Chirp

by Kate Messner

Mia loved the chaos of Launch Camp, too—the way everybody showed up full of ideas and cheered one another on. She and Clover and Anna worked together almost every day now. Anna had them helping to solder wires for the cricket robot. Zoya called the girls her Three Entrepreneurial Musketeers.

  “Team meeting!” Zoya called out on the Monday morning before the Vermont Launch Junior competition. “I have some updates before you get to work.”

  “Can’t I listen from here?” Eli was already at his computer.

  “Sure, if you don’t want breakfast.” Zoya opened a big green-and-white-striped box.

  “You brought Vermonstrosities!” Eli slammed his laptop shut, raced to the table, and lifted an enormous coconut-sprinkled chocolate donut to his mouth.

  “Whoa!” It was twice as big as any donut Mia had ever seen.

  “Vermonstrosities is the new donut shop that opened on Cherry Street last year,” Clover explained, picking out a maple-glazed donut the size of her face. “Their slogan is ‘Donut be afraid.’ ”

  “Ha!” Mia chose a custard cream donut, which must have been dusted with half a bag of confectioners’ sugar, and settled in next to Clover with her notebook. She hoped Zoya’s meeting would be fast. Mia wasn’t scrambling to get ready for the competition like everyone else, but she had a lot to do. Gram’s open house was only a week away, so she wanted to work on plans, and she also wanted to update her list of businesses to visit. Maybe Vermonstrosities would try a cricket donut. Mia opened her notebook while Zoya started talking.

  “First, a calendar note. Tomorrow we’ll be walking up to UVM to hear a talk from the owner of Five Dogs Apparel.”

  “What’s his name, and what’s he talking about?” Eli asked.

  “Her name is Anne Marie Spangler,” Zoya said, “and she is talking about her path to running a major apparel company that started right here in Vermont. It’s part of a speaker series at the college.”

  Zoya looked down at her clipboard. “Next we need to talk about Vermont Launch Junior. There’s still time to sign up.” She glanced at Mia when she said that. “But I definitely need permission slips by Thursday.”

  Mia went back to her notebook. There was no point in her doing the competition. Not when everybody else had been working on it for so long. She added Visit Vermonstrosities—chocolate cricket donut? to her to-do list.

  But then Clover slid the permission slip in front of her face and tapped on the list of judging criteria. “Your cricket farm plan is actually a perfect fit for this. You should enter!”

  Mia glanced at the guidelines. It did seem like she had a pretty good start. “But it’s this Saturday! And you’re already on a team. I wouldn’t want to do it by myself.”

  “Hey, Zoya!” Clover called. “Can a person be on more than one team for the competition?”

  “Sure,” Zoya said. “I’ve had kids who wrote code for multiple projects, and they presented with all of them.”

  “Great!” Clover turned back to Mia, as if that settled it.

  “I don’t know …” Mia’s stomach felt floppy, and not just because she’d scarfed down an entire Vermonstrosity. “I don’t think we have enough to work with.”

  “I’ll do it with you,” Anna said. “We can include a robot arm demo. It’ll be fun!”

  “And it would be great exposure for the cricket farm,” Clover said. “The newspaper sends photographers and everything. We can bring the banner, and the farm might even be on TV!”

  Mia had to admit that sounded promising. Gram was having all those meetings with her maybe-investors, and it might help if they saw the farm featured on TV. What if Vermont Launch Junior could really make a difference? What if they won? That wasn’t likely, and fifty dollars and a trophy wouldn’t solve Gram’s problems, but a mentor might help. Even if they didn’t win, more people would hear about the farm.

  “Okay,” Mia said.

  “Really?” Clover looked surprised.

  “Yay!” Anna cheered and high-fived them both. “We are going to rock this thing. Here’s to the Three Entrepreneurial Musketeers!”

  Mia had her mom sign her permission slip that night, before she filled in any of the project details on the paperwork. She wasn’t ready to share her plans yet. And that turned out to be fine, because Mom was busy on the phone when Mia slid the paper in front of her.

  “Yes, things are evolving,” Mom said as she signed. “She may be more open to the idea.”

  Mia started to go upstairs, but then she heard Mom say, “If you draw up an offer, I’ll make sure she gives it real consideration.”

  “Who was that?” Mia said when Mom hung up.

  “I’ve been on the phone half the afternoon,” Mom said. “First it was my mother in Florida, who wants to know about our Christmas plans, and I told her I don’t even know what’s for dinner tonight. I ordered pizza, by the way. And after I hung up with the pizza guy, Aunt Abby called because Fiona wants to start gymnastics, so she was asking about a gym.”

  “Is she going to Tumblers?” Mia’s heart sped up, but then her mom shook her head.

  “They didn’t have any openings, so she’s looking at a place in Needham. I told her I’d have you dig out some of your old leotards to send her.”

  “Okay,” Mia said. “But who was on the phone just now? You were talking about an offer.”

  Mom sighed. “That was Chet Potsworth, and—”

  “Mom!” Mia stared at her. “How can you even talk to that guy? You know he’s been messing with the farm to try to get Gram to sell!”

  “We don’t know that,” Mom said.

  “We do so!” Mia couldn’t tell Mom how she knew. But Mom couldn’t do this to Gram. “How do you think those fruit flies got in there? Magic?” Mia couldn’t believe this. No wonder Mr. Potsworth hadn’t tried anything else lately. With Mom on his side, he thought he’d already won. “What are you thinking talking to that guy?”

  “I’m thinking that we have no idea who broke in with the fruit flies, if anyone did. I’m thinking that Gram is struggling, in more ways than one. She needs to get out from under this farm before she goes deeper into debt and loses her house.” Mom put her hands on her hips and stared at Mia. “And I’m thinking you’d better watch your tone. What’s gotten into you?”

  “She doesn’t want to sell!” Mia’s voice shook. She didn’t even know if that was true anymore, but she wanted it to be. Gram had always, always been there for her when she needed a hug or encouragement. Maybe Gram was frustrated enough to think about quitting, but Mia wasn’t ready to let her. Ever since she heard Mr. Potsworth laughing at the processing plant, she felt as if she’d soaked up some of the fighting attitude that Gram had lost.

  Mia took her signed permission slip and stomped up to her room. She wanted to throw something, but she knew that wouldn’t do any good. So she did the only thing she could that might actually help Gram—worked on her Vermont Launch Junior project.

  It was an hour later when Mom came and sat down on Mia’s bed. “You know I’m trying to help Gram, right?”

  “She doesn’t want help. Why can’t she make her own decisions without you talking to that guy behind her back?”

  Mom nodded slowly. “You’re right about that. And I already spoke with Gram about my conversation tonight.”

  “You did?”

  “I called her when you went upstairs. She wasn’t thrilled that I reached out to Mr. Potsworth. But she’s going to think about his offer.”

  Mia shook her head. It was all so wrong. “Even if he didn’t do all that stuff to Gram’s farm, at the very least, he’s being super pushy with her. He’s a jerk. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

  Mom sighed. “It does matter. But selling to him may be Gram’s best option.” She picked up Neptune and flopped one of his wings a little. “In a perfect world, Mia, an amazing woman like Gram wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. But we don’t live in that world.” Mom looked sad about that, and Mia felt a little of her anger leak away. “When I got m
y first job at a law firm, one of the partners was so dismissive of the women in the office. We’d get left out of meetings, and he’d make comments about our skirts and jokes about … well … jokes that were inappropriate.”

  Mia stared at her mom. She thought about Clover on the beach and Anna’s mom at work in Silicon Valley. Did every woman she knew have some awful secret story? “How come you never told me about this?”

  Mom shrugged. “I guess it never came up. But anyway, he was my boss, and I was young and inexperienced. I needed that job to pay back my college loans, so I dealt with it until I could move. That was what I had to do. And this … well, this might be what Gram has to do. It may be her best option. She’ll have to decide.” She looked up at Mia. “Does that make sense at all?”

  Mia shrugged. Mostly it made her sad. “It’s just … Gram’s never given up on anything.” She took Neptune away from Mom. “And Gram’s not young or inexperienced. She knows what she’s doing, and she has amazing ideas if people would just listen to her. It’s not fair.”

  “No. It’s not.” Mom sighed. “I’ll call you when the food gets here.” She headed for the door but turned back. “Did you find any leotards for Fiona?”

  “Shoot. I got working on something and forgot to check. I’ll look now.”

  Mom left, and Mia pulled out the box full of gymnastics stuff she’d outgrown. She dug out a purple leotard, two pink ones, and the shiny blue one she’d loved best. Fiona would like that one, too. There should have been a matching hair scrunchie in there somewhere. Mia reached down to the bottom corners of the box and felt around for it.

  Instead, she pulled out an Olympic pin.

  Her stomach twisted, and she dropped it as if it had burned her.

  She thought she had gotten rid of them all, but it must have fallen off her old gym bag. And there it was, waiting for her at the bottom of the box.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Story from the Bottom of the Box

  The enamel pin had a bright American flag on it, with an outline of a girl on a balance beam and, above that, five delicate gold Olympic rings. It was the first pin he’d given her. He told her he’d been holding on to it for just the right person, and she’d worked so hard on the beam that she deserved it. Mia had pinned it to the gym bag she brought to practice every day.

  She remembered the day Phil started at Tumblers. Everybody was excited because he’d worked with Olympic athletes during the 2012 games. They had a real live assistant Olympic gymnastics coach at their gym! He’d been a gymnast in college, too, and was still amazing at vault. And he was just really nice. He’d been so nice. To everyone. But to Mia especially.

  She looked at the pin on her floor and tried to remember when things started to feel different. She wasn’t sure. But looking back now, there were so many things that seemed weird. He’d followed all the gymnasts on social media and asked for their cell phone numbers so he could text updates on practice times. He always hearted all of Mia’s posts, and sometimes he’d text her even when there was no practice news. It was never anything bad or anything. Just little encouraging notes—Hey, kiddo! Ready to go after that back handspring again on Monday?—or funny pictures like the cat dangling from its paws on a tree limb, with a line about hanging in there and a smiley face. A few times, he sent her goofy pictures of himself. Posing with the Champ the Lake Monster statue on the waterfront. Doing a handstand in his swim trunks at the beach with the message: You should send me a pic of you, too! One time, Mia was already in bed when she got a text that said, Hey there! Thinking of you tonight & looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!

  Mia stared at the pin on the floor. Regular grown-ups didn’t do stuff like that. She could see that now. It was easy from a distance. Like the crickets. Hey, maybe climb out of that water so you don’t drown! But back then, it had all just felt weird. And when Mia asked around, everybody said yeah, Phil was super friendly and kind of awkward and okay, maybe a little touchy, but that was just how Phil was. Everybody loved him. Coach Carrie was always on her gymnasts to eat healthy and lay off the junk food, but Phil would slip them Skittles and Starbursts after practice when she wasn’t looking. “Our secret, okay?” He’d winked at Mia when he gave her the king-size Twix bar.

  He gave a few girls pins, too, and he hugged everybody. That seemed fine at first. Coach Carrie hugged them when they left sometimes, too, and Phil was just there with her. Somebody Mia was supposed to hug. She didn’t feel like she had a choice.

  But after a while—Mia didn’t even know when it changed—Phil’s hugs felt weird to her. They were too tight and too pressed-up-against-her, and they lasted too long, and she couldn’t really pull away, so she’d started avoiding him at the end of practice. That went on for a week, until her friends Kira and Eunice started joking about it, saying that her name, Mia, stood for Missing In Action.

  Mia laughed it off. She didn’t tell them she’d gone MIA on purpose, hiding out in the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to hug Phil. She tried to make herself invisible so he wouldn’t bother her. Like the opposite of a kung fu mantis.

  That was Gram’s favorite insect, other than crickets. She’d shown Mia a video once. It was this little red-and-black praying mantis that scared off jumping spiders by standing up on its hind legs and raising its front legs, all fierce, over its head so it would look big and tough. “So any time you need some courage, you just take a deep breath and stand up tall like that little guy,” Gram had told Mia, “and you’ll start to feel bigger and braver, too.”

  But Mia had learned to make herself small. Instead of showing off at practice and celebrating with her friends, she’d stopped doing the things she was best at. She worked hard to not be noticed. She still did that sometimes, even though Phil was far away. Once you got in the habit of being small, it was hard to feel safe being your normal size anymore.

  Mia reached out and picked up the pin. She took off the back and let the sharp part poke her finger. The back rubs had started not long after Phil gave her the pin. He was always offering back rubs when people were sore after a workout. And who didn’t love a back rub?

  But on that one day, Mia had flopped down on a chair after practice to wait for her ride, and Phil had come up behind her and said, “You must be wiped out from all that work on the bars today!” and started rubbing her shoulders. Mia couldn’t even remember what changed exactly, if he was standing too close or pressing against her or breathing on her or where his hands even were, but all of a sudden, it felt icky.

  Mia felt icky. And she didn’t know what to do, so she said, “I should check for my ride,” and started to stand up, but he kind of pushed her back down with his hands on her shoulders to keep her from leaving. Had he really pushed her down? He had. Or she would have gone to the door. And then she’d just stayed in her chair with his hands on her because she was afraid to try again, and probably she was wrong and it was nothing anyway. Coach Carrie was right there in the office. So it had to be okay. Right?

  Only it wasn’t. Mia still felt icky when she got home. She wasn’t even sure she could say exactly what happened, but something had, and it felt gross and wrong and probably she should have said something to her mom, but how could you say something when you couldn’t even explain what happened yourself? You couldn’t. Mia had felt like she couldn’t anyway. So she’d gone girl-cricket quiet and disappeared into her room right after dinner.

  The next weekend, when it was time to go back to gymnastics, Mia still didn’t feel right. She told Mom she had a stomachache, but it was almost time for the Snowflake Competition, and Mom said to go anyway and she’d probably feel better when she got there, so Mia did.

  When she got to the gym, she felt worse. She needed to practice her beam routine, but she didn’t want to do that while Phil was at the beam, so she waited until he was busy at the vault with Eunice.

  Mia was halfway through her routine when it was time for the back walkover. She stood on her right leg with her left leg pointed forward, perfectly
balanced. But when Mia bent backward to spot the beam, she spotted him instead, walking toward her, and the next thing she knew, she was on the mat underneath the beam with her arm bent at a scary angle.

  Mom was still in the building, watching through the glass—she’d been waiting to make sure Mia’s stomach was okay—and she came running in and took Mia to the emergency room. There were X-rays and whispers and meetings and then surgery and recovery and TV shows and Popsicles and then more surgery and another five months of healing before Mia could even go to gym class again.

  Mia turned the pin over in her hands. She couldn’t even remember being the girl who felt so excited to have it on her gym bag, who thought maybe she’d go to the Olympics someday, too. Mia never thought about that after her fall. She wasn’t going back to Tumblers. Not with him there. Even if he was gone, it wouldn’t have worked.

  Things happened fast in gymnastics. The season Mia missed was the season she would have gotten her back layout on the floor and her giant on the bars, and by the time she could have gone back, Kira and Eunice weren’t even in the same level anymore. So Mia had stuck with streaming TV shows and eating Chex Mix in her basement.

  “Did you find them?” Mom appeared in the doorway.

  Mia closed her fist around the pin so Mom wouldn’t see it. “Yep, I have three that should fit her.” With her other hand, she tossed Mom the leotards.

  “Great. I’ll mail these tomorrow.” Mom nodded at the box. “Put that away and come down for pizza. Dad’s home, and Gram decided to join us, too.”

  “Okay.”

  Mom left. Mia waited to hear her footsteps go all the way downstairs before she opened her hand and looked down at it. The pin had left marks where its sharp edges poked into the soft part of her palm. Above that, right below her fingers, her calluses had hardened up again from all her arm hangs at the gym. She’d done seventy seconds last time. Maria said she’d probably be able to make it through the rings now, but Mia wasn’t sure. Sometimes she still felt like she’d left all her confidence on that mat under the balance beam, with Phil standing over it.