“But it’s still good!”

I roll my eyes. We pile onto the duck, and Prince gets in my lap. The duck doesn’t sink. In fact, she quacks a song the entire way across the pond.

“Ms. Duck, can I ask you another question?” Jonah says as she’s paddling across.

“Sure,” the duck responds.

“Are you good at duckball? I mean, you must be because you’re a duck.”

I roll my eyes.

“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever played duckball, but I AM really good at ducking,” Ms. Duck says. “Watch me!” She ducks under the water, taking us with her.

“No!” I yell as I’m pulled under.

Too late.

She pops up.

We’re all soaked. Prince barks loudly.

I turn around and give my brother a dirty look.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his wet hair off his forehead. But his eyes are gleaming and he doesn’t look sorry at all.

* * *

When we get to the other side, we thank Ms. Duck and slide off her back. Then we run to the fence around the vegetable fields.

We climb back over the fence. With no bird to stop us, it’s easy peasy, vegetable squeasy.

I look at my watch. GAH! It’s 6:45 P.M. at home! The middle of dinnertime. Our parents have to be freaking out.

We’ve been gone almost nineteen hours. By this point there are probably hundreds of police cars combing the streets. They’ve probably shown our pictures on the news.

I hope they didn’t use my class picture from this year. I was not having a good hair day.

I feel a lump in my throat. Who cares about my picture? Our poor parents. They’re probably really, really worried.

“This better work,” I say frantically as we approach the spinach patch. “Otherwise we’ll have to move in forever with Hansel and Gretel’s dad.”

“Are you kidding?” Jonah says. “If we stayed here, we would totally live in the candy house. It’s empty!”

“Good point,” I say.

We look at all the rows and rows of vegetables. There are at least a hundred rows each way, making a square. So like a thousand different patches.

“So which one did we come out of?” Jonah asks.

“I know it was a spinach patch,” I say.

“Um, there are a lot of spinach patches,” Jonah says, gesturing around.

I nod. “There sure are. I think it was somewhere in the middle-ish?” Oh my goodness. Are we going to have to knock on all the patches? That’s going to take forever. And what if it doesn’t even work?

“Wait. Abby!” Jonah says. “Let’s look for my baseball hat!”

I roll my eyes impatiently. “Of course, I want you to find your hat, Jonah. But we really have to focus on getting home. We can always get another hat.”

Jonah pokes me in the side. “Yeah, but this hat will be sitting right where we came out. So if we find the hat …”

“We find the spinach patch,” I finish. Duh. “Smart thinking, Jonah!”