Forty-Six

Finn

Finn sat with his back pressed against the side of the SUV, right beside the front tire. This was where they’d all landed, everyone jumbled together. Finn dug the heels of his sneakers into the pavement, pushing himself as close as possible to the other kids and the SUV full of coins.

Nobody quite dared to stand up and try to climb back in. Nobody suggested any plans.

Nobody spoke at all, except for the giant, horrible booming voice coming from the stadium, talking about how evil everyone was who’d ever made a coin or sent anything into the other world.

It took every ounce of self-control Finn had not to stand up and run over to the stadium and let the voice take over. Just managing to stay by the SUV seemed like a giant victory—bigger than the Olympics, bigger than the World Series, bigger than the Super Bowl. Bigger than any championship Finn had ever dreamed of winning.

And all he was doing was sitting.

But we have all those coins, he thought sadly. We were on the right track. I was so sure!

On his previous trips to this horrible world, Finn had counted on Chess and Emma and their friend Natalie to understand all the scariest details, so he didn’t have to.

He understood more than he wanted to now.

The coins aren’t enough, he thought. Not if we just sit here until the Mayor comes back.

He could just imagine the Mayor coming back in triumph, him and all the other horrible leaders marching into the stadium in some sort of victory parade. Everyone in this whole world would cheer them on, so proud that their leaders had taken control of the other world, too.

That was going to happen. That was what Finn wanted to happen.

No, Finn thought. That’s what the voice is making me think I want. Just like it’s making me think I want to go watch that big screen with everybody else in the stadium.

“How . . . how do we fight it?” he asked, his voice coming out scratchy and weak, as if he hadn’t used it in a million years.

Nobody answered him. Maybe nobody heard him.

The plan they’d had before wasn’t going to work. Gus was gone, and if they went into the stadium to drag him back, they’d all just get trapped, too.

Without him, none of them knew how to drive the SUV. Even if one of the big kids tried, they’d probably just crash.

It’d been a stupid plan, anyhow. It was silly, the kind of thing an eight-year-old boy would dream up when he was imagining being a hero, and the older kids around him were too nice to just say, “Grow up!”

Finn wasn’t a hero.

Finn wasn’t grown-up.

Finn was silly.

But sometimes silly is good, Finn thought. Sometimes silliness is what everyone needs.

He remembered how he and Chess and Emma and Natalie had gotten their first clue toward rescuing the Gustano kids because of the Greystones’ cat, Rocket, playing with a phone cord.

No—it had begun with Finn noticing Rocket playing with a phone cord.

Emma’s first good idea for finding a second tunnel into the alternate world had come after Natalie jokingly threw a pillow at her.

And Chess had found their first coin by pressing a carved wooden angel wing at a restaurant for kids’ birthday parties.

Take that, you stupid voice coming from the stadium! Finn thought. We win by being silly! Because that’s what you don’t understand!

“Pickle ice cream,” Finn said. “Succotash. Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

It was a perfect imitation of the bird springing out of the clock back at Finn’s favorite restaurant—the one in the good world.

Emma looked over at him and giggled. Kafi patted his face. It would be stretching things to say that Kona, Chess, Rocky, or Lana cracked a smile, but at least they all stopped frowning so intensely.

Finn dared to straighten his spine and look toward the jumbo screen in the stadium once more. He could see only one small corner of it, but that was enough.

“Our plan isn’t ruined!” he cried excitedly. “There are TV cameras in the stadium, too. They’re filming here now. We can just go on camera here, and throw the coins around the whole stadium. We’re still going to beat the Mayor!”