by Will Taylor
“The Great Plains Sofa Circle,” said Noriko. “Yeah, he is. But NAFAFA’s been divided over what to do with the west for decades. I mean, it’s just been sitting there, cut off, as far as forts are concerned. Do you know how weird it is to be linked up with kids from all over the entire continent but not have a single pillow fort from California? It’s pretty weird.
“My network and Murray’s have always voted to leave the west alone, because honestly we have enough territory to deal with already. Miesha’s network wanted it for a while back in the late 1900s but they don’t anymore. But Ben’s network has wanted to stretch out to the west coast this whole entire time, and Ben thinks they’ve waited long enough. Getting it would make Ben’s network bigger and more powerful than any of the others, and I can’t let that happen. Partly because, you know, it’s Ben. But mostly because my network has always been the biggest, and the most fun, and I refuse to be the head of the Council who lets that change.”
Oof. So much drama and intrigue going on under all these pillows and banners! Didn’t these kids know they could have an adventure without it turning into a soap opera? “So stop him,” I said. “You’re in charge, aren’t you?”
“I have stopped him,” said Noriko. “I’ve blocked Ben over and over, but I turn thirteen next month, I’m aging out, and he’s been waiting for that exact chance since the minute he joined.
“Except now we’ve got you two, in the nick of time, and if we can get you through your good-deed test and onto the Council before I leave, then all his plans will be shot and my legacy and NAFAFA will be safe.”
Abby raised her hand, frowning. “Okay, so I get that Ben wants the west and you won’t let him have it,” she said. “But how does you aging out give him his chance? Can’t the next leader just keep blocking him?”
Noriko shook her head. “That’s the main problem right there. The charter says it takes four votes to elect someone to run the Council. Obviously, I want Miesha to get it, and she’s the next oldest, but Ben’s made it clear the only way he’ll vote for anyone but himself is if we agree to let him take over the west coast first. Before we elect a new head. But if we can get your network onto the Council, we’ll have the four votes we need for Miesha, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.”
“Bad luck for Ben,” said Abby cheerfully.
“Totally,” said Noriko. “He actually thinks this is all super suspicious. He thinks I set up your network on purpose in order to block him at the last minute. That’s why we’re sneaking around like this. He’s got his spies everywhere. Miesha’s on ‘Distract Ben’ duty with Sprinkles the puppy right now just so we could have this meeting.”
“Aww!” said Abby. “Puppy duty!”
“Is that why Ben was being so unfriendly when I met him the other day?” I asked.
“Yup,” said Noriko. “I mean, Ben’s never exactly been sweet, but he knows you two turning up could stop his dreams of expansion for good, and he thinks I’m helping you. That’s making him an extra-grumpy Overall Boy.” She leaned against the railing, crossing her arms. “So, yeah, that’s the situation. This has to happen, and I’m sorry to be blunt, but it’s pretty clear from all your flailing around that you two can’t do this on your own. That’s why I’ve organized everything for you and set up a foolproof, can’t-fail good deed. It’s a sure thing, and totally doable even though you’re grounded. Carolina is putting the finishing touches in place and dropping off instructions in your fort right now.”
The roar of the room thundered around us.
“But that’s . . . cheating, isn’t it?” I said, blinking. “Isn’t that exactly what Ben’s accusing you of? That’s got to be against the rules.”
“Maybe? Technically? Who knows?” said Noriko. “Please don’t go quoting regulations at me, Maggie Hetzger. I’m head of the Council, and I can tell you half our rules are ridiculous anyway. Take the silver sunglasses.” She tapped her frames. “They’re just ordinary sunglasses. We started wearing them when the Hub chandelier got brighter bulbs back in the seventies. It started as a joke, but some Ben-type kid decided they should be a sign of authority and somehow made it against regulations to even talk about them, like you found out when you asked. Half our rules are completely pointless and entirely weird, and I think that means we can bend them sometimes if we have to. It’s not like we’re keeping Ben from getting anything he should actually have, anyway. We’re just maintaining the balance.”
Abby caught my eye, her fingers playing with the end of her braid. She arched an eyebrow. I wasn’t certain what that meant, so I raised mine back.
Noriko was watching us. “Look,” she said, an edge of exasperation in her voice, “I don’t think this is that hard. This is the part where you decide what you want. Do you want to take the next step and join the big leagues of pillow forts? Or do you want to go back to playing those make-believe games you keep talking about? It seems like an easy choice to me, but maybe I’ve been wrong about you.
“I can guarantee your acceptance into NAFAFA if you just jump through the hoops and avoid breaking the rules for anything less than a genuine, life-or-death emergency for the next couple of days. And remember, if you don’t pass the test, we’re shutting you down anyway. You’ll never do a good enough deed on your own in that time, so this really is your only chance. I’m trying to make it easy on you here.”
The jangling pipes and coins seemed to grow louder as Noriko finished her speech.
I didn’t know what to say. My insides were feeling as tangled as the room around us. Everything had changed. First Abby wanted to turn the whole west coast into one giant summer camp reunion, then Noriko admitted she’d been openly using us, moving us around like pawns in her power games. She had kind of threatened us too. Didn’t her whole argument boil down to Do what I say or else?
And hey, who was she to say we were flailing and couldn’t come up with a top-notch good deed in time? We’d just done three in one day! We didn’t need her shortcuts. We could do it ourselves.
And if for some weird reason it didn’t work out, well, then fine, we’d lose the links. But I’d still have Abby, and we’d still have our games. And no matter what Noriko said, that sounded just fine to me. It would sting losing Alaska, but this was about principles now. We’d make it into NAFAFA on our own or not have a network at all.
I looked over at Abby, who smiled and gave me a single, determined nod. This time I understood perfectly. We didn’t even have to speak. We are Camp Pillow Fort, that smile and nod were saying, and we can meet this challenge together, just the two of us. I grinned and nodded back.
“We’ll have to think about it,” I said to Noriko. There was no point giving her a direct answer just yet. We had plans to make first. Glorious plans.
“Of course,” said Noriko. “I expected that. I’ve arranged for Carolina to be your audio surveillance officer this afternoon. You’ll have a two-hour window once you’re back where you can talk freely.”
“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”
Noriko narrowed her eyes at me, then sighed. “Okay, look, to show you how serious I am, I’ll throw in a bonus: follow my instructions, do this right, and I’ll do everything in my power to fix your relationships with your parents. I’ll personally make sure they know you weren’t responsible, and everything will be like it was before.”
“You can do that?” asked Abby, her eyes wide.
“I’m Head of the Council of NAFAFA and Chancellor of the Forts of the Eastern Seaboard,” said Noriko. “Of course I can.”
“Wow!” said Abby. “Also, hey, can I ask a totally off-topic question?”
Noriko shrugged.
“What’s in that big tank in the corner?”
We all looked down. The big tank in the corner was full of something, but it wasn’t coins. It looked more like . . .
“Cheerios,” said Noriko. “You wouldn’t believe how many Cheerios end up falling down the back of sofas. We had to put them somewhere.”
Abby whistled, impressed. She gazed around at the forest of pipes. “So, how does all this work?”
“Do your good deed, get into NAFAFA, and you’ll find out,” Noriko said. “But I’m tired of shouting here. You know where I stand. I’ll take you back to your own network, and then you two have a big decision to make.”
Sixteen
“Leave it to us to wander into a pillow fort civil war,” I said as the link closed behind us.
“I know,” Abby said, “it’s bizarre. But that Hub! It’s incredible! You really didn’t describe it well enough. And all those other kids we can hang out with! I can’t wait to get into NAFAFA now.”
She seized the silver envelope waiting in the middle of the floor and ripped it open. “Let’s see what this maybe technically cheating good deed is.” She cleared her throat and read the letter aloud.
Maggie Hetzger & Abby Hernandez,
Your good deed has been prepared. Please follow these instructions carefully. The blue-striped pillow two to the left of the entrance of your hub has been linked to what we call a ‘partial fort.’ That means a situation where the pieces needed for a linked fort (pillows, a basic covering, a token) are gathered by accident. This mostly happens on sofas, like the one you encountered when you first linked up to Alaska. The partial we’ve set up for you today is a tarp and sofa in an alley behind the garbage dump half a mile from your house, and since it’s not a formal pillow fort, linking there is totally fine within the NAFAFA rules and regulations, even for a network on probation, and even with Ben nosing around.
The alley is a mess. The maintenance man who usually takes care of anything dumped there is getting old, and the trash has been piling up. You will clean the alley for him. Link through, clean the alley, talk about doing it later tonight when a regular monitor is on duty, and I’ll take the report and spin it up to good-deed status.
It’s important that you do a very thorough job, since the Council will judge you on the end result. It’ll probably take you a combined four to six hours of hard work. Sorry about that, but we need it to look convincing.
Maggie, Murray says you like spotting problems and asking lots of questions, so you’re probably wondering how we’ve linked the alley to your fort and what the cover story is. The ‘how’ is we took a postcard from your shoe box and tucked it under the sofa cushions. The cover story is you threw the card away and it got blown out of the recycling truck and ended up in the alley. Talking about that in your fort once the regular monitor is back on duty would be helpful. You could even say that maybe a rat found the postcard and carried it into the sofa to make a nest.
I don’t think there are any rats in the alley, but there might be. Sorry about that, too.
Sincerely,
Noriko, Head of the Council of NAFAFA, Chancellor of the Forts of the Eastern Seaboard
“Really?” I said, staring down at the letter. “More cleaning? Good thing that’s not happening!”
“What?” said Abby. “I think it sounds fine. We can get a start now, come back home for lunch, then finish up tonight. We get accepted tomorrow, Noriko fixes things with our families, and bam, all our problems are solved! She made it pretty convenient.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Hang on,” I said. “Are you saying you want to do this?”
“Obviously,” said Abby. “Wait. Are you saying you don’t?”
“Of course!”
Abby frowned. “Um, okay. Why not?”
Why were we even having this conversation? I held up three fingers. “I don’t want to clean up an old, dirty alley; I don’t want to get into NAFAFA using someone else’s ‘maybe technically cheating’ plan; and I don’t want to do what Noriko says just because she tells us to.”
“Oh. Huh,” said Abby. She held up three fingers of her own. “Well, I want Noriko to fix things with my dad; I don’t mind hard work when it’s helping someone; and I don’t want to miss out and spend the rest of the summer wondering about all the adventures we could be having if we just went with the flow and got into this NAFAFA club when we had the chance. Besides, Noriko’s only doing what’s best for her network, Mags. There’s no reason to take any of this personally.”
I felt like my brain had missed a step. “But—but what about back in the collecting room? That nod, when we agreed not to do this because we could do it ourselves?”
“What are you talking about?” said Abby. “I was nodding yes, all right, let’s do this. I was agreeing with Noriko.”
My insides flipped over. Once again, New Abby had come along and yanked the rug right out from under me.
“Huh, okay,” I said. Time for a deep, slow breath. “But don’t you think it would be better if we brainstormed more good deeds and passed the NAFAFA test on our own? We can do it—we’re Camp Pillow Fort!”
“There’s not enough time, Mags,” Abby said, shaking her head. “Like Noriko told us, this is our only option.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Not.”
“Is!”
“Not!”
We glared at each other.
“Just so I know, are you speaking in code right now?” I asked.
“No. And why do you keep thinking that?”
“Because you sound different.” I heard a tremor in my voice. “Something happened to you this summer.”
“Yeah,” declared Abby. “It did. I had a great time at Camp Cantaloupe. And I want to keep that going now that I’m home. And that means getting into NAFAFA, and this is how we’re doing it. Look”—she crossed her arms—“do you have even one new good-deed idea? One that’s ready to go right now?”
I had to shake my head.
“See? Sorry if it bugs you, Mags, but we’re cleaning up the alley, and that’s final.”
“No, we’re not,” I said, indignation flaring up inside me. First Noriko, now my own best friend telling me what to do? No way. “I’m head of our network, and I say we’re not doing it.”
“Oh, so I automatically have to follow your orders?” Abby fired back. “Uh-uh. My cat’s technically in charge, in case you forgot. And you may be vice director, but you don’t order me around.”
I spluttered. “What?! You’re ordering me around!”
“No, you are!” said Abby. “You’re saying I have to do what you say or you won’t play with me!”
My stomach twisted painfully. This was all going wrong. “I’m not saying that,” I said slowly. “All I’m saying is I want us to come up with our own plan instead of taking Noriko’s. Like we always used to.”
“Fine, then I’ll do Noriko’s good deed without you,” said Abby, shrugging.
“You can’t,” I insisted. “You can’t just decide to split up the group and go with her plan over mine.”
“Mags, you just said you don’t have a plan,” said Abby. “And stop trying to make me your sidekick in all this. Believe it or not, I can have adventures on my own!”
“So, what? You’re just going to go off and leave me behind like before?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
There was a thunderously uncomfortable silence.
Abby put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, dude. Is that what this is about? Are you still mad about me going away to camp?”
“No!”
“Really sounds like it.”
“Does not.”
“Yeah, it does.”
I took a super deep breath and held it, feeling the blood pounding behind my ears. “I’m not mad you went,” I said, letting it all out at once and fighting hard to keep my voice steady. “I just . . . missed you.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that,” said Abby. “But it’s not enough reason for me to feel bad about deciding to go.”
I blinked away the rainbows in the corners of my eyes. “What? You told me you didn’t have a choice. You said your dad made you go since he couldn’t get a refund.”
“Oh, yeah . . .” Abby went very still. Her face flushed dark. “Um,
about that.” Her eyes flicked to mine, then away again. “So, actually . . . I went on purpose. We could have gotten a refund. I could have stayed home. But when my dad asked me if we should cancel after you missed the deadline, I thought about it and decided I really, really wanted to go, even if you couldn’t.”
My heart stopped dead. The pillows spun around me. For one horrible moment I honestly thought I was falling through the carpet. I asked the only question I could think of.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to miss out,” said Abby. There was a plea in her voice. “I needed something different this summer, Mags, I just did. I needed—I needed to start actually doing things and not just hang out with you imagining all the time. Your games are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not really my thing anymore, and with middle school coming up . . . Only I never really figured out a way to tell you, and then camp was starting . . .” She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry if you were sad. Truly. Ever since I got back I’ve been trying to share as much of camp as I could with you, and I do honestly wish you’d been there, but it’s done now. It’s over. And I’m not sorry I went.”
It sounded like a practiced speech.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I said around the lump in my throat. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand or something?”
“Honestly . . . ?” said Abby. She left the answer hanging, hovering in the air between us. “Look, I know you’re mad, but I said I was sorry and we can’t change it now, so let’s just move on.” She tugged at her braid, and a crease appeared between her eyebrows. “And you can ease up on whatever abandoned-castaway story you’re probably starting in your head. It’s not like I’m gonna make this a habit or anything.”
The unfairness of that statement shocked me. “But you’re already doing the exact same thing!” I said, jabbing a finger at the silver envelope. “You’re choosing to leave me behind again right now.”
“No,” said Abby, firing up. “I’m choosing to follow through on something I think is important, and you’re choosing not to come! This is exactly why I didn’t tell you before, Mags, because you always take everything personally. Not everything I do is about you!”