1.
Ghostly Sighting?
It was a minute after midnight when Olive and her grandmother Mimi climbed 210 feet up the side of Coit Tower, a San Francisco landmark. At the top, Dr. Cobin Zang and Dr. Zang Cobin, Olive’s parents, were grinning wildly and holding out a luscious lemon cake—a family favorite. It was the first time that this clutch of authorized NOCK agents had been assembled. Olive was so happy that she almost began to cry, but her father beat her to it, sobbing into his sleeve.
However, his flow of tears was interrupted by a strange brouhaha.
“The lighthouse!” Olive shouted, training her binoculars across the bay at the tall structure that loomed over Foggy Island.
Immediately, she chomped down three times, activating her ComChom. This ingenious device resembled a retainer and allowed the Misfits to communicate in secret. Through her EarBuzz, a device that could pass as a fleck of earwax, she could hear panic as an alarm blasted from RASCH.
James, the youngest, smallest, and self-proclaimed smartest Misfit, was theorizing that the hazy figure of a woman floating in the air was—
“A GHOST!” he yelled through Olive’s EarBuzz.
A ghost! Olive had always wanted to meet a ghost.
Iggy’s skeptical voice came in. “There is no such thing as ghosts!”
“There’s total panic here,” Theo broadcast via his ComChom. He sounded thrilled.
Phil added in a calm but assertive tone, “Misfits, it’s time to gather!”
A jumble of emotions bounced so powerfully inside Olive that she began to wobble. Her parents never had time for her before. It was something she had longed for, plus there was lemon cake and her beloved grandmother Mimi. However, danger and adventure beckoned.
Steadying herself, and bravely pushing away the slice of cake her mother was holding out to her, Olive informed her family, “I’ve got to leave. NOCK and the Misfits need me!”
Via a souped-up Jet Ski, Mimi dropped Olive back off at school. Foggy Manor, home of RASCH, was a castle-like mansion that loomed over the late-night fog as Olive raced toward it. Outside on the lawn, students huddled in groups, hiding behind trees and singing. If Olive hadn’t known better, it would have seemed like a normal evening, except that it was after midnight. And there had been ghost sightings.
Whispers and yells reached Olive’s ears as she ran by:
“Ghosts? This is so exciting!”
“What if the ghosts start haunting Foggy Manor?!”
“What if everyone stopped talking about ghosts and let the rest of us go to sleep?”
Yash, the long-suffering assistant of RASCH’s dean, clomped around the grounds, wrapped in an oversized periwinkle blue bathrobe that puddled around her. Gripping a megaphone bigger than her head, Yash ordered, “EVERYONE, BACK TO YOUR ROOMS. NOW!”
Behind her, the dean herself emerged, looking fresh and dewy as ever. Her billowing caftan was the color of the lemon drops she always stashed in her pockets, and her hair was swept up in a delightfully complicated style.
“There’s no need to yell,” Sunny trilled, patting her assistant on the shoulder.
Yash glared at the dean and shouted into the megaphone, “I KNOW THAT.”
“If you can’t use it correctly, then give it back,” Sunny said, patiently holding her hand out.
The students around them watched in bewilderment as the dean tried to wrestle the megaphone away from Yash. In the commotion, Olive slipped away unseen toward the abandoned Donut Trespass! area.
The forbidden backside of the island looked nothing like the gorgeous gardens and massive green lawn that graced the front of Foggy Manor. Instead, the area was rundown and dangerous, overflowing with rusted machinery. Over the years, students spread menacing rumors of frightening fog that could squeeze the courage out of you, and tales of hungry wild boars with sharp tusks. It was said that in the 1960s, quicksand in the Donut Trespass! area swallowed a pod of unruly RASCHers.
Olive shivered. What if they had returned as ghosts?
If anything, these stories made the Donut Trespass! area even more appealing to someone like Olive. She eased under the rusty chain-link fence and hurried toward the lighthouse, where the ghostly sightings had occurred, but Olive was in such a rush that she tripped over a small pile of broken bricks.
As trained, she merely rolled herself into a ball, tumbled gracefully when she hit the ground, then leaped right back up without breaking stride as the fog rolled in.
Slipping on her FoggyGogs, Olive could see clearly through smoke and fog. Coming into focus were Theo and Phil, chatting as Iggy pretended to punch James. All the Misfits were wearing their pajamas except for Iggy, who slept in her street clothes.
Queenie the cat circled all of them nervously. Putting on her nose clamps to thwart her cat allergy, Olive scooped up the butterscotch feline and nuzzled her.
“I’m here!” Olive announced.
“We can see that.” Iggy didn’t even attempt to hide her yawn. It was, after all, way past midnight by now.
“What happened?” Olive asked as Queenie squirmed out of her arms and took off, most likely to Butter Bakery, where it was always warm and welcoming, no matter the hour.
“Queenie probably senses a paranormal presence,” James said.
“That cat needs her beauty sleep,” Iggy grumped. Her scowl was even bigger than usual.
“Beauty sleep?” Theo was having trouble keeping his eyes open, and the moisture in the air was making his already bushy brown hair even bushier. “Where do we sign up for that?”
“Come on, let’s head back,” Phil suggested. She was always the voice of reason. “We can talk about ghosts in the morning over breakfast.”
But even after Olive returned to their dorm and lay perfectly still in her oversized canopy bed, her brain kept racing. Just last week the Misfits were hunting down art thieves and rescuing Zeke, a fellow RASCH student. And now there were ghost sightings?
Iggy was convinced that they didn’t exist, but Olive wasn’t so sure. After all, her own parents and grandmother were often present but unseen.
Copyright © 2026 by Lisa Yee. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
