CHAPTER TWELVE: THE YELLOW WRISTBANDS
Benji and his younger brother Owen stood behind a delivery trailer studying their yellow wristbands.
A crew member had told Benji that the bands made them official preview participants.
He had promised they would be the first children to solve the secret room.
The man with the red cap had gone to collect another group, leaving them beside a panel painted with a silver moon.
Benji noticed that the panel was open a few inches.
He looked through the gap and saw a corridor full of tiny lights.
“We shouldn’t go in without him,” Owen said.
“We’re supposed to wait near the entrance,” Benji replied.
But the ribbon-cutting music had begun, and the children thought the preview was starting without them.
Benji stepped through the opening and called back to his brother.
“I’ll look for the man.”
Owen followed because he did not want to be alone behind the trailer.
Inside, the maze sounded like an empty theater.
Their shoes tapped against plywood, and the silver lights shimmered on the walls.
Benji followed the lantern symbols until he reached a curved platform surrounded by painted doors.
One doorway showed a sign reading THE SECRET PATH.
“This must be where we go,” he told Owen.
The boys walked down the narrow ramp into a square room filled with mirrors.
A silver star hung above a cardboard box in the middle.
Inside the box were wooden puzzle pieces shaped like moons and keys.
Benji picked up a key and turned it over.
He was looking for the clue when the floor vibrated faintly beneath his shoes.
A motor rumbled somewhere beyond the wall.
Owen grabbed his sleeve.
“What was that?”
“Probably part of the show.”
The doorway shifted sideways.
A painted panel slid across it and stopped.
Benji hurried back up the ramp.
The opening had disappeared.
He pushed the wall, but it did not move.
“Hello?” he shouted.
His voice sounded small inside the mirrored room.
Owen began to cry.
Benji tried the wooden key against the painted panels even though he knew it would not help.
He remembered the yellow wristband and wondered whether it might open something.
It did not.
Then he heard Daniel’s voice through the wall.
For the first time since entering the maze, Benji stopped moving and listened.
“My name is Daniel, and we’re opening the panel,” the voice called.
Benji pressed his palm flat against the wood.
“We’re here!”
Owen moved close enough to lean against his brother.
Benji kept talking because it seemed easier than hearing his brother cry.
“There are two of us,” he called.
“We’re staying by the wall.”
Someone answered that they were doing well.
Then a familiar voice called from farther away.
“Benji, it’s Carol.”
Benji recognized the woman who had taught him to mix orange paint for paper lanterns.
He told Owen she was coming.
Owen wiped his cheeks with his sleeve.
A drill buzzed on the other side of the panel.
The room brightened as a narrow crack opened beside the wall.
Benji saw Daniel’s face through the gap.
“You’re almost out,” Daniel said.
Benji reached for Owen’s hand.
When the panel opened, he held it tightly and led his brother toward the light.
