Hopping Mad

Rachel Steinberg

            “Is it dead? I can’t tell. I think it is. Wait, is it?”

            “Oh, this is disgusting.”

            “You are such a girl.”

            “Well, you are such a boy.”

            Henry poked at the grasshopper carcass in the overgrown grass with his stick, prodding it this way and that, lifting its feelers and legs, as if it was a log in a dying fire. Beside him sat his sister, Sally; she was not at all amused.

            “I mean it, Henry, cut it out.”

            “No way. I want to see if I can break it open.”

            Sally pretended to retch; Henry ignored her. He wondered what the inside of a grasshopper looked like. If their guts looked like angel hair pasta. If their eyes could come off like those of his sister’s stuffed animals. He continued to poke as he wondered.

            Meanwhile, Sally had stood up, and was watching the street, where several of the neighborhood boys were riding their bikes, whooping and calling out in the way they tended to do on fine summer days. She sighed; Henry ignored her.

            “I do wish they’d go away,” Sally remarked. “They frighten off all the pretty birds from the cherry tree. I miss those two cardinals that were here yesterday, they were so lovely.”

            “Hmm,” answered Henry. He thought he’d seen the grasshopper twitch.

            Slightly annoyed by her brother’s disinterest, Sally stalked off to the nearest cherry tree, an elegantly blossom-coated being with spindly branches and an enticing aroma. Sally set her face into a determined expression and reached for the lowest branch, fully intending to swing herself up. However, the branch broke under her weight, the tree being really too young to be climbed, and Sally fell in a heap at the trunk, clutching the bough rather foolishly.

            From the street, the biking boys jeered.

            “Silly Sally, Silly Sally,” they teased, riding back and forth before the hedges. “Can’t even climb a tree, she can’t.” One of them stuck out his tongue. Sally tossed her hair and turned her back. However, she cast a hurt look at Henry, to see if he would do anything. He ignored her.

            Sally flopped down in the grass and stared at the deep July sky. Sheep-like clouds floated tranquilly overhead, patiently being herded along in their blue pasture. Sally tried to count them, while really waiting for her brother to do something to her tormenters. He continued to scrutinize his grasshopper; she continued to scrutinize her clouds.

            Sometime later, there was a soft stir in the grass beside Sally’s head. She jerked her head up, bits of grass catching in her sunshiny hair, and spotted a neatly folded paper airplane made of the kind of paper she had hoped never to see until September. She looked around. The jeering boys were nowhere to be found. However, a new boy, on a shining black bike which precisely matched his hair, stood waiting between the hedges, smiling hesitantly. Sally opened the letter and read.

            I love you. I just moved here from Chicago. My name is Freddie Miller. Do you want to come to my house tomorrow for lunch? My mom said its okay.

            Sally looked up at the boy and glowered. He seemed taken aback, but he did not leave. Then Sally grinned at the letter, a grin less adoring than diabolical, and strode across the yard to where her brother lay in the grass. With a triumphant thrust, she shoved the letter under his freckly, uncaring nose.

            Henry read quickly, his eyes soaking up Freddie’s words. He looked at Sally, who had sat down with her back against the cherry tree, and was smiling dreamily up at the sky. Henry glared furiously at her, then at Freddie. Sally ignored him.

            Within a moment Henry was standing up. Within two he was walking towards Freddie and his shiny black bike. Within three he was bringing back his fist. Within four he had made contact with the side of Freddie’s face. And within five he was back beside Sally, positively glowing. Sally looked up and glowed back.

            They walked back to the grasshopper and sat down side by side. Sally did not say thank you; Henry did not say she was welcome.

            Instead, Sally pointed at the grasshopper and said, “Look. That grasshopper is alive.”

            And so it was.