"Ohhhhhhh." A terrified moan escaped my throat. I felt someone shove me hard from behind. The force of it sent me flying to the ground.

I lay there in shock and watched the huge tree branch crash down to the ground, cracking and shattering.

It landed a few feet behind me.

As I struggled to pull myself up, the sponge container rolled out of my hand. The little creature came spilling out onto the sidewalk.

"Saved your life!" cried Daniel. "Now you owe me big!" I barely heard him.

The sponge. I could only stare at the sponge. Whoa-ahhh, whoa-ahhh.

Breathing louder and faster and deeper than I'd ever heard before. Whoa-ahhh, whoa-ahhh.

Throbbing its little heart out. Practically hopping around on the ground in excitement.

Ba-boom, ba-boom.

Very weird. I'd almost been killed by the falling branch. And the sponge seemed really excited. As if it enjoyed my near accident. As if my accident made it really happy.

"Mrs. Vanderhoff!" I called, rushing into the classroom. "I have to show you something!"

Mrs. Vanderhoff is a brain. She basically knows everything about everything. She's very smart. And she takes us on great class trips. At Halloween, we visited

a spooky old theater that's supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of dead actors.

But Mrs. Vanderhoff is also really strict. Anyone who goofs off or talks out of turn stays after school for a week!

One other problem. She has no sense of humor at all. I've never even seen her crack a smile.

"Check this out, Mrs. Vanderhoff," I blurted out, shoving the sponge under her nose. "I found it under the kitchen sink of our new house. And when Daniel went to grab it, he hit his head. And my Dad thought I pushed him, and—and—"

Mrs. Vanderhoff peered at me over her wire-rim glasses. "Kat, sshh," she ordered sharply. "Now, start over—slowly and clearly."

I took a deep breath and began again, starting with moving day and ending with the falling tree branch.

"And you say it throbs and breathes?" Mrs. Vanderhoff asked, staring hard at me. "Yes!" I exclaimed.

"Let me see it," Mrs. Vanderhoff replied. I handed over the container. Hesitantly, she stuck her hand in and lifted the sponge out.

"Oh, wow." I groaned in disappointment. The sponge appeared dry and shriveled. It didn't breathe. It didn't throb.

Mrs. Vanderhoff glared at me. "Kat, what's the meaning of this?" she huffed. "This is an ordinary kitchen sponge."

She made a face. "A dirty one, I might add."

"You're wrong!" I cried shrilly, desperate for her to believe me. "It's much more than a sponge. It's alive. It has eyes—see? You've got to see!"

Mrs. Vanderhoff squinted at me, shaking her gray-haired head.

"Oh, all right," she said with a sigh. She bent her head and examined the sponge closely. She ran her fingers over its wrinkled surface.

"I don't know what in the world you're talking about," she said angrily, motioning for me to take my seat. "This thing doesn't have eyes. And it's not alive. It's a dirty, dried-up old sponge."

Mrs. Vanderhoff glared at me. "If this is your idea of a joke, Katrina, I don't get it. I don't get it at all."

"But..." I started.

Mrs. Vanderhoff held up her hand. "Not another word," she instructed. She handed the sponge back—dropping it into my hand like a piece of junk.

My stomach churned with disappointment. Couldn't I say anything else to convince her?

The sharp rap of a ruler on her desk interrupted my thoughts. "I'm going to pass back the papers from your math test last week," Mrs. Vanderhoff announced.

Everyone groaned. The surprise quiz on long division had been a major disaster for all of us.

"Settle down," Mrs. Vanderhoff snapped.

She reached into her desk to pull out the test papers, and—slammed her fingers in the drawer!

With a howl of pain, she shrieked, "My fingers! Owww—I think I broke my fingers!"

I was still standing beside her desk. Holding her hand, she turned to me. "Help me, Katrina. I've got to get to the nurse's office!"

I opened the classroom door for Mrs. Vanderhoff. Then I helped her down the hall to the infirmary.

"What's happened?" Mrs. Twitchell, the school nurse, jumped up from her desk and came running up to us. Her starchy white uniform rustled as she moved. She sat Mrs. Vanderhoff in a comfortable chair.

"My fingers," groaned Mrs. Vanderhoff, holding up her red, swollen hand. "I smashed them in the desk drawer!"

"All right," Mrs. Twitchell said soothingly. "We'll put some ice on that hand. And I'll make sure the principal sends somebody to watch your class."

"Thank you," Mrs. Vanderhoff moaned. "Katrina, you can go on back to class now. You've been very helpful."

Helpful?

Everywhere I went these days, I told myself, somebody seemed to get badly hurt! Unhappily, I shuffled my way back toward classroom 6B.

"Kat! Kat!" I heard someone shouting my name.

Daniel raced out of the library, nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces. He crashed right into me.

"I found it!" he cried breathlessly. "I found the sponge creature! In a book! I know what it is!"