“There are three rooms in all,” Phillip announced, passing out keys accordingly. “There’s a menu on the desk for you to order food from the restaurant. Please be reasonable, but make sure you feed yourself nicely. Is there anything—”

“Where’s the TV?” Paul asked.

Phillip gave him that same bewildered look, his brow crunched up into dozens of wrinkles. “A TV? What’s that?”

“Television. You know—movies, shows, commercials, television?”

“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tick looked at the light on the wall, which Phillip had turned on when they’d entered the room. They obviously had electricity here, but seemed to be missing a lot of other things common to Reality Prime.

As if reading his mind, Sofia asked, “Where are all the cars?”

Phillip put his hands in his pockets, his confused look morphing into suspicion. “Cars have been banned for at least twenty years.”

“Banned?” Tick asked. “Why?”

“And how do you get around?” Paul asked before Phillip could respond.

The hotel man shook his head, looking at his three guests in turn. “When that . . . when Mothball made me this deal, I didn’t realize she’d be sending such odd people. Where are you kids from?”

“Florida,” Paul answered. “Well, originally from California—”

Sofia cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. But we’re curious about the cars. Where we come from, they still use them.”

“The darn things were polluting us to death,” Phillip said, still appearing uneasy as he rocked back and forth on his feet. “So they banned them, made towns where everything was in walking distance. If you want to visit another town, you take the Underground Railroad—named after the lady who escaped the slave drivers a long time ago—the one who became president, Harrietta Tubben.”

Tick and Sofia exchanged baffled looks.

“So you’ve got trains, underground?” Paul asked.

“Fastest ones in the world,” Phillip answered, eyeing the door. “If there’s nothing else . . .”

“Thanks for letting us stay here,” Tick said, liking the idea of seeing Phillip leave and finally ordering some food. “Don’t forget to bring us that message from Mothball.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” the man assured them, already backing out the door into the hallway. “Order a nice dinner and get some rest.”

Tick closed the door before the last word made it all the way out of Phillip’s mouth.

“Well,” Sofia said, “this place is just like home compared to the last Reality—desert, glass tunnel, raging beast.”

“All I care about right now is food,” Paul said. He’d already picked up the phone to call room service.

Later that night, his stomach stuffed with roasted duck and asparagus (they didn’t have pizza or hamburgers in this place), fully showered and clean, Tick lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. Every ounce of his body begged for sleep, his mind deadened with exhaustion. And yet, he remained awake.

Man, I have a weird life.

He’d lost track of how long they’d been gone—it seemed like a month, but he knew it was only a few days, maybe a week at most. He knew his mom and dad were back home, worry eating at them like ferrets trapped in their gut, trying to stay chipper for Lisa and Kayla. Tick wished he could send them a message, talk to them somehow. Just to let them know he was okay.

A hard knock at his door made him jump. Crumpling up the sheets in his bed, he wiggled into a sitting position, his back pressed against the wall. He stared at the small space under the door, where two small shadows marked someone’s feet.

“Who is it?” he called out, embarrassed at how shaky his voice sounded to his own ears.

“It’s me, sleepyhead,” Paul replied, the words muffled through the wood.

Tick sighed with relief as he threw the covers aside. He hurried over and opened the door. Sofia was behind Paul, her eyes puffy with sleep. Each of them wore fancy-looking flannel pajamas provided by the hotel, and Sofia’s looked about three sizes too big.

“What’s going on?” Tick asked.

“Dude, have you looked out the window?” Paul stepped into the room, pushing past Tick.

“Um, no.” Tick stepped aside to let Sofia in, then closed the door. He flicked on the light, but Paul quickly waved his hand at him.

“No, dude, turn it off!”

Tick did as he was told, grumbling a little. All he wanted right now was to be left alone and sleep for days. He felt so tired and his body hurt like he had the flu. The only light in the room was a mysterious panel on the wall that shone a dull yellow. Something about it gave Tick the creeps.

Paul leaned next to the window, carefully pulling aside the curtains to peek through the corner, as if spying on someone in the parking lot. Tick faltered as he joined Paul—this place didn’t have a parking lot.

“What are you looking at?” Tick asked.

Sofia knelt at the other end of the window, lifting that corner of the curtains to peer out. The two of them looked ridiculous.

“Santy Claus,” Paul whispered. “What do you think we’re looking at?”

“I don’t know—that’s why I asked.”

Sofia turned toward Tick, the disgusted look on her face barely discernible in the faint light. “The glowing monkeys.”

“Oh, yeah!” Tick couldn’t believe he’d not even looked—a sign that his brain had gone to sleep even though his body had refused. He squatted on the floor between his friends and slowly lifted the bottom of the curtain to take a peek.

Outside, the dark forest stood like a fortress wall, massive trees silhouetted by the pale moonlight seeping through the thick clouds above. The city behind the hotel had a surprising lack of nighttime lights, making Tick feel like they were in a cabin deep in the wilderness. And there in the woods, radiant and eerie and constantly in motion, dozens of creepy glowing shapes moved about the trees.

“Those don’t look like monkeys,” Tick whispered. When he’d heard the word glowing, he’d imagined his old skeleton Halloween decoration back home, which appeared as a whitish-yellowish blur in the darkness. But this light was much different. This light was bright and stark and reddish, and the creatures looked a lot bigger than monkeys. “They look more like . . . radioactive bears.”