Floors #2: 3 Below by Patrick Carman Read Free Book Online Page A

incredibly cute, the kind of face that makes you smile and feel better after a hard day.
    “Will you catch me if I fall?” Remi asked the Leprechaun. But the monkey didn’t understand. It looked up at Remi with those big green eyes and smiled. A monkey loves attention almost as much as it loves animal crackers.
    It was some work getting to the top, but mostly it was a blast. Twice they swung on ropes from one side of the tree to the other, landing on vine-covered platforms. At one point the tree limbs became so thick, it was like crawling up through a tangled cave of leaves. When the limbs and leaves opened up again, they found that they’d climbed higher than the tree house by thirty feet. It was nestled against the wide trunk, and it appearedthe only way to the front door was by way of a steep zip line.
    Ingrid grabbed three zip-line rollers out of a wooden box nailed to a limb and gave brief and harrowing instructions on how to proceed. She set the roller over the line, grabbed the two handles, and was gone before either of them could say no.
    “Forget it,” Remi said, glancing at Leo. “You can’t make me.”
    Six or seven Leprechaun monkeys glided down the zip line by their curled tails, smiling back at Remi and Leo. The tails seemed to rise and fall loosely, like they were made of rubber. Other monkeys followed, riding down the line and jumping off at the bottom. They were a very playful bunch. Leo couldn’t help himself — he was dying to fly down to the tree house. It looked like a ton of fun, but the tree house itself was also stirring all the magic places in his imagination. It was SO not what he expected, mostly because it was made entirely of copper and rivets and pipes.
    There were three sections to the tree house, different sizes, but all with roofs that looked like the tops of mushrooms, round and curved at the sides. Thick, vine-like pipes ran every which way over and through the three roofs.

    “I gotta get down there,” Leo said. Looping the roller over the top of the wire, he was gone in a flash. When he reached the tree house, he let go and crash-landed into a clanging metal table. The table sat on a deck of wire grating that ran all the way around the structures. The table hit a metal chair and the chair went skidding off the grating, tumbling down the side of the tree.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Leo heard Ingrid say. “Happens all the time. The Leprechauns will bring it back.”
    Remi was petrified as he listened to the metal chair bounce all the way to the bottom. He could imagine each and every impact, all the broken bones and, more than likely, a lot of peeing his pants. It would not be pretty.
    “Come on, Remi, it’s easy!”
    It looked for a while like Remi wasn’t ever going to make the trip, but the monkeys were nothing if not intuitive, and they liked having company. They wanted to be helpful.
    “Loopa!” Ingrid yelled, and the Leprechaun monkey in Remi’s pocket popped its head up obediently. “Gather your friends — he’s going to need some help.”
    Loopa was off in a split second, screeching like monkeys do when they’re giving orders. Before long, a group of them had taken out another roller and placed it onthe line. One of them held it firmly in place while more monkeys than Leo could count started glomming on to the handles. They weaved their small arms and legs around one another, forming a wide loop Remi could sit on.
    They all looked at Remi at once and didn’t make a sound. They stared so patiently and so forcefully that Remi couldn’t stand it.
    “You guys have done this before, haven’t you?” Remi asked, inching one step closer to the zip line. He should have paid more attention. All at once, dozens of monkeys jumped on Remi’s back from the tree limbs behind him.
    He didn’t have a chance.
    The force of many small monkeys landing on him shoved Remi face-first into the loop, and then Remi and about fifty Leprechaun monkeys raced toward the tree