One Small Hop

by Madelyn Rosenberg

  Davy’s mom had been a good alibi, too.

  “ID?” Officer Kennedy said.

  But not good enough.

  Juliette held up her finger. “I’m responsible,” she said. “If anyone’s in trouble, it should be me.” But later, it’s going to be me, I thought.

  Officer Liu scanned Juliette’s finger, while she gave me the You’re-dead-Ahab look I knew so well.

  “Ah,” said Officer Liu. “Here’s your record.” I wondered if it was full of gold stars. We were quiet as he read. Finally, he said, “Do you realize you’re within half a mile of the Canadian border, Miss Goldstein?”

  “Border?” said Delphinium, which might have been pushing it.

  “Canada,” Officer Liu said patiently.

  “My grandmother lives near the border,” Leroy said.

  “Right,” said Officer Liu. “But New Glaser is in that direction. You follow this path to the main road, and you’ll be back on track. Aren’t you following a map?”

  I hoped he wouldn’t ask to see the route we’d planned out.

  “We’re practicing using nature,” Leroy said. “The direction of the sun.”

  “We’re following the signs, sir,” said Davy, his voice quiet, his back so straight I wondered how he could breathe.

  There was a beeping sound, and the officer looked at his One and then at his partner.

  “Murray, again?” she said.

  He nodded.

  Officer Kennedy looked at us. “That way,” she said, pointing. “Got it?”

  “Copes,” Leroy said.

  “Copes?”

  “Copasetic,” he said.

  She nodded. Then she looked at Davy. “Call your mother. We have a lot of experience with mothers. Something tells me this is one mother you don’t want to mess with.”

  “I’ll call,” Davy said. But he waited until the officers started their bikes before asking the One to engage.

  “I’m not in jail,” he told his mom.

  “Thank goodness those officers came along when they did.”

  “Yes,” said Davy. “They were very helpful.”

  I decided to let them be even more helpful.

  “Don’t forget to tell her we’re changing our route slightly,” I said. “So she won’t worry.”

  “What?” Davy said.

  “What did he say?” said Mrs. Hudson.

  “The officers suggested a better route,” I said. Now maybe she wouldn’t scream at us when she saw we were off course. “A shortcut,” I added.

  Before we took off again, I made Davy change the setting on his One so we wouldn’t get any more surprises from Mrs. H. I was sure Juliette would threaten to leave again, but she didn’t. We kept on through the woods until we reached the main road. We pedaled past a small, abandoned wind farm, the turbines lying on the ground like giant metal moths.

  “Are they following us?” whispered Juliette. She meant the officers, not the turbines.

  “We count to one hundred,” I said. “Act like you’re scratching your mosquito bites or something. If we don’t see anyone by one hundred, we cross the road and take Mr. Valentino’s route.”

  Davy did the counting.

  Juliette scratched her mosquito bites, probably pretending she was scratching my eyes out. I sneaked another peek at Alph to make sure he was okay. He wasn’t moving around as much as he’d been, but the roach was gone. I wasn’t sure if it had crawled into the sand pile, or if Alph had eaten it. Either way, the sooner we got to Mole Rat’s compound, the better.

  “Ninety-nine. One hundred.”

  There was still no sign of the officers, no movement but leaves and grass pushed by the warm wind.

  “Okay,” said Leroy. “Let’s go.”

  We crossed the highway and moved onto the access road.

  “Let’s hope Mr. Valentino wasn’t lying to us, like your friend Mole Rat,” Leroy said.

  “He didn’t lie,” said Davy.

  “He got us busted.”

  “He didn’t know they’d be patrolling.”

  “He should have.”

  All I was thinking about is what would have happened if Davy’s mom hadn’t yelled. We might have been caught going over the border—if not on our side, on theirs. We might, still.

  “Mr. Valentino said to look for a ghost birch,” Juliette said. “What the heck is a ghost birch?”

  “A tree,” I said. “With white bark.” Blight had killed most of them, so there weren’t many left.

  “There!” Delph pointed.

  A white tree stood just off the path. Its bark was peeling like it had a skin disease, and it looked like it had been struck by lightning more than once. Even in what was left of the daylight, it looked ghostly; I imagined it was worse at night. What I couldn’t imagine was how Mr. Valentino knew it was still there. But we pedaled up to it and turned right.

  “One hundred meters,” I said.

  “I cannot believe I’m doing this,” Juliette whispered.

  “Fifty.”

  The terrain didn’t change much. There wasn’t a wall, like there was on other borders, just a spot where the river was practically dry. I glanced at my One again, and we crossed the invisible line. No buzz. No sirens. No border patrol.

  “Welcome to Canada,” I whispered.

  Did the trees look taller? I felt like we should stop and mark the moment, but that would have looked suspicious. Besides, we’d lost time by going the wrong way. In just thirty-two kilometers, if we kept at it, we’d be at Mole Rat’s compound.

  I hoped he hadn’t sent us the wrong way on purpose. I hoped he had a girlfriend for Alph.

  I’m not sure what I expected Naked Mole Rat’s compound to look like; I only knew when we pulled up in front that it was the furthest thing from what I expected.

  For one, it was a house, a huge one. Three of my houses would have fit in one of his.

  Mole Rat had a yard, too, but it wasn’t filled with fake grass, like the yards back in Maine; this grass was real, tall, and out of control. In the light of the streetlamp, I could see thistles and pokeweed. A walkway went from the street to the front door, dividing the grass like it was the Red Sea.

  “Do you think it’s too late to ring the bell?” Juliette asked.

  We’d set up at another nearly deserted campground and made our way over in the dark.

  “He’s expecting us,” I said. I wondered if Mole Rat traded stocks for a living. I wondered how he got his yard to grow like that.

  “He was expecting us,” said Davy. “Maybe he isn’t anymore.” The house was dark. When we moved closer, the security light flashed on. If anyone was home, they knew we were outside.

  I picked up the satchel off the back of my bike.

  “Wait, you’re just gonna carry him straight to the front door?” Leroy said. “What if it’s a trap?”

  “We could play a little hard to get,” Delph said, agreeing with Leroy yet again. “Right?”

  I set the satchel back on the bike again. “You ring the bell,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”

  “Fac fortia et patere,” Davy said. “ ‘Do brave deeds and endure.’ He’s been talking to me. I’ll go first.”

  He went up the front walk, slowly.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous,” said Juliette. She pushed down her kickstand again and caught up with Davy. Delphinium followed on Davy’s other side.

  They reached the porch together, but it was Juliette who rang the bell.

  The door opened and a woman my mother’s age stepped out.

  “Mole Rat?” said Davy.

  “Pardon?” The woman looked at him like an alien had landed on her stoop.

  “We’re looking for Mole Rat,” Davy said again.

  “Oh,” she said. “Right. Mole Rat.” She looked over her shoulder and into the house. “Simon?” she shouted. “It’s for you.”

  For a minute, it was just the woman in the doorframe. And then someone else joined her at the door. The light behind him, from the fron
t hall, made it look like he was glowing. But he was shorter than I expected, and when he spoke, his voice was a lot higher.

  “Snow Leopard?” he asked Davy.

  Davy gave him a hand signal, three fingers down, with the thumb and pinky extended up.

  Mole Rat gave one in return.

  “These are the friends I was telling you about,” Mole Rat told the woman. “They’re late.”

  On the Othernet, with the mask and voice changer, it had been hard to guess Mole Rat’s age or gender. In my mind, he was a man, about thirty years old. Also, he had a goatee. This Mole Rat was only about 1.5 meters tall, with puffy cheeks. As I got closer, I realized he was a kid, probably near our age. The woman must have been his mother. She looked at Delphinium, who gave her a half wave, and at Juliette, whose arms were still covered with pink stuff.

  It was a good thing, because Juliette could look like a fashion model if she wanted to, and Mole Rat’s mother didn’t look like the kind of mother who wanted her kid hanging out with a fashion model after ten p.m. on a weeknight. But without makeup and with the pink stuff, Juliette looked like a regular kid.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Juliette said.

  Mrs. Mole Rat returned the greeting, then squinted into the darkness. “Are there more of you?”

  Leroy and I stepped forward with the satchel. We stood there, awkwardly, a feeling I was used to. Finally, Mole Rat whispered something to his mother.

  “Do you know what time it is, Simon?” she said.

  “Mole Rat,” he corrected.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is, Mole Rat?”

  “We’re sorry about the time,” Juliette said. “It took us much longer to get here than we thought it would.” She pointed to our bikes on the walkway.

  “We’ve been on the road forever,” Delphinium added. “We took a wrong turn near Geddy.”

  “A very wrong turn,” Leroy added darkly.

  Mrs. Mole Rat didn’t say anything, so her son leaned in again and whispered something else.

  “You need your rest, Simon,” she told him.

  He whispered again.

  “Oh. Fine, then,” she said, and walked out of view.

  “Come on in,” Mole Rat/Simon told us.

  He backed away from the door, stiff-legged, and turned. Then, with the same stiff-legged walk, he led us through the long front hallway and into a living room. It wasn’t the sort of room that had a couch in it; it was the sort of room where everything seemed to be truly alive. There was furniture made of old vines and tree branches, and the floor below us was real grass. I looked up. While the outside of the house had made it look like there was a second floor, inside, there was just space—space that had been filled with trees and vines. The ceiling was glass, like an old-fashioned greenhouse. It was what the Rec Boxes™ dreamed of being. But the plants in the Rec Boxes™ were haphazard, with cactuses growing next to plants you would have found in the tropics, and plastic flowers to fill in the gaps. Here, everything belonged together. Here, everything was real.

  “It smells heavenly,” said Delph. It did—flowery and misty and warm. Delph reached out and touched an orange flower that looked like a gaping mouth. A small green pod that dangled near it curled inside itself and sent seeds spraying into the air. Delphinium caught the seeds in one hand and offered them back to our host. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to break it.”

  “That’s jewelweed,” Mole Rat/Simon said. “Don’t worry; it’s supposed to do that. Here.” He grabbed another pod and placed it gently in her hand. It split and curled.

  A buzzing sound filled the room.

  “Are those bees?” I asked.

  Mole Rat laughed. “They’re fans—mechanical pollination.” He pulled a Q-tip out of his pocket. “I use these, too, sometimes.”

  Now that I looked more closely, I could see small fans among the foliage, their propellers aiming upward and sending a cool stream of air across the room. I turned and looked past the trees to a small, clear waterfall that emptied into a pond, with ferns along the banks. Apparently, it was the only waterfall left in Wodiska Falls. Only nobody knew about it.

  “How is this even possible?” I asked.

  We’d been to museums, government labs, and of course the Rec Boxes™. But nothing came close to what was going on in Mole Rat’s living room. Even our island, which had its own magic, wasn’t as lush.

  “I have a green thumb,” Simon said. “I’m also extremely resourceful and—” He took a breath. “Tenacious.” He led us over to a table and chairs, sat down, and motioned us to do the same.

  “As you might have surmised, I’m Mole Rat.”

  “Snow Leopard,” Davy said again. “Also known as David B. Hudson. Well. Davy.”

  “Mama’s boy,” Leroy suggested under his breath, as Davy’s One pulsed with light. I was glad he’d changed the setting so Mrs. Hudson’s head didn’t pop up in the middle of Mole Rat’s living room.

  “Excuse me,” Davy said. “I have to get this.” He headed to the generic background of the entrance hall, but we could hear Mrs. Hudson’s voice coming out of his pocket until he got there.

  “Geez, Mom, I’ve only been here for five minutes.”

  “Eight,” said his mother.

  “Leroy,” Leroy said to Mole Rat loudly, trying to drown Davy out. “You can call me Squid.”

  “Delphinium,” said Delphinium. No last name. No animal name.

  “Juliette Goldstein,” said Juliette. “And my brother, Ahab.”

  “Simon? Excuse me. Mole Rat,” said Mole Rat’s mom, coming back with a tray. It turned out to contain cookies. They came in reds and oranges and greens, matching the colors in the room. “I thought your friends might be hungry.”

  “Thanks,” Mole Rat said as she set the tray in front of us. He sighed. “Okay. You guys may as well call me Simon.”

  His mom smiled at us for the first time. “I’m Mama Bear,” she said. “But you can call me Mrs. Laffitte. I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

  Simon nodded again and she left.

  “Ahab, look!” Delphinium was pointing to some bushes where two birds were perched. They were small and brown, not colorful at all. But they weren’t animatronic, either, like the birds in the Rec Boxes™. Delphinium was caught up in the dance of their movements—real birds inside a house. But I saw something else: a warning.

  “How can you responsibly own an amphibian with those monsters on the loose?” I said.

  “Monsters?” Delphinium said. “They’re cute. Besides, Alph could take them.”

  Simon looked at me smugly. “Are you referring to my vegetarian finches?” he said.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” said Leroy. “But for those of us who aren’t ornithologists, what is the big flipping deal about vegetarian finches?”

  Simon was silent. I guess he was waiting to see how much I knew. So I answered, “They were some of Darwin’s finches,” I said. I wasn’t talking about the Disciples. I was talking about the original.

  “Darwin?” Leroy said. “Theory-of-Evolution Darwin?”

  “How many Darwins do you know?” Simon asked.

  “They were found on the Galapagos Islands,” I said. “Other places, too, and then, no place. They haven’t been seen in—well, they haven’t been seen, that’s all. And they’re true vegetarians. They won’t eat frogs. They won’t even eat bugs.”

  “I’d be more worried about the frogs eating the birds,” Leroy said.

  “I keep water for them away from the pond,” Simon said. “They know better.”

  “Well,” Delphinium said. “I guess that’ll do in a finch.” Things always felt less stressful when she managed to pull off a pun. “Owl be right over here,” she said, going to where Juliette stood watching the waterfall pour over the rocks.

  Droplets of water splashed on my sister’s arms and legs. She looked back at me. It was a Where-did-you-find-this-guy? look. But I hadn’t found him. Davy had.
And now that we were here, my choices were down to two:

  (A) Trust him, or

  (B) don’t.

  “Do you have any more questions about the safety of my ecosystem?” Simon asked. I’d moved on from the finches to asking about his use of fertilizer (compost) and whether he used chemicals for bug control (“duh, no”).

  “Give me a second,” Leroy said. “I always have questions.”

  Simon bent forward to grab a cookie. Then he sat straight up again. His legs didn’t move with the rest of him. I looked for a minute at his shoes, which were black and stiff—not sneakers like the rest of us were wearing.

  “Why haven’t you done something like this to our living room?” Juliette asked me.

  “Like Dad would let me,” I said. I didn’t say: Like we could afford it. Because no matter how resourceful Simon was, an operation like this took money. Still, I imagined our couch, with its puffy turquoise pillows, replaced by a silvery waterfall.

  “It would cheer up Mom, I’ll bet,” she said.

  Davy, who had put his One away, was back and reaching toward the water.

  “Don’t touch it,” Simon said.

  “I thought you said it was safe,” said Leroy.

  “It is,” Simon said. “But he’s not. I don’t know where his hands have been.”

  I grabbed a cookie with my own not-so-clean hands. It was sweet but rubbery.

  I was aware of Alph, near my feet in the satchel. I wasn’t sure about pulling him out. I could lose track of him in a big room like this.

  “So now what?” said Leroy, helping himself to another cookie.

  Juliette looked at Simon. “Where’s your frog?”

  “Where’s yours?” Simon said.

  I patted the satchel.

  Simon pointed toward the pond. “There’s a spot Elvira likes just behind the waterfall. Why don’t you see if she’s there?”

  The frog was there all right. Simon’s frog was a little smaller than Alph, with a slightly greener face but the same buggy, yellow eyes.

  “So how do we introduce them?” Davy said. “Soft music? A movie?”

  We looked over at Simon, waiting for some guidance. He rose and walked over to us.