Free The Flower Plantation by Nora Anne Brown

chest from bursting. Celeste fished my tooth out of my pocket, handed it to me and blotted the bloodstains on my clothes with cold water.
    I went to my bedroom to check on the butterfly eggs, which looked darker than they'd been that morning. Wanting to fetch my bug kit to study them more closely, I ran to the back lobby, where Celeste was already scrubbing my shorts. She laughed as I climbed eagerly onto a stool to take my kit down from the shelf.
    Running straight back to my bedroom I unscrewed the lid of the jam jar, prised out the leaf with the eggs and placed it on the window sill, where I could see it perfectly in the bright light. Kneeling down on the window seat, where Romeo had fallen asleep, I held the magnifying glass to my eye. I moved it backward and forward until I found the right focus on the eggs. The caterpillars had started to hatch.
    Two pairs of front legs emerged from the eggs. They hauled and stretched their long bodies like Joseph wriggling out of his sleeping bag. Their transparent, black-and-orange bodies were like sticky jelly sweets. I wondered what they would taste like.
    I stared at the tiny creatures until the midday sun was long gone from my window and Romeo had woken up. Their hairy little bodies darkened as they started devouring their egg casings, just as it was described in African Butterflies .That was their first meal. I drew a picture of the caterpillars in my book, next to the one I'd done of the eggs.
    Slipping the leaf and its new occupants back into the jar, I thought I'd need something bigger for them to live in. Something better, I decided – something without ragged edges like the punctured holes of the jam-pot lid. As I got up to find a new container, a figure moved in front of my window.
    I hunkered down. Only my forehead could have been visible at the window. I scanned the garden. My eyes roamed from the lane to the buddleia bush, from the five front steps to the orange-coloured road. Monty was with Mother, Romeo with me. What I'd seen had been too small to be one of the gardeners, too big to be the house cat. I looked harder but saw nothing. When I eventually stood up, a figure scarpered out of the hydrangea and ran straight into the buddleia.
    I threw myself away from the window and up against the wall. The fuel attendant's son, I thought, terrified he'd come back for Romeo.
    After a very long time, and when I was certain he must be gone, I inched towards the window again. As my body twisted into the afternoon light, I could see the figure still hiding in the bush. My eyes scanned the shoeless feet and bare legs that looked like twigs. It wasn't the fuel attendant's son – he had been wearing long trousers.
    Given that they were hiding in a buddleia, I reasoned, they couldn't be all that scary. I stepped in front of the window and saw the face of a girl, peering wide-eyed from within the bush. On seeing me, she took a step back and hid among the flowers.

7
    The girl in the buddleia bush was troubling. I sat on the bed, held the jar of caterpillars in one hand and tickled Romeo's ear with the other. Had it not been for the girl in the bush I would have been quite content. But she worried me: her presence made me question whether even with Romeo and my newly hatched caterpillars there was still something missing in my life.
    To calm myself I stared into the jam pot and remembered I needed something bigger and better for my new friends to live in. I'd need a container, a lid without ragged edges, some sticks and food. Caterpillars, I had learnt from African Butterflies , are very picky eaters. They will starve to death before eating the wrong thing. I left my bedroom and went to the pantry to see what I could find.
    â€œFabrice told me about your tooth,” said Mother as I rummaged about looking for something to fill with sticks and leaves. She held my chin and had a good look inside my mouth. “Where is it?” I produced it from my pocket.
    â€œYour first