After school I dropped my backpack in the entryway and kicked off my shoes. Mom stood at the kitchen counter folding a basket of laundry; she startled when I shut the door behind me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are you grabbing your bike?”
“I live here?” Not wanting to make Mom any angrier than she had been the night before, I plastered the sweetest of smiles on my face.
“No, I mean…” She walked around the counter toward me, and the moment felt very déjà vu, except my Velma costume was in my closet upstairs and not a surprise waiting for me on the bench. “Madeleine Brown called and invited you on a bike ride. I assumed you would grab your bike from the garage and go.”
I searched Mom’s face for a trace of last night’s rage, but she looked perfectly calm. “I thought I was grounded?” I asked.
My mind whirled with more questions than that. Why had Madeleine Brown gone through the trouble of calling Mom so I could join this mission? Did she want me there since I had been the one to get her on the team, or did she finally appreciate my detecting expertise? That last idea made me smile.
“Sweetie.” Mom busied herself by sorting through the mail stacked in the cubby by the door, pulling out envelopes and tucking them under one arm. “I don’t want you to stop playing with your friends. And I think it’s wonderful that you’re making new ones.” She stopped and looked at me. “What I don’t want, however, is you nosing around in police business. I appreciate your curiosity and passion, but it’s become dangerous and could get you and March hurt.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. Madeleine’s cover was good, obviously convincing, but I was still disobeying Mom by going on this bike ride. The thought pinballed from my brain to my gut, making me feel sick.
“Go on.” She motioned toward the garage. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I hugged her waist and then slipped my shoes back on.
As I rode to March’s house, I felt the strange sensation of being both heavy and light. Heavy with the guilt of betraying Mom, and light with the excitement of detecting.
I had never biked farther than ten miles before, except with my parents. Living off Federal, we were usually less than fifteen minutes away from anything interesting by bike. The Denver Exploration Museum for Kids, the Mayan Theater, the Tattered Cover Book Store, and Coors Field, if traffic was good. My parents didn’t allow me to cross Federal into the busier areas of downtown without them.
But Magic Planet wasn’t downtown. In fact, it was in West Highland, the opposite direction of downtown and about twice as far away as the elementary school. We rode on residential streets with hardly any traffic. Every now and then we passed a skateboarder or a jogger. But when March’s bike skidded to a stop at the end of the street, right up against the chain-link fence surrounding Magic Planet, my stomach erupted in a flurry of butterflies. I tried imagining that we were just a group of kids exploring an abandoned amusement park. There was no harm in that, right? And it’s not like anyone would tell Mom about it.
The metal curve of the Jack Rabbit rose above the fence, but years of overgrown bushes and vines had crowded the chain-link, and it was impossible to see much else.
“This is it?” Madeleine asked.
“The backside of it.” March rolled his bike away to the edge of the sidewalk, noticeably agitated to have arrived. “Traffic’s busiest at the front, so I thought we’d check the back first.”
Madeleine and I laid our bikes on the sidewalk and stepped to the fence. I cupped my hands around my eyes like a telescope and tried to peer through the greenery. Nothing.
We walked our bikes down the sidewalk on West 41st Avenue, checking for breaks in the fence. March and CindeeRae hung back a few paces, the cards on March’s spokes suddenly loud in the still afternoon.
March had just started to speak when I noticed a camouflage cover hung from one fence post to another—hard to see because of an overgrown shrub nearly as tall as me lining the fence.
“There.” I pointed, my voice a whisper. We all stood and stared at the suspicious panel, as if we expected the camouflage cover to rise like a curtain, and a line of kidnapped dogs to parade out.
“Let’s park our bikes,” Madeleine said, breaking the spell, and we followed her around the corner of the block, where I began to lock mine against the fence.
“No way,” March said, pulling the U-lock from my hand and putting it back in my basket. “We leave them unlocked for a quick getaway.”
No one argued.
Madeleine pulled back the camouflage cover to expose a perfect rectangular cut in the fence. She ducked inside, pushing through a canopy of foliage, loudly.
We shushed her from the safety of the other side of the fence. Madeleine waved us in, and the three of us hesitated. It felt like we should hold a debate on the pros and cons of trespassing onto Magic Planet.
“We need a plan,” I whisper-yelled at her.
“We’re checking things out,” she said. “That’s our plan.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said as she waved away my concern and disappeared inside.
I turned to March and CindeeRae, anxious to catch up with Madeleine before she did something stupid. “If anything bad happens, we meet back here.” That seemed a good addition to the plan. Ignoring the flurry of anxiety in my gut, I pushed back the camouflage and stepped inside the fence.
The cover of trees and the Jack Rabbit towering overhead made it seem much darker than late afternoon. There were no lights in the abandoned amusement park, and the place echoed with the eerie quiet of a haunted alley. CindeeRae and March pushed their way in, the swooshing of brush loud in my ears.
“Now what?” CindeeRae whispered.
“We investigate,” Madeleine said, using her outdoor voice. We shushed her again. Even CindeeRae, master of voice projection, knew when to keep it down.
“You’re a bunch of chickens.” Madeleine walked ahead to a bank of cotton candy and snow-cone booths. From there we could see more of the park, including the Sea Dragon and the Round-Up. Some of the rides had been pulled for reuse at other amusement parks or the new Magic Planet downtown. Darkened gaps marked where the Ferris Wheel, the Wild Cat, and the Sky Ride used to be, as if Godzilla had plucked them from the park and tossed them into the ocean.
We were walking toward the old Magic Summer Theater when a low hum rose in the chill air, followed by a chorus of barking. We stopped, and I turned my ear toward the noise.
“Is that what I think it is?” CindeeRae asked, her green eyes flashing against the park’s shadows.
“Let’s go.” Madeleine took off toward the sound, her black Converses slapping the pavement.
“She’s crazy.” March grabbed my elbow as I tried to follow after her. “We still need to be careful even if she isn’t.”
I stopped and looked around. He was right. This wasn’t how you launched a successful mission, I thought, watching Madeleine stomp down the park’s main thoroughfare and out of view.
CindeeRae, March, and I cut across the overgrown grass surrounding the backside of the shelter for the food court and carnival games. The barking came from inside that building.
Hugging the wall, we slunk around to the side, where we could just barely see the carousel pavilion across the path. White Christmas lights hanging from the eaves suddenly lit up against the late afternoon.
“That sound is a generator,” March whispered. “That’s how they’re powering the lights.”
“Who?” CindeeRae asked. “And for what?”
Her question hung in the air.
I tiptoed down the side of the building, March and CindeeRae following, and peeked around the corner to see what was under the shelter.
Dogs, big like Genki, were chained to shelter columns. Straw had been dumped on the cement floor, and each of them had cleared a perfect circle around their posts. The chains were just short enough to prevent them from reaching one another, and each post included a metal dish and a ratty blanket.
Once CindeeRae realized where the dogs were, she stepped into the open to search for Lobster.
Across the path, I could see the whole carousel pavilion, only it no longer housed a carousel, but a makeshift fight-ring on a platform, the railing spotted with blood.
I pulled CindeeRae back. “Those are fight dogs. Lobster won’t be here.”
We ducked behind the wall again, watching for Madeleine. Crouched low, I peeked around the shelter wall.
Crowley walked inside with another man.