Amphibian (17 page)

‘What does that mean, Phin?' she asked.

I told her it was the greatest gift we could give the earth because then the ecosystem including the atmosphere and all the animals and fish and birds could become healthier and healthier instead of diseased and dying like they are now. I told her that the only thing that would die if humans died out were a few parasites. Now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't have said that last part because that's when her face started to look weird – like my mother's face looked when she told me about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Phin, these drawings are going on our class wall in the corridor. These are drawings to celebrate Earth Day and to teach people about living responsibly. I don't think this drawing is appropriate.'

I told her that the sheet said to draw the
greatest
gift we could give the earth and this was the greatest.

Mrs. Wardman said, ‘I am not going to argue with you about this, Phin. I think you know as well as I that this is not a picture we can hang in the hallway for Earth Day. Please draw something different.'

I sat back down in my chair. I couldn't think of anything else to draw. I looked at what Kaitlyn had drawn – it was a picture of humans picking up garbage out of ditches. I couldn't figure out how that was a greatest gift because the humans had put the garbage there to begin with. That would be like somebody setting someone else's clothes on fire and then throwing water on that person to put out the flames and then calling the water a gift. It just didn't make any sense.

I looked to see what Gordon was drawing, and it looked like I don't know what, so I asked him what it was and he said it was a person cutting down trees to make houses. This didn't make any sense to me, but Gordon seemed to be happy enough about it.

When Mrs. Wardman came over to check on me, I still hadn't drawn anything else.

Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Phin, why haven't you drawn something?'

‘Because I couldn't think of anything to draw that isn't a lie,' I said.

Mrs. Wardman didn't say anything for a couple of seconds and then she said, ‘Okay, Phin, you can take the picture you did draw home to show your mother but we won't be putting it up in the hall.'

I said, ‘Okay.' But I just knew I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Wardman left, I got out my List of Lies and added another one:

5. For Earth Day Mrs. Wardman puts lies about humans on the wall in the hallway.

When I got home I didn't tell my mother about the Earth Day picture. Instead I put it in my Reull book. Then I wrote some more of my story to try to calm myself down. I wrote about how the Bothersome Gorachs are getting braver and braver. They're asking all sorts of questions that the Gorach scientists and Gorach Leaders don't want to hear. They're asking things like
‘How do we know the Reull animals don't feel pain?' They know they're wasting their breath asking these things of the Gorach Leaders and the scientists who work for them, so they're going to ask these questions of the Ordinary Gorachs at the end-of-the-week dance. They think this is a good plan since during the dances, Gorachs are at their smartest. This is because they dance on the flats of their heads and this makes their purple blood rush to their brains. As a result of the extra blood, they can think really, really super well. When you ask a Gorach a math question when he's dancing on his head, he can answer it three hundred times faster than when he's standing on his feet.

When the Gorach Leaders heard about the questions the Bothersome Gorachs were going to ask at the Gorach dances, they were very, very angry. The last thing they needed was a whole bunch of Ordinary Gorachs bothering them about all that nonsense. So they told the scientists that they had to come up with a reason as to why the Ordinary Gorachs shouldn't dance on the flats of their heads any longer.

The scientists didn't take long at all to think of a reason: Upside-Down Explosiosis. That's a condition, they said, that all of a sudden makes a Gorach's head fly clear off its body because of the pressure of all that blood. Then the scientists got a dead Gorach's body and chopped its head off and took a picture of this to prove this could happen. Then they sent this picture to all the newspapers on Reull along with the headline ‘End-of-Week Gorach Dances Now Outlawed Due to Upside-Down Explosiosis.'

Grammie called me this evening. She told me she was making donkeys, which are clumps of bread dough fried in butter in a pan. I love donkeys and could smell them in my imagination as we talked. She said next time I'm at her place we'll make them again.

I told Grammie about a video clip my father emailed me last week. It was of a homeless man in California who has a dog, a cat
and a rat for companions. They all get along really well and protect each other. The dog lets the cat ride on top of his back and the rat is on top of the cat. The cat even licks the rat to keep him clean. Grammie said that that is a lovely example of interspecies compassion.

Then Grammie changed the subject and asked, ‘How's school these days, Phin?'

I knew where that question came from, and I wasn't falling for it. Whenever Grammie knows about things I haven't told her about and I ask who told her that, she says, ‘Oh, a little bird.' But I know it's my mom and she's no little bird. Mom likely even told her about the Earth Day picture thing because it only took Mrs. Wardman about fifty-nine minutes to call my mom after I'd left the school. Let's just say I got in trrrouble.

‘Oh, fine,' I told Grammie.

‘Really, honey? You're doing okay?'

‘Yep,' I lied.

‘Well, sweetie, remember if you ever have something you want to talk about, I'm here. Okay?'

‘Yep, I know.'

Then Grammie asked me if there was any more trouble with Lyle. I told her just the same sorts of things like knocking over my things and stuff like that and that I figure Lyle will never stop bugging me. She said I should try to stay away from him as much as possible and to stick close to my friends.

I told her that maybe next time I'm being picked on, I could run up to another kid, scream, wrap my arms around his neck and groom him. That seems to work for chimps. Or maybe I could just bare my teeth or flash my hindquarters. That's what rhesus monkeys do when they approach a dominant group member. It signals to the dominant that he's top monkey and so there's no need to fight.

I told Grammie that if Lyle would just leave me the heck alone, I'd be happy to flash my butt at him. My grandmother laughed so hard I thought she was going to choke on her donkey.
That made me feel good – the laughing part, not the choking part. At least Lyle's good for something.

Cuddles is dead. DEAD. Without any warning at all. One day alive, the next day dead.

This morning just after the bell rang I checked on him like I do every day. That's when I noticed that his throat wasn't pulsing and his eyes were perfectly still. I reached into his aquarium to pick him up even though we're not supposed to do that without Mrs. Wardman's permission. He was stiff and still. Dead. Definitely. Dead.

For a few seconds I had some really crazy thoughts. First I thought maybe Cuddles was faking. I have never heard of frogs faking death, but some grass snakes do. When they're threatened, they puff up their bodies and hiss to try to scare the predator away. If a predator attacks, they fart out a bad-smelling liquid from their anal glands. And if that still doesn't work, they roll over on their backs and play dead. They stay on their backs with their mouths open and their tongues hanging out for up to fifteen minutes. Problem was, Cuddles wasn't on his back and his tongue wasn't hanging out.

My second thought was that I might be able to bring him back to life. I've read that wood frogs freeze in the winter and then thaw out in the spring and are perfectly fine. When they're frozen they look like they're dead, but they're not. But that was a crazy thought too since it was really warm in our classroom.

When my brain finally let me believe that Cuddles was dead, I called to Mrs. Wardman. I said, ‘Mrs. Wardman, Cuddles is dead!' She walked back to the aquarium and looked at me holding Cuddles. She said, ‘Oh, that's very sad. Phin, how about you put him back in the aquarium.' But I didn't.

Everybody looked at me holding Cuddles and Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Children, I have some bad news. I'm sorry to say that Cuddles is dead.' Then she said something about death being a natural part
of life and that although it's sad, Cuddles had a good life. That's about as far as she got because then I interrupted her.

Still holding Cuddles' dead body, I said, ‘Cuddles did
not
have a good life. He was stuck in an aquarium. An aquarium where all he could do was lie on that stinking log and bang into the glass walls! That's like saying a prisoner has a fun life – and Cuddles didn't even do anything to deserve being in a prison!'

Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Phin, I know you're upset, but Cuddles was well cared for –'

‘No, he wasn't!' I said. And then I started crying. I cried with tears that ran down my face and dripped onto the floor. I looked at Cuddles, and some of the tears I cried dripped on him too. I cried and cried and even though no sound came out, everybody was looking at me. Bird came over to me and just stood next to me and didn't say anything, but he had a sad look on his face too, which made me cry even harder. The only noise there was in the classroom was the sound of Lyle laughing and then Mrs. Wardman telling him to cut it out.

I cried because Cuddles was dead. I cried because I had failed to help him, and if I can't even help save the life of one frog, how am I going to save whole species of animals from extinction?

I cried harder when I noticed I was the only one crying. That made me feel so alone – like I was the last living thing on earth. Like I was screaming for help but nothing could hear me because the whole world was dead just like Cuddles.

Mrs. Wardman picked Cuddles up out of my hands and put him back in the aquarium. Then she put her arm around my shoulders and led me out the door. She walked me down to Mr. Legacie's office and told me it would be all right. She said I could call my mom if I wanted to and she could come get me and take me home until I felt better.

I didn't want to call my mother. I knew what she would say, and I didn't want to hear it. She would tell me the same thing Mrs. Wardman told me, and that would make me feel all alone again. Instead I just sat down on the chair outside Mr. Legacie's office.
Mr. Legacie came out and asked what had happened, and Mrs. Wardman told him that Cuddles had died and that I was upset. He sat down on the chair next to me and told Mrs. Wardman he would stay with me. Mrs. Wardman went back to 4
H
.

Mr. Legacie got me a cup of water and after a few minutes I stopped crying. He asked me if I wanted to talk about it, and I shook my head no. I was glad he didn't talk to me.

After a few minutes, I told him I'd like to go back to my classroom, and he said okay. When I first walked in, I could tell everybody was looking at me but I didn't look back. I sat down at my desk and cried some more – but only on the inside.

At noon hour, Bird tried to make me feel better. He told me he learned from his brother that a normal piece of paper cannot be folded in half eight times – it's impossible. He got me to try it and he was right – I could only fold it six times. It took my mind off Cuddles for about sixty-five seconds.

Then, because I still looked sad, Bird said that he figured Cuddles was in a better place, meaning Heaven. I nodded my head. I figured that if there's a Heaven, he must be there because he'd already been in Hell.

I once asked my grandmother if she thinks there are souls and she said she's an agnostic. An agnostic is someone who thinks that the existence of God and souls is unknowable. But she says absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so she's still open to the idea.

My father is an atheist who doesn't believe at all in God or souls, and he's pretty certain about it. He says this is the only life we'll ever have and if it's going to get better, it's up to us to do something to make it happen.

My mother believes in God and souls and she's pretty certain about it too – just as certain as my father is. They can't both be right.

I wish someone could tell me the right answer. But maybe it's like seeing colours. Scientists have found that some women have an extra kind of cell at the back of their eyeballs that makes them
able to see more colours than the average person. Maybe that's like religion – some people see the colours and some don't and maybe what we see while we're alive is what there is for us after we die.

I'd like to believe in God and souls because that would make it easier for me when it comes to death. It would be like losing your favourite thing but knowing for sure you'd find it again.

But if there are souls, when did it happen? Did it happen when we were
Homo habilis
or
Homo erectus
or
Homo sapiens
? It seems to me that there wouldn't really be a perfect time to give humans souls. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. It would be like God saying, ‘All humans today, no souls – all humans tomorrow, souls.'

I figure that since we're almost genetically the same as chimps and evolved from the same ancestor, then chimps must have them too. And since every animal came from the same ancestor if you go back far enough, then every single animal must have a soul – including frogs like Cuddles. It just makes logical sense.

Thinking of Cuddles' soul made me all of a sudden wonder where his body was. I asked Bird if he knew.

‘Well, Mrs. Wardman said that Cuddles shouldn't have died so soon, so she put him in the class fridge in a paper bag. She's going to take him back to the pet store and get a credit so that she can get another class pet next year.'