Part of her really wished they were going to do a traditional middle-of-the-night entrance through a skylight but it was far easier and simpler to slip into the museum in broad daylight while it was still open. With the museum closing at 5:45, they could even be home before their parents could deeply question their “working late on the play” alibi.
The American Museum of Natural History had its own entrance from the 81st Street Subway Station. There were beautiful tile mosaics of a coral reef with sharks and fish. They stood, pretending to study the art while everyone who arrived with them swept out of the station.
They backtracked to a blind corner and quickly assembled their gear. The spell needed to be printed onto a three-dimensional surface that stayed rigid while the magic was active. After a lot of experimenting, they’d found that wardrobe moving boxes worked best. The forty-eight-inch tall cardboard boxes covered them head to toe and were sturdy enough for the spell to work while they moved around.
Louise was all fumble-fingered as she carefully taped up her box. It had to be fitted together completely square. Then, seeming impossibly slow, she peeled the protective sheet off the circuit tracings and stuck them to the box. Everything had to match perfectly or the spell wouldn’t work.
When she was done, she glanced to see if Jillian had finished her box.
Jillian was gone.
“Where are you?” Louise called.
Jillian’s muffled voice came from near the tile mosaic. “Over here.”
“I can’t see you,” Louise said without thinking.
“Doh!” Jillian voice grew nearer. “Hurry up. We only have a few minutes before they shut the doors!”
“Okay, I’m almost ready.” She lifted up the box and let it slide down over her. In the darkness, she activated the magic generator. She gave it a minute and then spoke the words that triggered the spell. “Did it work?”
Jillian huffed nearby. “Wait a minute, I’ll check.” There was muffled scuffling noise. “Well, I can’t see you, so I guess it worked. Let’s go.”
The drawback to the spell was that they couldn’t cut eyeholes in the boxes. Nor could they mount cameras to the top of the box. They were basically running blind. Keeping the subway wall to their right, they started forward. Or at least Louise assumed they were both walking forward. She couldn’t hear anything but her banging heart, nervous breathing and the soft scuff of her shoes. The scent of cardboard seemed nearly suffocating; why hadn’t she noticed it before?
She went as carefully as possible down the subway hallway, toward the museum. They’d marked the edge of the museum’s surveillance with a piece of tape. Once she crossed it, she turned on her phone and used the back door they’d created in the museum’s surveillance system to watch the flow of people coming and going. They’d discovered if they moved sideways quickly, there was a slight blur in the video. It let them track their own movements with a small risk of discovery counterbalanced by the ability to dodge other people. She wove around a woman with a stroller and a group of Japanese tourist.
Her heart jumped as they passed the threshold into the museum proper. They were almost safe. There were people coming and going from the bathrooms on the right, so she kept to the left. At the end of the hallway, she turned left and went back toward the school lunchrooms. The doors were shut and locked but it gave a safe spot to crouch, out of the way, until the museum actually closed. There was a time stamp in the corner of the surveillance video. 5:32:03. They had cut it close.
At 5:35, the second closing announcement was broadcast, echoing through the nearly empty museum. After the English request for visitors to leave the museum, it repeated in Spanish and then Japanese.
Guards went into the bathrooms around the corner, their voices echoing on the tile. “We’re closing. Anyone in here?” The thud of bathroom stall doors behind swung open to make sure no one was standing on the toilets.
At 5:45, the recording of “The American Museum of Natural History is now closed” played in three languages as the big metal shutter rattled shut, closing off the subway station.
They’d done it. They were inside the museum after closing! They were now officially cat burglars.
“Meow,” Louise whispered.
The hardest part was going to be waiting another ten minutes before moving to be sure they avoided any last-minute sweeps of guards. There were still cleaning crews and guards and employees working late to dodge, but they should be few and far between.
Louise opened another window and checked on Tesla via a traffic camera. They had bought him the climbing feet attachments and had him scale the forty-foot granite pedestal to hide at the feet of the Chinese astronaut Jin Wong. The bronze statue of the man had odd wing-things spread wide behind him. Even after close study, and an extensive Internet search, Louise and Jillian weren’t sure what they represented. Its location across the street from the museum, its height and the wings made it a perfect place to hide Tesla. Even on the high traffic camera, the robot dog was invisible.