As Roger left the school building, he’d never been so glad for a short school week.
Outside, Roger and Jerry lined up for the bus home. Roger figured that now that he’d been “introduced” to the school, there was no reason for him to not ride the school bus like he always had.
“Why not just fly home?” said Jerry. “I sure as heck would if I could fly.”
“I’m not supposed to do any flying during the daytime,” said Roger. “At least not yet.” Besides, he thought to himself, it’s way more fun being with my friends than by myself. The walk this morning had been a drag.
Roger’s dad had warned him about how difficult the bus might be. The narrow seats and aisle were too crowded for his long mantis legs and body. The other kids let him go on the bus first, maybe to be polite. Or maybe just so they could pick seats far away from him. Once Roger got in though, students crowded into the doorway to watch him try to figure out how to sit down on the hard bench seats. Despite his best efforts, there was no way he could sit—or to be more accurate, stand—in a seat unless his hind end hung over at least one more row of seats behind him. Actually, more rows than that, because as one kid pointed out, “nobody wants to sit behind you and look at your bug butt.”
“That’s ‘abdomen,’” muttered Roger to himself as he battled with the seats.
The driver was a white-haired old man with the attitude of a dockworker. “Rules say no students in the aisles or doorways while the bus is moving,” he growled. “And students have to be sitting in a seat.”
“Come on,” said one of the kids jammed into the door. “I want to get on now!”
“Jeez!” said Roger. “Okay, how about this?” He crouched, and with one powerful spring of his legs, flipped right up to the ceiling of the school bus and hung there upside down, gripping the ceiling lights. Jerry and the crowd of kids still waiting to get on the bus applauded.
“I didn’t know you could do that!” yelled Jerry.
“Heck, neither did I!” said Roger. “I can ride up here! Plenty of room!”
The driver got out of his seat and looked up, frowning. “Like the devil you can ride up there. Get down!”
“Awwww!” said the crowd.
“That’d be so cool!” said one.
“He’s not in an aisle or a doorway,” Jerry pointed out politely.
“I don’t need no smart remarks from the peanut gallery, either,” said the driver, glaring at the students by the bus door. Jerry and the other kids shut up and backed up a bit. The driver turned back to Roger. “Look, kid, I read the thing the principal sent around to everybody. I get that you’ve got the weirdest problem I’ve seen since I was in the Navy back at Singapore, and I’m sorry about that, but I drive this bus, and I make the rules. No aisles, no doorways, no ceilings, no weird bug stuff. If you can’t figure out how to sit, you gotta get off.”
Roger sighed, hopped back down, and sullenly got off the bus. He pushed past the crowd of students at the bus door and stood nearby, watching in frustration as the other kids filed back on. Jerry came up next to him.
“I guess I’m walking,” said Roger. “Probably on Perimeter Road again, just to play it safe.”
“I’ll come with you this time,” said Jerry. “I don’t have to hurry getting home before a bell rings.”
“Thanks, man,” said Roger.
As the bus pulled past them, a couple of kids pulled down their windows and yelled, “See you tomorrow, Roger!”
The walk home was a lot less of a drag than the one to school had been.
Marlene biked over to Roger’s house that afternoon and spent the time before supper with Jerry and Roger practicing more baseball in the vacant lot. Roger went up to the wooden fence on the far side of the lot and, this time, simply leaped over it with plenty of room to spare.
“All right!” said Jerry. “Remember how hard it was getting you over that fence that first day?”
“Jeez,” said Roger. “And it must’ve taken me ten minutes to climb down that darn trellis from the balcony at my house back then. I could have just jumped right down!”
“Yes,” said Marlene. “And in any sensible world you’d have busted all four legs to matchsticks. It’s best to be careful when you don’t know your own limits for sure.”
Roger jumped back over the fence and went into the vacant lot in a series of huge hops, with him and his friends laughing all the way.
Roger still couldn’t run bases worth beans, and jumping from base to base was as illegal as flying over the bases. But his catching and hitting abilities were almost scary now, and while his throwing was slowly improving, Marlene still had to jump to catch a lot of wild ones.
“I’m really starting to feel like I can be a decent ballplayer again,” said Roger. “And a big part of the team. After all, every player has strengths and weaknesses, and the team works around them. I’ve just kinda got different ones now.”
“Really different ones,” said Jerry.
“Still, the team can work around the new ones, right?” said Roger, a bit anxiously.
“It means you’re sort of a rookie again,” said Marlene.
“I’m okay with that,” said Roger. “As long as I’m playing.”
When Roger came in the house for supper, his mother came up to him at the back door. “Hold still a minute, Roger. I want to check you over to make sure you don’t have a crack or something in your exoskeleton.”
“Uh, okay Mom,” said Roger, who stood patiently, if a bit uncomfortably, as his mother inspected him from all directions. It reminded him of when they went camping and he had to get checked for wood ticks. Could he still get wood ticks? Then he felt something funny on his wing cases and turned his head around.
“What are you doing with that duster thing? Mom! Are you dusting me? Jeez!”
“You don’t have any injuries I can see, thank goodness. And after walking that back road and playing in the lot, you’re lucky I don’t take a hose to you. Now stay still!”
When Roger’s father got home, he brought in a small green jar with a screw-on lid that he’d found in the mailbox. “Mrs. Ellis’ Miracle Salve, no doubt,” he said. Whether it was a cure or not, they never found out. Unscrewing the lid produced an outrageous odor that settled the question right there as far as the whole family was concerned, including the dog (who had once rolled in a dead skunk). The jar ended up outside in the trash wrapped in many layers of newspaper.
Later that evening after a supper of fried fish, Roger typed out his science report about the new Viking Mars landers on his mother’s typewriter, tapping the keys with his tarsi. Since he’d never used more than two fingers to type in the first place, typing wasn’t as hard as he’d imagined it would be. His mantis reflexes helped speed up the entire process. He did need some help rolling new sheets of paper in, though, which his mom was happy to do. Roger was managing rather well as a giant mantis, much to everyone’s surprise, especially his own.
Then he had to do handwriting practice. Roger hated it. It was slower than typing and a lot less readable, but his parents said it was important.
“It’s not like you can carry a typewriter everywhere you go,” his father said.
Roger used Jerry’s tube-modified pens and wrote on wide-lined paper like a little kid. Roger grumbled as he copied line after line from a newspaper article on the Mars landers. He had to admit the practice helped, but he’d be darned if he’d admit that to anyone else.
After finishing his homework, Roger watched TV for a while in the family room, standing next to the couch instead of sitting on it. Every so often, one of his parents would peep in and ask if he needed anything like a snack, or if he was cold or hot or tired. Roger took them up on an offer of a bag of beef jerky.
Eventually Roger felt too fidgety to watch TV, and, although it had gotten dark outside, he thought it was still too early to go to bed. He got up and headed for the back door, passing his father reading in the livi
ng room.
“Dad? I’m going out for a bit.”
His father looked up and opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it and looked at Roger for a moment. “Okay, then,” he finally said. “Don’t be out too long. Tomorrow’s another school day. And be careful.”
“I will, Dad.” Roger went out the door. As he stood in his backyard under a clear, dark sky, his vision began to sharpen. He could clearly see objects that had been concealed by the darkness a few minutes ago. He walked out to the edge of the vacant lot and looked out at the woods.
“Wow,” said Roger, quietly. Even in the dark he could see details of the branches and leaves on the trees a long way away.
And there was more. The animals concealed in the brush and behind the trees showed up as though they glowed. Unlike his daylight animal-spotting ability—“critter vision,” Jerry had called it—they didn’t even have to be moving for Roger to spot them. Did mantises really see like this? Or maybe owls, too? Or was it just him? Those shapes … he recognized the deer and her fawn again. He watched them come out into the open grass on the far side of the vacant lot to graze. Roger didn’t know how far a deer could see, but he stayed perfectly still so as not to scare them. He was very good now at staying perfectly still. A smaller shape in the woods resolved into what must be a skunk, judging by its waddling walk. That one over in another part of the woods looked like a fox. Roger hadn’t seen a fox around here for years.
Then, he looked up.
The sky was full of stars. Thousands and thousands of stars! More stars than Roger had seen in the mountains when they went camping last summer. The Milky Way spread over the sky as if someone had tossed a bucket of white paint across a black wall.
Then, looking around, he thought, It’s dark. It should be safe enough. He unfolded his wings and flew up into the air.
He whirred up over the top of his house and the surrounding trees, at least a couple of hundred feet, and then got a bit nervous. He had never been this high, and he didn’t know how much endurance his wings had. His wings faltered a bit, and he had to think about getting them back to speed. But after hovering for a few minutes without any more problems, Roger took a deep breath, flew higher and higher, and then hovered again to look around. How far up was he? Maybe a couple of thousand feet?
“Wow,” said Roger again. The whole of Highland Falls stretched beneath him, house and streetlights shining in a fantastic glowing grid. The farmland and countryside around it were mostly dark, but not to his eyes. It was as if there was a bright full moon, although the moon hadn’t even risen yet. West beyond Highland Falls and across the river, he could see the little island of light that was Centerville, and other towns at much greater distances. Little blobs of light scattered across the farmland were the farm houses. Little white and red sparks of car lights moved along the main highway west of town, and a few lonely cars moved slowly down the country roads around it. A blinking light in the distant sky was a small plane. Roger watched it long enough to be sure it wasn’t heading his way. Far off on the horizon, a faint glow showed where the big city was.
After a while, Roger turned and headed out east over the woods and wilderness area. In this direction, the landscape was mostly dark as far as he could see, although a few spots of light probably were campgrounds. He dropped back down to a lower altitude and tried out some careful maneuvers, climbing, diving, and jigging back and forth. He even managed a loop, although it was anything but round.
From up in the air, Roger’s “critter vision” could still pick out deer and other animals on the ground, even partially blocked by the leaves of the trees.
Still not feeling tired, Roger headed back over the town, flying high enough to stay out of the glow of the streetlights, but low enough to take a good look at things. He hoped that if anyone heard him buzzing up above that they’d think he was a stray June bug or something. People walking down the sidewalk or standing in their yards showed up in his night vision like the animals did. With his new eyes, he could even recognize faces. He spotted Ricky and his dad out in their yard with a telescope.
Jeez! A telescope! Roger wasn’t sure if they could spot him up here in the dark, but he didn’t feel like taking chances. He turned around and flew back home.
Roger landed in his yard and took one more long gaze at the amazing star-spattered sky. Now and then in his life, he’d gotten a look at something that made him feel like the world was a much bigger and cooler place than it usually seemed. That time his family had seen the Grand Canyon at sunset, or the first time he’d seen the Pacific Ocean when he was eight. He’d watched the waves for a bit, then went closer, waited for a wave to crawl ashore, bent over, and put his hand in it. He remembered thinking, I’m touching the same water that’s touching Hawaii and Japan. Somehow that made the size of the world more real right then.
What he’d seen tonight felt the same way. There was an awful lot going on out there that wasn’t about Roger McGillicutty, or school, or baseball, or being a bug. I don’t know if that makes me feel better about things, or worse. Some of both, I suppose.
Then Roger turned and went inside.
Chapter Eleven
The next day, Tuesday, Roger walked by himself again to school along the same route he’d taken the day before. Although Jerry had offered to get up extra early to walk with him, Roger, knowing Jerry would rather be sleeping in, had told him he was fine and to take the bus. Jerry tried not to look relieved but wasn’t very good at it.
Now he wished he’d taken Jerry up on his offer. Walking alone through the weeds along the side of the road gave Roger a lot of time to think, and he started to feel a bit down again. After his unforgettable flight last night, walking along a deserted, dusty road felt like being tied to the ground.
That, and he wasn’t looking forward to being the center of attention at school again, especially when way too much of that attention was people being afraid of him or even grossed out. Roger kind of missed the days when he could focus mostly on him and his friends at school, and nobody else really cared about him one way or the other.
Roger heard a car and looked behind him to see an old pickup truck rumbling past him, blowing stinky exhaust smoke and road dust all over him. A couple of boys from his grade in school were riding in the back, apparently getting a lift to school. He didn’t know their names, but they pointed at Roger and laughed. They sure knew who he was. It occurred to Roger that a mantis wearing a baseball cap and a backpack probably was a pretty ridiculous sight. It didn’t improve his mood.
“Hey, Bug Boy! Have an apple!” yelled one of the boys as he chucked an old, moldy apple from the truck bed at Roger. Roger was so surprised he didn’t even try to deflect it, and it whacked him on the front of his thorax, leaving a messy blotch.
“Hey!” Roger yelled, anger flaring. “Hey!” He was already in a crummy mood, and the stupid apple was the last straw. Without thinking, Roger’s spined arms shot out sideways, his wings flared up from his back, and the end of his abdomen curled up like the tail of a scorpion. Roger hissed.
The boys’ eyes went as wide as saucers, and they both scrambled back up in the truck bed until their butts were jammed up against the cab. They didn’t stop staring until the truck was far down the road.
Roger looked at himself. He’d done a praying mantis threat display! He’d seen it often enough when he’d annoyed his pet mantis by trying to get it to grab something. He was pretty darn sure his mantis hadn’t hissed at him, though! Slowly he dropped his arms and folded his wings, settling down. He’d have to watch his reactions. The last thing he wanted to do was scare people even worse. But then again, some people kind of had it coming, and sometimes maybe it was better to be scary than ridiculous.
Roger’s feet dragged as he awkwardly tried to use his arms and claws to wipe off the apple. But he just couldn’t stomach the idea of cleaning rotten apple off his claws with his mouth. Maybe his mom would have to hose him off.
Then, suddenly, he stopped and looked around. Okay, maybe he couldn’t fly up high in the daytime without being seen by too many people. But …
“Yeah,” he said. “Screw this.” He unfolded his wings again and lifted off. Then he flew off down the road, just a couple of yards up, raising a cloud of dust behind him. Within minutes, he had easily passed the pickup truck, buzzing just feet over the kids in the back who flattened themselves down to the truck bed. Roger hoped they’d flattened themselves onto more rotten apples.
“Whoo hoooo!” yelled Roger, zooming down the road again.
Roger easily dropped back to the ground in the school parking lot, long before the buses arrived. He felt like kicking himself with all four legs for not thinking of low-level flying that first day. Even after stopping in the lavatory to wipe himself off with a wet paper towel, he still got to his homeroom class before anyone else, even the teacher.
It wasn’t until Roger’s second class, history, that he noticed that there weren’t as many kids in the class as there were the day before. He pointed this out to Carl, sitting next to him.
“Yeah,” said Carl. “I hear a few parents are keeping kids home today. My parents wanted to know if I wanted to stay home.” He grinned. “‘No way,’ I told them. ‘Falcons stick together!’”
“Thanks, Carl,” said Roger.
Later that morning something happened that Roger had been hoping to avoid at school: he had to go to the bathroom. He’d been working it as best he could to “take care of things” at home, but there it was. When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, he thought.
Roger managed to wait until lunch, knowing he’d need longer than the short time between classes, and he would rather have exploded than try to get excused to go to the john in front of a class full of snickering kids.
Roger Mantis Page 8
