Floors #3: The Field of Wacky Inventions by Patrick Carman

into the trampoline, landing on his legs, his chest, and his face. When it launched him back into the air, his limbs were flailing around so wildly that Miss Harrington, who was reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in a comfy chair down below, thought she’d seen an enormous flying octopus pass through her line of sight. (Stranger things than this have been seen in a Whippet hotel.) There were four more trampolines, also at forty-five-degree angles, that bounced E. J. Bosco ever closer to the floor as if he were a tennis ball bouncing down an escalator. He landed badly on the cold marble, but only his ego was bumped and bruised as he stood and took notice of his surroundings.
    “Pull up a chair,” Miss Harrington said as Bosco stumbled in her general direction. “I have a feeling we’re going to be here until this ridiculous competition is over.”
    “Don’t mind if I do,” Bosco said, twisting as he cracked his back. “I’ve had about enough competition for one day.”
    The truth was, Bosco hated losing. They both did. But what were they to do?
    “Times like these, it’s hard to beat a good book,” Harrington conceded. She picked the top volume off a pile of novels that sat beside her and handed it to her companion. Bosco sat down heavily, took the book, and kicked his feet up on a coffee table covered with a whimsical painting of a monkey riding an elephant.
    “ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ,” Bosco said, and he smiled the way a walrus might smile, with a big, bushy mustache turned up on both ends. “You know, I’ve wanted to read this for quite some time. I’m rather glad I’ve been knocked out of these wacky proceedings. Does he send snacks?”
    “Oh yes, every hour or so. We should be getting some tea and biscuits any time now.”
    “Marvelous!” Bosco said, and then he continued in his best British impression, “I do rather enjoy the tea and the crumpets. Delightful, don’t you think?”
    Miss Harrington was far too preoccupied with Captain Nemo’s underwater adventure to pay any more attention to her new companion’s attempt at humor. So E. J. Bosco took a deep, relaxing breath and turned to the first page of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Glancing momentarily up at him then, Miss Harringtonunderstood how she had been feeling all afternoon. There was always time to work, never time enough to enjoy the pleasure of a good book. Being trapped in the Whippet Hotel library was a gift; it was what she and Bosco really needed — a small vacation with books to read and treats delivered by the hour.
    More often than not, Merganzer D. Whippet knew what his managers needed even more than they did.

    There were many well-documented incidents at Miss Sheezley’s hotel, the Foxtrot, to earn her a reputation as a serious overreactor. Kicking E. J. Bosco with all her might was but one example of this aspect of her personality. Once, a single ant was seen crawling through her lobby, prompting a hotel-wide evacuation, followed by a room-to-room search-and-destroy mission for anything having the appearance of a bug. And so it was to be expected that Miss Sheezley’s insistence on going back down the ladder was, probably, a little bit hasty.
    “How long are we going to stand on this ladder?” Remi asked. He was getting tired of waiting around for Miss Sheezley to stop blocking their way out.
    Leo had been able to glance around Miss Sheezley a little bit, and as far as he could tell, the top of her hotel wasn’t anywhere near hitting bottom.
    “I think maybe it’s stopped,” Leo offered. “Let’s go out and have a look. We can’t stay here all day.”
    Miss Sheezley reluctantly agreed to go back up — if only for a chance to get everyone out and then race back down the ladder to safety. She didn’t like being in the pole position, where people were more likely to get hurt. Better to let someone else lead until the very end, then swoop in and take the victory.
    When they’d all emerged into the light of