The Mealworm Diaries (13 page)

The excitement drained from Aaron's face. His hands fell to his side.

“That's just mean,” Karima scolded.

“What? How is that mean? You don't think his dad's gonna freak when he sees him? He's either gonna spring for therapy sessions, or he's gonna disappear all over again.”

“Is not! Is not! Is not!” Aaron said, his words getting louder with each repetition. “He's coming back to stay! He said! He said!”

“Ya, well, my old man said he'd get me a skateboard and a bicycle, but that never happened. Fathers promise all kinds of things. It's not like they ever mean it.”

“My dad always kept his promises,” Jeremy said, looking right at Aaron. “Probably your dad will too.”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, his voice quiet now.

Tufan turned to Jeremy, and in a voice filled with sarcasm he snarled, “So your dad's perfect. Lucky you. What's he promised you lately?”

“Nothing,” Jeremy said. Then he added the words he hadn't been able to say before. “My dad's dead.”

The circle was silent then. Not even Tufan had a smart answer for that.

There were whispers in the classroom. Jeremy heard. He figured they were either about Aaron's dad or his own. Sometimes he felt that somebody was watching him, but when he looked up that person always looked away fast. It was as if they wanted to ask a question, or say something, but didn't know the words.

Other than that, the day wasn't too bad. Aaron sat in his chair. He did his work and hardly rocked at all. Mr. Collins noticed that there was something going on. “It's very quiet in here today,” he said. “Is everybody in a turkey coma?” People chuckled, but the silence stayed.

During science, Mr. Collins told them that each set of partners would have to prepare a mealworm presentation. “You'll get planning time in class,” he went on to say, “but most of the work will have to be done on your own.”

Jeremy took a deep breath and raised his hand. He knew what he still had to do and he figured this was as good a time as any.

“Jeremy?”

“Mr. Collins. There's something I should have told before—about our mealworms,” he began. He went on to explain how Spot had died, and how he was to blame, not Aaron. Once everything was told, it didn't seem so bad. Mr. Collins asked Aaron if he was willing to shake hands and Aaron said yes. When Jeremy sat down again, Karima smiled at him, and he felt washed clean, like the sand on a warm beach the morning after a high tide.

After school Jeremy walked into the gym for skipping-team practice. The room echoed with voices chanting, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

Karima and another girl were turning a long rope for Aaron, who was skipping—or trying to. Every jump he made was higher than it needed to be. As he rose, he lifted his arms and opened his eyes and even his mouth. His knees buckled with each landing, but he looked happy.

“I'm skipping,” he called when he saw Jeremy, and then he tripped.

Jeremy was surprised to hear Karima say, “That was twenty-four, Aaron. You made twenty-four jumps this time. Way to go.” Then she turned to Jeremy. “You wanna help?”

“I guess,” he said, and when the other girl held out her end of the rope, he took it. “Okay,” he said to Aaron, “let's see if you can do it again. Only this time, try standing straighter, and remember, the rope's skinny so you don't have to jump so high.”

Jeremy and Karima began to turn, and Aaron jumped. When he made it all the way to forty-six, Karima clapped for him, and Aaron was so happy he laughed out loud.

The practice session went fast. Toward the end, other kids came over and started counting along. “Seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four…”

“Keep going,” Karima called, urging Aaron on.

“Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine…” The voices around them rose with excitement, and Aaron's face glowed.

Jeremy knew how important it was to turn the rope well, so his eyes stayed focused on Aaron's feet.

“Ninety-six, ninety-seven…”

He didn't see the body that came hurtling toward them until Tufan was in the middle of the rope, jumping beside Aaron.

Jeremy's first instinct was to pull back and trip Tufan, but he didn't. “Pay attention,” he warned Aaron as he bent low to slip the rope under both pairs of feet, once, then again, and again.

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine…” The gathered voices rose as they counted. “One hundred!” There was a great cheer and a lot of clapping.

Aaron raised his arms in victory. “I jumped!” he shouted. “I jumped all the way to one hundred,” and he ran celebratory circles around the gym.

His happiness was infectious, and other kids started running with him. “You did it! You did it!” Karima said again and again, and Jeremy couldn't help smiling. They all looked so happy.

That day Jeremy walked Karima home. She lived up past Gerrard Street, so he went out of his way but he didn't mind. He didn't mind one bit.

“You know,” she said as they walked, “with a little patience and practice, Aaron could learn to do all kinds of stuff.”

“Yeah.” Jeremy laughed. “With a
lot
of patience and practice, he probably can.”

TWENTY – SIX

In the second week of November, everybody was ready for their mealworm presentations. Jeremy was nervous. He hated the idea of standing in front of the class, talking, and he slumped in his chair when Mr. Collins asked for volunteers. He should have known that Aaron's hand would shoot up.

No-o-o!
Jeremy wanted to wail when he saw, but it was too late. Mr. Collins was already smiling. “All right, Aaron. You and Jeremy can go first,” he said, and Jeremy had no choice but to walk to the front of the room where they stood beside each other. He felt awkward, but Aaron grinned and took an enormous bow.

“We did four mealworm experiments,”
he began in his announcement voice.
“And this is what we
found out.”

“No need to shout,” the teacher said softly. “We can hear.”

Aaron went on more quietly. “Our mealworms ate bran and apples and pears. They ate potato peels and carrots and all the kinds of cereal we brought in. They even ate tunnels through wet paper towels. We were gonna look for a dead mouse to see if they would eat that, but we couldn't find one.”

There were groans from the class, and Aaron broke into one of his hyena laughs that stopped when Jeremy nudged him. Aaron glanced at Mr. Collins, took a breath and went on.

“We proved that mealworms like dark colors better than light colors, and they like to hide. Every time we put them in our maze they stayed beside the wall. And, and, and…” His voice rose in excitement.

Jeremy nudged him again. Aaron took another breath and continued at a slower pace. “And they don't travel very fast, but they get around. Mostly at night. We put them into a paper cup and we found out that they can use the claws on the ends of their legs and climb up. They're not as good at climbing down. They fall.” He grinned and crossed his eyes as he stepped back.

Some of the kids laughed again, but Jeremy ignored them and went right into his part of the report.

“Aaron's brother, Paul, took us to the museum,” he began. “We found out lots of stuff about mealworms there. Like Mr. Collins told us, mealworms aren't really worms, they're the larvae of darkling beetles. They wear their skeleton on the outside like a suit of armor, but it's not really strong and it can be squished pretty easy.”

“Yeah! That's how Spot became ‘The Blob',” Tufan called out. Everybody laughed again. Even Jeremy grinned. He was relieved that he had told the truth about Spot. Now it wasn't a big deal anymore.

He waited for the class to be quiet. “When mealworms grow, they have to shed their skin until they're big enough to turn into pupae. We think the reason we didn't see so many skins is, probably the mealworms ate them. Oh, and the pupa hardly moves at all unless you poke it, and then it sort of pulses from inside.

“We used our notes and the stuff we learned from our experiments to make this science diary.” He held up their booklet labeled
The Mealworm Diaries
. “We took turns writing the words and drawing the pictures.” Then he added, “I found out that everything I learned about mealworms was something that Aaron already knew. He knows more than anybody about science.”

“You've just said a mouthful,” Mr. Collins said, and the class clapped. Aaron grinned and bowed and motioned for the kids to clap some more.

That afternoon Jeremy came home to find his mother standing at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. “You're home,” he said.

“Finished my first exam. Only three more to go.” She grimaced. “I thought I'd give myself a break and do something besides read. How was your day?”

“Great. We did our mealworm presentation first because Aaron volunteered us. I was nervous, but once we were done, I was glad it was over with. Aaron hardly repeated himself. He wasn't even too silly.”

“All that practice paid off, I guess.”

“Yeah. It was good that Paul helped. Aaron listens to him.”

“Seems to me that when I heard you practicing in the living room, he listened to you a fair bit too.”

Jeremy flushed. His mother was right. Talking to Aaron was getting easier.

“Is this good news I hear?” Milly said, coming up from the basement. She placed a basket of laundry on a chair and walked to the cupboard.

“Yeah. We finished our mealworm presentation today.”

“So what happens now?” Milly asked.

“Now?”

“Well, you and Aaron spent a good deal of time together for this project. Just wondering if that'll continue.”

“Continue!” Jeremy put his head in his hands and rolled his eyes. “You think I still want to hang around with Aaron now that we're finally done with mealworms!”

“Jeremy!” His mother's voice cut in.

“What? The kid's been a total pain in the backside, and that's one of the nicest things I can say about him.”

He stopped, enjoying the startled expressions on the faces of Milly and his mother, before he went on to say, “Aaron and I won't be hanging around much anymore… until tonight, when we're going to the community center to play floor hockey with Horace and a bunch of other guys, and next week, when we start the unit on outer space. Did I tell you that Aaron and I are going to be partners again? We figured we might as well, now that we're sort of used to each other.”

“Jeremy!” Milly shook her head and laughed. When his mother joined in, Jeremy laughed too—a warm, loose, easy laugh.
I sound just like Dad,
he thought.
Just
like Dad.
And he laughed again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

More than anybody, I owe thanks to Peter Carver, who introduced me to the world of children's writing. He was there for Jeremy's birth in a short story, and he encouraged me to expand that story into a novel. Along the way I was given invaluable advice from the wise and talented members of Peter's writing classes in Toronto and Port Joli.

Special thanks go to Kathy Stinson for her feedback on an early draft of the work; to Chery Rainfield for invaluable advice; to Connie Hubbarde for being my first reader; and to my editor, Sarah Harvey, for taking a chance on a new writer and patiently allowing my story to grow.

I thank Joanne Taylor for giving Jeremy's grampa his voice, Sylvo Frank for telling me how to turn off bad dreams, Glenna Storie for “counting sleeps” and Richard Ungar for his wise counsel.

I'm grateful, also, to the Toronto Arts Council. Their recognition and support allowed me to experience, firsthand, the Nova Scotia world that Jeremy called home.

ANNA KERZ loves stories that touch the heart and tickle the funny bone. Now that she's retired from teaching, she fills her time by working as a storyteller, telling tales to audiences of all ages, and by writing books for children. She lives in Scarborough, Ontario.
The Mealworm
Diaries
is her first published novel.