by Gail Donovan
So she’d stopped calling on him so much, and Josh had started going crazy. Sometimes he talked without being called on first. Teachers hated that.
Sometimes he just talked to the kids next to him. She hated that, too.
But hopefully bringing in this frog could fix him up with Ms. O’Reilly. He didn’t want the honor of graduating as the worst kid in the worst class of Ms. O’Reilly’s twenty-seven-year teaching career.
And Happy Birthday to Aidan Roderick.
The intercom went silent, and Ms. O’Reilly stood up in front of the class.
“All right, fifth graders,” she said. “Joshua has brought in something to share with us.” Ms. O’Reilly had short gray hair and glasses. Half the time her glasses perched on the tip of her nose and half the time they dangled around her neck from a chain made out of sea glass. She gave Josh a go-ahead smile. “All right, Joshua.”
Josh set the bucket on the floor, took off the lid, reached in, and put his hands around the frog’s middle. “This,” he announced, lifting the frog up in the air so that its three hind legs dangled down, “is my frog.”
Kendra screamed. Lisbet and Mariah, who always did everything together, screamed in unison.
Charu stood on her chair—not like she was scared, Josh thought, but to see better.
Ben B. and Ben T. jumped out of their seats and surged forward to get a closer look.
“Let me see!” said Payson.
Payson wasn’t tall and he wasn’t even that big, but he was solid. When he ran down the soccer field, kids got out of his way. He easily pushed through the other fifth graders to the front. “Awesome!”
“Totally awesome,” agreed Ben B.
“No!” said Ben T. “Toadly awesome! Get it? Toadly?”
Josh was surprised to see Michael, a skinny kid with curly dark hair, stand on a desk for a better view. Michael didn’t usually do anything that would draw attention to himself. He was the kind of kid who never raised his hand. Josh didn’t know if Michael knew the answers but was shy, or if he just didn’t know the answers.
Josh was even more surprised when Michael gave him a thumbs-up sign. He couldn’t let go of the frog, so he just grinned back.
“Fifth graders!” said Ms. O’Reilly. “Fifth graders, we do not stand on chairs and desks!” She raised her hand in the air for order. But the class was so excited, she didn’t get order. She had to resort to what they did at schoolwide assemblies. She clapped out a rhythm: clap, clap, clap-clap-clap. Then the kids echoed it back: clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.
Charu got off her chair and Michael got down from the desk. The other kids took their seats again.
“Where in the world,” said Ms. O’Reilly, reaching for her sea-glass chain and putting her glasses on for an up-close look at the frog, “did this come from?”
“My yard,” said Josh, grinning. “There’s this place in the woods behind our yard that’s pretty soggy, with skunk cabbages and everything, and sometimes I find frogs there. I think maybe it hopped from there to this pool—not a swimming pool, but like a little pool with water lilies.”
While he talked, Ms. O’Reilly smiled and nodded. She asked the class, “How could this have happened? Any ideas?”
Kendra’s hand shot up. Usually she didn’t answer questions because she was busy trying to sneak-read books inside her desk. She said, “Maybe it was born like that.”
Charu was waving her hand in the air. No surprise there. She was one of those “ooh-ooh-call-on-me” kids. Except unlike Josh, she usually had the sort of answer the teacher was looking for. She was also the best speller in the fifth grade. “It couldn’t have been born that way because it isn’t born with any legs at all!”
“Yeah!” said Ben T. He and Ben B. shared the same name, but Ben B. had carrot-orange hair, and Ben T. had a chipped front tooth. He said, “Because it starts out as an egg and then it’s a tadpole and then it gets legs!”
“Maybe it’s like Siamese twins,” offered Lisbet. “Maybe a couple of frog eggs got stuck together or something and turned into one frog with too many legs.”
“I don’t think so,” said Josh. He couldn’t raise his hand because he was still holding the frog, but Ms. O’Reilly smiled at him to go on. “’Cause then it would have more than one extra thing. Like an extra front leg, or an extra head!”
The mention of an extra head made Lisbet and Mariah squeal, and Ben B. and Ben T. groan with delight. But even with all the noise, Ms. O’Reilly just beamed at Josh. Taking the lid off the terrarium, she asked, “Why don’t you put your frog in here for the day, Joshua? And then, let’s see”—she examined her watch—“we’re supposed to have Silent Reading now . . . but I’m going to call the library and see if we can go look for any material that will help us learn more about your frog.”
“Yes!” cheered Payson.
Payson hated Silent Reading time. It wasn’t that he couldn’t read well. It was that he hated being quiet, just like Josh. Way back in kindergarten, they used to build things with blocks and talk. Talking in kindergarten was called socialization. It was a good thing. Then in first grade the teacher moved their desks apart so they couldn’t talk too much. After that, they got put in separate classes. But this year enrollment was down. There were only enough kids for one fifth grade, so Josh and Payson were in the same class again.
Josh gently lowered his frog into the glass case. “Look, here’s some moss. Here’s some water. You can spend the whole day here.”
Payson came up and tapped on the terrarium. “How you doing, Froggy?”
“Hey,” said Josh quickly. “How would you like it if a giant frog started knocking on the window of your house? That’s what it’s like when you bang on the glass!”
“All right,” agreed Payson. “I won’t bother the freaky froggy.”
Michael came up to the terrarium and, for the second time that morning, surprised Josh. He asked Josh a direct question. “How’d you find him?”
“I was eating breakfast outside,” explained Josh, “except it was so gross I threw the spoon in our pond and that made the frog jump, and then I found him.”
Payson had stopped tapping the glass, but Josh could still hear him talking to the frog, saying, “Hey, Freaky Froggy, jump!” And he could hear Ms. O’Reilly on the phone with the school librarian: “. . . special opportunity . . . teachable moment . . . books on amphibians.”
“Think there’s any more?” asked Michael.
“Maybe,” answered Josh. “You could come over and we can look.”
Michael’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”
“Sure,” said Josh. His mom had a rule that she had to talk to the parents first, so he said, “I’ll get my mom to call your mom.”
“Really?” repeated Michael. “I mean—sure!”
Josh realized that he’d gone to school with this kid for years and hardly ever talked to him. But they were talking now, because of the frog.
Ms. O’Reilly was off the phone. “Line up!” she said. “We’re going to the library. Joshua, why don’t you take the lead?”
Josh went to the head of the line. Payson got behind him and gave him a congratulatory punch in the arm. Behind them came Charu, Lisbet and Mariah, Ben B. and Ben T., Kendra, Michael, and the rest of the fifth grade.
The whole room was buzzing. It felt like Halloween, or the last day of school, only he was the reason for all the excitement.
Well, him and the frog.
Josh liked this feeling. He was a star.
Chapter 3
The Serious Talk
Josh lifted up his hamburger bun and squirted a big glob of ketchup onto the meat. He might have been a star in fifth grade, but he didn’t expect any star treatment at home. Any minute now, he expected the Serious Talk. Replacing the bun, he picked up his warm, ketchupy burger.
“Cady,” said Josh’s dad. “Would you say grace, please?”
Josh put down his hamburger. Whenever they asked him to say grace he usually ended up winging
it, and when he was done his father would say something like “That wasn’t a grace, it was a speech.” More often they asked Cady, who had about ten grace-y poems memorized.
“For every cup and plateful,” said Cady, “please make us truly grateful.”
Josh was glad she’d picked one of the short poems; he was starving. “Amen,” he said loudly, and picking up his burger again, he bit into the warm meat.
“Lacey called,” said Josh’s mom. “She and Matt want you to sleep over on Saturday.”
Was that going to be the punishment? That he couldn’t go? Josh chewed quickly so he could protest without being told not to talk with his mouth full, but before he could swallow, his mom added, “I knew you’d want to, so I said yes for you, okay?”
“Thanks, Mom!”
Was this his lucky day or what? He’d found an amazing frog and he was a star at school and he was going to Matt and Lacey’s?
Matt and Lacey were his grandparents. Josh had three sets.
Grandma and Grandpa were his mom’s mom and dad; they lived in Massachusetts and Josh saw them on holidays like Thanksgiving. Nana and Pop were his dad’s mom and dad; they lived up north, almost in Canada, and his dad took him up there in the summer when they went canoeing.
Matt and Lacey were the mom and dad of Jonathan, Josh’s first dad. He and Josh’s mom had split up when Josh was a baby, and then he’d died in a car accident. Then Josh’s mom got married to David, and they had Cady. His mom called Jonathan Josh’s biological father and David his forever father. David had adopted Josh, and he was the only dad Josh knew. But he still had this whole other set of relatives left over from his first dad. Like Matt and Lacey. He called them the bio-grands.
Cady said, “If he gets to have a sleepover, can I have one, too?”
“We’ll see,” said their mother. “Tell us about your day, Cady.”
Their parents said that there was more to good table manners than holding your fork correctly. There was pleasant conversation. When your mouth wasn’t full.
“It was good,” said Cady. She didn’t really get the pleasant conversation concept.
Their dad tried Josh. “How did your teacher like the frog?”
Josh sat up on the edge of his chair. “She loved it! We got to go to the library and get out books on amphibians, and I looked up all the Maine species, and I’m pretty sure it’s a leopard frog ’cause of the spots. And I think it must be at least a year old and just came out of hibernation, ’cause it’s so big, and—no thanks to salad, Mom!”
Josh’s mom put some salad onto his plate. “You mean yes please to salad. Where’s the frog now?”
“School,” said Josh. “In the terrarium.”
His father asked, “How does he like it in there?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Josh. “It seemed like a nice place for him. There’s no predators in there. And there’s moss and water. But there’s nothing for him to eat. The book said they eat insects, so I’m going to catch some and bring them in tomorrow. And they eat small vertebrates like mice, so I was hoping maybe we could go to a pet store and I could buy some with my own money?”
To show what a worthy candidate he was for a special trip to town, Josh speared a big piece of lettuce and swallowed it without grimacing. “Please?”
“That is so mean,” said Cady. “The poor mice!”
“But he needs food!” protested Josh. “He looks weak. After I put him in the terrarium he didn’t move all day. I think something might be wrong with him.”
His father joked, “You mean, something besides having five legs?”
“Dad, that isn’t funny!” said Josh. But his parents were both laughing, and so was Cady. Josh set down his hamburger.
“It’s not funny!” he repeated.
“Yes, it is,” giggled Cady.
“No, it’s not!” said Josh. “The frog can’t help the way it is! Just because it has too many legs doesn’t make him less good as a frog. It doesn’t make him a freak.”
“Okay, I’m sorry I teased,” said Josh’s dad. “But seriously, wouldn’t you say it was a ‘freak of nature’? In the literal sense?”
“I guess so,” said Josh grudgingly. “But that doesn’t mean Payson has to call it Freaky Froggy!”
Cady giggled again. “Freaky Froggy?”
“Don’t say that!” said Josh.
“Josh!” said his mother. “You don’t need to shout.”
While their mom wasn’t looking, Cady silently mouthed, “Freaky Froggy!”
“Shut up!” roared Josh, lunging for Cady across the table.
Josh’s dad reached out and wrapped his big hand around Josh’s arm to stop him, and his mom said, “Joshua Tree Hewitt, there will be no fighting at the dinner table.”
“That is so unfair,” protested Josh. “How come it’s always my fault if me and Cady have a fight?”
“You started it,” said Cady.
“You did,” said Josh, “but you’re such a goody-goody suck-up they don’t even see it—”
“Enough!” snapped his mom, holding up her crossing guard hand. “Cady, you’re excused.”
“What about dessert?” asked Cady.
“No dessert,” said their mom.
Cady made a face, but she put her plate in the sink, picked up her reins, and left the room at a slow trot.
“Remember that pause button we talked about?” asked his dad. “That would have been a good time to push it. About a minute ago.”
“All right,” said his mom. “Let’s go back to this morning. You broke a cabinet, and you missed the bus again. How did that happen?”
What could he possibly say that would make them happy? Nothing he said was ever right. “I found a frog with five legs?”
His dad said, “You found the frog after you broke the cabinet, Josh.”
“Yeah,” said Josh, “but I bet I wouldn’t have missed the bus if I hadn’t found the frog. And I wouldn’t have found the frog if I wasn’t eating breakfast outside. And I wouldn’t have been eating breakfast outside if I hadn’t broken the cabinet. Which I’m not saying was a good thing or anything, but you’ve got to admit the frog is pretty amazing.”
Josh’s mom put her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands, like this conversation was making her tired. “You’re going at this completely backwards. We didn’t ask how you found the frog. We asked how you could get so worked up that you broke a cabinet.”
Josh couldn’t resist this opportunity. “My superpower strength?”
His dad said, “This isn’t a joke, Joshua!”
“Sorry,” said Josh quickly. “But I don’t know how it happened. It just . . . happened. I was trying to explain to Mom and she kept getting mad and not letting me explain . . . and then I was just trying to close the cabinet, and . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Josh,” said his mom, “I need to be able to tell you to stop talking without you flying into a rage.”
“I didn’t fly into a rage,” echoed Josh. “I just got mad because you were mad at me first. It’s like you’re always mad at me.”
“How can you say that?” she asked. “I’m not always mad at you.”
His dad made a referee’s T-shape with his hands. “Time out,” he said. “Let’s try something besides talking. Here’s what I propose. You’re going to write a short essay about what went wrong this morning, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Right now?”
His dad pushed a piece of paper and a pen in front of Josh. “Right now.”
“That’s my punishment?” asked Josh. “I thought it’d be like no computer for a week.”
“Good idea,” said his mom. “Since you mentioned it, that will be your punishment. This will be your community service.”
“But, Mom, I need to go online to learn more about the frog! There’s nothing in the library books about this!”
Josh’s dad said, “What you need to learn is that every time you open you
r mouth, you make it worse.” He picked up the pen and handed it to Josh.
Josh took the pen. If this wasn’t the real punishment, he might as well write whatever he wanted.
You expect me to follow the rules. These are the rules. 1) Come down dressed for breakfast. 2) Quick response! That means if you ask me to do something, I should do it quick. 3) First obey, then talk. That means if I disagree with what you want me to do, I should do it anyway, and we can talk about it later. If I follow all the rules, I won’t miss the bus. And we will all live happily ever after. Including the frog. The end.
Josh handed the paper to his parents and waited for them to read it. The house was so quiet that through the screen door he could hear the sound of the spring peepers trilling. He remembered that he wanted to ask his mom to call Michael Robinson’s mom. He knew better than to ask right now, though. You had to time your requests to increase the chance of a yes, and this was definitely not the right time. Not yet.
His parents looked at each other the way they did when they were trying to come to a quick decision in front of the kids.
Then they both burst out laughing. They liked it!
Josh decided this was the right time to ask: “Can Michael Robinson come over tomorrow? He wants to see where the frog came from. So will you call his mom?”
His mom said, “Sure,” and she went to get the school directory.
Cady must have decided that this was also the right moment for a request. She stuck her head through the doorway. “Can we have cookies?”
“Sure,” said Josh’s dad. “Cookies all around.”
Cady got out a box of chocolate chip cookies.
Talking on the phone, Josh’s mom gave him a thumbs-up that meant Mrs. Robinson was saying yes. “So they can ride the bus here . . . not a problem, we can bring him home later . . .” She said goodbye, hung up, and took a cookie. “All set.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Josh bit into a cookie.
It had been a crazy day. He’d found a frog with five legs. He’d gotten back in good with his teacher. He’d gotten in trouble with his parents and then, basically, out of trouble. And he’d made friends with Michael Robinson, and tomorrow Michael was coming over after school. All in all, way more good stuff than bad.
