Missy Opposite loved opposite words, but nobody understood her. She stood in the bright playroom, waving her arms at three small children. "Up and down!" she said. "Hot and cold! Big and small!" The children stared at her. One yawned. Another chewed his sleeve. Missy's shoulders dropped. She was tall, with shoulder-length hair curled at the ends, and she wanted more than anything to teach these kids what she knew. But waving her arms taught them nothing. She tried again. She jumped high, then crouched low. "See? Up! Down!" A little girl tilted her head. "You're just jumping," she said. Missy felt her face go warm. The words in her head were clear. The words leaving her mouth were not. Opposites lived in pairs, but she had no way to show both halves at once. Missy sat on the colorful floor and thought. She needed something a child could see and hold. Something with two sides. She reached into her bag and pulled out a set of black and white cards. She had carried them for weeks without a real plan. Now she looked at the crisp black backs and the clean white faces. Two colors. Two opposites. Her hands moved fast. She flipped one card black-side up, then laid its partner white-side up beside it. "Black," she said, tapping the first. "White," she said, tapping the second. The little girl leaned closer. Missy grabbed a dark card and a pale one. "Night," she said, holding up black. "Day," she said, holding up white. The boy stopped chewing his sleeve. "Do another one!" the girl said. Missy held one card high and one card low. "High. Low." She turned one card face up and one face down. "Open. Closed." The children reached for the cards now, grabbing pairs, sorting light from dark. For the first time, they were not staring blankly. They were playing. They understood. A small boy held up two cards himself. "Empty!" he said, showing a blank back. "Full!" he said, flipping to the crowded front. Missy laughed out loud. He had made his own opposite. The cards had done what her arms never could. Two sides, side by side, and the meaning was plain to anyone. Missy packed the cards carefully when the lesson ended. She finally had a tool that worked. But as she watched the children run to their parents, a new worry crept in. Three children had learned today. The whole world of Storyland still had not. A playroom was small. Out there were animals, a queen, a whole University of grown-ups. She had shown opposites to a handful of kids. Now she had to show them to everyone. And a deck of cards, she realized, could only hold so many words at once.