They were scuffling over the last of the potato chips when the Subaru finally turned off the main highway. MOUNTAIN ACCESS ROAD, said a sign. The road tilted steeply up. On one side were trees. On the other side was a gully and a frozen creek. Ollie’s dad was driving on through the storm like he didn’t have a care in the world, telling bad jokes from the front seat.
“What did the buffalo say to his kid when he dropped him off at school?” he asked.
Ollie sighed. Her dad loved bad jokes.
“Bison!” yelped Coco triumphantly, and everyone groaned but also laughed.
“Motorists are warned to exercise caution, avoid unplowed roads, and, if at all possible, refrain from driving altogether,” remarked the radio.
“Great,” said Mr. Adler, unbothered. “Less people on the road tonight means more snow for us tomorrow!”
“If you say so,” said Coco’s mom. She gave the smothering storm a cautious look. Coco recognized the look. Coco and her mom were both careful about things. Unlike Ollie and her dad, who were kind of leap-before-you-look.
“Want to hear another joke?” Mr. Adler asked.
“Dad, can’t we have a jokes-per-trip limit?” Ollie said.
“Not when I’m driving!” said her dad. “One more. Why did the scarecrow get a promotion?”
A small, awkward silence fell. Ollie, Brian, and Coco looked at each other. They really didn’t like scarecrows.
“Anyone?” asked Ollie’s dad. “Anyone? Come on, I feel like I’m talking to myself here! Because he was outstanding in his field! Get it? Out standing in his field?” Ollie’s dad laughed, but no one laughed with him. “Geez, tough crowd.”
The three in the back said nothing. Ollie’s dad didn’t know it, but there was a reason they didn’t like scarecrows.
That October, they, along with the rest of their sixth-grade class, had disappeared for two days. Only Ollie, Brian, and Coco remembered everything that had happened during those days. They’d never told anyone. They told their families and the police that they’d gotten lost.
They hadn’t just gotten lost. But who would believe them if they told the truth?
They’d been kidnapped into another world. A world behind the mist. They’d met living scarecrows who tried to drag them off and turn them into scarecrows too. They’d gone into a haunted house, taken food from a ghost, run a corn maze, and at last met someone called the smiling man.
The smiling man looked ordinary, but he wasn’t. The smiling man would grant your heart’s desire if you asked him. But he’d demand a price. A terrible price.
Ollie, Brian, and Coco had outwitted the smiling man. They’d survived the world behind the mist and come home. They’d gone into that world as near strangers and come out as best friends. It was December now, and they were together, and on vacation. All was well.
But two months later, they still had nightmares. And they still didn’t like scarecrows.
The silence in the car stretched out as the road got even steeper. The radio suddenly fizzed with static and went silent.
They all waited for it to crackle back to life. Nothing. Coco’s mom reached out and tapped it, pressed the tuning button, but it didn’t help. “That’s weird,” she said. “Maybe it’s the storm.”
Coco didn’t miss the radio. She was full of peanut butter and getting sleepy. She leaned her head on Ollie’s shoulder to doze. Brian was reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Brian liked sea stories. He and Ollie had both read one called Captain Blood and spent a few weeks arguing about the ending. Coco had read the book too, to know what her friends were arguing about, but it was about pirates. She hadn’t liked it and felt a little left out of the whole argument. Coco didn’t like novels, really. She liked books about real things. Bugs and dinosaurs and the history of space flight.
Brian began to read by the light of his phone. Ollie put her cheek against her window and stared into the wild night. Coco, half asleep on Ollie’s shoulder, began recalling the last chess game she’d played. It was on the internet, with someone named @begemot.
Coco loved chess. Her favorite books were histories of famous players and famous matches. One of her favorite things to do was to play online. On the internet, no one could be smug and assume she was easy to beat just because she was small and pink-haired. Sleepily, Coco went back over the opening moves of her last game. She’d played white, which always goes first, and had opened with Queen’s Gambit . . .
Up and up they climbed.
Coco fell asleep, still thinking about chess.
Coco dreamed. Not about chess.
In her dream, she was walking down a dark hallway, so long that she couldn’t see the end of it. Bars of moonlight fell across the carpet, striping it with shadows. But there weren’t any windows. Just the moonlight. It was bitterly cold. On each side were rows of plain white doors, the paint rotten and peeling. Behind one of the doors, Coco heard someone crying.
But behind which door? There seemed to be hundreds. “Where are you?” Coco called.
“I can’t find them,” whimpered a girl’s voice. “I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t find them. Mother says I can’t go home until I find them.”