“Julianna! Sasha!” the girls’ grandmother shouted as she stormed into the house. “What is going on here?”

“Um . . . well . . . ,” Julianna stammered.

“We . . . I mean Julianna’s friends . . . ,” Sasha began.

George frowned. Leave it to Sasha to blame it all on the fourth-graders.

Julianna’s grandmother looked at Alex, George, and Sage. Then she looked up to see Chris coming down the stairs. “This was not the best day for a playdate,” she told Julianna. “I told you we were having company.”

“It wasn’t a playdate exactly . . . ,” Julianna began. “We were . . .”

“And what is with all this dust?” her grandmother interrupted. “I asked you to clean up. Why would you make this place messier?”

“Because we don’t want to move,” Julianna told her. “I know that’s why these people are here. I heard you talking to Mom and Dad about it!”

“But why wouldn’t you want to move to a bigger house?” her grandmother asked her.

George couldn’t believe it. Julianna’s grandmother sounded so confused. But why would she be? No kid would want to move away from his friends and his school.

“Because our whole lives are in Beaver Brook,” Sasha told her grandmother. “I don’t want to start over.”

“But you wouldn’t have to start over,” Sasha’s grandmother said. “You’re only moving a few blocks away. You’ll still be in Beaver Brook. You’ll just have more room. Which you definitely need with all the junk your parents collect.”

“Oh,” Sasha said. “We didn’t hear you say anything about that part. And Mom and Dad didn’t tell us anything.”

“Your parents weren’t sure that they would be able to afford the bigger house, and they didn’t want to get you excited,” her grandmother explained. “But they found one. And the good news is, in the new house you each get your own room!”

Julianna smiled at the real estate agent and the people who were looking to buy her house. “This is a really great house,” she told them. “It looks a lot nicer without the dust and green grape eyeballs lying around. We just wanted to make the place look haunted so you wouldn’t buy it, and we could stay.”

“Beaver Brook is a great town,” George added.

“Yeah,” Chris agreed. “You can’t judge us by that kid you met running away. Louie’s not . . . he’s not . . .”

“He’s not like anyone else you’ll ever meet anywhere,” George said, finishing Chris’s thought.

“I have a feeling Beaver Brook is a wonderful place,” said the woman who was thinking about buying the house. “Otherwise why would you kids go to so much trouble to make sure your friend stayed here?”

George smiled. “Exactly.”