For weeks, Samantha divided her moping evenly between flopping on the living room sofa, sulking at the kitchen table during meals, and muttering to herself as she paced under the basketball net outside Uncle Paul’s apartment. Every afternoon, she took Dennis for a walk around the neighborhood. She spent half of each walk looking for clues about Uncle Paul and why he had disappeared and the other half wondering why he’d done it without saying goodbye.

When the weather was bad, however, she stayed indoors to power mope. There, she’d lie on the floor and write depressing entries in her journal. It was springtime in Seattle, so it rained for a few hours almost every day. The little black notebook already had sixteen sad entries.

On the thirty-fifth afternoon since Uncle Paul had gone missing, Samantha chose her bedroom for the gloom session. She invited her brother to join her. Ever since he’d lost his Yankees, Nipper was more than willing to mope along with her.

Samantha was on the floor, lying on her back with her feet on the bed. She flipped through her journal to one of the recent entries and read out loud.

“There’s a little bit of Nelly McPepper in all of us.

One moment, the future looks great. The next moment, all our hopes and dreams are jacked up onto a massive flatbed truck rolling south.

Life’s a bumpy ride, McPeppered with potholes that fling us, filled with despair, into the air. It’s so unfair! And there’s no umbrella big enough to shield us from the daily drizzle of our dreary lives.

We have nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

Nipper half ignored her. He was looking at an old baseball card Uncle Paul had given him.

“Honus Wagner,” Nipper said, using the magnifying glass to examine the stats on the back. “A guy who never got to play with the New York Yankees…just like me.”

“Wait,” said Samantha. “Let me take a closer look at that card.”

Nipper had already put it away and was examining the pencils, paper clips, and coins on Samantha’s desk.

“Sam, did you ever see an old penny up close? There’s a man sitting between the pillars of the building.”

“That’s Abraham Lincoln,” said Samantha. “The building is the Lincoln Memorial.”

Peering through the glass, he moved toward her.

“Let me peek inside your nose.”

“Cut it out,” Samantha said, and pushed him away.

Nipper tripped and fell. He landed flat on his back, still holding the magnifier in front of his face. He started to study the underside of the desk.

“Hey. I remember this piece of gum. I stuck it here last year. Do you think it has any flavor left?”

“You are exceptionally gross,” said Samantha. “And stop touching my things.”

“Technically, that gum is one of my things,” said Nipper.

He rolled onto his side and started examining objects on the floor.

“There’s a neat pattern on the bottom of your sandals.” He lifted a flap on the old umbrella. “This has a cool pattern inside, too.”

He squinted at the inside of the umbrella for a few seconds. Then he stopped. He sat up quickly.

“Come here, Sam. I want you to see something.”

“Nipper. I do not want to see a shoe or a bug or inside your ear.”

“No, really.” He handed her the magnifying glass. “Use this.”

He pushed the button on the worn wooden handle and the umbrella popped open.

“Hey! Close it!” Samantha shouted. “The last thing I need is more bad luck.”

“Just look.”

Samantha took the magnifying glass and lay down on her back under the open umbrella with her brother. She squinted to focus on what she was seeing, and, to her surprise, Nipper was right. There was a pattern on the inside of the umbrella. There were lines and shapes everywhere. But it was more than that. She took a closer look at things and saw that there were tiny pictures. Hundreds of them. No, thousands. She could see buildings, streets, tunnels, towers, ladders, stairs, trees, bridges, and fountains.

The umbrella was a map!

She recognized some of the drawings. There was the Eiffel Tower. There was the White House. There was a castle, an elephant, an ear of corn. But there were many more things that weren’t familiar at all.

Samantha was pretty sure that one big shape was China and another was Australia. She could make out the Taj Mahal and the Leaning Tower of Pisa…and everything was connected!

There were lines and arrows running from one picture to another. It looked like there was a tunnel under the Washington Monument. A zigzaggy line ran from the Statue of Liberty to a big sunken boat in the North Atlantic Ocean.

The umbrella was more than a map. It was some kind of top-secret blueprint of the whole world.

“Nipper,” Samantha whispered excitedly, “I think Uncle Paul gave me super-secret plans.”