TEA WITH THE MIDNIGHT MONSTERS

AN ASIDE

You may now be wondering if Millie and Pim would ever -- ever! -- see their mother again, and you may be worried.

If that's true and you're feeling anxious, please continue to read this page; if you're feeling all right, ignore this page and skip this half-chapter to the next.

If you're on the fence, consider for a moment a rollercoaster:

When you ride a rollercoaster, you're always sure how the ride ends. You know you'll be subjected to two to three minutes of harrowing climbs, terrifying plunges, and loop-to-loops...

The whole time you're screaming, you also know that the car will slow -- eventually -- and take you along a nice straight track to a dead stop, at which point you'll unlock your seatbelt, or the shoulder bars, climb out, head down a ramp toward your family, and vomit into the nearest trash.

You know how it ends.

And knowing the end doesn't ruin the fun.

Does it? No.

Of course not. Knowing the end is what makes it bearable.

In a way.

But suppose you didn't know how it would end. Maybe, you thought, it would go on forever -- a nightmare ride that could spit you out into the air and to your death.

That might make the ride less fun.

So by this logic, knowing a bit about the end of this story should be all right. It should not effect your enjoyment of it.

No? Yes?

Now, your teachers and parents might object; your librarian, the publishers of this book -- in fact, most grown-ups will probably object...

But between you and me, I'm not writing this story for grown-ups. I'm writing it for you. And personally, I think you might feel relieved to know the ending ends happily. Millie and Pim spend three days trapped -- exactly three days -- and they do become monsters -- but then they escape.

Why and how? That is the question.