“I found something,” he said, reaching his fingers into the space to try to grab the sides of the notebook and wedge it upward. When he got the top of it sticking up through the space enough, Becca was able to grab the notebook and pull it out the rest of the way. It was one of those black-and-white-marbled composition books, the kind they’d been required to bring every new school year since second grade. Notes, it said in shaky handwriting on the front. Matt’s jaw dropped at the sight of it.

“No way,” Danny said. “Do you think it belongs to the Game Master?”

Hardly able to contain himself, Matt took the notebook from Becca and opened it, and all the kids peered eagerly inside.

The pages were covered in what was unmistakably a kid’s handwriting. The scribbles were sloppy but impressively organized. Matt looked at the first page, which contained what looked like a mini profile of Becca. “Whoa,” he said under his breath.

Becca, the top of the page read, followed by a list of accompanying facts. Loves gymnastics. Loves her friends. Loves her nana’s zoetrope.

“Freaky,” Becca whispered, and Matt turned the page to see what would come next. Another mini profile, then another, then another. There was a page for everybody in the group.

The notebook covered Matt’s love of jokes and robotics, and Danny’s love of filmmaking and creating. It talked about Frankie’s passion for cooking, and Miguel’s knack with animals, and Kylie’s impressive skills with digital devices and puzzle solving. Each page had clumsily drawn but accurate cartoon versions of each of them to accompany their profiles, and another page showed a surprisingly accurate diagram of the treehouse in Becca’s house. The Clubhouse, the page was labeled.

“How does the Game Master know what my treehouse looks like?” Becca asked uneasily. “Does that mean they’ve seen the inside of it before?”

Matt imagined the Game Master sneaking into the clubhouse while they weren’t there, looking through all their stuff.

“And how do they know that we use Becca’s treehouse specifically as our clubhouse?” Kylie wondered. “That’s some serious spy work going on right there. Maybe we should set up a security camera or something.”

Matt turned the pages back until he could see his own profile again. He studied the drawing of Ralphie and the notes attached, hoping to find any sort of clue that might reveal what was done to him during the summer school game.

Solid design, the notes by Ralphie read. Motion controller. High capacity battery. Censor board. Wireless LAN AV transmitter.

For the first time, Matt wondered if it was possible that nothing had physically been done to Ralphie, but rather uploaded through the wireless transmitter. It would explain why he couldn’t find anything different whenever he went through the trouble of disassembling Ralphie to try to figure out what had happened to him.