The next day started with a scream. It was Callie, and it was not the scary kind of scream that would make you jump up from your breakfast. Instead, it was the kind that made me and Aunt Emma look at each other over the kitchen table. Aunt Emma’s eyes narrowed, and then she took another bite of her still-frozen toaster waffle. I drank my juice.

A moment later, Callie stomped in. The ends of her hair were smoking. She held up a metal wastebasket that I recognized from her bedroom: It had pink flowers decaled on the side. Well, it previously had. Most of the decals were now melted off. More smoke erupted from the top of it.

“I found another one!” Callie said, frenzied. “In my underwear drawer!”

Aunt Emma looked sympathetic. “It must have come looking for the ones in the clinic. Fuzzles lump together, you know.”

“Well, they’re not allowed to lump together in my underwear!” Callie slammed the wastebasket on the table. “Can’t we get rid of them?”

“Callie, no trash cans on the table,” Aunt Emma said. “And I’m trying to think of a way to move them safely, but it’s tricky since everyone thinks of them as pests. I’ll need to rearrange some of my appointments to this afternoon, I think.” She gestured to the Fuzzle in the trash can. It was blinking at Callie. “Do you think you can take care of that one?”

“One! One?” Callie echoed. She sounded a little unhinged. “Did you see what I took care of in the clinic yesterday? Millions! What’s one more! One! One!”

I had seen Callie melt down on two family occasions before, and neither time had been pretty. I definitely didn’t want to be standing in such close range. Turning to my aunt, I asked quickly, “Can I go over to Tomas’s house? I want to talk to him about the Fuzzles.”

“A brainstorm session?” Aunt Emma replied with a smile.

I smiled back. “Yeah.”

“That’s a great idea, Pip. Cloverton certainly could use all the Fuzzle help it can get.”

“Oh, please,” Callie said, slamming the trash can around a little bit. “How about instead of brainstorming, we all go to the mall to buy me some new underwear? Oh, wait, we can’t, because then no one would be here to protect us from exploding furballs!”

I hardly considered what the Fuzzles did to be exploding, but I certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud. I didn’t want Callie mad at me ever, and I definitely didn’t want her mad at me today, since I needed her help with the Fuzzle research. Getting up from the table, I took my plate to the sink. Callie folded her arms and gave the Fuzzle a look that should have made it catch fire again.

“You little beast,” Callie said. “This is the worst summer I’ve ever had! I wish I lived with—with—dentists!”

“Now, Callie—” Aunt Emma started.

I hustled outside before I heard any more. As I made my way down the sidewalk to Tomas’s house, I hoped he wasn’t busy—I hadn’t gone over without calling before. It was hard to imagine him having hobbies, but it was possible that his family might have decided to go somewhere for the day.

I quickly realized that at least a few of the Ramirezes were home, because as I knocked on the door, I heard shouting.

One voice, sort of older and boyish and nervous-making, shouted, “I didn’t put it in there!”

“Jorges?” This was an older voice, sort of mom-like.

“It wasn’t me!”

She shot out again. “Eric? I know it was you!”

Tomas’s voice wailed out, high and reedy, “Eric’s at Asia’s house!”

“Fuzzles don’t just appear in my underwear—”

The door still hadn’t been answered. I noticed a doorbell and rang it. The door opened nearly at once, and Tomas stood on the other side with a Band-Aid on his forehead. The walls on either side of him were covered with one thousand little pottery things. Plates and stars and beads.

“What happened to your head?” I asked. “An allergic reaction?”

“I hit it on the fridge,” Tomas replied. “I was trying to get away from the cheese.”

“Let me guess—you’re allergic to cheese.”

He nodded grimly. Behind him, I saw two biggish boys gallop across the hall, laughing furiously. A voice—it had to be Ms. Ramirez—howled, “You boys come right back here and take care of this thing!”

Tomas glanced furtively over his shoulder. “Mom found a Fuzzle in her underwear drawer this morning. She thinks one of my brothers did it.”

“Callie found one in her underwear drawer!” I exclaimed. “Aunt Emma said they like to lump together, but maybe they also like tiny spaces. Or underwear.”

“Then my bedroom should be full of them,” Tomas replied darkly.

“Because you have a lot of underwear?” I asked, confused.

“No, because I’m the youngest, so my room is the small—”

Ms. Ramirez appeared behind him then, and he went quiet. She was short and plump. Her hair was in ringlets like Raindancer’s. A smoking Fuzzle dangled from her thumb and forefinger. “Tomas! Were you born in a gas station? Ask her in.”

“Get in,” Tomas said, stepping back to let me in.

“That is not any better,” Ms. Ramirez said. “You must be Pip. Lovely to meet you.”

I was just trying to figure out what to say back when the Fuzzle in her hand burst into flame. Without any fuss or panic, she smacked it against a bare spot on the wall to put out the fire.

“No, Mom!” Tomas said. “Tickle it! You’ve got to tickle it.”

“I would just as soon tickle a rat,” Ms. Ramirez replied, looking disgusted. “Pip, your aunt is taking these things in, right?”

“Um,” I replied, then “um” again because I wasn’t sure I knew how to talk to Ms. Ramirez. I looked at Tomas, who shrugged encouragingly, and finally I said, “Yes, she’s taking them in. Sort of.”

Ms. Ramirez started down the hall. “Good. Tomas, you need to get some sun, anyway. I’m going to get you a pot or something for you to carry this over to the clinic. Don’t drop it! We haven’t had much rain and I don’t want you to burn down the neighborhood. JORGES, GET OVER HERE NOW. FIND ME A POT FOR THIS THING.”

Then she vanished into another room. One of the big boys—Jorges, maybe?—galloped past again, looking like a giant, muscled version of Tomas. Then another boy came, who looked exactly the same, and then another, until I started to feel like I was watching the same part of a movie over and over.

“Oh! Your brothers are triplets!” I realized. “That’s so cool.”

“Cool if you’re a triplet,” Tomas replied. “They get to do whatever they want. They are tall enough to reach whatever they want to reach. They don’t have allergies.”

I could tell he was feeling low about it, so I said, “They also don’t get to have adventures with Pip Bartlett.”

He smiled gloomily at me. Ms. Ramirez reappeared with a large nonstick saucepan. She’d put a glass lid on it, and we could see the Fuzzle crouched in the bottom. Crouched? Sitting. Lying. Piled. It was hard to tell since it didn’t have any legs.

“You bring that pot back,” Ms. Ramirez warned Tomas. “I do my pork in that one.”

As we stepped outside, I said to Tomas, “Don’t you think it’s funny that there were Fuzzles in two underwear drawers? Maybe we should ask some of the neighbors if they have found Fuzzles there too! Or at least warn them to protect their underwear.”

Tomas rubbed his neck. “I dunno. That sounds kinda … awkward.”

“But imagine how happy people will be to not have their underwear go up in flames! Plus it’ll be safer for the Fuzzles if we collect them all in one spot—they like to lump together, you know,” I said, repeating what Aunt Emma told me that morning as if I’d known it all along.

Tomas sighed noisily. “Okay, but I’m not asking.”

“I’m not asking!”

“I’m not asking. You’re the one who keeps saying underwear.”

We decided to draw up a flyer, since neither of us would ask. It only took a minute, long enough for the Fuzzle to travel around the inside of the saucepan twice, and when we were done, it seemed like it would do most of the explaining for us.

Armed with the flyer and the giant saucepan, we traveled to the next-door neighbor’s and knocked on the door. Tomas mistrustfully eyed a bug next to the porch light until the door opened, and then he handed the old woman on the other side the flyer.

“Tomas Ramirez,” she said. “What is this nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense,” I insisted. I felt particularly brave about talking at the moment, since I knew helping with the Fuzzles was the right thing to do. Plus, the flyer had started the conversation for me. I continued, “You should check your drawer. We’re trying to help.”

She narrowed her eyes at us for a long moment, and then she turned away, leaving the door open. She stumped out of sight.

“She thinks it’s a trick,” I told Tomas.

He removed a marker from one of his pockets and wrote THIS IS NOT A TRICK on the bottom of the flyer.

The woman returned. She was holding an enormous pair of flowered underwear. Tomas flinched.

“You were right!” she exclaimed. “There were two of them in there! I’m not touching them. Here, take all of it!”

Tomas was still staring at the underwear with wide eyes, so I snatched off the pot lid. She dropped the underwear inside; it landed with a soft thud. I guessed that was because of the Fuzzles inside it.

“I don’t need those back,” she said. “Tell your mother hello, Tomas.”

She shut the door.

“I don’t believe it!” Tomas peered into the pot with his head turned sideways, like he couldn’t look at the underwear straight on.

“Let’s try the next house,” I said.

The man at the next house knew Tomas as well, and obligingly went to check his drawers. He returned holding some bright red-and-green boxer shorts with a set of tongs.

“I didn’t want to touch them,” he said. “Are they poisonous?”

“Underwear, or Fuzzles?” I asked.

“You’re funny,” he said, but he said “funny” as if it meant “strange.” He dropped the boxer shorts inside the pot. “I don’t need those back.”

The next house was the same story, only this time it was an orange pair of underwear, and there were three smaller Fuzzles inside them. When the lady showed it to us, three pairs of eyes peered out of the leg holes.

“I think they’re nesting,” she said. “Do they normally live in hammocks or something like that?”

“Nobody knows what they normally live in,” I replied. “But that’s a good idea.”

The house after that didn’t have any Fuzzles in it, nor the one after, but at the one after that we struck Fuzzle gold. When the woman went to check her underwear drawer, we heard a mighty scream. It was so piercing that both Tomas and I went running inside to see if something terrible had happened. The woman stood in a very fancy bedroom, staring in horror at the top drawer of her dresser. Flames roared out of it.

“Tongs!” I ordered. “Then drop the Fuzzles in the pot!”

The woman ran out of the room and returned with a large pair of barbecue tongs. She fished out a pair of fancy purple underwear. Fire shot out of both leg holes like a dual flamethrower. Tomas lifted the pot lid, and she dropped the underwear in. Then she retrieved another flaming pair. And another. The pot was filling up, and the dresser was still producing Fuzzles. Plus, some of them kept on burning even after they were dropped inside the pot.

“Ow!” Tomas said. “The handle’s getting hot! There are too many to tickle!”

Plus, the dresser was still on fire. The smoke detector overhead began to shriek. Any Fuzzle that wasn’t already ignited went up in flames.

Far too many to tickle.

The woman clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, dear! I think I need to call 911! I must find my purse!”

“Where’s the bathroom?” I shouted. “I’ll pour some water on this!”

She pointed. As she ran to find her purse—and her phone, I guess, inside it—I ran into the equally fancy bathroom. There was nothing to put water in except for her toothpaste holder, so I began to make trips back and forth. Soon her underwear drawer was entirely doused, but the drawers below still seemed to be smoldering.

Outside, a fire engine wailed. Unexpectedly, the fancy lamp on top of the lady’s fancy dresser caught on fire too, and the lightbulb exploded with a brittle bang. Somewhere, the lady began to shriek again, a fancy sort of shriek. It felt like every sound that could possibly happen was happening. Tomas seemed to agree with the Fuzzles, because he did the Tomas version of bursting into flame. He kneeled beside the smoking saucepan and covered his ears.

A fireman charged into the room. “How many of you are there?”

Tomas didn’t reply because his ears were covered, and I didn’t reply at first because I was just staring. Then I replied, “Two! And a lady. And a lot of Fuzzles.”

“You need to get out!” he said.

“We were just trying to help!”

He said, “This is way too much for two kids. This is too much for any of us, probably. It’s a disaster.”