“Do you think she would turn on us?” Summer asked. “After what we’ve been through?”

  “Who knows?” Nate said. “She has tried to destroy us before.”

  “Do you still have the skeleton key?” Pigeon asked.

  “Safe and sound,” Nate said, patting his thigh. “It’s pretty long, but these jeans have deep pockets.”

  “We’ve got roustabouts at nine o’clock,” Pigeon warned. “Two of them.”

  “Don’t stare at them,” Nate said.

  “I don’t think it matters,” Pigeon replied. “They’re openly tracking us.”

  “Why don’t they make a move?” Trevor asked.

  Nate glanced around the crowded plaza. “I don’t think they want a fight where everyone will see it.”

  “Stick to the crowded walkways,” Summer suggested.

  “Maybe the Fun House is a bad idea,” Trevor said. “They could corner us in a tunnel or hallway there.”

  “We have to get to those sleepers,” Nate said. “If the security guards want a fight, I’ll give it to them. We finally have some firepower.”

  “How do we get deep into the Fun House?” Pigeon asked.

  “My guess is we start with the ball pit,” Summer said. “The secret way we got from Edward hopefully leads to deeper places.”

  The Fun House came into view up ahead, windmills spinning. Several clocks of different sizes had been added to the exterior, all showing different times.

  “We’re not waiting in line to get in, are we?” Pigeon asked.

  Summer shook her head. “Every minute we delay gives them time to prep their defenses.”

  “And organize a counterattack,” Nate said.

  Bypassing the line, Nate marched up to the ticket taker at the front. He noticed two kids from his English class watching him from the line.

  “Fun House emergency,” Nate said hastily, handing over more than enough tickets. “We’re on an urgent mission for Preston Wilder.”

  “Nice try,” the ticket taker said, stifling a yawn. “There’s a line.”

  “Call security if you want,” Nate said, pushing through the turnstile.

  “I will,” the ticket taker said, reaching for a walkie-talkie.

  Nate waited as Summer, Pigeon, and Trevor went through the turnstile, then he pivoted and waved at the roustabouts who had been following them at a distance. “Give Preston my regards!” he called.

  Then Nate followed his friends through the gaping clown mouth and into the Fun House.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Fun House

  The Fun House was designed to disorient visitors. With multiple routes through the experience, it was possible to travel to the end and miss many interesting detours. At the moment, Nate knew they needed to reach the ball pit quickly.

  Might security guards ambush them on the way? How long could he keep a Cannon Blast in his mouth without biting it? That was untested. He did not want to accidentally trigger the candy and slam into a bystander. He felt lucky he hadn’t hurt any innocent people back at the Lux Lounge. He’d just wrecked some tables and scared some diners.

  Assuming the diners were all authentic. How many of the individuals at the carnival were made of sand like the roustabouts? There had been so many people at the undercarnival, but so few trains came and went. Were they all people who had been following the carnival and opted to live down there? Or were some of them fake?

  Nate decided to keep a Cannon Blast in his hand. Pigeon and Trevor clutched candy as well, and Summer was unabashedly remaining a clown.

  Beyond the entrance, there were three main options: ramps to the right snaked up to the potato-sack slides, the mirrored hall to the left led to the teeter-totter floors, and straight ahead were the rope swings. Nate felt sure the swings were the best route to the ball pit, and Summer apparently felt the same way, because she charged ahead without consulting anyone.

  Nate suspected the Fun House had been designed by someone unfamiliar with lawsuits. At the rope swings, participants had to cross padded trenches to reach one platform after another. If swingers fell at the wrong time, they could easily sprain an ankle.

  Nate pocketed his Cannon Blast and seized the nearest rope above a knot. Then he stepped into the noose at the bottom and swooped to the first platform alongside others penduluming over the trench.

  Summer was having a blast on the swing, holding on with one hand, her feet running in midair. When she reached the far side, she pretended to stumble and swung back across, then back again, spinning and flailing. Several onlookers laughed. Nate had to admit she was a pretty good clown.

  “Don’t forget we’re in a hurry,” Nate muttered to her.

  “I know,” Summer replied. “I’m testing my clown powers.”

  “How did you pull that mallet out of your jacket?” Nate asked. “Back at the Lux Lounge?”

  “I have no idea,” Summer said. “I needed a weapon. I reached. It was there. Call it clown instincts.”

  Nate swung to four more platforms before completing the course. He felt bad for the people who lost momentum and had to drop into the trenches, but he was glad not to join them. He didn’t have time to climb ladders for second tries.

  Beyond the rope swings, they passed into candy-striped, turning tunnels. Nate walked along the first one, stepping to the left to avoid being flipped over. He emerged to find that more tubes had appeared since his previous visit. In one of the narrower tunnels, Summer planted her feet and braced her hands against the ceiling, circling through a handstand until she was upright again.

  “No roustabouts yet,” Trevor said at the far end of the last tunnel.

  They advanced into a huge room where tangles of climbable nets stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Nate remembered that heading up and to the right would take them to the ball pits.

  Nate did his best to move quickly, but the nets had some give, and distracting shockwaves arrived through the movements of other people. Summer raced along like a monkey, despite shoes that could barely fit into the available holes. The most precarious times came when Nate had to transfer from one net to another, but he managed to stay on the course.

  Having navigated the nets, they crossed to a room with several pits filled with plastic balls of every color. Some older kids from Diablo View waded around one of the pits, chucking balls at one another. The largest pit was the size of a respectable swimming pool.

  “We need the big one,” Summer said. “There should be a coin slot on the ground in the deep end.”

  Nate, Trevor, Summer, and Pigeon jumped into the huge pit, displacing balls all around them. The balls in the shallow end came up to their waists. As they pushed forward to the deeper area, the balls almost reached their necks.

  “This could take a while,” Nate said, the balls crowding his face enough to make him claustrophobic as he tried to feel for irregularities on the floor with his feet.

  “We should post a guard,” Summer said. “How about Pigeon?”

  “You got it,” Pigeon said, laboriously advancing through the deep balls. “This feels too much like drowning.”

  Summer ducked under the balls. “Try diving down,” she said to Nate. “You can breathe fine. It’s just kind of hard to move.”

  Nate burrowed down toward the floor of the pit. Bright reds, blues, yellows, greens, oranges, and purples filled his vision, and he realized that plastic balls had a distinct smell. The resistance of the balls was strange. When he leaned forward, they supported his weight. It had been easier to touch bottom when he was upright. But by angling downward, he found he could work his way to the floor, like a slow form of swimming. He still couldn’t see much, so Nate proceeded by feel, rubbing his hands against the smooth floor of the pit.

  “I found it!” Summer’s muffled voice called. “A coin slot. I’m getting out a Carnie Coin. Okay, here goes nothing.”

  Suddenly Nate was falling.

  With no warning, he dropped straight down, surrounded by a cloud of light, plastic balls.

  Unsure how far he would fall, Nate tried to twist in the air so his feet would hit first. He landed sideways on a huge, springy net with plenty of give. It absorbed his momentum, then tossed him up into the air, a deluge of balls around him. Nate could not help thinking of the dream where he had plunged from the tightrope.

  Tremors went through the net as Summer and then Trevor landed next to him. Looking up, Nate could see that the entire floor of the ball pit had dropped away like a giant trapdoor. Pigeon jumped through the opening moments before it closed up, his body crushing many balls and making the net wobble wildly. Above, the trapdoor latched shut, forming a ceiling.

  Like a giant spiderweb, the net spanned the entire room, anchored to all four walls. The blank white confines offered few options. One wall had a single opening leading into a stark hallway, so Nate scrambled through the ocean of balls in that direction. The balls flowed toward him as his weight warped the net. The springy give beneath him made his footing less certain. He bounced, lunged, and stumbled over to the opening, stepping off the net just after Summer. Turning, Nate helped Trevor and Pigeon escape the unstable net as they crawled near. Hundreds of balls had spilled through the gap into the hallway.

  “That might have been the biggest jump scare of my life,” Trevor mused.

  “It wasn’t scary with clown skills,” Summer said. “I did two flips on the way down. Maybe you should all put on Clown Lips. I have plenty.”

  “I’ll stick with my Cannon Blasts for now,” Nate said, getting the candy out again. “They’re very useful for destroying roustabouts.”

  Moving down the long, white hallway, Trevor stomped the stray balls that crossed his path. A red door awaited at the end of the hall, flanked by two more on opposite walls of the corridor. Nate and the others paused at the dead end.

  “Forward, left, or right?” Pigeon asked.

  “Do you think one is a trap?” Trevor speculated.

  “Or two?” Nate added. “Or all three?”

  “They might take us to different places,” Summer said. “Let’s split up.”

  Nate gaped at her in surprise.

  “Just kidding,” Summer said.

  “You’re really getting into this clown act,” Nate said.

  “We can’t waste time,” Pigeon reminded them. “Our enemies are hunting us.”

  “Or setting up an ambush,” Trevor said. “They may have secret ways to access anywhere in this fun house.”

  “How about this one?” Summer asked, opening the door on the left-hand wall to reveal a square white room with three yellow doors, one on each wall.

  “This gives me a bad feeling,” Nate said, trying the door at the end of the hall. Peering inside, he saw a square white room with a green door on every wall. Then he went to the door on the right side of the hall and found a room of blue doors.

  “Let me check something,” Nate said. “Hold this one open?”

  Summer placed her hand on the knob. Nate entered the room with the blue doors and opened one to reveal a white square room with orange doors.

  Nate returned to his friends. “It’s some kind of door maze. Does anybody know a strategy for this kind of thing?”

  “I vote we go fast,” Trevor said.

  “That might get us super lost,” Pigeon said.

  “Who cares if we can’t return here?” Trevor asked. “The way back is sealed.”

  “I’ll lead,” Summer said, reaching into her coat and producing a birdcage with a canary inside. She paused. “I was hoping for another mallet, but I guess this fits an exploration.”

  “Like in a coal mine,” Pigeon said.

  She set the cage down and entered the room with yellow doors.

  “Are we just going through doors at random?” Nate asked.

  “We should go straight as far as we can,” Pigeon said. “At least that way we won’t travel in circles.”

  Summer nodded, walking to the door across the room. The next one had purple doors. They followed her through rooms with orange doors, green doors, blue doors, yellow doors, and black doors. Deeper into the maze, the colors of the doors in each room varied. They reached a room with doors in yellow, brown, red, and purple. Then a room with doors in orange, black, green, and gold.

  As they progressed from room to room, Nate became increasingly amazed by the scale of the labyrinth. Summer went straight across rooms, and whenever a door opened on a brick wall, they turned right. Behind one door, they found a staggering drop, as if they had emerged from the side of a canyon.

  Summer kept charging forward. Pigeon began breathing hard, then ate a Statue Stick and turned himself to marble. Before long, Nate and Trevor were the ones panting and lagging.

  Then, in a room with two green doors and two yellow doors, they found a tall stack of couplets embossed in gold on the wall from ceiling to floor. They paused to read.

  Go through Red

  Wind up dead

  Go through Black

  Never come back

  Go through Brown

  Sure to frown

  Go through Blue

  Steering true

  Go through Green

  Not too mean

  Go through Yellow

  Happy fellow

  Go through Gold

  Much too bold

  Go through Orange

  Um . . .

  Better than Purple

  “This is the key to the puzzle,” Pigeon said. “The rhymes establish a hierarchy of door colors.”

  “Red and black are obviously bad,” Trevor said.

  “Brown and gold are bad too,” Summer said. “Maybe less bad though. Dying is worse than frowning.”

  “Which is better?” Nate asked. “Yellow or blue?”

  “‘Happy fellow’ sounds more enthusiastic than ‘steering true,’” Pigeon said.

  “What about orange?” Trevor asked.

  “It didn’t have a rhyme,” Summer said.

  “Neither did purple,” Pigeon said. “I think we have to assume those are in the middle.”

  “So from best to worst,” Summer said, taking her time as she continued to study the rhymes. “Yellow, blue, orange, purple, green, gold, brown, black, red.”

  “Or it could be blue, yellow, purple, orange, green, brown, gold, red, black,” Pigeon said.

  “Or it could all be meaningless,” Trevor pointed out.

  “It’s not written in marker,” Nate said. “Somebody chiseled it into the wall with gold letters.”

  “It’s way better than flying blind,” Summer said. “We have to choose an order to use.”

  “Yours was good,” Pigeon said. “We can refine as we go if something feels off.”

  “Do we have it memorized?” Summer asked. “We may not see this again.”

  “I think so,” Nate said.

  “Yodeling Buffalo Organize Proud Goose Grillings Before Baking Radishes,” Pigeon said. “The first letter of every word matches a color.”

  “That’s way harder to memorize than the colors,” Trevor complained. “Even if I forget some of the middle ones, I’ll remember the best are yellow and blue. And red is danger.”

  “I’ve got it,” Summer said. “Let’s go.”

  They proceeded through a yellow door. From that point forward, they avoided passing through a black, red, brown, or gold door. If they reached a room with only red or black doors, they backtracked. Going through yellow doors was the priority.

  They raced through one room after another. Eventually, they reached a room with doors of yellow, red, black, and green. The same rhyming couplets were embossed on the wall.

  “Did we loop back to the same room with the poem?” Trevor asked.

  “No, the other room had different door colors,” Summer said. “I remember it was two of one, and two of another. We took a yellow door out of that room.”

  “Is this the same poem?” Pigeon asked, studying the words.

  “Exactly the same,” Nate said, scanning it from top to bottom. “Let’s keep going.”

  On they went, through dozens more doors, then hundreds. They trudged onward, Summer and Pigeon carrying Nate and Trevor piggyback. At length, they reached a room with three red doors and one yellow.

  Summer opened the yellow door and stood still for a moment instead of rushing through. “This one is different,” she announced. “No more doors. It’s a . . . courtyard.”

  She took a step forward, and Nate peered around her to see a vast enclosure with large gray tiles on the ground, each about five feet square and marked with a distinct symbol at the center. There was no ceiling above the lofty walls, leaving the blue sky visible.

  Nate kept his Cannon Blast ready. He had held it for so long that some of the black dye had rubbed off on his palm. “Where’s the obstacle?” he asked Summer. “This looks too easy.”

  “I don’t know,” Summer said, studying the area. She walked forward, and dark clouds immediately crowded out the blue sky, a light rain falling. Summer turned back to Nate.

  “Wasn’t the sky just blue?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, gazing up, droplets rushing toward him from a cloudy backdrop.

  She took a couple steps forward, and a heavy wind began to blow. Nate leaned into the gust to avoid getting pushed sideways. Summer looked back at him, her rainbow pigtails fluttering like flags. “It’s getting worse the farther we go.”

  “Back up,” he shouted, returning to the doorway.

  When Summer retreated as well, the wind subsided, and the rain stopped. Leaning out of the doorway, Nate looked up at a blue sky.

  “That’s bizarre,” Pigeon said. “Is the weather changing outside too?”

  “I have no idea,” Summer said. “But it gets worse the farther I go.”