"Right," the man said, getting back into the car. He gave Bobby a long, grim look before he tried once more to start the car.
It turned out that the engine trouble was no more serious than three fouled spark plugs. The mechanic replaced the plugs and sent Bobby and his mom on their way.
"Why'd you go and make up a story like that?" Mom asked as they pulled out of the gas station. "You just about frightened that poor man to death."
"I don't know," Bobby said, shrugging. It was the truth: he didn't know.
Two
September 22
Last night I went outside and looked under the porch. There's a big spider living under there—I'm pretty sure it's a marble orb weaver. There was a little green light in its web. When I got closer I saw that it was a firefly; all wrapped up but still alive, its light turned on.
I felt sorry for that firefly, lit up for the last time, but what are you going to do? Everybody needs to eat.
The firefly got me thinking about Mike and Chad and the guys. The night last summer camping out in Mike's backyard when the air was thick with fireflies. His ma gave us empty pickle jars and we caught maybe a hundred fireflies apiece, put them together in one big jar, and brought the jar into our tent. That jar put out so much light we could read comic books!
I really miss those guys.
Last night in bed I couldn't sleep. Started wondering if spiders sleep. I think I read somewhere that they probably don't sleep as we know it. They go through long periods of time where they're inactive.
I got hungry, went downstairs for a bowl of Raisin Bran. In the kitchen there was a little house spider hanging from the ceiling. Not going up, not going down. Hardly moving. Just dangling from an invisible thread.
Exactly like me.
In the morning Breezy was at her command post at the breakfast bar. Mom was sipping orange juice.
"Hi," Bobby mumbled, fetching cornflakes from the cabinet.
"Mor-ning," Mom sang, the first note higher than the other. "How are you, Bobby? Sleep okay?"
"Okay," he mumbled. "You run today?"
"Three and a half miles," she replied. "I feel like a million."
He grunted. Sometimes Moms super-terrific moods were a bit much first thing in the morning. Just then Dad walked in, poured himself a mugful of black coffee, and sat down at the breakfast bar.
"Could I have breakfast?" he asked. "I'd like a cheese omelette, bacon real crispy, and rye toast, butter on the side."
"Ha, ha, ha," Mom said. For the past year there had been a rule in the house that was practically etched in stone: everybody makes their own breakfast. Ever since Mom started losing weight, she never, ever cooked breakfast for the family. She didn't fix lunches, either, and rarely made dinner. Dad did almost all the cooking.
"Joke," Dad said, kissing her on the cheek. "Who needs all that cholesterol, anyway?"
"I do," Breezy said. "I'm an adolescent. My brain is growing."
"That's what you think," Bobby muttered. Breezy had a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her, loaded with black pepper. "Looks like a coal miner sneezed on your eggs."
"Very funny," Breezy said. "Hey, want to hear what Ann Landers said to the woman who married a man who constantly picked his nose in public during their honeymoon? Her advice, and I quote—"
"Hey, c'mon," Dad said. "Why don't you pretend this morning that you guys love each other."
"We do," Breezy said. "We fight because we care."
Bobby rolled his eyes.
After breakfast he ran up to say goodbye to Thelma. The new tank hadn't made her any more active; she was hunkered down in her burrow at the back. Two crickets jumped fearlessly nearby. Very carefully he picked her up and stroked her legs. He could tell that she liked it when he picked her up. She had a particular way of lifting her legs one after another, and never tried to get away.
"See you after school, girl," he whispered.
Dad had the car going when he climbed into the front seat.
"Some day, huh?" Dad asked. "Look at that sky! Look at those leaves! We never had a fall like this in Naperville."
Bobby snapped the seat belt into place. In Naperville the cornfields turned brown in autumn. But on certain overcast days he'd be playing tackle football with a bunch of guys in the Worthens' cornfield when all at once the clouds would break enough for the sun to peep through. At a moment like that the whole cornfield would be shot through with gold.
Now that's fall.
Bobby looked out the window. He hated it here. He would never get used to all the hills, the rocks, the tree-covered sky.
If you're not from around here you must be from nowhere.
That just about summed it up.
"I won't be able to give you a ride home after school," Dad said. "You be all right?"
Home. For the past few weeks when people said anything to him, Bobby often heard words, not out-loud words, but words in his head. This time those head words said clearly, Home? Home is about eleven hundred miles from here.
"That's okay," he said. "I don't mind walking."
***
The school day passed slowly. Classes droned by. When the bell rang, Bobby collected his books, got up, and walked down the halls. It felt like moving in a dream.
After school he hurried home and went upstairs to check on Thelma. She was lying at the back of her cage exactly as he had left her. He wanted to pick her up again and play with her, but something told him to respect her privacy. Leave her alone.
The phone rang. It was Mom calling from work.
"How was school?"
"She's still not eating, Mom," he told her.
"Who?"
"Thelma." Who do you think?
"I know you're worried," she told him. "But try to be patient. The man at the pet store said it's not unusual for them to stop eating for a while, right?"
"Yeah, I know."
"I'm sure she's going to be fine," Mom said.
After Bobby hung up he went to his bedroom. He looked around at all the boxes containing his stuff, the posters still rolled up. It looked like he'd just arrived yesterday. The only things he had unpacked were his clothes and a few books. The room was long and narrow. With the walls bare, you could see that they needed a paint job. There were four windows, each shaped like a quarter of a circle. Those windows, Mom said, gave the room character. Four quarters equals a whole. But it didn't add up.
He lay back on his bed. The house was perfectly quiet, as if all human sound had been sucked forever from those four walls. Bobby felt his stomach rumble.
"Bandersnorple," he whispered. One of the secret code words he and Mike used to prevent other people from intruding in their conversations.
"Bandersnorple!" Mike would yell to him from the other side of the crowded town pool. All the kids around him would look at them like they were crazy. They had no way of knowing that bandersnorple was code for I'm-starved. He and Mike had lots of secret words like that. Sasparilla was code for I've-got-gum-you-want-some? Sergio meant I'm-bored-lets-get-out-of-here.
"Sergio," he whispered. He'd never been so bored. But where could he go?
The phone rang. Bobby sprang off the bed and ran into his parents' room to answer it.
"Hello?"
"Hey Bobs! It's Mike!"
"Mike! I was just, like, thinking about you!"
"I told you I was going to call today. September twenty-two, remember?"
"How could I forget? How ya doing?"
"Okay, I guess," Mike said. "Bored silly, tell you the truth." Bobby heard Mike blow his nose. "Stayed out of school today—flu."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Ever watch daytime TV? It really sucks. All the commercials are about diapers and laundry detergent."
"Yeah." Bobby laughed. For a moment neither one of them said anything. "Hey, you playing football?"
"Little. I signed up for travel soccer, so that's keeping me pretty busy on Saturday."
Bobby stood in his parents' bedroom,
the phone glued to his ear, hardly paying attention to what Mike was saying. It was enough just to let the sound of Mike's words roll over him. He pictured the words streaming between Mike and himself, words stretched along a single thread, the only thing connecting Bobby to the real world.
"Hows Thelma?"
"Great!" Bobby told him.
"Really?"
"Listen to this," Bobby said. "The woman from next door came over to visit, right? I was playing with Thelma on the kitchen floor. Thelma started running toward her and this lady totally freaked!"
He could hear Mike laughing.
"The lady was having heart palpitations!" Bobby said. "They had to call an ambulance!"
"Ha!" Mike started laughing even harder.
"I'm telling you!" Bobby finished laughing and took a deep breath. "And Thelma's been eating like crazy! I mean, she devours everything I throw in her tank! Totally bandersnorple."
There was a short pause.
"Oh, right," Mike said. "Hey, wow, well that's good."
Another long pause. Bobby tried to think of something to say.
"I guess I'd better go," Mike said at last. "I'm sending you a letter so write back quick or I'll rip your head off."
"Okay, okay," Bobby laughed. "Hey, say hi to Chad and the guys."
"Okay, and don't forget—next time it's your turn to call me. A month from today, except I might be away that week. Better make it October twenty-eight. Write it down."
"I will." A month seemed like forever. "October twenty-eight, four o'clock."
"Right," Mike said. "Wait a sec. Is that four o'clock your time or my time?"
"Well, I dunno," Bobby said, confused.
"Better make it four o'clock my time," Mike said. "Five o'clock your time. Okay?"
"Okay"
"Bye, Bobby."
"Bye, Mike."
He walked back to his room and glanced down at Thelma sitting in her new tank. Bobby sat on his bed trying to sort out his feelings: happy, lonely, a little sorry he had made up those stories about Thelma. But there was something about the conversation that bothered him. Is that four o'clock your time or my time? He'd always pictured himself and Mike together, breathing the same air, going through the same time. It had never occurred to him that their time zones were different now that he had moved east. The thought depressed him.
"Should've done this weeks ago," he whispered to Thelma, looking at his watch. He went to work and changed both his wristwatch and alarm clock from 4:05 eastern daylight time to 3:05 central daylight time.
Three
September 24
The web is what makes spiders different from other bugs. The web has always been spiders' major weapon in their war against insects. Some scientists believe that millions of years ago insects developed wings so they could fly away and escape from spider predators. But spiders fought back—they evolved the use of silk webs so they could catch those flying insects.
Just a theory but it makes sense.
Most spiders like to spin their webs either at night or in the early morning. Some spiders eat their webs at the end of the day and make a new one the next morning.
People have found lots of uses for the silk from spider webs. Optical instruments, for example. The crosshairs on rifle telescopes used to be made of spiders' silk.
Some webs are amazingly strong. People have gathered the web from the Nephila spider and used it to make fishing nets. The silk has even been woven into fabric.
For a long time people used cobwebs to stop the flow of blood on a wound. Even now people who clean out horse stables are told not to clear away the cobwebs because "you never know when you might need them."
All through history there have been people who believed there was something magical about spider webs. I read that in Kentucky some people still believe that President McKinley's death was prophesied in spiders' webs.
Also read that people in North Carolina in 1914 and again in 1917 reported that they saw lots of Ws in the webs of garden spiders. They thought the Ws stood for the initials of Woodrow Wilson. Or World War I.
Which reminds me—I HOPE we don't have to read Charlotte's Web in English this year. We studied it last year in Mrs. Sibberson's class, and I've read the book at least five times on my own. It's a good book—well, all right, a great book—but I'm a little sick of it.
It's not just that silly stuff about how Charlotte writes SOME PIG in her web. What bothers me is the way the book makes Charlotte seem so nice and kind. There's nothing nice or kind about spiders. They are killers. One author calls tarantulas earth tigers. They're merciless. There's no room for mercy when it comes to survival. When you're trying to survive, you have to look out for Number One.
In school Bobby drifted alone through another boring day: English, social studies, health. In science class Mr. Niezgocki assigned the essay topic: "How Science Affects My Life." The other students opened their notebooks to blank paper. In the front row, the boy from homeroom with the slick black hair groaned and rolled his eyes. Chick Hall, that's what Mr. Niezgocki called him yesterday. What kind of a name was that?
Bobby sat there, thinking. Writing didn't scare him like it did some kids. But what to write about? He could write about his mothers job as a nurse—strep tests, HIV, AIDS, blood cell counts, meds. Dads job making cardboard containers probably involved science, though he didn't know much about it. He could try something ordinary—TV, refrigerator. Or maybe the car, those fouled spark plugs. Blah blah blah...
All at once he sat up straight; his pen started scurrying across the page. The words came fast the way they often did when he wrote in his spider journal, and he had to work quickly to get them onto the paper. Pretty soon he'd filled up all of one page and most of the back.
"Stop!" Mr. Niezgocki said sharply "Even if you're in mid-sentence. Even if you're in the middle of a word. I know most of you aren't finished yet. You can finish these tonight. Right now lets hear someone read what they've written. Out loud. Any volunteers?"
Bobby's hand shot up.
"All right." Mr. Niezgocki smiled at him. "You're ... Robert Ballenger, right?"
"Bobby," he said.
"Okay, Bobby, go ahead. Please stand. You don't have to come to the front of the room, but I would like you to stand so everyone can hear."
He stood, his chest like a straitjacket around his thumping heart and began:
SILK FARMING
My father is a silk farmer. For the past ten years my dad has run a silk farm in Naperville, Illinois. It's a fairly large farm—a hundred and ten acres. This farm has been so successful that my father wants to expand. He is looking at some places in Arkansas where the land is cheaper.
Silk is a kind of fabric that people will pay lots of money for because of how it feels against their skin. Silk sheets feel cool on hot summer nights, but a silk shirt will keep you warm when the weather turns cold.
My father just may run the most unusual silk farm in the world. Most silk gets produced from silkworms, in Asia. The silk comes from the cocoons of the silkworms. But the silk on my fathers farm is made from spiders, from their webs. And spider silk is so soft and strong and light my father can charge a high price for it.
You may be wondering, If silk from spiders is such a great idea how come nobody else thought of it before? Well, they have. Many people have tried to mass-produce spider silk. But here's the problem. Unfortunately, spiders are cannibalistic. They have a nasty habit of eating each other.
Bobby glanced up and saw the other kids listening intently.
This was the biggest problem my dad faced and here's how he solved it. He found a special chemical that makes spiders less aggressive toward each other. But the next problem was how to get the chemical into the spiders without disturbing them.
My father tried lots of things, but none of them worked. Finally he found an answer. He sprayed the chemical on sugar and fed this sugar to the flies. (He also raises houseflies by the millions to feed the spiders.) When the spider
s ate the flies, the chemical made them much calmer. Now they hardly ever eat each other.
He stopped and looked up.
"That's as far as I got," he said.
"That was good!" one boy said.
"Nicely done!" Mr. Niezgocki said, nodding. "You included some strong supporting details. Any questions or comments for Mr. Ballenger?"
"Is that stuff true?" a boy asked. "About spiders being cannibals and stuff?"
"Yes," Bobby said. "Sometimes the females will eat the males."
"Smart," one girl said, nodding. "Serves 'em right."
"I hate spiders!" another girl said. "And my grandma is worse. Mom makes us kill all the spiders in our house because she's afraid if Grandma even sees a spider shell die of a heart attack."
"Can you bring in some silk made on your farm?" The question was asked by a tall girl on the window side of the room. "I'd love to see some."
"I'm not sure," Bobby mumbled. "Maybe. Ill see if I can find any around the house."
"Okay okay" Mr. Niezgocki was saying. "I'm looking forward to reading the rest of these. For homework I want you to finish up these essays and hand them in tomorrow. No excuses. You don't hand them in, and I put a little zero by your name. Is that clear?"
***
In the cafetorium Bobby took the same seat at the same table as the day before. He opened his lunch bag. As usual Dad had packed way too much food: olives, cut-up veggies, pickles, crackers with peanut butter, a ham and cheese sandwich, brownie. He kept the food in his lunch bag so nobody would see.
Chick Hall and his two friends took seats at the other end of the table. They ignored him. Ten minutes later a skinny boy took a seat at Bobbys end of the table.
"Hey, if it isn't Fostick the worm!" Chick said to him. "What rock did you crawl out of, huh?"
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