Nobody knew who wrote it. But everyone knew it was true—except the fifth puppy, who told himself that was probably a lie too.

"I found a rainbow in the rain gutter," he'd say. And the other puppies would wag cautiously, sniffing the air for rainbows.

In a small, tidy town where every rule was written in milk-white letters on a black iron gate, there lived five puppies. Four of them told the truth. The fifth—small, floppy-eared, with a tail like a comma—discovered early that lies tasted sweeter than bones.