Page 67 of Possibly Texas

Auggie bounced around excitedly.

“Have you tested it?” I asked.

“Dozens of times.”

“Have you learned the right path and beat the timer yet?”

He sighed. “Not yet.”

“Then I’m screwed,” I said with a laugh. “This is your creation.”

He shrugged. “Who knows? You not knowing anything about it might be to your advantage.”

“True,” I said. “So, whoever gets to the middle first pulls the lever and waits for the other?”

“Hm.” He was frowning. “I think whoever gets there first should wait. It’s more satisfying, getting to see the stars, if we both get there in under ten minutes.”

I swallowed. “Yeah. That seems fair.”

“Sweet!” Auggie jammed a fist in the air triumphantly.

“You’ll wait for me?” I asked. “I mean, you’ll probably get through the ducts first. If I don’t get there in time, you won’t pull the lever?”

“Nope.”

“That kind of ruins it for you, though.”

“Well,” his right shoulder rose and fell lazily, “the victory won’t be as sweet if I don’t have my friend to share it with. Stars burn brighter when more eyes are on them.”

I smiled.

“And you’ll wait for me?” he asked. “If you get there first?”

“Of course.”

Again, he was beaming at me.

“So,” he shook his head, “there are two entrances to the duct work. One, uh, over there by the worktable, and one over there.”

Auggie pointed across the considerable length of the barn to where a jumble of ductwork led. I’d never really paid much attention to the barn. My focus was usually on small parts of Auggie’s installation art. Or on Auggie himself. But the barn was massive. When I’d first considered Auggie’s observatory maze, I thought it’d be a piece of cake. Taking in the massive interior of the barn around me, and all of the ductwork, knowing that there were twists and turns and dead ends—and that I’d have to crawl through it—I wasn’t so confident.

The cavernous wooden room, though I wasn’t great with measurements by sight, was seventy-five to one-hundred feet wide and long. The ceiling seemed to reach to the heavens, but was probably only twenty or twenty-five feet above us. Any hayloft that had once been in place had obviously been removed so Auggie had all the space to work on his installation art. The silo was massive, so a loft would have gotten in the way.

I couldn’t even estimate how much ductwork roped around the room—or where Auggie could have gotten all of it—but it trailed everywhere that wasn’t directly around his worktable. Just from eyeballing it, I knew that if Auggie and I met in the same section, we would barely be able to squeeze past each other. Auggie was a smaller guy, and I was average. If we could run through tunnels to our destination, ten minutes would probably have been plenty of time to figure out the maze. On our hands and knees, it had to be impossible.

My heart thumped a little harder, thinking about crawling into the narrow space and finding my way in the dark. Also, having been laid out in a barn for who knew how long, there could potentially be rats or bugs—maybe even an overly friendly raccoon or possum. I couldn’t believe that Auggie had hosed down and scrubbed all of the ductwork, so there could also be rust and grime. Maybe sharp edges that I could snag my shirt on or cut myself on.

“Are the ducts…are they clean?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Auggie nodded slowly. “I mean, they’re dusty from being in the barn for so long, but there’s nothing gross.”

“What about animals?”

He laughed.

“I de-skunked them myself.”

“So, no spiders or anything?”