School Nathaniel Hardman (the best ebook reader for android txt) 📖
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- Author: Nathaniel Hardman
Book online «School Nathaniel Hardman (the best ebook reader for android txt) 📖». Author Nathaniel Hardman
“Bug collections are the grossest things in the world.”
“Not as gross as balut.” Suzy made no response to this, so Jeff continued, “Do you know what balut is? In the Philippines, they take an egg and bury it in the ground for a month, and then, when it’s good and rotten, they dig it up and eat it.[1]”
Suzy came back into the room, her expression hovering between anger and disgust. “What does balut have to do with anything?”
“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
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