“When I went to the bathroom this morning, there was one in the tub,” Fina says, grimacing. “It just sat there, watching me.”

“See, Emma? We can’t go on like this.” Mr. Ramirez offers me the helmet and vacuum cleaner. “And besides, I have to make some lunch.”

“Did they have a red dot on them?” I ask.

Fina shakes her head. “No. They were black.”

“Then they aren’t black widows. And if they’re big, then they aren’t brown recluse spiders. So they’re probably harmless.”

Gram taught me about spiders. She said it was smart to know what the poisonous ones looked like, especially spending so much time in the woods. She wasn’t bothered by the other kinds, though.

Fina is staring at me like I’ve just told her I can fly. “Harmless spiders?” she repeats. “There’s no such thing as a harmless spider. I’ll need years of therapy to get the image of that tub spider out of my head.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Mr. Ramirez says to her. “Emma’s working for the other side.”

“You mean she’s Team Spider?” Fina asks, clutching her hand to her heart.

I think we can agree by now that the Ramirez family is extremely weird. In an extremely awesome way.

I look from Fina to Mr. Ramirez and grin before jamming the baseball helmet on my head. “I’m not a spy,” I say. Then I lower my voice to a whisper. “I’m a double agent.”

“Excellent,” Fina says.

The two of us go around the house, sucking up all the cobwebs from the corners and checking under the furniture for more spiders. Every time we move a chair to look underneath, I lift the vacuum nozzle and say, “I’m going in.” Then Fina raises the bat over her shoulder and says, “Copy that. I’ll be your cover.”

By the time we’re done, we have found forty-eight cents, half a chocolate bar, one of those little umbrellas you put in fruity drinks (“I’ve been looking for that everywhere!” Fina says), and zero spiders.

“I think we scared them all away,” Fina says, taking off her mask (a baseball catcher’s mask, I’ve figured out) and flopping down onto the sofa, panting.

“I think your parents tricked us into cleaning your house,” I reply.

Fina’s eyes go wide. “Outsmarted again!” she says, shaking her fist.

“It’s okay. Your parents seem so cool. Mine would never let me run around the house swinging a baseball bat. And your mom’s hair! I love the purple.”

“She promised me that after my Quinceañera, I can get blue streaks.”

“What’s a Quinceañera?” I ask.