I went inside, got a flashlight, and poked around in the flower bed. The dirt had that damp, woody promise of living things just waiting to sprout. I still didn’t see a single insect, not even an ant. Finally I turned over a rock like Nick always did when we went into the woods or down to the stream. Nothing but a few pillbugs.
So much for something really cool—anyone could find a pillbug. “Come on, little roly-poly,” I sighed. The small oval bug curled into a silver-gray ball as soon as I touched it. I set the rim of the vial on the ground and tapped the pillbug in with my finger. It rolled to the bottom. As I was closing the vial, headlight beams swept across the cul-de-sac, then a car door slammed. Mrs. Fanelli walked across the street carrying the dinner sack, just like always. I crouched down between the rhododendrons.
“I called to check on him,” I heard Dad tell Nick’s mom. “Neither one is talking.” He said something else I couldn’t quite hear.
“Don’t argue with me, Dan,” Mrs. Fanelli said. “Take this dinner right now.”
And she marched back across the inky street without her sack.
10
ROOM TWENTY STINKS
Irushed around after breakfast the next morning, searching for something to use for my bug habitat. Mr. Allen had asked us to bring in an empty soda bottle. Why would our teacher assume that we all had soda at home? We didn’t. I hoped that Lacey, the junk food queen, would have an extra bottle.
We were also supposed to pay attention to where we’d found the bug and bring in something it might like to eat. Pillbugs lived in dirt, and so did potatoes. Good thing I knew there were still a few left in the bag from when Mom had tried to make that awful potato soufflé recipe she’d found in You Can’t Cook Zip. It was getting late, so I grabbed the bag from the pantry and shoved it into my backpack on my way out the door.
Wisps of hair stung at my eyes and a chilly wind pushed me along the sidewalk. Part of me was thinking that maybe, if I saw him on the way to school, I’d ask Nick, in a casual kind of way, what bug he’d collected. I had my vial in my hand, ready to show him the pillbug. But I never saw him at all.
“Leave your food items in your coatroom cubby for now, my entomologist colleagues,” Mr. Allen told us. “Please clear your desks of everything but your collecting vial.”
Nick was already sitting in his seat. His vial was full of water. Something long and brown was swimming around in there. He saw me looking and turned away. I pretended I’d been looking at Owen’s desk, even though Owen wasn’t there yet. Why did Nick collect that swimming thing? I wondered. Fish aren’t bugs. I twirled my vial around and around, admiring my pillbug. They might be easy to find, but they were nice in their own way. I liked how they rolled up tight when they needed to protect themselves. Summer had what looked like a dull gray button in her vial. Something fluttered in Lacey’s. Owen slid into his seat and hid his bug in his desk before anyone could see what it was.
Mr. Allen rubbed his hands together. “I’m sure we have an exciting variety of insects to study,” he said. “I’ve placed a diagram on each group of desks that explains how to identify what you’ve found. Let’s see how far along in this process we already are. If you know the name of your insect, raise your hand.”
Every kid in our group put their hand up, even Owen. In the other groups it seemed to be about half and half.
“Very good!” Mr. Allen smiled. “Let’s jump right in and see what Group Two has brought to share with us.”
Chairs scraped and squeaked as the rest of the class gathered around our desks.
“I’ll go last,” Owen said, his vial still inside his desk. He shifted his eyes around the group and settled on Summer.
I knew right then and there that he had brought in something really gross.
Summer smiled at Owen. I felt a chill creep under my skin.
“I’ll go first,” Lacey announced. “I have a pretty butterfly.” She waved her vial in the air. Inside was a small, silvery moth.
“Aha,” Mr. Allen said.
“It’s a wheat moth,” I said. I knew full well it wasn’t a butterfly. When Mom finds a wheat moth in our kitchen cabinet she always saves it to show Dad. She says that it came from the whole wheat flour bin at the health food store, and that it proves that health food isn’t really good for you after all.
“Moths and butterflies are close relatives,” Mr. Allen told us. “Lacey, you’ll be able to give us some good information about the similarities and differences. What did you bring, Nick?”
A stupid fish, I thought. Too bad, Nick, wrong assignment.
Nick held up his vial. “A hellgrammite.” Some of the kids giggled.
“Did you hear that?” Alima whispered loudly. “Nick said H-E-double-L.”
Mr. Allen took Nick’s vial and whistled. “A real beaut! Now here’s the six thousand–point question: What type of creature is a hellgrammite?”
“Fish bait!” Max said. “I use those when I go fishing with my mom. Boy, can they pinch! Where’d you get it?”
“I found it in the stream near my house,” Nick said.
It wasn’t the stream near his house, it was the stream near my house. Going to the stream was something Nick and I always did together. He must have sneaked around through the woods behind his house the really long way just so I wouldn’t see him. Well, too bad. I could have told him that swimming thing in his vial wasn’t what the teacher wanted. I waited for Mr. Allen to tell him to take his hell-gra-whatever back and find a real bug.
Mr. Allen handed the vial back to Nick. “A hellgrammite is the larva—or the young form—of a dobsonfly. A true insect with six legs, two antennae, and three body parts. See if you can find a picture of a mature one, Nick.”
That swimming thing was an insect? I couldn’t believe it. And of course it had to be something interesting. A real beaut, the teacher had said. I rolled my eyes.
Mr. Allen turned to me. “And what did you find, Nadie?”
I handed him my vial. “It’s a pillbug,” I said. It had curled into a tight, round ball.
“It’s buglike,” Mr. Allen said, giving it back to me, “but it’s not an insect.”
“Not an insect?” I repeated. My face got hot.
“When is a bug not a bug?” Max asked, pretending to be all interested.
“That’s the mystery Nadie will solve for us today,” Mr. Allen said, smiling my way.
Right. Like I was interested in solving mysteries for Mr. Allen. I clamped my mouth shut and stared long and hard at a blue pushpin on the bulletin board. Pillbug has the word bug right in it, I thought. I didn’t care what Mr. Allen said about it, it had to be a bug.
“How about you, Summer?” Mr. Allen asked.
“I took this off of my dog Toby,” she said, handing him her vial.
Mr. Allen held it up so we could all see.
I couldn’t help it. I had to look.
“Ah, a tick,” our teacher said. “Since insects have six legs, this must be another non-insect mystery.”
I counted its eight tiny brown legs wriggling as the bloated tick tried to right itself. It looked like it still had a piece of Toby’s skin in its pincer mouth.
Summer took her vial back and waved it around for everyone to admire. She hadn’t done the homework right, either, but she didn’t seem to care at all that her tick wasn’t really an insect. “It sucked Toby’s blood,” she said. “That’s why it’s so fat.”
“Gross!” said Max.
“Eew!” Lacey screwed her eyes shut.
Why is she pretending ticks are so terrible? I thought. I knew for a fact that Lacey had pulled lots of ticks off her terrier, Digger, just last summer.
“Just wait ’til you see mine!” Owen chortled. He whisked his vial out of the desk with a flourish. Yellowy white worms writhed in a putrid-looking mass.
“Hah-hah!” he shouted. “Maggots!”
“Another example of larvae—this type is probably the young form of a house fly,” Mr. Allen said. “Let’s
move on to Group One.” He walked across the classroom.
“Blech.” Jess made a face.
“Personally, I think Summer’s is grosser,” Max observed.
“Yeah, me too,” Lacey agreed.
Owen slammed his vial down. “Maggots are grossest,” he insisted. He scowled at Summer.
“Maybe,” said Summer, “but can maggots dig into your skin and suck your blood?”
“Who thinks the tick wins?” Max said.
Everyone in our group raised their hands.
Summer turned a satisfied smile on Owen.
The moment I saw the look on Summer’s face, I knew for sure that she couldn’t care less if her tick was an insect or a reptile or a bird, as long as it was better than Owen’s maggots. “Better” meaning “worse,” of course. I figured now was a good time to go back to my policy of staying away from both of them.
When each group had finished showing their finds, Mr. Allen asked all of us to go back to our seats. “Each of our specimens has its own charms,” he said. “Now let’s take a closer look using the microscopes. Be sure you can identify your classroom visitor, then get to know those your classmates have collected as well.”
“But what if you brought in something that’s not an insect, like my tick?” Summer waved her vial around.
“Learning how non-insect arthropods are similar to and different from insects is an important part of our study,” the teacher said. “I’d like all of you to keep your observations and drawings in your science lab notebook, and don’t forget to pick up your homework packet. After lunch we’ll put together our bug habitats.”
I had to admit I was surprised when I finally figured out that my pillbug was a crustacean, which meant it was more closely related to marine creatures like lobsters and crayfish than bugs. It used its chewing, scraping mouthparts to eat bits of plants that rotted on the ground. That’s good, I thought. It can probably eat a potato, too. Under the microscope I saw that it was covered with shiny sections, one overlapping the other, and had dainty legs that moved in waves. I made a sketch of it in my notebook.
Gordon had what I thought was the best find—a small dragonfly with a bent, blue body.
“Can I draw yours?” I asked him.
Gordon tilted his head up and down, up and down. “Affir-ma-tive,” he said in his mechanical monotone. He swiveled his head and body away in one motion and lowered his pencil to his lab notebook. I took my time drawing the delicate net pattern of the dragonfly’s wing veins. After a while, Gordon turned back to me on his robot axis. He bent forward and tipped his head down to examine my drawing.
“Accu-rate re-pre-sen-ta-tion,” he said. He pushed his notebook toward me. He’d done his drawing while looking at the dragonfly under the microscope. It was beautiful.
“Wow,” I said, impressed.
He ducked his head. His dark hair stood up in a shiny cowlick, and his scalp flushed a little pinkish. I picked up my lab notebook and moved on to sketch other people’s bugs. I skipped the tick and the maggots.
Mr. Allen let me stay in the classroom at lunchtime to finish my sketches. I didn’t get much drawing done, though, because I was too busy eavesdropping on the Spark’s editorial meeting. I couldn’t believe how many submissions Gordon and Jess wanted to choose for this week’s issue. And lots of them weren’t even about bugs. How could Mr. Allen let them wreck the magazine like that? He just has to let me work on it, I thought. I’d do such a great issue. And I’d never let trouble find its way anywhere near the Spark again.
“Nadie, ah, don’t you need to be somewhere?” Mr. Allen’s voice shook me out of my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I said, remembering that trouble seemed to have a way of finding me lately. Reluctantly I put away my notebook and left for my cleanup punishment at the zoofeteria.
The tables were empty and all of the kids were lined up to leave. Mrs. Wolfowitz was standing guard at the far end of the room. I sidled in and stood with my back against the broom closet as the throng of kids crushed by.
I saw Nick’s face in the crowd, but he didn’t see me. He had this dull look about him, like he didn’t care what direction he got pushed in or what he was doing. I couldn’t stand to see him looking like that.
Without thinking, I stuck my hand out and grabbed his arm. “Nick.”
“Together again!” someone sang out. I dropped Nick’s arm and looked around. The fifth grader from the media center was pointing at us. “These two like each other,” he crowed.
I heard shouts of “Oooh!” and “Let’s see!” from a knot of boys nearby. One of them shoved Nick into me. “Go on,” another kid called out, making loud kissing noises. “Go for it!”
They were all laughing at us. The space around me was collapsing, and I couldn’t breathe. Nick struggled to get away. His ears were such a dark purple I couldn’t see any freckles at all.
“Get off!” He squirmed free of their pushing hands without even a glance at me. “I don’t like her!” he shouted at the crowd. “We’re not even friends!” He broke through the group of boys, elbowing past anyone who got in his way. I was left standing alone in the middle of the circle. My face was burning.
“Guess you lost your boyfriend,” the fifth grader from the media center jeered. “Too bad for you.” He and his friends jostled each other through the doorway. Then the lunchroom was empty.
There is no such thing as a boy who’s a friend, I thought. I yanked open the closet door and hauled out the bucket and the mop.
When I got back to class after mopping the cafeteria floor, I noticed a bad smell hanging on the air. The telltale stink of a rat, I thought, glowering sideways at Nick. I turned my back on him. As far as I was concerned, Nick Fanelli didn’t exist.
Mr. Allen had cut all of the soda bottles in half, even the extra ones Lacey had brought. They were lined up on the counter, waiting to be used for our bug habitats. I put pebbles and dirt in the bottom of one of the extras and added a cotton ball soaked with water. The odor in the room got stronger. Other kids were noticing it, too.
“What’s that smell?” asked Alima, wrinkling her nose.
“Eeew,” said Lacey. “Open a window!”
“Owen,” Mr. Allen said. “What exactly did you bring in to feed your maggots?”
“I found them in the top of our compost pile,” Owen said, “so I brought some compost.”
“I think you’re going to have to dispose of it,” Mr. Allen told him.
Owen went to the coatroom and came back with a plastic bag full of greenish black slime. “Look,” he said, waving it toward Summer. “Your dinner.”
Here we go again, I thought. I shifted my chair back away from the desks.
“I didn’t have to bring anything to feed my tick,” Summer said. “He already ate Toby’s blood.” She grinned.
“That’s it, Mr. Allen,” Lacey groaned. “I want to change groups!”
“Owen, take that bag to the Dumpster immediately,” Mr. Allen said.
Owen held the bag up to his nose, and then offered it to Mr. Allen. “This doesn’t stink that bad,” Owen announced, sounding disappointed.
Mr. Allen took a careful sniff of Owen’s maggot food. “Not particularly inviting, but you’re right, it is not the source of our problem.”
The smell was making me want to stop breathing. Mr. Allen tried opening a window, but the wind sent the papers on his desk sailing around the room. He opened the door to the hall.
“I’ll see if the janitor can come help us,” he said.
I finished my habitat and put my pillbug in. I covered the open end with a piece of netting held on by a rubber band.
“That’s nice,” Summer said, peering into my habitat.
“I’m going to get its food,” I said. I went to the coatroom for my potato bag. When I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the bag, the stench almost knocked me flat. It was worse than Mom’s burned soufflé. It was worse than week-old thermos milk. It was even worse than the dead possum Nick and I fo
und in the woods last year. I pinched my nose and held the bag at arm’s length. A dark liquid oozed from the bottom.
“Look out!” I cried, sprinting across the room toward the trash can.
“Aughhh!” Jess yelled as I went by. Some kids held their noses and others pulled the necks of their shirts up over their faces. Everyone was groaning. Lacey and Alima ran out of the room.
Owen stepped in my path. “My maggots will eat that!” he said, swiping the bag from my hand. “Or,”—he turned and dangled it toward Summer—“maybe your tick wants some?”
Summer made her thumb and finger into pincers. “Ticks drink blood, remember?” She snapped her pincers at Owen.
“Summer, don’t,” I cried.
“Get your claws away!” Owen yelled. He swung the bag back.
It came toward me. I grabbed for it but missed. The bag caught me square on the shoulder and burst open. Stinking, rotted, liquid potato soaked through my clothes and oozed down my front in a slimy drizzle. Mr. Allen and the janitor arrived in the doorway as I started to gag. In a blur Mr. Allen ripped the curtain from the coatroom doorway, wrapped me up in it, and swept me out into the hallway. Holding his breath, he ran with me down the hall.
I had to shower in the nurse’s office. I ran the water as hot as it would go and filled the room with steam. While I was in the shower the nurse knocked, then came in to seal my clothes in a plastic garbage bag.
“How are we doing, dear?” she called through the curtain.
I shrank against the far wall. Leave me alone, I thought. I’m never coming out of here.
The Trouble with Rules Page 6
