The Viceroy Theater, on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Fourth Street, had seen better days. Only one of every four lights encircling the marquee was still working; the majority had burned out, been pecked apart by pigeons, or been shattered by vandals. The carpet in the lobby was threadbare, the chairs creaked awfully, and large water stains decorated the faded silk walls.

Still, it was one of Sam’s favorite places. He loved the smell of buttered popcorn that clung to the upholstery, and the old movie posters displayed on the walls, in part to conceal the water stains.

Most of all he loved the darkness. Sitting in a movie theater, he could be just anyone: a normal kid from a normal family, out to have a normal good time. For once, he was the one who got to watch and point and laugh.

Today the theater was showing a triple feature of Daughter of Frankenstein, Castle of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s Revenge. They found four seats together in the middle of the theater. Sam, who had been deliberately delaying to see if Max would catch up, was annoyed when Thomas plopped down next to him. Now she was separated by two people. Pippa took the seat to the left of Thomas, and Max settled in beside her and rested her knees on the back of the seat of the person in front of her. When the woman—her curly blond hair piled high on her head like whipped cream on a sundae—turned around to cluck her tongue, Max only grinned, showing off all the popcorn kernels in her teeth.

“She doesn’t mean to be an animal,” Pippa said apologetically.

“Yeah I do,” Max said.

Sam sighed and turned his attention to the screen. A small part of him had been hoping that Max might grab his hand during the scary bits, even though the rational part of his brain knew this was unlikely for two reasons: 1) Max didn’t get afraid; and 2) if she did grab his hand, he’d probably crush all the bones in her fingers.

“I wish they’d just get on with the movie already,” Thomas said, crunching loudly on some candy-coated almonds, as the screen flickered gray and white and a click-click-click filled the theater as the reel started to roll forward. Sam slouched further in his seat. They’d have a news report or two to get through first and the cartoons.

Thomas was speaking with his mouth full. “It’s worse than reading the paper. The whole reason you go to the movies is to escape . . .”

His sentence ended in a gurgle.

HORROR HAPPENINGS! said the words flashing across the screen.

Sam sat up, feeling as though his seat had given him an electric shock. There, on the screen, was Bill Evans.

“Not this moron again,” Max said loudly. Several people hushed her.

An enormous, black-and-white Bill Evans was sitting behind his desk at the Daily Screamer, a small brass plaque reading HEAD REPORTER prominently displayed in front of his typewriter, a cigarette clamped in his mouth.

“It’s not just the murders and the unexplainable deaths,” he was saying, to an off-screen interviewer. “The whole place is full of secrets. Take those four kids—”

Sam was so hot he felt as if he were melting, from the tips of his ears inward. He sank down in his seat, even as Thomas piped up.

“Hey, he means—!”

“Shut up,” Sam hissed. “Shut. Up.”

Several people swiveled around to stare. Sam was glad it was dark. He was sure he was the color of a radish.

“Now look.” Evans jabbed a finger on his desk to punctuate his words. “I got nothing against them personally. They never did me wrong. But the way they’re sniffing around, always in the wrong place at the right time, is suspicious.”

To Sam’s infinite mortification, the newsreel now showed a photograph taken from the museum’s recent promotional brochure. In it, Sam, Pippa, Max, and Thomas were dressed in costumes and posing on the Odditorium stage. Sam was holding an enormous block of concrete above his head. Thomas was in a back bend. Max was balancing a knife handle on the tip of one finger, and Pippa had both hands to her temples and was squinting in deep concentration.

“Something stinks at Dumfrey’s Dime Museum,” Bill Evans continued, “and I intend to get to the bottom of it.”

Fortunately, the newsreel shifted to a different subject at that moment: a segment about the escaped scientist, Professor Rattigan, who had been convicted to life in prison for unlawful experimentation on human beings.

“He could be anyone! He could be anywhere!” the announcer was saying onscreen, as images flashed of Professor Rattigan’s old underground laboratory, filled with walls of cages that had once held people. Sam’s stomach turned. The sight of the cages made pain shoot through his head. “He could be sitting next to you in the dark right now.”

“I—I don’t feel good,” Sam whispered.

Thomas’s eyes were still glued to the screen. “Movie hasn’t even started,” he said, shoveling more of the candied nuts into his mouth.

“I’m not staying,” said Sam, getting to his feet.

“Hey, kid, you’re blocking the screen,” a man grunted.

“Move it!”

“Sorry,” Sam spoke to the dark blob of faces all around him. Still blushing furiously, he ducked and began fumbling toward the aisle. Thomas groaned and Pippa whispered, “What are you doing, Sam?”

He was squeezing past Max when his toe caught on one of her shoes. Suddenly, he was pitching forward in the dark. Instinctively, he reached out to steady himself, grabbing the back of someone’s chair. There was a loud snap, as though a giant had just bitten off the world’s largest green bean, and then the chair was no longer steady, and a woman was screaming, and Sam was falling again.

The theater lights came on at once, and the screen went dark.

“Murder!” A woman was lying on her back, feet kicking the air, in the theater seat Sam had accidentally ripped free of the floor. “Murder! Theft! Help!” Her pocketbook lay beside her. It had popped open, spilling its contents across the floor.

Everything was confusion. People rushed over to help the woman to her feet. Ten people were talking at once.

“He went for my throat!” she was saying, wild-eyed. “He was after my purse!”

Sam had just climbed to his feet, and was about to apologize, when a man wearing wire-framed glasses swiveled in his direction.

“Hey!” the man squawked, lifting a finger to point. “It’s the kid from the news report! It’s one of them freaks from the museum!”

Sam felt time slow. He could feel the thunderous space between each of his heartbeats. One by one, as in a nightmare, the people in the theater turned to look. Sam wanted to run, but he was rooted to the ground.

Even the man’s voice seemed to have slowed, deepened, as though Sam were hearing him through a thick muffling layer of molasses. “It’s all of them!” the man said, as his finger slowly swept across the row of seats to encompass them all: Max, scowling; an irritated Pippa; and Thomas looking, amazingly, as if he were enjoying himself.

A new eruption of sound: time sped up again, and Sam was crowded from all sides. People were grabbing his shirt, firing off questions so quickly he could understand none of them.

“That’s our cue.” Max was beside him all of a sudden. She grabbed hold of his hand and he was so shocked, he forgot to squeeze back. “Out of the way!” she called, shoving and pushing. “Coming through!” She piloted him firmly toward the exit, plowing through the knot of people who had gathered, using elbows when she had to.

He was almost disappointed when they reached the street and the sunshine, and she released him. But at least there were no people pointing and yammering at him. At least he could breathe again.

“Wait for us!” Pippa burst out of the movie theater after them, and Thomas emerged a second later.

“What a waste,” Thomas muttered. “Frankenstein’s Revenge is supposed to be the scariest one.”

“You could have stayed,” Sam pointed out.

“By myself? No, thank you.” Thomas shoved his hands deep in his pockets and looked away. A little muscle flexed in his jaw, as it did when he was working a really hard trick, trying to squeeze himself into a shoebox or Chinese vase.

Sam realized, then, that Thomas was angry. “You enjoy it, don’t you?” He felt a little sick to say the words out loud. “You actually like being the center of attention.”

Thomas shrugged. “So?”

“They’re laughing at us, Thomas,” Sam said. He was shaking. He was angry, too—so angry he could break something for real this time, deliberately. “They think we’re freaks.”

“So what?” Thomas finally looked at him. “Who cares what they think? It won’t change anything. It won’t change us.”

Sam opened his mouth to respond but he was startled by a shriek. Pippa’s face was the vivid red of a ripe tomato, and she was glaring at Max.

“I don’t believe you,” she spat out. “You didn’t.”

Max had her arms crossed tightly. “I don’t know what—” she started to say, but Pippa lunged for her, and even as Thomas shouted, and Sam moved forward to separate them, Pippa had plunged her hands deep in the pocket of Max’s jacket. A second later, she was holding a battered woman’s wallet.

“You stole this,” she said, practically spitting the words, as though they were full of poison.

“I didn’t steal it,” Max said. She licked her lips nervously. “I found it.”

“Yeah, on the floor—when it fell out of that woman’s pocketbook,” Pippa said.

Max shrugged. “Finders, keepers.”

“You’re going to march right back inside and give it back to her,” Pippa said, waving the wallet threateningly in Max’s face.

Max swatted at her. “Get your hands out of my breathing space.”

“Don’t touch me,” Pippa said, swatting back.

“You ain’t my mother.”

“Aren’t! Aren’t! You aren’t my mother!”

“Well, you ain’t, either.”

Pippa made a low growling noise in her throat. Max’s fists were balled at her side. Both girls moved at once, lightning quick.

“Pippa,” Thomas cried out, at the same time that Sam said, “Max, don’t.”

Max had a fistful of Pippa’s hair in her hand, and Pippa was twisting the skin on Max’s cheek. Both girls were shouting, and Sam was shouting, too, though he hardly knew what he was saying. Thomas flung his arm around Pippa. He dragged her backward even as she struggled against him, clawing at his arm and demanding to be released. Sam hooked two fingers in the back of Max’s shirt collar and rooted her in place.

“Let me go!” she shouted. “I’ll poke her eyes out with toothpicks! I’ll nail her noggin to the ground!”

“Max, please,” Sam said. People were beginning to stare at them again. Down the street, a shoeshine boy had paused in his work, brush raised, mouth open. His client had lowered his newspaper to watch. On the opposite side of the street, a beat cop had paused and was peering in their direction, hand raised to his hat to shield his eyes from the glare.

“Look, everyone calm down, okay?” Sam kept his voice as quiet and steady as possible. He prayed for the cop to move on. The last thing they needed was more trouble.

“She started it,” Pippa said. She was panting. “Let go of me,” she said, wrenching away from Thomas.

Max snorted. “I didn’t start nothing, you started it—”

“All right, all right,” Sam jumped in, before things could get any worse. The cop finally moved on, casting one last glance in their direction. Some of the tightness loosened in Sam’s chest. “Let’s just head back to the museum, okay? We can talk everything out once we’re—”

But Sam’s voice was drowned out by a sudden commotion from down the block. A freckle-faced boy wearing a newsboy cap and carrying a stack of papers was shouting at the top of his lungs.

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” he hollered as people crowded him, snatching up newspapers, dropping coins in his hand. “The shrunken head strikes again! Reporter Bill Evans falls victim to the curse!”