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  FOR WOODY HOWARD.

  Teacher, director, mentor, and friend.

  Enjoy your well-deserved retirement.

  Just not so much that you won’t come back and work with me again.

  * * *

  DEAR READER,

  You are reading this because you expressed interest in the Get Lost Book Club.

  Now, I know you might be thinking, Wait! I never said I was interested in the Get Lost Book Club. I’ve never even heard of it. Not to worry. It’s my job to pick up on little clues that reveal your interest, like a detective. Maybe it’s the number of books on your shelf. Odd things you mutter under your breath or doodle during class. That weird topping you like on your pizza. You know the one. These signs may seem trivial to you, but you may as well have chiseled an application letter into my front door.

  I should warn you, the Get Lost Book Club isn’t for the faint of heart. Or the faint of brain.

  We believe that the greatest power of a story is its ability to make the world around you go away for a while … and sometimes that “while” can be longer than you expected.

  Intrigued? Worried? Downright terrified? You should be. Danger stalks these pages. Also, sword fights. Feuding families. Tight tights. Tomatoes.

  Do you have what it takes to be a literary adventurer? I think you do, but it’s up to you to prove it.

  If, on the other hand, you want to turn back now, then no hard feelings. I’ll understand. Some people just aren’t cut out for thrilling chases, fascinating characters, devious villains, and a whole lot of fun.

  But if you’re ready for an adventure, step right up and follow me. It’s time to get lost.

  Go on, turn the page. I dare you.

  Sincerely,

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  NOTHING GOOD COMES IN A BUCKET

  Once upon a time, superheroes Mal and Cal Worthy were trapped in the belly of a yellow beast. The smell of salami was overpowering. Would anyone claw free of the monster’s vile belly? Anyone?…

  “… Anyone?” the school bus driver called out again before shutting the doors. Immediately, two dozen kids began to shout.

  Becca Deed covered her nose. Corey “Gorilla” Manila, an eighth grader about the size and smell of a sack of dirty elephant laundry, had obviously had salami—and maybe garlic—for lunch again.

  Becca had been trying to escape into her brain, because her body sure wasn’t going anywhere. The bus had been locked in traffic for an hour. She was a writer, and as such, she was the kind of girl who could sit quietly as she explored her imagination—but even she couldn’t imagine away the toxic mix of eighth-grader breath.

  She pinched her nose tighter. Definitely garlic.

  Becca looked over to see her best friend, Kyle Word, snoring, his face pressed up against the window. Despite his last name, Kyle hated words and writing, but he and Becca got along because they both liked stories with epic adventures, dastardly villains, and justice for all. In fact, they were working on a comic book series together, The Astounding Adventures of Mal & Cal Worthy, that had all those things. She handled the text while he illustrated—which was a good thing, because Becca was really only good at drawing a cartoon cat.

  “Watch out for the Garblenuff,” Kyle mumbled in his sleep.

  “Wake up, Kyle,” Becca said, poking him in the ribs. But his only response was to snore a little louder and say something that sounded kind of like, “I know karate.”

  Becca sighed. They had planned on plotting the next Mal and Cal adventure on the bus, but Kyle had been tired all day because his little brother had woken him up extra-early. She guessed it didn’t really matter anyway. It was impossible to focus on anything when surrounded by garlic-zilla fumes. Not to mention Kyle’s sketchbook was still soggy from when someone had accidentally spilled tea on it. It had been a long day.

  But one more stop and Becca would be home. And not a moment too soon, because, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gorilla Manila dump a pack of itching powder down Kyle’s shirt.

  “Bye, Kyle,” she said, standing up quickly as the school bus screeched to a halt. “I’ll bring some aloe for you tomorrow. Maybe in the next issue, Mal and Cal should face down a bunch of giant mosquitoes.”

  “ZZhmm? What?” he said, waking up. “What do you mean?”

  Becca knew the moment the powder met his skin. His eyes popped like a poked puffer fish and he shot straight up, scratching like a monkey with chicken pox. Or, since he was bobbing his head to reach his neck, more like a chicken with monkey pox.

  The school bus’s doors swung open, and she hurried down the aisle before Gorilla Manila dumped itching powder on her back. Eager to breathe clean air, she hopped down the steps—right into a tsunami!

  Where had the water come from?

  The last time Becca checked, she lived miles away from any ocean. And she didn’t think it was supposed to rain today.… Maybe an elephant had escaped the city zoo and stepped on a water main?

  Then her eyes cleared and she saw the Bucket.

  The Bucket held by her stepbrother, Sam.

  That bucket and the villainous smile on his face told her the whole story.

  “Welcome home!” Sam said, his smile getting bigger.

  “Welcome to your doom!” Becca shouted. Dropping her backpack on the sidewalk, she charged.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE ONLY ANNOYING THING IS EVERYTHING

  Chasing him wasn’t really the best idea—Sam was built like a praying mantis, and when he wasn’t sleeping, he was usually playing basketball. Actually, he probably played basketball even when he was sleeping, too. She was pretty sure she’d heard him calling out plays in between chain-saw snoring. The constant thud-thud-thud-thudthudthudthud of the ball being dribbled in the driveway when she was trying to write was the least of her worries, though.

  Sam’s dad and Becca’s mom had been married less than a year, and she’d barely been able to tolerate having a stepfather, let alone the new “brother” he’d brought along with him.

  Her stepfather was named Stephen R. Danielson III. He liked to say it Three instead of The third, for some reason. Becca guessed he must have thought it sounded cool. She also guessed that he’d never bothered asking anyone what cool meant.

  SRD3, as his license plate said (ugh), was also a writer. He wrote copy for advertisements. When he found out she wrote, too, he’d tried to bond with her “writer to writer.” Becca didn’t see how selling people stuff with silly jokes was the same as telling beautiful stories about great heroes and brave adventurers. She certainly didn’t think any of her characters would be caught dead saying, “Don’t have time to dust? Dust to time, with the Tidy Tune musical duster! Keep on track with one step: a two-step!”

  If
Stephen R. Danielson III made her mom happy, that was great, but she wasn’t interested in adopting a parent. However, at first she’d thought that adopting a brother might be better. That was, until she met Sam.

  Obviously, she had been very, very wrong. Stepbrothers were no good, either.

  “Just you wait until I get you!” she shouted as she sloshed across the yard.

  “I don’t know if I feel like waiting that long,” Sam said. “The nursing home staff might not be happy with you tackling me in the pea soup line. I bet—OOMPH!”

  “Good boy, Rufus!” Becca said as their new one-year-old “duppy” (too big to be a puppy, too silly to be a dog) viciously attacked Sam with his pink tongue.

  “Gah! The smell! THE SMELL!” Sam gagged as he got a whiff of puppy breath straight up the nose.

  “Serves you right,” Becca grumbled. An idea started brewing in her head for a new villain to fight Mal and Cal Worthy in the comic: Samoron the Worst. Or Samrog, Prince of Toads. Or Lord Samstank of Hoops. Becca liked that last one—authoritative, yet accurate. She just needed to write it down in her notebook before she forgot—

  She stopped short. “Oh no! My notebook!”

  Running back around to the front of the house and over to the sidewalk, she knelt down to examine her soaked backpack. She didn’t just have schoolbooks in there—she also had her most precious possession: her ideas notebook. Dozens of story and character ideas had gone into it, and if the tsunami had damaged it, every good idea she’d had for the past three months would be gone.

  Unzipping her backpack, she felt around inside. Dry. Phew. Luckily (and unluckily), her body had shielded her backpack from the water. It was only a little wet on the outside, and her notebook wasn’t even damp. In fact, the only thing that seemed to have gotten truly soaked was a piece of paper in the outside pocket.

  With her thumb and forefinger, Becca carefully pinched it out. At first she thought it was a spit wad from Gorilla Manila, but when she took a closer look, she realized it was even worse than that: It was a note from the public library!

  A note that said three books were due today, and if she didn’t return them, she’d owe $$$! Triple dollar signs!!!

  Though the actual fee had been blurred by water, she was pretty sure the numbers would be the exact amount of change she had in her piggy bank … and the exact amount she needed for the entry fee for the Storyland Young Storyteller Contest, a writing competition that she and Kyle had entered. They had registered for the contest online, but they had to send the story and fee by mail, and the deadline to send them was tomorrow.

  Becca was the sort of girl who splurged only once in a while, saving up for something she really, really wanted. Kyle, on the other hand, had a sweet tooth, and more often than not, he exchanged his coins for chocolate ones. He was getting his allowance tonight and putting some finishing touches on Mal and Cal, but if she didn’t pay her half, their entry wouldn’t count!

  And that simply wasn’t an option.

  Because if they won, they’d get a free trip to Storyland, a new amusement park in Hawaii. Because they were only in fifth grade, they’d have to take at least one parent along, and Kyle had already said it could be Becca’s mom, Jane. That was Part 1 of Becca’s master plan.

  Part 2 was that Kyle would go home by himself—she knew airlines let kids go alone sometimes when a parent okayed it—and she and her mom wouldn’t go home at all.

  Ever.

  No more Stephen R. Danielson III and no dribbling stepbrothers. She would miss Rufus, but she was sure Mom would book a cruise for Rufus to come to Hawaii after they’d found a house with a good backyard for him.

  Swinging her backpack over her shoulders, Becca sprinted to the house. She always kept her library books on the shelf next to her bed, unless she was reading them or discussing story ideas with Kyle at his house.

  Becca skidded to a stop.

  She suddenly remembered that over the weekend, she’d gone to Kyle’s house. They’d looked at her favorite comic series, Rachel Never, Hero of No Time, while eating Mrs. Word’s cookies. In a chocolate-induced coma, she’d left the book in his living room.

  “NoooooOOOoooo!” she yelled. Instinctively, she started chewing on a thumbnail that was already jagged from Sam-related stress. Her dream of replacing Sam and his father with white sand and flower necklaces was floating away.

  “Becca?” Sam peered around the corner. Thanks to Rufus, he now looked just as wet as Becca did. “Why are you screaming—hey! Where are you going? Does Jane or Dad know?”

  “No time, I’m on a mission,” Becca called, wringing out her hair and marching off in the direction of Kyle’s house. Her clothes were still damp, but this was more important than that.

  “A mission?” Sam said, trailing behind. “For what?”

  “My future!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  LIBRARY FINES AND MYSTERIOUS RHYMES

  Becca glanced behind her as she marched. Sam was following, dribbling the whole time. Rufus lumbered along next to him, also dribbling.

  “You’re lucky I’m so fast,” Sam said, dribbling between his legs. “I ran back home and told Dad you were marching off on your mission, and he said it was okay as long as I went with you.”

  He grinned evilly at her. “Don’t worry, little sister; I’ll make sure you don’t get up to any trouble.”

  “You’re only one year older than me,” Becca pointed out. “You’re not my dad and he isn’t my dad. I care about his permission about as much as I care about that squirrel’s permission.” She pointed at a fat gray squirrel in a nearby tree that was probably more fun to talk to than Stephen R. Danielson III.

  She could practically hear her stepfather in her head. He’d probably said something like, Don’t be out too long! We’ll wait for you, but dinner may not. One of those lines that was almost clever or a joke.

  And it wasn’t like she was hitchhiking to another town. Kyle’s house was only four doors down the street.

  Sam tried to dribble once on each of the stepping-stones that made up the path to the Words’ front door, but on the third one, he stumbled over his own shoelace and missed.

  The ball careened into a bush and Sam careened after it … and Rufus careened after Sam.

  “So mature,” Becca muttered as she knocked. She knew boys weren’t as mature as girls, but most of them didn’t hit age four and then stay that way for the rest of their lives.

  The door opened and Mrs. Word appeared in a flour-dusted apron. She was a professional baker and made the most delicious desserts imaginable—and probably unimaginable, too.

  “Hi, Becca,” she said. “Hi, Sam. Sorry it took a minute. Kyle must not have heard you.”

  “Thanks,” Becca said, stepping inside. Only then did she realize what time it was—time for Kyle’s favorite TV show. He wouldn’t get up from Allosaurus, MD if an earthquake split the house in half, as long as he and the TV ended up in the same half. It was Kyle’s absolute favorite show in the world.

  “Hey, Mrs. W.,” Sam said, “any chance there might be some baked goods that need testing? You know I’m happy to donate my taste buds to science.”

  “I’m sure we can find something for you to research,” Mrs. Word said with a smile.

  “I’ll catch up in a sec,” Sam said, and followed Mrs. Word into the kitchen, Rufus trotting at his heels and drooling slightly more than usual. Even though Becca was tempted by the delicious smells, she knew that cookies could wait. Her library fine couldn’t.

  But as soon as she walked into the living room, she knew something was wrong. Her writer’s eye for detail instantly noticed three things:

  1. Not only was the TV not on …

  2. … but Kyle wasn’t there.

  3. And there was a backpack in the middle of the rug. A backpack with sparkly pink starfish stickers all over it.

  Becca frowned. She’d know those stickers anywhere—they belonged to Halley Pierce-Blossom, Miss Know-It-All of Greenfield Elementary. Th
ose pink starfish stickers sat front and center in class.

  But what was her backpack doing here?

  Becca and Halley got along okay, as long as Halley talked about only one of the documentaries she’d seen the night before instead of all three. But Becca knew for sure—as sure as the sky was blue—that Kyle and Halley couldn’t stand each other. Kyle had even named one of the villains in the Worthy stories the Vile Fanged Halleyodon after her.

  “Weird,” Becca muttered.

  “Did foo thay thomething?” Sam asked as he sauntered in with a full mouth and a plate of slightly burned cookies. Rufus was orbiting him, licking up any crumbs that dropped to the rug.

  But Becca didn’t bother to reply. She’d just spotted something else that didn’t fit in Kyle’s living room.

  She pushed aside Halley’s bag. Behind it was a small wooden crate filled with straw. The straw had a musty, oaky smell like it’d been sitting in the crate for years.

  There was panting in Becca’s ear, and she turned slightly to see Rufus’s giant pink tongue next to her. She grabbed his collar before he could jump in like a five-year-old into a pile of leaves. Mrs. Word only reluctantly allowed him in the house at all after the Pudding Disaster.

  “Could you hold Roo?” Becca asked Sam through gritted teeth. Rufus was just as much Sam’s responsibility as hers. Sam took one more bite of cookie, then reached for the dog.

  Becca looked back at the box. In the middle of the straw was a giant book. Gold lines accented the dark leather cover. It looked like it belonged in the study of a haunted mansion.

  Okay, this was definitely strange. The situation was getting less and less Kyle-like every second.

  Sam picked the book up.

  “Hey!” Becca protested. “You shouldn’t have touched that—now your fingerprints are covering up those of whoever replaced Kyle’s personality! Because that’s the only explanation for Kyle to have this book.”