Free The Nest by Kenneth Oppel Page A

that to Nicole. I watched her, wondering what she’d do. She shrugged.
    â€œHe looks fine to me,” she said, and went off to find a different action figure to maul.
    â€œIs it risky, the operation?” I asked Mom.
    â€œIt’s complicated, but they’re so good at these kinds of things now.”
    She smiled bravely, and I gave her a hug and said I was sure everything was going to be okay, and I tried to sound as reassuring as possible. Just like the queen had told me.
    Dad made lunch, and we ate it inside. They were doing it for me, because of the wasps. The baby had taken a full bottle and was having a nap upstairs. Mom had the baby monitor set up nearby.
    â€œI called an exterminator,” Dad told me. “They’re coming Friday to take care of that nest.”
    It was Tuesday. That was in three days. I nodded. “Thanks.”
    â€œSoonest I could get,” he said. “They’re crazy busy this year. It’s a terrible summer for wasps.”
    We were cleaning the dishes when we heard the crying. We all stopped, and the back of my neck went electric. It was normal baby crying, but it wasnot a sound we’d ever heard from our baby. He was quiet. He’d never really cried. At most he made a gentle kind of bird trill. Blaring over the monitor right now was a big full baby wail.
    Eyes wide, Nicole said, “Is that Theo?”
    Mom and Dad were both rushing for the stairs. I followed. I took the stairs two at a time to keep up. When I entered the baby’s room, Mom and Dad were leaning over the crib, peering down. The baby was deep asleep, breathing evenly, little hands balled into fists.
    From downstairs we could still hear, faintly, the sound of a crying baby over the monitor.
    â€œWeird,” I said.
    Dad picked up the transmitter part of the monitor and switched the channel. From downstairs the noise stopped.
    â€œWe must be picking up someone else’s monitor,” he said.
    â€œThe new people next door have a baby, don’t they?” Mom said.
    Dad nodded.
    I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t the baby next door. It was the baby outside our window, growing in the nest.
    That night Mom and Dad closed their door all the way, but I still heard them talking. I think they talked about me a bit, because I caught Dr. Brown’s name, and then I’m pretty sure they were discussing the baby. When I crept down the hall to hear better, Mom was telling a dream she’d had the night before in the hospital. In the dream a nurse came and told her that there’d been a mix-up and they’d given her the wrong baby, and the nurse had the right baby, and there was nothing wrong with him, he was healthy. And I couldn’t really hear what elseMom was saying next, because she was crying, but I heard her say the word “ashamed,” and Dad’s low soft words were covering up her choky little gasps.
    It was very dark in the nest now. I could barely see the walls, and then I realized it was because the baby had grown so large, it was blocking out most of the light. I felt its presence all around me, though I could make out only its outlines. The nest was very humid. Last winter we’d gone to the zoo and visited the rain forest pavilion, and it had been really crowded with people in their puffy coats, and all the monkeys and gorillas and their thick animal smell and their food and their poo. It was overpowering, and I’d had to go outside to breathe in the icy air. It was like that now in the nest.
    Almost at once the queen was before me. I didn’twant her touching me with her antennae, but I knew it was the only way we could talk.
    â€œDelightful to see you, as always,” the queen said. “So nice of you to drop by.”
    â€œWas that the baby we heard today?”
    She gave a little hop of excitement. “Quite a set of lungs he has on him, yes?”
    â€œIt scared us all.”
    â€œA