Amphibian (3 page)

Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Lyle says you called him a rude name. I don't know what it was and I'm not even going to ask you, because saying it once is enough. I don't want you to call names again, is that clear, Phin?'

I nodded my head, but I was really, really mad. I hadn't told on Lyle for pushing me, so why did he tell on me for calling him a name? He does it all the time, and not behind my back like some of the other kids. Lyle's the biggest front-stabber there is. I said ‘Whatever' to Mrs. Wardman, but I said it really low so that she could hear me only in her unconscious.

I wished really hard that red fire ants would swarm Lyle. Their sting hurts as much as wasp stings. The problem is there aren't many red fire ants around here. They're usually where it's warmer. Then I started thinking that maybe with global warming, they would begin a giant march north and eventually end up here.

This made me think about climate change and how the earth is heating up. Scientists say that if it heats up by more than two degrees, we'll all be in big trouble, and it's heating up even faster than anyone thought. Thinking this made me feel shivery inside. When I told Bird I was feeling worried, he tried to distract me by getting me to pretend the teachers could shoot laser rays out of their eyes and we should dodge them. But I just didn't feel like it.

I tried putting a stick between my teeth to make my mouth into a smile, but it didn't work. Bird said I looked like a jack o' lantern, and then he put a stick between his teeth too. When he did that, I saw something black crawling toward his mouth.

I said, ‘Umm, Bird, I think you should take that stick out of your mouth.'

He said, ‘Why?' but it sounded more like
Eiiii
.

Then I said, ‘Because there's something about to crawl into your mouth, and it's something that people might eat in Cambodia but we don't eat them here.' Actually, 80 percent of the world's people eat insects of some kind, which means they can't be all that bad for you, but just as I was about to mention that to Bird, he saw the beetle too. He flung the stick really far, and it hit a Grade 5 kid on the back. That kid turned around and pushed the kid behind him, who must have been confused. Bird started dancing around and shivering. He was still shivering and saying, ‘Gross, gross, gross,' when the bell rang. That made me smile a little bit for real.

We mostly did boring stuff the rest of the day, so to keep myself from falling asleep, I made up a game to play each time Mrs. Wardman told us to take a Duo-Tang out of our desk. The game was if I reached in with my eyes closed and pulled out the right one on the very first try, I got fifteen points. If I got it on the second try, I got ten points. Third try was worth five points and fourth try got a big fat zero. The goal was to get at least fifty points by the end of the day. I only got to forty-five.

The only good part of the afternoon was silent reading, when I got to read a book about dolphins. I learned that a dolphin mother sometimes has a dolphin midwife with her when she gives birth. The midwife pushes the baby up to the surface as soon as he's born so that he can get a breath of air. I also learned that if you plug a dolphin's blowhole, that feels to a dolphin like how covering your mouth and nose at the same time would to you. I wondered what that would feel like. I tried holding my breath to see what it felt like, but I didn't really think that would be the same.

After school, my mother showed up to take me home but I told her that I wanted to walk home today.

She said, ‘But, Phinnie, I'm already here.'

I said, ‘But I really want to walk home.'

My mother sighed and said, ‘Fine then, walk home.'

It was a good thing I did because on the way, I saw a plastic shopping bag on the side of the road. I picked it up and put it in my backpack because it could blow out to the ocean and a sea turtle or an albatross could choke on it. Albatross babies are fed things like plastic lids and Lego blocks by their mothers, who find them floating in the ocean and mistake them for food. Every year thousands of babies die because plastic gets caught in their throats and esophaguses, which makes them choke or starve to death. I wondered why the person who littered the plastic bag didn't think of that.

When I got home, my mother wasn't there. In a few minutes she showed up and told me that she had had a little talk with my teacher. This is never good news. I sucked in my breath and held it as long as I could. I remembered the rule of threes when I did this. The general rule is that you can live three minutes without oxygen, three days without water and three weeks without food. I was careful not to hold my breath for longer than the count of fifteen, because I wasn't sure that rule was completely accurate.

My mother still hadn't said anything else, so then I took another big breath and did the same thing over. She said, ‘Phin, what are you doing?' I didn't say anything right away because I was
still trying to let out the air I had breathed in and didn't want to break the pattern of it. She crossed her arms.

When all the air was out, I said I was just breathing, waiting for her to get to the point. She said she was getting there but was waiting for my full attention. I said I could never give her my complete full attention because some of it had to be used for things like breathing and blinking my eyes. She said most people could do those things without paying attention. I said not me because I had to keep part of my mind on those things in case they got out of control.

My mother said, ‘I heard you used a few select words today, Phin. What was that all about?'

‘Lyle pushed me. Twice.'

‘Well, I hadn't heard about that part. Did you tell Mrs. Wardman?'

‘No.'

‘Well, you should have. Lyle needs to learn a lesson. You'd actually be doing him a favour by telling on him.'

‘I don't want to do him any favours.'

‘You know what I mean, Phin. You'd be doing everyone a favour,' said my mother.

Then I told her that Lyle had pushed me before today too. She got really quiet, and I could tell she was mad. She said that she would talk to the teacher about it and that I should stay away from that kid like she told me to before. I said I was trying to, but the problem is Lyle has legs too. And also a few times Mrs. Wardman made me do group work with Lyle – even though I told her my mother said I should stay away from that kid.

Then came the part I was hoping wouldn't come. ‘What did you call Lyle?' asked my mother.

‘Lady,' I told her.

‘You called him
lady
?'

‘Yes.'

‘Since when is
lady
a bad word?'

‘Since fourth grade.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Well, how about next time you insult Lyle you call him
man
instead?'

I just rolled my eyes at her. Sometimes she just doesn't get it, but I was glad to get off that subject.

Then I said, ‘Mom, if I lie down on the couch, could you sneak up on me and cover my nose and mouth at the same time?'

‘Why?' asked my mom in a surprised voice with a surprised face.

‘Please. Just do it, please.'

‘That's kind of a creepy request, Phin. I need to have a good reason for doing something like that.'

‘What's creepy about it?'

‘Well, Phin, it sounds a little like a smothering and, you know, I rather like you. Besides, I don't want to spend the rest of my days in the penitentiary. I've written stories about some of those inmates, you know, and I don't think they'd be very nice to me.'

‘Yeah sure, Mom, sure.'

‘Seriously, why do you want me to do that?'

‘Because I read in a book today that if you plug a dolphin's blowhole, that feels to him like having your nose and mouth covered at the same time would to you. I want to know how that feels exactly.'

My mother said, ‘Oh, okay.' So I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, she covered my nose and my mouth with her hand – but only for a couple of seconds. She wouldn't do it for any longer than that, but I think I know a little bit better what that feels like to a dolphin. Not good.

At lunch today, Bird and I went to the edge of the playground by the apple tree. The tree has a branch that sits straight out and it's almost like sitting on a bench except that it is a lot higher off the ground and it bounces up and down a bit when we move around on it.

Bird and I were careful not to jump down on the side of the tree facing Mr. Byers' house. At the beginning of the year we were told
in school assembly that we could play only on the school-facing side of the apple tree. Mrs. Wardman even went out to show us where we could go and where we could not.

Bird said, ‘Can we step here, Mrs. Wardman?'

And she said, ‘Yes.'

Then he said, ‘How about here, can we step here, Mrs. Wardman?'

And she said, ‘No.'

He said, ‘But what about right here, Mrs. Wardman, can we step right here?'

And she said, ‘You can, but you may not, Richard, and your allowable questions are up.'

Richard is Bird's real name. Everyone calls him Bird because his last name is L'Oiseau, which is bird in French. Bird likes his nickname better. It irritates him that Mrs. Wardman won't call him by that, so he makes sure not to call her by the name she prefers either – just not to her face.

Bird stopped asking questions. But when Mrs. Wardman wasn't looking, he stepped over to the side she told him he couldn't step on, and then he jumped back before she looked around. But nothing happened to him when he was where she told him he shouldn't be.

I don't want to go anywhere near Mr. Byers anyway. He makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

One day I got Silly Putty stuck in the hairs on the back of my neck. I'm not sure how I did it – I think I forgot to put it away before I went to bed, and I lay down on top of it. When I got up the next morning, it was stuck to me.

I went to my mother and she said, ‘Geez, Phin, you're turning green.' She tried rubbing it off with soap and water but it wouldn't come off. Then she tried baby oil, and she pulled some off but the problem was she pulled off the hairs on the back of my neck too.

I yelled because it hurt, and then I said, ‘Great, Mom, now how am I going to know when I'm scared of someone?'

She said, ‘Phin, sometimes you exhaust me.' She says that a lot. But then she smiles.

When we were on the tree branch I told Bird that I thought I hated Lyle who pushed me yesterday and then told on me for calling him
lady
. Then I told Bird I would like to call Lyle an F-er to his face instead of behind his back.

The F word is one of the very first words I think of when I'm really mad. For example, in third grade we had to write down words that described our French partner, and the only word I could think of was the F word because I really didn't like him. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn't know what that word was in French – especially after he bit me. When that happened, I yelled the F word, but just inside my head.

This morning I woke up to an awful sound – it was like a wolf trying to howl after swallowing one of those birthday-party noisemakers. And it was standing over me.

I was a little worried about what I might see – maybe a pack of wolves having a birthday party and the cake just happened to be me – but I took a chance and opened my eyes. My mother was standing there and that awful noise was coming from her. She was smiling so I figured she wasn't choking on something, so I asked her what the heck she was doing.

‘I'm yodelling, Phin,' she said.

‘But you're not on a mountain,' I said. ‘You're standing over me making that awful sound. I thought you were a wolf with something caught in its throat. If you were a wolf, you'd have to be the alpha because if you were a submissive, the others would attack you for making a sound like that.'

Since my mother seemed to be interested in awful sounds, I told her that a science show I watched was about how researchers asked people across lots of countries to rate how horrible different sounds are. The top five were:

5. a metal drawer being opened

4. scraping wood

3. scraping metal

2. Styrofoam being rubbed together

1. scraping slate with a garden tool, which makes the fingernail-on-a-chalkboard sound

I told Mom that I figured her yodelling would be pretty close to the top of the list if the scientists had used it in their study.

‘Ha ha,' she said. ‘I actually think I'm pretty good. Anyway, I've been asked to give you a message. Your father is in Switzerland covering a story about how the permafrost is melting in the Alps and he emailed me and asked me to say hello to you and to give you a big lick from him.' Then she reached for me and pretended to lick me and it felt like I was being mauled by a crazy wolf mother. I told her to stop before she gave me the creeps.

As I ate my breakfast, I wondered how close Switzerland is to where I live, so I went up to my room and got out my distance globe. It's a globe where you touch one part of it with an electronic pen and then touch another part of it with the pen and then the globe tells you how far apart those two places are.

My father bought it for me on my last birthday so that I could always know how far away he was from me. I think he thought it might make me feel better to be able to see exactly where on the earth he was, but it doesn't. Now not only can I see how far away he is but I can hear the exact number of kilometres. That's like not only knowing that you're about to get a needle but also knowing how far it's going to go into your muscle. The robot-sounding voice said 5,403 kilometres.

I wondered which animals will start dying if the permafrost melts, so while my mother was having a shower, I got on to her computer and did a Google search. My mother told me to figure out the most important words when doing a search and type them in. So I typed in
animals
and
melting
and
permafrost
and it came up with 217,000 hits. One said that melting permafrost in Siberia is releasing carbon that's been trapped there since the Pleistocene era. As it bubbles to the surface, it releases methane gas into the atmosphere, and since methane is twenty times more potent
than carbon dioxide, this means global warming will happen even faster than the scientists originally thought.