“Maddie Li?” a woman’s voice said. “Danny Li’s sister?”

“Yes, is something wrong?” Panic gripped her. “Is he hurt?”

“I’m sorry to alarm you. No, he’s perfectly healthy.”

The woman identified herself as Kerin Labbott, the camp’s assistant director. “We called your mother first, and she directed us to you. Because Danny is, well, he’s refusing to leave his cabin. He won’t say why. It’s quite unusual for him—he’s such an active participant that his cabin counselor has to corral him back in at lights out.”

“Let me talk to him,” Maddie said, her pulse still quick, the tentacles of panic not yet released.

Maddie heard the creak of a door and then Kerin explaining who she had on the phone.

“Mads?” Danny said.

He sounded stuffed up. Like he had a cold. Or had been crying.

“Hey, kid, how those fireflies treating ya?” Maddie said breezily.

Silence and then a simple, nasal “I miss you.”

A vise squeezed Maddie’s heart. “I miss you too, Danny. So much.”

“I want to go home. When you go home. When will you be home?”

“Soon,” Maddie said, though she still had more than a couple of weeks left at ValleyStart. “But what’s wrong? Emojis don’t lie. From the ones you’ve been sending, you seemed the definition of a happy camper.”

“Nothing. I just don’t like it here anymore.”

“Why? Did someone say something? Or do something?”

Silence.

“Danny, you can tell me.” Maddie paused. “Please tell me . . .”

“They took my socks. They won’t give them back.”

His special socks—the ones he lived in until the smell made Maddie’s eyes water and she begged him to let her wash them. The socks Mom and Dad bought him, together, at the opening of the Gumberoo theme park.

“I’ll talk to Kerin. We’ll get them back, okay? I promise.”

Danny still didn’t respond, and Maddie hugged her arms against her chest, wishing it was her brother she was holding.

“Danny, is there something else? Do you know why they took your socks? Did they need a wash—”

“No! I washed them on my feet in the lake like every day.”

“Okay, but there has to be a reason.”

“They . . . This one kid said I was a liar. But I’m not a liar.”

“I know you’re not, bud.”

“I told everyone I knew Esmé Theot, and he called me a liar. I told them Esmé Theot read the last chapter of the first Gumberoo to me as a bedtime story, and he called me a liar. So . . .”

“So what, Danny?”

“I put a snake in his bed.”

“Danny!”

“A garter snake—won’t hurt him!”