Free Beetle Boy by Margaret Willey

are moving toward me? While Mrs. M. is gone? I was there, in her kitchen, making the morning coffee. Mrs. M. had taught me how to make it—beans ground in a grinder, filtered water, a good brand of coffee, but not too dark roasted. I grew to like it her way—my dad drank only generic already-ground coffee from a tin, bitter and weak at the same time. He drank the terrible stuff all day. But Mrs. M.’s morning coffee was wonderful.
    Her kitchen had Asian-inspired wallpaper—cartoon cranes and rabbits and lotus blossoms—and she had a little green vinyl booth in one corner, like a personal restaurant. This was where I would sit and sip coffee and get ready to face the school day. There was a high window above the booth that showed a maple tree. Birds flew back and forth from the tree’s lower branches to the window feeders, and Mrs. M. knew the names of all the birds—I swear, anything that flew by—she could tell me what it was. She wasn’t crabby in the mornings, and she seemed to like that I had learned to make her coffee exactly right. She always wore an old bathrobe that was a faded purple plaid and her hair would be matted in the back because she slept on her back and her face would be softer and her voice huskier.
    Are you ready for school, Charlie? Did you have a good day? Do you need anything before I go to bed?
    I am falling into sleep. No beetle dreams , I instruct my unconscious. But of course there is a dream.
    I am in Clara’s kitchen, my own age, but in this dream I haven’t written the books yet and I know I have to write them because I need money. I am under tremendous pressure to get all eight of them written in a few days or else I will have to move back in with Dad and Liam. I am trying to begin when I realize that it is impossible for me to write the books without Mom. Then I am on a train, and I am going to Wisconsin to get beetle stories directly from Mom. The train turns into a rowboat. I have nothing with me but an old trash bag full of clothes and one book— Franklin Firefly , the one where Franklin has a cold and he can’t stop sneezing out his lights. I open the book to the first page, and there is a message for me in Mrs. M.’s handwriting, instructions for what to say to my mother. The message says, Tell your mother you will bring the biggest beetle to her house and she will have to take care of it . I close the book, very nervous in the boat now, unable to row, unsure that I will be able to deliver this message to my mother, unsure of how I could ever get the gigantic beetle to Wisconsin, upset with Mrs. M. for giving me an impossible task instead of helping me.

TWELVE
    I can’t safely stand on a footstool with my cast, so instead, I tap the edge of the box above me with the end of my crutch, patiently, firmly, until it moves far enough forward to fall into my arms. My project: relocate boxes before Clara comes home. I open the box in my arms, flipping through its contents, straightening the items that were mixed up in the fall. Then I close the lid, tuck the box under one arm, and reorient myself with my crutch.
    As I am backing out of Clara’s closet, I brush against a long dressy skirt made of black velvet—a fabric I hate. In fact, the sensation of velvet against my arm sends me reeling into another memory—I am nine years old and inside my new costume, and there is no escape, no way to get myself out of reach from my dad’s latest idea for selling books—a beetle costume hand-sewed by someone named Dorothy, who also made several sets of ugly curtains for us before Dad got tired of her.
    The costume probably earned Dorothy an extra two weeks of attention from Dad—it was carefully designed and sewn with six black legs, a thickly padded body, and black velvet wings. On my feet were black sneakers. Dorothy had also created a black helmet that tied under my chin and had thick pipe cleaners at the top of my head