The Sock Thief

Part One · One at a Time

Jonah's socks were disappearing. Not pairs of socks, just one sock at a time. On Monday a blue one went missing, and on Wednesday it was a green one with a hole in the toe. By Friday he had five socks in his drawer, and not one of them matched any other. He lined them up on the bed and stared at them.

"Check under your bed," his mother said, so he checked under the bed again. "The washing machine eats them," his father said. "It is a well known fact." Jonah had already looked inside the washing machine with a flashlight, twice. It was empty, and it smelled faintly of lemons. It did not look like a thing that ate socks.

That left exactly two suspects. The first suspect was Biscuit, the dog, who was brown and shaggy and had once eaten an entire kitchen sponge. The second suspect was his little sister Mia, who was four years old and said no to everything. "Mia, did you take my socks?" "No." "I did not finish asking you." "No."

Jonah decided to catch the thief himself. He took one sock, a red one, and tied a little silver bell to the top of it. He set it on the third stair, right in the middle. Anything that picked up that sock would ring that bell. He went to bed with his door open and the hallway light burning.

He meant to stay awake, and he stayed awake for a very long time. He heard the fridge humming, and the house creaking, and Biscuit sighing in his basket beside the door. Then suddenly it was morning, and the sun was on his face. He ran to the stairs. The sock was gone, and so was the bell.

He had slept right through it. At breakfast he watched his two suspects closely. Biscuit lay under the table with his chin on Jonah's foot, looking innocent. Mia ate her toast with her eyes shut. Neither of them looked like a thief. Jonah needed a trap that would wake him up, no matter what.

That night he tied a sock to a long piece of sewing thread. He tied the other end of the thread around his own finger. If anything pulled on the sock, it would pull on his finger, and that would wake him up. He laid the sock on the carpet beside his door. Then he lay in the darkness and waited.

He woke up because something was tugging gently at his hand. The room was black. The thread was pulling, tight, then loose, then tight again, like a fish on a line. Jonah sat up slowly. He slid out of bed without a sound, found the thread with his fingers, and began to follow it.

Part Two · The Thread

The thread went out through his door and down the hallway, past the bathroom, past the closet where the towels lived. It turned the corner. Jonah followed it with his hand, one careful step at a time, and the thread led him right up to his sister's door. A light was showing underneath it. A flashlight.

He pushed the door open, and there was Mia, sitting up in bed with a flashlight. Biscuit was standing on the carpet beside her with the red sock in his mouth, and the thread was still tied to it. Mia was holding out a cracker. "Good dog," she was whispering to him. "That is a very nice one."

"Mia," said Jonah. For once, nobody said no. Biscuit trotted over to a basket beside the bed, dropped the sock inside it, and came back for his cracker. Jonah looked in the basket. Then he looked at the floor, and the shelf, and the chair, and the top of the dresser.

Socks, dozens of socks. His blue one and his green one and the one with the hole in the toe. Every single one had two buttons sewn on for eyes, and some had hair made of yarn, and some wore little paper hats. They were lined up along the wall in rows, all facing the same direction. "What is this?" he whispered.

"School," said Mia. She pointed with the flashlight. "That one is the teacher, and those are the class, and they are learning about the moon." She was very serious. "Biscuit brings me the students," she explained, "and I give him a cracker, because he is a good dog." Biscuit wagged his tail and looked at the cracker box.

Jonah opened his mouth to shout at her. Then he looked at the blue sock with the yarn hair and the serious button eyes, and the shout turned into something completely different. It came out as a laugh, and it was quite a loud laugh. Mia put a finger to her lips. "Shh," she whispered. "The class is sleeping."

He could have taken every sock back, or he could have woken up their mother. Instead, he sat down on the carpet beside the basket. "The blue one is mine," he said, "and he needs a voice. He sounds like this." He made the sock talk in a deep, slow, rumbling voice, and Mia laughed so hard she fell over sideways.

At breakfast on Saturday morning, Jonah wore one green sock and one blue one, and so did Mia. Their father looked at their feet and did not say a single word. Under the table, Biscuit sighed, got up, and dropped a clean gray sock on Jonah's foot. It was their father's. Mia reached for the cracker box.