gave Finn this strange tingling feeling. He thought how strange it was that Amanda had just showed up the way she had, become his friend right as he began crossing over. How could he ask for a better friend? And yet…Was there something she wasn’t telling him?

He caught a look in her eye as if she’d said too much and now regretted it. She looked away, breaking their eye contact.

“Finn?” It was his mother calling from downstairs. It disturbed the moment. Finn didn’t ask Amanda anything—but he’d wanted to.

He checked the time. It was going on eight o’clock.

“I can drive Amanda home now,” she hollered upstairs.

“I wish I could go,” Amanda said. She didn’t mean home.

“Yeah, that would be cool.” He caught himself using that word again. She’d teased him about it earlier, but not now.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, standing. “Remember everything so you can tell me.”

He walked her downstairs to the door, where his mother was waiting with a smile. The three of them walked out to the driveway. Finn took the backseat. Amanda and his mom talked about boring girl stuff: favorite shopping malls and places to get your hair cut.

She lived on the far edge of their school district, in what had once been a small church. There was a stained-glass window in the center of the roof’s peak: a blue background with a white angel.

Lit from inside, it looked as if the angel were flying. He didn’t know why, but it seemed appropriate for Amanda.

Finn hurried his mother to drive faster on the way back home.

She looked at him funny when he told her he was going to be late to bed.

It was like something from Star Trek, or Power Rangers, Finn thought. He was standing at Central Plaza, a circle of grass and sidewalks in front of the castle. Over the next several minutes, one by one, the other four DHIs appeared. Charlene first, lying on the grass to his left, wearing her nightgown. She stretched her arms as if waking up. Philby was next—his red hair electric as a DHI. He came hurrying in from Tomorrowland. Willa showed up on the road to Finn’s right. She also wore pajamas—shorts and a matching T-shirt.

Maybeck came walking up Main Street alongside Wayne, who drove a Disney golf cart.

“Well, well,” Wayne said. “The gang’s all here.” He climbed out of the cart and made a point of saying hello to Willa, whom he’d only met once before.

A loud crashing noise came from somewhere in Tomorrowland. Cheering followed this.

“Something wild’s going on over there,” Finn said, pointing.

A concerned Wayne said quickly, “Follow me! And not a word until I say.”

They followed Wayne and his cart up the ramp that led into the enormous castle. Finn noted that the DHIs glowed and shimmered once inside the shadow of the castle arches.

“Memorize all this carefully!” Wayne called back to the DHIs.

He led them through a gift shop and into a storage room, then through a heavy medieval-style door that he unlocked with a large key, and down a nondescript hall, through another door, and into a vast, cavernous space.

Finn stopped. Staircases led in every direction, interconnecting in impossible ways, some upside down. A variety of oddly shaped doors of all sizes faced him at every level. Each corridor and staircase connected to the next in the most unlikely, impossible ways. All interlocked. It was a giant puzzle that somehow all fit together. And yet it made no sense: inverted stairs?

“We call this Escher’s Keep. Walt admired M. C. Escher’s work,” Wayne said, climbing a staircase.

“Who’s Escher?” Finn asked.

“Do your homework,” Wayne admonished. “The keep was built as part of an Alice in Wonderland attraction. But it never opened.”

“Why not?”

“Walt decided to keep it for himself.”

Finn reached the top of some steep stairs, out of breath. He continued down a darkened hall and looked up to see Wayne standing upside down on a landing a few yards ahead.

Wayne said, “Don’t be fooled. You’re fine. But a single misstep and you’ll end up in a slide that will dump you into the moat. So stay to the left, and only step on the blue tiles, never the white or the red. Pass it along to the others.”

Finn repeated the weird instructions in a whisper. A moment later he stood with Wayne. To the others, now arriving, both Wayne and Finn appeared to be standing upside down.

He heard Maybeck say, “Okay! This is way cool.”

Wayne said, “This is a good place to come if you’re ever in trouble or trying to hide. Without a guide to show the way, no one makes it up the first time. Memorize it carefully. The castle has several secret entrances. I’ll show you if we have time. Once in here, you’re safe.”

Itisn’t safe, Finn remembered Charlene saying. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go any farther.

Wayne continued, “The other place you should be safe is if you follow the tracks out of the Frontierland train station toward the Indian Encampment. There are some teepees out there that aren’t programmed for DHI projection.”

“Safe from what?” Finn asked.

“Ah!” Wayne said, ignoring Finn’s question. “Here come the others. Follow me! Memorize!”

he reminded. “The next two staircases are fakes.”

Finn was stunned by how incredibly real each of the many staircases appeared. The first staircase turned out to be nothing but paint on a wall. Wayne led him to the real staircase and together they climbed it.

Finn looked back, carefully committing the route to memory. He called ahead to Wayne. “If I’m half hologram, half human, as you said, how can I touch anything? Shouldn’t I only half touch it?”

“Have you studied Einstein, Finn?” Finn didn’t want to sound dumb, so he didn’t answer. “It’s time you did. There’s more space between atoms than there are atoms. And yet atoms hold together somehow and form what we think of as a solid. We can touch, smell, taste. It all comes down to what you believe. What you think you can do.”

The only thing Finn knew about Einstein had to do with bagels. He stuck to more practical matters. “How will we ever get back down?”

As he reached yet another landing, Finn realized Wayne was nowhere to be seen.

“Take the middle door,” Wayne’s voice instructed.

Finn faced half of a hexagon: three doors, all at angles. He walked through the middle door, which sprang shut behind him. He now stood in a pitch-black space. Being part hologram, Finn glowed, casting a bluish light into the absolute blackness. But the space seemed to swallow his light, to go on forever. He saw nothing.

Charlene came in next. Even when the door opened, Finn saw no walls, only blackness.

“I don’t exactly love this,” Charlene said, a pulsing blue light in the dark.

The way her voice sounded—so close and bright—told Finn that they were in a very small room.

“Look up,” he said.

“Are those stars for real?” Charlene asked.

“Is anything real here?”

The door opened. Philby, Willa, and Maybeck entered. As the door shut, the stars reappeared.

“Wow!” Philby said.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed.

“What’s this about?” Maybeck asked.

Finn jumped as Wayne said from behind him, “Move to the center, everyone.” He’d been standing there all along.

The kids crowded together into a group. Finn felt the old man’s hand grab his wrist and pull him toward what turned out to be a wall.

“Feel this?” Wayne asked.

“Yes.” It was a smooth, glassy button.

“And this?”

Another.

“Yes.”

“Push.”

Finn pushed. The floor vibrated and the stars grew closer.

It took a moment, but Willa understood before the others. “It’s an elevator!”

“An elevator without walls,” Finn said, for it wasn’t the floor that appeared to be moving, but the walls.