watched a show about the pyramids with Gran. Can I go in?” Eden asked.
“No!” Cedar said. “It’s not safe! It’s not…normal. We have to get your bedroom back. Maybe if I go through, I can figure out a way to fix this from the inside.” She gave Eden a stern look. “You stay here; I’m going to get a rope or something to hang on to, okay?” Eden nodded. Cedar ran down the hall and started rummaging through her closet. After a minute she came back, armed with a bike lock, two of Eden’s toy dog leashes, and a skipping rope.
Eden was nowhere to be seen.
“Eden?” Cedar dropped her makeshift ropes, her heart pounding. “Eden!” she screamed. Through the shimmering veil she could see Eden standing ankle-deep in the sand, looking around with wonder. “Eden! Get back here right now!” Cedar yelled. Eden was smiling and waving at her, but she didn’t seem to hear her. Cedar swore and stepped through the doorway after her daughter.
CHAPTER TWO
It was incredible. The air was only slightly warmer than it had been in the apartment, but the way it smelled, the way it felt on her skin and tasted in her mouth, these were all different. The sand was cool beneath her feet. She was standing about half a mile from the base of one of the pyramids. The other loomed even farther in the distance, and a massive pile of rubble lay a few hundred yards to her left. There was a fringe of trees, or maybe buildings, in the distance, silhouetted by yellow streetlights. Cedar had never been to Egypt, but she had seen her share of National Geographic magazines, and this looked like the real thing. Other than the two of them, there was no one nearby. It was so quiet Cedar felt as if they had walked in on something private, some secret vigil the pyramids were having with the night sky.
“What are you doing?” she said in a hushed voice to Eden, who had picked up Baby Bunny and was brushing the sand off her. “I told you to stay put! We have no idea what’s going on!”
Eden looked slightly abashed. “I just wanted to get Baby Bunny. It seemed okay when I stepped in the first time, so I figured it would be safe.”
“You thought this would be safe?” Cedar waved her hands around them, feeling slightly hysterical. She breathed out slowly. “It’s okay,” she told Eden, who was looking at her with worried eyes. “I’m just a little freaked out.” She took her daughter’s hand, holding it more tightly than necessary, then turned and looked behind them.
The bedroom door stood open in the sand. The same shimmering, luminescent air danced in the doorframe. Cedar walked around to the other side of the door. Behind it was more sand. It was as if someone had stood a freestanding door, complete with a frame, in the middle of the desert. Cedar went back around to the front side. She was tempted to close the door from this side to see what would happen, but stopped herself. What if it disappeared? What if they became trapped in Egypt or wherever this place was? She panicked slightly at that thought. “We’re going to go back now,” she told Eden.
“Nooo!” Eden moaned. “I want to stay here!”
Cedar stepped through the doorway and into the hallway, pulling Eden with her. The familiar air of the apartment hit her in the face, and she shivered.
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” Eden whispered, turning around and staring back through the door of what used to be her bedroom at their footprints in the sand.
Cedar blinked a few times, and then said, “I have no idea what to do.” She closed and opened the door again, but Eden’s bedroom did not reappear. The pyramids were still there.
“Let me try!” Eden said, and before Cedar could stop her, she reached through the shimmering air and pulled the door closed. When she opened it again, the pyramids were gone, and they were greeted with the familiar sight of pink walls and a fluffy speckled carpet.
Cedar stared at her daughter. Something inside her shifted again.
Eden scowled at the interior of her room as she entered it. She sat down on the edge of her frilly bed, then got up and crossed the room back out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. “What are you doing?” asked Cedar, who was still