Project Mulberry (14 page)

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 and 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.

It was the afternoon of the third day of the spinning, a Sunday. Patrick was sitting on the couch in our living room. I'd told him to sit there while I went and got the paper from my room. He raised his eyebrows at me but didn't say anything.

"I've decided what I'm going to embroider. I'm going to do"—I paused dramatically, then whipped out the paper—"the Life Cycle of the Silkworm."

I held up the sketch I'd drawn.

"Egg. Worm. Cocoon. Moth." I pointed to the drawings one by one. "And wait till you hear the best part. I'm going to use regular embroidery floss to do the egg and the worm. And the moth, too. But for the cocoon, I'm going to use the thread we make. The cocoon is made of silk in real life, and it will be made of silk in the picture too, get it?"

Patrick grinned, a really huge grin.

He got it, all right. I almost felt like hugging him. He put his hands up in the air and bent forward a few times like he was bowing to me.

"Julia Song, you
are
a genius. We are absolutely, positively, going to win a prize at the fair."

I made a silly curtsy back at him. "Thank you, thank you." I'd thought of doing the life cycle a while back. But it was the caterpillar that had given me the idea for the cocoon part. I'd watched it spin for a while right before I went to bed, and I'd woken up that morning with my genius plan.

I had known right away that it was perfect. There was just something so completely
right
about it. It wasn't American, like the flag—but it wasn't Korean, either.

Or maybe it was both?

Patrick took the sketch from me and studied it for a second. Then he looked up. "It's almost like an exact picture of the whole project, right?"

I nodded. "That's what I was thinking."

"Okay, so if it's supposed to be just like the project, you should leave out the moth at the end."

"Why would I leave out the moth? That's the final stage, right?"

"The final stage of the silkworm life cycle, yeah. But not the final stage of our project."

"What are you talking about?"

"We're not going to have any moths."

"Of course we're going to have moths," I said. "Look how great they're doing—they're almost done spinning their cocoons."

"But we want thread. So you can sew with it."

"Yeah, so?" What was Patrick's problem?

Patrick rolled his eyes at me. "Oh, I get it. You never read the book, did you."

"I did so. I mean, I didn't read every word, but I looked through it. I studied the pictures a lot—I traced one for the caterpillar sketch."

"Jules. If you'd read the book you'd know."

"Patrick,
what
are you talking about?"

He shook his head. "If you want to get silk from the cocoons, you have to kill the—the creatures inside.
Before
they come out as moths."

What!

I stared at him. I could feel the blood going out of my face. "You have to
kill
them?"

Patrick nodded. "You have to boil the cocoons. For about five minutes, to dissolve all the sticky stuff that keeps them together. Then you can unwind the silk. But the boiling kills them—the pupae."

For once, there was no jostling in my head because there was only one thought, with nothing else for it to bump into.

Kill them.

We'd have to kill them.

My hands were freezing cold. I closed them into fists—open, shut, open, shut—while I tried to get my brain to work.

"Patrick, wait. Why can't we unwind the cocoons
after
the moths come out?"

"Jules. It's all in the book."

"Okay, okay. I didn't read the stupid book! Tell me!" I almost screamed.

Patrick spoke slowly, like he was trying to calm me down. "The moth gets out by making a hole in the cocoon, right? To make a hole it has to chew through the silk—well, it doesn't actually
chew,
it spits out this chemical that dissolves the silk and makes a hole. And the hole goes through
all
the layers of silk, see? So instead of one nice long thread, you'd end up with a million tiny short pieces that you couldn't sew with. Silk farmers never let the moths come out—it would ruin everything. Get it?"

I got it, all right. I closed my eyes because I felt dizzy.

I hadn't known that I didn't know.

 

Ms. Park:
Julia?

(silence)

Ms. Park:
Julia, come on.

(silence)

Ms. Park:
I know you're there. I can hear you.

(more silence)

Ms. Park:
Okay, so you're upset. But we need to finish this story. I'll give you some time on your own now, but I'll be back in a little while.

Ms. Park:
Julia? Three days and you haven't said a single word. You still need more time? All right, let me know when you're ready.

Ms. Park:
Are you ready now? It's been two weeks....

Ms. Park:
Come on—you can't hide forever.

Ms. Park:
At least I hope not.

Ms. Park:
Julia! I've given you more than a month! Enough is enough! You can't run away from this—it's
your
story and you have to see it through! Now stop being a coward and come talk to me RIGHT THIS MINUTE!

(silence)

Ms. Park:
Julia. I'm sorry I got mad. (pause) But I really want to finish this story, and I can't do it without you. I'm stuck. Completely stuck.

(silence continues)

Ms. Park:
There. That was what you wanted at the beginning, remember? For me to admit I'm not always the boss? Well, you were right. I need you. Talk to me.

(silence gets louder)

Ms. Park:
Please? Please, please, PLEASE?

Jostle
,
jostle
. My brain was starting to work again.

Jostle, bump. Bump, thump, jostle, bang. Bang, crash, smash into smithereens.

If we let the worms live and turn into moths, I wouldn't be able to make the picture with real silk and we wouldn't be able to enter the Domestic Arts category, so we'd only have Animal Husbandry, and even that wouldn't be very good. It would be more like a school science project than a really good Wiggle project.

Worst of all, I'd be letting Patrick down.

But for me to carry out my genius idea—to embroider the cocoon with real silkworm silk, we'd have to—

Crash, bang, smash.

***

I opened my eyes and looked straight at Patrick. "We can't do it," I said. "We just can't."

Patrick jumped to his feet. "Jules! Are you nuts?"

"Patrick—"

"It's such a great project! And your idea for the picture is genius—I told you that already! It's perfect! It'll be the best project ever! And with the video, and the photos ... we've been working so hard, Jules! We can't let it all go to waste!"

I still felt dizzy, and now my stomach was starting to churn. "I know we've been working hard," I said, "but so have
they
." I nodded in the direction of the back porch. "They're spinning like crazy, Patrick. Because they think they're going to get to be moths at the end of all this."

Patrick flapped his arms wildly. He looked like an ostrich that had forgotten it couldn't fly.

"Oh, for pete's sake—they don't
think
anything! They're
worms!
"

"How do you know they don't think?" I demanded.

"Jules!" Now he raised his voice. "It's not even like they're endangered or anything! People have been making silk for ages and ages, and they always kill the worms, and nobody worries about it, and they're
fine
—there are still billions of silkworms in the world! You—you just—you're being
stupid
about this!"

Stupid?
Stupid?

Somehow that was the last straw.

"Stop blaming me for everything!" I yelled back at him. "You're the one who's afraid of them! You probably
can't wait
to kill them! I bet that's why you picked this project—so you could kill a bunch of poor innocent caterpillars! Besides, I didn't even want to do this in the first place!"

"I'm not—What?" Patrick frowned. "What do you mean, you didn't want to do it? I thought—"

"You thought wrong! I hated the idea right from the start! But you were so—so— I knew I'd never be able to talk you out of it, so I just went along with everything—and the money—and then your phobia—and I'm the only one who cares about them!"

From the look on Patrick's face—a combination of stunned and confused—I knew I wasn't making much sense, but I couldn't stop to get organized. I felt like any minute I might start to cry, so I kept yelling because maybe yelling would keep me from crying. "So now everything's all messed up! And it's not fair, and it's not my fault!"

I turned and stomped up the stairs to my room. But I didn't close the door because I wanted to hear Patrick leaving.

He did.

***

He didn't come back after supper to do homework, either. Instead, he sent me seven e-mails. I couldn't believe it—there were way too many kids in his house, and he hardly ever got the computer more than once a night.

 

From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Date: Sunday, May 27,6:43 PM
Subject:Wiggle project

I cant believe you think I would pick this project just to kill worms. Thats the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Just because a person has a phobia doesn't make them a MASS MURDERER.

 

From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Date: Sunday, May 27,6:54 PM
Subject:Wiggle project (again)

its not like theyre PETS, Julia. You didnt even name them. And besides worms have NO nerve endings. they don't feel pain, it wouldn't hurt them NOT ONE BIT.
i am not lying to you about this!!!

 

From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Date: Sunday, May 27,7:09 PM
Subject: Wiggle project

when theyre in the cocoons they're hibernating,

they are not even CONSCIOUS.

 

From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Date: Sunday, May 27,7:1 I PM
Subject:Wiggle project