One Small Hop

by Madelyn Rosenberg

  Juliette leaned over and pulled a strappy thing down from the top of the seat and clicked it at the bottom. Apparently, it was supposed to go over one shoulder, instead of both like the harness in the hydro. Because I was lying down, Juliette strapped it over my hip. I held on to the thermos like it was the blue teddy bear I’d had when I was little, before I knew that real bears had never come in that color, before I knew that real bears were in trouble. My dad turned the ignition key and pressed down on the pedal to move the car backward. We jerked. Even harnessed in, I nearly rolled off the seat. We jerked again as my dad switched gears. He turned the Soov right and then too far left.

  “It just takes a little getting used to,” said my dad. “Practice.” He didn’t get any driving practice with the hydro. And Fourth of July came just once a year.

  My dad swerved again. There was a bump and the Soov stopped moving. He gunned the gas, and the engine roared. I could hear a tire spin.

  “Is it broken?” asked Davy.

  “Stuck.” My dad slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Okay, plan B. Jules, you sit behind the wheel. Everyone else, come push.” They all bailed out. Again, he did not mean me.

  “One, two, three,” he yelled. On “three,” Juliette pushed the gas, a little timidly.

  “Gun it, Jules. One, two, three.”

  She pushed harder. I could hear it in the engine.

  I could also hear Delphinium saying “stroke, stroke,” and Leroy laughing. And then:

  “We could use this branch,” Leroy said. “For traction.”

  Ka-ching. Another great idea for Leroy.

  “Grab a bunch,” I yelled.

  Only Juliette was there to hear me. “What?” she said.

  “Tell them to break down a bunch of sticks. Fill the hole.” She passed along the message.

  I heard a crunching sound and the Soov lumbered forward slowly. Juliette screamed and slammed on the brakes. “Now move it into ‘park,’ ” my dad said. “Where the P is.”

  She looked relieved when my dad switched places with her, and even more relieved when we finally reached the highway and the ride smoothed out. The rain had slowed some, but it was still hard to see. The windshield wipers shrieked back and forth. There were no other lights. We were the only ones on the road.

  “How’s it feel, champ?” my dad asked. “Do we find the nearest hospital?”

  My arm was cut deep, but with the towel pulled tight, the blood didn’t seem to be a problem. My ankle was still on fire. Delphinium didn’t seem as interested in injuries related to blood as she had been in rashes, but she leaned over the seat and looked at my face. “Well?”

  “I can wait until Blue Harbor General,” I said. I figured Mrs. Hudson would freak if it took us much longer to get home. And I wanted to get the frog spawn into a proper tank as soon as possible.

  While my dad drove, Juliette told him about our trip. She even mentioned Alph. “You have to swear not to tell,” she said.

  “Like you did,” mumbled Leroy.

  “A real frog?” said my father. “No kidding.” For once, he didn’t mention anything about his childhood. And she didn’t mention that we’d snuck across the border. My sudden coughing fit stopped her from saying anything about the eggs.

  “We really liked Valentino’s,” she said.

  “Best ice cream ever.”

  “It’s not real ice cream anymore,” Juliette said.

  “Figures.”

  “You never told us you were in Canada for an environmental conference,” I said from the back.

  “I didn’t?” I could see him shrug in the darkness. “I must have forgotten that part.” The most important part.

  He whistled a little bit as he steered toward home. He stopped when we neared Blue Harbor.

  “Crap,” he said.

  Even from lying down in my seat, I could see the reflection of the blue lights.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “There’s a sinkhole,” said Delph. “It’s taken out half the road. The EPF is here … and Officer Ripley.”

  I guessed a sinkhole was considered “environmental.” My dad rolled down the window.

  “Ted,” said Officer Ripley. “What a surprise. I’ll need to see your license and registration.”

  “Look, it was an emergency,” my dad said.

  “Out of the car,” said Officer Ripley.

  My dad cut the motor and slid out of the driver’s seat. He tried laughing it off again. “Angus, you know I wouldn’t drive this thing if I didn’t have to. Have I ever done it before?”

  Officer Ripley didn’t laugh.

  “Ahab,” Davy whispered. “He’s got a dog.”

  That wasn’t good.

  “And he’s got Derek.”

  I needed to think, but the pain made it hard to concentrate. “We have to get the frog spawn out of here. If the dog …” I didn’t know if EPF dogs were trained to sniff for frog spawn, but I knew they were trained to find things that were out of the ordinary. Frog spawn was out of the ordinary.

  “Can you get to the bikes?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Juliette. “Some of them.”

  “Okay, here’s the strategy.” I felt like a coach. “Davy: Get on a bike and ask if you can go home because your mother is going to be worried. Anybody who knows you can confirm that.”

  “I got you.”

  “While Davy’s talking to Officer Ripley, Leroy will take another bike and head to my shed with the frog spawn.”

  “What if I kill it?” Leroy said. “Or drop it?”

  “I already dropped it,” I said.

  “Check, then,” Leroy said. “What if Derek follows me?”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “What if they ask where we’ve been?”

  “Say we were visiting a friend,” I said. It didn’t feel like the truth yet. But it felt like someday it might be.

  “Look,” my dad was telling Derek’s dad. “I don’t have time for this. I have to get my kid to the hospital. And you don’t have time for this, either. You’ve got to deal with this hole.”

  “Mr. Goldstein,” said Davy. His voice was high and whiny. Perfect pitch.

  “What, Davy?”

  “My mom’s going to be climbing the walls if she doesn’t hear from me.”

  “She’s already climbing the walls,” my dad said. To Officer Ripley, he said: “His mom is Kim Hudson.”

  “I’ll let her know you’re safe,” Officer Ripley said.

  “Come on, Angus. Just let him go. The kid wasn’t driving this thing. I was.”

  “She really needs to see me in person,” Davy said, removing the bike from the back of the Soov. I could hear his voice getting a little farther away. “If she doesn’t, she’ll get really upset.”

  “Kid,” Mr. Ripley yelled. “Come back here. Now, where’s that one going?” And I knew Leroy had taken off in the other direction.

  “Hey,” Derek said. “That’s Varney.”

  Go, Leroy.

  “The Lobster Killer,” Derek said. “I’ll bring him in for questioning.”

  “Would you mind telling me where you were?” Officer Ripley said.

  “I found them at a campground in Beulah,” my dad said. “The storm cut off our communication and I went to find them in case something happened. As you can see from my son’s bleeding arm and broken ankle, something happened.”

  “I’m going to have to check the car,” said Officer Ripley.

  “For what?” asked my dad. “Wet socks? They’re in there.”

  I lifted myself up to see the sinkhole through the windshield, gaping, like the earth had opened its mouth and wanted to swallow us. Revenge, maybe, for all we’d done to it. I didn’t know what Officer Ripley could do about the hole. Maybe that’s why he was focusing on us: My dad seemed like something he could control.

  “Infractions,” said Officer Ripley as I sank back down onto the seat. “I’m sworn to protect the world from people like y
ou.”

  Blindly, I thought. Without seeing the forest. Without even seeing the trees.

  “The whole vehicle is an infraction,” said my dad. “A rolling infraction. I’m guilty as charged. I get it. I’ll pay. But would you please let me get my kid to the hospital?”

  “Where does she think she’s going?” Delph must have taken off, too.

  “Maybe she didn’t like my driving,” my dad said. “Look, if you were a kid, would you rather go home on a functional bicycle or spend three hours with me in a hospital waiting room?”

  “Dad,” I called from the car. It wasn’t a fake diversion. The pain in my ankle made everything around me look red. My face was clammy with either new sweat or old rain. I guess I must have been pretty pale, because when Officer Ripley looked in the back seat, he said, “Even if this is an emergency, you’ve broken about seventeen laws by driving this thing.”

  “Fine,” my dad said. “Charge me. Look, I messed up, Angus, I get it. But you have to know I wouldn’t drive this thing unless I had to. Look at him.”

  I lifted my head off the sticky car seat and tried to look as pathetic as possible. It wasn’t a stretch.

  Mr. Ripley nodded, just once. “But this isn’t over,” he said.

  “Fine,” said my dad. On the seat beside him was another green slip. I was betting there was a check mark next to every box on there.

  Juliette took another bike and went home to be with Mom while my dad took me to the hospital. He couldn’t seem to sit properly in the chair, but he didn’t look away when they cut open my jeans to examine my ankle. He didn’t look away when they cleaned up my arm, either. They gave me a shot to numb it first. That hurt worse than the sealant they used to glue the skin together. Not knowing what had happened to the eggs hurt most of all.

  They gave me a pair of scrubs and a pair of crutches, but I leaned on my dad to get back to the car. He settled me in the back again, though I sat up this time, with my leg stretched out across the seat.

  “The original Ahab lost part of his leg,” my dad said. “I’m glad you got to keep yours.” From looking at his face, I could tell he’d actually been worried about that.

  He slammed the door and got in the front seat.

  “Dad?” I said. He didn’t answer, but he looked back over his shoulder to show that he’d heard me.

  “What happened after Canada? After your trip, I mean.”

  “I came home,” he said.

  That part was obvious. “Did you get arrested?” I said. “Did you stay friends with the Mellor twins? Did you earn your Planet Protection badges?”

  “Now, how did you know about that?”

  “Your journal was in the satchel,” I said. “You left a lot of pages blank.”

  “I wasn’t much of a writer,” he said. “Let’s see. The Mellor twins moved, and we didn’t keep in touch, though I did hear that Chris became a lawyer. In the Planet Protectors, I made it as far as Earth Warrior. And as for jail, the answer is no, I didn’t go. We got thrown in the back of a police car and they scared us a little. Told us to go make some signs and stand in front of our own capitol. They said that’s where the change needed to happen.”

  “Did you?”

  “A couple of times.”

  “How come you gave up?”

  “We didn’t want to go to jail,” he said.

  “Not on the conference. On saving the world.”

  My dad turned to the front again, so I couldn’t see his face. “We just didn’t get anywhere, Ahab,” he said. “It felt like no matter what we did, nothing changed. The president never read petitions—anyone’s, not just ours. He didn’t care. I guess, after a while, it seemed easier to let somebody else fix things. And a while after that, I let myself be convinced that less needed fixing than I thought.”

  I’d never heard my dad be that honest. But it didn’t make me feel better.

  “You were lazy,” I said.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “There’s nothing easier than denial.”

  But that wasn’t true. Denial seemed like something he had to work at. My mother, too.

  My dad turned the key in the ignition. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.

  “Maybe I didn’t give up completely. I had you, didn’t I?” He coughed like he’d swallowed wrong, and put the Soov into drive. We headed home.

  Everyone was waiting in the kitchen: my friends, their parents, my sister. They cheered when I hobbled into the kitchen. I thought about Simon, and the way he had to think every time he took a step. I’d have to do that, too, but only for about eight weeks. I searched my friends’ faces for a clue about the eggs, but they were hard to read, especially Leroy’s face. I knew it better now, but I couldn’t read every look.

  “I knew you shouldn’t have gone on this trip,” my mother said, hugging me so that I almost fell over. Davy’s mom had her arm around his neck. It looked more deadly than maternal.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” I said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better trip. Until the end.” Until we gave up Alph. Until the storm. Until a tree landed on top of me.

  “We saw stars,” Juliette said.

  Leroy nodded his head toward the door, but we couldn’t get away, not yet.

  “I was thinking in the car,” my dad said. “That you might need some more lab space.”

  “Does that mean I get Juliette’s room?” I said. It was bigger than mine. My sister acted like she was going to punch me, but she stopped before making contact, a sign that our relationship had improved.

  “Something tells me I won’t be driving that car again,” my father continued. “Helluva car. If Ripley doesn’t impound it, maybe I’ll send it out to pasture. That would free up the garage.”

  Was he serious? Suddenly, it was as if he was the one who’d been struck by lightning. Maybe he was giving up on giving up. I was going to make him a new shirt for Father’s Day.

  “Actually,” I admitted, “the Soov was dead useful. Maybe we could keep it. Outside. For emergencies. I could retrofit it with a hydrogen fuel cell engine—” I wouldn’t leave the job half done, either. Maybe I’d even make a few improvements, get the Disciples to take notice.

  My dad uncorked a bottle of pampas grass wine with a pop and winked at me. Then he poured it out for the adults.

  Leroy caught my eye again. “Hey, Ahab. Let’s go inspect your new lab space.”

  It hurt to lean on the crutches, so I leaned on Davy a little as we went out the side door and into the garage, where steam was still rising off the hood of the Soov. Juliette came, too, and leaned against it.

  “Helluva car,” she said, a perfect mimic of my dad.

  Finally, we could talk. Or we could have if Derek Ripley hadn’t been in the driveway, on an EPF scooter now instead of his bike. The streetlight shone behind him.

  “I just came here to bring you something,” he said. He pulled a thermos out of his backpack. “Varney dropped this.”

  Darn it, Leroy, I thought. There was no swear word strong enough. You had one job.

  “Where’d you find it?” I tried to swallow but couldn’t, like the wad of frog spawn was still in my mouth.

  “He dropped it when I caught up with him,” Derek said. “I almost threw it in the trash. Littering is an obvious infraction. But then I thought: No. With all the fines my dad is going to stick on your dad, you probably need all your worldly possessions. So I’d better return it.”

  “Well. Thanks,” I said. “That was kind of you.”

  He shook the thermos.

  “Don’t!” I said.

  “I think I’d better make sure there’s no contraband in here. For my dad, you know?” Derek unscrewed the lid and turned the bottle upside down. I waited for the frog spawn to land in a lump on the garage floor. A few drips of water plopped out.

  That’s when I noticed something about the thermos: It wasn’t even mine.

  “It’s empty,” Derek said.

  I dared to breathe. “Thanks for returning it,” I said.r />
  “It wasn’t empty earlier,” he said.

  “What did you think we had in there? A lobster?” Leroy folded his arms.

  Derek folded his. But there didn’t seem to be anything left for him to do. He threw the thermos on the ground. Then he got on his dad’s scooter and puttered back down the drive. On the rear bar, just above the license plate, I could see the EPF logo and tag line: PROTECTING THE WORLD FROM YOU; PROTECTING YOU FROM THE WORLD. They didn’t do either of those things. But I guess, in his way, Derek thought he was doing his part to save the planet. That’s when it hit me: part. Maybe we didn’t have to save the whole world; maybe we just had to try to save a part of it. Even my dad had done that: He’d saved us, plus he’d kept Davy’s mother from having a nervous breakdown. We’d saved Alph from being lonely, and maybe Simon, too. It remained to be seen whether or not we’d saved the bullfrogs. We were trying, and that counted for something.

  “What’s something times something?” I asked.

  “Something squared.” Delph beat Davy to the answer.

  “Which is better than nothing,” I said. Maybe it was the painkillers, but I grinned.

  “Is he delirious?” Leroy asked.

  “Mostly,” Davy said.

  “Hey,” said Juliette as Derek disappeared in the distance. “Isn’t that an infraction? Riding a scooter belonging to an EPF officer?”

  “Infraction RE 7543-1,” Leroy said without hesitating.

  “You made that up,” Delph said.

  He shrugged.

  “So,” I said. “About that heart attack you gave me, on top of my other injuries.”

  “We switched thermoses,” Leroy said.

  “Where are the eggs?”

  “Delph has them. I threw her your thermos and she threw me hers. She made an amazing catch. She could go pro, a catch like that.”

  “Thanks,” Delph said. In the dark, I couldn’t tell if she was blushing.

  “Getting tossed around probably isn’t good for them,” Leroy said.

  None of this had been good for them. But we still had them.

  Delph grabbed her thermos off her bike and headed into the blackness of the backyard, toward my shed. Juliette grabbed a small ball from a bin in the garage and squeezed it once. It gave off a warm yellow light. I creaked open the shed door, and we squished inside, around the wooden plank I used as a table. Sitting on top of it was a green envelope.