We had been searching high and low for Loopy every day after school for a month. Scratchy and Carlos had driven miles in the park, even over to the Upper East Side. Zoe and I had walked all the Upper West Side neighborhoods between Central Park and Riverside Park. We had even downloaded the files from the memory cards we took out of our head cams the day Loopy disappeared. All we found were the same scenes we both saw that day. Wiley throwing a rock, Wiley punching some kids, and then . . . nothing.

Zoe pulled her thick, pink, cable-knit sweater up to cover her neck from the wind. “But check this out. He’s gaining followers.” She handed me her phone.

“How did he get 435 followers?”

“Who knows? You have a weird dog. People follow weird.” She grinned. “But at least we know he’s still out there, right?”

Right then, Carlos and Scratchy came rolling by. “Hey, we thought we’d come down your street and see if you wanted a ride to school. Wanna climb on back?” Scratchy pointed his thumb over his shoulder.

“Sure!” I ran down the steps of our brownstone and got ready to ride with Scratchy.

“Hey! Wait ONE minute!” Zoe put her hand out. “There’s a new post! But . . . this can’t be!”

“What can’t be?” I motioned for Carlos and Scratchy to wait a minute and I ran back up the steps to look at Zoe’s phone. @LoopDogNYC had posted two new pictures! It was his furry legs all right, and they were running up some stairs. I swiped to the next picture. It was a sign hanging on a wall, with a drawing of the Statue of Liberty. Next to the drawing it said “128 steps to the top of the Pedestal!”

“Loopy’s on Liberty Island!” I yelled down to my friends.

“WHAT? That’s RAD! Let’s go get him!”

“You bet!” I yelled.

“Arcade, you can’t! You have school.”

“But Zoe, he’s been gone for a month!”

“I know, but you just can’t skip schoo—”

Just then the fiery metal tester hanging around my neck sizzled into action.

*  *  *

Orange glitter swirled down from the trees that had begun changing into their fall colors, and it fell on our shoulders. Carlos brushed some off with his hand. “What is this stuff? I’ve lived in New York City my whole life. We’ve never had orange snow before.”

Scratchy’s eyes popped out of his head. “Oh, man! Arcade! Are we going traveling? Anything but a plane, buddy! Anything but a plane!” He laughed.

I thought of the time Scratchy traveled with me through the elevator doors and he ended up having to fly a plane over the Statue of Liberty.

“Traveling?” Carlos asked. “Where are we going? I’ll get my handicap access map.”