Sneaks by Catherine Egan

Author:Catherine Egan [Egan, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

31

They were all three waiting outside the school at seven-thirty in the morning when Ms. Pryce pulled up. Charlotte was in full rice-pudding-face mode, but didn’t bring up their tense conversation from the day before. This time, Ben had his water soaker as well as the briefcase stuffed in his backpack, which he’d patched with a thick layer of duct tape where the Sneak had ripped a hole in it.

Ms. Pryce was dressed in a lime-green pencil skirt and matching heels and a brown faux-leather jacket zipped up over her blouse, with her bulky bag over her shoulder.

“Good morning,” she said, as if it were an entirely normal thing for them to be meeting this early. They followed her into the school and up to the library. She shut the doors behind them and gestured to the same table they’d sat at yesterday.

“No Sneak attacks last night, I assume?” she asked.

Ben shook his head.

“May I see The Book of Keys?”

Akemi took it out of her backpack and handed it to her while Charlotte scowled.

“I also found this…hidden inside Agatha Bent’s dog’s name tag,” said Ben, passing her the slip of paper. “We think it’s some kind of directions. It’s connected to the book.”

Ms. Pryce examined the list of words, read the letter from Colin Bent, and then opened the book. She paused a long time over the poem on the first page before flipping quickly through the other pages.

“I understand that this past week must have been very confusing and frightening, and I hold myself responsible,” she said at last. “I never imagined this scenario…but I feel that I should have. As much as possible, I need you now to put it out of your minds. It’s not something that you should be involved in.”

“You said you would explain!” cried Akemi.

“We’re already involved,” added Ben. “We know stuff, and we’ve captured Sneaks, and I’ve been hurt. If we’re going to keep secrets for you, we deserve to know what’s going on. It isn’t fair to tell us to keep quiet and try to keep us out of this.”

Ms. Pryce studied them. “It is unfair,” she agreed. “But having so foolishly put you in harm’s way, I am trying to do whatever I can to keep you safe.”

Charlotte was giving him an I told you so look.

“Just explaining things isn’t going to put us in danger!” insisted Ben.

“If I tell you a little bit…about the multiverse, the history of the gap…will that help you to put this matter aside?” she asked.

They all three nodded vigorously.

“Very well,” she began. “This is an oversimplification, of course, but imagine different universes—perhaps with distinct physical laws—as beads on a thread. The thread linking all our universes together is a kind of tunnel or road passing through them, although in reality it is not so orderly as beads on a single thread. The Gateway Society refers to this tunnel as a “transdimensional wormhole.” Think of the gap as the hole in the bead that the thread

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