Chapter 5

A Crazy Plan

No one slept well in the Silver house that night. I tossed and turned in my new bed. I couldn’t stop worrying about Becca. I finally fell asleep near dawn, but even then I had awful nightmares. I dreamed that Snow White was chasing me around the dwarfs’ house, yelling, “A rat! A rat!” and trying to hit me with a broom.

In my dream the telephone rang, and Snow White answered it. She had the voice of a man and was talking so loud that she woke me up. “Gone?!” she cried.

I awoke with a start. That wasn’t Snow White on the telephone. It was Mr. Silver, and he was talking to his wife.

Michael, Tyler, and I all stumbled out of our rooms and downstairs. My eyes were bleary, Michael didn’t have his glasses on, and Tyler was in his underwear.

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Mr. Silver cried. “Are you sure? Yes, I’m on my way right now!” He hung up the phone and stared at us, dumbfounded. “Becca disappeared! And so did both of the other girls that were at the hospital with her.”

“Did someone call the police?” Michael asked. As usual, he was the one who stayed calm.

“Yes, of course,” his father said. “I’m going to the hospital. You three stay here. The police might call if they know something. If you hear anything, let me know immediately! I’m counting on you three!”

“Okay, Mr. Silver,” I answered. “We’ll do everything we can.”

Mr. Silver got dressed in a hurry and rushed out of the house wearing a pair of mismatched shoes.

After Mr. Silver had gone, I sat down at the breakfast table with the two boys, but nobody was hungry. We turned on the television and saw that the morning news was already reporting the story.

Just then I noticed that Michael’s glasses had fogged up. Bad sign. That always meant that trouble was on its way.

The phone suddenly rang. Michael picked it up quickly. Then he handed me the receiver. “It’s for you.”

“H-hello?” I said into the receiver. It was the very first time that I used that gizmo! “Who is this?”

“Echo, it’s me, Mrs. Silver,” she said. Through the phone I could hear her crying. “Oh, you were right. Something was terribly wrong with those apples. I’m sorry! If only I had listened to you.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said quickly. “We have to concentrate on finding Becca. You can count on me. I’ll hunt down that evil old witch!”

When I hung up the phone, I realized that Tyler and Michael were staring at me in shock.

“Since when do you hunt down evil old witches?” Tyler asked.

“There’s something you haven’t told us,” Michael said. “Come on, spill your guts.”

I realized that the boys still didn’t know the full story. I figured I should start at the beginning. I told them about the previous day, from when I’d first seen the old woman selling her apples, to getting hit with a broom, to the moment Becca had taken a bite of the apple. When I had finished, they were even more confused.

“This is crazy!” Tyler said. “So you’re saying that old lady cast a spell on those girls with the apples and then kidnapped them?”

“I’d bet my right wing on it!” I said.

“If that’s really the case, then all we have to do is find her!” Tyler exclaimed. “Case closed!”

“Yeah, right,” Michael said sarcastically. “All we have to do is comb the entire city of Fogville, hope the woman hasn’t left town yet, and that’s it. Piece of cake.”

“Or . . . we could use the magic ring!” Tyler said with a sneaky smile.

“How can you joke about this?” Michael asked. “Our sister is missing!”

“I’m not joking,” Tyler told him. “Do you remember the little ring that I gave Becca at the hospital? It’s no ordinary ring. It’s my latest invention, the pager-ring!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Michael asked.

“It means that when someone gets lost, all he has to do is turn the ring around his finger, and the ring will send a signal to the receiver,” Tyler explained. “It makes finding a missing person a piece of cake!”

“So where exactly is this receiver?” Michael asked. He was starting to sound a bit more interested in his brother’s plan.

“Right here!” Tyler said, placing a small metal box with a thin antenna on the table.

Michael sighed. “How is Becca supposed to even know how the ring works?” he asked.

“I whispered that to her yesterday, a few seconds before we left her room,” Tyler told us proudly.

“Let me get this straight,” Michael said. “You told Becca how this magic ring invention of yours works when she couldn’t hear you?”

“Exactly!” Tyler replied, smiling.

Michael and I exchanged a puzzled look. He shrugged. It might not have been a great plan, but for the moment, it was the only one we had.