Twenty-Five

Finn

“Go, Rocky!” Finn cheered. “I agree!”

Rocky was worried about his mom and brother and sister; Finn was worried about Mom and Natalie and Ms. Morales and Joe. They could still be a united team. Finn raced over to Rocky’s side, ready to turn the lever as soon as it latched on.

But something was wrong. The lever didn’t burrow into the wall. It skittered to the side, leaving a gouge in the cream-colored paint.

“It’s okay,” Finn said. He put his coins into his pocket so he could pat Rocky’s back. “I know what happened. Someone must have used that spot before. Levers have rules—they can’t latch on in the same place twice. We’ll try somewhere else.”

He eased the lever out of Rocky’s hands.

“Finn, Rocky—wait!” Emma said. Maybe Chess and Kona were screaming the same thing. Their voices blended together. Finn heard, “—logical plan—”; he heard, “—work out strategy—” and “—before we do anything else.” And then he looked into Rocky’s eyes and tuned out the others.

“We can’t wait!” Finn shouted, even as he swung the lever at a lower spot on the wall than Rocky had hit. “You plan. Rocky and me, we’ll get the lever ready.”

But the lever bounced off that part of the wall, too.

“What?” Finn wailed.

“Finn, it’s really not a good idea to—” Chess began.

Finn didn’t listen. He slammed the end of the lever down into the floor, as if he were hammering a nail.

Nothing happened this time either.

The others fell silent.

And then Finn went a little wild. He began swinging the lever again and again and again—at every wall, at every panel of the wood floor, at the stairs, even at the coffee tables. Nobody stopped him, even though he was like a maniac. He knocked over lamps and vases; he toppled framed pictures from the wall.

But he might as well have been wielding a Wiffle ball bat for all the good it did.

Nothing changed. None of the spots he hit opened tunnels or slides or spinning spaces. The lever just wouldn’t connect. It was like it had turned into an ordinary hunk of metal, instead of a key to traveling between the worlds.

Finn threw the lever across the room. It crashed into one of the few lamps Finn hadn’t already knocked over. That lamp fell to the floor, shattering on impact.

But the lever didn’t connect there, either. It slid across the scarred wood floor, completely unmoored.

“Why won’t it work?” Finn wailed. He sank into a heap on the floor as if his bones had turned to rubber. Or as if, like Emma facedown in the stink grenades, he’d dissolved into hopelessness.

Only, his hopelessness was real. Not caused by any fake smell.

“How are we going to rescue anyone now?” Finn moaned. “How are we going to save ourselves?”

Chess and Emma crouched beside him to pat his shoulders and arms and back. To comfort him. And then Rocky and Kona and Kafi were there, too. Kona stroked his hair. Kafi left a little string of saliva on his face.

But nobody answered his questions.

Nobody wants to say it out loud, Finn thought. Nobody wants to admit . . .

They couldn’t rescue anyone now. Not Mom. Not Natalie. Not Kona’s dad or Rocky’s mom or brother or sister.

Mom and the others were stuck in Ms. Morales’s house, under attack from scary people from the scary world.

And Finn, Chess, Emma, Rocky, Kona, and Kafi were stuck in the scary world.