Read Floors: for Free Online Page B

already!
    “I’m here. What’s up?”
    “Nothing much. I’m bored. What are you doing?”
    Leo thought about what he should say. Remi was still brand-new and he barely knew him. What if he told him a crazy duck was trying to kill him inside a giant pinball machine?
    He settled for something slightly less weird.
    “I can’t talk now — I’m dodging bowling balls. Don’t call unless Rickenbacker is coming up here. Got it?”
    “Do you have any idea how lame it is standing at this door? You’re dodging bowling balls and my brain cells are melting from boredom. You’ve gotta get me in the game!”
    “Not now, Remi! Stay focused. We’ll talk about this later.”
    Leo put his plan into high gear, setting Betty on the pinball floor and running up to the kitchen with the purple ball under one arm and the box under the other. He could barely hold on to both and nearly dropped the ball twice, which would have meant playing the whole thing out again and probably getting flipped around the room by an unreliable duck.
    He got to the kitchen and saw the spot he was looking for: a wall of lights in the shapes of bowling balls. One of them was purple, and Leo felt sure he knew what to do.
    Strike the purple ball in the kitchen by the hall.
Three times fast. Duck!
     
    He set the box down on the counter, careful not to let it touch a bumper. Then he held the heavy purple ball in front of the round light and shoved. When the ball hit the light it kept right on going, right through the wall, and dropped out of sight. Then the light was back.
    “Uh-oh,” said Leo. “I don’t think that was supposed to happen.”
    Betty quacked from the floor and Leo looked down. The ball was back, rolling out of a different hole by his feet.
    “I guess I should do it three times, right?” he asked Betty.
    Betty just stared at the refrigerator, which was shaped like a huge flipper standing on end.
    When Leo picked up the ball, it was half as heavy.
    “Different ball. Interesting.”
    He shoved it at the light again, and again it melted into the wall, dropped out of sight, and appeared at his feet. This time it was a lot lighter, like an oversize golf ball.
    “Is it just me, or is this getting more confusing by the minute?”
    The one-way conversation with Betty was surprisingly calming, and Leo began to think maybe he was more like Merganzer than he’d even thought. Merganzer loved talking but didn’t often want anyone talking back. Leo was like that, too. Speaking helped him think clearly, and ducks were awfully good listeners.
    “One more time and I bet this thing will float away.”
    Leo passed the ball through the hole one last time, and when he did, Betty honked louder than Leo had ever heard her honk before.
    He was reminded in that split second of one very important word in Merganzer’s note.
    Duck!
     
    In this particular case, his mind flashed a message:
Merganzer probably wasn’t talking about a real duck. He probably meant
you’re
supposed to duck.
    Not one to take chances, Leo ducked, and when he did, the original purple ball (the one that felt like a bowling ball) flew out of the hole in the wall and back into the pinball machine where it belonged. It careened through a flipping turnstile near the ceiling, an impossible shot from any other angle, and all the lights in the room went dark. The ball bounced loudly down intothe gutter, and when it was gone, the lights came up a dark purple. A deep hum filled the room as a hole slid open in the ceiling and a white light shone down on the dark surface of the floor.
    A ladder descended.
    Leo had popped back up when the ball flew past his head and had watched the pinball machine change. Now he was back on the floor, crouching down as another purple ball rolled out and bumped lazily against his foot. Leo took a moment to thank Betty for saving his life, then picked up the fourth ball. It felt like a ping-pong ball. Leo dropped it and it bounced right back up with a hollow