Wylder knew where he was before he opened his eyes.
The air smelled familiar. Chemicals, air-conditioning, fast food. He made out pizza and barbecue sauce and even—could it be?—onion rings.
Wylder was lying on his back. He opened one eye to confirm what his nose had told him, and saw … Flynn’s mustache. But it was a picture, not the real thing. He opened both eyes wide. Yup! He lay on the carpet in a corridor of the Toronto Convention Centre, next to the big cardboard train display for Viminy Crowe’s comic book.
Wylder sat up feeling dizzy, the way you do after a long nap in the middle of the afternoon. But his trip to the world of the comic had not been a dream. No, not at all. His pants were still slightly damp. No backpack, of course. He’d left it back in Florida, pages and pages ago.
Addy lay beside him, still wearing Nelly’s clothes—the puffy-sleeve dress, the vest with all the pockets and the lace-up boots.
Wylder let out a whoop of relief. He’d found the portal—or it had found them! They’d crossed over and made it home! Safe and sound.
“Addy! Hey, Addy!”
He shook her shoulder. She stirred, not quite waking up yet. Her hair fell away from her face, revealing a puzzled frown as she slept. Tuckered out from flying through the smoky sky and being rescued, eh? He and Salad Girl had come a long way.
Wylder rolled over to find the comic book on the floor beside them, open at the last page.
Take a ride? Yeah. Wylder remembered the swirling smoke, his determined leap into space, yanking on Addy’s foot, feeling himself lifted into the air … that was a ride, all right.
The comic book had dropped out of his mouth when they fell. Did all the pages get turned to expose the inside back cover, where this ad was? Is that how they got home? Must be. Turning the pages had carried them through the comic, and it also got them out of the comic. The way back from the comic was different from the way in.
It didn’t matter now. He was home. Today’s adventure had been amazing, but it was over. He stood up and stuffed the comic in his back pocket.
How normal everything looked—as if he’d been here all day and never gone anywhere at all. The same booths, crowds and convention babble. People in their pretend capes and goggles and swords. What would they say if they knew that he had just lived this kind of adventure?
“Addy, come on! Get up!”
She groaned and rolled over onto her other side.
A security guard told them to move. “You can’t sleep in the middle of ComicFest.” The embroidered name badge on his uniform said ERNIE.
He helped Wylder to get Addy standing up.
“Oh, you’re one of those actor people,” Ernie said to her. “Who are you supposed to be? Wait a second!”
His eyes went to the cardboard train and then back to Addy.
Beside the blown-up image of Flynn were smaller pictures of Isadora, Lickpenny, Nevins, the robots—and Nelly.
Wylder watched the guard’s face. The man’s eyebrows shot up. He was clearly having a lightbulb moment.
“You’re that girl, aren’t you?” he said. “Viminy Crowe’s niece? Hey, he’s looking for you. Making a big fuss. Did you know that?”
Addy blinked at Wylder. She didn’t look like she knew anything.
“Come with me to the artists’ lounge,” said Ernie. “I saw your uncle there a while ago.”
Wylder had planned to head straight home. His mom must be going a little cuckoo by now. But it seemed like Addy needed him. She leaned against him as they went up the escalator. He put his arm around her. It was embarrassing, but he didn’t mind. And this was a chance to meet Viminy Crowe.
Addy’s uncle Vim bounded across the lounge in three strides, dropped his big portfolio case and kneeled down to hug Addy, who had flopped onto a couch.
Vim was tall and thin, with arms and legs like a stick insect’s. His eyes flashed behind thick, goggly glasses. He had a cloud of untidy dark hair, which followed him around like it was trying to catch up with him and never quite succeeding. His hands moved constantly, as if he were conducting his own life and the tempo was marked “As fast as you can play!”
He bounced up to shake Wylder’s hand in both of his. “My boy, my boy!”
Wylder didn’t even mind when the man let go of his hands and hugged him! A complete stranger and it felt good!
“Thank you, Ernie! An utterly heroical rescue!”
Viminy Crowe gently shooed the grinning security guard out of the room and closed the door. He bounded back over to where his niece lay with her eyes shut.
“She’s a bit zonked,” said Wylder. “She’ll be okay in a minute, though, won’t you, Addy? It takes a bit out of you, the page-turn.” Listen to him, Wylder Wallace, the expert, telling Viminy Crowe how things were!
“Maybe some water?” he said.
“Yes! Get her something to drink, Wylder Wallace!” Viminy Crowe knelt beside the couch. “I jumped nearly out of my skin,” he said, “when I got Addy’s text and checked my own sample copy. There you both were on the train! Talking to Isadora Fortuna! It must have been magic, but what kind? How did you get in?”
“There was some kind of portal through the, uh, door to the, uh … ladies’ room.” Wylder gave him a bottle of water from the counter.
“Incrediballoo.” Viminy unscrewed the cap and took a swig.
“But that worked only one way—into the comic. I think the way back must have something to do with the big display. That’s where we came out.”
He explained about landing next to the cardboard Gold Rush Express and seeing the advertisement on the back page of the comic.
“Consider me gobsmacked,” said Addy’s uncle. But he didn’t stay gobsmacked for long. “That lammergeyer was Addy’s idea—did she tell you that? We must have drawn eighty hundred versions till we got it just right. And not only the mechanizmos! Everything! The whole comic! And there you were, actually inside! Zipping around, fighting and eating and talking, teleporting from page to page. Living between two worlds. Words fail me—they absolutely fail me.”
No, they don’t, thought Wylder. He had never met anyone who talked so much or so quickly. Wylder was quite a talker himself, but getting a word in with Viminy Crowe was like interrupting a blizzard.
Vim tipped the water bottle and swallowed.
“Addy? Want some?” But she was dozing and not paying attention. He patted her arm and stood up.
“All afternoon I’ve been riveted by your adventure,” he said. “Chewed up with worry, of course, but also … chartreuse with envy! You have to tell me what it’s like inside. I want to know everything. Do the ServiDudes make a noise when they move? Does the smoke from the engine smell like smoke? Is the sun warm? And Isadora … is she beautiful? Did you try flushing the toilet? Was the alligator as big as it looks? Was it real? Is the comic real?”
He stopped talking and stared at Wylder. His eyes were intense and concentrated, full of longing.
“It’s, uh, pretty real.”
Wylder wasn’t used to adults like Viminy Crowe. Mom wasn’t enthusiastic about anything, except maybe worrying about how Wylder could fall in a hole or get lost. Dad hardly opened his mouth at all. The two weeks Wylder spent with him every summer were practically silent, except for the TV. Now Wylder wanted to say more about the Gold Rush Express, to give details, to somehow let Viminy Crowe know just how much he admired him and the world he had created. But the words were slow to come.
“Actually, it’s so real you forget it’s not real,” he said at last. “It’s … incrediballoo.”
A big guy with a beard and a portfolio case came into the room to get his jacket. He nodded at Vim. “Back tomorrow,” he said. “Another day, another twenty thousand comic book crazies.”
An announcement came over the loudspeaker. Ghost Kids Academy had giveaways galore. Hurry on over to booth number 781. Hurry, hurry. Last chance today.
Addy sat up.
Her uncle rushed over and took her hand. “You’re awake, Addy-pie! Fantastico! You’re here in the artists’ lounge at ComicFest. You just missed Fred Ickenham, grumpy as ever. It is profundamentally great that you are sitting up. We were fretting about you, weren’t we, Wylder Wallace? Do you want something to eat or drink? Let me say that you look fantabuloso! The Nelly gear suits you! But how are you feeling?”
She looked him up and down and then slowly turned her body around, taking in the room. She frowned when she got to Wylder.
“You,” she said.
“Yes me,” he said. “Wylder. Remember?”
Come on, Addy—snap out of it!
Vim nudged her with the water bottle and she finally took a long drink. She coughed at first, took another big gulp and coughed some more before starting to swallow normally. It was like she was learning to drink for the first time.
Addy gazed up at the buzzing fluorescent lights while she finished the water. When she’d had enough, she handed the bottle back to her uncle and wiped her mouth with her hand. She got up and walked carefully to the old-fashioned gumball dispenser by the far wall. It was as if she was still asleep, thought Wylder. Groggy and slow. It reminded him of the time he went on the Whirligig at Wonderland. He’d had to lie down all the way home in the taxi. Mom had been convinced he was going to die.
“Should we take her to the doctor?” he said. “She’s usually more …” How could he put it? ‘Lively’ would be the polite thing to say.
Viminy Crowe turned his hands palm up in an I-don’t-know gesture. “The doctor scenario has been playing in my brain,” he said. “But I keep stuttering at the part where we’d have to tell what happened. A lie wouldn’t be helpful, and the doctor wouldn’t believe the truth. Even we don’t know for sure what happened! At least she’s on her feet now. Hang on a second.”
His phone was ringing. He checked the caller’s name. “I should take this. I’ve been dodging these fellows for hours.” He swiped his thumb over the screen.
“Hello, Magnus!” said Vim. “How are you and all the other FunnyBones? I’m sorry I couldn’t talk before. My niece was missing, but she’s back now. Your timing is perfecto!”
Wylder went over to the gumball machine. You didn’t need money to make it work—you just turned the handle. Addy was on her third or fourth gumball. Her jaw bulged.
“These are delicious!” she said, slurping.
He tried one. They were good, but they were just gumballs. Poor old Addy, he thought. She wasn’t a candy girl before. It was all lettuce and stuff like that …
Lettuce! Wylder took a quick gulp of air and scanned the room. Addy didn’t have her bag. She must have left it on the train. The bag itself didn’t matter—after all, he didn’t have his backpack either—but how had she forgotten about the rat inside?
He took the comic out of his pocket. Would he be able to spot Addy’s bag wherever she’d dropped it? Or had their stuff—and Catnip—disappeared when the comic went back to its original story? He had a moment of … well, something at the idea of Catnip disappearing. A little shiver, for sure. He’d never liked the rat, but Addy sure did. And it was a living thing, after all.
Wylder glanced at the cover of the comic and felt a ping behind his eyeballs. It was not a gulp moment or a shiver moment. It was a “Holy crap!” moment.
He gasped out loud.
“Addy!”
She didn’t turn around. He thrust the comic at her.
“Look at that!”
Her uncle came over with a smile on his face.
“Relief is positively surging through my veins!” he said. “That was Magnus Snayle from FunnyBones Comics on the phone just now. The new issue of the comic—all ten thousand copies—is stuck at the train station, which means that Magnus hasn’t seen it yet. Isn’t that a wonderful piece of luck?”
Addy frowned down at the cover.
Wylder wondered why she wasn’t jumping up and down in horror. Didn’t she realize what was going on?
He knew. He opened his mouth to tell Viminy Crowe the bad news, but the man steamrolled right over him.
“All morning I’ve been yelling about those missing comics. Funny, isn’t it? If they had arrived on schedule, it would have been catastrophonous! A 19th-century train story with two modern kids in it? Running around with blue jeans and cell phones? Ridiculoso! Fans would jeer! They’d never buy another Flynn Goster comic—the hero might as well be dead. Me too. The FunnyBones people would drop me like an old penny. My career would be over, and I’d be back to selling soap for a living. Have you ever sold soap, Wylder Wallace?”
“Huh? No,” said Wylder. “And I hope I never have to. But—”
“It’s not easy. Trying to convince a grocery store manager that your lathery skin-softening product is beyond all others—the one that belongs on the shelf at eye level. Placement is key, you know.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir. But listen, there’s a big problem. The comic—”
“I’ve been dodging the FunnyBones’ phone calls all morning. Now that you two have returned and everything in the comic is cleared up, I can finally face them. So I’m off to meet—”
“Mr. Crowe!” Wylder’s shout caused Vim to rear back like a startled horse.
“Sorry, have I been talking a lot? I suppose I have. I do that when I get excited. My sister, Pippa—that’s Addy’s mother, a lovely lady, you must meet her—rolls her eyes, and—”
“Show him, Addy!”
She held up the comic, as if saying, “You mean this?”
Wylder grabbed it out of her hand. Viminy Crowe’s glasses had slipped down his nose. He slid them back up.
“What’s wrong, Wylder Wallace?”
Wylder held out his copy—Addy’s copy—of the comic book.
“Everything.”
