The Show Must Go On Read online

  What would you say to someone famous?

  “I’d ask what made you pursue acting.”—Elise

  “If I met the Kratt Brothers [Chris and Martin Kratt], I’d ask which is their favorite animal and if they have any pets at their homes.” —Emmett

  “I would say hello, but if he was mean, I’d run back to the car.” —Freya

  “If I met Kristaps Porzingis, I’d say ‘You’re my favorite Knick.’ ” —Owen

  “I’d be speechless!” —Lucy

  Visit all the states with Finn and Molly in

  #1 Let’s Mooove!

  #2 The Show Must Go On

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Courtney Sheinmel and Bianca Turetsky

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2019 by Stevie Lewis

  Excerpt from Magic on the Map #3: Texas Treasure copyright © 2020 by Courtney Sheinmel and Bianca Turetsky

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sheinmel, Courtney, author. | Turetsky, Bianca, author. | Lewis, Stevie, illustrator.

  Title: The show must go on / Courtney Sheinmel and Bianca Turetsky; illustrated by Stevie Lewis.

  Description: New York: Random House, [2019] | Series: Magic on the map; #2 | “A Stepping Stone Book.” | Summary: “Twins Finn and Molly Parker are whisked away in their magical RV to compete in a scavenger hunt in New York City.” —Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018036688 | ISBN 978-1-63565-169-0 (trade) | ISBN 978-1-63565-170-6 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-63565-717-3 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Treasure hunt (Game)—Fiction. | Celebrities—Fiction. | Recreational vehicles—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Twins—Fiction. | New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S54124 Sho 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781635657173

  This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  a

  For Eleanor, Beatrice, and John

  —C.S.

  For Ruby and Ras

  —B.T.

  Contents

  Cover

  Travel with Finn and Molly in Magic on the Map!

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  United States of America Map

  Chapter One: Welcome Back

  Chapter Two: The Next Destination

  Chapter Three: The Most Famous Kid on Earth

  Chapter Four: Hallie Hampton

  Chapter Five: The First Clue

  Chapter Six: Lady Liberty

  Chapter Seven: One Hundred Lightning Strikes

  Chapter Eight: Bird’s-Eye View

  Chapter Nine: A City on the Water

  Chapter Ten: Prepare for Landing

  Chapter Eleven: Break a Leg

  Chapter Twelve: Opening Night

  New York State Facts

  New York Map

  Excerpt from Magic on the Map #3: Texas Treasure

  It was late at night on the second day of summer vacation, and Molly Parker couldn’t sleep.

  The good thing about not being able to sleep on summer vacation is there’s nothing you need to wake up for in the morning.

  But the bad thing is it gets really boring when you’re lying there with the lights turned out.

  At least there were some interesting things to think about—like what had happened the day before, on the last day of second grade. Molly and her twin brother, Finn, had come home from school to find a camper in their driveway. It used to belong to someone named Professor Vega. She taught in the astrophysics department at the same college where their dad worked. He had traded his old car with Professor Vega for the camper.

  It looked like a regular camper on the outside. It was white with one orange stripe and one yellow stripe, a rounded roof, and three windows on each side.

  But inside, it had a PET.

  Not an ordinary pet, like a dog or a goldfish. This PET stood for:

  Planet

  Earth

  Transporter.

  PET used the information superhighway to travel anywhere in the world within a matter of seconds! Last night they went to Colorado. Molly and Finn spent the whole day there, riding horses, saving a cow, and learning to square dance. But when they returned home, it was only the morning. Their parents were just waking up. They didn’t even know the twins had been gone.

  Molly wondered if PET would take her and Finn away again tonight. Anything was possible….

  Where would they go? And how did the magic work?

  There was only one way to find out. Molly slipped out of bed and put on her fuzzy bunny slippers. She tiptoed so as not to disturb her parents, and wandered outside to the driveway. The camper door was unlocked and opened without a squeak.

  “Took you long enough!” Finn said. He jumped up and tossed his pocket-sized baseball video game onto the couch. “Are you ready?”

  “Hang on, I want to check something,” Molly said.

  She walked to the bulletin board in the back of the camper, where a map of the world was pinned up, with two pushpins stuck into it. One was in Ohio, where the twins had lived all their lives. The other one was in Colorado. Molly touched the Colorado pin and felt a spark at the tip of her finger. “Whoa,” she said.

  “Let’s go!” Finn said.

  Molly raced with her brother to the two big leather seats at the front of the camper. Finn sat down in the driver’s seat, just like he had the night before.

  Molly took the passenger seat. “I can’t wait to talk to PET again,” she said. “I have so many questions.”

  “Me too,” Finn said. “Starting with, where do we get to go this time?”

  Molly pressed the POWER button on the TV screen, but the screen stayed dark.

  “PET, wake up!” Finn said. “We’re back!”

  PET was silent.

  “C’mon, PET,” Finn said. He turned to Molly. “What are we doing wrong?”

  “Maybe we need to do all the same things,” Molly said. “First, I think you made some vroom vroom sounds.”

  “Okay, vroom vroom,” said Finn.

  “And then…ugh. I hate to have to tell you this…and then you sang that baseball song you always sing.”

  “Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the croooooooowd,” Finn sang loudly. Molly put her fingers in her ears. Still, PET did not wake up.

  “Maybe the magic was only for one night,” Molly said.

  “That stinks,” Finn said. His video game whooped from the couch.
He got up and headed back to it.

  Molly moved to the driver’s seat. She wanted to know how the magic worked. Even more than that, she wanted another adventure. An adventure like the ones she read about in books. She’d read a book called The Cricket in Times Square. It was about a cricket who lands in the middle of a bustling New York City subway station. Molly had seen a bunch of crickets at home in Ohio, but she’d never seen a talking cricket, and she’d never seen Times Square. She imagined PET taking her to New York, to the center of Times Square, where she’d meet up with the cricket and his friends.

  Except that was just a book. And their magic camper had turned back into a regular old camper. The kind of camper that traveled on roads, not the information superhighway. New York was over five hundred miles away, and Molly got carsick on long rides. She rested her head on the steering wheel and sighed.

  “Welcome back,” a robotic voice called. Molly whipped her head toward the TV screen. The words “Welcome back” were scrolling across the screen in bright red.

  “PET?” Molly whispered.

  “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out!” the camper answered.

  “PET!” Finn cried, rushing toward the front of the camper. “I knew you’d come back. Molly, give me my seat.”

  “This time it’s Molly’s turn to drive,” PET said. “Fair is fair.”

  Finn flopped into the passenger seat. “Well, fine. But remember, next time it’s my turn.”

  “Buckle up, kids,” PET said. “Molly has chosen our next destination.”

  “I didn’t choose anything!” Molly said.

  “Where are we going?” Finn asked.

  “That’s for me to know, and you to find out,” PET said.

  The dashboard screen lit up in every color of the rainbow. Molly and Finn grabbed on to their armrests tightly. (Even when you’re excited about something, you can still be afraid.) The camper started to hum, then it started to shake. There was a near-blinding flash of white light, and they were off!

  Molly squeezed her eyes shut, but she opened them when Finn called out, “Hey! Look!”

  A flock of birds with royal-blue and reddish-brown feathers flew by the windshield. “Oh, those are eastern bluebirds,” Molly said. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  They sailed over a trio of waterfalls, fields of green, and trees….

  “I think those are apple trees!” Molly cried.

  “Look over there! Is that the ocean?” Finn asked.

  “Wow, I think so!”

  “Cool!”

  But pretty soon the ocean wasn’t in sight anymore. All they saw were buildings, and more buildings, and even more buildings. And then the camper landed with a jolt.

  Molly still had questions for PET, but she didn’t get a chance to ask them. “I’ll be back when your work here is done,” PET said. With that, the screen went blank. The camper doors swung open. Molly and Finn quickly undid their seat belts and jumped down onto the asphalt.

  “Where are we?” Finn asked.

  Molly looked around. PET said she’d picked the destination, but so far she couldn’t tell what it was. They were standing in an alley, in the shadow of tall buildings. In the distance, there were muffled sounds of tires screeching and horns honking. When Molly turned toward the camper again, it had disappeared.

  She looked over at Finn. “Uh, Finn,” she started. “You’re not going to like this.” She pointed to something on her brother’s shirt.

  Finn felt his heart beat a little faster as he looked down. Gone were his plaid pajamas. In their place were blue jeans and a white-and-navy-pinstripe baseball jersey.

  “Are you okay?” Molly asked.

  “I’m a traitor is what I am,” Finn said. He turned around. “What’s on my back?”

  “The number two,” Molly said. “And then over that it says ‘Jeter.’ ”

  “Ugh,” Finn said. “Jeter. One of the best shortstops in history and a five-time World Series champion.”

  “That sounds pretty good.”

  “But he didn’t play for any of my favorite teams,” Finn said. “He played for the Yankees—the New York Yankees.”

  Finn reached up to the top of his head to feel for what he knew was there—a baseball cap. He almost couldn’t bear to look at it, but when he did…

  Phew!

  It was his trusty Little League Moonwalkers cap. He put it back on and folded his arms across his chest, covering up as much of the blue and white as possible. He’d walk around like this all day if he had to.

  Molly spun around in delight. “We’re in New York!” she cried with glee. “The Big Apple! The City That Never Sleeps! The Empire State!” She paused. “Wait. What am I wearing?”

  She looked down at her own clothes: black leggings, pink high-tops, and a white T-shirt with the famous logo I NY.

  “I’m going to have to buy some new clothes,” Finn said.

  “I don’t have any money,” Molly said. “Do you?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Listen,” Molly said sternly. “The magic worked. We’re going to have our next big adventure—that’s way more important than clothing.”

  Finn let his arms fall to his sides. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s figure out what our work is.”

  The twins ran down the alley toward the sound of traffic. At the end of the street, there was a rush of people passing by. Molly and Finn had never seen so many people in one place in their whole lives. Everyone was walking fast, like they knew exactly where they were headed and they wanted to get there very, very quickly.

  “Whoa,” Finn said. He reached for his sister’s hand, which was not something he could remember ever doing before. “There’s gotta be a billion people here.”

  “Only eight million people live in New York City,” Molly said.

  Eight million people was still a lot! Besides that, there were stores, hotels, and skyscrapers stretching up practically as high as the eye could see. And there were flashing billboards, and taxicabs speeding by. It was hard to know where to look first, so the twins looked everywhere.

  “Look at those signs!” Molly cried. She squeezed Finn’s hand tightly.

  “Ouch!” he said, pulling his hand away.

  “Broadway and Seventh Avenue,” she read out loud. “You know what that means?”

  “Um…we’re between Sixth Avenue and Eighth Avenue?”

  “We’re in TIMES SQUARE!” Molly practically screamed. “I feel like we’re at the center of the universe.”

  “Hey, could that be our work?” Finn asked. He pointed to a sign in the window of a pizza place.

  LOOKING FOR WORK?

  DELIVERY PERSON WANTED.

  BICYCLE REQUIRED.

  “Maybe if we work there, we’d get pizza for free,” he said.

  “I’ve never heard of eight-year-olds getting hired to be delivery people,” Molly said. “And how would we get all the pizzas to their right places without our bikes?”

  Finn shrugged. They kept walking. Up ahead, a big circle of people gathered around…something. The crowd was blocking the twins from seeing exactly what it was. But everyone in the circle was looking in the same direction and taking lots of pictures.

  “Let’s go look,” Finn said. He gripped Molly’s hand again and ducked into the crowd. When they got to the front, they could hardly believe their eyes.

  At least, Molly could hardly believe her eyes.

  Finn could believe it. He just couldn’t understand it. Everyone was flipping out over a kid. People in the crowd were shouting at her.

  “Hallie, smile!”

  “You’re my favorite, Hallie!”

  “One more? PUH-LEASE, Hallie?”

  “Oh. My. Goodness,” Molly whispered. “That’s Hallie Hampton.”

  “Was she in your book?
” Finn asked.

  “Of course not,” Molly said. “That book was about talking animals. It was fiction. That means it was completely made up.”

  “I know what ‘fiction’ means,” Finn said.

  “Hallie Hampton is a real live person,” Molly went on. “Look at her!”

  “I see her,” Finn said. “So what? I’m a real live person, too.”

  “Hallie Hampton is the star of Awesome Sauce, and she may just be the most famous kid on earth!” Molly cried. “I’m going to say hi!”

  Molly stepped closer to the one and only Hallie Hampton.

  But then something terrible happened. There was a man in a black suit and sunglasses who’d been standing behind Hallie Hampton the whole time. Molly was sure he was a bodyguard. The man leaned down and said something into Hallie’s ear. She waved to the crowd and ducked into a stretch limousine. The man slammed the door closed, then gave the roof a couple of hard slaps, as if to say, All done here. Move ’em out.

  “Oh no!” Molly cried. “Now I’ll never get to meet my favorite star.”

  Hallie Hampton’s limo didn’t move. There was a red light and a lot of traffic. The tinted windows were too dark to see inside, and the man in the black suit was blocking the door. Some people in the crowd put down their phones and walked away.

  But Molly stepped forward.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  The man in the black suit didn’t seem to hear.

  Molly tapped his arm. “Excuse me,” she said again. “I…uh…I want to meet Hallie Hampton.”

  “You and every other nine-year-old on the planet,” the man said.