Surprised, Matt turned to see if that was true, and it was. No matter which direction he looked, he couldn’t see any sign of the house or the big tree in the front—the weeds were too high.

“Let’s try the left turn first,” Kylie said, clearly nervous as she looked right one last time. “If we hit a dead end, we’ll make our way back here and try the other side. The trick to this is going to be to keep our heads on straight. Try to remember where we have or haven’t gone. It’ll be hard because everything is going to look the same in these weeds.”

“Okay,” Matt said, suddenly wishing that he’d been in the group that had gone inside the house. His group had gotten to stay outside, sure, but the darkness of the forest combined with the tall weeds made him feel like the yard was swallowing them whole.

Kylie led them down the left path, which eventually made another few turns before splitting off into yet another choice of direction. “We went left the first time,” she said, looking around. “So maybe this time we could go right.”

“Left, then right,” Matt repeated, trying to memorize the order in his head. “So if we were going to turn around, we’d want to go right, then left?”

“It’d still be left, then right,” Kylie said as they made their way even deeper into the maze. “Because even though we’d want to take opposite turns, we’d have to make them backward.”

Already Matt’s brain hurt trying to keep track of exactly where they were. By the look on Miguel’s face, his did too. Thank goodness they had Kylie with them.

After a few more turns, Kylie stopped and looked around. “Dang it,” she said, looking between another set of turns. “I have to be honest right now—I have no idea where we are. Like, are we going in circles? Or does the maze really go this deep?”

“It has to be circles,” Matt said, the sight of a nervous Kylie causing a hard pit of dread to form in his stomach. “It feels like we’ve been walking for a long time.”

“I don’t think we’re going in circles,” Miguel said. “The weeds have gotten a little taller, if anything. They weren’t this tall before, were they?”

“I don’t know,” Kylie said, her breath quickening, and Matt could see that she was starting to panic a little bit. “It’s like no matter where I look, I feel lost.”

Right when it looked like she was about to lose it, something caught Matt’s eye on the path ahead. Something bright green on the ground, standing out among the many shades of brown of the weeds.