I raised my hand.
“Young man?”
“Is that why the tanks are empty?” I said. “Because you’ve rehabilitated the animals and released them?”
“Is that why the tanks are empty?” she repeated. She sounded like the hologram lady back at the Rec Box™. “They’re not all empty. Let me show you over here.”
She walked to the corner, stopping at a tank with a large, silvery fish floating near the top, its body arched.
On the screen, I could see Davy raising his hand.
“Yes?” said Officer Drejko.
“Is it dead?” Davy asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “You see how its mouth is moving? It is being … rehabilitated. Now here”—she moved to a different part of the room, where we saw a small, striped animal curled up in a small, wire cage that was filled with twigs—“we have the chipmunk. These creatures are little scamps. They love to run and play.”
I squinted to try to see if the chipmunk was still breathing. Davy raised his hand again.
“Yes?”
“Is it dead?” Davy asked.
The officer glared. Then Derek raised his hand.
“Yes?” she snapped.
“My dad works for the EPF,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. Her body relaxed and this time, the smile seemed genuine.
There wasn’t much to see in the Rehabilitation Center, though Officer Drejko led us around the room twice. Because the field trip was virtual, we couldn’t smell it, but I was betting it smelled a little like the harbor. Officer Drejko introduced us to one of the scientists, who sounded like he’d bought his degree at a convenience store.
I imagined Alph floating around in one of those tanks. He’d have been better off hopping around in a Rec Box™. And he was definitely better off with us. If we were going to save him, we’d need to keep him as far from the EPF as possible.
After Officer Drejko said goodbye, Mr. Kletter let us finish out the period with a virtual earthworm lab.
“Do not be alarmed,” he said. “That long, brownish shape in front of you was not manufactured in the school cafeteria. On your desk, you will see a stylus. Please use the stylus to select your incision point.”
My lab partner was Davy, who was grossed out, even though the worm wasn’t real.
“Don’t give me that face, Mr. Hudson,” said Mr. Kletter. “This one is, in fact, dead. And in my day, it was suckling pigs.”
“Mr. Kletter?” I asked as Davy plunged his tweezers into the projection and pulled back a flap of earthworm skin. I pulled back a flap on the other side of the incision, exposing organs that looked like they were made of chewed-up pieces of gum. “Why don’t we do that anymore? With the pigs? Or with frogs? My dad dissected frogs.”
“As did I. But the school system has decided—in error, I might add—that there is no need to study a creature’s insides if you have no chance of encountering the creature’s outsides. If it makes you feel any better, you’ll do rats in high school.”
“Virtually?” said Davy, making sure.
“Of course. Though I dare say the EPF wouldn’t mind lending us a few live ones for educational purposes. That’s one population that shows no sign of decreasing.”
We turned back to our worm, identifying the hearts, the gizzard, and the crop.
“If Mr. Kletter studied frogs,” Davy whispered, “he might know about them.”
“Know what?” We’d researched a lot about them, from eating habits to skeletal structure.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Vocal nuances. Where the dentary bone is. You know: stuff.”
With Davy’s assistance, I’d set up the Alph Cam so we could all check in on him whenever we wanted. We figured with the four of us watching, we’d see something else: another frog, another animal. But so far, the camera had only given us a few images of Alph hopping across the screen. Most of the time, even if he was out of view, the tracker showed a red dot moving in the vicinity of the spring.
“And … time,” Mr. Kletter called as class ended. “Drop your stylus in the bin on the way out. That’s one beauty of virtual dissection: no dishes to wash.”
“We have some questions about frogs,” I said when everyone but Davy had left the classroom.
“Dissection?”
“Actually, I’m really interested in their mating habits,” I said.
“Why?”
It was a fair question. Why would two of your best students suddenly be interested in the mating habits of a species no one had seen in Blue Harbor for twenty years?
“Research,” I said. I thought about last year’s report. “I’m interested in the effects of climate change on their breeding habits.”
“Mmhmm.” Mr. Kletter looked skeptical, especially since he hadn’t assigned us anything we’d need to research.
“We’re trying to get ahead,” Davy said.
Instead of going to his One, Mr. Kletter went to a cabinet. “It may surprise you to know that I am not intimately familiar with the mating habits of frogs, but this might help.” He handed me a bound stack of paper, a book, with a cover that smelled old and moldy. The book was illustrated, in detail, in full color. Chapter 7 was about the life cycle of a frog. I’d seen some of the information on the One, but it was different having it here, all connected. Davy looked over my shoulder as we read that a frog’s mating season typically lasted two or three months, beginning in May or June. The season for bullfrogs lasted longer (which boded well for Alph), but there were way more males than females (which didn’t). At least, that’s the way it had been when the book had been published, back in 2021.
“Do you know what a bullfrog sounds like when it’s looking for a mate?” Mr. Kletter asked unexpectedly.
Maybe, I thought.
“No,” I said.
He cleared his throat and made a sound similar enough to Alph’s errrrr that it wouldn’t have showed up as “cow, sick” on a One. He started coughing, but we clapped anyway.
“We had some in a pond near my house, when I was a kid,” he said. “Sorry. I’m a little rusty. I haven’t done that in a long time. They’re invasive, you know, bullfrogs. Not that it matters at this point.” He handed me the book. “You can borrow it if you’d like. If you discover anything new, I’ll give you extra credit. Not that either of you needs it.”
“Poor guy,” Davy said when we were outside the classroom. “I wonder why the ladies are ignoring him?” He was talking about Alph, though I guess we could have said the same thing about Mr. Kletter.
“There aren’t any,” I said. We’d stayed in the classroom long enough that the halls, usually choked with people, only had one.
“Awwwww,” said Derek Ripley. He was really good at being where we didn’t want him to be. “Which one of your wittle fwiends is having pwoblems with the wadies? Let me guess: all of them.” Derek looked at the book under my arm. “The Mating Habits of Frogs and Other Amphibians. Is that where you get your make-out lessons?” He puckered his lips. Then he said: “Your sister didn’t need a book.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Derek just smirked.
“Shut up about my sister,” I said.
“I’m just saying, my brother’s a good teacher.” He puckered his lips and made a smooching sound.
“Shut it, Derek,” said Davy. I’d always suspected he had a crush on Juliette, though he’d never admitted it.
“Make me,” Derek said.
I shoved the book into Davy’s hands, which were curling into fists. I pulled back my own fist and socked Derek in the stomach. It wasn’t premeditated or anything. My fist acted like it had a mind of its own. I’d never hit anyone before. It made my arm feel sort of noodly. My gut felt that way, too, when Derek punched me back.
“Did that hurt, Frog Boy?” he asked, instead of calling me by my usual name.
I fell against the wall. My vision even blurred for a second. When it cleared, Derek was walking away from us.
Davy put down the book and we both started after him, but neither of us got in another lick because Mr. Kletter stepped out of the classroom.
“What is this about, gentlemen, if I dare use the term?”
“A disagreement,” Davy said.
“I was just telling a joke,” Derek said, walking backward, away from us. “Goldstein didn’t like the punch line.”
When Derek was gone, Mr. Kletter said, “I’d hate to think you were spending your valuable time focusing on the wrong things.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He winked. “There’s plenty I could say about that kid if I wasn’t afraid of the wrong people overhearing it.” He looked near the ceiling, toward cameras we couldn’t see but knew were there. “Stay out of trouble. And let me know if your research turns up anything interesting.”
“We will.”
“And, Mr. Goldstein …”
“Yes?”
“Let me know if I can help.”
But there wasn’t anything Mr. Kletter could do unless he was secretly harboring a female bullfrog in his condominium. I thought about telling him about our island, but it wasn’t mine to share. Besides, even if he was one of the good guys, Mr. Kletter was part of the generation(s) that helped cause this mess. I wasn’t sure teaching us to dissect a worm could make up for that. There were underground groups, like the Disciples, working to repair the government’s mistakes. Mr. Kletter probably even belonged to one of those groups, though I doubted he was a D². If he was, he wouldn’t still be teaching at a middle school.
Still. Don’t trust anyone over thirty. People had been saying that since the 1960s. My expression was: Don’t trust anyone who’s eaten a real cheeseburger. That meant people like my dad. And my science teacher. If we were going to fix anything, we’d need to do it ourselves.
Leroy, Delph, Davy, and I had gone to the island four more times and hadn’t found anything else alive—at least, nothing that wasn’t supposed to be. We’d seen some scat. It wasn’t from a bear, though. More likely from a rabbit. The pellets were small, almost perfect little balls. They looked like the kibble Davy’s mom fed their dog.
I spent some time looking at the plants, especially the ferns. We even discovered blueberry plants, which Maine used to be famous for, though there weren’t any blueberries on them. And we found air—cold air—that seemed to come from underneath an exposed tangle of tree roots near the bottom of the hill. It was almost as if the inside of the island was air-conditioned. My research turned up a similar phenomenon known as an algific talus. Except there weren’t supposed to be any of those in Maine, and the talus part—broken rocks that absorb cold air and freeze it—was missing.
Meanwhile, we’d been watching Alph, who still seemed lonely.
My sister, Juliette, was lonely, too. She came home with puffy eyes after a date with Peter, and when my mom asked how it had gone, she said, “Fine.” Only, no one says “fine” if things are fine. You only say they’re fine if they’re not fine and you don’t want to talk about it.
She wasn’t talking about it. Not even to her friends. Usually, I’d hear her through the door of her bedroom. But for two days: silence. Then, when I went to the plaza, which sits between the middle school and the high school, I saw Peter Ripley with Elise, Juliette’s best friend since sixth grade. He had his hand in the back pocket of her jeans.
When I came home, I gave Juliette a root beer sucking candy. I sucked on one, too. It’s good to have something in your mouth when you have nothing to say.
It was Davy who figured out a way to solve Alph’s loneliness problem and, in a roundabout way, Juliette’s, too.
We were sitting on his back porch, which was glassed in, with his dog, Rudy, at his feet. He was on the Othernet, a hacker network that uses, as Davy puts it, “a winning combination of smoke, mirrors, and anonymity to allow for honest, heart-to-heart conversations.” Honestly, he should be in charge of their ad campaign. I’d been on it before, a couple of times, but Davy practically lived there. And that’s where he saw the frog.
“Ahab, check this out. I found us a frog.” His voice was high again.
“A virtual frog doesn’t do us any good,” I said.
“Not virtual,” said Davy. “It’s for real.”
He called up an image and sent it beaming into the air between us. I did not see a frog. I saw someone wearing a white mask that covered all of his face. He was holding his hands in front of his throat.
“I hate to break it to you, but that is not a frog,” I said. “It’s, like, a serial killer or something.”
“It’s not a serial killer. It’s sign language,” Davy said. “This guy has a frog. A real live frog.”
I couldn’t figure out what he was going on about. “Even if he does have a frog, how do you know it’s a bullfrog?”
“See his left hand? Horns. Ergo, it’s a bullfrog.” Most of the smart kids I know have extensive vocabularies, but rarely use them, unless they’re writing. Davy liked to throw in the occasional “ergo” for everyday conversations.
“That could mean anything,” I said. “ ‘Go, team.’ ‘Rock ’n’ Roll.’ ”
“It means he has a bullfrog,” Davy said. “I talked to him.”
“You talked to him,” I repeated. “About frogs? Just like that?”
“We were discreet, of course,” he said. “We found a secure channel. And get this: His frog is female.” Davy did a little dancing thing with his feet.
“How do you know that?”
“I told you, I talked to him.” The dancing stopped. He was starting to lose patience, which, for Davy, is rare. Not as rare as a bullfrog, but rare.
“So where is this frog?” I asked Davy.
“Canada.”
“Canada?” I said.
“It could be close, Ahab. Closer than if he lived in Texas or even New York.”
“It’s a big country,” I said. “There’s a big difference between New Brunswick and the Yukon.” The US and Canada had been friendly once, but that wasn’t the case anymore. “We’d have to cross the border.”
“Just talk to him. Semper anticus. Always forward.”
When Davy brought out the Latin, I knew he was serious.
The next afternoon, Delphinium and Leroy came over and Davy plugged a small, square device into the side of his One.
“What are you doing?” Delph asked.
“Disguising us,” he said. “In case of trolls. We’re just trying to find a private spot where we can talk. It’s like playing hopscotch. It makes our origin harder to trace.” He punched in a few commands. “New Zealand is nice this time of year.”
We were in. A beam of light projected from his One.
“We take the names of animals on the extinct or fragile list,” Davy says. “I’m Snow Leopard. The guy with the frog is Naked Mole Rat.”
“Why would anyone choose that?” I said.
Delph smiled. “It sounds like something you would choose, actually,” she said.
“White Whale, maybe,” I said. “I would not be Naked Mole Rat.”
“I almost forgot,” said Davy. He handed out three balaclavas, even though it was a hundred degrees outside. “Protection.”
“I thought you said it was a safe channel,” said Leroy.
“It is,” Davy said. “He said he’d find us at 3:07.”
The channel stayed blank.
3:08.
“Maybe he forgot,” I said.
3:09.
At 3:11, a guy in a black mask flashed onto the screen.
“Snow Leopard?” he said. When Mole Rat spoke, his voice sounded like he was gargling with some weird combination of milk and metal.
“And friends,” Davy said.
“Are they trustworthy?”
“Are you?” asked Leroy.
“
They’re part owners,” Davy said. His voice sounded like he was gargling with the same mouthwash as Mole Rat. “I’d trust them with my life.”
“Do you have him?” Mole Rat said.
“We have an image. Show him.”
I held up my own One and projected a moving image of Alph in the spring. Mole Rat’s eyes opened wider.
“I underestimated you,” Mole Rat said.
“Your turn,” Davy said.
Mole Rat’s head disappeared and in its place was an image of a frog. It wasn’t close enough to tell whether it was a female, but the breed was right. The frog was perched on a rock that looked like it had been polished and buffed. Like Alph, she was alone.
“What is your asking price?” Mole Rat said.
“We’re not selling,” I said. “Will you sell?” Owning two frogs, breeding them, continuing the species; the Disciples would have to take me then.
“You couldn’t afford her,” Mole Rat said.
“How much?” asked Delphinium. I don’t think she really wanted to buy or sell a bullfrog; she was just curious.
“One hundred thousand dollars.”
“Holy—” Leroy said.
“Told you,” said Mole Rat.
I didn’t like where this was headed, especially since my mom never remembered to give me an allowance. I washed test tubes on weekends sometimes, over at the university. And I’d get a little more money for my bar mitzvah, but that was months away. Combined, it wasn’t enough to afford even a leg of Mole Rat’s frog. It wasn’t enough to own a toe.
“And you’d give us a hundred thousand dollars?” Leroy asked.
“No. I believe your threshold for parting with your frog to be much lower.”
“You believe wrong,” said Delphinium.
“Are you selling her to someone else?” I said. “If we don’t buy her.”
“My goal is not to sell,” Mole Rat gargled.
“What is your goal?”
“Continuation. Propagation.”
“Would you be open to an introduction?” I said. “You retain your ownership; we retain ours.”
One Small Hop Page 7
