CHAPTER TWELVE
IF I COULD
Even though Cricket hadn’t told anyone about meeting the miniature giant, Teacher sensed something. Cricket was whispering in the corner with Gloria—telling her about meeting Firefly, how she’d nearly scared him to death when she first appeared—when Teacher rapped on her desk to get his attention.
“Excuse me, Cricket. Do you have something to share with the class?”
Cricket did have something to share with the class; in fact, he had lots of things to share with the class, but one mention of any of them and Teacher would stick him straight in detention.
“We’re waiting, Cricket.”
Gloria poked him in the leg with her good wing. “Tell her something,” she whispered.
“Um,” said Cricket. “Telling the temperature is one of the main purposes of a cricket’s life?”
Teacher sat back and clicked her wings once. Twice. Again. “It is,” she said. “It certainly is. But is that the important thing you were discussing with Gloria?”
Gloria poked him again, a poke that meant Say yes.
“Yes,” Cricket began, but Teacher cut him off.
“I don’t believe you, Cricket. That’s strike one. Three strikes and you’re out. Isn’t that the rule?”
Yikes! Three strikes and you’re out? That was baseball language.
“That’s right,” said Teacher, as if she could read his mind. “It’s been clear for some time that you’ve got an unhealthy fixation on giants. But baseball, Cricket? Baseball? After what your friend”—she pointed to Gloria—“went through with a lollipop stick?”
She shook her head and went on. “A lollipop stick weighs a fraction of what a baseball weighs. You are on very dangerous ground here, Cricket.”
The other young crickets leaned forward. One of them, out of Teacher’s sight line, sat back on his hind legs and raised a wing in the air and pantomimed the motion of a baseball catcher. The others around him started to laugh, muffling their mouths with their wings.
So they knew.
They all knew about Cricket’s fascination with baseball. And they all thought that he, Cricket, was a joke. Cricket folded his wings and looked down at the dirt floor.
“Back to Telling Temperature,” said Teacher. “You’re next, Cricket.”
Cricket shook his head. He had no idea where they were. What did it matter, anyway, what the temperature was?
“Well?” said Teacher. “Three chirps in fifteen seconds plus thirty-seven equals what temperature?”
“I don’t get it, Teacher,” said Cricket. “I don’t see the point.”
He didn’t. All you had to do was hop outside to know how warm or cool it was. And anyway, if all the other crickets knew what the temperature was, why did they need him to do the exact same thing? Learning to catch would be so much more useful to the cricket nation. If crickets knew how to catch, never again would one of them be injured by a falling object like a lollipop stick. Right?
Teacher cleared her throat loudly.
“Strike two, Cricket,” she said.
Just then, far off in the distance, gleams of light shivered through the clouds. Distracted, Teacher leaped to the window and motioned the class over with one wing. Cricket stayed back. From the other side of the room rose the sound of whispered counts, all beginning with One, and all beginning at different times. One, two, three—one, one, two, three, three, four, one. The whispers were drowned out by the booming thunder.
“Ch-ch-ch,” came a whisper from behind him.
It was Gloria, trying to get his attention. Gloria, with her draggy legs and wing. Gloria, who couldn’t jump, who usually faded into the background of the class, literally faded, every day pushing herself against the far dirt wall so that Teacher wouldn’t use her as an example in Fear of Giants. He turned.
“I hate this, Cricket. Don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“Who cares about the temperature?”
“Not me.”
Her strange blue-green eyes were bright and burning. She poked him with her wing again, more like a jab.
“Why don’t you do something about it, then?” she whispered.
Cricket looked around the room. Young crickets labored with their pencils, muttering numbers to themselves. Faraway lightning flashed in the faraway clouds beyond the windows. Teacher roamed up and down the orderly row of young crickets at the window, checking calculations. She hadn’t yet noticed that Cricket and Gloria were conferring again.
“Like what?” he said.
“Leave.”
Gloria waved her good wing at the other crickets crouched with their notebooks and pencils. Beyond the window, beyond the grass and the path that led to the river, was the river itself.
“Escape,” said Gloria.
She waved her wing again.
“Don’t just sneak out for a few hours,” she said. “Escape.”
Again came the sparkle from the distant water, followed by another boom of far-off thunder. The young crickets crouching by the window busily scratched away in their notebooks, counting under their breath.
“I just want to learn how to catch things,” said Cricket.
Gloria blinked slowly, her blue-green eyes disappearing and then reappearing. She was crying. Far off in the distance, the river glinted. The storm was over. The young crickets closed their notebooks and started to return to their desks.
“I’d go with you if I could,” whispered Gloria. “But I can’t. Leave, for both of us.”
Teacher turned and saw them.
“Back to your seats,” she said. “Both of you. And since you appear to be so smart that you don’t need to pay attention like the others, I want to hear your temperature calculations. Now.”
Cricket turned to go back to his desk, but then he stopped. He just . . . stopped.
“What seems to be the problem, Cricket?” said Teacher.
“Nothing.”
She nodded briskly, once, as if he had confirmed something.
“Strike three,” she said. “You’re out. Detention for the rest of the week.”
She clapped her legs together, in a hurry-up-get-moving way. Cricket moved faster. He was almost at his desk now, the desk where his notebook lay unopened, his pencil beside it. The other crickets looked at him with a what’s-he-done-now look. Here he was at the desk.
Cricket reached out with one of his front legs as if to pull his chair out and sit down, but then he surprised himself and swept the notebook and pencil off. CRASH. The other crickets jumped. Behind him, he heard Teacher suck in her breath. He leaped once, into the aisle. He leaped again.
And he kept on going, right out of the school.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WOULDN’T IT BE AMAZING?
Late that night, when the baby fireflies had already gone to bed and the older ones, Firefly’s age, were nearly done with flying practice, Firefly flipped onto her back.
“What are you looking at, Firefly?” said one of the others.
“The same thing she’s always looking at,” said another.
“Not the moon again.”
“Always with the moon.”
“You should look at it,” said Firefly. “Really look at it. Wouldn’t it be amazing to fly up that high?”
Uh-oh. She had said too much. The other fireflies buzzed and vibrated and blinked frantically, the way they always did when Firefly said something that startled them. At least no one had thudded to the ground. Yet.
An elder, an old and extremely stern elder, came to see what all the clicking and vibrating was about. Seeing Firefly, she scowled.
“What’s going on here?” she said.
“She’s talking about flying to the moon,” blurted one of the young fireflies.
“Fireflies don’t fly to the moon. Put that idea out of your mind at once.”
The hollow tree began to come to life as other elders within stirred. They came darting out of the knotholes, one after anot
her, and formed ranks behind the first elder. The young fireflies buzzed and fluttered until the whole clearing glowed bright.
“The giants flew to the moon,” said Firefly. “And they don’t even have wings.”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Young fireflies fell to earth all around her. While others attended to them, the old, stern elder floated over to Firefly. She glowed with a furious light.
She waited until Firefly met her gaze.
“The only possible outcome of an attempt to fly to the moon,” she said, “is failure. Giants are the enemies of the firefly nation.”
“All of them?” said Firefly. “Are you sure? Because the miniature giant seemed so nice when Cricket and I were talking to him. His name is Peter.”
Cricket? Peter? Giants? The moon?
Now she’d truly done it. Not to mention she’d just broken her promise to Cricket. She glanced away from the stern elder’s horrified eyes to see the others staring at her. Something had changed, just now, and they all felt it. In talking with a giant, she had disobeyed the cardinal rule of the firefly nation. She needed Elder, and quickly. He would understand. He would explain to the others.
“Where’s Elder?” she said.
“We’re here,” said one of the others, speaking out from the long line of ranked elders.
“Not you,” she said, forgetting to be polite. “Where’s my elder?”
The elders floated silently before her. Some of them blinked private messages to one another, none of them in Firefly and Elder’s secret code. She twirled around, blinking the fast fast fast, looooong looooong code. He must be out there somewhere, she thought, and again she blinked out the code. And again. But there was no answering blink, not from nearby, and not from far off.
“Elder!” she called.
Then the stern old one cleared her throat.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“What do you mean he’s gone? Out foraging? Flying?”
But she just shook her head. “Gone,” she said again, and pointed to the sky.
Elder, gone?
Firefly followed the pointing wing. Thousands of stars winked and glimmered in the darkness. No. Elder could not be gone. Not when she needed him so badly. The stern elder’s glance softened when she saw the look on Firefly’s face.
“I’m sorry, Firefly,” she said. Her voice, for such a stern elder, was gentle. “It was time.”
“No, it wasn’t!” she said. She darted back and forth in the clearing. “Elder!” she called. “Elder!”
No answer. No welcome sight of Elder emerging from the hollow tree. The air in the clearing buzzed and vibrated.
“Elder!” she cried again, but the knothole in the hollow tree remained dark. She glanced wildly around but saw only the blinking of little fireflies and the sad gaze of the remaining elders.
That was when Firefly zoomed straight up, aimed herself at the giants’ house, and left the Hollow behind.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHY DID YOU LEAVE?
Stroke.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Firefly counted out her wingstrokes to calm herself, the way Elder had taught her. Now Elder, her Elder, was gone. He had turned into a star. This was what became of all fireflies, he’d said, but she wasn’t ready. There were things she needed to tell him, things that only he would understand.
Remember that one of the stars in the sky will be me, he had told her. And I’ll be watching over you.
That wasn’t enough! She needed to talk to him. She needed to tell him about Cricket and Peter and the giants and the moon. She flipped onto her back and searched the sky. It was full of stars, but which one was Elder? She flipped back and kept on flying, the night air cool against her fevered body.
When she was close to the giants’ house, Firefly slowed. She steadied herself in midair and then pulled herself straight up with light wing strokes. Now she hovered outside Peter’s bedroom. His window was open. Firefly floated closer and closer, until she was just outside the screen.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
That was his calm, even breathing. She peeked in. She could just make him out, curled under a white sheet on a huge bed. One arm and one leg were thrown outside the sheet, as if he had fallen asleep in the middle of doing something. One foot rested on the bare wooden floor. Firefly hung in the air outside his window, watching him sleep. She began to sing softly to herself.
“Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd.”
By morning she herself was half-asleep, keeping herself aloft with a few lazy strokes of her wings.
“What are you doing?” said a familiar voice.
Cricket! Where had he come from? Crickets were supposed to be in cricket school this time of day.
“Are you spying?” he said. “Because if you’re spying, I want to spy too.”
With a mighty leap he made it to the window ledge and managed to hang on with all six legs. It was a precarious perch. Firefly hovered just above him.
“Why aren’t you in class, Cricket?”
“Why aren’t you with the rest of the fireflies?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
Firefly didn’t want to talk about Elder. Not yet.
“Because I told them about the giants and the moon and you,” she said.
“What?! Why did you do that? I thought we had a deal.”
She did a backflip in the air above his head. “I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I’m not good at keeping secrets. So I left.”
“Well,” he said. “I left too.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Because they were laughing at me. And Teacher was angry and put me in detention because of the whole baseball thing. And, well, because I was failing Telling Temperature class.”
“Well,” said Firefly, “I’m failing Fear of Giants class.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. I told the fireflies that I wanted to be like the giants and fly straight up to the moon.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
He shook his head. “What did they do?”
“They forgot how to fly,” she whispered. “Thud. Thud, thud, thud.”
Cricket started laughing and nearly fell off the perch. He renewed his grip with all six legs.
“Hey!” said Firefly, peeking again into Peter’s room. “He’s awake!”
Together they watched Peter fling back the sheet and hop out of bed. He stretched and yawned and pulled on his T-shirt and shorts. He thumped across the wooden boards of the floor and disappeared. Now he was visible behind the next window, the kitchen screen window. Firefly floated over, and Cricket, with another mighty leap, landed on the kitchen window frame.
Oh no. The mother and father giants were up too.
How enormous they were. So much bigger than Peter, and so clumsy. Look at the father giant, roaming around inside the kitchen with a telephone in one hand and an enormous orange bowl in the other. Look at the mother giant, sitting in that enormous chair with a giant green mug on the table before her.
“Beth, have you seen my—?” said the father giant.
“No, but have you checked in the—?”
“Yes. Not there.”
What did that mean? How confusing. Cricket and Firefly couldn’t stop watching, though. Three giants, right in front of them! Peter sat down at the table, and the father giant put a plate in front of him. He picked up a fork and began to eat. Clink. Scrape.
“That smells horrible,” Firefly whispered to Cricket.
“How can he eat it?” whispered Cricket.
They felt sorry for poor Peter, forced to eat that awful-smelling giant food. If only he had a snail, thought Firefly. If only he had a nicely rotted piece of tomato, thought Cricket. But Peter kept clinking and scraping. The stinky food didn’t seem to bother him.
The father giant kissed the mother gia
nt on the cheek and ruffled his hand on Peter’s head. If he did that to me, I’d be dead, thought Cricket, and for a minute he imagined the lollipop stick as it must have looked, roaring toward Gloria on that awful day.
“Bye, honey,” said the father giant. “Good luck with that project.”
“Thanks,” said the mother giant. “Drive safe.”
The door of the giants’ house burst open, and the father giant tromped down the path to his car, opened the door, and leaped in. Slam. Cricket felt that slam vibrate from the bottom of his six legs up through his carapace and all the way to the ends of his wings.
Grind.
Roar.
The sound of the car starting was familiar to both of them, but neither had ever been this close to it before, and it was louder than either could have imagined. The father giant couldn’t seem to do anything quietly. Now the tires crunched down the gravel driveway and eased onto the smooth road, and the car disappeared around the bend.
“Bye, father giant,” whispered Firefly, and Cricket, despite himself, started to laugh. Peter turned his head sharply in their direction.
“Uh-oh,” whispered Cricket. “Now you did it, Firefly.”
At that, Peter’s eyes widened, and he pushed back his chair. Tromp, tromp, tromp. He appeared at the window and pressed his nose to the screen.
“Cricket! Firefly!” said Peter. “Are you spying?”
“Um,” said Cricket. “Kind of.”
“Peter?” called the mother giant. “Who are you talking to?”
“Cricket and Firefly. Do you want to meet them?”
Tromp. Tromp. Tromp.
The mother giant lumbered across the kitchen floor and peered down from her enormous height. Cricket froze on the window frame. Firefly momentarily forgot to fly and almost thudded to the ground.
“The ones you were telling us about last night?” she said.
The hot gust of her breath through the screen, even from so high above them, washed over Firefly and Cricket like a wind.
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