The ball makes it in.

“I got two in! While that’s not great, it is still better than nothing,” I exclaim to my brother. I am thoroughly impressed with myself for doing that. I thought I would ultimately do terribly, but two out of ten is better than zero out of ten.

The woman at the booth presses something on a small tablet I just now noticed, and then my card pops out slightly from the machine. I take my card back and move out of the way for Devin.

“Let me show you how it’s done,” he inserts his card, and the woman hands over the ten balls. The first ball goes right into one of the jars floating in the middle, but his second throw bounces off the top of the jar. He continues to throw them, and in the end, he makes eight out of the ten jars, and I make a very annoyed face. At least we are now tied with one win for me and one win for Devin.

He turns around with a smug smile, and I do my best to ignore him and watch our Dad. He misses the first two but makes the third. On his fourth shot, he throws the ball right into the jar, but it bounces out. We laugh about it for a moment before he throws the rest of the balls. In the end, he makes three into the jars, but I know he could have done better.

Since that game is just for fun and was individually played, there is no winner. Therefore, there is no prize, and we move on to the next game.

The next game is more of a table stand rather than the usual bigger stands and booths that surround the carnival, and it requires two people to play. This is a game I am very familiar with since Devin, and I used to play it a lot as kids. The game is arm wrestling, and my brother immediately looks over to my Dad to challenge him in the game.

They both insert their cards and when the woman at the stand says go, they both begin their struggle to push the other one’s arm down. Both of them are strong, and there is a lot of back-and-forth struggling, so it is hard to tell who is doing better.

I see the determination in Devin's face. His brows come together in concentration, and his face starts to get a little red the longer the competition goes on. Dad, on the other hand, looks like he is not even breaking a sweet. Ultimately, Devin wins, and he gets excited once again. The lady hands him a piece of chocolate, and we move on.

We play two other games before coming to the next one, which takes place in a building that I know was not there before the carnival was put up. I wonder how much time and money they spent making the carnival for us. I also wonder if we will get more things like this. Maybe the Governors will open this carnival once a month or something, or perhaps it doesn’t have to be for just one night.

The sign out front of the building says Mirror Maze in sharp letters. We get in line and wait. Devin is still teasing me about the throwing game and how he could have easily beaten me in arm wrestling if I had played, and I tease him about his lack of directional skills. The game has the word maze in the name, and I know that it means a sense of direction will be needed.

“Remember the first time you came home from school without Mom? You were so sure that you didn’t have to take a left turn out of the school that you ended up going straight to the Jefferson’s house five blocks away,” I say, and we all laugh.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I saw my friend Evan, and I started walking without thinking. I made it home eventually.”

“Yeah, eventually being the keyword,” I say. We all laugh again, and the line moves up a little more.

I think about how Mom made me walk Devin home every day from school for a whole month after that. To make things interesting, Devin and I wouldn’t just walk home, that would be too boring. Instead, we would race each other to the big tree at the end of our driveway. I was always the fastest, but I made sure to run slower so that Devin wouldn’t lose me and get lost again.

Every few minutes, the line would move up when they let one person in, and eventually, that person would come out of another door to the left of the entrance. Each person seems to spend a different amount of time in there, but they always come out after about four to eight minutes.

When it comes to our turn, we follow the same system as before and let Devin, the reigning champion, go first since he won the last game.

Devin enters his card into the slot by the door and goes in. I immediately turn to face my Dad and address what he’s been doing, “You can stop now, you know.”

“Stop what?” He says while still looking at the door.

“I know you have been letting us win. I saw you in the shark game. You were winning but pulled away. Then there was the throwing game, where I know you could have done better, but you did badly to make me feel better. I also know you could have kicked Devin’s ass in arm wrestling.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says innocently, but I know better. He wants us to believe that we are good at things in order to give us the confidence to continue trying more and believe in ourselves.

The only time he doesn’t do this is when Devin and I are doing something stupid that could potentially get us hurt. My Mom once said that he just wants us to challenge ourselves so that we will be prepared for anything in the future.

After a few minutes, the woman in uniform opens the door and instructs me to insert my card then come inside. I give one last glance at my Dad to make sure he knows that I know what he’s doing, and then I do as the woman told me to. I insert my card into the machine and then walk through the glass door that has been tinted so that no one on the outside can see what is on the inside.

The room is silent with dark walls, but there is an open doorway that is lit up with bright lights around the rim of it. I can see a small amount of the way inside the door, and from what I can tell, there are full-length mirrors inside.

“You are to find your way out of this maze of mirrors. Please try not to touch or break any of the mirrors or decoys.” Decoys? “Once you finish, remember to take your card back at the exit. You may now enter.”

Her serious voice and disinterested expression lead me to believe that she will not answer any questions I may have about what she means by decoys.

I enter through the illuminated doorway and immediately notice my reflection staring back at me, so I know a mirror is in front of me. I look to my left and right. I can see my reflection standing further away to the left, so that is the direction I go.

While I am walking, I make sure to stay within the walls of my reflection and head toward the direction where I am not seen. This seems simple, so I start walking a little faster. I believe that I am walking in the right direction because I see my reflection farther away, but all of a sudden, I go to take another step, and I am blocked by an invisible wall. The invisible wall is clear glass.

I put my hand to the glass and immediately assume this is what the woman meant by decoy. I then move to the side where my hand touches the mirror and try to find where I am supposed to go. I put my hand out, and when it feels nothing, I continue that way.

I walk into a few more decoy paths and find myself sometimes stuck in corners and having to go back the other way. The whole thing seems really confusing.

I stop for a second to take a closer look at the mirrors and decoy glass and see that there is a difference between the two. On the bottom, there is about an inch of a white outline around both the mirror and glass. On the mirror, I can see the small outline reflection of the light, whereas on the decoys, the outline does not reflect. Looking at this helps me see which way is a dead end and which way will lead me out of here.

I continue to look at the outline of the maze for a while. This method makes me move through the maze quickly, and I don’t walk into any more decoys. I am doing pretty well with this tactic until I turn a corner and nearly have a heart attack.

Instead of seeing myself standing in front of me, there is somebody else, and it’s not my brother or anyone I know. A boy no older than me is just standing there. He is wearing a gray shirt with a hole in the shoulder and it has a handful of stains and dirt on it.

I immediately know he is not from Treegrass. Not only have I never seen him before in my life, but everyone in our town always wears nice, clean, and washed clothes. Therefore, nobody should look like him.

The boy has a small cut on his cheek and is thin, a lot thinner than he should be. I look away from him and around at my surroundings. There is no one else here. I regain my composure and look at him again.

That is when he says something that makes my blood run cold.

“Run.”

Chapter 3

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