by Beth Vrabel
I shrugged to cover up embarrassment at singing Joni Mitchell. I almost blurted that when I was just a little kid Mom used to play the folk singer’s music over and over while I napped on the couch during my treatments. But I didn’t. The General lazily hissed at my body’s movement. “Seems as good a plan as any.”
Jocelyn lowered herself on the grass next to me, plugging the earbud into her own ear. For a few minutes we just listened to the sad music.
“How dead am I?” I asked, looking up at the cloudless sky.
Gramps had grabbed me after the punch, pulling me to the car, but I had seen Jocelyn take a Guinea Pig quilt patch and hold it under Max’s bleeding nose as we pulled away.
She pulled in a big breath. “The doctor reset his nose. Max told his dad some story about you turning suddenly and knocking him. The doc said it’s going to take about six weeks to heal entirely. So no tournament for Max.”
“Wait!” I said. “He lied to his dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Master Waters buy it?” I asked.
Jocelyn nodded.
“Why would he do that for me? I mean, if he told the truth, I’d be in huge trouble. And I’d definitely be off the team.” I didn’t mention the ongoing waking nightmare I’d been having about being arrested for assault. That could happen, too.
“That’s who Max is. He always takes the high road. Always does the right thing.” She cleared her throat. “He broke up with me.”
Neither of us spoke for a long time, letting song after song pull at our thoughts. “Why did you do it?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.”
Jocelyn stretched out her arms so that the tops of our hands brushed. I braced myself for another round of electricity to zap between us. But it only felt like her hand touching mine.
Chapter Eighteen
Mom sat at the kitchen table across from me, staring me down. She had her cellphone, featuring Dad’s scary face via FaceTime, propped up on a stack of books. “What is going on?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” I stared at my hands.
“Something is going on, otherwise you wouldn’t have broken that kid’s nose!”
I shrugged.
“Ryder!” Mom and Dad both yelled in unison.
I sat back in the chair and crossed my arms. “It was a mistake, all right? I didn’t mean to punch him.”
“How do you accidentally punch someone in the face?” Dad asked.
I glared at his face on the screen. “I don’t know, Dad. How do you accidentally forget to call someone back for six days in a row?”
Dad’s face moved off screen for a second and I heard him huff like one of his bison. “This isn’t about me, son. You know how tough it is to get reception out here. I had to abandon my research and drive fifty miles this afternoon so I could have this conversation.”
“Thanks for your sacrifice,” I muttered.
Mom’s eyes widened. “What has gotten into you, Ryder? You know we’re here for you when you need us. Don’t blame this on your father, not when I’m in the same house as you. Why haven’t you come to me to discuss this problem?”
I shook my head. “Forget it. It’s not your fault.”
Dad cleared his throat. “Then what is going on? Gramps said all this is about some girl?”
Was it? Was it all about Jocelyn? Maybe a little. But mostly I just had to, in that moment, shut up Max.
“It’s this guy. He’s so freaking perfect all the time. I just got sick of it.”
Mom stared at me. Dad stared at me. Dad cleared his throat. “Let me get this straight. You punched the kid—breaking his nose—because he was too nice of a guy?”
I shrugged again.
“I’m not buying it,” Dad said. “We raised you better than that.”
I coughed but it sounded a lot like a snort.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Mom, her voice high.
“Nothing.” I stared at my hands.
“Whatever your reason was, we need to deal with it now,” Mom said. Again those words rattled in my thick skull. Deal with it. She pushed a notebook and a pencil toward me. “I want you to write this boy a letter. An apology.”
I picked up the pencil and twirled it in my fingers. “There’s no point,” I finally said.
“Why would you say that, Ryder?” asked Mom, her hand stretching out to squeeze mine.
I held up the pencil. There seriously was no point on it. (That one was for you, quilt club!) I threw down the pencil, bolted up from the chair, and went to my room, slamming the door.
It was late evening when Mom opened my bedroom door without knocking. “Grab your jacket,” she said. “We’re leaving.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, thinking she was going to ruin everything—including (okay, especially) Max’s lie to his dad that this was all an accident—and force me to apologize in person.
“There’s a massive mayfly bug swarm in Pennsylvania. We’re going on a road trip.”
Seriously, this is my mom’s idea of family bonding, chasing bugs.
But they weren’t just any bugs.
Mom put the station wagon into park next to a bridge in a small Pennsylvania town, putting an end to the most suffocating, quiet road trip in the history of bad road trips. (Seriously, Mom didn’t turn on the radio once in two hours and thirteen minutes.)
I wondered how we had managed to travel into a different temperate zone.
Because it was snowing in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania.
In the middle of May.
Thick flakes shone in the yellow glow of streetlights and the full moon, a total whiteout on the roadway.
“What?” I stammered.
Mom smiled. “Can you believe it?” In front of us was a bridge with police cars blocking both sides. Officers stood near the bridge, shaking their heads. “They’ve actually closed traffic, the little pests.”
“Those are … those are bugs?”
“Mayflies,” Mom said happily. Thousands—no, millions—of tiny flying bugs clouded the sky. It was as thick as any blizzard I had seen in Montana one winter.
Mom handed me a surgical mask. “You’re going to want to put up your hood, too. They love to fly into ears. And don’t take off your glasses.”
“Are we seriously going out in this?”
“Watch your step,” she said instead of answering. “It’s going to be slippery.” She put her hand on the door handle. “And take a deep breath.”
I half expected a blast of cold air to hit me in the face when the door opened. What actually happened was much, much worse. The shudder-inducing aroma of roadkill mixed with pond scum and a dash of decaying fish slammed me in the face. “OMG!” I gasped.
“I know!” Mom chirped, and she twirled. She actually twirled in a flurry of bugs.
We approached the officers so Mom could flash her credentials. “Dr. Jenna Raymond,” Mom said with a flourish, like she was a secret agent or something, “Entomologist.” Each step made a crunching sound under our heels, a lot like a much drier version of breaking Max’s nose, as we stepped on the bodies of fallen bugs. Getting out a small ruler from her bag, Mom hooted. “Two inches thick! Can you believe this?”
No, I could not.
“Oh, Ryder,” she gushed, nothing but round eyes behind her glasses. “I was so worried we’d miss this.”
Mom got out a camera and took dozens of pictures, mostly for work but a few of me, too. She pulled out a few specimen tubes and added mayflies to them.
One of the officers ambled over to us. “You’re certainly the only person we’ve seen who’s happy about this invasion. Three motorcycles went down trying to cross the bridge last night. A minivan nearly went over the railing.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Mom said, “but this invasion is actually good news for your community.”
The officer and I looked around at the buzzing blizzard. His mouth popped open, but just for a second (too many bugs to keep it gaping for long).
>
I couldn’t see Mom’s smile under her mask, but I heard it in her voice. “A population this size could only emerge if the river below us is significantly cleared of pollutants. In other words, this is proof your town’s pollution controls are working! Mayflies are a vital indicator of our water systems’ health. Congratulations!”
The officer stared at Mom for a full thirty seconds. He absently slapped at a mayfly on his nose. Another one immediately took its place. Turning to me, he said, “Is she for real?”
I nodded.
“No need to get testy,” Mom said. “Two days max and they’ll all be dead.”
“Thank goodness.” The officer crunched away, stepping a bit harder than necessary.
Mom sighed. “He just doesn’t get it.”
“Got to say, Mom, I don’t get it, either.”
Mom pulled me under a street lamp, so the yellow glow illuminated the swarm. “Try to focus on just one bug, Ryder.” It was tough with how quickly they moved, but finally I found one. It bobbed up and down, up and down, then suddenly back and forth. Quickly it went up and down again.
Mom, her eyes on me instead of the bug, said, “It’s a nuptial dance. The dancers are all male. Females fly through the swarm and join with a mate. A little later, the female lays eggs over the river. Up to three thousand of them!”
“What then?” I asked, giving a little admiring nod when I saw that one little guy found a special friend midair.
“She’s spent, drifts to the top of the river, and dies over her eggs. By then, the male also has fallen. In fact, I’d say just about all of these under our feet are danced-out males. They try to follow their mate to the river, to make sure she deposits the eggs safely, but they’re usually too exhausted to make it the whole way.”
Mom held out her hand. One of the bugs landed on her fingertip. “They’re so tiny, aren’t they? But fascinating. Those eggs might spend up to a year in the river, turning into elongated nymphs. They find their way to the side of the river and sprout tiny wings. Within hours, they transform again, into this.” I’m not positive if it was my bug, but as she spoke I watched another dancer fall to the ground.
She held the bug out under my nose. “See how beautiful he is?”
“Sorry, Mom,” I said. “I mean, I get it, they’re cool and all. But beautiful is a stretch.”
Mom let the bug drift from her fingertip. “Under a microscope, you can see these are bright, beautiful insects. Their delicate wings remind me of stained-glass windows, and then there are their long narrow bodies. Their entire adult life consists of only a few hours. They never eat, never rest. Just ensure the next generation will be created. A generation they’ll never know.”
Mom turned to me. “Humans, we’re not like that. Our lives grow more and more complicated after our children are born. We have decades ahead of us. But if this was what life was like for us—one beautiful dance before dying—in order to make sure you would be born, I’d be first in line to buy my party ticket.”
I didn’t know what to say. Silently, we made our way back to the car, laughing as we slipped a little on the sheet of bugs.
Mom packed up her samples before taking her place next to me in the car. She turned on the engine, but left the car in park. We watched the pulsating dance of death and birth illuminated by the station wagon’s headlights for a few more moments. For just a second, I got it. I understood what fascinated her so much about insects. When she put the car in reverse and we left the bridge behind us, I asked, “Mom, why did you take me here?”
She didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, she pulled off the highway and onto an access road. I couldn’t make out her features in the darkness. It was so long before she spoke that clouds drifted away from the moon and suddenly there she was, her pale face blue in the moonlight, eyes watery and wide.
“Do you remember when you were small? Before?” She took a deep breath. “Before you had cancer?”
I shook my head, wanting to turn away from her but not able to.
“There was a swarm the night before the doctor’s appointment when you were diagnosed. Not of mayflies, but of lightning bugs. The thing is, your dad and I, we’re scientists. We knew as soon as we saw the white glow of your pupils in photographs that something was wrong. We’re expert researchers. We knew what the doctor was going to tell us the next morning. But you didn’t.” She sighed. “So we went to the swarm. Are you sure you don’t remember this?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a lot of memories from before,” I said quietly.
Mom swallowed and nodded. Her smile was slow and soft. “You danced with the bugs as they flashed around you. It looked—it looked like the stars came down from the sky just so you could play among them. You never noticed your father crying in the car.”
“Dad cried?” I couldn’t picture my bulking giant of a father weeping.
“He curled up like one of the spent mayflies, sobbing.” Mom shifted. “I stood with you, watching you play, thinking about the unfairness of it all. All your life, we took you with us on our research trips. You knew more about insects than you did the alphabet. You could set up a tent in less time than it took most kids your age to snap a few LEGO bricks together into a tower. We thought we were giving you a magical life, but really it was just an extension of our life.” Mom let her fingers run down the side of my cheek. “But there we were, surrounded by death and birth, and I realized—maybe for the first time—that you weren’t an extension of your father and me. You were you. You had your own life. And if that life was going to end prematurely, there wasn’t anything—anything—I could do about it.”
“Mom …”
“Ryder, none of this is coming out right. You know I never knew my parents, right? They died when I was small.”
I nodded.
“I only ever knew me. I was scared, knowing what you were about to face, that you only knew us. That you might never have a chance to know you.”
“I don’t understand,” I muttered.
“Then there was your father,” Mom went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “raised by Gramps, whose life was and still is entirely tied up with his dead wife. When we thought we might lose you, too, your dad panicked, knowing he’d never get over it, the way his dad never got over losing his mom.”
“Okay …”
“We promised ourselves something in the car that day. We swore that we’d get you through this. That we’d fight like crazy for you—and push you to fight just as much. That we’d make sure you always had what you needed.” Mom bit her lip and stared at me intently for a second. “And we swore—we promised—that no matter what happened, we wouldn’t lose each other or ourselves in the ever-changing, buzzing cycle of life we found ourselves in.”
My head pounded—maybe it was the effect of the mayflies—but I couldn’t seem to understand what she was saying.
“We went too far, though, didn’t we?” she said. “We respected your independence too much. So much that we made you feel alone. We’re scientists,” she said again, “yet we somehow didn’t question the evidence in front of us: you. Choosing to believe that if you were laughing or making us laugh, you weren’t hurting. That if you never spoke about life before your diagnosis, you never thought about it. That you got a second shot—a second pair of wings—and we shouldn’t question it.”
Mom took a shaky breath. “And there’s more.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her, making her laugh. But it was nervous sounding and I noticed her lips trembling a bit.
“We were scared,” she said quietly. “We came so close to losing you. We had to think about what life would be like if we didn’t have you. We decided that if we got you through treatment, we would continue building our careers, our lives, separate from our lives as parents and spouses. We told ourselves it was to show you through our unconventional lives the importance of independence. Of following your passion. But it’s really because we were scared.” Quieter, she added, “It’s stupid, though. Because I�
�m still scared. All the time.”
I looked away, thinking of erasing the doctor appointment message. “Scared of what?”
Mom surprised me by not mentioning the c word at all. “Scared that I’m doing a bad job as a parent. What you saw today—it’s proof that nature shows us again and again and again that our most important job while on this Earth, the most vital purpose, is making sure the next generation thrives. I’m terrified to mess that up.”
Mom smiled at me, sort of wobbly. “I think I’m doing an okay job. That I’ve got a kind, funny, charismatic boy. But then he goes and breaks another boy’s nose.”
“Mom …”
“I know, I know,” she said. “I am just so scared that I’m not the mom you need.”
“Of course you are,” I mumbled. I wished I was the kid she and Dad needed. I wished I were as independent as they thought I was. I wished I didn’t need them. I wished I wasn’t jealous of bugs and bison. I pushed down the feelings, but I couldn’t push away a question.
The question, always buried in my mind, bloomed to the surface and wouldn’t budge. A rogue mayfly zipped around the car interior, and I lowered my window to let it out before speaking. Watching it leave, I whispered, “Do you wish I would’ve died? So you and Dad could keep going on your trips and research and never have to deal with me?”
I didn’t turn toward Mom. I couldn’t. But I heard her breath suck in. Before she could answer me, I added, “Or maybe it would’ve been better if I hadn’t been born at all?”
Mom grabbed me, her thin arms crushing me against her, holding me together even though she fell apart. Sobs erupted out of her. “I thank God every moment of every day for you, Ryder. Every single day. That you’re here, that you’re alive. It’s the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever seen. I don’t just mean that your cancer is gone. I mean you.”
