Zack felt as if somebody had slugged him in the gut.

Nobody moved, nobody spoke. They all simply stared up at the shuttered window in shock, willing it to reopen.

It didn’t.

“Can she just reject us like that?” asked Janice.

Miss Guacaladilla was stunned beyond the capacity to speak.

“No way!” said Sydney. “She has to let us in! We’re family!”

Miss Guacaladilla continued to not say anything.

And then the crying began.

Of course it was just Miss Guacaladilla, so Zack didn’t really mind, but it jolted him into action. “It’ll be okay,” he promised.

“It is NOT okay!” barked Sydney. Zack saw her cheeks reddening—a sure sign of imminent eruption—and he quickly moved to still the volcano gurgling inside his sister.

“We’ll make it okay!” he insisted. “I promise, we won’t let them—”

But whatever he wouldn’t let “them” do was forgotten when the eldest Rothbaum suddenly let out a scream.

“Alexa!”

Janice pointed in horror at the house. Spinning around, Zack felt his stomach drop as his youngest sister walked up to the very edge of the moat.

“Alexa! Get back!” he called, hurrying forward to intercept.

“Oh no!” wailed Miss Guacaladilla. “She’s going to jump! The poor, sad, brokenhearted little girl is going to jump!”

“She’s not going to jump!” snapped Zack as he reached Alexa, who—it should be noted—had no plans to jump. Instead, she stood at the very edge of the moat, raised her head toward the shuttered window, and said simply, “Please?”

“Please?” asked Zack. “What do you mean, please? Please what?”

Rather than answer, the defiant seven-year-old took a breath, looked up at the window, and repeated, “Please?”

And Zack got it.

“Please, Aunt Gladys?” he added. Alexa smiled at him and took his hand. Together, they continued their quiet plea.

“Please, Aunt Gladys?” they asked in unison.

Janice stepped up and took Zack’s hand, adding her voice to the simple question.

“Please, Aunt Gladys?”

“Oh, this is so tragically dramatic!” espoused Miss Guacaladilla. “My heart is going to burst from the pathos!”

“Please, Aunt Gladys?” they asked again, this time with the fourth and final Rothbaum temporary orphan joining in. “Please?” It was a desperate, shameless play to their aunt’s emotions. Having never met her before, they had no reason to think it would work.

But it did.

“Stop that,” came Aunt Gladys’s voice from behind a different window.

“Please, Aunt Gladys?” they repeated in as syrupy a tone as possible.

“Go away,” she grumbled from yet another window.

“Please, Aunt Gladys?” This time even Miss Guacaladilla chimed in, adding extra misery to the cause.

Suddenly, the shutters of a window on the second floor burst open and Aunt Gladys stood there wagging a finger at the five of them. “Not fair,” she reprimanded. “So not fair. Shameless. Below the belt.”

Trusting his gut, Zack silently led the others back a single step to leave little Alexa standing alone, facing the wavering woman.

“Please take us in, Aunt Gladys,” she said.

Aunt Gladys peered at Alexa. Alexa smiled back at Aunt Gladys through eyes blurry with tears.

“You look so much…,” breathed Aunt Gladys in a bare whisper.

“Like our mother?” finished Zack.

“Charlotte? No! No, no, no.” She waved her hand dismissively, and Zack worried he’d overplayed their hand, but his aunt softened with another look at Alexa. “Like my mother.”

Alexa smiled.

Aunt Gladys suddenly snapped her fingers and jolted awake, all business. “Get back,” she ordered, dropping from view.

“Back?” asked Zack, confused. He turned to Janice for help, but she shrugged.

“Back!” came Aunt Gladys’s call from within the house. “Back, back, back!”

“Is she sending us away again?” demanded Sydney. Zack wasn’t sure, but he felt it might be a good idea to do as their odd relative had asked. He ushered the frowning Sydney away from the moat while Janice took Alexa’s hand and pulled her back as well. Nobody thought to urge Miss Guacaladilla, but she managed to drift back anyway, leaving a surprisingly large puddle of tears in her wake.

“Geronimo!” yelled Aunt Gladys.

There came a deep, rhythmic booming of massive chains and an ungodly squeaking noise. Then a massive chunk of the house fell forward.

“Run!” screamed Zack, who realized now that none of them had moved back far enough. All five individuals (even Miss Guacaladilla) turned and ran as a slice of wall four stories high and easily twenty feet across fell to the ground with a resounding crash.

When the dust cleared, Zack (who found himself huddling protectively over Sydney) turned back to the house, speechless.

“That is not right,” said a wide-eyed Sydney.

Zack had to agree. He’d certainly never seen anything like it in his life.

An entire twenty-foot-wide section of the house lay bare to the world, encompassing four floors. The wall that had once protected these rooms from the elements now lay across the moat, massively thick chains reaching from the farthest edge back up to the roof.

It was a drawbridge.

“Did I squish anybody?” asked Aunt Gladys.

Once inside with their meager belongings, Miss Guacaladilla quickly herded Aunt Gladys off to discuss whether the Rothbaum children would be staying in the house until their father awoke from his coma, leaving the kids to fend for themselves. Before following the social worker deeper into the bowels of her home, however, Aunt Gladys ran over some basic dos and don’ts for the siblings.

“Don’t scream. This is a no-scream house,” she began. “If you have to go, use a potty. No eating off the floor. Wash your hands. Did I mention no screaming?”

“Yes, Aunt Gladys,” replied Zack.

“Good. And don’t touch the doors. That’s important. No door touching.”

Satisfied, the skittish little woman turned and marched past Miss Guacaladilla through an archway into the next room.

“ ‘Don’t touch the doors’?” asked Sydney incredulously. “ ‘Use a potty’? Does she think we’re three?”

“I’m seven,” announced Alexa defensively.

“Guys, don’t worry about it,” said Zack. “She had to say something, right? I don’t think she spends a lot of time with kids, so she’s probably a little nervous.”

“Let’s explore,” said Janice. Nobody objected.

Aside from the front door—or, Zack supposed, the front drawbridge—the only exits from the rather narrow front room were the archway Aunt Gladys had led Miss Guacaladilla through to the right and a similar archway on the left. Relishing a moment away from Miss Guacaladilla’s waterworks, the children turned left.

They were a bit surprised to immediately find themselves in what looked to be Aunt Gladys’s bedroom. As narrow as the front room—really more hallway than room—it contained a small twin bed, a side table, a dresser, and a large, open closet filled with very tacky dresses in far too many colors. Another archway beckoned on the far side of the room.

“This is weird,” said Janice, frowning.

“Aunt Gladys is weird,” muttered Sydney.

Zack wasn’t about to disagree. He stepped up to the closet—which had no doors—and carefully pushed the clothes aside, peering at the wall behind them.

“Huh,” he said.

“Huh?” asked Sydney. “What, huh?”

Rather than answer, Zack led his sisters into the next room, an equally narrow hallway/room containing a flight of stairs leading up to the next floor and yet another open archway beyond.

“Huh,” repeated Zack.

“Will you stop with the huhs?” demanded an increasingly irked Sydney.

“Zack,” began Janice. “What are you—”

But Zack held up one finger and raced into the next room, which appeared to be the kitchen. It was as narrow as the other rooms, but quite a bit longer. The inner wall was lined with a stove, fridge, sink, cabinets—pretty much all you’d need for a kitchen but in a single, extended row. Zack jogged into the middle of the room and inspected this odd “Wall of All Things Kitcheny,” looking back and forth and frowning.

“I’m tired,” said Alexa, dropping to the floor.

“Zack, you want to tell us why we’re running around like antsy gazelles?” asked Janice.

“You guys notice anything strange about these rooms?” he asked.

“Like what?” asked Janice. “Aside from the fact that there aren’t any doors in this place? Which is weird since she very specifically told us not to touch the doors.”

“The rooms are all curved!” he exclaimed. “I bet if we keep going, we’ll eventually run into Aunt Gladys and Miss Guacaladilla and, after that, be back at the front door. Front drawbridge. Whatever.”

Janice furrowed her brow and took a closer look at the inside wall. “Huh,” she said.

“Not you, too,” moaned Sydney.

“We’re circling something,” said Janice.

“What?” asked Alexa. “What are we circling?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Zack.