by Anna Kerz
“Can’t they get out? Can’t they get out?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Collins said. “The sides are smooth and straight, and I’m hoping they’ll like the food so much they won’t try to escape. I’m not sure what the caretaker would say if we let an army of mealworms loose in the school.”
A few of the girls said “Ewww!” all over again, but the boys chuckled.
Aaron huffed when Mr. Collins refused to give him a tin of his own. “It’s up to your partner,” he said, handing Jeremy two tins. “He’s the keeper of your mealworm, remember?”
Then he raised his voice so the whole class could hear. “Use a marker to print your name and your mealworm’s name on the side of the tin, and then tidy up and begin your journal entries.”
Jeremy passed one tin to Aaron and printed the name Spot on the second. When he finished, he saw Karima wiping her desk with a couple of wet paper towels. She didn’t say anything, but when she was done she handed them to Jeremy, so he wiped his own desk. He was happy to get rid of any mealworm poop, even if it was almost invisible. Tufan reached for the towels next, and then everybody got towels and followed their example. Jeremy felt better. Maybe his desk wasn’t the only poopy one.
When Aaron left, Jeremy wrote everything he could think of in his mealworm diary, and he made a quick sketch of two mealworms sitting up as if they were having a conversation. One was wearing little square glasses; the other had a big letter S on his chest and a little cape across his shoulders.
Karima’s laugh made him look up. “That’s really good,” she said.
He smiled and a warm feeling settled into his chest. There was something about her…was it her eyes?
Whatever it was, it made all his Aaron troubles seem less important.
FIVE
“Man, it sucks to be you,” Tufan said as they lined up for recess. “Aaron is such a creep.”
Jeremy chuckled his agreement, but when he saw Aaron watching, not three feet away, he stopped. He didn’t like the kid, but he didn’t want to make fun of him either. To keep from saying anything else, he stepped to the side and knelt to retie his shoelaces as the line of kids swirled by him and out the door.
When he got outside, he found himself surrounded by a whole lot of kids he didn’t know. He saw Karima looking at him and he turned away, afraid she might call him over. When he glanced back, she was unfolding a skipping rope. It wasn’t long before he heard a familiar slap, slap, slap beating out the song she and her friends were singing as they skipped. He wondered how they’d feel if he asked to join them. He was good with the ropes, really good. But from what he could see, in this school skipping was only for girls.
There were other groups of kids nearby. Some were playing foot hockey. None of them were paying him any attention. At home somebody would have asked him to join in, or he would have walked over and said, “Can I play?” At home he never stood alone. At home he knew everybody.
He looked out into the field beyond the pavement and saw the boys from his class in the baseball diamond. By the way their arms were waving, he was sure they were arguing.
He’d found out yesterday that they played something called soccer baseball. Horace said real bats and balls weren’t allowed in city schools, so they played a game with baseball rules, kicking a soccer ball instead of hitting a baseball with a bat. He waited to see if somebody would wave him over. Nobody did.
He turned, spotted the sign for the boys’ washroom and thought about going in there. Would it be easier to hide in the washroom than to stand alone in a crowd? He shook his head, lifted his shoulders and headed for the diamond. He’d stand and watch if he had to. It was better than spending recess beside a urinal.
“Hey, Jer,” Horace called as he came closer. “Where’d ya go, man? C’mon. We need you to make even teams.”
To his surprise, Tufan yelled, “He’s ours.” And then, “Go play third base.”
Jeremy smiled as he walked to his place. That’s all it takes to get a good spot on the team, he thought. One good mealworm rescue.
It wasn’t until the first kid was standing at the plate that Jeremy noticed Aaron. He was crawling on his hands and knees at the edge of the diamond, combing the grass with his fingers as if he was searching for something. Obviously he didn’t play with the guys.
The game went fast. The boys kicked and caught and passed the ball easily. It was a good game, and Jeremy soon got into it. When he had a runner on third, waiting to race home, he watched the kid at the plate angle himself and he knew the ball would come his way. He got ready. The boy kicked hard, but instead of a long drive, the ball rose.
“I got it,” Jeremy called, his eyes on the ball. He positioned himself, arms ready. It would be an easy catch. He stepped back, and back again, and swayed to correct his stance. There were shouts, but his whole body stayed focused on the falling ball. He raised his hands for the catch, took another step back and fell, his arms windmilling. He landed heavily on a body—Aaron’s body—as the ball bounced into the dirt beside him.
There were cheers from the other team as three runners, one behind the other, crossed home plate, but his own teammates were hopping mad.
“No fair!” they shouted. “Interference!” And then, “Aaron! Aaron!” their voices loud with frustration and anger.
Horace came running. “You okay?”
“I didn’t see him,” Jeremy said, rubbing a sore spot on the back of his head. He checked his elbows. The right one was scraped and dust-covered, but there was no blood.
“Are you okay?” Horace asked again.
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
The bell rang for the end of recess. Still arguing, the boys straggled off the field.
Jeremy stayed back. He wanted to say something, but didn’t know what, so he watched Aaron sit up, push his glasses higher on his nose and look around.
Stunned, Jeremy thought. The kid is stunned. He kicked the toe of his shoe into the dirt. A small cloud of dust rose and drifted toward Aaron. Too bad, Jeremy thought. Too bad for you. Then he turned and ran to join the boys already lined up at the school doors.
SIX
“Are you up for a snack?” Milly asked, offering him a plate that held a couple of cheese slices, some apple wedges and a few crackers.
Jeremy looked up in surprise. He hadn’t heard Milly come outside, but he was happy to accept her offer of food. “I’m always up for a snack,” he said, accepting the plate and placing it on the porch beside him. “My mom says I have a hollow leg.”
“My mother used to say that too,” Milly chuckled. “You have to wonder where that expression came from.” She turned and walked to the wicker rocking chair beside the front door and straightened the flowery cushion before she lowered herself down.
Milly was some kind of relative—his grandfather’s cousin or second cousin, or something like that. He remembered his mother explaining it all when they were on the train coming to Toronto.
“Was she at the funeral?” he had asked.
“No. She sent a card,” his mother said, and Jeremy had nodded and gone back to staring at the river and the trees and the telephone poles that flashed by his window. What he knew for sure was that Milly’s husband was dead, her daughters grown up and gone. They were staying with her so his mother could go to college, and so there’d be someone at home for him after school or when his mother was at her part-time job at the grocery store.
Milly was a big woman, both tall and wide. She moved slowly and carefully, as if she was afraid she might step on something breakable.
“Welcome. Welcome. I’m glad you’ve come,” she had said when they first arrived, and she had stretched out her hand to shake his as if he were a grown-up. “Call me Milly,” she said. Jeremy had been relieved that she hadn’t tried to hug him. He’d been hugged too often, by people he hardly knew. He decided that very first day that Milly was all right. She didn’t try to boss him around or pepper him with questions.
T
hey sat for a while, Milly rocking, Jeremy staring toward Queen Street where the streetcars ran, as if by watching he could make his mother come home earlier. Their pocket of silence seemed to amplify the noises of the city. There was a screech of tires, followed by the clang of a streetcar’s bell and a horn, blaring. A siren wailed, paused as if to take a breath, then wailed again. The whup, whup, whup of a helicopter beat across the sky above them. Toronto was loud. Would he ever get used to the noises?
A couple of kids whipped by on rollerblades. He watched. It looked like fun. There had been no place to rollerblade where they lived in Nova Scotia. The side roads were dirt and gravel. Only the main roads were paved. But here? He thought about asking his mother for some, then decided not to. They weren’t going to be here that long anyway.
“Autumn’s coming,” Milly said. “There’s something in the air.”
Jeremy nodded. He gazed toward Queen Street again. From his perch he could see cars flash by the end of their street. He wouldn’t be able to see his mother get off a streetcar, but he’d know the minute she turned the corner and started toward the house.
He sat, watching the street so carefully that he didn’t notice Thomas, Milly’s ginger cat, until a cold nose probed his hand. Jeremy didn’t move as Thomas folded himself into sitting position and settled down beside him. The cat sat so close that Jeremy could feel his warmth, and he reached over and began to scratch behind Thomas’s ears. It wasn’t long before the cat’s body vibrated with a deep rumbling purr.
“He likes you,” Milly said. “He’s not always so friendly. Did you have a cat back home?”
“A dog,” Jeremy said, but the catch in his throat stopped him from saying more.
He was with his father the day they found the dog. It was a blue and brown and golden day, just like this one. Was that only last year? No, it must have been two years ago now. He and his father had been walking along the riverbank, not talking, just walking. After an hour or so they stopped on a mossand lichen-covered rock that jutted out over the water. His father settled on the ground and closed his eyes against the sun. Jeremy tied a line to a stick and baited his hook with a bug. Time and again he tossed it into the water, but if there were fish, they weren’t biting.
For a while the only sounds were the water tumbling over stones and the short sharp call of a kingfisher. Then there was a new sound. His father sat up, scanning the riverside brush and small trees. The sounds came again from somewhere behind that, from the darkness of taller trees—grunting, whining, whimpering. Even now Jeremy remembered his fear: the tightness in his chest, his breath in his throat. Bear? They had passed some scat earlier.
“It’s dry and old,” his father had said. “Nothing to worry about. That bear’s long gone.”
But now Jeremy saw his father stand and tilt his head to listen. Then, without a word, he walked away through the dry grass, pushed through the shrubbery and the saplings and disappeared.
“Dad?”
No answer.
“Dad?” Panic filled Jeremy’s mouth with a taste like metal. “DAD!”
“Jer? C’mere. Ya gotta see this.”
Relief. It couldn’t be a bear. He shoved his way through the undergrowth in the direction his father had taken. “Dad?”
“I’m here. C’mon.”
Jeremy stepped into a clearing to find his father kneeling beside a cardboard box filled with four furry little bodies. Puppies. Not bears.
“Some people.” His dad shook his head. “What kind of people dump puppies like garbage and leave them to die?”
The sight of the pups washed away Jeremy’s fears, and he joined his father on the ground, letting the puppies clamber into his lap and lick his face. He remembered laughing as he petted, scratched and held the warm fuzzy bodies.
“Pick one. You can keep one,” his father had said. So he had picked, but he had been sad when they had to leave the rest at the animal shelter.
His father had looked a little sad too, but he gave the peak of Jeremy’s cap a sharp tug down and said, “You know we can’t keep four dogs. They’re healthy. They’ll all find homes.”
The girl behind the counter agreed, and Jeremy felt a little better.
“His name’s Henry,” he had told his mother when they showed her the squirming pup.
“Henry? What kind of name is that for a dog?” she had said, but the name stuck.
Beside him now, the cat stood and stretched elegantly, from his toes to his tail; then he leaped to the porch railing and tiptoed to the corner post where he sat, staring down the street, as if he was waiting too.
Jeremy turned to Milly. “My dog’s name was Henry,” he said. “We found him in the bush beside the river. Somebody dumped a whole litter and left them to die.”
“Some people,” Milly said, echoing his father’s words.
SEVEN
“Today I want you to do some brainstorming,” Mr. Collins told the class after recess. “You can use one page of your diary to make a list of possible mealworm experiments.”
There was an excited buzz. Mr. Collins had to raise his voice to speak over the noise. “Don’t forget,” he called. “Don’t do anything to harm the mealworms.”
Kids popped out of chairs in their hurry to pair up. Only Jeremy took his time. He placed his notebook and pencil and both mealworm cans on his chair and dragged everything to Aaron’s desk. When he arrived, Aaron walked away.
That’s it, Jeremy fumed. I’ve had it with this loser. I’m gonna work alone. He looked around, ready to tell Mr. Collins his decision. I tried, he’d say, but I can’t work with Aaron. But Mr. Collins was across the room talking to some other kids, so Jeremy dragged everything back to his own desk and dropped into his chair. On the blank page in front of him, he wrote: Mealworm Experiments. He underlined the words so hard his pencil made a hole in his page. He sighed and tried to think about mealworms. The first ideas came quickly, and he wrote:
1) What colors do mealworms like?
2) How fast can mealworms travel?
3) What do mealworms like to eat?
4)
What else? He stopped, chewed on the end of his pencil and looked around for inspiration. Across from him, Karima and another girl were adding to what already looked like a long list of ideas. Tufan was arguing with his partner, but even their list was longer than his. He saw Horace across the room. He and his partner were talking and waving their hands as if they were drawing their experiments in the air. Jeremy sighed. This would be fun if he were sharing it with a friend.
A grinding sound penetrated his bubble of silence. Aaron was at the pencil sharpener, his pencil now so short he was pushing it into the opening with the flat of his hand. He stopped and pulled the pencil stub from the sharpener.
“Mr. Collins. MR. COLLINS!” he called. “I need a new pencil. I NEED a NEW pencil.”
Ha! Jeremy thought. Mr. Collins will finally make him do some work. He waited for the teacher to send Aaron back to his desk, but Mr. Collins barely looked up.
“Get some work done, Aaron,” he said. “I’ll get you a new pencil when I’m finished here.”
If Aaron heard, he didn’t listen. Jeremy saw him take the sharpener apart, empty the pencil shavings into the garbage can and twist the cover around until it clicked back into place. Even then he didn’t come back to see what Jeremy was doing. He wandered to the other end of the room, stopped beside the snake’s vivarium and moved his fingers across the glass. The snake inside rose and swayed, first left, then right, then back again, as if it was dancing to the movement of Aaron’s hand.
A wave of anger rolled through Jeremy. It’s not fair, he thought. Why do I have to do this by myself? He wanted to shout, “Stupid Aaron. Stupid teacher! Stupid school.” He wanted to cry. No. Not cry. He didn’t want to cry. When he looked up he saw Karima watching, her eyes soft and dark, and he took a long breath.
“Five minutes,” Mr. Collins called.
That’s when Aaron appeared. He put his elbows on
Jeremy’s desk, leaned into the middle of the experiment page and began to read in a voice like an announcer. “Number one. What colors do mealworms like?”
Tufan snickered. A hot flush rose in Jeremy’s face. The urge to shove Aaron away became so strong that he had to clench his fists to keep his hands down. It didn’t help that Aaron shook his head and said, “That’s useless. Can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Jeremy asked, his voice tight.
“Mealworms. They’re color blind. Your experiment’s a dud. It’s a dud. Waste of time.”
“How do you know?”
“They’re the larvae of darkling beetles, so that means they eat grain. Stuff like the bran Mr. Collins gave us to feed them.”
“So?”
“So they’re always in the middle of something or under something, where it’s dark. Actually, they like the dark. They’re nocturnal. They don’t need to see colors, and nature doesn’t give you what you don’t need.”
Jeremy stared. He was still mad, but the thought crossed his mind that, for a stupid kid, Aaron sounded pretty smart. “Larvae?” he finally said.
“Yeah. Mealworms are larvae. They’re larvae. They’ll metamorphosis, or something like that. They’ll change. Into beetles. Like caterpillars change to butterflies.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. I JUST KNOW.” He gave Jeremy a twisted grin and crossed his eyes.
Jeremy frowned to let Aaron know he wasn’t going to laugh.
“Actually,” Aaron began, stretching the word so that it came out ac…tu…al…ly, before he went on in his regular Aaron voice, “I, I told my big brother we were gonna study mealworms, an’ he took me to the library an’ there was this book all about them. He, he even showed me how to find stuff on the Internet. It was way cool. Way cool! He knows everything like that. He’s in high school. An’ next Saturday he’s gonna take me to the museum. He said. He said there’s a whole case of darkling beetles there.”