“I don’t understand,” Sam said over the creak of Ms. Malloy’s porch swing.
His fifth-grade teacher swung back and forth, sipping a lemonade she’d gotten from the kitchen. Sam’s glass of lemonade sweated on the table next to the swing, untouched. Anita made hers a lot sweeter. “What are they?”
“Maybe goblins?” Ms. Malloy said. “Or fairies. I’ve never been sure.”
Sam swallowed. “Why are they here?”
“In Mount Cloud?” Ms. Malloy mused. “They took something from me a long time ago. Now I guess they’re back for more.” She looked pale and sad. Her hand was shaking so hard the ice clinked in her glass.
Sam scooted to the edge of the porch swing to see the Little Free Library better.
The box was tilted, the door hung open, dangling from one hinge, and Mrs. Lockheart’s hedge looked like hogs had trampled it.
Which was kind of what had happened.
Ms. Malloy and Sam had pulled all the books out and pounded at the sides of the library, but they hadn’t found a single silver hair. They’d tried to put it all back in order, but the box wobbled on its post. Sam promised himself that he’d come back to fix it later.
He would much rather have been playing baseball.
Down the street, Anita’s car pulled up to the curb, home from picking Bella up at prekindergarten.
Now was his chance to explain what had happened with Mason before Ms. Malloy talked to his stepmom. Maybe now he could get out of trouble—or at least not have to go back to school on Monday to meet with Principal Vane. Ms. Malloy couldn’t deny she’d seen something.
“I think whoever they are stole my words too.”
Ms. Malloy looked at Sam hard. “Which words?”
“The ones you wanted me to say today.” He held his breath and waited.
“Oh, Sam, oh no. I’m so sorry.” Ms. Malloy looked downright embarrassed. “I thought you were just being stubborn. I never thought—” She drew a breath. “I’d stopped thinking they were real.”
She meant the creatures. Sam knew it. He inspected the scrapes on his arms from the bushes. “We both saw them, though?” He had to be sure. Adults might be unreliable about this kind of thing.
She rubbed her temples. Her hair, escaped from its bun, had fallen into her eyes. She brushed it away. “I saw them. But, Sam . . .” She paled. She’d been about to say something else; he was certain. Instead, she sipped her lemonade until the ice clinked in the glass, then took a deep breath. “Sam, you need to get those words back! Not being able to apologize? I know how difficult a life that could make for you.”
What did she mean? Sam stared at her. The porch swing creaked. “So I don’t have to go back to school on Monday? Because you believe me? And you understand? And you’ll tell Dr. Vane?”
Ms. Malloy blinked. She shook her head slowly, side to side. “Unfortunately, Principal Vane expects you, and he’s very strict. You’ll have to come back until you can apologize. There’s no way around that. And if I tried to tell Dr. Vane what we saw . . .” She sighed. “Sam, I wish I could, but I just can’t. Dr. Vane’s so new. I could lose my job. And I love teaching.”
She was a really good teacher. Sam didn’t want her to lose her job either. “Maybe you could just tell him I did say _____?” He tried to smile, hopefully.
She shook her head. “I’m not going to say you did work that you didn’t do, Sam. Perhaps you can think of another way around the situation, however. Did the—goblins—say anything this morning? Before they took your words?”
She did believe him.
He nodded. “The old woman said I was careless. Then she shook that stick at me.”
“Sam, the times you’ve said you’re sorry, did you truly mean it?”
He concentrated on his sneakers. “Not always.”
“But sometimes?”
Sam nodded. “Of course.” When he’d fought with his friends when he was really young, he’d meant it when he’d said ____. When he’d hurt his stepmom’s feelings, or Bella’s. Those times. “But maybe not this morning.”
“I tried to read everything I could about magic creatures once. All the different kinds. Did you know there were different kinds? Some nicer than others. They used to steal things people were careless about. But then they disappeared—except for in stories. And now they’re back in Mount Cloud!” Ms. Malloy said. She stared at the Little Free Library. “That’s a problem.”
“What did they take from you?” Sam asked.
And that was when Ms. Malloy began telling Sam the strangest story he’d ever heard.
“There was a brown-and-white pig,” she began. “Right here in the village—you know I grew up in this house, right?”
Sam shook his head. He hadn’t known that.
“I bent down to scratch the pig’s ears. And I think I said _____. Well, I said those words a lot, whenever someone was kind, or even if they were mean. I didn’t think about them, I just said them. And there was a lady with the pig. She waved a stick at me, and I could almost feel the word being pulled from my mouth. And suddenly, I couldn’t say it anymore. My parents sent me to all kinds of doctors, and I learned quickly not to mention goblins or fairies.”
What were the words? She couldn’t even tell him. Just like what had happened to Sam.
She tipped the lemonade glass to her lips and, when there wasn’t anything to drink, crunched one of the ice cubes between her teeth. It made an awful sound.
“So, after a while, I didn’t believe the goblins were real any more than the doctors and my teachers did.”
Ms. Malloy pushed at the porch floor with her cane, and the swing moved back and forth in the hot summer air.
Across the street, Anita set out the lemonade pitcher and a plate of cookies. Her head turned as if she was looking for Sam. Then she checked her watch.
“I should go home soon,” he said.
That broke the storytelling spell. Ms. Malloy stopped the swing. “Of course, Sam. I’ll go over with you and explain everything. Well, some things. Just—I mean, it’s up to you, but I can’t . . . I’ll lose my job if people thought I’m seeing goblins.”
She looked so upset, and Sam patted her arm like he’d seen his stepmom do when Bella or his dad was worried. “It will be okay, Ms. Malloy. I’ll figure something out.”
“Thank you, Sam.” She walked slowly down the steps of her porch and Sam followed her. She didn’t sound convinced. They were almost all the way across the street when Ms. Malloy said, “Starting next Monday, at school.”
Sam couldn’t help it. He groaned. But then his stepmom was there with cookies and lemonade, and Bella came running at him and gave him a hug. She jostled the lemonade, and it splashed cold on his shirt. “Thorry!” Bella said through her two missing top teeth.
And for a moment, it was just like a normal first day of summer. But Sam knew, if he was going to get out of trouble, that he needed to catch those goblins-or-fairies and get his words back. As soon as possible. Like today.
As Ms. Malloy talked quietly with his stepmom, he watched the Little Free Library carefully and sipped his lemonade.
“What are you doing, Tham?” Bella asked. “Can I help?”
Sam’s half sister stood in the doorway of his room, staring at the mess he’d made on the floor.
The mess would eventually be a goblin trap. His own design: shoebox, pocket dictionary, string, and a stick. But for now, it was a frustrating heap.
Bella, at five, was his favorite person in the world, but she was too little to help with this. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“What is?” Bella was also the most curious person in the world.
While Ms. Malloy had explained to Anita some of the situation, keeping the goblins out of it, Bella had curled up beside Sam at the porch table and sucked her thumb. She’d listened wide-eyed while Anita had asked Sam careful, concerned questions.
Now she touched one purple, sparkly sneaker to the edge of the goblin trap. “Why are you building that? Why don’t you just say thorry?”
Since Bella’s front teeth had both fallen out a few weeks before, most everything she said that began with an s sounded fuzzy.
“I want to say it, Bell. I have to go back to Ms. Malloy’s classroom every day until I can.”
“But Ms. Malloy lives across the street. Why do you have to go all the way to school?” Bella worked hard on the s sound for each word.
Sam winced. He had to go all the way to school because Ms. Malloy had talked to Dr. Vane. And Dr. Vane was a stickler for rules. And because an old woman and a pig had stolen his words. Thinking about it made the back of Sam’s throat itch and his eyes prickle. To make the feeling go away, he kicked the goblin trap. Hard enough so that it came apart with a clatter.
“Sam!” Anita called from downstairs.
“_____” Sam replied, his mouth opening and shutting around the space where the word was supposed to be. Then, “Won’t do it again!”
Bella’s eyes widened. “You really can’t thay it?”
Sam’s breath caught. He shook his head, ashamed and frightened. And Bella, thinking he was still joking, giggled nervously. “Tham, maybe if I thay it with you?”
That was it, the last straw. It had been a very long, terrible, hot day.
“Bella,” Sam said. “Practice isn’t going to help. I can’t THAY it. Period.” His heart raced, and he immediately felt terrible.
Bella’s eyes glittered and then the tears came. She disappeared with a wail that carried all the way to the kitchen.
Sam wanted to go after her, but he was also so embarrassed and angry. Instead, he sat there on the floor, staring at the goblin trap.
Why couldn’t Ms. Malloy have just told his parents about the goblins or fairies— No. No adult would have believed her, either. At least this way, he’d maybe have an ally when he needed to stake out the Little Free Library. That’s where it seemed like the goblins were congregating. And if he could catch one of them, he’d have proof.
A moment later, Anita stomped upstairs, holding his sobbing sister. “Sam! Really?”
From his stepmom’s expression, Sam was pretty sure that when his dad got home, he’d be one hundred percent grounded. He was a nice dad and pretty patient as things went, but the call from school and a sobbing sister all in one day were a lot for anybody.
And Sam hadn’t even done anything—well, he hadn’t done all that much—wrong.
Anita went back downstairs. He climbed into bed and pulled all the covers over his head.
Soon enough, he heard his dad come home. The front door squeaked as it swung wide and closed with a heavy thunk. Then Anita spoke quietly to Sam’s dad at the door. And once the door shut, Sam’s dad came upstairs and into Sam’s room. He was still wearing his summer suit—one he’d once said was kind of like a knight’s armor for his job at the design and PR agency—plus his T. rex tie. He wore the suit because he had to. He wore the tie because it made Bella and Sam laugh.
But this afternoon, Sam’s dad took one long look at the goblin trap splayed across the floor and then sat down on the corner of Sam’s bed.
“Hey, kid. Rough end to the school year?” Sam’s dad’s voice was quietly curious. Sam nodded furiously, and the blanket rustled. His dad’s compassion made the anger evaporate; he could feel it shimmering away, like heat from the playground.
But when his eyes began filling with tears again, he knuckled them away and pressed his face into his pillow.
“I don’t know what’s happening. But it’s NOT my fault.” Muffled by the fabric, Sam’s voice sounded thick and muted, even to his own ears. He turned his head to the side, facing the wall, so his dad couldn’t see the tears still flowing down his cheeks. He knew he couldn’t tell his dad about the goblins, either.
“That sounds really frustrating.” Mr. Culver didn’t push further. “Especially when everyone’s thinking you’re in the wrong.”
Sam nodded but didn’t turn over. His dad always got him. Ever since his mom had left—a letter on the table for his dad, a postcard for Sam, because he’d been a baby—they’d been a really good team. And summer was their best season because of baseball. They both loved the game.
Sam remembered then that next Sunday dad’s company had seats at the stadium—the Phillies versus the Mets. Please, he begged himself. Please let this be fixed by then. Please let me have caught the goblins by then and made them give me my words back. “It’s not a very fun time,” he whispered.
“Not fun for Bella, either. She worships you. And you hurt her feelings. And Mason’s. Things will be rough until you apologize.” His dad’s voice was still calm, but with each word, Sam felt himself shrinking. He wished he could turn invisible too.
“I want to make it better. I just don’t have the right words,” Sam finally whispered.
His dad sat for a few more minutes, quietly, and then patted Sam on the leg. “You’ll figure it out. Sometimes it’s not what you say; what you do matters more.”
The bed creaked as Sam’s dad got up, then the stairs creaked, each tread like an old keyboard made of groans, as he descended them.
Just like the Lockhearts and Ms. Malloy, the Culvers lived in an old Victorian house; the kind with a lot of woodwork and shadows in strange places. It had secret doors and built-in closets, and Bella and Sam had opened all of them, hoping for one like in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. So far, they hadn’t found any secret doors that led anywhere good, like a Mets game, or spring training, or the World Series.
Instead, sometimes they thought they saw mice, and Bella had sworn a couple times lately she’d seen fairies.
“Hey, Bella?” Sam knocked on her door. Then he pushed it open. She wasn’t there.
Out her window, he saw his sister standing on the porch, a lightning bug jar in her hands.
He walked back down the curving stairs, looking out the old glass windows that made tiny patterns on the lawn as the sky turned a purplish blue outside. The evening was warm, fireflies pricked the grass, and cicadas hummed. Bella ran through it all, trying to catch the lights and put them in a special jar.
He went to help her.
As he knelt and gently cupped a firefly so she could sweep it into her lighting bug container, one Anita had punched a few holes into and laced with leaves, Bella whispered, “Thank you, Tham.”
“You’re welcome,” Sam replied, and he meant it. And the word didn’t get stolen. He breathed a sigh of relief.
At the edge of the yard, though, Sam saw a glimmer of white. Then, in the moonlight, a silver-haired boy riding a white pig crossed the street toward Mrs. Lockheart’s house. “Bella, are those the fairies you said you saw? Can you help me catch them?”
Bella stared into her glass jar, watching the small lights turn on and off. “What, Tham?” By the time he drew her attention away from her fireflies, the creatures across the street were gone.
“You all right now, Sam?” Their dad came out and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“It’s been a really strange day,” Sam replied. “I’m ____.” He shook his head. Still couldn’t say it. “I’m glad it’s over.”
But the evening wasn’t over, of course.
Once Bella was asleep, and the lights had turned on upstairs at Ms. Malloy’s and at the Lockhearts, Sam gathered up his goblin trap and rebuilt it on the sidewalk below Mrs. Lockheart’s Little Free Library.
If those creatures liked words so much, Sam had a whole book full of them.
He trailed the string along beside him, set up to watch from behind the oak tree, and, with the cicadas singing, watched the stars come out in between the branches.
If Mason hadn’t been so mad, Sam might have asked if she’d set goblin traps with him.
He kind of wished he had. It was too quiet, sitting out here alone.
He checked his watch, which had glow-in-the-dark numbers. Eight thirty. He couldn’t help it. He yawned.
He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, Mason and her friend Gina stood beside the Little Free Library. He hadn’t seen or heard them arrive. And they’d been there long enough to pull apart the goblin trap. Mason held the dictionary spine-out as if she was about to put it inside the library.
Was she peering at something in the box? Sam couldn’t tell. His muscles tensed like right before trying to steal a base.
He didn’t want to scare Mason and Gina, but he didn’t want any goblins hiding in the Little Free Library to jump out and steal their words, either.
Worse, Sam really didn’t want the two girls to see him sitting here holding the string end of a homemade goblin trap. He was caught.
For a minute, Mason’s glow-in-the-dark nail stickers winked like fireflies against the box. Then she pushed the dictionary inside and closed the door as best she could with its broken hinge.
“Why do you even bother? He was so mean.” Gina cracked her gum.
“We’re doing a summer project together, is all,” Mason said. “And we’ve been friends a long time. I wanted to try and help him get out of trouble with Ms. Malloy, at least.”
“It’s your summer, I guess.” Gina shook her head. She headed down the street to her own house and went inside.
Mason paused, looking up at the stars. Listening to the cicadas. Sam didn’t move.
Then, without turning toward the tree he sat behind, Mason said, “Sam.”
Sam gulped. How long had she known he was there, listening? He wanted to melt into the grass with embarrassment.
“What are you doing out here?”
“What are you doing out here?” Sam said back, and then scrambled for the first thing that came to mind. “Me, I thought I’d study who uses the library and when.” The words came out jumbled, but kind of made sense. Still, Sam’s skin felt red-hot.
“At night?” Mason looked back down at the shoebox and then up at the oak tree. She narrowed her eyes. “With a trap?” She waited a minute more. “I was trying to help you. But you’re getting really weird, Sam.”
He sat silent, embarrassed again, and also kind of mad. Mason sighed and walked down the sidewalk, heading home. “See you later, I guess.”
Maybe Mason and I aren’t friends like that anymore, anyway, Sam thought. Which might be at least partly my fault, but I can’t fix it until I get my words back.
So Sam waited until she’d disappeared into her house and then he set up the goblin trap again. He pulled the dictionary from the library—checking to see if he saw anything (or anyone) strange inside first—and set it open this time to the Ss, and one of the words the creatures had stolen from him. He could read it but not say it, which was so frustrating. And then he waited some more.
His stepmom called from the front porch. “Sam? Time for bed.”
Sam didn’t answer because right then, he saw the two goblin-fairy-creatures, heading for the library. The silver-haired people walked close to the hedge, beside the white pig. The pig itself was snuffling wetly along the sidewalk and limping a little.
The pair spoke to each other, their voices low and musical. Sam could barely make out what they were saying. He thought he heard the boy saying, “I almost had that old man’s word. I would have, if I had a spell! Show me how the magic works, Nana, please.”
Quiet as crickets, the old woman answered, “Not just yet, Tolver. I want to make sure we do this right or not at all.”
Their words confused Sam, along with what happened next.
The old woman climbed into the Little Free Library. The boy lifted the pig up as she waved her willow branch around, and the pig also disappeared inside the box. Then, holding the pig’s leash, the boy began to pull himself inside.
How did they all fit? Them and all the books too? Sam was baffled.
But if I caught them, Sam realized, they’d have to tell me how and give my words back.
He left his hiding spot and grabbed the silver-haired boy’s boot, then his canvas pant leg, the cuff of which was just then disappearing inside the library, and, finally, the pig.
“Get off!” Kicking and struggling, the boy turned to look at Sam, and he started becoming transparent.
“No you don’t!” Sam yelled for the second time that day, and tried to hold on.
As he did, Sam realized he was shrinking, growing small while the library loomed large.
But when the boy kicked free, Sam fell back and stopped shrinking. As he struggled to his feet, the old woman, the boy, and their pig crawled over books toward the back of the library, which seemed to have a hole in it. There was a star-filled sky on the other side, and Sam imagined he could smell the sea. The old woman had already disappeared, and the boy was about to. Sam reached out fast and caught the pig’s trailing leash once more. This time, he refused to let go.
The pig squeaked, surprised, as the hole at the back of the library closed. Sam grasped the tiny leash with his fingers and pulled gently until the miniature pig sat in his hand. Very carefully, he put the pig in the goblin-trap shoebox and closed the lid.
Then he brushed Little Free Library splinters off his sleeve and listened to the pig grunting and snuffling in the shoebox. He walked home, shaking.
Whatever was going on inside the Little Free Library had something to do with his words disappearing, and Sam would figure it out. He had the whole weekend to work on it.
Just as soon as he figured out what miniature goblin-fairy pigs ate.
And how to hide one from his parents. And his sister.
He let himself back into his house, the shoebox grumbling and grunting quietly under his arm.
Once he got the pig situated—air holes in the shoebox, some vegetable peelings and a piece of felt from Bella’s craft room as a bed, and a small bandage for the pig’s scraped hoof—Sam tried to sleep.
He wished, as he pulled the covers up and thought of the strange hole at the back of the Little Free Library, that he had friends who could help him figure out what had happened tonight. Ms. Malloy was great, but she couldn’t possibly fit in a Little Free Library, and Mason was out of the question. There was Suyi from baseball, but he was a year older and might make fun of Sam when he heard what Sam was doing. It really should’ve been Mason.
The Culvers had moved to Mount Cloud a couple of years after Bella was born. Most of the kids on the street were Bella’s age or in high school, and, though Sam knew a few others from the neighborhood baseball league for the longest time, Mason had been his best friend. He’d met Mason walking to the Fourth of July picnic the year they moved in.
Mason had been a perfect partner for games and elementary-school pranks. She knew he was afraid of spiders, which no one else did. She loved graphic novels as much as he did, even if everything else she read was different. They watched all the same movies. She would be perfect for this.
But that first time he’d teased her this year, he’d called her Mason McGarPEE in front of Ben and Suyi—sixth graders—and she’d started to drift away. Sam had said _____ then, but she’d yelled, “You always say ‘sorry,’ but you don’t mean it.” And though they’d teased each other off and on ever since, it wasn’t always in a nice way when they were on. And she was a master at the silent treatment when they were off.
The shoebox sat on Sam’s desk, drenched in moonlight. He’d taped the lid down and made sure the air holes were clear.
Now, thanks to that pig and its goblins-or-fairies-or-whatever, Sam couldn’t say _____ at all.
At least, not yet.