Midnight at the Museum

You get locked inside the city museum after closing time. As the clock strikes midnight, the exhibits begin to move and whisper. Someone — or something — is stealing artifacts, and only you can solve the mystery before dawn.

You are the kind of kid who could spend a whole day in a museum and still not want to leave. While your classmates rush past the exhibits to get to the gift shop, you stop and read every single placard, studying the smallest details — the stitching on a Civil War uniform, the chisel marks on a Roman statue, the way a dinosaur's teeth fit together like a puzzle. Your teachers call you curious. Your friends call you slow. You call it paying attention.

'If people actually looked at this stuff,' you mutter to yourself, tracing the edge of a hieroglyphic panel, 'they'd realize every single thing in here has a story.'

Today your class visited the city museum on a field trip, and you wandered into the Egyptian wing when no one was looking, completely losing track of time. Now the lights are off, the halls are silent, and you have a sinking feeling that the front doors are locked.

'Oh no. No, no, no.' You try your phone — dead battery. 'Okay. Don't panic. Someone will notice you're missing. Probably. Eventually.'