Maggie & Abby's Neverending Pillow Fort Read online

  Dedication

  For my mom

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  There’s no sound in the world quite like the sound of a cat getting stuck to an ice cream truck.

  Most kids would have missed it. But after six weeks without Abby, six weeks of being almost completely on my own, six weeks where going out to get the mail was becoming the best part of my day, my senses were on high alert for anything even halfway interesting while I was out there.

  It went down blink by blink. In perfect. Slow. Motion.

  Plink-plink-doop-doodle-doo-plink! went the ice cream truck parked innocently across the street, its music filling the summer afternoon.

  Mrreow! went Samson, Abby’s huge black-and-white cat, launching himself at something small and buzzy near the back of the truck.

  Kschkt! went Samson’s snagglepaw, the one with the claws he couldn’t pull back, latching with a plasticky crinkle onto the vinyl banner advertising Robo Pops and Chocolate Swirl Bars and Fun-Fun Rainbow Crispys.

  Slam! went Caitlin, the high school senior across the street, who always stopped to use her own bathroom when she was out on her ice cream route, leaving her house with her eyes glued to her phone.

  Mrreow! went Samson again, tugging forlornly at his paw. The banner shook, but the cat stayed stuck.

  Caitlin was laughing at something happening on her screen. She didn’t see Samson. She climbed into the driver’s seat. She turned on the engine.

  Hey, no, wait! went my heart.

  If Caitlin drove away, Samson could get hurt. He could lose his claws for good.

  Or worse, Caitlin might back up and Samson could be killed.

  Or Caitlin might start driving, see Samson in her side mirror, panic-drive into a utility pole, and then Caitlin could be killed.

  Or she might slam on the brakes, making a truck that could possibly be behind her by then veer out of the way to avoid her, jump the curb, and hit me instead, and then I could be killed.

  Or a truck could be coming from one way and a school bus from the other, and Caitlin might still be laughing at her phone, and in the confusion all of us could be killed.

  This was a potential disaster on an epic scale. This was the Titanic pulling away with every kitten on Earth napping in the cargo hold. No! This was the space shuttle counting down to liftoff with an entire kindergarten class hiding under its booster rockets!

  I had to do something. Options, Maggie, options . . .

  Got it. Get the shuttle operator’s attention.

  “Caitlin!” I yelled.

  No response. My call was lost in the plinking roar of the musical liftoff engines. I stepped forward to cross the spaceport tarmac, but a lunar cargo supply truck zoomed by from the other direction and I flinched back. I couldn’t get out there in time—it was too dangerous.

  Mrreow! cried the cornered kindergarten class. Through the waffle cone decals on the shuttle window I saw the pilot strap herself in and snap her visor down. I had seconds to act.

  I stared around desperately, then looked down at my hands and smiled. They were full of flares, charged and ready for use. Of course! I’d planned for this! I always planned ahead, because something could always go wrong.

  I planted my feet right on the edge of the tarmac, took a deep breath, threw both hands up and out and forward, and shouted again, giving it everything I’d got just as the shuttle began to move.

  “Hey!” My voice rang around the space depot, echoing off the shining chrome buildings, rising to a roar as the flares exploded into thousands of shining white sparks flying through the air in all directions. The wind blew my hair back, and I laughed in triumph and relief as the driver looked up and the shuttle slammed to a halt.

  The fire in its engine died.

  “Hey,” Caitlin called, rolling down her window. “You dropped your mail.”

  I blinked and looked around. She was right. The mail I’d just collected was scattered on the hot street between us: five or six envelopes and a catalog for discount wrapping paper.

  “You caught a cat,” I said, pointing. Caitlin quirked an eyebrow. I looked both ways and jogged across the road. Caitlin turned off the engine and got out.

  “Oh, hey,” she said as I unhooked Samson from her truck. “That’s not good at all.” She scratched Samson’s ears. “Sorry I almost dragged you off, buddy. Lucky you were out here to see him, Maggie.”

  Luck had nothing to do with it, I thought. A special agent–rescue specialist trained in the use of flares always knows where and when she’ll be needed.

  The wind blew through my hair.

  “Sure,” I said, gathering Samson up into my arms. He was already purring. “Thanks for stopping.”

  Caitlin laughed. “Like I had a choice. I’ve seen people do a lot of weird things to flag down an ice cream truck, but no one’s ever thrown their mail at me before.”

  I looked up and down the street. There were no cars coming, but if I didn’t get the remains of those flares picked up quick, I’d have to explain to my mom why her catalog had tire tracks on it. “Hey, do you think . . . ?” I said, shrugging Samson to show that my hands were full.

  “Course,” said Caitlin. “You saved the day.”

  I repeated that phrase to myself, picturing a glorious victory parade for me going down our street as Caitlin gathered the mail and tucked it under my arm.

  “Was this yours too?” she asked, holding up a cheap plastic pen. I squinted at it. Ah, yes, the hypno-raygun I’d been flipping through my fingers when I approached the mailbox. You never know when those things will come in handy.

  “You keep it,” I said generously. “I’ve got plenty more.”

  “Um, okay, thanks.” Caitlin slipped the pen into her pocket. “Here, hang on a second.” She opened the back of the truck and rummaged around, emerging with a wrapped Mega Ultra Caramel Swizzle Cone. “On me,” she said, setting it in my elbow beside Samson.

  “Wow, thanks! I mean”—I dropped my voice, trying to be cool and not sound like, I don’t know, a third grader—“you don’t have to do that.”

  “You helped me out.” Caitlin shrugged. “And you’ve been alone a whole lot this summer. Thought maybe you could use a pick-me-up or something.”

  “Huh?” I said. “How do you know I’ve been alone?”

  Caitlin pulled out her phone again. “I live across the street, remember? I see you all the time sitting up on your roof, or staring into space every time you get the mail. Your friend went to summer camp without you, right?”

  “Abby? Yeah, she went to camp.” This was weird. So Caitlin had been watching me, had she? I began assessing which rival spy agency she might be working for. “How did you . . . ?”

  “You’ve got a postcard from her in there.” Caitlin nodded toward the mail getting sweaty in my armpit. “Plus one of her brothers told me.�
�� She tilted her head toward the turquoise house one to the right of mine. Abby’s house. Her twin brothers had stayed home all summer. I’d seen them playing soccer in their front yard. But they were juniors in high school and about as likely to hang out with a soon-to-be-sixth grader like me as Caitlin was.

  “Abby’s coming home soon though,” I said. “Very soon.”

  Suddenly I was burning with impatience. My arms were full of successfully rescued cat, free ice cream, and, apparently, the latest postcard from Abby. This mission was officially over. “Anyway, thanks again for the Swizzle Cone,” I said, scanning the road.

  “Sure, sure. Thanks for saving me from the cat, or the other way around. Hope your summer gets better,” Caitlin said, tapping at her phone. Then she stopped and looked up at me. Really looked. “You know what?” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed just because you’re alone you’re not okay. People can have amazing things going on in their lives that no one else knows about. I bet you’re having a whole summer full of awesome adventures, aren’t you?” She smiled, patting me on the shoulder. “Of course you are. You go get ’em, tiger!” And she returned to the truck.

  It was my turn to quirk an eyebrow. Yeah, definitely not suspicious behavior. Definitely not clearly working for a counterspy agency. . . .

  I got out a hurried “You too!” as Caitlin closed the door; then I crossed back to my own territory. The tinkling of the ice cream truck faded in the distance as Samson twisted lazily out of my arms and dropped onto the grass, taking the mail and ice cream with him.

  “You’re welcome, buddy,” I called as his tail disappeared through the gap in the fence leading to Abby’s place. I wiped my forehead. I loved that cat, but hypno-rayguns, he was heavy.

  My house phone jangled through the open kitchen window as I scooped up the ice cream and letters, and I hustled in to answer it.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, hopping up on the counter. I tucked the phone against my neck and started flipping through the mail. Bill. Bill. Junk. Bill. Junk. Catalog. Hey, a second postcard!

  “Hi, sweetie. How’s the day?”

  “Fine. I rescued Abby’s cat from a killer ice cream truck, and I just got another postcard from Uncle Joe.”

  “Aw. I should probably be mad my little brother writes to you more than me.” The intercom buzz and bustle of the hospital break room echoed behind her. “How’s he doing?”

  I scanned the postcard. “Good. Same as the last few months: Alaska, whales, cabin, whales, research, sciency science. Aaand more whales!”

  “That’s Joe. What’s that crinkling noise I’m hearing?”

  “That is the sound of a Mega Ultra Caramel Swizzle Cone being unwrapped,” I said. “Caitlin across the street gave it to me.”

  “That was nice of her. I’m glad you’re spending time with other people. Make sure you eat something with vegetables for dinner, though.”

  I just barely avoided a sigh. “You won’t be home?”

  “—be right there,” my mom said to someone who wasn’t me. “What, sweetie? No, that’s why I called. I’ll be working late again.”

  “I’m shocked,” I said, biting off a chunk of ice cream.

  “Oh, don’t start,” said my mom. “Deep, slow breath, you’ll be fine. Hang on— No, I said I’ll be right there. Well, I think Philips should be able to handle that without me by now. One second— Sweetie, sorry, but I really have to go. Remember what I said about dinner, and make sure you get your chores done, okay?”

  I took another bite. I was powering my way through that ice cream. “Yes, Mom,” I said around a mouthful of caramel crunchy bits. And really, what else was there to say? I’d been used to my mom being gone since she got promoted to head doctor in the kids-with-cancer ward. And now that I was eleven-staring-down-twelve and she trusted me to be okay on my own all day, I was starting to forget what she looked like.

  I was fine with it before, when I had school stuff and Abby was around, but things hadn’t gone to plan this summer, and after six long weeks of being really, truly, actually alone—if you don’t count those first two weeks of oh-my-ice-cream-let’s-not-talk-about-it beginner tennis lessons, which went about as well as me around a group of strange new kids has ever gone—I could say for certain it wasn’t much fun at all.

  “Okay then, real good-bye now,” said my mom. “Love you. See you soon.”

  “You too,” I replied. My mom hung up first.

  Well hey, another night of being all by my lonesome. I stuffed the last of the ice cream into my mouth, fished Abby’s postcard out of the bill pile, and headed for my pillow fort in the living room.

  The fort’s technical name was Gromit’s Room, after Abby’s favorite movie, but with no Abby around to get the inside joke I’d just been calling it my Fortress of Fortitude. At least it was cool and comfortable after my cat-carrying marathon in the afternoon heat. I flicked on the lamp, re-armed myself with a new pen from the arts-and-crafts corner, and settled back against the sofa cushions to read the latest from Camp Cantaloupe.

  Maggles! I saw a turtle today. I named it Brandon McPondy. It pooped beside the lake. Wish you were here! Can’t believe it’s almost over! Home Thursday!

  Abs

  That was all.

  Only. Wait. Wait wait wait-wait-wait. Thursday. TODAY Thursday?!

  I sat up, staring around as though some total stranger would appear and confirm that yes, today was the fifth day of the week and this glorious news was true. I punched the air, my mood doing a complete one eighty.

  Abby was coming home today!

  But there was something weird going on with the postcard. This was Abby’s very last message, so why was she still writing in code? She’d been sending cheerfully pointless cards every other day since she got to camp, all way too out of character to be anything but secret messages, but for the life of me I’d never been able to work out what her encryption system was. I’d been counting on some sort of big reveal at the end, but here she was keeping the act going right up to the final card. It was very mysterious. Camp Cantaloupe must have been such a horrible, oppressive place that she couldn’t risk saying any more until she was safely home.

  Of course, Camp Cantaloupe wouldn’t have been horrible if I’d been able to go with her like we’d planned. Then it would have been, like Abby said, ah-may-zing. Then instead of waking up week after week to a silent house and boring chores, I’d have been waking up to a log cabin with splintery floors, dead wasps in the windows, and Abby snoring away in the bunk below me. And when we lined up for roll call, we would have been standing side by side because our last names are close, and they would call out “Hernandez, Abigail!” and Abby would shout “Hair!” and I would smile, and they would call “Hetzger, Margaret!” and I would shout “Peasant!” and Abby would snort. And then we’d steal all the red and orange Froot Loops from the mess hall and the games would really begin. Camp Cantaloupe would never know what hit it.

  But we didn’t go to camp together. Our plans failed. And all because my overworked mom forgot to send in my camp registration paperwork, and by the time anyone realized, it was too late. Abby did everything she could to cancel, but we couldn’t stop it: we were doomed to spend the first half of our last summer before sixth grade and middle school—where, if the stories were true, everything was going to change and the earth’s crust would break into pieces and the world as we’d known it would be turned upside down—horribly, tragically apart.

  I reread Abby’s card, looking for hidden patterns. “Can’t believe it’s almost over.” What could that mean? Abby had promised she would hate every minute of camp without me, and these messages—all on official, silly Camp Cantaloupe postcards—were so Fun-Fun Rainbow Crispy cheerful they had to be fake. My co–secret agent just did not use that many exclamation marks.

  And what about the other clues? Along with her steady stream of postcards, Abby had sent back a map of the campgrounds, a speckled owl feather, and a scarf she’d made out of an old patchwor
k quilt during her first arts-and-crafts lesson. I’d spent a whole week working out rescue missions based on the map, but had to give it up when I realized none of them were really doable without my own helicopter. The scarf and feather became Abby-themed decorations in my fort, but what if all those things were actually a cunning key to decode the postcards, and I’d somehow missed it? Me, the world’s greatest secret agent? I’d never live it down.

  I glanced at the picture on the front of the card, which showed Orcas Island and, for some reason, a goofy-looking moose, and shoved it in the very back of my postcard shoe box alongside all the others. That was it, then. It was over. My best friend was coming home, and one way or another I was finally going to get the answers to all my questions.

  Nothing to do now but climb up on the roof and wait.

  It got pretty hot sometimes, but every day that summer I’d braved the heat and the danger and clambered up roofside, staring out west past Seattle and Puget Sound toward Orcas Island. Somewhere out there, somewhere past that darn pine tree blocking my view, Abby was trapped all alone at camp, waiting, counting down the days just like I was.

  Which meant we were waiting together.

  Only, as the scorching July days dragged by, I’d had to admit I was starting to feel, despite all my training and patience, maybe just the teeniest bit . . . lonely.

  Which might explain why I screamed like a third grader presented with pie when the Hernandezes’ car crunched into the driveway next door with a back seat full of duffel bags and a front seat full of . . . Abby!

  I scrambled off the roof so fast I almost broke my neck. We met in the middle of Abby’s lawn and slammed our arms around each other.

  “Abs!”

  “Maggles!”

  We hug-danced around and around and around. We stepped back.

  Abby looked fantastic. She had a hearty sunburn, impressive scratches on her arms, and a fancy new side braid in her dark, curly hair. She was also taller than me somehow. I squinted. She actually looked pretty different. She looked like . . . New Abby.

  Wait, I thought, for the first time all summer, what do I look like? Am I New Maggie? I felt the same, and I knew from the mirror that morning that I still had my usual choppy bangs, square jaw, and independent eyebrows. Abby was smiling, though, so I must have been doing okay.