The Strangers

Emma, normally a math whiz, is frustrated that she can’t decipher the letter despite her interest in codes and codebreaking. She remembers her mother giving her a book about codes, and she wonders if that act was a sort of preparation for this moment. When Finn shows her the butterfly logos, she recalls a story about Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and a wartime spy who encrypted coded drawings of military fortifications inside butterfly sketches. She also remembers her mother’s love of rainbows. Arranging the butterflies in rainbow order, Emma reexamines the dot patterns. What emerges is a map of the Boring Room with a star marking a place behind an empty bookshelf, which Emma concludes is “where we’re supposed to look” (133).

The kids convince Ms. Morales to drive them home again—ostensibly to visit Rocket—so they can explore the Boring Room. As they enter the room, unsure of what they might find, Chess is relieved to have Natalie with them to shoulder some of the responsibility. Looking around the room, Chess is struck by the stark emptiness of it. There are no adornments—just a desk, a chair, and three nearly empty bookshelves. When Finn mentions the absence of internet service in the Boring Room, Natalie points out that that makes no sense; if their mother designs websites, she would need constant internet service. This calls into question the veracity of everything their mother ever told them.

Meanwhile, Emma is focused on the map. She, Finn, and Chess search the area around an empty bookcase in the spot marked with a star. As Chess tries to gain a foothold on the top of the bookcase, he slips, tumbling to the floor and knocking the bookcase over in the process. The bookcase doesn’t fall so much as swing open. It’s not a bookcase at all but a secret door. 

As Finn looks for a flashlight to explore the dark space behind the bookcase, Emma steps into it, looking for a light switch. When she finds it, the light illuminates a hidden room stocked with food and water. They also notice a stack of shoeboxes. Chess opens one and finds it stuffed with money. Finn wonders if his mother really did rob a bank.

Most of the cash in the shoeboxes is in small denominations—ones and fives—therefore, Natalie concludes, it’s highly unlikely their mother robbed a bank. Further, she speculates that the hidden space is actually a panic room, a special enclosed area where someone might hide from intruders—or kidnappers. While Emma and Chess locate the button that opens the secret door, Natalie and Finn discover a lever inside the panic room. When she pulls it, the room shifts beneath their feet and begins to spin. When the spinning stops, the entrance is blocked by rows upon rows of bookshelves.

Looking around, they find the opening isn’t blocked after all; it’s shifted. When the floor begins to shudder again, they make a dash for the exit, but they find themselves in darkness. Turning on a light, they find not the Boring Room but an empty, dusty space. Somehow, the spinning room transported them to another place.

The kids and Natalie explore the empty space, trying to get their bearings. They assume they must be in a neighbor’s basement, but nothing looks familiar. As they ponder various possibilities—the room is actually on a track and it’s moved them to the adjacent street, for example—Natalie tries to locate their position on her phone but can’t get a signal. Unlike the others who want to get back to their house, Finn is eager to explore the new space. Running up the stairs, he bursts into an empty house with boarded up windows. When they open the front door, they see a completely unfamiliar scene: a crumbing porch and a yard overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a tall wooden fence. None of them have ever seen this place before.