At least, it looked like an envelope. It was soft, like fabric, but I hadn’t felt anything quite like it before. There was no postmark and no return address, but it was from the Disciples. It had to be. Unless Davy or Leroy was playing a joke on me. But I didn’t think they were. I hadn’t mentioned wanting to be a D² out loud to any of my friends, except Davy. I wondered if they had envelopes at their houses, too. Or if Simon had one sitting under his plum tree.
“Dang,” Davy said, even though the moment clearly called for Latin.
I opened the envelope and pulled out a small green paper, so thin I could see through it. Three words were printed on it in gold: “Get well soon.”
So it wasn’t an invitation. “It’s a get-well card,” I said.
“But what does it mean?” asked Davy, who knew the possibilities.
“I guess that I should get well?” I could have spent the whole night analyzing the words for hidden meanings, enough for an A, B, C, D, E, and F. Enough to convince myself that a get-well card counted as something, too. But that would have to wait. We needed to make sure the frog spawn was safe.
Leroy and Davy prepped an aquarium, one of the bigger ones. Delph unscrewed the thermos lid. Gently, she poured the frog spawn into its new home. The pieces sat next to one another, like a puzzle.
“There,” Delph said. She put the thermos on top of the table and accidentally touched my hand.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, as if no one else was even in the shed.
I thought that might be the moment to:
(A) kiss her,
(B) find out if she wanted to be more than friends, or
(C) turn the whole thing into a game of rock, paper, scissors.
Before I could decide that kissing was the sort of thing you should save for eighth grade, Davy said: “So if we’ve got American bullfrog frog spawn, but it was made in Canada, does that make them Canadian bullfrogs?”
“Actually, they’re a tad Polish,” Delph said. “Tadpolish!” she added when Leroy looked confused.
“That was terrible,” I said.
Juliette said, “I hope I can frog-et it,” which was also terrible. But it was perfect for her first pun.
“I can’t believe after all this, I’m still going to fail social studies,” Leroy said.
“We can talk to Duckworth for you,” I told him. “Delphinium is very persuasive. Or Davy could just hack in and give you the grade you deserve.”
“You can do that?”
Davy waved his hand. “Child’s play,” he said. “You deserve an A for that boat,” he said. “And international travel should count for extra credit.”
“My mom was right,” Leroy said. “You are a good influence on me.”
I thought about the thing he’d said he wanted when we were on his stoop that day: Respect. I’d only pretended to give it to him. Maybe because I was jealous. But he had it now. When I said it out loud, it felt like an apology. “Respect.”
Because Leroy wasn’t a bad influence either. He didn’t do things the way I did them, but the things he did made my brain work differently.
Maybe I didn’t even need to be a Disciple to discover great things. Maybe what I needed was my own secret society to discover things along with me.
“If the tadpoles hatch, we should tell people,” I said. Just because the society was secret, it didn’t mean everything had to be.
“He’s delirious again,” Davy said.
“They don’t need to know it was us that found them—or where. Just that someone did.” Seeing Leroy’s lobster, even after it was recently deceased, was what got me to look for a live one. That had led me to Alph. “They need to know what’s possible. If they hatch, we can show them.”
“When,” said Delph.
“Lots of things can happen to the eggs,” I told her.
“Lots of things already did,” she said.
We all looked at the frog spawn resting in the shallow water. In the heat, it would dry out in no time.
“We need water from the spring,” I said.
“I’ll go get some in the morning,” Leroy said.
“I’ll keep watch,” said Delphinium.
“Let me know if you need a chaperone,” said Juliette.
Leroy looked like he was still thinking about his social studies grade. “I know hanging out with a lobster murderer isn’t great for your scientific reputations,” he said. “I get it if you want to keep your distance in school.” He’d spent the beginning of the trip trying to make us forget he’d killed a lobster. Now he was reminding us. It made zero sense. Delphinium looked at him like he was the one who was delirious.
“Did we or did we not just go all the way to Canada together to save frogkind?” she asked.
“We did.”
“And did we or did we not just illegally cross the border, flee the EPF, catch a ride in a nonsanctioned vehicle, and almost get struck by lightning in a wicked storm?” Juliette added.
“We didn’t almost get struck by lightning,” Leroy said. “Well, except Ahab.”
“You saved the frog spawn,” I said. “Besides, there aren’t many people in the world I would trust to help me play matchmaker for a snake.”
Trust.
The answer wasn’t “Trust no one,” like it said in my dad’s journal. The answer was to trust someone.
“Snake?” said Davy. “We’re going to play matchmaker for a snake? Insanis.”
I nodded, wondering if Simon could get a line on one. We’d start with the copperhead. And then whatever bird we’d heard calling that day on Alpha Island. Who knew what else was out there? There could be more lobsters or turtles or geckos, even. There could be butterflies or a moose. And okay, the moose was a long shot, but whatever was out there, we’d find it. I had a lab now. I had friends who doubled as a crack research team. And I had something else, which wasn’t exactly scientific but which made all the difference anyway. I had hope.
“For the copperhead Leroy and I found the last time we were on the island,” I told Davy.
“Very poisonous,” Leroy added. He looked back at me. “I’m not riding to Canada with a copperhead in my backpack. But if you carry it, I’ll keep you company.”
I reached out my hand, and he reached out his. We shook. Delphinium put her hand on top of ours, and Davy and Juliette added their hands to the pile.
“Guess we have a deal, then,” Leroy said.
“We have a deal,” I said. But we had more than that.
We had:
(A) a partnership,
(B) a friendship, or
(C) a future.
Or maybe this was one of those times I really needed a fourth option. Because the answer that was most correct—the thing we really had—was (D) all of the above.
I wrote One Small Hop while bullfrogs croaked in my backyard and worries about the world and the climate took up permanent residence in my brain. Writing this book didn’t calm those worries. But it did encourage me to continue thinking about things I could do to help—big, small, and in between. Helping the world is like writing, I think: The only way to get anywhere is to not give up.
Thank you to Lisa Sandell and the team at Scholastic for the careful reads and discussions and for making this book real. I have been lucky to have Wendy Wan-Long Shang as the other half of my writing brain these past few years, and I am so grateful for her “emergency reads.” Thanks to Susan Cohen and Nora Long. Thanks to Paul Dellinger for giving this manuscript an early look with his sci-fi goggles, to my supportive writing group for every time they said “you’re still working on the frog story, right?” and to my writing friends who led me to new discoveries. Thanks to Tom and Cece for giving me more of a boost than they’ll ever know; thank you Rachael, Anamaria, Jackie, Mary C., Mary T., Kristen, Angele, and Lenore. Thanks to “Full Blacksburg” and to everyone who walked with me, side by side and six feet apart. And thanks to my family for being who you are and for letting me be who I am. I look forward to spot
ting the first crocus of a new spring with all of you.
Madelyn Rosenberg is the author of many books for young readers, including This Is Just a Test, a Sydney Taylor Honor Book, and Not Your All-American Girl, both of which she co-wrote with Wendy Wan-Long Shang. She is also the author of The Schmutzy Family, a National Jewish Book Award finalist; and Cyclops of Central Park. Madelyn lives in Arlington, Virginia. You can visit her online at madelynrosenberg.com.
Copyright © 2021 by Madelyn Rosenberg
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, May 2021
Cover art © 2021 by Joyceline Furniss
Cover design by Baily Crawford
e-ISBN 978-1-338-56563-8
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