The Strangers: Chapters 21–33

She was peering intently at a paper they’d printed out the night before in Ms. Morales’s office: the map of the Boring Room that came from putting together the butterfly spots.

“Maybe we need a magnifying glass. Maybe we need a microscope. Maybe we need to douse the wall with lemon juice or some other reagent.”

Apparently Natalie didn’t know what a reagent was either.

“It’s just a pantry?” Finn said in dismay. “We have something as cool as a secret room hidden under our house, and Mom just uses it to store food?”

“Mom would never rob a bank,” Chess said decisively, like he was slamming a door.

He peeked toward the secret room, then back at Emma. “Well, I kind of kicked the wall, too, but that was by mistake.”
He brushed his fingers against a scuff mark on the wall.

“The whole room moves?” Finn crowed delightedly. “Even the walls?”

He was still getting oriented himself.

It was a little creepy to see the expanse of bare floor before him.

Instinctively, Finn gazed toward the place where he’d see the nearest window if he’d come up the basement stairs in his own house.

Chess’s face had turned stark white. Emma’s eyes had grown so big it seemed like they’d taken over her face.

Logic, Emma told herself. Sense. Facts. Think about those, and you won’t panic. We can’t be that far from home.
But even the air seemed to be conspiring against her, making her think otherwise.

But the threat of a storm had apparently blown in, just in that short amount of time. The sky now was full of low, ominous clouds, and the air felt murky and thick.

He remained right on the threshold, the door open behind him.

Maybe Chess’s long, gangly arms caught the edge of the door somehow; maybe there was a breeze that Emma hadn’t noticed. But as soon as Chess was out of the way, the door swung shut behind him with a loud bang.

A figure loomed in the doorway of the house they’d just left.

They all made a silent procession back toward the basement stairs, except for Ms. Morales sneezing twice more, and complaining, mostly just to herself, "How could anybody sell a house like this, with that stench everywhere?”

This doesn’t make sense, Emma thought, silently trudging behind Finn and Ms. Morales.

Mom, we’re going to figure all this out and find you, Emma thought, as if she really believed she could communicate with her mother telepathically. We are. Don’t worry.

At first, it was just an indistinct noise, but he twisted the earbud slightly in his ear, and then he could make out words.

“We were lost! My phone wouldn’t work! We—”
“And it never once occurred to you to just turn around and walk back through the tunnel to the Greystones’ house?” Ms. Morales asked, her voice rising with incredulity.

He could feel his lower lip start to jut out, like he was just a sulky little kid. He forced himself to keep his lip in, stand up straighter, and stare Chess right in the eye.

“You think our mom was kidnapped?” Finn asked, trying so, so hard to keep his voice from wavering on the last word.

“I can’t find anything about some fugitive criminal being caught, or about any kidnappings around here. I thought it might help to find the address of that house we were in, but there’s no house on any street near yours that matches what it looked like.”

“You’re looking up something about our dad?” Finn asked Chess, and this time he had no control of his voice. “Why? What’s an oh, obit...uh...”
“Obituary?” Natalie finished for him, snapping her head toward Chess’s computer. “You mean the news story from when he died?..."

Painstakingly—because he hadn’t really learned how to type yet—he keyed in “Rochester, Emma, and Finn” and added the words “kidnapped” and “news.”

The man on the screen inclined his head toward his wife.

He flushed, realizing how dumb he sounded.

“Mom says we’re the only ones who will be able to read her letter,” he said, pointing to the computer screen Emma had been poring over before they’d heard the voice like Mom’s.

“I’m really sorry,” Natalie repeated. “Sorry that you think you have to, to dwell on everything like this. And that...”