Charlie weighed sixty pounds, half his sister's size, and today he swore he would keep up. Bridgette and her friends met at the tall storybook house with three floors and a green front door. They had a clubhouse on the top floor. Charlie wanted a spot in it. To earn one, he had to prove he could keep pace on their trail runs. So far he never had. Bridgette climbed onto her bike and looked back at him. "We're not slowing down for you," she said. "Last time you cried at the creek." "I won't fall behind," Charlie said. He gripped his handlebars. His legs were short, but he had a plan. The pack shot down the trail. Charlie pedaled hard. The bigger kids pulled ahead fast, their tires kicking up dirt. Within a minute he trailed by twenty feet. His lungs burned. He knew he could not win by speed. But Charlie knew this trail. He knew the muddy shortcut through the tall weeds that the older kids always skipped. It was narrow and messy, and Bridgette hated getting dirty. Charlie loved green things and never minded the grass. He swung off the main path and cut through. The shortcut worked. He burst out ahead of the whole pack. For the first time, he was winning. He heard Bridgette yell behind him, surprised. Then Charlie saw it. A single purple flower stood in the middle of his path. Its petals shone like something good to eat. A small hand-painted sign leaned beside it. "POISON. DO NOT TOUCH." His front tire was headed straight for it. Charlie yanked the handlebars. His bike skidded sideways in the mud. He missed the flower but hit a root. He flew over the bars and landed hard on his shoulder. His bike clattered into the weeds. Bridgette braked beside him. The others circled around. Charlie sat up, muddy, his arm throbbing. He waited for her to laugh. She didn't. Bridgette stared at the shortcut he had taken. "You beat us," she said slowly. "Through there. Nobody uses that." "I almost hit that flower," Charlie said. He pointed at the purple tulip and the warning sign. Bridgette knelt and looked at it. Her face went pale. "That's the poison one. My friend touched it last summer and swelled up for a week." She looked at Charlie. "You could've stopped us all from smelling it." Charlie stood, holding his sore arm. He hadn't kept up. He had gotten ahead, then crashed. But he had found the fast way, and he had spotted the danger first. Bridgette wiped mud off his shoulder. "You're too small for the trails," she said. "But you see things we miss." She paused. "Come to the clubhouse tonight. There's something we need help finding. Something old and broken. If you can find it, maybe you've earned a spot." Charlie's arm hurt. But he grinned. He wasn't fast. He was something else now, and Bridgette had finally noticed.

That night, Charlie climbed the three floors of the storybook house with the green door. The clubhouse filled the top room. Boxes and old junk crowded every corner. Bridgette stood by the window with a girl two years older than Charlie. "Find the old, broken thing," Bridgette said. "That's the test. Get it right." Charlie's stomach twisted. He had no idea what she meant. The room held a hundred old, broken things. A cracked lamp. A chair with three legs. A dusty box of tangled string. Guess wrong, and he wasted his one chance. The older girl, Jojo, leaned against a shelf and watched him. She grinned like this was a game she already knew. Charlie turned in a slow circle. He couldn't ask. Asking would prove he didn't belong. So he did the thing he was good at. He looked. He looked hard. Most junk in the room was dusty and gray. But one shape near the wall had no dust on the strings. Someone touched it often. A battered viola leaned there, its varnish faded, one edge cracked and softened. A baby rabbit sat beside it. The rabbit was small and brown, with two tiny fangs poking from its mouth. It nosed the viola's broken corner, then looked up at Charlie. He froze. He almost pointed at the rabbit and blurted the wrong answer. Jojo snickered. She turned to Bridgette. "Is your brother always this funny?" She thought he was lost. She thought he'd fail. Charlie ignored her. He knelt by the viola. The crack was old. The strings were new. "This," he said. He set his hand on the faded wood. "It's old. It's broken. But somebody still plays it. That's why it matters." The room went quiet. Jojo's grin dropped. Bridgette stepped forward and stared at Charlie. "Nobody told him," she said softly. "He found it himself." She picked up the viola and held it like something precious. "This was our grandmother's. We've been fighting over who fixes it." Charlie's chest loosened. He had guessed right. He had seen what the others missed, again. Bridgette looked at Jojo, then back at Charlie. "He's in," she said. "He earned a look at least." Jojo crossed her arms but said nothing. Then Bridgette's face changed. She turned the viola over. A folded paper stuck out from the crack, jammed deep inside the body. "Wait," she said. "What's this?" She tugged it. It wouldn't come free. "Somebody hid something in here." She looked at Charlie, and now her eyes were serious. "You found the viola. But you didn't find what's inside it. And I can't reach it." Charlie stared at the tiny gap in the wood. His hands were smaller than anyone's in the room. Everyone was looking at him now.

Charlie slid two fingers into the crack in the old viola. The wood was rough inside. He pinched the folded paper and pulled it free. Everyone leaned close as he opened it. Inside was a drawing of the viola, but with a symbol he didn't know, and one word: Orchestra. Bridgette frowned. "Grandma wrote this." She turned the paper over. "She wanted this fixed and played again. In an orchestra." Charlie looked around the crowded room. He knew his sister played the viola. He heard her practice through the wall at night. But their school had no orchestra. No band. Nothing. "There's no orchestra anywhere," Charlie said. His voice was small. Bridgette set the viola down. "There's one place. St. Thomas Moore. The Catholic school." She said the name like a locked door. "They have an orchestra. But we don't go there. We don't know anyone there." Charlie thought about the note. Grandma wanted the viola played. Bridgette wanted to fix it. Both meant nothing without a place to play it. He wanted to help. He wanted to prove again that he saw things the others missed. He studied the drawing. The strange symbol sat in the corner, small and neat. Two crossed keys. He had seen it before. On the green door downstairs. On the mat where he wiped his shoes every day. "Bridgette," he said. "Come look." He led them all down the three floors of the storybook house. He stopped at the front door and pointed. There, carved into the wood near the handle, was the same mark. Two crossed keys. Faded, but real. Bridgette touched it. "That's the school's symbol," she whispered. "How is it on our house?" Jojo pushed forward. She was two years older than Charlie, and she still looked at him like he was a joke. But she wasn't laughing now. "Grandma taught music," Jojo said slowly. "At St. Thomas Moore. Before we were born." She stared at Charlie. "Nobody told him that either." Charlie's chest went warm. He had found the way in. "If Grandma taught there," he said, "maybe they'd let her viola play there again. Maybe they'd let us bring it." Bridgette held the note tight. Her eyes were bright. "That's it. That's how we fix it right. We take it to the school and we ask." She looked at Charlie, then at Jojo. "All three of us." Jojo crossed her arms, but this time she nodded. Bridgette pushed open the green door. The night air came in cold. "We go tomorrow," she said. "But St. Thomas Moore won't just hand us anything. We have to prove the viola was Grandma's. And I don't know how yet." Charlie looked down at the folded paper in his sister's hand. One problem was solved. Now they had a school to face, and no proof at all.