Project Mulberry Page 10

  He was right.

  What I'd thought were dead worms were just the skins of worms.

  Our worms were molting.

  "I almost had a heart attack," I told Patrick a few minutes later. He'd come over as soon as I called.

  Patrick clucked his tongue at me. "Jules, you should have known they were going to molt. It's in the book."

  "I haven't read it all yet—I hadn't gotten to that part."

  "They're gonna shed twice more," Patrick said. "This is their first instar."

  " What kind of star?"

  "Instar," Patrick said. "It means the stage between moltings. Let's get some pictures of these skins."

  While Patrick arranged (and rearranged, and rearranged) the photos in a folder, I practiced my embroidery. By the time the worms were three weeks old, I'd had two months of practice. My mom said I was getting pretty good.

  But I still hadn't decided what to embroider for the project. I wanted it to be something really special—something that would deserve genuine homemade silk thread.

  Ideas were easy. Good ideas were hard.

  My mom and I had agreed on a compromise about visiting Mr. Dixon. She said we could stay, but only for half an hour, and not every time, and of course I always had to tell her.

  Maybe I'd gotten it all wrong. Maybe my mom really was just being a good mom, and her getting mad at me before had nothing to do with Mr. Dixon's being black.

  Except...

  Except for what she said at the very end of our conversation.

  "Fine," she said. "I guess it's only fair that you visit with him a little, seeing as you're getting the leaves from him. I'm glad we've got that settled." Then she sort of shrugged. "But I have to say, I still can't quite understand it. He's an old man—what could you and Patrick possibly have in common with someone like him?"

  I shrugged back at her and said, "He's nice, that's all."

  Someone like him—was that sort of a coded way of saying something? Underneath what she said, did she really mean someone black?

  Or was it just what she said—that he was an old man?

  I wondered if thinking about this race stuff too much made you see it in places where it didn't exist.

  But then I wondered the opposite: Maybe it existed all the time, and you only saw it if you were really thinking about it?

  The silkworms got big enough for me to hold. Before, I'd been scared of hurting them. Now, they were almost as big as my pinkie. Their feet were bigger, too, which made them really look like caterpillars instead of worms.

  I'd pick one up and let it crawl around on my hand. They hardly weighed anything at all; it was just a soft little tickly feeling in my palm. I loved holding them.

  I thought I was starting to be able to tell the worms apart. They were striped at their segments, but their stripes weren't exactly the same, some wider, some narrower. There were three that looked to me to be a tiny bit bigger than the rest, and two average-sized ones that seemed the most sluggish.

  I mentioned these things to Patrick.

  "Oh, come on, Jules," he said. "You only think you can tell them apart. We'd need, like, scientific equipment to measure their differences."

  He was probably right. But that didn't stop me from trying to tell them apart.

  Patrick shot some tape of me holding one of the caterpillars. It cooperated beautifully—it rippled around on my palm and stood upright on its back feet and moved its head like it was looking around.

  "That's great," Patrick said. "I got a really good close-up of him."

  "How do you know it's a him? It might be a her."

  "We'll be able to tell the moths apart," Patrick said. "I read about it. The females are usually lots bigger and have wider butts."

  I giggled. "Moth butts."

  "Well, yeah. The bottoms of their thoraxes are wider. But there's no way to tell with the caterpillars, not by just looking."

  I looked more closely at the caterpillar in my hand. "Maybe we could find a way," I said. "If we did, that would make us, like, real scientists."

  Patrick clicked his tongue. "Julia, entomologists have been studying caterpillars and moths, like, forever," he said. "If there were a way to tell, they'd have found it by now."

  "What kind of ologist?" I said. "Oh, never mind. They're cute no matter which sex they are." I held the caterpillar out toward him. "Want to hold it?"

  Patrick shook his head. "Entomologist," he said. "Entomology—the study of insects. And no, I don't want to hold it. I have to put the camera away."

  "Just for a minute. It's fun, they're kind of tickly—"

  "I don't like being tickled."

  "C'mon, you never hold them."

  "Jules, I said no!"

  Patrick's voice was so fierce it startled me. I pulled my hand back and curled my fingers a little, sort of protecting the poor caterpillar from the loudness. "Whoa," I said. "What's with you? It's no big deal, I just thought you ought to hold one. So you can learn everything about them. You can look at them a lot closer if you hold one."

  Patrick turned away. "I don't want to," he muttered.

  He was being so weird. "Why not?" I persisted.

  "Because."

  Great answer. "Because what?"

  Patrick pulled open the door with a hard jerk. "I don't want to talk about it!" he yelled, and stomped into the house.

  Sheesh!

  I put the caterpillar back into the aquarium, replaced the lid, and followed Patrick inside. He was putting the camcorder into the closet.

  "Patrick."

  He closed the closet door and turned to face me. "I'm sorry I yelled," he muttered.

  "I didn't mean to make you mad, I just..."

  He looked down at the floor. "It's not your fault," he said. "It's—well, I never told you this. But I'm—I—I've got—" He shuffled his feet and seemed to be studying his toes very hard. "I've got a thing about worms."

  "What do you mean—what kind of thing?"

  He sighed and looked up, but not right at me. "You know what a phobia is, right? Well, I have a worm phobia. I hate them. They give me the creeps, big time."

  I looked at him in disbelief. "You have a worm phobia?" I said. "I can't believe it! Why the heck did you want to do this project?"

  He shifted his feet again. "Well, it seemed like a really cool idea, making our own thread. I wanted an animal project, and we couldn't have any of the big ones. And I thought doing this might help me get over it—might make it so I wasn't phobic anymore."

  Now he looked at me. "Besides, it wasn't just me—you wanted the project, too."

  Ha! I almost laughed out loud. I guess Agent Song had been pretty good at her work after all.

  But I didn't say anything about that, about not wanting to do the project before. I was still too amazed by what Patrick had just told me.

  Afraid of worms! Of those sweet little tickly things we'd been raising since they were tiny eggs! Ridiculous! I mean, being scared of sharks or—or alligators or something big and scary, I could understand that. But worms?

  "Why are you scared of them?" I asked. "They don't bite or anything! I mean, they might poop on your hand, but even their poops are no big deal." Caterpillar poop was tiny, plus it was hard and dry, not disgusting like dog poop or cowpats.

  "I know all that," Patrick said, "but that's the thing with phobias. You're scared even when there's no real reason to be. I read about it on the Internet." He straightened up a little. "I found a website that lists more than five hundred phobias. Mine is called 'scoleciphobia.' 'Phobia' means fear in Greek, and 'skolex' means worm. I memorized some of the other ones too. Amaxophobia—fear of riding in a car. Ephebiphobia—fear of teenagers. And my favorite: Arachibutyrophobia. Guess what that is?"

  "Arack what? How the heck would I know what it is?"

  "A-rach-i-bu-tyro-phobia. Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth."

  "No way! You made that up."

  "I did not! It's a real phobia."

/>   We both laughed, and I was glad that Patrick was sounding more like himself. "So has the project helped?" I asked. "Are you less phobic now?"

  He shrugged. "A little. I mean, I still don't like them. But at least I can look at them now. Before, I used to get grossed out just by the sight of them. And it helps a lot when I look at them through the camcorder. Or the camera lens. I don't know why, but it makes it easier."

  "Wow," I said. We were both quiet for a moment. I was thinking how hard it must have been for Patrick to tell me about his phobia. Boys weren't supposed to be scared of crawly things. "I'm glad you told me," I said. "I won't bother you about holding them anymore."

  He nodded. "Thanks," he said. He sort of shivered and rolled his shoulders. "How about some work on South American agriculture now?"

  Me: Oh! Oh! Oh! I just figured something out!

  Ms. Park: And what would that be?

  Me: It's you, isn't it? You're the one with a worm phobia! No one would think of giving Patrick a phobia like that unless they had one, too. That's it, right?

  Ms. Park: Would you please lower your voice? There's no need to shout.

  Me: Ha! You're not answering me, which must mean I'm right!

  Ms. Park: So how come you're all sympathetic toward Patrick but not toward me?

  Me: Because Patrick is my friend—not someone who bosses me around all the time.

  Ms. Park: Boss you around? Excuse me? I can't even get you to talk more quietly.

  Me: And besides, I don't think it's fair for you to force your phobia onto poor Patrick.

  Ms. Park: Patrick is his own person, you know. I can't help it that he's phobic.

  Me: I'm glad you didn't make me phobic. I love those worms.

  Ms. Park: It wouldn't have worked. You're just not the type.

  13

  When they were twenty-four days old, the caterpillars stopped eating. I didn't panic because Patrick had warned me it would happen. "They'll stop eating and change color—they'll turn yellowish," he'd said. "That means they're getting ready to spin their cocoons. Tomorrow we should move them into egg cartons."

  Patrick had read that the caterpillars liked to have their own little compartments to spin in. The brochure suggested toilet-paper tubes cut in half or egg cartons. I'd saved two egg cartons, and Patrick brought over a third from his house.

  There were twenty-six worms. "I'm not going to put them twelve, twelve, and two in the cartons," I said. "I think they'd like it better to be divided up more evenly. I'm going to put them eight, nine, and nine instead."

  The next day we cut through the hinges of the egg cartons so the tops would be easier to take off and put back on. Patrick's research said the caterpillars liked to spin in the dark, so we'd be leaving the tops on most of the time, but we still wanted to be able to watch them once in a while.

  I picked up each caterpillar carefully and let it crawl on my hand for a few seconds. Then I put it into an egg pocket.

  Some of the caterpillars sort of stood up halfway and swayed around like they were investigating their new homes. Then they coiled themselves up neatly. We cleaned out the old leaves one last time and put the egg cartons into the aquarium.

  Now that I knew about Patrick's phobia, I couldn't believe I'd never noticed it before. If he wasn't shooting tape, he was fussing with the focus or playing back what he'd taped or switching to the regular camera. He never looked at the caterpillars straight on. The only way he ever looked at them was through a lens.

  I could tell he was still really creeped out by them. I tried to think of something that scared me the same way. I didn't like spiders very much.... When I was little, I slept with a night-light on.... But I knew neither of those was really a phobia, not like Patrick's.

  I couldn't imagine what it felt like, to be that scared of something. Sometimes I wanted to talk him out of it again, make him hold one, stuff like that. But that didn't seem fair. I just had to try to understand in other ways. Like by thinking how it was very brave of him to want to do a worm project at all. And how he'd decided to do it both to try to get over his phobia and because he thought it was what I wanted.

  My best friend had a phobia. If he could deal with it, so could I.

  The next morning I went to check on the caterpillars. The egg cartons wouldn't open. Somehow they had gotten stuck closed. I showed Patrick when he came over.

  "I can only get them open a little," I said. "Wait, let me try again."

  I held one of the cartons at eye level, pulled at the top, and managed to open it a crack so I could peek in.

  "Wow!"

  "What is it?" Patrick asked. "What do you see?"

  "They're going nuts!" I said. "They're moving their heads around like crazy. I can't see very well, but they're all, like, frantic. Do you think something's wrong? Maybe they don't like it in there."

  "No, I think they're okay," Patrick said. "The silk comes out of their mouths, and the book said they're constantly in motion while they're weaving their cocoons. That's gotta be what they're doing. But why can't you open the carton?"

  "There's all this webbing. It's stuck to the top and bottom—it's like they've glued the carton shut. Maybe they want to make their cocoons in private."

  "That's not it," Patrick said. "They make a little sort of hammock thing first, to hold the cocoon. And they have to string it up somehow. So they're doing it from top to bottom. They're not gluing the carton shut on purpose."

  I watched for another few seconds. Then I closed the carton gently and put it back in the aquarium.

  Patrick flapped his arms. "There's no way I can film through that crack," he said. "What a bummer—this would be the most interesting part."

  On the way to school we talked it over some more. "There's gotta be some way to film them," Patrick kept saying.

  We were in luck—it was a Friday, so we had the whole weekend to work on the problem.

  First we tried cutting a window into one of the cartons. This was a little scary. I picked the carton that held eight caterpillars—I knew I'd left the corner egg pockets empty, so that was where I cut the window. I used nail scissors and poked a hole with the point, then made tiny tiny snips to cut a square. All the while I was praying that none of the caterpillars had moved into that space overnight.

  I pulled out the little cardboard square and let out a huge breath. It was fine—there wasn't any caterpillar under it. But I couldn't really see any of the other ones either, unless I put my eye right up to the window and tilted the carton a little.

  Patrick shook his head. "We gotta make the window bigger," he said.

  So I did that next. I cut more of the carton, so three egg pockets would be exposed. But when I lifted off the flap of cardboard, a caterpillar came with it, trailing a little cloud of webbing.

  Patrick jumped back in alarm.

  "Oh no!" I cried out, then rescued the poor thing as it dangled in the air.

  I pulled the caterpillar off the flap—the webbing was really sticky—and put it back into the carton. Then I checked it over anxiously. It seemed fine, but the first thing it did was try to wiggle away from the open window.

  "This isn't working," I said. "See, it doesn't like being out in the open."

  I ran into the house and found a roll of masking tape. Then I ran out to the porch again, taped the bits of cardboard together, and stuck them back onto the carton.

  I felt much better once I'd done that. It had made me quite panicky—the caterpillar was obviously upset by our invasion of its privacy.

  "Gak," Patrick said. "Now what?"

  Kenny came out to the porch.

  "Hey, Patrick. Hey, Julia. Whatcha doing?"

  Patrick explained the problem to him.

  "So you need to leave us alone," I said to Kenny and glared at him. "We have to work on this."

  Kenny ignored me. The snotbrain. He looked at Patrick. "Just put one in a little jar," Kenny said. "That way you could film it through the glass."

  Patrick looked at him a
nd then at me. Then he laughed, clapped Kenny on the shoulder, and said exactly what I was thinking. "Why didn't we think of that?"

  ***

  I opened the cardboard window one last time, took out the same caterpillar, and put it into a little glass jar. We'd poked air holes in the metal lid. We kept the jar in the aquarium alongside the egg cartons, and I put a cup upside down over it so it would be dark most of the time. But whenever Patrick wanted to film, we took the jar out for a few minutes.

  It was so cool. My parents came out to see, and Patrick's parents brought Hugh-Ben-Nicky over that evening to have a look. The porch was very crowded; I worried that all those people would upset the caterpillar. But it didn't seem to care, not even when both the twins started jumping up and down and screeching with excitement.

  The caterpillar moved its head constantly. Sometimes fast, sometimes a little slower, but never stopping—it looked like really hard work. The silk came out of its mouth just as Patrick had said.

  At first the silk was almost invisible. You could see the strands only if you looked really hard.

  By the next morning, though, the caterpillar had already wrapped itself in a layer of silk. It looked like it was living inside a cloud. We could see its black mouth moving, moving, busy, busy, busy. Patrick wanted to stay up all night to film it, but both our moms vetoed that idea. The following morning he was at our house in his pajamas again. The silk was almost solid; now we could barely see the black mouth moving inside.

  I was glad Patrick was taping it; I'd be able to watch it again as many times as I wanted. But I knew it would never be as special on tape as it was now, happening right in front of me, those wispy threads at first barely more than air, and then like a cloud, the caterpillar spinning layer after layer after layer, each layer made of one hundred percent real silk thread.

  I stood with a piece of paper held behind my back. "I am a genius," I said to Patrick.