Kingdom Keepers II(38)
“We cannot sleep!” Finn repeated. “Wayne warned us about that. We’ve got to believe him.”
Maybeck indicated a food cart. “Cokes all around!”
A few minutes later they were all loading up on caffeine. “Maybe Maleficent can’t get Jez out of the park until after it closes,” Amanda said, “or maybe the plan is to run all of you around until you tire out. If she can trap you all in the Sleeping Beauty Syndrome, she eliminates the enemy and is free to rule without challenge.”
“You think she took Jez to bait us?” Willa asked.
“None of this means anything,” Maybeck said, “until we find Jez. The challenge is to stay awake long enough to find Jez and crash this cloned server—if it even exists. Then maybe we hunt down Maleficent, if we’re still standing. But until we find Jez, none of it matters.”
“Listen!” Charlene said from high on the stilts.
The kids turned their attention toward the jungle.
“Not to me!” Charlene clarified. “To the music.”
The kids perked up their ears. It was Ashley Tisdale’s “Kiss the Girl,” coming over the Park’s speaker system.
“Yeah? So?” asked Willa. “Radio Disney plays that all the time.”
“I know that,” Charlene said. “But me and my family come as often as possible, and I’ve never heard that song in this Park before.”
The kids listened some more. “You’re right. It’s always Lion King and stuff like that.”
“It’s Jez,” Amanda stated.
“What’s Jez?” Finn asked.
“‘Kiss the Girl’is Jez’s favorite song,” Amanda said. “She abuses that song on her iPod. If it doesn’t belong in this Park, then it’s her. It’s some kind of message.”
“I think you’re more tired than the rest of us,” Maybeck said.
“Which is completely understandable,” Willa chimed in, “given the stress…”
“Listen…listen!” Amanda demanded, raising a finger to try to shut them up. “Raven-Symoné is going to sing ‘Under the Sea’ next.”
“Yeah, right,” said Maybeck. “I suppose if your sister can dream the future, you can hear it.”
“Philby,” Amanda said, “Jez had her iPod with her. Is there some way she could use it over the sound system?”
“Hijack the sound system?” Philby said, considering the question. “Depends, I suppose. If she stripped a wire from the earbuds and tapped into—”
But he was cut off by the music changing.
Raven-Symoné was singing “Under The Sea.”
All the kids went quiet.
Some visitors walked past talking about going on Expedition Everest. The parents sounded reluctant to try the ride.
But it wasn’t the guests that had silenced the kids.
“Coincidence,” Maybeck said in a whisper. He didn’t sound at all convinced.
“It’s Jez,” Amanda countered, her voice noticeably brighter.
“I know for a fact that they never play that song here,” Charlene said from up high. “I believe Amanda. And besides, it’s softer than the regular music—not as loud. It doesn’t sound right.”
“Which would also explain why Finn and I overheard two maintenance guys talking about sound-system problems,” Philby said.
Finn’s face brightened. “That’s right!”
“Then why doesn’t she just send us Morse code, or something?” Maybeck complained.
“Because she can’t give away what she’s done,” Amanda said, trying to think as Jez would think. “She doesn’t want them figuring it out. So she’s trying to communicate with us, without it being really obvious.”
“Wait right here,” Philby said, taking off at a run. The kids watched him go.
They used the downtime to review the page taken from Jez’s diary.
“The animals could symbolize different things,” Willa suggested.
“Like what?” a skeptical Maybeck questioned. “Listen, I see the drawing of the lightning striking a castle, and even I’ve got to admit it’s pretty coincidental. But the rest of these? They’re animals. So what? She likes animals. It doesn’t mean they mean something.”
“It doesn’t mean they don’t,” Amanda countered. “You don’t know Jez. They’re clues. Clues we’re supposed to follow.”
Philby came running toward them.
As he did, there was suddenly no music at all: a rarity in any of the Disney Parks.
Then “Under the Sea” began playing again.
One thing all the kids knew: music never repeated in any of the Parks. Not ever.