house tomorrow.”
But Abby was already out of bed and switching on the light. “Dude, no,” she said, her hands on her hips. “I want to have tomorrow free for doing good deeds so we can make sure we get into NAFAFA. And that means you need to get up right this second, because tonight we”—she whacked me with her pillow—“are—cleaning!”
It definitely wasn’t the best going-over my house had ever seen, but between us we rallied long enough to sweep the floors, polish the faucets, straighten the books, wipe the windows, and scrub the toothpaste out of the bathroom sink before deciding to call it quits.
“Okay, for real, enough’s enough,” Abby said, as I led the way back into Fort McForterson. “Your mom can’t expect us to do more than that.”
“I hope no-o-ot,” I yawned, closing my eyes as the end of my patchwork scarf brushed over my face. I stopped, wondering sleepily if I could spot the bit of First Sofa in it.
Abby bumped into me headfirst from behind.
“Oop,” I said as she fell over, snort-laughing. “Oh, come on, it wasn’t that funny.” Abby rolled onto her back, sleepy-giggling, and her arm thumped against a pillow one to the right of the entrance.
The pillow fell slowly forward, and another pillow, a brand-new pillow, appeared behind it.
Thirteen
“Hey!” Abby said. “New link!” And she was right. The off-white, industrial-looking pillow staring back at us was definitely a stranger to Fort McForterson.
“Ugh,” I said. “Now? It’s seriously too late for this.”
“This is awesome!” said Abby, somehow completely awake again. “New link means new fort! But where did it come from?” She pushed the pillow aside. There was darkness behind it. “Only one way to find out!” She started forward.
“Hang on!” I said, throwing out an arm and blocking her path. Questions and dangers were swarming through my tired brain. What if this was a test set by the Council? Or even a trap? Would using this new link disqualify us? Were we supposed to put the pillow back and just forget the link existed? Or were we supposed to explore it and use its powers for good? I couldn’t decide.
I couldn’t hold Abby back forever either.
“Just, be careful,” I said, lowering my arm.
Abby wrinkled her forehead. “Careful? Of what? And why are you always scared of new links?”
“I thought it might be a Council trap. You know, to test us.”
“Huh?” said Abby. “How do you figure that? We didn’t add this link, so we can’t get in trouble for it. It might have nothing to do with them, anyway.”
“Then that’s even worse,” I said. “That means it’s a stranger’s fort, and that could mean a whole other kind of trouble. I mean”—I waved a hand at the unidentified darkness—“there could be anything in there.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Mags,” she said. “This is a pillow fort, not a long-lost portal in one of your games. We’re not gonna be facing giant spider crabs or hungry ghost badgers. No mechanical librarians are going to kidnap me and hold me for ransom until you hand over a book from your mom’s shelves that turns out to be a secret animal-sound translator when you read it in a mirror on the night of a full moon. That’s a normal-looking pillow right there, which means it must lead to a normal-enough fort. So why don’t we stop wasting time and go check it out?”
Oof. New Abby. She did have some surprisingly good game ideas, though. And it didn’t sound like I’d be able to stop her from charging ahead. I sat back and shrugged.
“Thanks,” said Abby. “Can you get me some light?”
I passed her a flashlight from my supply corner and watched as she disappeared into the darkness. The seconds ticked by, but nothing happened. No cries for help, no Council bursting in from every pillow, no explosion, no collapsing links. Were we okay, then?
I ran my mind over the Council’s lecture about their weird rules, and suddenly remembered the map of Camp Pillow Fort they’d refused to let me see. Our network had made a strange shape on it, bumpier than it looked on our map. Was that because it showed this fort too? A fort that was already linked in, but I just didn’t know about it yet? If it had been here all along, it might be okay to use. . . .
A light hit my face from inside the new link. “Hey, Sleepy McTiredface,” came Abby’s whisper, “come on.” I sighed, pushed down my neverending questions, and squeezed in after her.
We were in a small, boxy fort, built around a folding table shoved into a corner. Pillows lined the walls on two sides, with a blanket hanging down to the floor on the others. The cold linoleum floor was littered with art supplies, and as Abby waved her flashlight, I saw colorful drawings taped to the underside of the table above our heads.
“Good thing you were careful coming in,” she whispered, “or you might have been seriously injured on all these crayons and pieces of construction paper.”
I ignored her.
“It definitely looks like a little kid’s fort,” Abby went on. “So that’s okay. But how did it get linked in? Do you recognize anything?”
I shook my head. Uncle Joe’s made sense, but I didn’t have the faintest idea how we could’ve gotten linked in to some random little kid’s fort. It felt totally creepy, sneaking around a stranger’s space by flashlight. What if the owner turned up and found us? Or worse, what if they were sitting just outside, only inches away on the other side of the blanket, listening to our every word?
And what was outside, anyway? Sure, it looked all sweet and innocent in here, but that didn’t prove anything. It could all be part of the trap! This fort could be set up in a pitch-black attic, or the musty basement of a haunted mansion, or a locked classroom in an abandoned boarding school, and when we crawled out, we would find our names scrawled on the chalkboard in jagged letters, waiting for us.
“We’ll have to go out there and look for clues,” I said, shivering.
“Agreed,” said Abby. “And it’s your turn to go first, fearless leader.” She pointed the flashlight at a crack in the blanket walls. “Watch out for ghost badgers.”
“Oh, you are just hilarious tonight,” I whispered. Abby giggled.
I took a deep, steadying breath, put my secret-agent shoulders back, parted the sheets the tiniest bit, and looked out.
We were in a hospital room. The walls were pale pastel green, and the cool air smelled like hand sanitizer and paper towels. The lights were t
urned off, but a computery glow came from a group of machines clustered around a bed on the opposite side of the room.
And in the bed, fast asleep, was a small girl.
“Oh, wow,” said Abby, lying flat on her stomach and ducking her head under my arm. I leaned on her shoulders. New Abby sure was a lot more cuddly than Old Abby, and I had to admit, that part was nice. We both watched the girl sleep quietly.
“She must be really sick,” I said, scanning the room. “Look at all those cards taped to the wall. She’s been here awhile.”
There was a soft tap on the door, and it swung open. We scrambled back, killing the flashlight and hardly daring to breathe, as someone came in.
Footsteps crossed the floor toward the bed. There was a faint click, and one of the machines beeped.
“Mmph, whassat?”
“Hey, Kelly,” whispered a voice. “Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”
I felt my hair stand on end. I knew that voice. I opened the teeniest crack in the sheet and looked out.
My mom was standing over the bed.
“Deep, slow breaths, sweetie,” she said to the girl named Kelly, “and you’ll be asleep before you know it. Then when you wake up, it’ll be tomorrow and you can play in your pillow fort again.”
“Will you be here?”
My mom sat down on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “I’ll always be right here when you need me,” she said.
“Okay,” murmured Kelly. “G’night, Dr. Hetzger.”
“Good night,” whispered my mom. She waited until Kelly was asleep, then adjusted her blankets, scribbled something on a chart at the foot of the bed, and left, closing the door quietly behind her.
I let out a breath.
“Wow,” said Abby. “That was weird.”
I didn’t say a word. It was more than weird. My mom had just promised to be there for this total stranger whenever she needed her. This stranger who wasn’t her family, who wasn’t her daughter, who wasn’t me.
Something hot and spiky settled in my stomach.
“That girl’s really sick then, isn’t she?” said Abby. “Since your mom’s a cancer doctor?”
I nodded. We looked out at Kelly. She couldn’t have been more than eight.
“And this is her fort,” Abby said, shining the flashlight around again. She ran its beam along the pictures taped to the ceiling and smiled. Apparently Kelly liked drawing two things: cats and space. Mostly together. She was good, too. There were cats in space suits, cats on the moon, cats meeting aliens, cats pushing buttons in control rooms, and cats in rockets counting down to liftoff.
The memory of saving Samson from the ice cream truck rocket ship floated through my mind, and I fought back a smile.
“These are adorable,” said Abby. “I bet she’d love Samson. And look, crimped edges; she must have scissors like yours, Mags.” She nudged me. “You’re kindred spirits!”
“Hah,” I said.
“I bet she comes in here to pretend she’s not in the hospital. It must get really old being sick.” Abby flicked a crayon across the floor, then her head snapped up. “Hey! Hey, hey, hey!” She batted me on the shoulder. “We should fix it up for her!”
“What?”
“The fort!” said Abby. “We can give it a makeover, bring her things to make it better, make it fun. It can be a total magical surprise.”
“Okay,” I said, “but— Ow! Stop it! Why do you always hit people when you have an idea? And please stop calling the forts magical. We’re not third graders here.”
“What is this thing you have against third graders?” said Abby. “But whatever, this is such a good idea. She’ll love it, plus it’s the perfect good deed. Win-win!”
I didn’t answer. I scowled down at the linoleum.
“Hey,” Abby said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just— Don’t you think we’ve done enough good deeds for one night? I’m seriously tired here.”
“Come on,” said Abby. “It’ll be fun. And even forgetting the good deed, this is a nice thing to do. Don’t you want to make a sick little kid happy?”
I knew the only answer to that was yes, but I couldn’t say it. It wasn’t like this Kelly person didn’t have time to make her fort better herself. All she had to do was lie around all day while my mom took care of her.
Okay, fine, that wasn’t fair. But my stomach still felt hot and spiky, and I definitely wasn’t in the mood to stay up late for the second night in a row, doing a favor for someone I didn’t even know.
Abby was watching me, a line between her eyebrows getting deeper and deeper the longer I stayed quiet. I looked away, chewing the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t going to win this one.
“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Sweet! Come on, tired Maggie!” Abby shook out her wrists and cracked her neck. “So, what do we need? Or, more important, I guess, what can we get?”
What we got turned out to be a hodgepodge of odds and ends scavenged from our bedrooms and houses. Between us we found: colorful fake flowers to jam between all the pillows; a squashy blue bathmat to spread over the cold floor; a string of paper butterflies; a round mirror with a broken frame; a useful stack of extra construction paper; an old wicker basket to hold Kelly’s mess of art supplies; and a miniature tea-party table that we decorated with a lime-green dish towel, a pair of battery-operated candles, a chipped teacup, and a tiny owl wearing a hat.
It was hard work crawling back and forth with our hands full, especially since we were trying to be quiet, and by the time we finished even Abby was grumbling. Still, as we sat back to survey the final result, I couldn’t help feeling a rush of pride at what we’d done. We’d transformed Kelly’s boring, everyday fort into a cozy palace, pretty and twinkling in the electric candlelight.
“Go us!” said Abby, wiping her forehead. “This is awesome. Kelly’s going to be over the moon.”
“Along with her cats,” I said, nodding up at the drawings.
“Ha!” said Abby. “There’s my girl back.”
I flashed her a grin, then dropped it as a new worry suddenly occurred to me. What if Kelly wasn’t over the moon? What if she got scared instead? What if we came back to visit and found her fort surrounded by police tape, with all those knickknacks covered in our fingerprints sealed up in plastic bags as evidence? If Kelly took the makeover the wrong way, we could be in serious, serious trouble.
“Calm down,” said Abby when I pointed out the problem. “It’s okay. We can leave her a note. That way she’ll know someone nice was behind everything.”
After carefully discussing how much to say, we wrote out the note.
Dear Kelly,
Surprise! We hope you like your fort makeover. We can’t tell you who we are, but we have forts too, so we’re kindred spirits.
Your space cat pictures are awesome! Will you draw us one of a big black-and-white cat? We know a cat like that. His name is Samson. He hasn’t been to outer space, but he likes to explore and go back and forth between our forts. We are so sorry you have to be in the hospital and hope you get well very, very soon.
From . . .
“What should we put?” asked Abby, tapping the pen on her leg. “‘A & M’?”
“‘Your Forty Godmothers’?” I suggested.
“How about ‘Your Next-Fort Neighbors’?” said Abby.
“That works.”
Abby folded up the letter and tucked it under a candle on the little table.
“Okay, that’s that,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Guess all we can do now is wait to see if she likes it. But hey”—she bopped me on the knee—“at least now we can be absolutely, for sure certain we’re in NAFAFA. If thoughtful greens, ankle fixing, housecleaning, and heroic fort fancying don’t get us in, nothing will.”
She yawned. Then I yawned. Then both of us yawned, and we made our last trip home for the night.
Abby went back to her pl
ace, but I decided I needed a change after the long day and crawled up onto my old sofa bunk in Fort McForterson. It was glorious getting to stretch out in my own space again, and I realized being on my own didn’t bother me at all now that my best friend was right on the other side of the pillow.
Besides, I thought as I finally drifted off to sleep, Abby was right: there was no way we weren’t in NAFAFA now. All the hard work was behind us, and from here on out, things could only get easier.
Fourteen
I woke the next morning to the blare of my house phone ringing in the kitchen. I crawled out of the fort and shuffled over to answer it.
“Hullo?” I said, staring blearily at the stove clock. It read 8:05 a.m.
“Maggles, it’s Abby.”
My brain gave a hiccup. That didn’t compute. Why would Abby call me on the house phone? It would have been faster to just reach through the forts and poke me.
“Who?”
“Abby, your best friend and next-door neighbor. Listen, we’ve got trouble.”
My brain hiccupped again, slowly coming online.
“Huh? What sort of trouble?”
“Well, for starters, I’m grounded.”
My brain thudded into gear.
“Grounded? What for?”
“My dad woke me up a bit ago kind of . . . very angry,” she said. There was a quaver in her voice. It took a lot to upset Abby. “He asked me to come look at something in the kitchen, and it was a total mess. Everything in the cupboards was switched around, and the mugs were under the stove, and the pots and pans were in the freezer, and there were dirty fingerprints on the walls, and all the forks and knives were hidden in the orange juice carton. It was chaos.”
“What?!”
“And Mags, he thinks we did it. He said he heard us sneaking around last night and just assumed we were playing a game, but if this is our idea of a practical joke, it’s going too far. I told him it wasn’t us, but he asked me who it was then and I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so now I’m grounded.” She let out a shaky breath. “It was NAFAFA, wasn’t it, Mags? They attacked.”