“Great,” Flynn groaned.
“You don’t find a cockroach,” I said. “A cockroach finds you.”
“And how are we going to make that happen?”
“Flynn, you’re an expert when it comes to designing an experiment. You can do data and graphs.”
“So?”
“You can think like a scientist,” I said. “But I can think like a cockroach.”
* * *
—
LUCKILY, I’D BEEN observing Cah and Croach so closely that I knew just what food they liked best. “Cah loves beans and sugar and fruit,” I said. Flynn found a jar of raspberry jam while I unlidded the Tupperware of last week’s lentil stew, which was definitely fermenting.
“Good thing your dad never cleans out the fridge,” said Flynn.
“Only when something stinks and it’s definitely not Ivan,” I agreed. “As for Croach, remember that day we got sushi from Misohungri? That new place on Main Street?”
“I loved that sushi,” said Flynn.
“So did Croach. He rolled around in it like Jim Bob in slops.”
Flynn arranged a rank California roll on a plate.
“Don’t use a plate,” I said. “Put it right on the floor. Easier access, and the scent’ll travel faster.”
“You do think like a cockroach.”
“Thanks,” I said, flattered. Flynn dumped lentil stew on top, and I added the jam.
“Are we all set?” said Flynn.
I surveyed the food. All their favorites. It made me miss them. My mild-mannered Croach, who shimmied his thorax whenever I filled the water trough. My wacky Cah, who’d do anything for a joke.
My throat grew tight. “What if they can’t find their way back?” I said. “They’ve been out for hours, Flynn….”
“They’re just getting a taste of the outside world. They’ll be back.”
I flipped off the lights. The moonlight made the kitchen silver and gray. Flynn and I took up positions on opposite countertops, poised to pounce at the first sign of scuttling.
“I just want my boys to come home,” I said.
“Shh,” said Flynn. “They’ll be here any minute.”
* * *
—
THE WATER HEATER popped and bubbled. Snow made a shirr-shirr sound as it shifted on the roof. A board creaked, and a train hooted a dreamy, distant whistle. Flynn, crouched on the other counter, was a statue. I could hear the beats of my own heart. We had waited for a very long time.
I stared at the dark mound of food on the floor.
There was nothing.
But then—
There was something.
A twitch in the side of my vision.
I thought it might be eyestrain, or wishful thinking.
But the twitch became a shape. A small, dark shape under the baseboard of the dishwasher.
Flynn saw it too. He bent his head, and I nodded.
Suddenly, the shape made a break for it. A cockroach scurried across the floor. He leapt onto the food.
I eased myself off the counter. As soon as my feet touched the floor, the cockroach felt the vibrations. He tensed. His antennae wiggled wildly. I froze, and he returned to the food.
I couldn’t risk another step. I’d have to catch him with one move. I tensed my thighs, ready to leap.
On three, I thought.
One—
Two—
“WAHHHH!” Ivan cried from upstairs.
The cockroach startled and darted left. I dove. He scampered toward the baseboard, but I launched myself at him—my foot slipped on something—I crashed down—but my hands were cupped over the floor.
“Got him,” I gasped.
Flynn turned on the light. We both blinked. I peeked into my cupped hands. “I think it’s Croach,” I said. I put him into the gravel side of the fish tank, and made sure the feeding hatch was closed before I squatted to squint through the glass.
“Yeah, it’s Croach.” He ran a lap around his habitat and sighed in relief (I’m guessing) as he lay on the sun rock and closed his eyes. “Get some sleep,” I told him.
“WAHHHH!” Ivan wailed.
“He’s going to wake up your parents.” Flynn looked nervously at the mess of cockroach bait. I’d stepped in it, and it was ground thoroughly into the floorboards. “What if they wake up and find us here?”
“That’d be bad.”
Flynn turned for the stairs. “I’m fetching him.”
“The last person we want here is Ivan!”
“WAHHHH!”
“No,” said Flynn, “the last person we want is your mom. And that’s what’s going to happen in about four seconds. We’ll get Ivan, we’ll restrain him, and we’ll calm him down.”
He was right. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your baby brothers closest of all.
* * *
—
A FEW MINUTES later, Flynn tiptoed down the stairs. Ivan, snuggled in his arms, was wearing his gorilla pajamas and holding Gloria. “Ivan understands,” said Flynn, obviously for Ivan’s benefit, “that we have to be very quiet.”
“Yep,” I said.
“Ivan, can you show Soren what very quiet means?”
Ivan put a finger to his lips. He said nothing.
“Wow,” I said.
“No sounds from your parents’ room,” Flynn said. “They must be pretty conked.”
“They usually are,” I said. “They find their lives exhausting.”
“Now what?” Flynn shifted Ivan to his other hip and looked at the trampled food on the floor. “More waiting?”
All three of us gazed at the crab-lentil-jam mush.
“Gross,” whispered Ivan.
Flynn set him down. He toddled to the fish tank. I tensed, but all he did was wave at Croach, who waggled a lazy antenna back.
“Free,” said Ivan.
“They don’t want to be free,” I told him. “Life is good in their habitats.”
It hurt to think of Cah out there. Scared. Alone.
“Where would he have gone?” Flynn said.
“Out,” whispered Ivan. He didn’t sound like himself when he whispered. He sounded less like a monster and more like a kid. “Out.”
“What?” I said.
Ivan pointed at the door to the dark mudroom, where the chickens slept on their roosts. “Out.”
THE THREE OF us peered through the glass door. Flynn reached back to turn off the lights so we could see more than our reflections. Slowly, our eyes adjusted.
The hens were bundles of feathers: five plump, sleeping lumps. And there was Martha, a spikier bundle on a roost near the window. The heat lamp was dark, but I knew it’d turn on soon.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Three forty-eight,” said Flynn.
“We’ve got twelve minutes before they all wake up.”
“Can’t we just turn off the timer?”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t help. They’ve woken up at four a.m. for weeks now, so they’ll wake up at four a.m. today.”
“Out,” said Ivan.
The mudroom floor was six inches deep in pine shavings and straw, all gray and tangled in the moonlight.
“We don’t even know he’s out there,” said Flynn.
“I bet he is.” Ivan was right. If I knew Cah—and I knew Cah—he’d have looked for adventure. And where else could he be? If he’d been anywhere in the house, he wouldn’t have been able to resist the food on the kitchen floor. “He’s out there. We just have to find him. Flynn, get another spoonful of lentil stew.”
We stepped into the chilly mudroom. It was 3:53 by the oven clock. Flynn dumped the stew on the straw, and I breathed, “Cah! Cah, Cah, Cah!”
Martha twitched.
We froze.
This was the most dangerous thing I’d ever done in my life. Entering Martha’s lair—in the dark—with no armor?
What were we thinking?
My body shook. Sweat dripped down my neck. I didn’t dare wipe it.
It went against all my instincts to take my eyes off Martha, but I stared at the food. Come on, Cah, I thought. I know you smell the food. Come feast.
The minutes ticked away. 3:58, 3:59.
Cah. Cah. Cah.
The heat lamp clicked on, flooding the mudroom with warm, yellow light. Ivan jumped, but stayed quiet.
I glanced at Martha.
One of his beady eyes opened. Then the other. His head swiveled. He saw us.
“COCK-A-DOO-ARGH-ACK-ECK-EH!”
With squawks and fluttering, the chickens startled awake. They flapped from their roosts to the ground. In a burst of feathers, Martha, enraged, launched himself at us—
And there he was! There was Cah! Scuttling madly toward the stew!
“CAH!” I yelled.
“COCK-A-DOO-ARGH-ACK-ECK-EH!” yelled Martha.
I lunged, but Martha was faster. He held Cah in his beak.
* * *
—
MARTHA EYED ME. “Let him go,” I pleaded. “Please. I’ll hunt you other cockroaches.”
I hoped Cah didn’t understand me.
“Nice Martha—sweet Martha—”
Martha took one step backward on his pickled legs.
It was a lost cause. He had never liked me.
My eyes filled with tears as he took two more steps back. Cah, frozen in his beak, was drawn farther and farther away.
And then Ivan strode forward. He flung his arms wide. Martha, startled, stared at him. His chubby arms quivering, Ivan yelled, “EAT IVAN!”
“Ivan!” I said. “No!”
“EAT IVAN INSTEAD!”
“Don’t sacrifice yourself! It isn’t worth it!”
“BABY!”
“Get Cah!” Flynn hissed to me. “Get him while Martha’s distracted!”
I hesitated. “But—”
“TASTY BABY!”
Martha poked his head forward, his wattle swinging, his beak within inches of Ivan’s soft arm.
I dove for Cah, and I plucked him from the jaws of death.
Martha, furious, wheeled around. “COCK-A-DOO-ARGH-ACK-ECK-EH!” he howled. He flew at me. I stumbled away, raising an elbow to protect my eyes, cupping Cah in my hands.
“Inside!” yelled Flynn, fumbling with the doorknob.
The three of us fell into the kitchen. Flynn slammed the door. Martha threw himself against it, but the glass held.
I slowly opened my palms.
“Are you okay?” I murmured.
Cah waved his antennae.
“Don’t let him escape again,” said Flynn.
“Oh,” I said, depositing Cah into his habitat, “I doubt he’ll want to escape anytime soon.”
Cah flopped onto his sun rock.
“After all,” I told Cah, “it’s not every day that three heroes will step in to save your life.”
“Tasty baby,” whispered Ivan.
“We did it,” said Flynn.
Ivan stuck out his right hand to me. It took me a second to figure out that he wanted to shake. I don’t know where he got the idea, probably from a movie, but we shook hands.
He turned to Flynn, and they shook hands.
He looked at the two of us.
Flynn and I couldn’t have avoided it if we’d wanted to, and, you know, I don’t think we did. We were awkward, like we were aliens who’d seen humans do this weird hand-rubbing sign of peace and wanted to try it out for ourselves, but we did it. We shook hands.
It loosened something inside me. I smiled at Flynn. He smiled back. “You know,” I said, “you’re actually—”
Footsteps thundered on the stairs.
THE LECTURE WAS not fun. Mom and Dad tag-teamed it, so as soon as one of them ran out of steam, the other reared up. Sometimes I think they must rehearse those things.
They told us they’d need time to figure out appropriate consequences, so we were sent to bed. About five minutes later, we had to wake up. Dad drove us to school since it was negative fourteen and we were hauling the fish tank and the science-fair board. “And remember, boys,” he hollered out the door, “behave today, or else! You’re skating on thin ice!”
“Ooh,” I heard from behind me. “What’d you do?”
I spun around. Purple glasses, brown braids sticking out of a red wool cap—
Alex.
We nodded at each other, but it was too cold to stay outside, or even talk outside. Opening your mouth made your spit get all gummy and your teeth hurt like you’d bitten into an ice cream cone. In the too-warm entrance hall, radiators hissing overtime, I said, “Whoa. Hi. I didn’t know you’d be here so early. Did you guys leave at two a.m.?”
“We stayed overnight with my aunt in Effie.”
“Oh. Nice.”
“ALEX!” I heard someone say.
Not someone. Three someones. The triplets hurried over.
“Andrezejczaks!” squealed Alex. “It’s so good to see you!”
She was so high-pitched I almost thought she was faking it, but Olivia flung her arms around Alex’s neck. Lila and Tabitha weren’t the hugging types, but they were beaming too.
Flynn nudged me with the science-fair board.
“Who’s that?” he said.
“Alex Harris. My best friend.” She and the triplets had formed a tight little clump. “Well, she was my best friend until she moved.”
“Is that who you’re always video-chatting?”
“Yeah. Until a few weeks ago.”
“Are you guys fighting or something?”
I shifted my weight. The fish tank was getting heavy, and I couldn’t take off my mittens until I put it down. “Let’s go to homeroom.”
“Okay.”
I turned to Alex. “Um, see you later, I guess? Are you here all day?”
“I have a visitor’s badge. I can stay as long as I want and I’m supposed to text my mom when I want her to pick me up.”
“You have a phone? When’d you get a phone?”
“A couple of weeks ago.” She flashed it. “There’s a lot you miss when you don’t talk to me.”
“You’re the one who wasn’t talking to me!”
“Come on, girls.” She linked arms with Lila and Tabitha, leaving Olivia to trail behind. “We need to find a private place to catch up.”
“And we need to find Ruth!” said Lila.
I trudged to homeroom. Flynn followed me. He didn’t say anything, which was nice. Ms. Hutchins’s classroom was already crammed with projects, boards and plants and things built of Popsicle sticks. Flynn slid our board into a safe spot behind the begonia, and I checked to make sure Cah and Croach had survived the journey.
“Yes,” I said to Flynn, “is the answer.”
“Huh?”
“To whether we’re fighting. Me and Alex. I guess we are, anyway. She has new friends. This girl at her school, and the triplets here. She barely knew the triplets before she moved.”
“Well, you have new friends too,” said Flynn.
“I do?”
Jéro ran up to us. “I saw Alex out there. Anything you want to tell me before tonight, Soren?”
“Uh, no.”
“Come on. One little hint for your buddy Jéro? Your favorite bookie? I won’t tell anyone, I promise. They could torture me and I wouldn’t tell.”
Flynn eyed me. “Are you planning something?”
“No! I told you! I retired!”
“Because I worked really hard on this science-fair project.”
�
��So did I! So did everyone!”
“Hmm,” said Jéro. Flynn wasn’t as obvious, but I could tell he wasn’t sure either.
“After all the excitement last night,” I said, “the last thing I want is chaos at science fair. I want everything to be peaceful and calm.”
Jéro gaped. He turned to Flynn. “Did he really say that?”
Flynn started laughing. “I wish I’d gotten that on video. That’s the weirdest thing that’s happened all year.”
* * *
—
THE RULE IS if it’s negative degrees, we have to have recess in our homeroom teacher’s classroom.
“G. Grandin versus E. Garcia.” The class tournament of paper-clip badminton was up and running and hugely popular, and Jéro was reading off the day’s matches. “J. Johnson versus T. Tyler. R. Grant versus F. Skaar.”
“Flynn’s playing?” Soup asked me.
“Yeah, he joined last-minute. Today, actually.”
I’d asked him if he’d wanted to play during math that morning, and he’d gotten this look of utter joy and said, “Me? Yes!”
“Rats,” Soup groaned.
“No, it’s okay, he’s actually cool—”
“Nah, I just mean, he’s going to win. If he’s half as good at badminton as he is at soccer, he’ll flatten us all.”
Alex came over. “Want to play?” I said.
Soup said, “It’s the All-Class Paper-Clip Badminton Open. We’re the tournament directors. It’d be a late registration, but we could get you in—”
“No thanks. I’m teaching the triplets the basics of paper dolls.” Alex tilted her head at me. “If you know what I mean.”
“Wait. What do you mean?”
“You want to join us?”
What did she mean?
I glanced at the triplets. They were already snipping at colored paper. I couldn’t decide whether to be suspicious.
“Come on, Soren. It’s not the same without you.”
The three badminton matches were already under way, and the rest of the class was gathered around the competition desks, chanting and clapping. “We’ve got to help keep stats,” Soup reminded me. “And do crowd control, ref any close calls…”
He was right. I was needed. “Sorry,” I told Alex. “Maybe later?”
Here Comes Trouble Page 19
