“And what happens when we get to the tree?” Matt challenged. “We all just climb on to the branches and hope that nobody falls down and breaks their neck?”

“You won’t fall,” Becca assured him. “I won’t let you. You can climb on to the branches when there’s someone both ahead of and behind you, so there’ll always be somebody to hold on to, no matter which way you look. Plus, check out the roof itself—it totally slopes downward on the way to the tree. By the time we get to that back corner, we won’t be three stories up anymore. If anything, it’ll be more like one and a half.”

Matt looked at the window, thinking it over.

“Come on, Matt,” Miguel urged. “We’ve beaten all the games. We’ve pretty much defeated the Game Master, this is just the last step. Elephant has been gone for so long! Climbing down that tree will end something that was started months ago.”

Matt looked hopefully to Becca, who offered an encouraging smile. “What do you say?” she asked him. “Do you trust us to help you get out of here in one piece?”

Matt sighed, looking out the window. “I guess I don’t really have a choice,” he said at last. “Because there is absolutely no way that I’m going to stay in this house a minute longer.”

“Yes!” Becca clapped her hands together, proud of her best friend. They were really going to escape the terrible old house! “I’ll go first,” she offered. “Then everyone else can come and form a wall so that when it’s your turn, you don’t have to see off the edge of the roof, just like Kylie said.”

“Okay,” Matt said, still looking like he wanted to faint. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”

Desperate for escape, Becca reached her hands out the open window, holding on to the frame as she pulled herself up and over it. Suddenly she was standing outside on the roof. Turning away from the house, she marveled at the view from up here—she’d never thought she’d be so happy to be in this yard again, or, at least, in view of it. She thought of how hard she’d tried to avoid having the group come here at all and could almost laugh at herself. Look how far they’d come in just one day.

“Incoming,” Kylie’s voice piped up from behind her, and before she knew it, everyone was standing next to her on the roof.

Except for Matt.

“We’re ready for you,” Becca said gently from the lineup. “Come on out!”