No matter how hard he tried, Finn just could not go as slowly as the others. His brush caught on something. He squinted down at the lever.
“I’m looking for lines, right?” he asked. “But little wavy ones, not thick ones?” He shoved his brush forward, and inched around to the lever’s other side to squint again at what he’d found. Everyone else was staring down at their own space; nobody was looking at his area of the lever.
“What if someone had a tattoo on their fingertips?” Finn asked. “Like, of some word? Would that show up as letters instead of fingerprints?”
“What do you mean?” Emma asked, turning her head.
Finn pointed.
“Isn’t that the letter U?” he asked. Maybe he was just fooling himself, because he’d been talking about letters on a Pez.
Emma hopped over the lever to Finn’s side. She dumped more baking soda beside Finn’s area, and swiped her own paintbrush across that zone.
The letters S and E appeared beside the U.
“Use,” Finn read. “It’s the word ‘use.’”
Emma threw her arms around Finn’s shoulders.
“Finn! You’re amazing! Thank you for making us check for fingerprints! You’ve found another code!”
Eleven
Emma
“I have?” Finn said blankly. “But ‘use’ is a real word. What if it’s not another code but—”
“Instructions!” Emma yelled. “You’re right! Maybe you’ve found instructions!”
She picked up the baking soda box again, then changed her mind.
“The letters are carved so lightly we can’t see them, so . . . I think this will go faster if we do something like a tombstone rubbing,” Emma said. “Natalie, now we need white paper and a pencil. Where’s . . .”
She didn’t wait for Natalie to answer. She just stood up, walked over to Natalie’s desk, and pulled out the supplies she needed.
“What’s a tombstone rubbing?” Finn asked.
“Oh, I know what you mean, Emma,” Natalie said. “Did you have Mrs. Creveau for third grade, too? Finn, maybe you’ll do this next year. Tombstone rubbings are for when the letters have worn off a gravestone over centuries, so you can’t read it anymore—sometimes, you can’t even see that there are words there—so you use pencil and paper to . . . well, it’s exactly what Emma’s doing now.”
Emma was glad Natalie had answered Finn. Emma was too busy shaking the baking soda away and then laying the paper down carefully over the middle section of the lever. She had to bend it a little, since there was such a gully in the lever. Then she pressed the pencil point sideways against the paper and began running it back and forth.
“I did that in third grade, too,” Chess said. “But do you think this lever is hundreds of years old, like the tombstones?”
“I don’t think the words on this lever wore away over time,” Emma said. “I think this message was designed to be impossible to read unless you know it’s there. Unless you know to do a tombstone rubbing and look for it.”
“Okay,” Natalie said. “What does—”
But Emma was already holding up the first sheet of paper:
USE IN A
EXISTS IN
Silently, Chess handed her a second sheet of paper.
Emma placed it on the next section of the lever and began rubbing the pencil back and forth again.
Then she dropped both sheets of paper to the floor, side by side.
USE IN A SPOT THAT
EXISTS IN BOTH (WORLDS)
“It is instructions!” Emma exulted. “And I was right about the lever all along! Just not totally, one hundred percent right!”
“Were you ninety-eight percent right?” Finn asked. “Ninety-five percent?”
“Oh, who cares about the numbers!” Emma said, grabbing her brother by the shoulders again and swinging him back and forth. “I was right enough that we can go rescue Mom!”
Twelve
Chess
Chess watched Finn, Emma, and Natalie hugging and congratulating each other. Then Finn switched to fist-bumping everyone.
“We’re the best team ever!” he crowed. “We all worked together! Now let’s go!”
“Go where?” Chess asked quietly.
“Somewhere we know exists in both worlds! That’s where the lever will work!” Emma said. “That has to be what this means!”
“So you’re saying . . . the only reason the lever didn’t work here in my room is . . . doesn’t this room exist in the other world?” Natalie asked. “Are you saying Dad’s whole house might not exist in the other world?”
“I guess not!” Emma said, shrugging. “That’ll teach me to consider all the possible variables the next time!”
Natalie scooted back against the wall. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“Dad had this house custom-built after Mom said she wanted a divorce,” Natalie said. “He said he wasn’t going to be one of those sad-sack divorced dads living in an empty condo and getting all depressed about losing everything. He said . . . he said he’d show Mom he was fine without her.” She tilted her head back to gaze toward the ceiling. A dreaminess settled over her face. “If this house doesn’t exist in the other world, what does that mean?”
“It means we have to go somewhere else to use the lever and go back to the other world!” Finn said, as if that should be obvious to everyone.
Chess made himself stop gazing at Natalie.
“We shouldn’t try our house either,” Chess said. “Not just because the tunnel in the basement collapsed, and maybe that closes off the whole house as a place to travel from. But also . . . the authorities in the other world know where we were traveling back and forth before. Don’t you think they’re probably guarding the house on the other side?”
“So maybe we go to a neighbor’s house?” Finn asked. “Or . . . can we find somewhere to put the lever beside the pond back in our neighborhood? We know the pond exists in both worlds!”
“I don’t think we should cross into the other world outdoors, where anyone could see us,” Chess said. He tried not to let his voice tremble, so no one would hear how much that idea terrified him. “And what would we tell our neighbors about why we want to hang out in their house? How could we say, ‘Oh, just leave us alone and don’t worry if we disappear’?”
“Natalie’s mother’s house,” Emma said firmly, as if she was settling an argument. “That’s where we try the lever next. We skip school and do it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“We don’t know for sure that Mom’s house exists in the other world, either,” Natalie objected. “Not the same house in the same place. We never saw it when we were there before.”
“But if it does—and if that’s where you and your mom live in the other world—then it’s the safest place to go back,” Emma said. “A place where you, at least, would look like you belong, Natalie. So that’s what we try first.”