The Mealworm Diaries (5 page)

That morning Mr. Collins limped into class, his left arm in a sling. Some of the girls gasped. Karima's hand rose to cover her mouth.

“Don't worry,” Mr. Collins said. “It looks worse than it is.”

Kids began calling out questions, and Jeremy strained to listen but had trouble understanding the words through the thrumming that filled his ears. The sound washed in and out like ocean waves, breaking up Mr. Collins' voice. Jeremy heard, “…too fast…steep hill…wiped out…the bike's fine.” There was relieved laughter.

Jeremy had to remind himself to breathe. He glanced at Karima. Saw her face mirroring her worry. Saw Aaron bouncing.

“Did…did…did you get hurt? Did you get stitches?” Aaron shouted. Jeremy's eyes went to the teacher's face.

Mr. Collins shook his head. “No stitches,” he said. “No blood. Just a slight sprain and a lot of sore muscles. Now it only hurts when I breathe.” He groaned then, and there was another burst of sympathetic laughter.

It rained all morning and through the afternoon, but Jeremy didn't mind that they had to stay inside. Mr. Collins had been teaching the class about chess, and Jeremy had really gotten into the game. He was sitting across from Horace, the two of them studying the board, when Aaron came by. They ignored him. He stood, silent, watching. Then Horace made a mistake, and Jeremy reached for his queen, expecting to make the winning move.

“Queen to rook four,” Aaron said before Jeremy could put her down.

“No fair! No fair!” Horace complained, and Jeremy shouted Aaron's name in protest.

“But it's the right move,” Aaron said.

“I know it's the right move,” Jeremy said, “but now I can't make it. Thanks a lot. You just messed up our game.”

“But—,” Aaron began.

“No buts. Go away. Get lost. Butt out.”

For once Aaron didn't argue. He looked confused, but he walked away. At the end of recess, Mr. Collins had to coax him out from under a table at the back of the room where he was rocking back and forth and talking to himself. Some kids snickered, and Tufan muttered something about “crazy.” Jeremy had been thinking the same thing, but the word bothered him when he heard Tufan say it.

When it was still raining at three thirty, Jeremy expected all the after-school activities to be cancelled, so he was surprised to hear the principal announce, “Cross-country people please meet Mr. Collins at the gym doors.”

Mr. Collins must have been surprised too, because he groaned loudly, and everybody laughed.

Jeremy was looking forward to running again. His leg ached a little on days as rainy as this one, but not too much, and as long as the new shorts were still on order, he could run in trackpants. He'd talk to Mr. Collins about the shorts once they arrived.

Horace led the way down the stairs and to the gym doors, where kids were milling about. It looked like more of a mob than a lineup. Jeremy heard a lot of talk and laughter and then, “Ewww! Look who's coming.” That stopped him.
Are they talking about me?
He didn't have time to answer his own question, because somebody crashed into him from behind and sent him stumbling forward. More laughter.

He turned.
Watch where you're going,
was on his lips when he heard, “I didn't…I didn't…” It was Aaron, with Tufan standing right behind, looking smug.

“Hey, Cantwait,” Tufan said, “I just
can't wait
to see you run.” His words came with a mean laugh, and Jeremy heard stifled snickers from the crowd at the door. He almost felt sorry for Aaron.

One short sharp blast from a whistle cut through the hallway noise. “Line up,” Mr. Collins called, and when everybody shuffled into a kind of line, he led the way into the gym.

A whole bunch of kids sat down with Tufan, but Jeremy didn't want to be in that crowd. He looked around, saw Karima sitting in a circle of girls. He couldn't join them, so he plopped down in an empty spot. Horace sat down beside him, and then Aaron came and squeezed himself into the space between them.
Too
close, too close,
Jeremy wanted to say. Then he shook his head. He was starting to think the way Aaron talked.

I hope this guy isn't expecting to be friends,
he thought as he glared at Aaron and shimmied to the left. Aaron didn't seem to notice. He was already busy unraveling the elastic from the top of his socks.

Mr. Collins limped to a chair and sat. Then he raised his right hand and waited for silence. “I checked out the

Farmer's Almanac
,” he began with a crooked grin. “You've heard of that, haven't you?”

The kids shook their heads. Jeremy wasn't surprised. Why would these city kids know what an almanac was?

“The forecast for September is rain, rain and more rain,” Mr. Collins went on. “That's not good for the harvest and it's not good for cross-country runners, because it means that we're going to get wet and cold and muddy when we run.” There were groans. “If you have a problem with that, you might as well forget about running and quit now.” He looked around as if waiting for someone to get up and leave. “No? Well then, I can tell you that we're going to begin our training indoors.”

There were relieved chuckles.

Mr. Collins divided the kids into teams. Jeremy found himself sitting last on a team with a bunch of girls and Aaron.
Great,
he thought,
I'm never gonna get
away from this guy.
He decided that the only good thing about his team was that one of the girls was Karima. When he checked, he saw that the other teams all had more boys than girls, and the team Tufan was on was all boys. Jeremy's shoulders drooped.
It doesn't matter what
we play, we're gonna lose this one.

“Your job is simple,” Mr. Collins began. “Run to the wall, pick up a skipping rope, take ten turns, then run back and tag the next person.” There were a few groans from some of the boys, but everybody started shouting as soon as the first runners took off.

Jeremy was surprised at how fast the first girl in his team could run. She was small and skinny, but she really moved. When she began skipping, he started to cheer. On all the other teams, the first runners were boys, and not one of them knew how to skip. Their arms jerked the ropes up and over their heads and then smacked them hard to the floor. They pulled up their knees and jumped high enough to clear a fence, but the ropes tangled in their legs and slowed them down. By the time it was Aaron's turn, their team was actually ahead. “Go! Go! Go!” Jeremy shouted, excited at the possibility of a win.

Aaron took off, his neck stretched, his body bent so that the top was almost parallel with the floor, but his eyes were lifted to the ceiling. As he ran his toes pointed out to the sides and his feet made loud smacking noises when they hit the floor. His arms flapped with each step so that he looked like a wounded duck trying to take flight.

When he reached the skipping rope, Jeremy saw that all hope of winning was gone. Aaron couldn't bring it over his head. His arms rose, but the rope twisted in the air and his legs bent like pretzels every time he came down. Jeremy felt sorry for him all over again. He understood why Aaron chose to let the rope fall. Instead he bounced up and down on the spot ten times and headed back across the gym. There were calls of, “Cheater! Cheater!”; but Jeremy ignored them, and when Aaron tagged him he took off running.

The last runners on the other teams were already skipping when he reached his rope. Beside him, Tufan was huffing and muttering about “girly stuff” as he struggled to finish. Jeremy jumped twice. On his third jump he went as high as he could, stretched his legs forward and bent from the waist so that he seemed to be doing a sit-up in the air. Then he turned the rope fast. It whistled as it whipped around him four times before his feet came down, and then four more times on the next jump. When he was done he found himself racing back to his team behind Tufan. Last, but not dead last. There was a fine difference. He was prepared for more calls of “Cheater!” for not taking ten separate skips, but they didn't come, and when he looked up, Mr. Collins was looking back at him.

“Well, Jeremy,” he said when the kids were quiet, “where'd you learn that?”

Jeremy paused. Should he tell? There didn't seem to be much choice. “I was on a skipping team back home,” he said. Then he looked down.

“Are there other things you can do with a rope?” Mr. Collins asked.

“A few.”

“I'd like to see some. Anybody else interested?” he asked.

Some of the kids began to clap, so Jeremy took the rope Mr. Collins handed him. He hadn't skipped in months. Not since before the accident. What tricks would his leg allow him to do? He began with simple heel-toe taps. They were enough to make people clap again, giving him the courage to go on. He folded his arms back and forth to do cross-overs. They were harder. He felt his bad leg tiring. Should he stop?

“Way cool!” A voice called out. It was enough encouragement to make him decide to try his very best trick.

Jumping at a steady pace, he went faster, then lifted his arms and let the rope fly up. As it rose, he kept his feet moving until it dropped again, into his waiting hands. He skipped for a few more beats, then trapped the rope under his raised toes and stopped.

There was a long moment of silence, filled only with the short sharp gasps of Jeremy's breath, until Aaron's voice called out, “Go, Skipper, go!” Then there was laughter and more applause, and Jeremy felt good.

On his way out of the gym with all the other kids, he was bodychecked into the wall. It happened fast— too fast to see who did it. It might have been an accident except he was sure that he heard someone say “Suck-up” just before he was pushed. He thought he recognized the voice, but he wasn't sure until recess the next day, when Tufan pointed to right field and said, “Skip out there and try not to trip.”

TEN

On Friday night Jeremy lay in bed, his hands behind his head. His eyes followed the finger-like shadows of tree branches that slid across his ceiling and down his walls. It was hard to sleep in the city. For one thing, his bedroom never got completely dark, and even with the curtains pulled, streetlights and porch lights and the probing beams of passing cars brightened the room. From Queen Street came the sounds of traffic: the
clickity-clack
of streetcars, the rumble of a passing truck, the occasional squeal of tires, the blare of a horn. The house was silent. Not even tv voices drifted up the stairs. Milly must be reading. He turned and snuggled into his quilt as the shadows danced on.

“Don't wait up,” his mother had said. “I have to stay late for the store inventory.” But he wouldn't sleep. Not until he knew she was home, and safe.

The front door opened and closed. A murmur of voices. He waited, expecting his mother's steps on the stairs. She always checked on him before she went to bed. Instead he heard the click of cups on the table. The shrill whistle from the kettle
.
They were going to have tea.

Unwilling to sleep, he slipped out of bed and padded across the room and into the hallway. His mother's voice drifted up from the kitchen: soft, sad, tired. He tiptoed to the landing and sat on the top stair in time to hear Milly say, “…in bed for a couple of hours.”

For a while the only sound was the clink of a spoon in a cup. That had to be his mother. She always stirred and stirred her tea. His father used to tease that she couldn't drink before the spoon was worn out and cried uncle.

Finally there was a soft murmur of voices. At first he couldn't make them out. Then he heard his mother say, “Dan loved cars,” and later, “…but I quit school and we got married.”

They talked for a while, about Nova Scotia, about his grandparents. Jeremy yawned and thought about going back up to bed. Milly's words stopped him. “He worries about you,” she said.

“I know. He never used to. But…” There was the sound of a stifled sob. It was enough to make Jeremy's stomach cramp. He folded his arms across his middle and leaned his head against the railing.

“Sorry,” he heard his mother say. She blew her nose. “It's been…It's been a bad day. Back home I thought about Dan all the time. I thought it might be a little easier here. It is, I guess. Until today.” There was another long silence. “It's kind of an anniversary. Fourteen years ago today Dan and I went on our first date. And now… It all happened so fast.”

Jeremy groaned.
She's going to tell,
he thought.
She's
going to tell.
He was afraid of what was coming. He didn't want to hear, but he couldn't stop listening.

“It was near the end of March,” she said. “We'd had a few warm days. The ground was still frozen, but most of the snow had melted. There were puddles on the road. Jeremy had a practice to go to. His skipping team was going to perform for some provincial group. Gym teachers, I think. Doesn't matter.”