No. Starting over would only add more time to the game. Matt had to trust himself to have concentrated well enough not to miss the key—it’s not like he completely blanked out when he had been thinking about Becca and the others. Nodding to himself, he continued into a patch that was thickened with bright-red poppies. The blossoms themselves were too delicate to grab, but Matt made sure to run his hands down the stems to see if there was anything tied to them or settled into the dirt below them. When he was almost done with the section of bright red, he noticed that one of the poppies looked . . . different from the others.

Carefully, Matt poked his finger into one of the petals of the strange poppy, letting out a small sound of surprise when he realized it was made out of plastic, unlike its very real counterparts. “What the heck?” he whispered, right as he spotted a bright-red key taped to one of the petals. The key was the exact same color as the rest of the poppies, and it blended in so well, Matt knew he was lucky to have noticed it.

“I found the key!” he cried out, peeling it from where it was taped to the fake poppy petal. “It was in the poppies!”

“I always knew poppies were my fave,” Kylie remarked, still out of breath from running over from her own area. “Now we can open that lock and see where the gate leads us.”

“One step closer to Elephant!” Miguel said with a cheer. “Well done, Matt.”

With a smile, Matt unlocked the silver padlock on the gate, and the group was able to walk through into a narrow but well-maintained walkway that went around the side of the labyrinth, back toward the direction of the house. Before they knew it, they were passing the yard itself—but they weren’t in it, and could only see it from the gated walkway. His breath in his chest, Matt let his eyes move forward to see where the path would actually lead them.

There, at the end of the dirt walkway, was a side door leading directly into the house.

Becca

“Let’s go see if the front door is unlocked now that we’ve beaten the game in the basement,” Becca suggested as she led the group into the main house again. She hustled over to the front door, only to discover it was still locked. “Darn.”

“How are we supposed to go find a silkworm if we’re still stuck in here?” Frankie said, looking in frustration out one of the filthy windows. “There aren’t silkworms inside.”