Read Floors: for Free Online Page A

fact, the purple ball would need to be played as well, because the balls were stacked under a sheet of thick Plexiglas. They were only dangerous after they were shot into play. After that, a person could really get hurt in the Pinball Machine, which was definitely why Ms. Sparks was sohappy Captain Rickenbacker had stayed in the room so long. No one else would rent it.
    “Betty,” said Leo, “we’ll need to play a couple of balls. Stay in here with me, okay?”
    Betty didn’t mind being picked up — in fact, she loved it. When Leo put one hand on each side and lifted her up so she could stand near the controls, she sighed happily.
    Leo pulled back on the giant spring-loaded ball whacker and let go, sending the blue ball up the silver rails and into play. It bounced off spring-loaded couches and chairs, spun through a whirligig, and headed for one of the two giant flippers. The room was alive with bells and zingers, lights blinking every where. Betty was mesmerized, concentrating on every move the ball made. Leo had planned to simply let the ball bounce off the flipper and land in the gutter, but he couldn’t help himself. He simply had to slap the flipper buttons with the palms of his hands (the buttons were big, like dinner plates) and send the blue ball sailing back up toward the kitchen, where it knocked down several letters that spelled out
MERGANZER
. The back wall spun the score on white tiles with black numbers as the ball came flying back toward the control booth. It slammed into a bumper and took flight, crashing into thick Plexiglas infront of Leo’s face. Leo laughed nervously, thinking to himself,
If not for the Plexiglas, that ball would have knocked my block off.
    Betty honked nervously, flapping her wings in the small space.
    “Just stay put and you’ll be fine.”
    He let the blue ball drop into the tire-size hole, then shot the purple ball into play. This was where it would get dangerous, because he needed that ball. He’d have to go out and get it.
    Okay, Leo, you can do this. Just take it slow.
    “You wait here,” he told Betty, giving her a stern look that she returned with equal vigor. Betty didn’t like to be bossed.
    The ball was bouncing wildly back and forth between two chairs as Leo jumped out from behind the safety of the control room. He was standing in the middle of a live pinball machine, wondering what it would feel like to catch a bowling ball going fifty miles per hour. The ball came free from the back-and-forth of the bumpers and down the floor at lightning speed. Leo dove out of the way, sliding into a bumper of his own and feeling it fling him back like a rag doll. As he got his bearings, Leo saw that the ball had bounced back up in an arc. He turned and jumped, catching the ball in the gut as it knocked him to the slippery floor. The weight of theball pulled Leo down toward a round hole that would try to swallow him up. But Leo was a fast thinker, even inside a giant pinball machine. He held the ball in his arms, spread his legs, and caught hold of one flipper with each foot. If Betty were to walk onto one of the flipper buttons in the control booth, he might not live to tell about it, and he watched the duck carefully.
    Betty quacked. She stared at Leo, then at the big white buttons.
    “Betty, no. Please, don’t —”
    She held one webbed foot over the right flipper button, paused, then slammed it down.
    Leo leaned over to the left flipper just in time, but Betty was laughing now, waddling back and forth between the flippers as if it were the most fun she’d ever had in her life.
    It took four or five jumps back and forth before Leo dove past the gutter and landed against the door with a thud.
    “That wasn’t nice,” he chided the duck, standing up with the bowling ball in his arms.
    His secret two-way radio squawked to life.
    “Remi here. Leo, you there?”
    Remi was whispering. Not a good sign. Leo pulled out the tiny watch on the string — twenty minutes gone