Chirp

by Kate Messner

  CHAPTER 17

  Me Too

  “Do we have crushed red pepper flakes?” Dad asked.

  “Check behind the moose,” Mom said.

  “Squeeze its ear while you’re over there,” Gram said.

  Dad found his pepper and squeezed the moose’s ear, but nothing happened. “Is it supposed to say something? I can feel the little speaker thing in there, but it doesn’t work.” He tried the other ear, and the moose called out, “Hello from Vermont!”

  “It’s supposed to say two different things,” Gram said. “One of your speakers must be broken. The one Bob gave me when we first moved in had the same issue. Not that I wanted a talking moose in my office anyway. I gave it to my neighbor for her preschool classroom.”

  “Well, somebody must like them,” Mia said. “Aren’t they pretty popular?”

  Gram nodded. “He’s a good businessman. And a decent guy. He offered to buy out my lease and take over the space if I have to close. I may ask what he thinks about this sale …”

  “You might really do that?” Mia knew Gram was frustrated, but she still couldn’t believe it.

  “Mia, my dear. We’ve had freezer issues, humidity issues, seagulls, and fruit flies. I don’t like to think of myself as a woman who gives up on anything. But I also don’t like to think of myself as a fool, and I’m just not having luck with investors. If things don’t turn around soon, selling may be my best option.”

  “I think that’s smart,” Mom said. “You should be enjoying life at your age. Not—”

  “I enjoy working,” Gram said. “I always have. Even in the early days. I put up with a lot when I was the only woman in UVM’s entomology department for those first ten years—male colleagues taking credit for my projects, telling me to go home and raise my kids—but I still loved going to work every day.”

  “Well, maybe things will turn around,” Mia said. “Daniel told you how much everybody loved the Chirp Challenge at the farmers market, right? And did we ever show you this?” Mia took out her phone and pulled up Mayor Obasanjo’s page with her Chirp Challenge selfie. “The mayor loves your crickets!”

  Gram looked down at the phone. “Well, look at that!”

  “It’s been shared four hundred times, so that’s pretty cool,” Mia said. “And she linked to your website with info about the open house on Sunday, so maybe lots of people will see that and show up!” She didn’t want Gram to give up hope. Not when Mia might actually be able to do something to help.

  “You’re still having that open house?” Mom sounded disappointed. “I thought with all the issues you’ve been having, you might call it off.”

  “Oh, no. I already put an ad in the paper, and we’ll be okay,” Gram said. “We haven’t been producing like we should, but I still have three hundred pounds of frozen crickets and a batch that’ll be ready to harvest soon. As long as we keep our temperature and humidity steady and don’t have any freezer issues, we’ll be in good shape.”

  “Good!” Mia said. “I bet you’ll have a huge crowd.”

  “Maybe,” Gram said. “It would be nice to have a good turnout in case this is our last hurrah.” She sounded so tired. And that made Mia want to fight even harder.

  They had an hour of Launch Camp before the field trip to hear the speaker on Tuesday. Everyone was racing around, trying to finish Vermont Launch Junior projects. Also stuffing their faces with food.

  Aidan had spent the night before experimenting with variations on Gram’s cricket-flour cookie recipes. “I figured out the perfect balance for health and deliciousness,” he said.

  “Did you leave out the crickets and add more chocolate chips?” Eli hollered from across the room.

  “Nope,” Aidan said. “I figured out you can replace twenty percent of the regular flour with cricket flour to make it healthy without messing with the texture. Any more than that and your dough gets gritty.”

  Mia sampled the cookies and thought they were great. So were the bao buns Quan and Bella had brought in to share. They were all soft and fluffy with sweet barbecued pork inside. Julia and Dylan were on their third servings each.

  “Okay, everybody!” Zoya called. “I know you’re on deadline, and it’s tough to miss work time today, so I’ve arranged for the maker space to be open tonight if anybody wants to work for a few hours later. Any takers?”

  Every hand went up, including Mia’s.

  “Great,” Zoya said. “Let’s get things cleaned up for now, and we’ll head over to the college.”

  They walked the four blocks to UVM, where the speaker was presenting in a big lecture hall. They were the only kids there. Everybody else seemed to be enrolled in college business classes. Mia had brought her notebook to brainstorm in case Anne Marie Spangler’s talk was boring, but it turned out to be great. She talked about how she’d built her first business—a small start-up in Vermont—and then sold it to a bigger company so she could launch another one and eventually ended up running her multimillion-dollar company called Five Dogs Apparel. When Anne Marie Spangler talked about her business plan, Mia felt pretty cool that she had done almost all the same things in her plan for Gram’s farm.

  After the talk, Zoya gave them fifteen minutes to use the bathroom and look around the art gallery in the building before they walked back to camp. Mia was waiting for Clover to come out of the ladies’ room when she heard some college students still talking with the guest speaker, so she wandered back into the lecture hall.

  “Without a doubt, you ladies will face challenges your male colleagues don’t have to deal with,” Anne Marie Spangler told them. “My first job out of college was a nightmare because the guy who ran my department couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”

  Mia moved a little closer and slipped into one of the seats. Anne Marie was talking quietly, but Mia could still hear as she told the young women how her boss had harassed her at work every day. It was pretty awful.

  “So what did you do?” one of the students asked.

  “Eventually, I quit,” Anne Marie answered. “I found a different job.”

  “That’s not right,” the other student said. “He’s the one who should have had to leave.”

  “Yep. But that’s how things worked back then. Welcome to the patriarchy.” Then Anne Marie Spangler waved her hand through the air as if the patriarchy were a fruit fly she could flick away. “It worked out, though. Last year, I bought his company and fired him.”

  “That’s epic,” one of the students said.

  “Anne Marie?” a voice called from the lobby. “Your car’s here.”

  The students thanked her and left, and Anne Marie Spangler started packing up her computer. Mia watched her fold the cord and tuck it into her briefcase. Anne Marie looked so … normal. She looked fine. Like that stuff never happened to her. How did she do that? Mia wanted to ask, but she felt stuck in her chair, and her voice was all gummed up in her throat.

  Anne Marie zipped her briefcase, tossed it over her shoulder, and turned to leave. “Oh!” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there. Did you have one last question?”

  Mia nodded.

  Anne Marie looked at her, waiting.

  “It’s not a question, actually,” Mia said. “I just …” She blinked fast. “That kind of happened to me, too.”

  Anne Marie tipped her head, confused.

  “That thing you talked about. With your boss.”

  “Ohh.” She put her briefcase down and gestured to the chair next to Mia. “Okay if I sit with you for a minute?”

  Mia nodded.

  “I’m so sorry something like that happened to you.”

  Mia nodded again. “Me too.”

  “Do you want to talk any more about it?”

  “No,” Mia said. Then she added, “It wasn’t as bad as what happened to you. But …”

  “Just because it could have been worse doesn’t make it all right,” Anne Marie said. “It wasn’t okay.”

  “No,” Mia said. “No.” Sh
e said it again. Louder. “No. It wasn’t okay.”

  “Did you talk with your parents about what happened?”

  Mia shook her head. Until now, she’d never said anything to anybody. Because everybody loved Phil, and at first she’d been too confused and afraid to say anything. Then later, it seemed too late to speak up. She should have said something right away. It was weird to talk about it now. Wasn’t it? It shouldn’t matter anymore anyway. But it did.

  “It was a long time ago,” Mia finally said. “It’s not anybody I see now.”

  “So you’re safe,” Anne Marie said.

  Mia nodded.

  “Anne Marie?” The lady from the car popped her head in again. “We need to head out if you’re going to catch this flight.”

  “Okay.” She looked back at Mia. “When something like this happens, it can be a lot to sort out. But you’ll be okay. You really will. Do think about talking to your family or another adult you trust, though. It might help.”

  Mia nodded one last time, even though she couldn’t do that. Not now. She couldn’t even figure out why she’d said something to this stranger lady she was never going to see again.

  Maybe that was why she said it.

  Or maybe it was because she’d been so surprised that people who looked and talked and ran companies like Anne Marie had stuff happen to them, too.

  CHAPTER 18

  Disasters and Spies

  That afternoon at Warrior Camp, instead of heading over to hang on her usual bar, Mia lined up for the rings.

  “All right!” Maria gave her a high five. “You’ve been working so hard, you’re going to fly through these.”

  “I’m going to give it a try, at least.” Mia jumped from the mat to the first two rings, which were pretty close together. That was the easy part. Then she took a deep breath, let go of the ring behind her, and let her body weight swing her forward to grab the next one.

  “Great! Keep that momentum!” Maria shouted.

  Mia let go again and grabbed the next ring. She made it almost to the end, but the last ring was too far away. She reached for it but missed and found herself swinging from one arm. She kicked her feet, grabbed the ring with her other hand, and held on. But now she was swinging all over the place and didn’t have the right momentum at all. She was about to drop when Maria called out, “Reach back now and steady yourself! You’ve got this!”

  Mia’s arms were on fire. She could feel the taped rings tugging at the skin on her calluses and really didn’t want to rip them open again. But she thought about reaching back. She thought about how free and strong she used to feel, jumping off those high red rocks at the lake. Splashing into the cool, clear water and staring up at the summer-blue sky.

  Maybe she would never be that brave, lake-rocks Mia again. But she could reach back and borrow some courage from her. Maybe she couldn’t go back to Boston and buy Tumblers and get rid of Phil. But she was going to get that last ring.

  Mia’s hands burned, but she held on. She kept her grip and waited until she wasn’t swinging anymore. Then she let go with one hand and reached back for the ring behind her.

  “That’s it!” Maria shouted. “Now give a pull to get yourself going again. Big swing!”

  “You got this, Mia!” Clover shouted.

  Mia pulled but didn’t move all that much. So she pulled harder. She did it again, and when she started swinging—really swinging—she let go with her back hand, reached forward as far as she could, and felt the rough tape of the last ring on her palm. She grabbed it, swung forward once more, and landed on the mat at the end of the course.

  The whole gym exploded in applause.

  Mia looked down at her hands. They were red and raw and stinging in the best possible way.

  Clover ran up and hugged her. Isaac and Liam were right behind her with high fives.

  “Want to try the warped wall now?” Isaac asked. He’d started wearing his hair in a ponytail, so she could finally tell him apart from Liam.

  “Sure!” Mia was on a roll. Why not?

  The warped wall didn’t go quite as well. Mia didn’t even get to eight feet on her first try, but by the time Maria blew her whistle at the end of camp, she was almost to the ten-foot line.

  “You were on fire today,” Clover said as they walked down the hallway to the cricket farm. They’d promised to help Daniel with feeding and watering before they went back to Launch Camp for the late work session. “You’ll be on top of that wall in no time!”

  “I hope so,” Mia said. And she meant that. It was funny. When Warrior Camp had started, she’d looked up at that wall and thought, No way! But Clover had been working on it all summer. She’d made it to the top last week and looked so triumphant when she rang the bell that, just for a minute, Mia had imagined herself up there, too. “I should have tried it sooner.” Mia pulled open the door to the cricket farm. “Now I only have one more week to— Ugh! Why is it so hot in here?”

  Daniel was just running into the warehouse with a big fan. “Oh good!” he said. “You’re here. They need water, pronto!”

  Mia dropped her gym bag and grabbed a water dish from the closest bin. It was completely dry. “What happened?”

  Daniel opened a window and plugged in the fan. “Thermostat was cranked up when I came in ten minutes ago,” he shouted over the whirring. “Nobody was in this morning, so I have no idea how long it’s been like this. We’ve lost about twenty percent of the adults already.” He opened another window. “But if we get them water and get it cooled down quickly, we should be able to keep it to that.”

  Mia and Clover worked as fast as they could. While they dealt with the water, Daniel worked to harvest a bin of crickets. Mia thought about how much faster Anna’s robot harvester would be. She hadn’t tried it with actual crickets yet, but Mia had brought one of the cardboard condos to camp, and it seemed like it was going to work. She couldn’t wait to tell Gram but had decided it would be best to wait until after Vermont Launch Junior. Especially now, with the mess in the warehouse today.

  Within an hour, all the cricket bins had fresh water, and the place was feeling cooler. “What’s next?” Mia asked.

  “Nothing else we can do at this point,” Daniel said. “Just help me get these into the freezer and— Oh no.” His voice sank.

  Mia rushed over to the big chest freezer in the back of the warehouse. “Now what?”

  “Looks like we blew another fuse.” Daniel stared into the freezer.

  “Or somebody turned it off on purpose,” Mia said, looking at Daniel. This wasn’t an accident. She knew it wasn’t. Had Daniel turned off Gram’s freezer himself?

  “Can you tell how long it’s been off?” Clover asked. “Maybe they’re still okay …”

  Daniel lifted a tub of what should have been frozen crickets from the freezer and pulled off the lid. They were all thawed and soupy. He cursed under his breath.

  “Are all of Gram’s frozen crickets in here?” Mia asked.

  “Most of them,” Daniel said. “She’s got another freezer at home, but this was everything we harvested in the past month.” He shook his head. Mia watched him. He really did seem upset. “I’m going to take today’s batch to my apartment and get them into the freezer there. You can head out. Thanks for the help.”

  Mia fought back tears as they rode to school for the work session. She didn’t know if Daniel was sabotaging Gram or if Mr. Potsworth was working by himself, but it was awful and so, so unfair. Gram had worked so hard. She’d pushed through so much and had this amazing career in a field that was almost all men. She’d built her department at the college so other women could study entomology, too. Gram had done such amazing work. How come nothing could go right for her now that she was following her dream with this farm?

  When they got back to camp, Anna was excited about a change she’d made to the robot harvester—something about a six-cycle repeat. Mia tried to listen but couldn’t focus.

  “Don’t you realize how much more efficient t
his is going to be?” Anna asked.

  “I’m sorry.” Mia explained what had just happened at the farm. “It’s freaky,” she said. “We were talking at my house last night about how everything was in good shape unless there were temperature or humidity issues or something went wrong with the freezer, and then bam! We have temperature and freezer issues today.”

  “That’s what makes me think Daniel must be involved,” Clover said.

  Mia nodded. “I know. He’s, like, Gram’s favorite person, but …” She shook her head.

  “Who was there when you were talking about that stuff?” Anna asked.

  “Just my parents and Gram.”

  “Any chance your parents are involved?” Anna asked.

  “No.” Mia had thought about that. Mom really wanted Gram to sell the place, but there was no way she’d be that awful. “But I swear, if it wasn’t Daniel, somebody else must have heard that conversation.”

  “You don’t have one of those nanny cams at your house, do you?” Anna asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “A camera that parents set up to spy on the nanny. It’s usually hidden in a teddy bear or something. Lots of people have them and don’t realize how easy it is to hack into them once they’re set up.”

  “We don’t have a nanny,” said Mia, “or any of those spy cameras, so it’s— Wait. Did you say they’re hidden in teddy bears?”

  “Yeah. Why? Was there a creepy teddy bear hanging around when you were talking?”

  “No,” Mia said. She didn’t even have her teddy bear from when she was little. Neptune was the only stuffed animal she’d kept. But then she remembered the moose. She thought about all the family conversations that had happened in the kitchen, where she’d left it. What she was thinking sounded too weird to be possible. She said it anyway. “But we have a creepy moose.”

  Clover gasped. “I thought something was off about that moose guy!”

  Anna listened while Mia explained about the talking moose Mr. Jacobson had given her and how she’d left it in the kitchen. “But I can’t imagine it’s got a spy camera inside,” Mia said. “The moose isn’t exactly high tech. When my dad tried to make it talk, one of its ear speakers didn’t even work, so I don’t think—”