Floors: by Patrick Carman Read Free Book Online Page A

supposed. And what was more frightening still: MR. M. wasn’t a figment of someone’s imagination. He was real.
    Maybe Captain Rickenbacker wasn’t totally off his rocker after all.
    Leo gathered his nerves and picked up what had fallen out of the ceiling. It looked like it had been designed to work with the box. It had a metal platform and two handles sticking out, like the handles of a motorcycle. He took up the box and placed it carefully on top of the square platform between the handles. A perfect fit, if ever there was one. A new sound rose from behind him — the sound of wind. When Leo turned, the giant purple ping-pong ball had floated up into the air.
    “I know what I’m supposed to do!” he said excitedly. “I understand!”
    Leo told Betty to stay right behind him and to do exactly as he did, and somehow he knew she’d understood. She fell in line as Leo held the handles on the box and stared into the model.
    “I know the way out of here, but there must be some trick to it, and the trick must involve the ball.”
    As he neared the floating ball, he felt what he’d expected: A strong channel of air was coming out of the floor, holding up the ball. Leo twisted the right handle as if he were actually riding a motorcycle and watched as the ball moved slowly forward. Twisting it the other way brought the ball right back. He tilted the front edge of the box down and the ball descended, the flow of air from the floor growing weaker. Then he tilted the front of the box up faster than he should have and the ball bounced off the ceiling. He leveled the box, and the ball was back, holding steady in front of his eyes.
    “Well, Betty, I know how to get this ball through the maze. I just don’t know why I’m doing it.”
    Leo shrugged. There was nothing to be done but guide the ball and follow it through, and so he began. Everything started out fine, twisting and turning through one green, then one yellow, then two red rings, Betty hopping through the rings behind him. But then he came to a place in the round maze where there were two rings to choose from. They were in the opening that would send him deeper into the maze, closer to the middle and the very end. Would it matter which one he chose? He thought not, and sent the ball through the blue ring on the right. When he did, thering filled with spires of electricity and the ball exploded into dust.
    Leo lurched back, nearly falling into one of the rings, and stared in shock at the purple dust particles flying every where. If there were such a thing as fairy dust, Leo thought, it would look like this. The electric charge had turned the ball into sparkling purple mist that stuck in Leo’s round tuft of hair and danced on the wind.
    He tried to calm himself down, but could only imagine what would happen to him if he went through the wrong ring. Would he, too, be turned to dust, never to escape the Ring of Rooms or the Room of Rings?
    “At least now I know what the purple ball was for,” he said. “But it’s gone now.”
    Leo was aware of the time ticking away, and this only added to his anxiety. Checking his watch, he saw that he’d already been gone a full hour. Ms. Sparks would be furious about the ducks being left in the pond. Then she’d find that Betty was missing and go ballistic. And what about his father — what would he say if Leo couldn’t be found?
    Leo was looking at Betty like she might have the answer to all his problems, but it turned out she had the key to a different question. She was staring at one of the frosty glass walls again, watching a new messageappear. Leo joined her as an unseen finger wrote out seven words before the shadow moved off again.
    Turn the handle back three times fast.
     
    Leo was beside himself with worry, but he couldn’t give up now. For starters, he didn’t know how to get the round door back open again. And even if he could get it open, there would be Captain Rickenbacker and his flying bowling balls to deal