CHAPTER 12
WHEN I SEE the NO TRESPASSING signs around the factory, my dad’s advice from Grandpa Soda Pop plays in my head. Think twice before you act once.
Yeah, they’d both tell me that now about going in here.
Whatevs, I think. I can handle this.
The sky gets darker as I study the fence. Is the opening I saw last time at this bottom here? Or that bottom?
Jeremiah tells Jen, “Kinda creepy how this place is next to a cemetery, huh?”
I crouch and yank the fence, but it won’t lift. I rush to another spot, yank, it lifts, and I yell to my friends, “Why climb when we can roll under?”
Everyone is SOS because they never thought of that.
I hold up the fence and Dan wiggles under fast. One by one, everyone does.
Now I’m the last one outside.
A faraway cop siren whistles, making me pause a second. I remember, Everyone is white here but me.
“You coming?” Dan asks. “I can’t hold this fence up forever.”
I wiggle under.
I was right about getting inside the factory too—the lock on the door is all for show. When we pull the door back hard, there’s enough room for each of us to slip through by turning sideways.
I expected inside the factory to be scary, and it is. Long shadows stretch off tall metal machines—the shadows remind me of those monsters from the Shazam! movie that stood still, waiting to come alive. Wind howls through busted windows, making newspaper pages and plastic bags swirl, alive-like, around our feet.
We’re not the first ones in here. Old mattresses are on the ground in two different spots with empty bottles near them. Graffiti is on walls. Doesn’t help relax me that some are demons and skulls.
But it’s the clanking sound that really freaks me out—like someone is banging a warning. No one has to tell me I have frightened googly eyes. I feel them.
Dan feels like I do. He comes and whispers in my ear, “That noise. You think it’s ghosts telling us to get out?”
Then Chad points to two conveyor belts that slope up in a forty-five-degree angle to some square holes near the ceiling.
“How sick would it be to climb way up there? I bet we fit through those holes. Let’s climb them,” Chad dares us.
“Nah. We could fall. Look how high those belts slope,” Jeremiah says.
Chad eyes me the way he did back at the handball court fence. “Stephen, you think you’re Spider-Man. You said you’re a climber. Race me.”
Christopher cuts him off. “I’ll race you, Chad. And you know I’ll dust you.”
Chad gets competitive. “C’mon, then.”
They go.
I’m glad Christopher just saved me—but I don’t want him getting hurt. Still, if anyone’s got this, it’s him. His climbing skills are tight.
Chad scoots onto one conveyor belt, Christopher on the other.
“On your mark,” they both say at the same time, “get set, GO!”
They race up, and the higher they get, the bouncier the conveyor belts get.
Jeremiah yells up to them, “Slow down!” He turns to us. “Dang! They’re about to bounce off!”
I’m scared just watching, and only when Christopher makes it to the top and through a ceiling square do I relax. Chad follows and then is gone too.
Jen says, “C’mon. If they can do it, we can.” She climbs on a belt and starts up. Her climbing skills are awesome too. Her brother, Jeremiah, scrambles to keep up with her.
Me and Dan turn to each other.
“I guess I’m doing it.” Dan climbs on.
Ugh! Now I have to.
I climb behind him, and he tells me, “Quit bouncing.”
“That’s you.”
These belts are not stable. The higher we get, the bouncier they get, and the more I need to focus on not falling off.
Jeremiah and Jen wait for us and we all keep going forward.
We’re almost at the square openings where Chad and Christopher disappeared, when—
“BOO!” Chad pops his head out and snaps a photo. The flash is blinding.
I stumble but catch myself as Jen screams at him, “You IDIOT!”
But Jeremiah . . .
When he jumped back from Chad’s flash, one of his legs slipped off the conveyor belt. Now they’re both dangling off the belt.
Everyone’s eyes pop and stare at him.
I imagine the worst. Him letting go and breaking both legs when he hits the floor.
Jen scoots back to help her brother, but—good thing—he’s okay. He swings a leg up that catches the conveyor belt. Then his other. His whole body shifts back on.
Phew.
We all climb through the square openings, and Jen’s so mad, she yells, “What’s wrong with you, Chad?!”
Dan’s mad too. “Chad, you could’ve killed one of us! Not! Cool!”
“Shut up.” Chad swats away them criticizing him. “No one got hurt.”
He walks off into the shadows.