The Benefits of Being an Octopus

by Ann Braden

  “Not even any tracks?” I say. “You must be bummed.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s all part of the hunt. You’ve got to be just as stealthy as they are.” He pauses. “Sometimes, a bobcat will match its steps to a coyote’s tracks—will go footprint for footprint.”

  Maybe Silas is stealthy enough to figure out how to reconnect our electricity without the company knowing.

  But it might have to be a bobcat-shaped electrical box for him to pay any attention to it. He’s going on, now about what its scratch marks look like on trees. About how you have to keep your face to the wind when you’re tracking. “Whatever bobcat is out there, it’s one that knows how to hide, knows how to disappear.”

  “Too bad, man,” I say.

  Silas stops walking, looks at me, and gives that same weird “we’re part of an awesome conspiracy” smile. “No. Not bad at all.”

  I stare at him. I picture his dad and him sitting in the front seat of their truck talking about bobcat tracks. They always seem so happy together. Like they’re on the same team.

  “Hey,” I say. “Do you know where you file that form to get help with electricity and stuff like that?”

  He stops and looks back at me. “I think my dad used to bring it to Family Services up on Route 14.”

  “Oh yeah. Thanks.”

  He nods and goes back to talking about the bobcat stuff. About how snow conditions are perfect because they prefer to be able to walk on hard-crusted snow, but this most recent dusting over that icy stuff will let him pick up its tracks. On and on.

  Until we reach the bus stop—it’s packed with kids older than us and who look a whole lot less grimy than I do—and he clams up like he’s never once heard of a bobcat. Because that’s Silas’s superpower: going for entire school days without talking. He’s been doing it since the fifth grade when Brendan Farley got people to place bets about how quickly Silas would start crying, so he’s really good at it by now.

  Things would be a whole lot simpler if I could just build a wall around me like he does. I mean, I basically don’t talk in class either, but it’s so hard to keep my face blank when people are trying to mess with me.

  I file onto the bus behind Silas and slide into the empty seat across from him. The bus is warm and quiet. But then I hear a voice behind me. It’s Kaylee Vine making noises as if a pile of rotting fish was just deposited in her lap. “That smell,” she says. Like she always does.

  But not for long. I feel inside my backpack for my debate packet.

  My stomach drops. Where is it?

  “Ugh, I can’t sit here anymore,” I hear Kaylee say as she grabs her stuff and heads to the back of the bus.

  My debate packet. Sitting at home. Still on the windowsill.

  Why did I think today could be any different?

  CHAPTER 4

  I quickly pull my backpack closer to me and start drawing a cloud in the window’s condensation. One circle. Two circles. Make it puffy. Puffier. Puffier. This cloud needs to be so big I can disappear inside it. Someplace where I can’t hear Kaylee’s voice.

  The bus pulls away from the trailer park and starts heading down the street, where practically every house has a big yard, and some even have a swing set in back. I keep running my tentacle along the window, making the cloud bigger and bigger until there isn’t any condensation left to draw in. It still isn’t big enough.

  The bus slows down for its next stop, and I peer through the wet window to see Matt Hubbard waiting up ahead. His bus stop is magically right in front of his house. No need to cross a whole trailer park. Instead, he gets to strut down his perfectly snowblown walk, probably after having waffles, an omelet, and several strips of bacon for breakfast, and probably after his mom gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to “Have a good day, dear.”

  And certainly after he checked his backpack to make sure he had his homework.

  I’ve seen his family before because they go out for pizza at the restaurant where my mom works—and they do that every single Saturday night. Every single one! It’s like it doesn’t matter if it’s a payday week or not. Like they never run out of gas in the car and can’t fill it up. Like it’s easy for them all to be together at the same time with no one working or sick or totally stressed out or screaming or naked (that’d be Aurora).

  It’s like he lives on a beautiful tropical island, and I can see it and smell the pizza, but no matter how hard I swim I can’t get there.

  Matt gets on the bus, holds his trumpet case out in front of him so it can fit between the seats, and makes his way toward the back.

  Even though we’re in the same homeroom, he doesn’t look my way. That’s one of the things about the people on that beautiful tropical island: they can’t see who’s floating about in the ocean around them. Or maybe they can and they just choose not to look. I don’t know.

  I’ve never been there.

  Fuchsia is waiting for me at my locker when I arrive. Fuchsia isn’t her real name, but she wasn’t a fan of the name McKenna, and she’s even less a fan of her mom. She found out about the color fuchsia in second grade, and since all of first grade was kids coming up to her to order a McKenna and fries like she was a drive-thru window, she didn’t look back.

  Now she’s leaning against the locker next to mine, her pink hair splayed out behind her. “I want you to know that I destroyed that white team yesterday.”

  “White team?” I drop my backpack and start opening my locker. “Are you talking about foosball? At the rec?”

  She nods. “Destroyed.”

  “Who were you playing against?” I carefully tuck the edges of my winter jacket inside my locker so the sleeves don’t get pinched. I love my jacket. Lenny gave it to me—it was this random present one day because it’s my mom who buys our clothes, not him—and it’s one of those camo jackets with the sleeves that look like leather but aren’t really, and it’s pink. It’s awesome.

  “I told you: the white team.”

  I eye her.

  “And I destroyed them,” she says. “Nine to nothing.”

  “You mean, you scored against a team of little plastic men who were frozen in place with no one to spin their handles,” I say.

  “Nine times, baby.”

  I bite back a smile and shut my locker. “How long did that take?”

  She shrugs. “Just a few hours, but I was persistent. And I had promised Jane Kitty I would bring home a victory.”

  Jane Kitty is a little scruffy ball of fur who followed Fuchsia home this past fall. I had been going on about Jane Goodall at lunch that day, and Fuchsia—who felt like living in the jungle would be way better than living with her mom—adopted the wild kitten as her own piece of jungle. I haven’t gotten to meet Jane Kitty yet because my mom and Fuchsia’s mom had a big blowup around the time we moved into Lenny’s trailer, and we haven’t been able to go to each other’s places since. But Fuchsia talks about her all the time.

  “Jane Kitty might be more proud of you if you could score against an actual opponent,” I say. “How many points did I score against you last time?”

  Fuchsia puts on a fake thinking face. “Hmm … I can’t remember because it was so long ago.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I can remember your score. It started with a z, and—”

  Fuchsia puts her finger to my mouth to stop me. “Sorry, you only get to talk smack if you’re going to show up.”

  “I couldn’t yesterday,” I start to say. But Fuchsia is already heading down the hall.

  “No show? No smack!” she calls.

  Elementary school goes through sixth grade here, so this is our first year in middle school, and even though we’re already halfway through the school year, I still haven’t figured out the point of homeroom. Yeah, Mr. Bontaff takes attendance, but they take attendance during classes, too. And there’s the morning announcements over the loud speaker about all the activities the good kids do like drama and jazz band, but that still leaves us eight and a half minutes
of awkwardness. There aren’t assigned seats, so I usually just try to find a seat in the back where no one will bother me. Unfortunately, I can’t get there without walking past some girls who are going on about the animals they chose for the debate, and of course have their perfectly filled-out packets with them. The chromatophores right under my octopus skin switch to camouflage. When I slide into the seat, I might as well be made of the same colors as the desk and the metal chair legs.

  I close my eyes. All I had to do was put the debate packet into my backpack. I could have done it last night when I finished it. I could have done it this morning before I woke up Bryce and Aurora. I should have thought about it on my way to the bus stop. I still could have run back to get it. So what if Frank had woken up and yelled at me?

  Most of the boys in my homeroom are bunched together like bees swarming an open jar of grape jelly. They’re all buzzing—mostly about the Patriots’ game yesterday—and it’s like the jar of jelly is moving because soon the swarm is in the back corner right next to my desk. They’re oblivious to me, of course, and I shift my backpack out of the way before it gets stepped on. The last thing I need is to be walking around with a giant footprint on my bag. I’d rather pretend that I’m not sure what people think of me instead of being forced to carry around physical proof of it.

  “Come on,” Brendan Farley is saying, “that was definitely the best play of the game. Did you see the look on that receiver’s face when he dropped the ball? Priceless!”

  Calvin Umbatoor shakes his head. “No way, man. It was the Pats’ hurry-up offense in the third quarter. The Colts’ defensive line didn’t know what was coming at them.”

  Matt, with his trumpet-playing lungs, quiets them all down. “You’re all wrong. The best play of the game was clearly the fumble on that third down in the first quarter and that’s because … ” He pauses for dramatic effect.

  “Because the Colts were in field goal position,” I mumble to my desk.

  The sudden silence around me is the kind that makes me lift my head without thinking. And there is Matt Hubbard looking right at me.

  “Exactly,” he says.

  He’s still looking at me.

  My octopus chromatophores don’t always listen to me. Suddenly, that oh-so-awesome camouflage skin has turned bright red and pimply all over.

  CHAPTER 5

  The “Social Studies and Science Interdisciplinary Block” arrives like a slow-motion steamroller.

  The wall between the social studies and science classrooms has been opened. I’m on the social studies side because that’s the class I would usually have now, but at least I can see the tanks of hermit crabs on the science side. They could use a cleaning. I’m signed up for extra help in science during the special Ace Period on Wednesdays because I don’t do homework in that class either, but it’s okay because Mr. Peck lets me spend the period cleaning the tanks. They’re usually filthy. I figure he’s the one who needs the extra help.

  “Let’s get crackin’!” Ms. Rochambeau calls out. “I want to see nothing on your desk except your debate packet. I’ll be coming around to check.”

  Around me everyone moves in a flurry, clearing off their desks to leave only their beautiful, filled-out, remembered packets.

  Octopuses can squish their bodies down to no bigger than a crumpled-up bag of chips. By the time Ms. Rochambeau gets to my desk I might as well be that balled-up bag, with all the chip bits eaten, ready to be tossed into the trash.

  Ms. Rochambeau raises her eyebrows when she gets to me. Not in a “how clever to ball up like a bag of chips” way, but in that “you have disappointed me with your very being” way that teachers are so good at. She shakes her head as she writes my zero into her gradebook. “Sometime, Zoey, I hope you surprise me.”

  “I forgot it at home,” I say to my desk. “I promise I finished it.”

  “Mm-hmmm,” she murmurs. “It doesn’t do you any good at home, unfortunately.”

  She pretends she believes me. I pretend I don’t want to squirt octopus ink all over this classroom.

  “Maybe I could be in the debate anyway,” I say, even though she’s already moved on to the next kid. “I know all my facts.”

  She doesn’t look up from the other kid’s packet. “Then you should have brought in your filled-out packet, so I could see that. I was very clear with my expectations.”

  Having to sit and watch everyone else is even worse than getting Ms. Rochambeau’s Raised Eyebrow of Disappointment.

  Calvin Umbatoor mumbles through his opening statement about the “terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex,” reading directly from his packet. Then Matt Hubbard is up.

  He stands up like he’s been waiting his whole life for the opportunity to address the combined social studies and science classes. “My friends, the best animal on this earth is clearly the orca.”

  Did I make that whole Matt-agreeing-with-me-in-homeroom thing up? Did that even happen? Because part of me feels like I shouldn’t be allowed to think the name Matt Hubbard—or, at least, that if I do, angry, flying Vikings will show up and beat me over the head with wooden swords, yelling “NOT WORTHY!” Because he’s the whole package—like an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World package. And I’m nothing like that. Maybe I’m the stub of an already used bus ticket—specifically the bus that my dad took to get away from us—and even then I’m the ticket stub that’s at the back of the bus with muddy boot marks all over it.

  But he did talk to me, didn’t he? And he looked at me like he could see me and like he respected my amazing analysis of the Patriots’ game.

  Because it was amazing, wasn’t it?

  “They are fierce predators that can swim up to thirty miles per hour,” Matt is proclaiming. He definitely isn’t reading off his packet like Calvin was. “Orcas work together in teams to take down their prey. AND!” He raises his finger in the air. “They will share the meat with the whole pod.” In a flash he produces a giant bag of Swedish Fish and starts passing them out.

  He keeps up his presentation over the joyful squeals as people get handfuls of candy fish delivered to their desks.

  I pop one in my mouth. It’s delicious.

  Could I have actually competed with this?

  “And they’re camouflaged. Their black back blends in with the ocean if someone is looking down on them, and their white belly blends in with the sky if someone is looking up.”

  But two colors are nothing compared to the octopus’s constantly changing camouflage. Right?

  “And you’re all eating fish right now, but they hunt and eat a wide variety of animals, including the seal, the sea lion, the stingray, the squid, and the octopus.”

  Right.

  I stop eating the Swedish Fish.

  Next Kaylee Vine stands up. Her shirt says I’m watching you, and it’s got a picture of an owl with giant eyes—and it fits her perfectly, like all of her clothes do.

  “Owls are the best animal. They’re wise and they have these things called light rods in their eyes so they can see every single leaf on a tree in the middle of the night. And they can rotate their head more than 180 degrees, so they can see everything around them.”

  There’s something about the way Kaylee looks around at everyone that makes me think she might be able to rotate her head more than 180 degrees, too. Under her watch no detail goes unnoticed. I realize my shirt has slipped to the side and I fix it. The downsides of a growth spurt means that my mom insists on buying clothes that are two sizes too big for me when she’s at the consignment store.

  “Their wings have a special pattern of interlocked feathers so they can fly silently through the air,” Kaylee is saying. She isn’t reading off her packet either.

  I wouldn’t have needed to look at my packet. I know my octopus facts cold. But still, Kaylee is saying this stuff like not only has she known it all her life, but like everyone with half a brain would know it, too. My leg starts twitching just imagining what it’d be like standing up there talking. Everyone woul
d be looking at me. Even the owl on Kaylee’s shirt.

  “This means they can sneak up on unsuspecting chipmunks and grab them with their sharp talons. And before you get all upset about the chipmunks, you should know they’re actually helping the chipmunk population. The strong chipmunks know how to take care of themselves. The owls are weeding out the ones who don’t. And that’s better for everyone.”

  I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that she looks straight at me when she says this.

  Because if you can take care of yourself, you’d have clean clothes, and you wouldn’t smell like cigarette smoke, and you’d definitely remember your debate packet. And how is it fair for the kids who are on top of stuff to have to share the classroom with kids who aren’t?

  “And, Calvin, I want you to know that I’ll be coming for you and your T. rex’s tiny little brain when we get to the Q&A part of this debate.”

  If I had remembered my packet and made the mistake of getting up there, that owl on Kaylee’s shirt would be full-on rolling its giant eyes at me along with everyone else by this point. Did I really think Kaylee Vine was going to be impressed with my octopus facts? Did I really think she was going to give me a pass when the whole point of the debate is to prove everyone else wrong?

  It’s not enough to know your stuff. Not if one of the things you know for sure is that everyone you’re going up against is better than you.

  CHAPTER 6

  After the school bus drops me off, I zip up my jacket and walk as quick as I can along the shoulder of Route 3. If I can get to the Pizza Pit before Bryce and Aurora’s Head Start bus shows up, I can steal my favorite five minutes of the day. A logging truck whizzes past me, and I squint to block the spray of icy slush it kicks up from the road.

  My mom’s lucky to have this job. It’s not as much money as the fancy place she worked in the tiny little mountain town of Peru, Vermont, where all the skiers came, but you can’t keep a job like that if your car doesn’t start when it’s cold out. Plus, people eat at the Pizza Pit year-round, and we can walk there from the trailer.