Chirp

by Kate Messner

  Mia watched him reply to whoever it was. Maybe Daniel was looking at new jobs because he was worried the farm might fail. She couldn’t really blame him for that, given how things were going. The guy needed a job. But until he knew for sure, he might keep it a secret so Gram wouldn’t think he was giving up on her. Still, it was kind of a crummy thing to do. But maybe if Gram got her investors and things got better, Daniel would stay, and everything would be fine. All Mia could do was keep helping as much as she could.

  She finished changing the water and added feed to the dishes while Daniel started the harvest. It really did look like a pain in the neck. He’d shake crickets off, wait for them to climb back up, and then shake those into a different bin to be harvested. Then he’d put the cricket condo back in the first bin and wait for more live crickets to climb on. He looked like a robot. Back and forth. Shake and wait. And that gave Mia an idea. She’d seen Anna’s robot arm pick up pencils and ping-pong balls and swivel to drop them into buckets. Why couldn’t it pick up cricket condos, too?

  CHAPTER 10

  The First Firefly of Summer

  Mia thought about that the whole drive home. She and Dad had to stop for some errands, so by the time they walked through the door, Mom was already packing the cooler for their fireworks picnic.

  “Does Clover want a ride tonight?” Mom asked.

  “No, she’s riding bikes there with her moms, so they’ll meet us.”

  After Mia changed her clothes, they drove to pick up Gram, who was surprisingly chipper, given her fruit-fly infestation.

  Mia almost didn’t want to ask, but she was too curious. “How’s everything at the farm?”

  “Buggy,” Gram said, and waved her hand in front of her face as if she were swatting fruit flies. “But let’s not talk about that tonight. I’m going to enjoy the fireworks with my granddaughter.”

  “Hey! They’re playing my song!” Dad turned up the radio. It was tuned to the country station that played “God Bless the U.S.A.” practically nonstop on Independence Day weekend. Dad sang along every time. Badly. By the time the song ended, they were all laughing.

  “I’ll drop you off and find a spot,” Dad said as they pulled up to the waterfront. Mia knew he was doing that so Gram wouldn’t have to walk far with her droopy foot, but Dad was smart enough to add “because the cooler’s heavy” so she wouldn’t argue.

  The sun wouldn’t set for another hour, so there was plenty of space on the lawn. “How about over here?” Mia led the way to a grassy spot between two big trees and helped Mom spread out the blankets.

  “Hey!” Clover called as she walked her bike over.

  “Perfect timing,” Mom said. “We just got here.” She and Gram introduced themselves to Clover’s moms, Alessandra and Jess, while Clover and Mia tore into a bag of potato chips. Mia brought Clover up to date on the fruit-fly situation.

  “That Potsworth guy is the worst!” Clover said. “We’ve got to nail him on this. Can we go out there tomorrow?”

  “Everything’s closed until Monday,” Mia said. “But yeah … we need to do something.”

  Half an hour went by before Dad found them. “I had to park in another county,” he said, looking around at the growing crowd. “And now I’m famished from my journey.” He passed out sandwiches, sodas, and his famous Fourth of July pyrotechnic brownies, and everyone dug in.

  When they were finished, Mia and Clover went to the playground before it got dark. Mia’s Boston friends would have thought that was too elementary-schoolish. She loved that Clover didn’t care about stuff like that.

  The swings were full of little kids, so Mia and Clover took a few lazy twirls on the merry-go-round thing while they waited. As Mia spun around, she saw a sign she’d never noticed when she lived here before.

  “No adults allowed except in the company of a child?” she read. “That’s weird.”

  “Not really,” Clover said. Two swings had opened up, so they walked over. “There are creepers all over the place.”

  “What do you mean?” Mia asked, but her stomach twisted as she climbed on her swing. She was pretty sure she knew.

  “Just … jerks,” Clover said. She pumped her legs, and Mia did, too, until they were swinging side by side, as high as they could. “When we were visiting my grandmother in Florida last year, I was walking on the beach. Just by myself because it was all cloudy and nobody else wanted to go out. And I walked farther than I was supposed to because I like picking up shells.” She looked at Mia, who nodded. Shells were her favorite thing about the beach, too.

  “I finally turned around when it started to rain a little,” Clover said, sailing into the sky. “And that’s when I noticed there was nobody else on the beach. Except one guy walking toward me.”

  Mia’s heart sped up, and her arms felt all shaky. She would have jumped off the swing if Clover hadn’t been in the middle of her story.

  “When we were maybe fifty yards apart, the guy pulled his baggy swim trunks way off to the side, so everybody could see what was under there. So I could see.”

  “That’s so gross!” Mia said. “What did you do?”

  “It’s not like I could turn around. The rain was picking up, and I had to get back.” Clover stopped pumping and slowed down. Mia did, too, until they were just swaying a little. The setting sun had turned all peach-pink and was just brushing the peaks of the Adirondack Mountains on the other side of the lake.

  “So I just kept going.” Clover swallowed hard. “I got closer and closer, and he kept holding his shorts like that. I wanted to run, but I’d have to run right past him, and what if he grabbed me or something?”

  “Clover, that’s so awful.” Mia reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “I would have been terrified.”

  “I was.” Clover took a deep breath and let it out. “But then I figured that’s exactly what that jerk wanted. To scare me. He was doing that messed-up thing with his swimsuit because he wanted me to be afraid. And I just … I don’t know. I felt like I had to pretend I wasn’t. Like maybe if he thought I wasn’t scared, everything would be all right.”

  Mia stared at her. “So what’d you do?”

  “When I was about to pass him, I looked right at his face. He was looking away then, at the ocean, but I stared him in the face and said, ‘Hello!’ in this really loud voice.”

  “Clover! Seriously?” Mia couldn’t imagine doing that. She probably would have turned around and kept running in the wrong direction forever. “What did he do?”

  “He kind of freaked out,” Clover said. “He jumped and dropped his handful of shorts and did this quick nod. And then he walked away really fast.” Clover bit her lip. “I kept checking to make sure he didn’t turn around, and then when he didn’t and I was a ways down the beach, I ran home and told my moms what happened.”

  Mia actually couldn’t imagine doing that, either. Her parents would flip if she’d wandered off on a deserted beach like that. “Did you get in trouble for walking so far?”

  “Not really,” Clover said. “They were glad I said something, and they called the police. But we went home the next day, so I don’t know if they ever caught him.”

  “Wow.” Mia watched as the sun sank into the mountains. “Bet you never walked on the beach again after that.”

  “No, I still do when we visit.” Clover squinted at the sun. “It feels different, though. Like … I don’t know. Like a shirt you used to love that has an ugly stain on it that won’t come out. But I’m not gonna let some creep take the beach away.”

  “Yeah.” Mia thought about that as the sun disappeared and realized how much she’d lost this past year since her accident. She used to love the feel of the balance beam under her bare feet. And she’d missed her gymnastics friends so much when she stopped hanging out with them. It wasn’t even fun to watch competitions on TV with her mom anymore. They used to love that. But it seemed too late to get any of those things back.

  “We should go.” Mia stood up from her swing. �
�The fireworks will start soon.”

  By the time they got back to the blanket, an Eagles tribute band was playing in the waterfront tent, and the adults were singing along to “Hotel California.” Clover’s moms were really good singers but didn’t seem to mind that no one else was.

  “Mia! I’ve been waiting for you to get back.” Gram held up what looked like an empty jar. But then something glowed inside it.

  “You found a firefly!” Mia hadn’t seen a single one since they got back to Vermont, but Gram always seemed to find them.

  “Do you know how bioluminescence works?” Gram said, turning the jar.

  Mia did, but she said, “How?” And that made Gram light up, too.

  “It’s a chemical reaction inside the firefly’s body,” Gram said. “The fireflies control when they flash, and they do it for a bunch of reasons. Most related to finding a mate. The males are always showing off, lighting up. And then females of the same species answer.” She let her firefly go free, and it flashed off into the trees.

  “What if the female firefly isn’t into the male who’s calling her?” Clover asked.

  “Well …” Gram’s eyes practically glowed at that question. “There’s actually one species of firefly where the female signals to males of a different species. Males they don’t have any interest in mating with.”

  “So what do they do if those other males show up?” Mia asked.

  “Eat them,” Gram said.

  All the moms applauded at that.

  “Ouch,” Dad said. “Speaking of light, who needs a sparkler?”

  Everyone did, so he passed around the box and held a lighter until they were all lit. Mia and Clover stood up with their sparklers, kicked off their flip-flops, and twirled around, making swirling trails of light. It was like the swings. With her Boston friends, Mia would have felt too old to dance with sparklers, but with Clover, it was just fun.

  “Spell out your name!” Clover looped her sparkler to make a fancy cursive C.

  “Mine’s easy!” Mia sparkled out her three letters.

  “Oh! We used to do this when I was a kid.” Jess jumped up and spelled out her name, too.

  Alessandra tried to join in but only made it to the D before her sparkler faded. “I don’t think I like this game! It’s not fair to people with long names,” she said, and everyone laughed.

  “Hey, the real fireworks are starting!” Dad called.

  “Sticks in here!” Mom held up a cup of water she had waiting so nobody would step on the hot ends. Everyone fizzled their sparklers cool and settled in to watch as red and blue fountains of fire exploded over the bay.

  Mia loved listening to the waves as the fireworks lit up the lake. She loved that they were watching with Gram this year, that she’d found that first firefly of the summer and gotten to tell Mia and Clover about making light. And Mia especially loved that she had a new friend. One who was brave enough for both of them.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Cricket-Bot Plan

  Gram called Saturday morning and said the fruit-fly situation was much better. It didn’t seem like any more had hatched, and Mia was happy to hear that. But it reminded her that she had cricket work to do, too.

  Clover came over to work on the Chirp Challenge banner for next weekend. Mia practiced her pitch for the farmers market and the restaurants they planned to visit afterward. Before Clover left, Mia told her what Daniel had said about everything taking too long, like the harvesting.

  “Are you sure we trust that guy?” Clover asked.

  Mia hesitated. “Not really?” She still thought there was a chance Daniel might be working with Mr. Potsworth somehow. “But either way, the harvest thing is an issue. I was watching him. And maybe this is dumb, but I started thinking about Anna’s robot. You know how it can pick things up and swivel and everything?”

  “That’s not dumb. It’s brilliant!” Clover said, rolling up the banner. “Everything’s automated these days, and if Daniel does leave, your grandmother will need quicker ways to do stuff. I bet Anna will totally be on board for this.”

  Clover was right. On Monday morning, they found Anna at camp. She still had red-white-and-blue-striped nails from the holiday weekend and was trying to make her robot pick up a gummy bear. “I’m trying to program it to feed me snacks while I watch TV.”

  “We have a proposal for your robot if you’re interested,” Clover said.

  “Could you program it to shake something?” Mia asked as the robot claw crushed a yellow gummy bear.

  “Sure. What for?”

  “To shake crickets into bins.” Mia went on to explain her idea. If Daniel or whoever replaced him got the bins set up, Anna could program the robot arm to shake crickets off the condos. They could put it on a timer—you could do that with robots, right?—and set it up so the robot would repeat the cycle four or five times, and then a buzzer would go off when it was done. That way, a worker could get it started but then leave to do other jobs while the robot handled the harvest.

  Anna was nodding slowly the whole time Mia talked. “Sure. I think that’s possible.”

  “Really?” Mia was afraid to hope. “So … is there any chance you’d want to work with us?”

  “That’d be great,” Anna said. “Want to come over after camp to brainstorm?”

  “Sure!” Clover answered for both of them, so Mia texted her mom, and they rode their bikes to Anna’s house after camp. It was up on the hill near the University of Vermont. Both Anna’s parents worked there; her mom taught computer science, and her dad was in charge of something in the admissions office.

  “You ride up this hill every day?” Clover asked, lifting her shirt to wipe sweat from her face at a stoplight.

  Anna nodded. “Mom refuses to drive me. She says if I’m going to spend all my time making stuff in the basement instead of exercising, I should at least get to camp on my own power.”

  “It could be worse,” Mia said. “Our moms made us do this Warrior Camp thing.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Clover said as they pulled into Anna’s driveway.

  “What’s Warrior Camp?” Anna asked.

  “A place where totally ripped coaches torture weak, unsuspecting kids,” Mia said, and stood up to pedal. At least she was getting in shape again, though. Without Warrior Camp, she might not have made it up this miserable hill.

  When they got to Anna’s house, her parents were at work, but her older sister, Prima, was at the kitchen table, surrounded by books and papers full of diagrams. The scent that filled the kitchen made Mia’s stomach grumble—a mix of onions, oil, and spices. “What’s that amazing smell?”

  “Pakora?” Anna looked at her sister.

  Prima nodded and pointed to a plate of fried vegetable fritters on the counter. “Mom made them before she left, and I’ve already eaten a whole plateful, so go for it.”

  Anna took the plate and some paper towels, and they headed down to the basement.

  It was nothing like Mia’s basement, where there were just moving boxes and laundry. This was a workshop with even more tools and supplies than the maker space at school.

  “This is amazing!” Clover said.

  “It’s pretty great to have,” Anna said. “Prima’s in school at MIT, so she hogs it up with projects when she’s home for the summer, but the rest of the year, it’s pretty much mine. Here …” She put the plate of pakoras down on the counter and grabbed a pencil and a big piece of paper. “Let’s talk about your harvesting robot while we eat.” She started sketching. “It’ll have to be a six-axis robot like this one, with articulated arms and something that can grip the cardboard because it’s not very thick, right?”

  “Right,” Mia said through a mouthful of pakora. She didn’t know what an articulated arm was, but she was grateful that Anna did.

  For another half hour, Anna drew and asked questions, and Clover and Mia did their best to answer. By then, the pakoras were gone, and the basement was feeling stuffy, so they went outside, and Anna l
ed them to a wooden fort tucked back in the trees.

  “Prima and I built this before she left for college.” Anna pulled down a rope ladder, and they all climbed up.

  “It’s really cool.” Mia liked how sturdy it felt. Her old friend Lily had a tree fort, but Lily’s dad hadn’t been much of a builder, so half the time, her fort felt like it might blow over.

  “Hey … thanks for asking me to work on your project,” Anna said.

  “Oh my gosh, thank you,” Mia said. “There’s no way we could do this part ourselves.”

  Anna nodded. “It’s kind of a perfect job for me. And I really do like working on teams. It’s just …” She looked at Clover.

  “Yeah. Eli’s kind of a pain.”

  “I told my mom about it, and she was so mad, I was afraid she was going to march in there and grab him by the collar or something. I figured it would be easier to just work by myself. Before Mom taught at UVM and met Dad, she worked at a tech company out in Silicon Valley, and there were, like, four women in the whole place. She’d never told me this before—it only came up when I told her about Eli—but she got harassed a lot. She was the only woman there who wasn’t white—she’s Indian, in case you didn’t figure that out—and she says cute white guys like Eli were the worst because they thought they were God’s gift to the world and just assumed she’d want to go out with them.” Anna took a deep breath and looked up. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, but I just …”

  “No, I get it,” Mia said. She did. And now she was extra glad they’d asked Anna for help. “I’m just happy you want to work with us. And I hope we can hang out more, too.”

  “Hey!” Anna stood up. “You should show me some of your warrior course stuff. Didn’t you say it was like a jungle gym situation? Look …” She pointed out the fort’s back window, where monkey bars led to another rope ladder.