Gretel is still comforting her brother.

“Don’t worry,” I say.

“Will you help us find our way home?” she asks.

“We’ll help you,” I say. But what I really mean is we’ll help them find the cake house, and not their actual house.

“But how?” Gretel asks, narrowing her eyes at me and taking her brother’s hand. “I would like to know a specific plan.”

Why am I not surprised? I also like to always know a specific plan. Too bad I don’t have one right now.

“Let’s walk … that way,” I say, pointing forward. In the original story, a bird shows them the way to the cake house. So all we have to do is find the bird.

Hmm. I hope that bird isn’t the same bird that protected the fence. No, it can’t be. This bird tries to help the kids, right?

I look up in the air. There are a lot of birds. But none of them are tweeting at us.

“So where are you from, anyway?” Gretel asks. “Are your parents worried about you being out in the forest by yourselves? Or did they drop you off here, like ours did?”

“Neither,” I say.

Jonah snort-laughs. “Right now, our parents are so mad at us, they probably would drop us off here.”

“Do you get in trouble a lot?” Hansel asks Jonah. “We do. Yesterday we got in trouble for not bringing in enough firewood. Our stepmom is always mad at us about something.”

“Oh, we get in trouble all the time,” Jonah says, nodding. “If I don’t put away my toys? My parents flip. My mother took away my golden ball just because I broke a lamp! And so what if I leave my remote-controlled robot on the living room rug? Big deal, right? And I wasn’t allowed to get a new lightsaber after I left mine in the yard and it got ruined by the rain.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t my fault it rained!”

Hansel stops walking. “A remote what? And what’s a lightsaber?”

“I guess you haven’t seen Star Wars,” Jonah says.

As Jonah tells Hansel all about his toys, I check my watch again. Another nineteen minutes have passed at home. It’s 3:30 A.M. in Smithville. We’ve got to move it.

“How many toys do you have?” Gretel asks Jonah.

“Lots,” my brother says. That’s true. Our closets are overflowing with them.

“You too?” Gretel asks me.

“Well, I don’t play with toys like I used to,” I say. I feel a little uncomfortable, but I’m not sure why. “But I have a lot of fun stuff in my room. Like a jewelry box and books and Legos and arts and crafts —”

“Your room?” Gretel repeats, stopping in her tracks. “What do you mean?”

“My bedroom,” I say. Has she not heard of a bedroom? “Where I sleep.”

“I don’t have one of those,” Gretel says.

“Me neither,” Hansel adds.