Part One

Chapter One

Sam

On the last morning of fifth grade, Sam Culver lost his favorite word. Right after that, he lost two more words.

Sam didn’t notice at first. But then his sometimes-best friend, Mason McGargee, and his teacher, Ms. Malloy, noticed. And after that, everyone noticed. Which was embarrassing.

“Sam! Easy on the screen door!” His stepmother, Anita, had called as he ran from the house. Too late—the door hit the frame with a WHAM right between screen and door.

“Sorry!” he shouted over his shoulder, hoping that would smooth his exit. He heard Anita say something about Mason, but he was already late. He’d see Mason in a minute anyway, because they walked the three blocks to school together.

But today, she wasn’t waiting for him.

Just in case Mason was running late, Sam strolled slowly toward Ursula K. Le Guin Elementary alone. He took his time stepping over cracks and dodging the ants making lean trails across the already-hot pavement. Mason and her mom had missed their families’ latest Saturday movie night and the first meeting of the Mount Cloud summer baseball league, which they’d been waiting for all year. He had a lot to tell her.

As Sam walked, he whistled. He wasn’t very good at whistling, and the notes sounded flat. He tried to remember the bad guys’ theme in the monster movie that he, his sister, Bella, and their parents had just watched. But he couldn’t quite get it right. Mason would have known which notes he was getting wrong, because she never forgot things like that. But she hadn’t caught up to Sam on the way to school yet, so he couldn’t ask her.

Sam was also thinking about baseball—how could he not? The first practice of the summer was that afternoon. At the end of last season, he’d played second base instead of his usual right field position, and he and his dad had been working on his throws ever since. The Mount Cloud coaches, Mr. Lockheart and Mason’s dad, Dr. McGargee, had hinted Sam might move to the infield for good.

Sam was so busy thinking about baseball and movies that he almost tripped over a miniature white pig rooting around the base of Mrs. Lockheart’s Little Free Library, two doors up from his house.

The pig’s snout was deep in the last of the tulips, upending the flowers and pushing dirt onto the sidewalk. Boy, Mrs. Lockheart hated when her flowers got messed up, Sam thought. Then he realized there was a bigger problem.

The pig’s leash—a long, leather strap that matched the saddle it was wearing—had gotten tangled around Sam’s ankles. He’d blundered right into it when he was looking at the wrecked tulips and wondering who was going to get in trouble and have to apologize to Mrs. Lockheart.

Mrs. Lockheart hated apologies. Sam knew this for a fact, having messed up her tulips before.

The surprise pig was very odd, and its leash and saddle even more so. But what most immediately concerned Sam was the small, silver-haired old woman poking a willow stick at his face while trying to untangle the pig’s leash with her other hand.

Her skin—both on her hand, which was way too close, and her face—was wrinkled like a dried apple. When she shook the stick, the end almost scraped Sam’s nose. And then she started scolding him.

“Watch where you’re going, young man!” the old woman bellowed; her voice was much bigger than should be possible for someone so small. Even Bella—who was five and taller than this woman—couldn’t get so loud. The old woman waved the switch at Sam again. “Kids should be more careful, especially—”

“Sorry!” Sam said for at least the second time that morning.

He tried to back up and pull his foot free from the leash. The pig made a watery snuffling sound and gazed at Sam doubtfully, sideways, with one black-ink eye.

Sam couldn’t free his foot fast enough. He ended up splat on the sidewalk, next to the tulips, where he couldn’t avoid the old woman’s stick. She tapped him on the cheek with it, which itched. “Hey!”

Something shimmered near Sam’s cheek, like a spiderweb or a long piece of ribbon—the kind Bella sometimes tied to Sam’s backpack. He pushed it and the stick away. Sam waved at his hair too, for good measure. Leaves and spiderwebs sometimes fell from the big oak onto the sidewalk near the Little Free Library.

For a moment, Sam felt the same way he did when he’d just pulled a tooth out—where that one raw spot was just lacking, before it became a point of pride to stick his tongue through. And then the feeling went away, and he grabbed for the ribbon. Mrs. Lockheart didn’t tolerate littering any more than people messing with her tulips, and if she caught Sam on the way to school doing both, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

But the ribbon—or whatever it was—sparkled just out of reach. Then the white pig snorfled it up gleefully. Most of it disappeared before Sam could grab it. “Hey!”

“You shouldn’t be so careless!” the old woman scolded him. She glowered and yanked at the leash. The pig snuffled, and Sam finally freed his foot. He was going to be so late for school.

“I really apologize for running into you! I have to go,” Sam shouted over his shoulder as he sped off, a little embarrassed that he’d managed to get so tangled up with the pair of them. The strange woman waved at him with her stick. And Sam got the missing-tooth feeling again, but then it went away.

A pig! With a saddle—in Mount Cloud! Sam almost stopped and turned around again to make sure they were real. But that would make him even more late. And who would believe that he was late because of a wandering grandmother and her miniature pet pig? No one. Especially not Ms. Malloy, his fifth-grade teacher, who lived right next door to the Lockhearts and likely had never seen an old woman walking a tiny pig on a leash. Sam knew he hadn’t.

But then he did look back. And when he didn’t see the old woman or the pig—or anything other than the Little Free Library and a few uprooted tulips—he wondered if maybe he had imagined it all.

He quickened his pace and made it to the school’s front steps just as the bell rang. He’d climbed two of the five big stone stairs that led up to the blue doors of Ursula K. Le Guin Elementary before Mason caught up with him.

“What is that you’re whistling?” Mason asked. She wore her hair in curly pigtails and had one of last year’s Mount Cloud baseball jackets wrapped around her waist so that it cinched her yellow sundress in a blue hug.

Sam hadn’t realized he was still whistling the song.

“There you are! I can’t remember the tune right—it’s from Ghostbusters IV, which you’d know if you’d been able to come watch the movie last weekend,” Sam teased. He and Mason had been teasing each other a lot lately. Sometimes not so nicely.

“This one?” Mason repeated the tune and did it perfectly. She was so good at remembering. And at whistling.

Sam felt his face go red. He didn’t really know why, but Mason barely having to try to remember made him want to turn invisible. She was better at everything than he was, really, except reading and baseball. And maybe fixing stuff, when Sam had Anita’s help. He spoke without thinking. “It’s hard to tell. You whistle kind of like a goldfish.” He puffed his cheeks and pressed his lips into a fish face.

Mason’s smile fell.

One thing Sam liked about Mason was that he rarely had to worry about hurting her feelings. She was tough and always said she could give as good as she got. But today felt different.

“It’s not like you can whistle well either, Sam. You should practice more instead of teasing people.” Mason was blinking hard, and her face was scrunched. “Can we not fight today?”

Sam winced. Mason knew he was touchy about having to do extra work to get stuff right, like with math this year, but she still teased him about practicing. It wasn’t fair. Even though he did wish he could unsay the bit about the goldfish.

He tried to smooth things over. “Sure. And I’ll definitely practice. As long as it’s practicing baseball!” He opened Ms. Malloy’s classroom door. It was the first room down from the principal’s office, just after the main entrance. A wave of air-conditioned coolness washed out, smelling a little like very cold tin cans. “Instead of spending all summer doing math problems, like a nerd!”

Mason elbowed him. “It’s called Math Olympics, and I like it.” Now she grinned.

Sam smiled too. He started to describe what had happened on his walk. “You’ll never believe . . .”

But with a few words, his mostly best friend made him forget all about pigs and grandmas. “Don’t worry, you’re getting a lot better at math too,” she said with a wink.

Mason wasn’t letting up! Even if she’d dropped the joking tone and was trying to sound nice. Sam focused on his shoes, betting he was turning bright red and that everyone in class could probably see it. Math had been hard this year, and Mason knew it.

His parents had even talked with Ms. Malloy about extra summer work, but he’d managed to pull his grade up before the end of May. Unlike Mason, who ate math for breakfast, Sam wished he could disappear every time the subject came up. Why didn’t she get that?

Mason took her seat and Sam slid into his desk right in front of hers. His embarrassment simmered, then quieted. Why had they been fighting? He couldn’t remember how it started. Now he felt a little sad. Mason would have loved hearing about the pig.

She’d have said the old woman was a witch or a fairy, probably.

Sam almost turned and tried again, but Mason was already talking to her neighbor, Gina. And Gina thought Sam was weird. So he decided to leave it alone for once. His dad said that it was good to leave well enough alone sometimes.

Maybe when it’s summer, I’ll tell her about the pig, Sam thought as he stared at his desk. Meantime, only a few more hours of school to get through and I’ll be free. He knew he’d earned it: the bell was going to sound like a winner’s gong.

That final bell took a long time to chime.

School ground from math (games, thankfully) to history (a movie, with everyone dozing off, including Ms. Malloy) to English. The playground outside Ms. Malloy’s classroom window shimmered with waves of heat. Sam couldn’t take his eyes off it.

That shimmer meant freedom. Schools in Mount Cloud’s district weren’t built for this much summer. The air conditioner—an old window unit with colored strips of paper in the vents that let the students know it was still working—coughed and sputtered. It couldn’t keep up with the heat.

Sam could almost taste the lemonade Anita would set on the porch after the last day of school. She’d done that every year since he was six. He could feel the sweaty surface of a baseball—Mount Cloud Community League (MCCL) Sharpied in fading black ink near the red stitching—as he caught it and tagged a runner out. Summer was less than an hour away.

On the playground, a tongue-red kickball someone had left out after recess seemed to deflate a little and stick to the pavement. As he stared, the curl of a pig’s white tail appeared behind the ball.

He blinked to clear his eyes. Then he heard a snort.

The pig, not the ball.

When Sam looked again, after giving his head a good shake, the pig was gone.

“Sam! Pay attention!” Ms. Malloy waved a fan-folded worksheet in his direction. The less-warm air cooled the sweat on his cheek. “We have forty-five more minutes of your time, my friend. We’re going to make it count. Let’s take a look at your summer book projects.”

“Yes, Ms. Malloy,” he said, while his sixteen classmates, including Mason, snickered. Sam momentarily considered tacking a halfhearted apology onto the end of his sentence, then looked up at his teacher with wide eyes.

Sorry was the kind of word that had always rolled off Sam’s tongue like a bright coin and made everyone relax. Before he said it, he’d think of something sad, like chocolate melting uneaten or Bodie Jacobs, the youngest player ever for the Mount Cloud farm team (who might get to play for the Mets someday), striking out with all the bases loaded. That was Sam’s secret formula for getting out of trouble. It wasn’t just the word that mattered. It was the delivery: Say sorry and look really sad or serious. Adults ate that stuff up.

But it was the last day of school, and when he said certain words around Ms. Malloy, he had to mean them. She was strict. Sam learned that from the first three-paragraph essay he wrote for her: wasted or excess words got him extra work, like looking up things in her huge classroom dictionary. But Ms. Malloy said Sam was a great storyteller, so she’d wanted him to fix it.

No, she’d said she expected Sam to fix it. So he had.

When anyone did what Ms. Malloy expected, she never said thank you. She just nodded like they’d finally lived up to her standards and moved on. That made her a little scary, for a teacher, but also as a neighbor.

Ms. Malloy, when she left Ursula K. Le Guin Elementary, would walk the five blocks to her house, which was catty-corner to Sam’s, and sit on the porch fanning herself all summer, except when she disappeared inside.

She wastes summer, Sam had told Bella once. She didn’t come to baseball games or go to cookouts; she didn’t go to the neighborhood parties either, his parents said. She sometimes chatted with people on her porch, but that was it.

Sam couldn’t imagine anything worse, and neither he nor Bella could figure out what Ms. Malloy did at her house for three whole months. They’d spent some time the previous summer imagining that Ms. Malloy’s house had hidden tunnels and secret portals to the other side of the world. Like in the stories that Sam’s sister loved.

But Ms. Malloy didn’t seem like the kind of adult who would have secret tunnels. She was the kind of adult who could sit on her porch all summer long without the perfect bun on top of her head getting the least bit out of place.

In the classroom, the heat-damp curls of Sam’s own too-long hair already stuck to his neck.

“Sam!”

He stopped staring at the small holes in the ceiling tiles and smiled at Ms. Malloy.

She shook her head, then returned to discussing their summer book projects. “You’ll be partnering with someone in your neighborhood to take care of the nearest Little Free Library and make sure it’s stocked with books for the community. Ones you’ve read. I want you to write recommendations too. And if there isn’t a Little Free Library near your home, I can help you find a way to build one.”

Sam grinned. This would be easy. Ms. Malloy’s neighbor, Mr. Lockheart, had built his block’s Little Free Library—with Sam’s help—and it was always well stocked. The recommendations? Those depended on who Sam was teamed with. He liked sharing sports and comic books. He hoped he got someone who liked a lot of different things.

“Sam, your partner is Mason.”

His smile faded. This wouldn’t be so easy after all. While Mason liked science fiction and graphic novels, she also liked to read math and science books. Maybe, Sam decided, we can add in some of Bella’s favorite recommendations too, and it would work out.

The whole summer might still have gone great if Mason hadn’t decided right then to whisper something about Sam and math to Gina Dulaney that sounded like more teasing.

And if Sam hadn’t decided to fire back.

“I hope you won’t have to spend the whole summer with your grandmother again, Mason,” Sam whispered, trying to get her to be quiet. At least about him. “I don’t want to have to do the whole project myself.”

Mason’s face folded shut like a book. She looked hard at her desk.

And WHAM, Ms. Malloy’s hand came down loud on Sam’s desk. “Apologize, Sam. Immediately.”

His stomach cinched up. He’d gone too far, probably. Somehow. He had no idea how. But it was definitely too far.

As the window-unit air conditioner hummed loudly, stirring the chalk dust and sweaty-feet air of the classroom around without actually cooling anything off, someone pig-snorted near the window, and Mason glared at Sam.

He thought of Bodie Jacobs striking out with three people on base. Then he reached for his trusty word.

“______ ...”

Sam gaped, tasting the empty space where the word should have been. He couldn’t for all the summer baseball games in the neighborhood make the sounds that formed his magic get-out-of-trouble word.

He’d used it just that morning, for bumping into the old woman with the pig!

But now? The word was gone.

So was the other word he could think of that meant the same thing.

Sam’s mouth hung open and he stared at Mason, and she glared back. He tried to say the word again. “S______” is all that came out. Nothing more.

The word wasn’t just stuck, it was gone, and the place where it had been was a hole no sound could escape from.

What was happening? He opened and closed his mouth experimentally. “I can’t,” he said.

Talking was fine. His voice wasn’t gone. He didn’t have laryngitis.

It was just that one word. He tried again, opening his mouth wider. “I’m ______.” Nothing.

“Stop fooling around, Sam. This is serious.” Ms. Malloy’s tone had a brittle edge to it.

Just then the bell rang, and everyone lurched toward summer.

Everyone including Mason, who whispered, “My gran passed away, you fish-face jerk,” as she gathered her bag and swept out of fifth grade in a storm of dark curls and worn-out sneakers.

Everyone except Sam, held in his seat by Ms. Malloy’s restraining hand. His stomach churned. Was that what Anita had been trying to tell him that morning?

Probably that’s why Mason hadn’t been able to come watch movies last weekend. Sam blinked hard and stared at his desk. He wished he hadn’t said anything.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw the white pig and the old woman—her willow stick held straight up in the air—and beside her a boy, silver hair sticking up every which way and wearing a long green shirt under a short vest and canvas pants. They strode past the kickball field, across the playground, and then toward the baseball diamond.

When Sam listened really hard over the air conditioner, he heard one of them whistling the tune he’d been trying to figure out that morning.

The classroom’s air-conditioning unit ticked slower and slower until it stalled. Down the hall, Sam could hear his friends opening and closing their lockers and running, shouting toward the big doors at the front of Ursula K. Le Guin Elementary and freedom.

He looked up at Ms. Malloy, and she looked down at him.

“You can’t apologize? Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. Tears made his eyes prickle, which was frustrating. He shook his head hard. He didn’t cry, not over something as dumb as this. “It’s just gone.”

Ms. Malloy got down to eye level with Sam. He knew that when a teacher did that, something was really wrong.

“Listen, Sam. This isn’t a game. You must apologize to Mason. I can’t let you end the year like this.”

“What do you mean?” Panic rose. Getting stuck in fifth grade was just a story that sixth graders told at lunch to scare fifth graders. Even Mason had never teased Sam about that. “I did all the work. I passed math.”

“You did. And you did it well too, once you applied yourself. You’re bright, Sam, when you do the work. But this? This is unacceptable behavior. I don’t want to spend my summer in this hot building any more than you do, so write Mason an apology note if you can’t say it, and we’ll be done.”

One of Ms. Malloy’s grammar posters (It’s = it + is) wilted, a corner peeling away from the wall. She smoothed it back, her charm bracelet jangling against her jacket sleeve. Sam was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and he was hot. He couldn’t imagine how sweaty the adults were. Yuck.

Ms. Malloy turned back to her desk, opened a drawer with a loud squeak in the quiet room, and then handed Sam a piece of lined paper and a pencil.

He started to write. Dear Mason, I’m very very _____

And that was as far as he got. Sam stared at Ms. Malloy. “I can’t find the word.”

Frowning, she pulled her enormous dictionary from the shelf and put it on Sam’s desk with a thunk. She walked back to her desk and sat down. “I’ll wait.”

This dictionary was legendary at the elementary school. The words were so small that it came with its own magnifying lens, and Ms. Malloy had to supervise students when using it, so they didn’t break the lens or try to fry bugs with it.

Now, though, Sam didn’t even know where to begin. He was getting a little scared.

He’d forgotten things before. His mind had gone blank at the blackboard when he was trying to calculate a word problem. That had been awful. But he’d never lost an entire word and all its synonyms.

He kicked the desk leg, nervous energy finding its way to his feet.

“I’m not kidding, Ms. Malloy. Even the word you said just now: a______? That’s gone too.”

Sam knew what she meant when she’d said the word, but he couldn’t say it, and it was starting to be hard to even think it.

Gone. Lost.

He felt as bad as the day he’d frozen over the math problem, the chalk getting damp in his hand as the substitute math teacher prodded him with, “Come ON, Sam, this isn’t hard.” His classmates had whispered—not quietly, either—and Mason had shushed them.

Mason had been really nice to him later, also. But he’d been so embarrassed that she’d had to keep people from teasing him, and he’d snapped at her. Called her a name, in front of people.

Ever since, they’d been not-as-good friends. And today might have wrecked them entirely. She’d been nice, even though she was sad. He could see that now. Which made him feel even worse.

If he could make it up to Mason, he would. Once he got out of school. But, Sam wondered, if I can’t say the word, or write it, how can I possibly fix things?

Ms. Malloy studied her watch. Ten minutes past summer.

“I want to get out of fifth grade, Ms. Malloy,” Sam finally said. “But the words you want? I mean it. They’re really gone. I think they were stolen.”

Ms. Malloy frowned. Her forehead wrinkled and she pressed her fingers to the spot beneath her glasses where they rested on her nose. “I’m going to call your parents.”

Sam swallowed hard. No one wanted to hear a teacher say that.

“Come on, Sam, all you have to do is apologize.”

He tried a new tactic. “I regre—” he began. That word would probably work as well as other words he suddenly couldn’t say. But that missing-tooth feeling happened again, and the word unspooled even as Sam said it. As if it had been pulled from his mouth, a shimmering ribbon flickered near the air conditioner, then flew out the window.

Sam shut his mouth angrily and stared out the window, blinking hard, trying to figure out what was happening. Then, that willow stick waved below the sill.

Just beyond it, past the school’s playground, the neighborhood league was starting to set up on the now-impossible-to-reach baseball field. Coach Lockheart put a canvas bag of aluminum bats by home plate. He kicked at the dusty diamond. Dirt and lime puffed up, then settled in the heat.

And closer to the building, that same wild-haired boy skittered away from the window, holding the stick and trailing a sparkling ribbon. Sam thought the boy shouted, “I did it, Nan!”

But when Sam blinked and rubbed his eyes, the boy was gone.

Sam looked at his teacher. “Honestly, Ms. Malloy. This morning, there was a pig by Mrs. Lockheart’s yard and an old woman with a stick, and I think I saw them just now—”

Ms. Malloy blinked. “A pig? What does that have to do with your apology?” Then she sighed heavily. Finally, she waved him out of his chair. “Let’s go, Sam.”

With loud footsteps, accompanied by the click-pop of her cane, Ms. Malloy headed down the hall to the principal, with Sam in tow. He’d been right: she didn’t believe him.

Right before Sam and Ms. Malloy reached the doors that led outside, they turned into Principal Vane’s glass-walled office. He was packing up his bag when Sam and Ms. Malloy entered.

Sam glanced behind him, through the glass doors, out to the playground one more time. There, the old woman and the young boy were crossing the field with the snow-white pig.

“Wait, there they are! Ms. Malloy!” Sam pointed, but by the time Ms. Malloy and Dr. Vane stopped talking and came to look, the old woman had waved her willow switch and they’d disappeared.

“What is it, Sam?” Ms. Malloy asked, concerned.

“Nothing. I thought I saw—” Sam couldn’t understand it. Maybe there was something really wrong with him after all. Maybe I’m getting sick? he worried. On the first day of summer, oh no!

“Mr. Culver?” Dr. Vane said. “I hear you won’t apologize. And who is where, exactly?”

Dr. Vane was new, and his white hair was cut close to his head, which was almost square. He was even stricter than Ms. Malloy.

“No one’s there,” Sam said. “And I think I might be sick. I mean, I feel okay, but something’s . . . not right?” Maybe he should have spoken up about the pig, but he didn’t think Principal Vane would believe him either.

Ms. Malloy interceded. “Sam is an excellent teller of stories, Dr. Vane, but this is unusual, even for him.”

“Can I go home if I’m sick?” Sam couldn’t help trying it. Dr. Vane could have let him off with a warning.

Ms. Malloy looked worried. “Maybe it’s best.”

Sam heaved a sigh of relief. Summer was only moments away.

But Principal Vane frowned. “Ms. Malloy can walk you home, Sam. I’ll call your parents to let them know. And you’ll all come back here on Monday to meet with me again unless you either apologize or bring a doctor’s note.”

What?

“Dr. Vane’s decided you’ll need to come to school until you can apologize, Sam. We both will.” Ms. Malloy sounded a bit mournful.

“I’ll explain it to your parents. The school is serious about mean-spirited behavior. You could spend all next week here, Sam, or as little as one minute, right now.”

Sam tried once more, but the word _____ just wouldn’t come.

Ms. Malloy sighed, then handed Sam his backpack.

“I’m sorry that’s your decision, Sam. See you Monday.” Principal Vane frowned at him, and then at Ms. Malloy, and shut his door.

Ms. Malloy made him wait by the doors of Ursula K. Le Guin Elementary while she locked up her room. Then Sam and his teacher began the long walk back to Mount Cloud village. Together.

It was the worst day, kind of ever.

As they walked home, Sam kept an eye out for anything weird.

If he could show Ms. Malloy that strange things were afoot— for instance, a word-stealing white pig—maybe she’d let him off the hook.

But they crossed the big street leading away from the modern brick-and-stone elementary school and turned into their neighborhood—streets lined with Victorian cottages, brightly painted, two green parks with benches and bird feeders and a community garden, all so much older than the school and the bright city that Sam’s dad took the train to every day—without seeing anything strange.

“Sam, I know the past few years have brought a lot of change for you, but you’ve been doing fine. Now you’re fighting with your best friend, you’re distracted, you’re snooping around your neighbor’s hedges—is everything okay?”

The thing about living down the street from your teacher, Sam thought, is they know too much about your life.

He stopped searching the hedges for the old woman, the boy, and the pig. It was important to look adults in the eye when he wanted them to believe him. “Everything’s fine, Ms. Malloy.”

Sam’s teacher was tall and what his dad called bird-boned. Her wrists were knobby, and her fingers too, and all her clothes hung straight down like curtains. Her charm bracelet was big and jingly, and her cane was as black and shiny as her hair.

Sam liked her cane—Ms. Malloy had stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on it when they studied the solar system. She was pretty old, Sam thought. More than thirty, maybe even close to forty, like Sam’s dad and Anita were, but nowhere near as old as Principal Vane.

She might not have much to say when students did okay, but when Ms. Malloy was really pleased with their work, she’d smile, and her eyes would sparkle. She’d say, “Brilliant.”

But she wasn’t smiling now.

“If you want to talk,” she said.

“Honest.” Sam tried to fill in the silence. “Everything’s fine!” Except for a couple of lost words.

Not lost. They’d been stolen. He was sure of it now. How could Sam explain that this wasn’t his fault? He wished he could prove the theft without Ms. Malloy thinking he had made it up.

Her cane and heels click-clack-clicked on the sidewalk, and the summer breeze blew the tree leaves into a long shushing sound. They turned onto Calloway Drive—their street.

The first house on the corner, the Lockhearts,’ was the biggest and oldest Victorian in all of Mount Cloud village. The glass windows—Anita, an architect, called them “mullioned”—and gingerbread porch of the house appeared in all the community posters.

Last summer, Coach Lockheart built the street’s Little Free Library to resemble his house, painting it the same four purple shades—light to dark—with cream gingerbread trim. He’d let Sam and Anita help.

The box was a lot bigger than most Little Free Libraries because of all the additions. It sat outside Mrs. Lockheart’s low green hedge, which was bordered on both sides with tulips.

Ms. Malloy had tulips too, but no hedge. Just a big oak tree. Her flowers had gotten crushed in the same incident as Mrs. Lockheart’s, but she hadn’t minded as much. Just tossed the ball back.

Sam wondered if Ms. Malloy was going to walk him past her house and all the way to his. This was another problem with living down the street from your teacher.

“I’m okay, Ms. Malloy,” he said in his most serious voice.

“Okay, Sam. I won’t press. But I’d like to get this figured out,” Ms. Malloy said. “Sixth grade is a big responsibility. You set the example for the rest of the school. You can’t be so cavalier about your friends’ feelings.”

“I know Ms. Malloy—” Sam began. But right then, on the other side of the Lockhearts’ hedge, he saw a pig’s tail and then a snout sticking through the branches. “There you are.”

“Who?” Ms. Malloy looked around, but Sam was already scrambling under the hedge, trying to grab the pig. His backpack jammed in the bushes and he got stuck and scraped. Meantime, the pig leapt away, snorting, just out of reach. “Sami

He wriggled his backpack free and crawled from the other side of the hedge, determined to show Ms. Malloy that there really had been a pig. Sam was sweating, and the dirt clung to his knees and arms. When he stood up and chased the pig, the old woman emerged from the bushes and started chasing Sam too. She raised her arm, trying to swat him with the willow stick again.

The pig, with a tendril of ribbon dangling from its jaw, ran straight for the Little Free Library. Its Victorian gingerbread-trimmed door hung open. When the pig got there, it and the old woman took an enormous leap, shrunk rapidly, and then disappeared inside the library. The door slammed shut.

Sam stumbled, stunned. What had happened? But he couldn’t let them get away.

“Oh no you don’t.” Sam grabbed the frame of the miniature house, knocking pieces of trim loose. He opened the door and stretched his hand into the Little Free Library.

When something caught Sam’s fingers and pulled, he tried to yank his hand free.

Sam pulled, and the something yanked back, until his arm was good and stuck in the Little Free Library. His backpack dropped to the ground as he grunted and struggled. The grip on his fingers grew painful as the library rocked on its purple-and-white-striped post.

“Sam?” Ms. Malloy’s voice came through muffled from beyond the Little Free Library. “What are you doing?”

At that moment, whatever had his hand released it, and Sam tumbled backward to the ground.

He looked up to see his teacher, frowning.

“Nothing! I thought I saw a—” Her eyes narrowed. She hadn’t seen the pig. Maybe Sam was seeing things. “A wasp! I wanted to get it out before any little kids got stung!”

Ms. Malloy continued to look dubious. “You should be more careful.”

“I will be,” Sam assured her.

But even as he said the words, Sam glimpsed two dark eyes and a puff of silver hair peering over the pile of free books inside the library. The boy—though the creature looked like a bug deep in the shadows—wasn’t wearing a green shirt after all. That was his skin. He was green, with silver hair, like the old woman. And he had dark, beady eyes like a bug.

Except he was too big for a bug. And his hands were as strong as Sam’s. And he was glaring at Sam.

Sam glared back. He lunged at the face behind the books.

“Sam!” Ms. Malloy squinted at the library, fumbling for her glasses. Then she grabbed Sam’s shirttail and pulled. A twisting, yanking, tumble later, the Little Free Library’s door swung, dangling, on one hinge.

Below the door, five figures sprawled among the remainder of Mrs. Lockheart’s tulips. Five. Not two.

Ms. Malloy. Sam. A small, fuzzy, green boy with silver hair. A very small silver-haired old woman who raised a long switch into the air threateningly. And a tiny white pig with a pink snout and a brown leash. The edge of a sparkling ribbon inscribed with gleaming letters dangled from the pig’s mouth.

“Got you!” Sam yelled. “Ms. Malloy, can you see? This is what stole—”

Ms. Malloy stared, her mouth hanging open.

The pig grunted and struggled. Sam’s fingers tightened around the pig’s leash. With his free hand, he reached for the ribbon.

“Give that back!” The old woman shouted, then blushed nearly invisible when Ms. Malloy turned toward her, shocked.

Sam hadn’t expected his teacher to see the creatures. To his surprise, Ms. Malloy’s eyes widened. Sam didn’t expect her to react the way she did, either.

On a normal day, an adult like Ms. Malloy ought to have said, “What IS this?” or maybe, “Who is that?”

But instead, his teacher shrieked “YOU!” at the top of her lungs and lunged for the tiny old lady. “GIVE IT BACK!”

Now it was Sam’s turn to be shocked.

Ms. Malloy’s voice suddenly sounded so young and outraged. In fact, she sounded a lot like Sam.

The old woman, in reply, struggled to take the leash from Sam’s grip. She stuck out her tongue at Ms. Malloy. “I can’t, and I won’t.”

The pig rooted around in Ms. Malloy’s school bag until she smacked it away with a loud, “THIEF!”

And then the younger creature, whom they had all forgotten in the chaos, bit Sam’s hand.

“Ow!” Sam let go of the leash fast.

Then he and his fifth-grade teacher sat on the sidewalk in shock as the green boy, the tiny old woman, and the white pig disappeared into the Little Free Library.

“Well, I never thought I’d see that wretched thing again,” Ms. Malloy grumbled.

Sam shook his stinging hand and stared at his teacher.

“What did they take from you?” Ms. Malloy asked, her voice shaking.

For the third time that day, Sam was left speechless.