When frogs were full size, like our frog, they ate snakes and mice and fish.
Maybe that was why we hadn’t seen any other small creatures on the island; maybe the frog had eaten them.
Delph came back with the aquarium and we set it up with water and the rocks and plants that Leroy had gathered.
I slid on my gloves—more to protect the frog than to protect myself. He was heavy and slimy when I lifted him. He didn’t complain, just settled into a corner of the tank and waited. I put a screen over the top.
“Do we report it?” Davy asked. He usually preferred to stay below the radar.
“How do you say ‘heck, no’ in Latin?” asked Leroy.
“I was just checking,” Davy said.
“We’re not reporting it,” I repeated. The new government wasn’t protecting the environment any more than the old one was. They’d admitted there was a problem, which was good. But they were just pretending to help. Davy knew that. He was an expert at figuring out which government-released images were real and which were fakes. The ones of President Franco standing next to restored swampland or a baby cheetah? Propaganda. Also: totally bogus.
“Then what are we doing?” Davy asked.
“Gathering information. Our own information.”
The frog croaked again and Leroy jumped back and forth between two rocks, a sort of victory dance.
“The next thing we should do,” I said, “is see if there are any more.”
We fanned out. Leroy went down the hill, to where he’d found the first lobster, with Davy as his partner. Delphinium and I searched around the spring. The frog called out again from the aquarium, but no one called back.
“Poor thing,” Delphinium said. “If he has a girlfriend, she’s not speaking to him.”
“I don’t think she would anyway,” I said. “The females don’t talk.”
“Well, that’s oppressive,” Delph said. “Wait. If the females don’t talk, how do we know there isn’t a female out there somewhere? If we take him, he could be leaving behind a girlfriend. We’d never know.”
Delphinium had a point. If we took the frog away, we were taking away his chance to find a mate. Plus, he could die. I thought about the way Leroy’s lobster had looked in the EPF tank with the tail curled under.
My aquarium, with a water pump, was better than Leroy’s bucket. But what if it wasn’t enough? A dead frog wasn’t going to get me into the Disciples. It might even get me banned. For life.
“Maybe we could leave him here for a while,” I said. “But we could tag him. And watch him.”
“And his girlfriend,” said Delphinium.
“If he has one,” I said.
We searched a while longer but still didn’t find much wildlife, besides the usual insects. We found plants, though, that I hadn’t seen on the mainland. Mayapple, according to the One, and something else it identified as winterberry. We heard birds, camouflaged in the trees. What if one of them tried to eat my frog? Our frog. Still, he’d made it this long.
Davy and Leroy made it back up the hill, and I outlined my new plan.
“You always carry a tag in your pocket?” Leroy said.
“No,” I said. “Just today.” I dug into my bag and pulled out a small vial full of microchips, each less than a centimeter long. I’d bought them years ago, but I had yet to inject them under the skin of any actual animals. The closest I’d come was Davy’s shoe, plus a cockroach that I’d tracked through our house for a week before my dad stomped on him.
“Will it hurt him?” Delph asked.
“No. Not if I do it right.” Could I do it right?
“Just don’t plug him in the heart or the eyeball,” Leroy advised.
“Thanks.” I knew I wouldn’t hit a heart or an eyeball, but an artery was a possibility. My hand shook, and all I was doing was holding the chip, not even inserting it.
Davy pulled out his own One, which read aloud (in the voice of British gamer Rudy Janowitz) a story about a group of scientists who had tagged frogs back in the 1930s. They’d put metal tags around the dentary bone. “Which would be here,” Davy said, pointing to his jaw. “Delph could do it. She has steady hands.”
Delphinium shook her head. “If that’s really the last bullfrog, I’m not going to be responsible for killing him. No way.”
“Maybe we can just use this,” said Leroy. He held up a tube of Bind-oh. “I’ve had it on my skin tons and it hasn’t hurt me.”
“That’ll work,” Davy said.
“It seems safer than breaking the skin,” Leroy said.
“It does,” said Delph.
It did. Maybe if I’d practiced more, or even done one of those virtual dissections, it would have been different. But the frog was so delicate, I couldn’t take any chances. Sticking something on him seemed better than sticking something in him. I picked him up again with a gloved hand. I wondered how the Disciples felt about science that used Bind-oh.
“It’s okay, big guy,” I told the frog. “It’s okay.”
The frog’s legs drooped over the sides of my hands, like a rag doll’s. He pulled his eyes in, in sort of a blink, and then they popped out again as Leroy put a dab of Bind-oh on his head and dropped the chip on the dot with my tweezers. I held the frog for the required thirty seconds so he wouldn’t touch anything and get that stuck to his head as well.
I’d brought along a motion-detecting camera with the intention of setting it up where the stream and ocean met. Instead, I set it up near the spring, not far from where we’d found the frog. That way, I could monitor him and see if he had any friends.
“If we can’t figure out a name for the island, can we at least name the frog?” Delphinium asked.
“Rana,” I said. It was part of the species name.
“Bob,” Leroy said.
“How about Caesar?” said Davy.
“Bob.”
“It’s the last one of its kind,” Davy said. “What’s a good name for something that’s the last one of its kind?”
And that’s when it hit me. “Alpha.”
“That’s not the word for last,” said Davy. He sort of mashed his mouth together, the way he does in school when he’s waiting for the rest of the class to catch up with him.
“Exactly,” I said. I didn’t want him to be the last of his kind; I wanted him to be the first.
Leroy shrugged again. “Okay. But we’re calling him Alph for short.”
Alph seemed to like his name. He watched us with his round froggy eyes, and he didn’t seem afraid. I set him back on the ground near the stream.
He took a hop, a short one, into the water, but he didn’t sink all the way down like he was hiding, just like he was getting comfortable. He seemed to be saying, “So, yeah. This is where I hang out.” I guess after you’ve lost most of your species to a hostile environment, a few kids with a tube of Bind-oh aren’t going to freak you out.
I watched him a little longer, to make sure the chip stayed where it was supposed to, while everyone else explored.
Alph didn’t move much, except to puff out his throat and holler, looking for company. The only company he found was me.
We went home empty-handed. Even though we’d been mostly successful—I’d touched an actual frog—it didn’t feel that way. Leroy talked me into leaving some of the equipment behind so we wouldn’t have to lug it back the next time.
“It’s not like anyone’s going to steal it,” he said. “There’s nobody here but us.”
It was true. Even the banks of the harbor, where we sometimes saw out-of-work anglers, were deserted.
We stowed the canoe in Leroy’s hiding place and covered it with dead branches. Then we rode our bikes toward home. Davy turned off at Highbush, and Leroy, Delph, and I rode together until Elderberry, where Delph peeled off. “Later,” she said.
That meant it was just me and Leroy when we ran into Derek Ripley.
At least I didn’t have the aquarium on the back of my bike. There was nothing suspicious
about me—nothing except that I was with a known lobster killer and I was wearing my grandfather’s hip waders.
“Yo, Slime Boy,” Derek said. “Waiting on a flood?”
“It never hurts to be prepared,” I said. My back still itched. Seeing Derek made me itch more.
He nosed his bike closer. “Hey, Varney, what’d you kill today?”
“Mosquito.” Leroy’s expression didn’t change.
Derek reached us and looked down at my boots, which were dotted with globs of dried mud and sand. “Haven’t been anywhere you’re not supposed to be, have you, Slime Boy?”
“I was exactly where I was supposed to be,” I said.
“I told my dad I’d keep an eye on you.”
“Because he can’t do his own job?”
“He does his job very well.” Derek looked smug. “People like your dad make it easy for him to reach his quota. In fact, one more green ticket and your dad might be going to j-a-i-l.”
“You can spell,” I said. “I was worried.”
“Don’t test me, Goldstein,” he said “You guys have been up to something.”
We didn’t say anything.
“I’ll bet you were in the harbor, looking for more lobsters, which is a violation of environmental code RE 17: No persons, either willingly or unwillingly, may enter the water for any reason without proper authorization from the EPF.”
Leroy shook his head. “I guess we’d better give up, Ahab. He caught us.”
“What the—”
“But we’ve moved beyond lobsters,” Leroy continued. “We’re on to bigger things.”
Even though I didn’t trust him, I couldn’t believe Leroy would turn over so easily. He’d had practice getting in trouble.
“What are you chasing now? Goldfish?” Derek said.
“Bears,” Leroy said solemnly. I almost laughed with relief.
“Yeah, right,” Derek said. “You saw a bear. In the water.”
“In the woods,” Leroy said. “I’m not saying it was a bear. Ahab was helping me figure out if it was a bear.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t have to believe us,” Leroy said. He didn’t even blink.
“If you thought you saw a bear, why didn’t you call the EPF?” Derek said, his eyes narrowing.
“I didn’t want to call if it was a false alarm,” Leroy said, putting his hand over his heart. “Isn’t that a violation or something?”
“RE 29,” Derek said.
“We were searching for evidence,” Leroy said. “That’s why he needed the boots.”
I tried to think what sort of evidence would require boots. I got the answer a half a second before Derek did.
“You’ve been wading around in bear dung?” Derek said.
“I didn’t say that,” Leroy said. “I said we were looking for it.”
“Actually, we refer to it as ‘scat,’ ” I said helpfully.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Derek said. “Scientific Posers of America?”
“But we didn’t find any,” I added.
“I’m still telling my dad,” Derek said.
“Good,” Leroy said. “Then you’ll be guilty of … whatever it was.”
“Violation RE 29,” I said. “I’d check it out before reporting.”
“You’re lying,” Derek said.
“Leroy saw something,” I said. True, right?
“You should check it out,” Leroy said. “I’ll bet Ahab would even loan you his boots.”
“I don’t want your crappy boots,” Derek said. It would have been an apt description, if I’d actually stepped in bear scat.
Derek rode off, not in the direction of the woods.
I looked at Leroy. “Bear scat? Seriously?”
“It’ll keep him away from the water.”
It was turning out that Leroy could build more than a good canoe; he could build a pretty good lie, too.
I stowed my boots in the garden shed.
Fortunately, I’d saved my shower time, the last I was allowed before I turned it over to Juliette for a week. The cold water helped, but not much. I was still covered with red welts. I toweled off and coated myself with salve before I went back downstairs.
Juliette was out with Derek’s brother again.
“She really likes him,” my mother said, live from Fantasy World. She handed me a glass of Amp, water infused with essential vitamins. It had a faint sour taste, but I liked it. I took a sip so I wouldn’t have to answer.
“Do anything productive today?” my father asked.
“I rode my bike.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time the Mellor twins and I biked to Canada? Sorest my muscles have ever been.”
My dad does not have what you’d think of as a biker’s body. But when he talks about the old days, I can almost get an image of what he used to look like, with his brown hair spiked into what he called a “fauxhawk.” (Apparently, that meant he was too afraid of my grandmother to shave the sides of his head.)
The twins were his neighbors, until they moved to Minnesota. The trip was the last thing they all did together before St. Paul.
“We went through two sets of tires,” my dad said. “Not that it was such a far trip. Tires were thinner back then.”
I’d heard this story a million times, so it was hard to concentrate. My mind went back to what Derek said, about the tickets.
“Peter’s dad—” I interrupted.
“Come on, now,” said my dad. “You’ll give me indigestion.”
But I started again. “I saw Derek Ripley this afternoon and he wouldn’t shut up about your tickets. He said if you get one more, you’re in trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble if I get another ticket,” my dad said. His laugh was contagious, and I started to smile, too. Then he said, “I’m in trouble if I don’t pay the tickets I’ve already got.”
I looked over at my mom, and I’d be willing to bet she was already making a plan to pay off those tickets herself.
“Ripley’s not even a real cop,” my dad said as my mom stood up and walked out of the room. “You know better than to say anything in front of her,” he said when she was gone.
“Why don’t you just pay them?” I could feel the anger burning in my throat like I’d swallowed a firecracker.
“If I pay them, I’m just donating money to the Angus Ripley Vacation Fund. It’s a farce.”
But it wasn’t the lack of payment that was bothering me; it was getting all the tickets in the first place. “Why can’t you just try to fix things?” I asked.
“What haven’t I fixed around here? The dispose-all? The sink? I even fixed your sister’s what’s-it—that bracelet she got in Michigan.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, which he already knew. “You keep talking about how different things were when you were a kid. Why don’t you at least try to make it better?”
“Like what? Recycling a juice pouch? Look, Ahab. We have some growing pains. Things will straighten out. Give it time.”
I couldn’t believe my dad believed the old government line. Maybe he really did believe that someone was going to cover the world with some sort of regenerative pixie dust and fix things (the Disciples were our best chance, if you ask me). Or maybe he was putting up a front. Maybe he knew, even better than I did, how bad things really were.
“You could at least pretend to care,” I said. “Put things in the right bin. Something.”
“Kid,” my dad said. I hated it when he called me “kid.” It made me feel like we were in a movie. “My contribution to this mess isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.”
“Because they’ve all melted,” I said.
“Ahab,” said my dad.
“Dad?” I said.
“Shut it.”
Mr. Kletter was my favorite teacher at Blue Harbor Middle School. But that doesn’t mean he was above taking us on pointless field trips. The good thing is that he admitted they were pointless.
“Settle
down, class,” he said after we’d all filed in. “Try to contain your bubbling excitement as we travel to New Arcadia.” Like the other teachers, he wore a tight-fitting shirt, black with three-quarter sleeves, and long black pants that looked like they were suited for running in sleet. Unlike the other teachers, he wore a Hawaiian shirt draped over it. It was red, with enormous yellow flowers that didn’t look like they were based on anything remotely scientific.
He turned off the lights and passed out a bunch of pairs of VR goggles, which looked at least twenty years old. “Put them on,” he said. “You don’t want to be left behind.”
I put on the glasses and stared into the blackness.
“Behold,” Mr. Kletter said in a flat monotone. “Rehabilitation Center Field Trip. Engage.”
The screen blinked to life and took us to a lab in New Arcadia, where a woman was standing, waiting for us. She had a sharp nose and a smile that looked too big for her face. An image of our class appeared on a screen on the wall beside her. As she walked, it moved with her.
“Hello, Mr. Kletter,” she said.
“Officer Drejko,” he said. “Thank you for agreeing to show us around your facility.”
“I’m so glad to have you,” she said. She led us past some statues of animals—a steel squid, a wooden cow. I didn’t see a frog. “Though I’m afraid I’m short on company this week.” She gestured to the side, where we saw a bunch of cages and a row of aquariums. All of them were bigger than mine. And all of them seemed to be empty.
“As many of you know, President Franco has turned her focus back on the natural world around us. And that world needs a helping hand. When we find a fragile species, we bring it here to our EPF facility, providing the highest standard of care imaginable.”
“It looks like Aqua Alcatraz,” I whispered to Davy.
Officer Drejko cleared her throat. I wondered if she’d heard me. “Here, we employ some of the nation’s best scientists, who provide our fragile species with a vitamin-filled diet to make them stronger and more capable of dealing with the natural world. When they’re stronger, we release them.”
One Small Hop Page 6
