After school, in the storage room behind the library, Abby dragged a chair over to the big box—Lincoln’s box. She stood on the chair, opened the top flaps of the box, and looked in.
Nothing down there but the textbooks.
“He’s not coming back,” Doc said from the doorway. He came in and shut the door behind him. “He said he’d give us just one chance.”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s it, then?” Abby asked. “Lincoln’s just going to sit there forever?”
“Looks like it,” Doc said.
He jumped onto the table, then onto the wobbly stack of boxes he’d climbed the day before. “I never did get to make that jump.”
“It’s all our fault,” Abby said. “He warned us.”
“Hey, I tried,” Doc said. “You didn’t. Think I can make it? To the big box?”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “The box is almost empty.”
“So?”
“So you’ll fall right through and break your—ugh, who cares.”
“Watch this!”
Abby sat down at the table and opened her backpack.
Doc said, “I’m really going to!”
Abby took out a book and started reading.
Doc screamed, as he jumped. He sailed across the room, made it to the big box, hit the top flaps of the box feet-first, fell through, and disappeared.
No crashing sound. No screams of pain.
Abby waited. The box didn’t move.
She got up and stood on her tiptoes and looked in.
On the bottom was the layer of books. Nothing else.
Doc came down hard in a cloud of dust.
“Look out, there!” a man shouted.
Doc looked up. A horse-drawn wagon was rattling right toward him.
Doc froze. The wagon swerved and the wheels of the wagon missed Doc’s legs by inches.
“Get out of the road!” the driver yelled.
Road? Doc wondered. What road? Doc looked around. Yep, he was on the road. A wide, dirt road. And another wagon was heading his way.
He bounced to his feet and ran to the sidewalk. He was standing there, brushing the dust off his jeans, when Abby landed a few yards away.
“Over here!” Doc shouted to her.
She dodged a galloping horse and made it to the sidewalk.
He was smiling at her. “You jumped.”
“Into the box? Yeah.”
“I’m proud of you,” Doc said.
“For being as dumb as you?”
“As daring, you mean.”
“Okay, fine,” Abby said. “Where are we?”
“Not a clue,” he said.
They looked around. Horses and carriages rolled down the dirt road. People walked by on the sidewalk—men in old-fashioned suits, women in dresses. Two- and three-story brick buildings lined the road.
“It’s like history,” Doc said. “Except, you know, in color.”
Abby stepped in front of a woman who was passing by.
“Hi, sorry,” Abby said. “Silly question, but … remind me of where we are?”
“Pardon me, child?”
“Like, the name of this town. What is it again?”
The woman looked Abby up and down, then Doc. “This is Springfield, Illinois,” she said. “Where did you get those strange clothes?”
“I think the mall,” Doc said.
“And what year is it?” asked Abby.
But the woman was already hurrying away. Looking slightly scared.
Abby and Doc started walking in the other direction.
“So what do you think?” Doc asked. “We’re inside a book?”
“Or back in time?” Abby wondered. “Like The Magic Treehouse?”
“The Magic Cardboard Box,” Doc said. “That doesn’t sound as good.”
“No, it doesn’t. Maybe it’s a dream?”
“Must be your dream, then. Mine are more exciting.”
They crossed the street and walked down a block with wooden houses.
“You know, zooming over cities, fighting zombies,” Doc said. “Either that or I go to school in my underwear.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Abby said. “Hey, that looks like the picture in our textbook.”
She pointed to a house on the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets. It was a light brown two-story house with green shutters.
“Lincoln’s house?” Doc said.
“I think so,” Abby said. “What are those kids doing?”
Four kids were on the sidewalk in front of the house. One boy was sitting on another boy’s shoulders. He was tying a string around a tree, as high up as he could reach.
“Hurry!” a third boy called from below.
The boy got the string tied. Then, still on his friend’s shoulders, he pulled the other end of the string tight, so that it stretched across the sidewalk, about seven feet above the ground. The other kids crouched down, giggling.
Doc and Abby watched from across the street. The front door of the light brown house opened. The man who’d visited them the day before stepped out.
He really was Abraham Lincoln, and by now Doc and Abby believed it.
Lincoln walked down his porch steps, lost in thought. He turned onto the sidewalk—and headed right for the string.