- It is a beautiful day. Will and Jim lean out their windows to chat, and Will asks if last night was real.
- Four minutes later, the two boys are tearing out of town. Yep – the carnival is real.
- Will notes that it looks like a regular old, normal carnival. But Jim is disbelieving. He wants to go look around.
- As the two boys plunge into the thick of the carnival, they can find no traces of last night's sinister characters and shapes. Everything just looks normal.
- Miss Foley, their seventh-grade schoolteacher, comes forward to greet the boys. She tells them she loves carnivals but cannot find her nephew Robert. She is somewhere in her fifties.
- She offers them some food and tells them she is going to the Mirror Maze.
- Will advises against it but cannot articulate himself convincingly, ad Miss Foley "vanishe[s] into the mirror ocean."
- Will tells Jim that the Mirror Maze is the only part of the carnival that looks as ominous as everything else did last night.
- Jim is silent for a while and then exclaims that his hair really is standing on the back of his neck.
- Will is experiencing the same sensation.
- The two boys spy several versions of Miss Foley in the Mirror Maze and, unsure which are real, wave at all of them.
- All the versions of Miss Foley begin to scream and cry for help.
- The boys succeed in extracting her from the Maze. As they step into the sunlight, Miss Foley begins talking about a poor little girl who is lost in the maze. Will tells her there is no one there. The ticket taker swears no one came in before or after Miss Foley.
- But Miss Foley is adamant. Will asks what the girl looked like. Miss Foley admits she looked like a younger version of herself.
- She tells the boys she is heading home, and walks off.
- Will wants to leave also, but Jim taunts him, saying they need to stay until sundown and crack the carnival's mysteries.
- Will asks why anybody would want to go into the maze. Jim hesitates, but finally agrees that it seems like a bad idea to venture in there.