The scarecrows fell to dust; the ghosts vanished.
_
The last drops of water were sprinkled on the last people. Ollie heard Mr. Easton sputtering, “What onearth?” as he heard Coco’s soothing and creative explanation.
She looked down at her watch, swung the compass around until the needle pointed toO. “Let’s go home,” she said. “No one get lost, okay?”
It took them until dawn to get out of the corn maze, which twisted in on itself, again and again, like the minotaur’s labyrinth. Theywouldhave been lost without Ollie’s watch.
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Easton over and over. “I don’t understand.” But he walked beside Ollie for a while and then went back with Brian to make sure no one was lost in the darkness and twisting stalks. The kids didn’t talk much. They just walked, hanging on to each other, dull with shock.
For most of the way, Seth’s hound went with them, breathing deep breaths like the rushing of the sea in the darkness.
Just at sunrise, they saw a gap where the corn ended.
24
THE SIXTH GRADEof Ben Withers Middle School came out of the corn maze together, and Brian, Ollie, and Coco were holding hands as they did. They were even laughing; who cared if they were dirty? They were alive. The sky was a thin living blue. The air smelled like ordinary fall: crisp leaves and smoke. There were no scarecrows. The mud and cold and fear of the past days was like a bad dream.
At the edge of the cornfield, the hound stopped. Ollie turned to look at him. “Call me by my name,” he whispered into her ear, “if you need.” And then he bounded joyfully back into the shadows between the corn, the shadows that, Ollie suspected, always clung to the edge of the world.
Then the kids stepped out of the corn maze and stopped.
“We’re back where we started,” said Brian.
They were. They had popped out of the cornfieldright next to the bus. The bus looked just as it had on the day they rode to Misty Valley Farm, except now it stood abandoned in the middle of the road.
A very serious crowd stood around the bus. A tow truck, three police cars. Regular cars were lined up on both sides of the road, with crowds of people dressed to tramp through the woods. A search party. Parents. All their parents. Some of them had obviously been crying. Ms. Webster was there, weeping hysterically. Her voice came to Ollie’s ears as she stepped out of the corn. “The scarecrows,” she was saying. “The scarecrows—and he smiled at me. I couldn’t say no, d’ye hear me? I couldn’t say no!”
I said no,said Ollie.And I bet I wanted my mom more than you wanted your old farm, even if you were going to jail.
Heads turned, as thirty kids broke at once from a gap in the corn. Some people screamed with happiness and shock. But Ollie only had eyes for one of them. “Dad!” Ollie hollered. “Dad!”
Her father whipped around. “Ollie?Ollie!” There was no color in his face, not even a bit, and there were marks like blue thumbprints under his eyes.
Her father sent Officer Perkins sprawling when he sprinted toward her. Parents on all sides were running toward their kids, shouting questions, exclaiming, crying. Ollie found that she was running too, half blinded by tears. All around her, the sixth grade surged forward.
“Mom!” cried Coco, and out of the corner of her eye Ollie saw Coco swept into a hug by a tall woman with thick ash-colored hair.
Then Ollie and her dad collided, and he managed to stop just in time so he didn’t run her over. He caught her to him tightly, and Ollie could feel him shake. “Ollie,” he whispered. “Ollie, sweetheart, I was so worried. What happened?”
“I love you, Dad,” Ollie said. “I love you.”
She buried her face in his familiar flannel shoulder. But right before she did, her watch chimed softly. Ollie glanced down.
LOVE, it said.
“Love you too, Mom,” Ollie whispered.
A month later...
MS. WEBSTER DIDN’Tgo to jail. She was supposed to. She went to court and everything. But the night before her sentencing, she disappeared. Ollie, when she heard, wondered if Ms. Webster had made a new bargain with the smiling man, and if so, what it was.
—
After they left the corn, no one seemed to be able to properly remember what had happened during that night and day. No one except Coco, Brian, and Ollie. There were stories about government cover-ups, about experimental drugs, about aliens.
Ollie and Brian and Coco looked at each other and they shrugged. Was it any less weird than the truth?
