Maya wasn't supposed to be awake at midnight.
She definitely wasn't supposed to be in the garden.
But something had woken her — a small, scratchy sound coming from beneath her bedroom window.
She took out her torch and looked across the flowerbed. Nothing. She tiptoed past the shed. Nothing.
Then, just as she was about to give up, the beam caught something small and round near the compost heap.
A hedgehog.
"Oh no," Maya breathed. "Oh, you poor thing."
The hedgehog looked up with worried eyes and curled into a prickly ball.
Maya knew she had to help. But she also knew hedgehogs could bite, and their spines hurt if you touched them wrong. She thought for a moment, then ran — carefully, so she didn't drop the torch — back to the house.
In the kitchen, she grabbed Dad's thick gardening gloves, the kitchen scissors, and an old cardboard box. She lined the box with a tea towel.
Then she tiptoed back outside, her heart thumping so loudly she was certain the whole street could hear it.
The little hedgehog hadn't moved.
"I'm going to help you," Maya whispered. "I promise I won't hurt you."
Very, very slowly, she snipped the netting away, one strand at a time. The hedgehog trembled but didn't uncurl. When the last piece fell away, Maya gently — oh, so gently — lifted him into the cardboard box.
He was freezing.
"Right," said Maya, suddenly feeling braver.
She carried the box inside and placed it carefully in the warm cupboard with a blanket. Then — because she couldn't work out what else to do — she woke Mum.
Mum was cross for about ten seconds. Then she saw the hedgehog, and her face changed completely.
"Oh, Maya," she said softly. "You did the right thing, love."
The next morning, they drove the little hedgehog to a wildlife rescue three miles away. A kind woman with a tattoo of a robin on her arm weighed him, checked his legs, and smiled.
"You saved his life, you know," she told Maya. "Another hour outside and he wouldn't have made it."
Six weeks later, a card dropped through the letterbox. Inside was a photograph of a plump, healthy hedgehog snuffling through autumn leaves in a garden somewhere in Devon.
On the back, in loopy blue handwriting, someone had written:
"He says thank you. He's now gone home."
Maya stuck the photograph on her bedroom wall, right next to her window. And every night before she closed the curtains, she checked the garden — just in case someone else needed rescuing.