Whoa! Where on earth …?

Addy was dead sure she had never been in or even seen this place before. Not in real life, and not in the comic book either.

Uncle Vim had definitely not drawn this place.

Not the beach, spotted with palm trees that clicked in the gentle breeze like train wheels. Not the pale pink sand where she and Wylder had landed in a bumping muddle. Sand so fine that it clung to Addy’s clothes like icing sugar. Not the turquoise ocean with the perfect arc of a rainbow on the horizon and white-tipped waves rolling toward shore. Not the merry group of laughing kids, tossing a beach ball and doing cartwheels. And what was that sweet, spicy smell? So strong it was like inhaling a flavor. The smell of cinnamon.

Catnip scrabbled his way out of Addy’s bag, whiskers quivering. Addy picked him up, nose to nose, grateful for this small, loyal creature in the middle of such strangeness. Was his brain big enough to grasp the hugely weird day he was having?

She cuddled him while she scanned the beach, looking for clues.

“Did we end up in Florida again?” said Wylder.

“I’m still mad at you.” Addy held up the comic book. “This is mine! Keep your paws off.”

He opened his mouth, but she hadn’t finished.

“Not Florida. And definitely not 1899.” She paused for a second. “It doesn’t look like anywhere.”

Just when she was getting used to being one of the characters in the comic book, fighting battles and sassing nasty villains, now they get zapped to another crazy world? How unfair was that?

“There’s practically a war going on in here.” Addy shook the comic with a clenched fist. “And suddenly we’re … wherever this is!”

Wylder raised his palms as if to say “Stop, okay?”

Addy stopped, but mostly because she’d breathed in another huge waft of cinnamon, and it was the most calming, comforting thing she’d ever smelled. She closed her eyes and thought for a second about one of Uncle Vim’s specialties: banana-cinnamon pancakes. Mmmmm.

“I need to tell you some stuff,” said Wylder. “I’ve been … well, it was an accident, but I got out. Out of the comic. I was in Toronto—”

“Yeah, actually? You got out? I wondered where you were.”

“With Nelly,” he said, not quite looking at her.

Addy let it sink in. “So how did it work with her? She’s just paper and ink. Did she … get, like, dimensional?”

“Uh—”

“Seriously, how did you get out? And didn’t you notice it was her and not me?”

“Total luck,” said Wylder. “We went through the back page of the comic. I figured that out later, but—”

“We …” said Addy. “We.”

“I thought it was you.”

“It wasn’t me. It was Nelly. I got left behind.”

“I know that! That’s why I came back—to get you. But I met your uncle and everything! And the main thing is, I can get us home now. I’ll show you. We should just go. Right now.”

Addy knew from Wylder’s earnest, pleading face that he had not meant to be selfish when he’d left her to possibly die and have her skin sliced off to decorate a robot named Poppy. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t blame him for any of this.

But—and it was a big but—even if he could actually get them home, there was still a whole lot wrong. And she had a pretty firm suspicion that the wrong stuff could be made right only by staying in the comic. If they were still even in the comic, that was. Addy glanced over at a giggling circle of children who were tossing a beach ball back and forth. Where were they? It was creepy how nice everything was after the scary bird and Lickpenny’s moldy teeth and the smoke and the severed hand …

“Okay,” she said at last, “tell me how you think the portal works.”

Wylder yelped and pointed at the ocean. “Look!”

Addy spun around to stare.

“It’s Cinny!” said Wylder.

Cinny?

“Holy cannoli! You’re right.”

The golden animal in a striped bathing suit rode a surfboard, flashing his famous cheeky grin. As his wave rolled onto the beach, gum fell down like rain. Real gum! A couple of pieces hit Addy on the head. The boys and girls—all swaying happily in a moment of cinnamon worship—unwrapped what they caught and popped the gum into their mouths. Cinna-Monkey, nicknamed Cinny by children everywhere, was the beloved mascot for Cinnaglom gum. He’d been tossing gum since Addy was born.

Lightbulb!

Addy pulled out the comic. “Look. Right-hand page. This is where we are.”

A blue-headed macaw with vibrant yellow plumage swooped over their heads, laughing the way parrots do—as if they know your secrets.

“We’re in an ad?” said Wylder. “That’s crazy!”

Addy never paid attention to ads. They were basically invisible, as far as she was concerned. She skipped over them and kept reading the story.

But she’d recognize Cinny anywhere.

“The Cinnaglom people are pretty good sponsors, my uncle says. They really like the comic. They once sent us a whole carton of free gum—a hundred and forty-four packs. I chew it all the time.”

“But how did we get here?” Wylder sounded as if his head might pop off from trying to figure it out. “I don’t mean whose fault—I just mean how?”

“I guess when we were … you know, fighting …” Not Addy’s proudest moment. “The page got turned. And here we are.”

“That might be the craziest thing that has happened this whole day.” Wylder unwrapped a stick of gum and offered it to her. She folded it over and put it into her mouth.

“Hey!” Wylder looked around on the sand. “Where’d the wrapper go?”

He unwrapped another stick, watching carefully. The shiny colored paper vanished as it left his hands. Poof! Just gone.

“Holy cannoli,” said Addy. “I guess there’s no such thing as litter in the world of advertising. Too bad we can’t do that trick at home.” Catnip turned over in her lap and she scratched his ears.

“And speaking of home,” said Wylder, “are you ready to go? Because I totally know what I’m doing now and your uncle is waiting. All we have to do—”

“Wait a sec,” said Addy. “No sudden moves, okay? Can you explain why you think we should go when everything is still a big fat mess? And it’s all our fault?”

“Your uncle said we’re like a computer virus, that we’re infecting the story.”

Addy’s gum was losing its flavor already. She spat it out and watched the blob disappear before it hit the sand.

“It’s too late for us to fix stuff,” Wylder said. “Viminy Crowe for sure would want us to go.”

“He would?” How did Wylder Wallace know what Addy’s uncle thought about anything?

She slid the sleeping rat onto her shoulder and laid the comic across her knees so they could look together at the whole double-page spread.

“Uh-oh,” she said.