Wylder peered over Addy’s shoulder. “Lickpenny uses Flynn to get the gold?” he said.

“The way it was supposed to be, Lickpenny used Snap to open the roof of the armored car, and then Isadora and Flynn hijacked the gold at the last minute. Now Lickpenny is forcing Flynn to use Snap’s hand.” Addy was quiet for a moment. “Shreds of the old plot keep showing up. But the characters are twisting them into a new story.”

“Acting on their own,” said Wylder.

“Lickpenny is a creep,” said Addy. “But Uncle Vim made him so smart that when the story breaks down and he gets to think for himself, he is actually capable of taking over the world. McGurk is just a dough-brain. And Lickpenny is kicking Flynn’s butt.”

“It’s not Flynn’s fault!” Wylder had to defend his hero. “He was trying to save me when he fell in the pool. Isadora did a great job of sewing on the robot hand, but her idea totally backfired.”

“Yup. Everything is coming up Lickpenny. The only one who has got the better of him so far is me.” Addy looked pleased with herself for a second. “Which is why we have to stick around and fix the story.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“But your uncle—”

“Please stop telling me what Uncle Vim thinks. He’s my uncle, not yours. We have a couple minutes of peace here in paradise. No flying robots or evil chemists—just a surfing monkey and gum falling from the sky. So why shouldn’t we figure out a way to fix the story? And don’t say, ‘But’!”

“But—”

“I told you not to say that! And I know what you’re going to say next. Us being safe is more important than the comic. Our moms are worried, blah-blah-blah. But everything I care for most is about to disappear. Pffffft! If Uncle Vim moves away, I’ll die. This issue of the comic has to get fixed, and it has to have a great ending.”

“Do Flynn and Isadora get together? Is kissing in the balloon your uncle’s idea of a great ending? Because I do not think—”

“No one will buy the comic if Lickpenny gets the gold and Flynn gets beaten and Isadora’s balloon crashes. Ten thousand copies will go into the garbage—or the recycling—because of us. FunnyBones will drop Uncle Vim, and he’ll never be able to pay back the money he borrowed from my mom—because of us. My uncle will have to go back to selling soap in Saskatchewan and won’t live with me anymore—because of us. We cannot let this happen!”

“Your uncle was on his way to meet with Magnus Snayle when I left.”

Addy’s face turned from determined to panicky. “Does Snayle know what’s going on?”

“Not yet. Vim was hoping to keep him away from the comic as long as he could.”

“How much time do we have?” said Addy.

“Maybe not much. That’s why we should leave.” Wylder shivered. A cloud had appeared out of nowhere to block the sun. The earth shook a bit, the way it does when a subway train runs under where you’re walking.

“Are you saying—is my uncle saying—that if we leave, the comic will go back to normal? As if we were never in it?”

“I hope so,” said Wylder.

“Because—think about it—the first worst thing that happened wasn’t so much about us as our stuff. It was Flynn tripping over your backpack and losing his hand. You going to Toronto didn’t bring his hand back.”

Wylder felt his face heat up.

“Oh,” said Addy. “That’s it, isn’t it? Our stuff.”

Impedimenta, thought Wylder.

“Your backpack?” She looked down at her dress.

“My jeans? What happens if they stick around?”

“I don’t know.”

“My jeans are in still in Nelly’s room. Your backpack is in Florida. Even if we go home, our stuff stays and keeps messing up the comic.”

“Your jeans haven’t messed up anything,” said Wylder quietly. “But anyway, we’re only guessing that those things matter. I don’t want to be the person who tells your uncle that you got smashed on the rocks by a lammergeyer. Your uncle loves you. Whole. And my mom loves me.”

“Enough mush.” Addy rubbed Catnip’s head. “You’ve made your point. But you know you’ll feel like a loser if you go back without trying. Think about that, Mr. I Don’t Want to Tell Your Uncle. And anyway, you’re not in charge of me! I want us both to stay and fix things. Come on, Wylder!”

All Wylder had wanted was to find Addy. Now that he had, he saw that maybe there was more involved. You couldn’t rescue someone who did not want to be rescued.

“Your uncle might’ve said something about stuff,” he mumbled. He would feel like a loser if he didn’t even try to fix the story he had wrecked.

Addy seemed to realize that his resolve was melting. She brushed the sand off her hands with a couple of brisk claps. “If one of us is about to get captured or amputated, we’ll just turn the page and escape, okay?”

“I don’t— Amputated?”

“Okay?”

Wylder sighed, suspecting he had just agreed.

A girl in a dazzling pink bathing suit landed a triple backflip right at their feet, sending up a fine spray of sand. Her skin was as smooth as a plastic doll. Her tight curls bounced, and her teeth glittered as she sang out: “Cinnaglom is like fireworks of flavor!” she said.

“Uh, yeah,” said Addy. “Like that’s important.”

The girl’s sunny smile wavered for a moment. “Is that a … rat?” she whispered.

Catnip sat up on Addy’s shoulder and sniffed.

There was that subway rumble again. The girl bit her lip and hurried back to her friends. The water sparkled, the palm fronds clicked, the breeze smelled sweet. It was all kind of perfect.

“Let’s make a plan,” said Addy. “Step by step, let’s take out the traces that we were ever in the comic.”

“But every move we made changed something. People talked to us, bumped into us. We affected them in every panel.”

“True. But we didn’t leave our stuff behind in every panel. Let’s go collect what we dropped.”

“Starting with my backpack.”

“Right. And my jeans. Anything else?”

Cell phone? No, that was still in his backpack. But there was something—

A merry tinkle of music interrupted his thoughts. The beach kids had joined hands in a circle and were singing, faces lifted to the sky.

“It’s the jingle,” said Addy. “Put sparkles in your mouth with fireworks of flavor!”

She let Catnip run down her arm and stood up.

“I say we start at the beginning, with the Red Riders and the gold. We’ll zip through to where we are now to make sure we haven’t left anything behind.”

“But what about here in Cinnaglom?” said Wylder. “That bouncy little girl could be telling her friends about the rat right now. Messing stuff up all over again.”

“Cinnaglom isn’t part of the story—it’s an ad. As far as the comic is concerned, you and I have disappeared. When we turn the page, we’ll go back to being part of the story, visible again.” She held up the comic book. “Ready for page one?”

Her eyes were dark and fierce. How had he ever confused her with Nelly?

“Okay,” said Wylder. “But here’s the deal. You can lead the way and make the rules because you’re such a … I mean, because this is your idea. But I get to hold the comic. And don’t say, ‘It’s my comic.’ ”

“Well,” she said, “it’s not your comic.”

But she was smiling when she gave it to him.

Another rumble, longer and deeper than before, like the note on a church organ that makes the floor vibrate. The singers had stopped in the middle of their jingle. They huddled together in scared silence, the beach trembling.

Addy and Wylder stared at the panel where Lickpenny was forcing Flynn to laser-drill a hole in the train car roof. What was happening to the picture? The lines, the figures, the whole panel shook.

The next rumble was the strongest yet. Sand swirled around them as Wylder grabbed Addy to keep himself up and she clung back. Was it an earthquake? The sky was blue overhead but ominous clouds gathered on the horizon.

And then they heard the voice. A deep, resonant voice that came from the very air around them.

“ADDY …”

The comic in Wylder’s hand seemed alive for a moment, shaking violently. The Cinnaglom ad was still there.