“But this is a tile ,” said Pola, the artist. “Tiles don’t groan. They crack or they don’t.”

“Do you think it’s happy?” asked Pola.

“It’s a ground beetle!” said Kacper, who had a bug book in his backpack. “They live in soil. This one must have fallen into a hole when the school was built, and the tile was put on top. It’s been living in the dark for years.”

But Franek shook his head. “If we just let it go on the classroom floor, someone will step on it.”

So the Nowi Tropiele formed a rescue plan. Zosia drew a map of the route to the school garden. Kacper found a clear plastic cup. Ms. Maj provided a stiff piece of paper.

The class gasped. A prisoner for three years? Longer?

It was coming from the floor near the old bookshelf. Under the shelf, a single, square floor tile had lifted slightly at one corner, as if something underneath was trying to push it up.

Underneath, there was no monster, no treasure chest, and no secret tunnel. Instead, there was a small, dark space in the concrete—and in that space lay a single, smooth, black beetle. It was alive, but trapped. Every time it tried to climb the smooth wall of its little pit, its legs scraped the underside of the tile. Crick.