Forty-One

Emma

“Finn, don’t!” Emma screamed. “Not there!”

Because what if slamming the lever in the dirt meant the whole world shifted places? Or the worlds just . . . traded?

It didn’t matter. Nothing happened. The lever didn’t settle into the ground, ready to be turned. It just knocked a few tufts of grass out of place.

“I thought if the coins got through to the other world again, the lever would, too,” Finn said forlornly, dropping to the ground.

“But only two of Gus’s coins got through,” Emma said gently. “And then three didn’t. I bet the routes between the worlds only opened temporarily.”

“And I bet it was when Finn was on TV,” Kona agreed. She lifted Kafi away from the duffel bag she’d been climbing over and hugged her close. “Those people who went outside to look up at the sky—maybe they were actually thinking their own thoughts. Not just believing everything they saw on TV. Maybe there was a minute when they wanted to look at the sky. They weren’t doing it just because of Finn.”

“But then they turned around and started going back to the TVs,” Chess said. “And that’s when the routes probably closed. And the last three coins Gus dropped just landed on the ground here, instead of traveling anywhere else.”

“They’re right about how it worked, aren’t they, Gus?” Lana asked.

Gus looked warily up at the light posts ringing the parking lot again.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m sure that’s true.”

“But why?” Emma asked. “I can tell that everything’s linked—the coins, the levers, the TVs, the smells we were used to before. But how can—”

Gus darted another glance at the light poles and sighed.

“It’s a balancing act,” Gus said. “Between the worlds. Between good and evil. And between the coins and the TVs. The Mayor and the other leaders—they took a big risk, leaving this world under control of the TVs, and going to the other one to take control there. I heard they started stealing our side’s levers, from the very beginning. And they figured out how to make levers of their own. . . . If they can consolidate their control over both worlds, I doubt anyone will ever be able to defeat them. They’ll have too much power for any coin, for any lever, for anyone.”

“But . . . ?” Emma said hopefully, because she knew there had to be one.

She knew they still had to have a chance.

“But right now, they’re fueling their invasion of the other world by drawing on the power of all the minds under their control in this one,” Gus said. “All that brainpower, all that energy—it’s all being drained to help the Mayor and the other leaders who have gone to spread their evil in the other world. When people walked out and looked at the sky—suddenly they weren’t working for the leaders anymore. They weren’t doing what the leaders wanted. It was like . . . a power outage.”

“Or a power surge,” Kona said. “A surge of power for the good guys. For us.”

“So we know what to do next!” Finn said excitedly. “I can go back on TV again. I’ll tell people to go outside for, I don’t know, five minutes. That gives us enough time to use the lever, doesn’t it? We’ll travel to the other world, rescue Mom and everyone else, and fight off the Mayor. Five minutes of telling people what to do—that’s all I need!”

Finn was such an optimist.

“No,” Gus said, shaking his head even more sadly than before. “You don’t need to spend more time controlling people. What matters is how long they spend thinking for themselves. Each of them individually longing for goodness . . . And you had the element of surprise the last time. If you tried the same approach again, people would just shrug and think, Enh, going out and looking at the sky didn’t change anything before. So I’ll just keep watching TV.”

Emma scowled at Gus, because he was such a sad sack, so full of doom and gloom. How could he have worked with the coins for the past eight years when he didn’t seem to have any hope at all?

I bet every bit of hope he ever experienced was just because of those coins, she thought.

She felt the first prickles of an idea jolting her brain. People always said getting an idea was like a lightbulb turning on, but for Emma, ideas arrived more like lightning. Maybe thunder, too.

“What if . . . ,” she began. She could barely get the words together to explain. “What if . . . Gus, Lana, do either of you know where we can get more coins?”

Gus and Lana peered at each other. At first, they looked as secretive as ever, their teeth clenched, their eyes narrowed, their lips pursed. But maybe it helped that there were two of them. Maybe they had started trusting one another. At least a little.

Maybe they had started trusting the Greystones and Rocky and Kona, too.

“Ye-es,” Gus said cautiously. The corners of his mouth ticked up, ever so slightly. On anyone else’s face, this would still count as a scowl. But from Gus, this was definitely a smile.

“Then let’s go!” Emma exclaimed. She grabbed Gus’s arm, to tug him to his feet again. “Come on!”