Chapter 1 1
THE HEDGE WAS AS TALL as the three of us standing on each other’s heads. It was also thick and prickly, with the kind of needles that would definitely poke at least one eye if we tried to push our way through the branches. The hedge was growing around a rusty iron fence topped with the kind of spikes that would definitely rip our pants and our underpants if we tried to climb over it. And that was if we were lucky.

We didn’t want to picture what would happen if we weren’t lucky trying to climb over those spikes.

There didn’t seem to be any way past the hedge. Which was frustrating and also confusing. Because all three of us had just seen the strange kid we’d been following pass straight through it, backward, with no trouble. This made the strange kid seem even stranger. And it made us even more curious about what was behind that hedge.

Pen and Jasper, who don’t agree on much, both think we should keep moving ahead with the action now so the story will be exciting. But I feel like we need some background about ourselves first so the story will make better sense. And since I’m the one typing, even though all three of us are narrating, I get to decide.

Pen and Jasper read this and told me I don’t get to decide and to take the background part out. I said I would, but I didn’t. I’m counting on them not rereading and noticing I left it in.

So here’s a minimal amount of information about us, some of which probably won’t come as a surprise.

There were—and are—three of us: Pen, whose full name is Pen Q. (he swears we’ll never know what it stands for) Blaisewell; Jasper, whose full name is Jasper Yi; and me, Aldo Pfefferkuchen (the P is silent). We’ve lived in the town of Frog Lake all our lives, and we (obviously) go to Frog Lake Middle School.

Pen and Jasper have known each other since they were in pre-K together. Pen says Jasper attacked him with a plastic shovel on the first day. Jasper says Pen is mistaken. But Jasper says that a lot. My guess is that Jasper was provoked, which is actually pretty easy to do, so I can see both sides of that argument.

Pen and I met at the Frog Lake Kids’ Drama Fest the summer after second grade. My parents were hoping it would make me more outgoing, and Pen’s were probably hoping it would make him less outgoing. Pen was a huge hit as the talking candelabra in our musical. I was fourth fork from the left.

When Pen introduced me to Jasper, Jasper thought I was annoying at first. And then for a while after that. But I wore him down eventually.

At this point, Pen, Jasper, and I have been friends long enough to know exactly how to get on each other’s nerves—and also exactly when to get quickly back off them. This is the basis of our lasting friendship.

And that’s all you need to know about us for now.