It is the first eastern lubber grasshopper that I’ve seen for realsies. It’s yellow with black circles and stripes on it, and it’s almost as long as my hand! I move my jar closer to it.
When I’m lying on my tummy in the green grass looking at a bug, I feel like someone has shrunk me to bug-size. Would me and this grasshopper be friends if I was really the same size as it?
I try to breathe quietly so it doesn’t get scared. I remember Papi said that when you scare an eastern lubber grasshopper, it sprays stinky stuff like a skunk. He will be proud of me when I bring it home and put it in the bug habitat he bought for me at the Family Dollar Store. Mommy doesn’t like me bringing home bugs though, so I’ll have to hide the jar from her.
The grasshopper is feeling the edge of the jar with its antennas. Oh, no, the grass is tickling my nose. I have to hold in a sneeze. A-a-cht! The grasshopper doesn’t notice a thing.
“Buuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttttttttttttttttt!” A boy’s body lands oof! on my back. My face is in the spicy dirt.
“Get off!” I yell, rolling over and pushing him off me. It’s my best friend, Caleb.
“Did you hear that, José?” Caleb asks. “I just called you butt! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“You chased away my grasshopper!” I say, folding my arms.
Caleb bends his elbows with his hands out like he’s saying it wasn’t his fault. His blue eyes go wop, wop, back and forth. That means he has a good idea but he’s waiting until I’m paying attention to tell me. Finally he says, “I know how we can steal my brother’s fireworks.”
“Fireworks? Coooooooool!” Caleb always has the best plans.
We’re hiding in the dead bushes between Caleb’s house and his neighbor’s house. A couple whitefringed beetles crawl by. “Okay,” says Caleb, “you go around the back. I already put a box under Andy’s door. You just have to climb in. Remember where I said the fireworks are?”
“Underwear drawer. It’s on top.”
“Yeah. Alright, I’m going to go distract my mom. Wait ’til I get in the door, and then hurry. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Caleb skips barefoot across the pokey brown lawn. He opens the front door and steps inside. I keep my head bent below the bushes and run to the back of Caleb’s house.
Just like he said, the window is open and a big box that says coors light is under it. I climb on the box and put my hands on the windowsill. The box is empty and starts to crunch under me. I pull myself into the window and fall onto a pile of Andy’s clothes on his bed.
I freeze. The door to the bedroom is open. I can see into the bathroom on the other side of the hallway.
“Boy, put that down!” I hear Caleb’s mom yell.
“Make me!” Caleb yells back. I hear scrambling and then a crash.
Caleb’s mom yells the f-word. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Naa, nana, nana, naa!” yells Caleb. Caleb’s feet go bumbumbumbumbum around the living room. His mom’s go boom! boom! as she chases him.
I am afraid she’ll see me in Andy’s room, so I close the door. On the back of Andy’s door is a big picture of a woman with no clothes on. Boobs! Boobs! Boobs!
Boobs! Boobs!
Kabam! Something slams into the door and the naked lady’s picture shakes. Caleb’s mom yells the f-word twice and the s-word once and the h-word three times.
I remember what I am supposed to do. I trip over a pile of DVD cases on the way to Andy’s dresser. His dresser is tall. When I pull open the top drawer, I can’t hardly see inside it. I pull out the bottom drawer too and stand on top of the clothes in it. Now I can see.
Andy and Caleb’s mom must not fold their underwear like Mommy folds mine. Andy’s briefs are stuffed in the drawer in little balls. Looking for fireworks, I find a brown paper lunchbag. Inside are a bunch of shiny blue packages, but they don’t say fireworks and they seem a little small. Just in case, I stuff the bag in one pocket of my cargo shorts and keep digging.
The dresser rocks back and forth I’m digging so hard. Finally in the way back of the drawer I find a bigger, heavier paper bag. The boxes inside it have pictures of fireworks on them and say things like mineshell mayhem and double trouble roman candle.
“I’m leaving!” I hear Caleb yell down the hallway. It’s our signal. Before he slams the front door, he calls his mom the b-word.
“Yeah, you’d better run! When Frank gets home, he’s going to whup you where the sun don’t shine!” Caleb’s mom yells back.
Not even waiting to close the dresser drawers, I hold the bag of fireworks in one hand and tumble out the window.
Dada-dumdum! I am a super-secret agent running away with a million dollars! Bang, bang, bang! I roll on the ground so the bullets go whiz, whiz, whiz over my head. I jump on my bike and twist the handlebar. “Vroom!” I say.
“Yesssssssss!” says Caleb when I sneak into the Ragnos’ old barn and he sees I’m carrying the fireworks. He holds onto a rope and jumps off the hayloft. He swings a few feet above my head going, “Yahoo!”
“Shhh!” I say.
Caleb tries to do a somersault off the rope but lands on his back. He coughs and pops back up. He grabs the bag from my hands and dumps everything on the dirty concrete floor.
“Which one do you want to try first?” he asks. He takes a yellow plastic lighter out of his pocket.
“Shouldn’t we go somewhere else to actually light them?” I say. “Like maybe down at the gravel pit?”
“The gravel pit’s dumb,” Caleb says, opening the double trouble roman candle box. He pulls out a red and blue tube that’s as big as the bottom half of my arm. On one end of the tube is a point with a little rope poking out, and on the other is a stick.
I take the instructions out of the box. “Hmm,” I say, sounding out the bigger words, “it says first you have to—”
“Light it!” Caleb yells. His lighter goes zzt! and he holds the flame to the little rope sticking out of the top of the firework. It lights up with a little psht!
16 years ago