CHAPTER 1

Not So Boring Night

It was Friday night, and Amal Farah lay on the couch in her father’s office at the Capitol City Air and Space Museum. Her history textbook sat on the floor beside the couch. She had a three-day weekend ahead of her, but she was bored and had decided she might as well get her homework out of the way now.

“Dad,” Amal said without picking her head up from her pillow, “when are we leaving?” She didn’t like to whine, but sometimes it was necessary. And now was definitely one of those times. She’d been sitting in her father’s office since four o’clock, right after school.

“What?” her father, Dr. Ahmed Farah, the museum’s head archivist, replied. His attention was on his computer screen, not on his daughter — nor on the time.

“You said you had to stay a little late,” Amal reminded him as she checked the time on her phone, “but it’s almost eight o’clock. I’ve finished all my homework. I’ve texted all my friends. I’ve played ten levels of Fruit Basher on my phone. And on top of all that, I’m starving. When are we going home?”

Dr. Farah sighed and pulled off his reading glasses. With his thumb and index finger, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. There’s just a lot going on. I’ve been butting heads with Mr. Mordecai in the Special Collections Division. He’s been just furious about …” Dr. Farah stopped himself. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’ll settle this soon, I think. Give me twenty more minutes.”

Amal slid off the couch and onto the floor. “Fine,” she said, picking up her history textbook. “I’ll just do my homework again.”

“Great idea,” her father said with a smile.

Suddenly there was a loud CRASH! It shook the office walls and echoed through the open door.

“What was that?” Amal asked, sitting up straight.

Dr. Farah took off his glasses again and stood up. “I’m not sure. I thought we were the only ones left in the museum besides the security team.”

“Let’s go check it out!” Amal exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

“I’m sure security will investigate,” Dr. Farah said.

But Amal grabbed her father’s hand and pulled him through the office door. “It’ll just take a minute,” she insisted. “Let’s face it. It’ll be the most exciting thing that’s happened to either of us since I got here.”

Dr. Farah smiled a little. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said.

Amal led the way down the back hall of the museum. This part of the museum was off-limits to visitors, but Amal and her best friends — Wilson Kipper, Clementine Wim, and Raining Sam — had free run of the place most of the time since their parents all worked in the Capitol City network of museums.

“I don’t hear anything anymore,” her father said. “No point in looking around if we can’t follow the noi—”

BANG!

CLANG!

CRASH!

“That noisy enough for you, Dad?” Amal asked. She darted around the corner and down the next hallway, leaving her father behind.

Up ahead, the lights flickered. There were eerie sounds and startling shadows around every turn. But Amal wasn’t scared. She ran on, following the banging and clanging, which grew louder with every step she took.

“This way, Dad!” Amal called back over her shoulder. She didn’t slow down or look behind her, and soon she reached the deepest, darkest hallway, past all the offices, beyond even the bleakest storage rooms of the maintenance department.

Amal stopped. It was a dead end. She faced a blank wall. There were no doors, no signs, and no evidence that anything existed beyond it. And yet the clanging and banging continued, ringing louder than ever from the other side of the wall.

“But there’s no door here,” Amal muttered to herself. She could hardly hear herself think over the noise. “There’s no more museum. How can anything be making noise on the other side of this wall?”

After a moment, the noise stopped, though the clanging echoed in Amal’s ears like a ringing fire alarm. Soon she heard her father’s running footsteps approaching.

“Amal!” Dr. Farah called as he rounded the last corner. “Please don’t run off like that again.”

“Dad,” Amal said, ignoring his reprimand, “the banging was coming from the other side of this wall. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why not?” Dr. Farah asked.

Amal pulled her phone from her back pocket and quickly brought up the museum’s website. She clicked through to the map and found where they were. “Because there’s no more museum on the other side of this wall,” she said, showing him the map. “It ends here.”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Farah said. “Perhaps it’s outside.”

“Maybe,” Amal said. “Do you think there’s construction going on tonight?”

Dr. Farah shook his head. “Who would be working now at this hour?”

Amal nearly laughed. “Dad,” she said, “you’re working at this hour.”

Her father chuckled and wrapped an arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “Well, I think it’s time I call it a night. Let’s get some dinner.”

“Finally,” Amal said. “I’m starving.”