“I think they look like pretty rainbows,” says Iris.
“Thanks, Iris,” I say.
Jill rolls her eyes.
After school I get on the bus and sit down next to Abby. Suddenly, I realize that I’m not terrified anymore. In fact, I feel as excited as if I just got off a roller coaster. We totally got away with it!
I sit down next to Abby. As the bus pulls away, I look toward the monkey bars. I can’t believe my eyes. There’s Mrs. ’Stache surrounded by paint cans, holding a paintbrush in her hand! The monkey bars are covered in beautiful flowers with swirling green stems.
I guess Mom’s right: you really can’t judge a book by its cover.
The whole next day at school, everyone is talking about how pretty the monkey bars are. I’m sure that if I’d found a smaller brush like Mrs. ’Stache did, I could have made them look even better.
After school, I get to go to the Dorski Haunted Zoo so Darby and I get on the bus together.
“I can’t believe we actually painted the monkey bars!” I say to Darby.
“I know,” she says. “We were brave. It feels kind of good, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but never again,” I say. “We were lucky. Now I know what you mean about Jill making you do bad things. She made it sound so fun and easy to get away with! Actually, it was kind of fun, and we did get away with it. But we could have gotten into huge trouble.”
“Never again,” Darby agrees.
“You know what’s weird, though, Darby?” I say. “Even though Jill made me shave off half my eyebrow, wear a skirt to school, and almost get into the worst trouble of my life, I can’t help it. I’m starting to like her.”
“It happens,” Darby says.
After we have some Pop-Tarts, Darby and I decide to pedal to the swamp to look for frogs. The lily pads all have flower buds on them, and we find one of them in bloom.
“Smell this,” Darby says, picking it out of the water with the cord still attached.
“Yum!” I say. “It smells like orange sherbet.”
“Wait till they all bloom,” Darby says. “It’s like sherbet heaven.”
I start seeing frogs sitting on the lily pads. I’m getting good at spotting them now.
“Look!” Darby points down the stem of a lily pad. “Frogs’ eggs!”
I look over the side of the boat and see a big glob of clear jelly stuck around one of the lily pad stems.
“Where are the eggs?” I ask.
“There are clear eggs inside the jelly,” Darby says. Then I look up and see something strange.
“Look at those two frogs,” I say, pointing. “They’re stuck together. Why are they like that? I’ve never seen them do that before. Do you think the one on top is hurt or something?”
“I don’t know,” Darby says.
I pick them up out of the water. I hold the bottom frog in my hand and try to pull the top frog off.
“I can’t get them apart.”
I pull on the front legs of the top frog and try to pry them off the bottom frog, but they’re stuck, like they’re superglued. I can’t separate them at all.
“Let me try!” Darby says.
She pulls a bit harder than I did, but she can’t get them apart either.
“They must be conjoined frog twins!” I say. “You know, like those conjoined twins we saw on TV!”
“You’re right!” she says. “Do you think anyone has ever found conjoined frogs before?”
“Maybe we found the first ones in the world,” I say.
“Maybe they’re worth lots of money!” Darby says.
“Let’s go show your mom. She might know what we should do with them. We could be famous!”
I carefully hold the frogs in my hands until we get back to Darby’s house. We run into the house.
“Mom! Look! Look!” Darby yells.
“What? What?” her mom says, glancing up from her magazine.
“Look at these frogs! They’re stuck together!”
“We think they’re conjoined frogs!” I say. “You know, like the conjoined twins on TV. We pulled and pulled on them, and we can’t get them apart!”
Her mom looks for a second like she is going to start laughing, which is weird. “What an amazing discovery!” she says. “Maybe they’ll want to study them at the University of Washington. Why don’t you bring them to Lily’s house and show her mom, too!”
“Let’s bring them to Jill’s house first!” Darby says. “She should be back from riding by now.”
We get into the pedal boat and put our frogs in the bucket with some water, leaves, and grass, then steer toward Jill’s house.
“What if we get really rich?” Darby says. “Maybe we’ll even get to go show the president!”
We tie up the boat to Jill’s dock, and I follow Darby up the humongous lawn to the house. I’ve never been in such a big house before. I feel nervous, but Darby is obviously comfortable. She bursts through the deck door into the kitchen.
“Jill!” Darby says. “Jill! Come here!”
Jill comes downstairs. “Where are your mom and dad?” Darby asks.
“I don’t know,” Jill says. “I think they’re playing cricket or something.”
“What’s cricket?” I ask.
“Right,” Jill says. “I mean golf.”
“Come to the lake,” Darby says. “We have to show you something.”
“Okay, give me a minute,” says Jill.
She reaches up and opens a cupboard in the kitchen. “Fancy some biscuits?” she asks us.
“With gravy?” I ask hopefully.
“No, Lily! A biscuit is a cookie in England,” Jill tells me. “It would be rank with gravy!”
We eat while Jill puts on her shoes. I look at the photos on a bulletin board. Her parents look like fancy people. Her mom looks just like Jill, with curly blond hair and a shiny smile. It looks like they go to a lot of dress-up parties.
When Jill’s ready, we take her to the pedal boat. The two frogs are still in the bucket and still stuck together.
“We found conjoined frogs!” Darby says, picking them up. “We’re going to be famous!”
“We tried to pull them apart, but we couldn’t,” I tell Jill. “They’re totally joined together. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”
Jill looks at Darby and me for a second, then smiles.
“No, I haven’t heard of anything like that!” she says. “You’re going to be brilliantly famous for finding them!”
“I know!” I say. “We could be, if they’ve never been discovered before. We’re going to take them to the University of Washington to a frog professor, or call the news.”
“Don’t be thick!” Jill says. “The frog professor will get famous — not you! And forget the telly. I know how to make you even more famous. We can make a video, and I’ll share it on Instagram right now. I just joined, but I already have loads of followers. Even some of our friends from school can see it! And, in fact, I might even have a frog professor following me!”
“We can do that?” I ask.
“What are you, daft?” Jill says. “Don’t you use Instagram?”
“But how?” Darby asks. “You don’t even have a phone.”
“I do now!” Jill says. “Mummy bought it for me so she can let me know if she’s staying late at work. I can’t believe you don’t have one yet.”
I’m going to have to talk Mom and Dad into buying me a phone. It’s getting embarrassing to not have one.
I pick up the frogs and sit next to Darby on the lawn. Jill holds the phone out so we’re both in the picture and the lake is in the background. I don’t really feel comfortable in front of the camera, especially if the video is going on Instagram, but Darby promises that she’ll do all the talking.
“Hello from Pine Lake,” says Darby. “I’m Darby Dorski, and this is Lily Lattuga, reporting live with an incredible discovery! Show them, Lily!”
I hold up the frogs in front of our faces.
“Lily and I have discovered real conjoined frog twins! Perhaps the first of their kind in the world! Show them how they’re joined together, Lily.”
I demonstrate by trying to pull them apart.
“We believe that they are joined chest to back,” Darby says. “Do they share the same heart? The same lungs? How do you think they swam as pollywogs, Lily?”
Jill points the camera toward me. I don’t know what to say. She told me that I didn’t have to talk!
“Um,” I say. I can feel my face get hot and am sure I’m turning red. “Maybe like two mermaids wearing one bathing suit top?”
“Yes! Probably like that!” says Darby, laughing. “Mermaid pollywogs!”
I feel more comfortable now because Darby thinks that I said something funny, so I talk some more.
“We are going to bring our discovery to a frog professor at the University of Washington so they can study them,” I say. “We want to share our discovery with the world. But, of course, they will live with us.”
“That’s all for now,” says Darby. “This is Darby Dorski and Lily Lattuga signing off.”
“Perfect!” Jill says.
Jill touches the screen a few times. “It’s up!” she says.
“Already?”
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” she says. “Instant fame!”
“That was so fun,” Darby says, petting the top of our conjoined frogs.
“I agree,” I say. “We should make lots of videos!”
“Let’s take the frog twins to your house straightaway,” says Jill. “You must be dying to show your family!”
Darby and I pedal to my house, with Jill in the back of the boat. When we get there, we see Abby sitting on the grass next to the lake. She’s holding something disgusting.
“What are you doing, Abby?” I ask her. “Is that a banana slug?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m looking at its pneumostome.”
“Its numo-what?”
“It’s the hole that it breathes out of. Did you know slugs only have one lung?”
“You’re such a science nerd, Abby!” I say. “Wait till you see what we found!”
“What?” Abby asks. She sticks her finger over the slug’s pneumostome.
“What are you doing?” asks Jill.
“I’m plugging up the pneumostome to see what happens.”
“Abby,” I say, “if you plug up the hole it breathes out of, you’re going to kill it!”
“It can’t die, it’s my friend,” she says, petting the slug and setting it down. “Bye, Sluggie! We can play later! So, what did you find?”
“We found conjoined frog twins!” I say. “We’re going to be rich and famous!”
“Really? Can I see?”
We show Abby the frogs in the bucket. She picks up the frogs and turns them around in her hands. Then she starts laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I ask her.
“These aren’t conjoined frogs,” she says.
“Yes, they are!” I tell her. “We tried really hard to pull them apart. They’re totally stuck together!”
“Don’t they teach you anything in fourth grade?” Abby says. “They’re stuck together ’cause they’re mating. It’s called amplexus.” Jill starts cracking up. Darby looks at her.
“Jill!” she says. “Did you know?”
“Don’t be thick, Darby,” Jill says. “Of course I knew! I went to private school in London, where I actually learned something.”
“What about our video!” I say. “Is it still on Instagram?”
“Oh, brilliant!” Jill says. “It already has three hundred and eighty-four likes! Mikey likes it! So do Sonja, Gabriella, Billy, and most of the rest of our class. Plus, a whole bunch of other people.”
“Take it off, Jill!” I beg her.
“No way!” Jill says. “This is going to make me rich and famous.”
“That’s mean, Jill!” Darby says. “Take it down!”
“No!” Jill says. “Come on, Darby, it’s brilliant. Everyone will love it.” Darby tries to grab the phone, but Jill runs away.
“Ta-ta!” she says. “I texted Mummy, and she’s coming to pick me up.” She runs up the hill and down our long driveway toward the road.
“We should not have told Jill,” I say.
“Oh, well,” Darby says. “My mom told me that all publicity is good publicity. She should know, since she’s in advertising. Anyway, one good thing could come out of this. The frogs could have babies at your house, and we’d finally have frogs at your end of the lake! They probably can’t swim away, since they’re stuck together.”
We bring the frogs down to a little beach by the shore of the lake. There are a bunch of algae-covered sticks and leaves. A perfect place for having babies. We set the frogs down.
“Make babies, froggies!” we say.
The frogs take a hop into the water and float there. Then they start swimming away — back toward the swamp.
“What’s so wrong with my end of the lake?” I shout at the froggies.
“I can’t believe they can swim hooked together like that,” says Darby. “It’s amplexus-tastic!”
The next morning, I dread going to school.
It’s obvious from the moment that I get on the bus that everybody saw the video. The whole bus starts laughing and clapping.
“I saw you on Instagram,” says Gabriella. “It went viral! You must be mortified!”
“You thought those were conjoined frog twins?” Tillie laughs.
“How could you not know?” Sonja says.
“Hey, it’s the frog twin!” shouts a first-grade friend of Abby’s.
I pull my sweatshirt hood over my head and sit down. Abby is laughing with everyone else, telling anyone who will listen about amplexus. She loves the attention she’s getting for having a stupid sister who has a mean friend. Make that ex-friend. What was I thinking letting Jill grow on me? Forget it! I’m not going to be friends with her anymore. I’m sure Darby won’t either. Not after this.
When I step off the bus, Billy comes up behind us.
“Frog twins! Frog twins!” he repeats all the way to class.
When I get to the coatroom, Jill is there with three other kids, looking at her phone and laughing. I don’t want to go in, but it’s not like I have a choice. It’s school.
“It’s a good job you did that video, Lily!” she says in her stupid British accent. “It’s up to one thousand six hundred and two likes! I have ever so many new followers, thanks to you and Darby. Just brilliant!”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks a lot.”
“You aren’t cross with me, are you?” she says. “I’m making you famous. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I sit down and pretend to read my library book. I hear everyone’s voices get loud again in the coatroom and look up to see that Darby has just walked in and is hanging up her coat. When she turns around, she’s laughing with everyone like it’s funny! She sits down at her desk and smiles at me like nothing’s wrong.
Does Darby know something I don’t know? Like, maybe if you act like nothing’s wrong — nothing is wrong?
When SHTV starts, I can’t believe my eyes or my ears.
“Three of our students here at Sunny Hills Elementary School are famous on the Internet!” one of the announcers says.
“Darby Dorski and Lily Lattuga, two fourth-graders from Mrs. Larson’s class,” says the other announcer, “were either being hilarious or actually mistook two mating frogs that they caught in Pine Lake for conjoined frog twins. Jill Johnson, also from Mrs. Larson’s class, posted a video on Instagram, where she now has over a thousand followers — and it went viral!”
Then they play our video! Everyone is cracking up, including Jill, Darby, Mrs. Larson, and . . . ME! All of a sudden, it seems hilarious to me, too. I’m starting to feel kind of cool for being on Instagram. Maybe Darby’s right, and all publicity is good publicity! We are kind of famous now, which is what we wanted.
“Li
ly and Darby, how amazing that you discovered amplexus!” Mrs. Larson says, after SHTV. “Your timing couldn’t be better. It just so happens that we are making our own frogs’ eggs today in science!”
Mrs. Larson tells us about our frog project. She shows us pictures of the eggs, but Darby and I already know what they look like.
“We will be using clear water beads. When we put them in water, they will increase in size and look and feel quite a lot like real frogs’ eggs without jeopardizing any real frogs’ eggs. You will work in groups of three. Each group will be given a glass Mason jar and take turns filling it with water at the sink. Then you will go to the experiment table, take one spoonful of beads, and add them to your jar.”
“Only one spoonful?” José asks.
“One spoonful,” she says. “You must have room in your jar for the beads to grow — they will increase to one hundred times their original volume and soak up all of the water in your jar. When you are finished, please label the jar and go back to your desks for a quiet activity. You may read, write in your journals, or work on your math packets. It will take a few hours for the beads to reach their full size, which means that we will continue our science unit after second recess. Now you may form your groups.”
“Rizzlerunks in a group!” Jill says, grabbing my arm.
What else am I supposed to do? I’m not quite as mad at Jill now, anyway. Darby joins us. We all go to the experiment table and get a jar, then line up at the sink to fill it with water. Everyone is pushing ahead to get to the water.
“We’re first in the queue!” Jill says, pushing toward the sink.
“Order, children!” Mrs. Larson says. “I want you in a queue — a line — that you can all be proud of.”
Jill fills our jar with water, then Darby adds a spoonful of beads, and I label it. We put it on the table and go back to our desks to write our hypotheses about how the frogs’ eggs we are creating will differ from the frogs’ eggs we saw in the pictures. Darby elbows me and passes me a note. I open it. It’s from Jill.
The Rizzlerunk Club Page 8