Emma stepped forward and tried the knob. It didn’t budge.
Tyler clapped his hands together. “Welp. Guess we should leave it alone, then.”
Opal joined Emma and they tried together. The knob finally turned with a screech and the girls forced the door inward with their shoulders. Scents of decay rushed out to greet them.
Opal took a tentative step into the dusty foyer. Ahead was a cobwebbed archway covered by a green velvet curtain. She heard the door close behind her.
“Oh, wow,” Emma whispered. “Way cool. Like our ownNight at the Museum.”
“People got hurt in those movies,” Tyler mumbled darkly, but even he seemed awed.
Opal crossed to the heavy curtain and pushed it aside. Her breath caught.
An enormous room opened up before her, lit by grimy glass skylights. Broken sunshine slanted through them,illuminating a haphazard assortment of strange objects. Paintings. Wooden chests loaded with crusty books. Knickknacks of every shape and size. Old photographs hung in crooked frames along the walls, some of them broken. A jumble of antique weapons filled an open coffin beside the door.
“Whoa.” Emma bit down on her thumbnail. An animal’s skeleton dangled from the ceiling, knotty bones wound and spiraling in a loop, ending with an elongated skull. Opal lifted the yellowing placard affixed to its tail, but the ink had faded away.
“This isn’t a museum,” Tyler muttered, sounding queasy. “We’re in a psychopath’s attic.”
“It’s definitely some kind of collection.” Nico brushed a fraying red rope strung between two tarnished poles.
They wandered down a center aisle dividing the overstuffed room. Emma pointed to a crate withMummybranded on its side. Inside was something shriveled and brown, curled up as if avoiding their eyes.
“Looks like jerky,” Nico said, peering closer.
“Ugh.” Opal pinched her lips together. Did he have to be so disgusting?
“We could eat it to survive,” Emma said cheerfully. When Opal stared at her, she shrugged. “What? In this movie I saw,Natural Selection, they totally did that.”
“Never heard of it,” Opal said.
“Most people haven’t. But it’s really good. Well, notgoodso much as gross.”
“Whoa, checkthisout.” Tyler was staring into an iron-banded chest filled with twinkling gemstones. “Any way these puppies are real?”
Nico grinned wickedly. “If so, we’re rich!”
“You want to rob the place?” Opal couldn’t believe it. They’d found a storehouse full of amazing, awesome things, and he was talking aboutstealingthem?
“We don’t all live on Overlook Row,” Nico muttered.
Opal bit her lip. She used to live a block from Nico, but when his dad made a federal case about those owls, people lost their jobs. That allowed her parents to snag the big yellow house they’d wanted for years. Her mother had foreclosed on the property herself as part of her work at the bank.
In fact, Opal’s moving was kind ofNico’sfault, if you thought about it. At the very least, it was his dad’s.
Opal crossed the showroom floor in search of another door. Cool or not, the place was also starting to give her the creeps, like a wax museum she’d been to once in San Francisco. It felt like everything was watching her.
A pedestal near the back of the chamber caught her attention. Atop it sat a large jar with something green floating inside. Curious, Opal walked over to investigate.
“What’s that?” Emma asked, following along. “One of those old lava lamps?”
“I don’t know.” Emma’s description was a good one. Inside the bulky jar was …something. A shifting, lime-colored blob.On impulse, Opal pressed a finger to the glass, like she used to do at the aquarium when she was little.
“What the heck?” Nico asked, joining them. Emma grabbed his arm, her face flushing with excitement. “Nico, this is the coolest place on Earth, and no one else knows about it. I claim this houseboat forus.Me, you, and Ty—we have a clubhouse now!” She bounced on the balls of her feet, eyes alight.
Opal’s stomach knotted.Me too, right?
The thought surprised her. Was that what she wanted? A weird hideout five miles from town, shared with three kids she never hung out with, or even talked to much?
