“Then why didn’t he kidnap Ralphie instead of Elephant and Nacho?” Miguel asked. “Also, Vice Principal Pinter hasn’t really been acting suspicious since school started. He even came up to us that one day and asked if we were all right after everything, remember?”

“Exactly,” Matt said. “Maybe he was trying to get a peek into the state of the group.”

“My money is still on Mrs. Richards,” Kylie added. “She’s the one who’s technically in charge of all the supplies Mr. Verdi needed access to in order to help the Game Master execute their plan. Who else could have handed over the keys to the maintenance closet?”

“Keys can be stolen,” Becca reminded Kylie. “To be honest, I’ve started to doubt that it was any of our teachers. Mr. Verdi might know more than he was originally letting on, but we should be open to considering that the Game Master is a kid, just like us.”

“What kind of kid is capable of coming up with a plan so complex?” Matt asked with a laugh, but as soon as he asked the question he realized that the idea wasn’t so wild. After all, their group alone had shown itself to be capable of some pretty amazing feats. What if the Game Master was a kid?

“But why us?” Frankie wondered out loud, shuffling their feet and kicking little rocks across the street as they walked. “There has to be a reason why we were chosen out of everyone else. Before we were summer schooled, none of us really hung out, except for Becca and Matt.”

“And that wasn’t exactly by choice,” Becca said, making Matt laugh. She wasn’t wrong. “I’m just hoping that the first clue shows up sooner rather than later.”

Before long, the group reached the edge of the neighborhood, and the weight of Ralphie in the harness was causing Matt’s back to hurt. “I’m gonna let Ralphie walk around,” he announced to nobody in particular, removing the robot from the harness and setting it in a nearby patch of grass. “Maybe he’ll be able to help in some way.”

“That’s the spirit,” Danny said, kneeling behind Ralphie to get a good shot with his camera. “Go forth and search, my metal-tastic friend!”

Ralphie replied by toddling clumsily straight ahead, his arms waving around as he took a sudden sharp turn into a tree, which knocked him on his back, his arms and legs pumping like an overturned beetle.

“Whoops,” Matt said, rushing forward to help set the robot upright. When he did, Ralphie put his arms down and turned his head straight toward Matt. “Listen,” the robot said, the first time it’d spoken something that wasn’t complete nonsense in two months. “Listen carefully.”