Here Comes Trouble

by Kate Hattemer

  My handwriting had gotten really messy, and my hand hurt.

  I also feel guilty because I get to do all the fun parts of the project, like taking the experimental subjects for walks around the garden, and Flynn is doing the hard parts, like graphs.

  The bell rang. “Notebooks on my desk. Soren? Everyone else has finished—”

  “Okay! One sec! Almost done!”

  Also, I should have made sure I was alone before I tried to teach my cockroaches to twerk. Ruth saw it, and she will never let me live it down.

  * * *

  —

  ONE WEIRD THING happened that evening.

  “Have you finished your homework, Soren?” said Dad.

  “I’m reading our Language Arts book.”

  “Reading? Or reading ahead?”

  Darn. Dad knew me too well. I hated the way teachers made you read one chapter at a time—just when you were getting into it, the homework assignment ended—so I always read the books in one go. “I’m way ahead,” I admitted.

  “Do you have other homework?”

  “Some math problems in the online textbook.”

  “Flynn’s on the desktop, but I think Ruth has my laptop in the dining room. Tell her I said it’s your turn.”

  Reluctantly, I put down When You Reach Me. I dragged my toes all the way to the dining room, leaving two jerky trails in the carpet. “Dad says you have to—”

  Shwop! Ruth had slammed the laptop shut.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing,” she said, way too fast.

  Usually she either messages her friends or plays this game where you build fortresses out of cat heads. Or both. But I was pretty sure I’d seen a video-chat window, and a familiar face. A face with purple glasses.

  “Go away,” she said, clutching the laptop to her chest. “I’ll give it to you. Just let me close what I was doing.”

  I was too surprised to argue.

  As I signed in to the textbook, I thought, Should I be suspicious?

  FLYNN AND I didn’t speak for the entire last week of our experiment. I fed the cockroaches and took them out for exercise and noted their measurements, and he worked on the board in his room.

  The day before it was due, he stopped by my seat on the bus home. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “After you feed them, update the log one final time and bring it up to my room.”

  I grunted. He headed back to the seat Goldie was saving for him.

  “Awkward,” said Jéro.

  “That’s the first time he’s spoken to me in a week.”

  “I wish Lila would stop speaking to me. I wouldn’t even need a week. I’d take an hour.”

  “Guess who’s visiting tomorrow?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Alex.”

  “Wow,” said Jéro. “I remember her. Are you guys going to do something?”

  “Like hang out? Of course.”

  I thought of how Alex had hung up on me. How she had a new best friend, and how she’d emailed the triplets to complain about me.

  Probably we’d hang out.

  Maybe.

  “No. Like an epic prank.”

  “Oh. No. Not this time.”

  “What you should do,” said Jéro, “is prank science fair. Destroy all the boards so Ms. Hutchins can’t grade them. Dump Kool-Aid all over them or something. And I’m not saying you’d try to dump Kool-Aid on Lila, but if she ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time…”

  I laughed. “Yeah, no, not happening. That kind of thing takes weeks of prep.”

  “You guys are experts. You could do it.”

  Squirt guns. Or, no, buckets. A few dozen packets of red Kool-Aid powder. And the basketball backboards would be pulled up against the ceiling, so if we could get buckets of Kool-Aid strung up on them ahead of time, all we’d have to do mid-fair would be push the button to lower the hoops….“That’d ruin a lot of people’s hard work.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  “Well, anyway.” I wished the conversation were over. “Nothing’s happening at science fair.”

  Jéro elbowed me. “If our board’s getting destroyed, I don’t want to bother finishing it. So if you change your mind, give me a heads-up, okay?”

  * * *

  —

  WE GOT HOME. Flynn went upstairs, and Ruth went out to build a snow castle for Prince Jim Bob, Duke of Pork. Dad said, “Soren, will you watch Ivan for twenty minutes while I rest my eyes on the couch?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks. He wrecked me today.”

  “What’d he do?”

  Dad shot a grim look at a pile of dirty laundry. “It began with the creamed spinach….”

  “IVAN LIKE FEE SEES!” yelled Ivan from the floor.

  “Got it,” I said. “Go lie down. Ivan, want to help me feed Cah and Croach?”

  Ivan lifted a trusting, chubby hand to mine. I walked him over to the windowsill with the fish tank. “There’s Cah, in the soil habitat,” I told Ivan.

  Ivan peered in. Cah (such a ham!) started doing push-ups on his sun rock.

  “And this is Croach. He’s shy, but really funny once you get to know him. Wave, Croach!”

  He sized us up with his glossy black eyes and then scuttled behind his cactus plant.

  “IVAN LIKE!” Ivan put his hands flat on the fish tank’s glass. Cah twitched, glared at Ivan, and ran away.

  “You’re smearing their habitat windows,” I explained. “How would you feel if someone messed up your room?”

  “IVAN NOT LIKE!” he said, frowning at me.

  Oops. Definitely the wrong question to ask, as I messed up Ivan’s room all the time. His crib rails made an extremely convenient rack for draping dirty underwear and wet towels. “Let’s feed them,” I said. I went over to the fridge while Ivan stared at the fish tank. He’d gotten as glazed over as he gets with cartoons. “Leftover spaghetti? No, too hard to measure. What do you think we should give them?”

  “CREAMED SPINACH!” said Ivan.

  “Uh, no. I heard what that did to you.”

  “IVAN GO BOOM!”

  I winced. “How about saltines with peanut butter?” I chose two saltines with identical salt patterns and used the lab scale to measure eight grams of peanut butter onto each one. “A classic snack.”

  Ivan watched as I opened the feeding hatch and set down the crackers. Neither Cah nor Croach ever finished their meals, but Flynn said it’d be an experimental no-no to remove the leftovers. This meant the food areas were gross. They liked it, though. They’d hunker there for hours, licking a splotch of yogurt here, a crumb of croissant there. Once I’d seen Cah squatting to take a poop right on top of all the food. I’d looked away as fast as possible. Scientific curiosity is all well and good, but there are some things you can’t unsee.

  Ivan thrust his hand down the hatch. “No!” I said. I snapped it shut so fast that I caught his hand, and he started to cry. “Sorry, Ivan! Ack, I’m sorry! But don’t wake up Dad! Come on, Ivan, shh—”

  He sucked his hand and scowled at me.

  “Let’s go play Barbies,” I told him. “Where’s Gloria? Is she still in physical therapy for her leg? Will you let me visit her?”

  At last, he gave a sulky nod.

  FLYNN DIDN’T COME down for dinner. Dad sent Ruth to find him while we waited, chicken potpie glistening on our plates. “He says he’ll eat later,” Ruth reported. “He’s got too much work.”

  “Hmph,” said Dad, who likes his cooking to be appreciated. We ate, and Ruth and I did the dishes while Mom cleaned around us. Ivan was playing with his tea set in the corner.

  “What’s Flynn working on?” asked Mom as she swept the floor.

  “The science-fair proj
ect, I’m guessing.”

  “Your science-fair project?”

  “Well, also his.”

  “The project you two are doing as partners?”

  “Um, yes, that would be the one.”

  Mom stood there with the broom like a Roman soldier with a javelin. “Then why,” she said, her voice steely, “are you down here, not up there?”

  “Well, this was his part—we split up the work—”

  “Jon!” Mom blared.

  “Yeah?” said Dad.

  “We need to talk to our son. Soren, go to our bedroom immediately.” She turned to Ruth. “Do your half of the dishes, and then stop. Not a single fork more. Your brother will finish his half himself.”

  * * *

  —

  I THOUGHT I might get some mercy. “He still won’t talk to me,” I said, but Mom said, “And that means you don’t have to do your own science project?”

  “I already did my half!”

  “Remember our talk at the rec center?” said Dad. “I’m worried you walked away thinking that we condone bad behavior. And that’s not at all the case.”

  “And remember our talk in the car?” said Mom. “I know he’s not treating you particularly well, but imagine, Soren. What if you had to go live in Brooklyn with Flynn and Aunt Linnea? For a whole year? Go to a new school, make all new friends, come home after school and it’s not your real home—”

  “He’s made a ton of friends.”

  Mom sighed. “You’re missing the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Right now,” said Mom, “the point is that you can’t let him do that project by himself.”

  “Reheat his potpie and take it upstairs,” said Dad.

  “And don’t even think about coming down until the project’s done,” said Mom. I opened my mouth. “If you run out of ways to contribute,” she added, knowing what I was about to say, “well, keep him company.”

  “I swear,” I tried, “he wants to do it alone—”

  That got me nowhere.

  Mom and Dad stayed in their bedroom, doing this thing they do every few months where they pretend they’re so disappointed in their children they can’t resume normal life. Ruth had finished the dishes. “You didn’t have to do that,” I called into the living room, where she was reading Ella Enchanted.

  “I wanted to,” she called back. “I’m pretending I’m an oppressed stepsibling who doesn’t yet know she’s going to be a queen.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I actually was grateful, even though that meant I was an ugly stepsister. “Thanks a lot, Ruth.”

  “By the way,” she said, “do you have any water balloons?”

  “Yeah, in my sock drawer. Why?”

  “Can I borrow them?”

  “You can have them.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” I slammed the microwave door on Flynn’s potpie. “I owe you.”

  “Cool. Awesome. Thanks.”

  “It’s kind of cold outside for water balloons.”

  She shrugged and turned a page. Flynn’s potpie spun in the microwave. I strolled over to the window—“AHHH! Ivan!”

  He waved. He was still in the corner, playing with his teacups.

  “I didn’t know you were in here!”

  “IVAN QUIET!”

  “I know. It was weird.”

  Beep! Beep! That was the microwave.

  “SOREN PLAY!”

  “I can’t right now.” I felt a rush of big-brotherly warmth. “But I wish I could.”

  “IVAN WANT SOREN PLAY!” he yelled, his chin quivering.

  “Sorry, Ivan. I really can’t.” He clearly didn’t understand why not. “Someday you’ll get it,” I told him. “Someday you’ll be in this much trouble yourself.”

  “I hope that potpie is on its way up the stairs!” Mom yelled from the bedroom.

  “Gotta go,” I told Ivan. “We’ll play later.”

  * * *

  —

  “I DON’T NEED ANY HELP,” said Flynn.

  “Well, my parents are making me stay in here until you’re done.”

  “I’d prefer to be alone.”

  “Well, my parents are making—”

  “Fine.”

  I lay on the bed and watched him enter measurements into Dad’s laptop. After a few minutes, I rolled over. Now I was facing the mural. Nope. Not about to look at that. I rolled over again. I started mouth-breathing. Supposedly you can hypnotize yourself if you focus only on your breath, eight counts in, eight out—ahhhhh—ahhhhh—

  “Gah!” Flynn exploded. “Could you be any more annoying?” He tossed a sheaf of papers onto the bed. A box of colored pencils followed. “As long as you’re trapped here, you might as well color these graphs.”

  “Whoa,” I said, despite myself.

  “You won’t?”

  “No, I just mean, these graphs are really professional-looking.”

  Flynn ducked his chin. “They’re okay.”

  “They’re awesome.”

  I felt kind of bad my name would be on them. That’s how good they were.

  “How did you know how to do all this stuff?” I said.

  “I googled it.”

  I colored one bar of the first graph a soft periwinkle. Usually I’m way too impatient to color within the lines, but these were too nice to mess up. I took my time. I shaded the way Mom shaded when she’d take pity on me or Ruth doing geography homework and sit with us and help color in the nations of South America. She taught us how to hold the pencil loosely, how to overlap the strokes so the shade came out even. Coloring. It took me back, back before geography homework, back to dinosaur coloring books, to our old kitchen with yellow walls, where I sat on a pillow for a booster and someone cut me silhouettes of Santas and stars so I could make ornaments for the Christmas tree. I’d had memories before, obviously, and I’d have been able to tell you that the past had passed and you couldn’t dip back, but I guess I hadn’t totally believed it until right then, when I wished I were a little kid and knew I never would be again.

  The graphs took a while. Flynn paged through them. “Not bad.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No,” he said stiffly, “thank you. Thanks for doing all the hard parts of the project.”

  “Okay,” I said, “no need for sarcasm.”

  “No, that’s what I wrote about for Ms. Hutchins’s reflection thing,” he said. “That I flaked and gave you all the tough parts.”

  “That’s what I wrote about!”

  “You’ve been tending roaches!”

  “You’ve been making graphs!”

  We stared at each other.

  “I thought I was getting off easy,” he said.

  “So did I.”

  * * *

  —

  “ONE LAST STEP,” said Flynn at midnight. The board looked amazing. Mostly because of him, but it was true I’d done a lot of coloring. “We’re going to display Subject A and Subject B—”

  “You mean Cah and Croach—”

  “But we also need photographs of them in their habitats.” He grabbed his phone. “I should have done this earlier, but, um, I didn’t want to get that close.”

  “They’re very friendly,” I assured him.

  We tiptoed through the sleeping house. Mom and Dad’s door was shut. Ruth and Ivan’s was ajar, but their room was dark and silent. Flynn flicked on the kitchen light. I went to the fish tank.

  “Good evening, Cah and Croach!” I whispered. “Ready for your photo shoot? Wait—what—no—”

  I sank to my knees.

  The feeding hatch was open. Both habitats were empty.

  Cah and Croach had escaped.

  “GONE,” I WHISPERED.

  “G
one?” said Flynn.

  “They must be hiding,” I said frantically. “Playing a trick. Cah! Croach! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  Flynn rattled the fish tank.

  “Careful!” I squealed.

  But I knew they weren’t in there. We’d designed the habitats to be observed. There weren’t places to hide.

  “How could they have escaped?” said Flynn.

  I thought for a minute.

  Oh.

  “Ivan was playing here—by himself—and he watched me open the feeding hatch earlier today—”

  “You think he set them free?”

  “I know it. He was in here alone after dinner. They’re smart, Cah and Croach, but they couldn’t have opened the hatch themselves.”

  “Our project is going to be so messed up if we can’t find them,” said Flynn.

  “That’s what you’re worried about?”

  “It’s due tomorrow! What else would I be worried about?”

  “Their safety!” I said. “Cah and Croach are house pets! They’re domesticated! Now they’re alone in the wild!”

  “I don’t know how we’ll present our project without them,” said Flynn.

  “They’re going to get lost—”

  “We don’t even have photographs!”

  “Or get eaten—”

  “This is terrible,” said Flynn.

  “It is.”

  “Do you think we can catch some backups and fake it?”

  “That’d be like Dad expecting nobody to notice if he swapped Ivan with some other two-year-old from fencing class.”

  Flynn and I made sudden eye contact, and I knew what we were both thinking:

  I wish.

  “Let’s split up the kitchen and search,” said Flynn. “You take under the fridge, I’ll—”

  “No. No. We’ll never find them that way.” I’d done a lot of research. “Did you know a cockroach can flatten itself out as thin as a dime? They might not be in the kitchen. They could have slid under the door.”