---

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>Thread safety issue in STJ.JsonObject</issue_title>
<issue_description>### Description

Calling GetPath on a JsonObject child node in parallel triggers InvalidOperationException.

Reproduction Steps

var tree = (JsonNode.Parse(
    """
    {
      "oh": "noes"
    }
    """
) as JsonObject)!;

// Workaround, do this once before parallel
// tree.First().Value!.GetPath();

Parallel.ForEach(Enumerable.Range(0, 10), _ =>
{
    tree.First().Value!.GetPath();
});

Expected behavior

I expect parallel reads from the JsonNode/Object/Values to be thread safe.

Actual behavior

On JsonObject.GetPath, line string propertyName = FindValue(child)!.Value.Key; I get the following exception + stack trace:

System.InvalidOperationException: Nullable object must have a value.
   at System.Nullable`1.get_Value()
   at System.Text.Json.Nodes.JsonObject.GetPath(ValueStringBuilder& path, JsonNode child)
   at System.Text.Json.Nodes.JsonNode.GetPath()
   ...

Regression?

Possibly regression from #77421

Known Workarounds

Traverse the object hierarchy serially once before parallel access to force lazy-initialization.

Configuration

Using .net sdk 9.0.305.

I don't think the rest matters, but macOS 15.7.1, arm64.

Other information

I guess calling tree.First() in the repro triggers initialization of the underlying Dictionary and I can't see anything in place to avoid a race condition there.</issue_description>

<agent_instructions>Please validate or dispute my hypothesis in the issue, then come up with a fix. If my hypothesis is correct, it would involve using an interlocked to ensure that a single dictionary insurance is published. </agent_instructions>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

@stephentoub Just based on code inspection, I suspect the issue is that #InitializeDictionary when called concurrently could end up returning two different dictionary instances with different node objects. While idempotent in terms of contents, reference equality will be different, and FindValue is relying on reference equality to locate the child object.