He raced along the bridge. Sutton took a deep breath and then raced after him. Partly because she didn’t want to be left behind. And partly because they had to escape the sea lions.

  When she reached the other side, Luis cheered. He gave her a high five as she jumped off the bridge.

  “We did it!” he cried. “We saved the penguin chicks!”

  “Thank you, Luis,” Sutton said, trying to catch her breath.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t do anything. Come on.” He grabbed her hand again and pulled her toward the trees.

  Sutton had completely forgotten the throbbing pain of the bee sting on her palm, the squelch of her soaked shoes, even the terrifying passage over the bridge they had crossed. The only thing that mattered now was seeing her dad.

  When they burst through the trees and into the parking lot, she didn’t see him. Instead, Sutton saw a whole circle of adults crowded around the faded map. A group planning their hike, she thought at first. But there were park rangers and police officers too. One of the police officers was giving instructions.

  “So one group will head toward the rope bridge,” the officer said, his gaze down on a clipboard and his finger pointing directly at Sutton and Luis.

  Someone turned to see where she was pointing and then said, “Wait, is that them?”

  As one, the group swiveled to look at Sutton and Luis, and that was when Sutton saw her dad. “Oh, Sutton, honey!” He burst out of the circle and crossed the parking lot like a bot on turbo speed.

  Luis’s mom was right behind him. “Luis!” she cried. “What happened?”

  “Dad, I’m fine,” Sutton said as he crushed her to him, her voice muffled and her face smooshed into her dad’s jacket. She inhaled the wonderful, familiar scent of him. And then she was crying, and she didn’t even know why, because they were finally here, together. Now that they were safe and she didn’t have to be brave anymore, it all came flooding over her, and all she wanted was to be tucked up in their apartment with a cup of golden milk and Moti sleeping on her feet.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Elizabeth’s hand was soft on Sutton’s head, stroking her hair. “We’re so very, very sorry.”

  Sutton emerged from her dad’s jacket to nod at Elizabeth, who had Luis firmly tucked under her arm. “I’m okay now.”

  “We walked to where we thought the tunnel would open out,” Sutton’s dad said. “But we couldn’t find an opening.”

  Elizabeth rested her hand on his arm. “We kept walking, thinking maybe the tunnel dumped out farther along the trail. But it didn’t.”

  “So eventually we doubled back and tried to go through the tunnel ourselves,” Sutton’s dad said as Elizabeth started to giggle, “but we didn’t fit.”

  “Didn’t fit?” she laughed. “You got stuck! I almost called the park ranger then!”

  “We almost got stuck too,” Luis said. “But Sutton helped me get out.”

  Their parents exchanged meaningful looks. “You guys worked together, huh?” Sutton’s dad said.

  Part of Sutton wanted to deny it. But they really had. Without Luis, she would probably still be sitting in that clearing, or she’d be stuck on the other side of that rickety bridge. Without Sutton, Luis could have been stung by a bee!

  “Yeah,” Luis said. “And we made it back to the parking lot.”

  “And so did we,” his mom said.

  “Because we made an emergency plan,” Luis said.

  “Yes, love,” Elizabeth said.

  There was a lot of explaining to the rangers and the officers how they’d gotten separated. Sutton showed the rangers on the old, faded map where the tunnel opened up, and they promised to block it over so no other kids would be lured in by the fantastical possibilities.

  “We’re so sorry,” Martin said after the park rangers had gotten their statements and the search party had dispersed. “I was so sure the tunnel would open up farther along the main trail. When it didn’t…”

  “It was scary,” Luis said. “But we had each other.”

  Sutton’s dad wouldn’t let go of her. She didn’t really mind. “You guys must be starving,” he said. “Do you want to go grab something to eat? There’s a vegan place near here with good options for you, Luis.”

  Sutton didn’t want to hurt Luis’s feelings, but she was exhausted. One look and she could tell he felt the same way.

  “No,” they said together. “But thanks.”

  * * *

  Sutton dug her watch out from under the driver’s seat as soon as she got in the car. She strapped it on. Having a GPS unit next to her skin calmed her. Technology was her friend.

  Sutton’s dad and Luis’s mom stood between the two cars, saying their goodbyes. Sutton looked away as her dad pressed a quick kiss to Elizabeth’s lips.

  The idea of them kissing wasn’t as bad as it had been this morning. But that didn’t mean she wanted to look at it.

  “Oh, honey,” he said when he got in the car. “Are you all right? You look pretty banged up.”

  “I just want to go home,” she said.

  His face fell as he pulled out of the lot. “I guess this was kind of a disaster. We’re zero for two now.”

  “Actually, Dad”—his eyes lit up as he looked at her in the rearview mirror—“Luis wasn’t that bad. Maybe we could ask him and Elizabeth to come over for our next movie night.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t get to know Elizabeth at all.”

  “Thanks, pumpkin. That means so much to me that you’re willing to try.”

  Sutton fiddled with the buttons on her GPS watch. “I’m always willing to try for you, Dad. But promise me one thing.”

  “Anything.”

  “No more hiking?”

  He guffawed so loud, Luis and his mom probably heard him in the car behind them. “I promise. Absolutely no more hiking.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Luis

  Luis was finishing up the crucial scene where the Whitlow School students freed their Alistair Academy rivals from the control of the Dark Force, when his mom stuck her head into his room.

  “Sawyer will be here any minute,” she said. “Can you come clear the table off? Your stuff is still spread out.”

  Luis tucked his notebook carefully into its drawer and headed out to the kitchen. His mom was preparing ingredients for personal pizzas, and she needed room to set all the different toppings out on the table so he and Sawyer could each make their own.

  Luis had been sure Sawyer wouldn’t want to hang out with him again after the guinea pig incident, but now he was coming over and Luis wanted everything to be perfect. They’d even bought real dairy cheese for Sawyer’s pizza.

  “Did you make any progress with that last night?” Luis’s mom asked from the counter, where she was slicing bell peppers. The night before, she had gone to her room to do yoga and call Martin while Luis had stayed up to try to master the basics of mini-robots.

  Now that Luis was almost done with Penelope Bell’s story, he was starting to think about the next one he’d write. He thought it might be about robots, so he needed to learn the basics. First he’d talked to Sutton, but she’d gotten exasperated with his insistence on giving the robots personalities and opinions.

  “The whole point is that they don’t think! You program them to do what you want!” she said.

  She had gotten so frustrated, she sent him home with one of her most basic mini-bots and some links on how to program it to move. “You need to see for yourself!” she’d said. “It doesn’t matter how they feel!” She’d giggled when Luis insisted on naming the robot Bumble, but had strictly prohibited him from painting black and yellow stripes on it.

  He could work on getting in touch with Bumble’s feelings later.

  “Not much progress,” he admitted to his mom. “Though I did decide that Bumble’s parents are named Honey and Digger.”

  She laughed and passed the bowls of cheese and tomato sauce across the counter for Luis to put on the table. “Somehow I don’t think Sutton would approve of the bot having parents.”

  “Then she’s really not going to approve of Bumble’s dreams of becoming a country music star.” Luis carefully tucked Bumble into the bot carrying case and set it on the highest bookshelf he could reach.

  “You can tell her all about it tomorrow. What time are we supposed to be there?”

  “Five.” Luis had read Sutton’s text inviting them to her not-birthday so many times that he’d memorized it. “But we still need to get a present!”

  “I thought she said no presents.”

  “She said no birthday presents. She never said no not-birthday presents.”

  Luis’s mom grinned and brought a few more toppings around to put on the table. “At first I thought you two might be too different to ever get along. Now I’m thinking you’re more alike than anyone ever imagined!”

  Luis glanced at the clock. Sawyer and his mom should have arrived by now.

  “They’re coming,” his mom said, reading his mind. “If I recall correctly from when we served on the fall carnival committee together, Sawyer’s mom has a tendency to run late.”

  If Luis recalled correctly, Sawyer’s mom did not mind breaking a few traffic laws when she was really in a hurry. But hopefully his mom was right. It was a lot more comforting to blame Mrs. Lawson than to imagine Sawyer was having second thoughts about hanging out with him.

  “And anyway, this gives me a minute to talk to you about something.” His mom grabbed some papers from the counter and led him to the couch. “I know the hike was kind of a disaster”—Luis opened his mouth to object, but his mom went on before he could—“but you did an amazing job handling the challenges that arose, even when I wasn’t there with you like I should have been.”

  “Sutton helped.”

  “I’m so glad she did. No matter where you go or what you do, there will always be people around to ask for help. Unless you decide to go climb Mount Rainier all by yourself, but that seems unlikely.”

  Luis snorted. He would leave the extreme adventure activities to Penelope Bell and her friends.

  “I did a little digging.” She laid a brochure on the couch between them. It said The Greater Seattle Bureau of Fearless Ideas. “They have writing workshops for kids and post some of the kids’ work online. They even publish books with collections of kids’ writing. I thought you might like to check it out.”

  Luis ran a hand over the brochure, almost afraid to pick it up. Maybe it would vanish in a puff of smoke. It seemed impossible. “Writing workshops? With other kids?”

  “And…,” she went on. There was more? “The bookstore in the university district has a regular graphic novel club, where kids talk about their favorite graphic novels, and also learn about writing them. I was thinking about your dad’s comics.…”

  Suddenly Luis could think of nothing else. His dad’s art, Luis’s love of stories. Luis might not be the best artist in the world, but he could learn. Or he could partner up with someone who liked to draw but wanted someone else to come up with the story. The world seemed full of opportunity.

  “Yes!”

  His mom laughed. “You don’t want to know more—”

  “Yes!” Luis said. “I mean, no! I don’t need to know more. I want to do them. Both of them. Can I do both?”

  She took her face in his hands. “You can do both. You can do anything. Your papi would be so proud of you, Luisito.”

  A car door slammed outside, and they broke apart. “Sounds like Sawyer’s here!” Mom said. “Shall we make some pizzas?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sutton

  It was Sutton’s birthday, but not.

  Her mom’s flight from the research station to Seattle (or really: from Antarctica to Christchurch, New Zealand; to Sydney, Australia; to Los Angeles; to Seattle) would get in a week after Sutton’s actual birthday. So the plan was to wait and do their traditional family birthday celebration a few days late, when her mom could be there with them.

  It wasn’t what Sutton would have chosen, if she could have. But she wouldn’t have chosen to get lost in the woods, get stung by a bee, land in a stream, and cross a structurally unsound bridge, either, and that had turned out all right. Finding her way back to her dad in the parking lot had made everything okay. If staying another week at the research station meant her mom got that much closer to saving the penguins, that was okay, too.

  But her dad had said he couldn’t possibly ignore the most important day of the whole year, the day that marked the birth of his brilliant daughter, so they’d decided to have an informal, totally-not-official, not-birthday birthday get-together.

  Mrs. Banerjee’s knee was miraculously healed by the prospect of cooking for a crowd, and she sent Sutton as her gofer between the apartments all day, since she had things baking in the ovens in both her apartment and theirs.

  “It’s not supposed to be a big deal,” Sutton protested, when she saw how much work Mrs. B was doing.

  “You think this is a big deal?” Mrs. B said with a laugh as she shredded carrots for the gajar ka halwa, a sweet Indian pudding Sutton had specifically requested. “You should have seen when my daughter got married. That was a big deal. This is a Sunday afternoon.”

  Everything smelled so good, Sutton wasn’t going to protest too hard.

  In her free moments between apartments, Sutton ran up the stairs to the rooftop patio, where her dad and Mr. Wong were dusting off the furniture and opening up the table umbrellas, in case the menacing thunderclouds made good on their threats. Moti and Freckles curled around each other on one of the cushioned benches.

  “Does Freckles like the cat condo?” Sutton asked.

  Mr. Wong beamed. “He does! So does Moti! Sometimes I think Mrs. Banerjee and I should break down the wall between our apartments so the animals can be together all the time.”

  Sutton grinned. She wasn’t sure, but she thought Mr. Wong and Mrs. Banerjee would like that an awful lot too.

  Dad’s phone buzzed and he checked a text. “Sabina and Sadiq’s soccer game just finished, so they should be here soon.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Riley and her family will be up as soon as the little one wakes from her nap.”

  Sutton nodded. Not so long ago, Riley felt like her fiercest rival. Sometimes she still would be, when they were vying for the top spot on their robotics team. But it didn’t always have to be that way.

  A couple of days after the hike, Sutton had knocked on Riley’s door again. This time she was available to help, and together they figured out how to get the bot through the maze. Sutton had done almost all of it herself; she just needed a little bit of help with the last step, and that was okay. Now it would be ready to show her mom.

  Her dad’s phone buzzed again. “Oh! That’s Liz. I’ll go bring them up.”

  Sutton’s stomach did a flip. It had been her choice to invite Luis and Elizabeth for her not-birthday birthday, but now that they were right downstairs, she felt a little nervous. They’d seen each other a couple of times in the weeks since the hike, but suddenly a family gathering like this one—even if it was a not-birthday—felt momentous.

  What if they got along like cats and dogs, except regular cats and dogs, not like Freckles and Moti?

  Which made Sutton realize: “Oh no! The animals have to go downstairs!” she said. “Luis is terrified of dogs!”

  “Even Moti?” Mr. Wong looked at the little pile of fluff intertwined with Freckles on the bench.

  Sutton thought about how Luis had reacted to the beautiful black Lab on the park trail. “I think it would be best.”

  “All right, dear.” Mr. Wong hurried over to the animals and hoisted Freckles over his shoulder, knowing Moti would follow. “I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared into the stairwell, and Sutton was alone on the patio. But she wasn’t alone, not really. So many people who loved her were bustling up and down the apartment building’s stairs, preparing to not-celebrate her birthday.

  The stairwell door swung open.

  “Hi, Sutton.” Luis stood there, holding a gift that looked like he’d wrapped it himself. “Happy not-birthday.”

  She beamed. If anyone would understand the concept of a not-birthday, it would be Luis.

  “Thank you.” Then she scowled. “But you weren’t supposed to bring a present.”

  Since it was Sutton’s not-birthday, she’d instructed her guests not to bring presents. All she wanted was their company—they wouldn’t be a replacement for her mom, but they were the people who filled her life with love and fun, who guided her through the maze, even when Mom couldn’t be there.

  By opening herself up to Luis, and then to Riley, Sutton had finally achieved her goal. She’d been so focused on making the bot turn right to get through the maze exactly how she’d planned it. It turned out there was a different way. Just because coding was based in logical cause and effect didn’t mean there was only ever one way to do something. In fact, there was almost always more than one way to arrive at a solution.

  She and Luis had gotten through the park and back to where they belonged by a very different route than they’d planned. It had worked out. And who knew? If they’d stayed on the main path with their parents the whole way, things might have turned out very different. But now here they were, with Luis holding out a present.

  “It’s not a birthday present,” Luis said, holding up the package, which was wrapped in Santa Claus wrapping paper. “See? No birthday paper.” He set it on a table with a few other unauthorized presents.

  Dad and Elizabeth came through the door next, and he held it open so Mrs. Banerjee could bustle through with a tray full of food. He took the tray from her, and then Mr. Wong appeared with two more trays, just as Aunt Lindsay arrived.

  It took the adults one more trip back downstairs for plates and utensils, and then it was all laid out in front of them.

  “This looks amazing,” Elizabeth said. Mrs. Banerjee beamed. “Would you tell us about these dishes?”

 

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