School Read online

  “You said this was the grossest thing in the world, and I’m just saying, it’s not THE GROSSEST thing in the world.”

  “ANYWAY,” Suzy said, with some apparent effort, “I don’t think you should pin it yet. You should wait for Dad. You know he’s good with delicate stuff like this, and you’ll just mess it up.”

  Jeff didn’t like this suggestion. He wanted to spread out the dragon NOW, and he wanted to show it off at school NOW. But Monday was three days away, and his dad really was better at this kind of thing.

  “Hey Suzy,” he said, a thought occurring to him. “Do you think they’d name it after me? Like if I’ve discovered a new species, would they name it after me?”

  “I don’t know, Jeff,” Suzy said, heading back to her room. “Little Brother Fly might already be taken.”

  TWO

  Jeff’s dad peered through the lens at the dried, yellow-green fly lying on the plate. “Would you look at that,” he breathed out.

  “See, Dad. It’s a little dragon, just like I said.” Jeff pointed, then moved to his dad’s other side and pointed again. “Do you see the tail? And can you see the spikes on its back? You can’t see it very well right now, but when it was alive, it had these tiny claws, and it was holding onto the chip like this,”

  Jeff held his hands up by his chin and made biting motions, but then he thought he probably looked more like a chipmunk than a dragon and dropped his hands. His dad smiled and nodded.

  “Is that... is that a tail?” he ventured, “Are you sure that’s not another leg?”

  “It’s not a leg!” Jeff’s voice cracked a bit, “How does that look like a leg? That’s a tail!”

  His dad made placating motions with his hands. “Okay, okay. Let’s get some tweezers and spread this little guy out.” He walked over to the junk drawer and rifled around. “And some pins. Where do we have pins?”

  “Mom! Where are the pins?” Jeff yelled helpfully.

  “In my sewing stuff!” A voice yelled down from upstairs.

  “Where’s your sewing stuff?”

  “In the white plastic three-drawer thing in my sewing room!” There was a pause, then, “Right by the sewing machine!” And in a snippy tone, “Where I sit to sew!”

  “I’ll get ‘em!” Jeff ran to the top of the stairs and jumped down, bracing his arms against the walls half-way down the stairwell and swinging into the rec room. Four girls were sitting there and all four glanced up as Jeff landed.

  Suzy frowned. “Nice jump, Spider-Man.”

  Jeff ignored her. “Gotta get some pins,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he could see Jenny smiling at him as he skirted around them and ducked into his mother’s craft room.

  Pins in hand, he hurried back, avoiding eye contact. At the bottom of the stairs, Suzy called out, “Aren’t you going to climb? Honestly, who even USES stairs these days?” Jeff felt his face grow hot as he ran up.

  When he got back in the kitchen, he found his dad had put the fly on a square of cardboard and was staring at it through the magnifying glass again. “Here, Dad.”

  “Thanks.” Still staring at the fly, his dad added, “You know what the best response is when someone is teasing you?” Jeff flushed; apparently his dad had heard Suzy downstairs. “You’ve got to lean into it. Own it, join in the joke, and no one can make fun of you.”

  “Yeah, okay. So can we open up this dragon?” And they got to work.

  The wing cracked and flaked as they pulled it open, the thin membrane falling away from the skeletal outline like a dry leaf, rubbed between one’s fingers. Once it was pinned, it provided more the OUTLINE of a wing than a wing itself, but still, it wasn’t the wing of a house fly.

  The tail had curled in a bit, and extending it was harder than either Jeff or his dad had expected. Eventually Jeff got the tip of the tail with his tweezers, his dad pinned the base, and Jeff extended the tail with a quiet but sharp snap.

  The head they tackled last, using toothpicks to tease it out of the crook of the shoulder where it was tucked, then sinking pins to either side of the jaw to keep it from moving.

  “Well I’ll be.” His dad breathed.

  “See, Dad. It’s a dragon!” Jeff beamed.

  “It sure looks like it. A dragon fly. Huh.” He seemed at a loss for words.

  “So do you think it’s like, a new species? Do you think they’ll name it after me? The Jeff fly? The Jeffly?”

  “Welllll, that doesn’t seem very likely. There are a lot of weird bugs in Georgia. I’m sure this has been discovered before. But,” he added quickly as Jeff began to protest, “We can ask an expert.” He turned toward the stairs and called out, “Lori! Don’t we know an etymologist?”

  “What’s an etymologist?” Jeff asked.

  “A bug scientist. Or is it entomologist? No, it’s an etymologist. Or... what do you call a doctor who does digestive system work?”

  Jeff stared back blankly.

  “No, that’s an internist,” he answered himself. “I think it’s an entomologist.”

  “Uh, okay. So do we know any entomologists?”

  “It seems like we do. I just can’t think who... I’m going to go ask your mother.” As he disappeared up the stairs, Suzy and her friends appeared in the kitchen.

  “Look what me and Dad did.” Jeff pointed at the cardboard square, trying not to look too proud.

  “You mean, what Dad and I did?” Suzy said, her emphasis heavy on the corrected grammar, as she lifted the magnifying glass to her eye and peered down at the fly.

  “No, I don’t think you and Dad did that,” Jeff said, deliberately missing the correction, “It was just him and me.” Suzy groaned but didn’t look up.

  “Weird.” She said finally, straightening and handing the glass to Karen, who had been leaning down and squinting. “So are you going to go do something with Nacho now?”

  “Well, I guess he could come over and see the dragon fly...”

  “You were supposed to be out of the house tonight!” Suzy snapped. Jeff shrugged uncomfortably. Suzy glared.

  “Is this a, um–” Karen bent low over the cardboard, “This kind of looks like a dragon.” Jeff’s face lit up, and he launched into the thrilling tale of how he and Suzy had caught the dragon.

  Jeff kept his eyes on Karen and Miley as he talked, but then he thought it would seem awkward that he wasn’t looking at Jenny, so he met her eyes squarely and blushed. She was following his story intently, her face alive with interest. Then Jeff was sure he was looking at Jenny too much, so he looked at Karen, then Miley, then Suzy, then Karen, then Jenny again, whose nose was just slightly pointed up in the cutest way, her chin delicate and fine, her lips glistening...

  Suzy cleared her throat. Jeff snapped his attention back to Karen and Miley. “And then I found it dead on the windowsill,” he finished. His voice squeaked on “windowsill,” and he felt his face go hot. Stupid voice, he thought. “Well, I gotta go get Nacho.”

  THREE

  At about 9:00, Nacho came over, to Jeff’s immense relief.

  Jeff’s parents were in their room, having their monthly budget meeting, and Jeff knew they would soon head out for their post-budget-meeting ice cream date. Suzy and her friends were downstairs again, watching a movie. Until Nacho arrived, Jeff had been dividing his time between fidgeting, staring at his dragon fly, and wishing he had something to do.

  A thorough examination of the fly and a retelling of the tale took them hardly any time, so Jeff took Nacho out onto the driveway to play P-I-G on the small basketball standard in the last of the fading September light.

  Within five minutes, Nacho was a P-I, and Jeff was lining up a long shot from the sidewalk to finish him off. He dribbled, raised the ball, and Nacho said, “Hey! Look at that!”

  “Nice try.” Jeff said, and he sank it. He pumped his fist in triumph, but Nacho wasn’t paying attention.

  “No, really. Look.” He was pointing at a large butterfly fluttering around the flowers in front of Jef
f’s house.

  Jeff opened his mouth to make fun of Nacho’s un-manly love of butterflies but paused. “That seems really bright.”

  The sun had set, and the first stars would be shining soon, but the butterfly’s wings were vibrant – swirls of electric blue and neon purple. Jeff walked slowly across his lawn as he stared. “Is that a glow-in-the-dark butterfly?”

  As Jeff approached the flowerbed straight on, Nacho crept up from the side, whispering, “Don’t scare it off! Do you have a butterfly net?”

  “Why would I have a butterfly net?”

  “I dunno. Just in case?”

  Jeff stopped his creeping progress and stared at his friend. “Just in case of what?”

  “I dunno. Just in case you need a butterfly net?”

  “No, I don’t have a just-in-case butterfly net.”

  “Well, how are we going to catch it?” Though neither had mentioned it, catching the butterfly had been their plan as soon as they saw it.

  After a moment’s consideration, Jeff took off his t-shirt, then held it up by the shoulders. “I’ll toss this over it, and then we can kind of fold it up over it as we pull it off the flowers. Oh!” Jeff’s face lit up. “Nacho! Then we can put it with the fly and show it to the bug scientist. Then I’ll have TWO new bugs I’ve discovered.”

  “Well…” Nacho hesitated.

  “Okay, fine,” Jeff conceded. “One of them can be named after you and one after me.” Then after a moment, “I get the dragon. You can have the butterfly.”

  They were standing only a few feet from the flowers, and the glow of the wings was now unmistakable as they opened and closed slowly. Jeff focused on the insect, held his breath, then lunged forward, throwing the shirt as he went.

  The butterfly was up off the flowers faster than Jeff would have believed possible, easily rising above the shirt as it landed.

  Nacho shouted and leapt, trying to catch it in his hands, but the butterfly danced over him. Jeff grabbed his shirt and swung it wildly, hoping for a lucky snag. Nacho whipped off his own shirt and took a huge leap into the air, waving the shirt wildly at the rapidly ascending butterfly. In moments, it was gone.

  Jeff squinted up, panting, his arms limp at his side, his shirt on the grass.

  “Whatchya guys up to?” said Suzy.

  Jeff squeaked and snatched up his shirt, his instinct to cover up in front of the four giggly girls standing in the open doorway. Then he forced himself to drop his arm to his side, hoping his confidence would make up for his lack of rippling muscles or chest hair. Nacho clutched his shirt to his chest.

  “We were just trying to catch this weird butterfly,” Jeff pointed up, trying to flex without it being too obvious.

  “Are you flexing?” Suzy asked.

  “No!” said Jeff, horrified. This was a nightmare. He started to panic.

  Then he remembered his dad’s advice. Lean into it.

  In his most casual tone, he said, “I just have huge muscles.” He pulled an exaggerated body-builder pose, pointing awkwardly into the sky and flexing every muscle in his body. “The butterfly went that way,” he gasped out through clenched teeth. Jenny and Miley giggled, and Suzy smiled.

  Jeff pulled his shirt back on, and after a quick look around showed no signs of the butterfly, he and Nacho went inside with the girls. His parents were in the kitchen, pulling out a gallon of ice cream and a jug of root beer.

  “We knew you kids would be here tonight,” said his mom, “So we thought we’d do root-beer floats together!” Suzy grumbled but went to help fill cups.

  Jeff told his dad about the butterfly.

  “Hmm. Very odd. Well, we’ll ask Perry about that, too. Perry Johnson was that bug scientist I was thinking of – your friend Peter’s dad.” Jeff scowled, but his dad didn’t seem to notice and went on, “He said he’d come look at our little fly on Monday.”

  Jeff thanked Suzy for the float she was holding out to him; then a thought occurred. “Hey, how come you guys were watching us?”

  Suzy grinned, but it was Karen who answered, giggling, “We saw your heads over the top of the window-well, sneaking up, and we thought you were trying some prank. Suzy had us come upstairs, and she wanted to bring the hose around from the back yard and hose you guys down.” Jeff looked in dismay at his sister, who smiled back impishly.

  “Maybe next time,” she said.

  FOUR

  When Suzy awoke on Saturday, her phone read 6:59. She lay in her bed for a while; it was Saturday after all, and she could sleep in if she wanted. Her mind drifted.

  Saturday. No school. Should work on the campaign skit for the student council assembly. She hummed in satisfaction.

  When her family moved here two years ago, she had no friends, no network. No one knew her name. Two years ago, they had told her that the student-body president was ALWAYS a boy and ALWAYS a member of the football team. Even now, the memory made her indignant. As if football players were better. As if they cared more about the student body and represented them better…

  But that was going to change. Two years after moving here, Suzy had friends. She had connections. Everyone in the school knew her name. And yesterday in the lunchroom, she had seen the panic in big, strong, Derek Peterson’s eyes at the sight of all those kids wearing Vote-for-Suzy buttons.

  Suzy’s smile broadened, and her mind continued to drift. Need to finish homework so I can work on the campaign. Homework. Math. Stupid Jeff.

  Suzy’s warm bubble popped, and she scowled. Why did her dumb seventh-grader brother have to transfer into her math class? SHE was the smart one! SHE was in advanced math, and SHE had a perfect 4.0 in middle school. And then dumb Jeff had to skip ahead, the only seventh grader in the school taking advanced eighth-grade math, and now when people saw her, they said, “Isn’t that Jeff’s sister?”

  Suzy let out a long, hot breath. Who cared? It was Saturday, and she wasn’t going to school today.

  But she did have to pee.

  When she was done in the bathroom, she wasn’t feeling sleepy, so she went down to the kitchen, poured herself a bowl of cereal, and ate a few bites standing. She wrinkled her nose. Something smelled like curry.

  Suzy headed to the table, passing Dusty’s bed by the laundry-room door. As she passed, he growled at her, and she jumped, sloshing a bit of milk down her wrist.

  “Jeez Dusty,” she said, “Did someone forget to feed you yester...” she trailed off as she looked down at her dog. Or rather, as she looked down at what was NOT her dog.

  Dusty’s fur was grizzled, gray and curly, but this dog’s fur was shiny and black. Dusty had grown thick and stiff with age, but this dog looked lean and fit. Dusty had one head. This dog had two.

  One head still seemed to be asleep. The other had its eyes half open, its upper lip pulled back slightly to expose a glimmer of wet teeth.

  Suzy almost ran, but she remembered that the surest way to get Dusty excited was to run away from him. Also, she thought the dog’s vibe was sleepy/annoyed, not two-headed murder.

  Suzy inched her way backward to the kitchen table and eased her bowl down. Then she backed her way to the stairs, eyes fixed on the dog. As she sidled backward up the first stair, she saw the dog close its eyes and drop its head.

  Suzy bolted.

  She ran to her parents’ room at the end of the hall. The bed was unmade, and her parents weren’t in it. Not in the closet; not in the master bath. Suzy ran back to Jeff’s door and found it locked. She knocked quietly but continuously until Jeff opened it a crack.

  Suzy shoved him out of the way and slammed the door shut behind her, locking it with trembling fingers.

  “What the...?” Jeff mumbled, brow furrowed, eyes still half closed from sleep, “Why are you being crazy?”

  “I’m not being crazy!” Suzy hissed as she strained to pull his dresser across the carpet toward the door. “There’s a two-headed dog in the kitchen.”

  Jeff considered this, then, “Are you sure you’re not being crazy?”


  Suzy rounded on him, her eyes wild. “There is a MONSTER dog in the kitchen, and Mom and Dad are missing! And I don’t know where Dusty is!”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t, like, Dusty on top of a toy dog or something?”

  Suzy glared. THIS was the kid who had skipped ahead in math?

  “Okay,” said Jeff, starting to wake up, “So there’s a two-headed dog in the kitchen. And it was trying to bite you?”

  “No, it was mostly just sleeping. But it growled at me!” Suzy added hurriedly, feeling defensive. “And Mom and Dad are missing!”

  Jeff pursed his lips, glanced at his alarm clock and said, “Weren’t Mom and Dad going to the gym?”

  A weight lifted from Suzy. In the safety of Jeff’s room, knowing her parents would soon be home, she began to relax, and her breathing slowed. Then Jeff said, “I want to see it.”

  Shrugging off her protests, Jeff slid the dresser back out of the way and opened the door wide enough to stick his head out. “I can’t see anything,” he said. “Are you sure it was dangerous? I mean, just because it’s deformed doesn’t mean it wants to hurt you.”

  “It growled at me and showed its teeth! But I guess it could have bit me if it wanted.” Suzy had calmed enough now to concede this. “But what is it doing in our house?! And where’s Dusty?”

  “I dunno. Mom and Dad will know what to do. They should be home any minute. But they’ll probably want to get rid of it…”

  Suzy’s eyes grew wide, and she grabbed Jeff’s arm. “Jeff! They’re going to walk in the garage door, and it’s going to attack them! It’s sleeping in Dusty’s bed right by the door!” He stared back dumbly. “Call ‘em on your phone! Do you have your phone? Call them!”

  Jeff rifled through the pile of papers, books, and laundry on his desk. “Hmmm. It was right here, somewhere.” Under a blanket, he found a small, carved jade bowl, which he paused to examine. “Where did that come from?”