Thirty

Chess

Five minutes, Chess thought.

Emma had been away from the others maybe five minutes, tops. But she looked like she’d been through an entire war: her hair sweaty, a bruise growing on her cheek, the lever wielded ahead of her like a sword.

We are in a war, Chess thought. We’ve been in a war our entire lives, and we didn’t even know it.

Finn ripped away from the others and threw his arms around Emma.

“We were just coming to rescue you, but now we don’t have to,” he rejoiced. “You rescued yourself! You figured out how to fight the TVs!”

“Barely,” Emma said. “I don’t know if it will work the next time. That’s why we have to get away from this house. I bet the Judge and the Mayor and Other-Natalie had at least a dozen TVs here. They’re probably all booby-trapped.”

“But what if there are just more TVs outside?” Rocky asked, his voice shaking. “Or what if there really is a battle going on out there, one we just can’t see? Or there might be security guards and bad police officers like the ones my brother and sister and I saw after we were kidnapped. Before you Greystones rescued us . . .”

He might as well be one of those TV announcers, telling us all to be too afraid to move, Chess thought.

“We have to get out of this house if we have any hope of getting that lever to work,” Kona said.

And what she said, that felt like the coins working, Chess thought. Giving us hope. And courage.

“Come on,” he said, gently patting Rocky’s back. “We’ll all be together. We’ll be okay.”

“And we’ll go slow and be careful,” Finn said.

If everything hadn’t felt so serious just then, Chess would have laughed. Finn never wanted to be careful or go slow. On their previous trips to this frightening world, he’d always been the one scurrying out ahead of everyone else, never even thinking of danger. Or, just expecting someone else to rescue him.

Well, Chess thought, I guess Finn can grow up, too.

“Want to take a box of granola bars with us for the road?” Kona asked.

Quickly, the kids all grabbed something they thought might be useful. Emma found a sack with handles to carry the lever more easily. Finn threw in a handful of candy bars. (Maybe he wasn’t too grown-up yet.) Chess dropped the roll of tape into the sack, Rocky added the granola bars, and Kona topped it off with a pile of dish towels as she muttered, “I guess these could serve as spare diapers for Kafi, if we get desperate.”

“We’re really doing this?” Rocky asked, hesitating beside a long window at the end of the kitchen that was already broken. “We’re going to risk everything and—”

“Staying inside would be risking everything, too,” Chess said gently.

Risking that we’re going to be trapped by another TV springing to life, he thought. Risking that we never get back to rescue our moms, Natalie, and the others. Risking that the Mayor completely takes over the better world, as well as this one. Risking that we never actually do anything, but just wait and worry . . .

“Here,” Chess said. “I’ll go first.”

He stepped out through the window frame, being careful to avoid the last shards of broken glass still hanging around the edges.

Nothing happened. No sirens blared; no security system beeped. Chess peered down toward the guard towers at the bottom of the hill, and they all stayed silent and still. As far as Chess could tell, they were all deserted.

“See?” Chess said. “No problem. This is easy.”

It wasn’t—Chess’s heart still pounded too fast. He hadn’t recovered from worrying about Emma just a moment earlier. Or about everything else ever since finding out about the alternate world. But he could still move forward. He could still hold his hand out to help the other kids step out the window, too.

Then they were all outside, all of their backs pressed tightly against the wall. The air seemed much clearer now, without any smell of stink grenades.

“I say we run down to the trees at the bottom of the yard,” Emma whispered, as if she’d only needed a little fresh air to come up with a plan. “Then we climb the wall and hide as much as we can on our way to the first house that we recognize as being like one in the other world.”

“And you think that’s where we can use the lever,” Kona finished for her. “Or use some lever that we make from our coins.”

So many gaps in that plan, Chess thought. So many things we don’t know about the lever or the coins, that mean we don’t know if that plan will work or not.

Also, the expanse of open lawn between them and the trees looked as enormous as a football field. Maybe two. Maybe three.

The longer the kids stood there staring at the wide-open span of grass, the bigger it seemed.

“Umm . . . ,” Rocky began.

He’s going to chicken out, Chess thought. He’s going to talk everyone else into being too afraid, too.

Chess could feel how everything was in balance, teetering between fear and action. He could feel how much he was like Rocky—how much he had always been the one saying, No, wait! Let’s think about this before we do anything!

But he could also feel how much they needed not to be afraid.

How much Chess himself needed not to be afraid.

“Let’s go!” Chess called, taking off. He glanced back over his shoulder to call to the others, “Just run, and you’ll be safe in the trees before you know it!”

And it was at that exact moment—when he wasn’t looking—that someone crashed into him.