Free Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park Page B

we'd had to redo something Kenny had ruined?
    "Yeah, Julia. I'm not
stupid,
you know," Kenny said. He shook his head and looked at Patrick like they were buddies—the two of them against me.
    "Thanks, pal," Patrick said. "We're counting on you."
    Kenny grinned. Then he said, "I could write it down every day. What the temperature is when I get home. That way you could tell by looking at the numbers if it's getting colder."
    What a dumb idea. Like there was no such thing as the Weather Channel.
    "That's a great idea!" Patrick said. "Why don't you go and get a pad and a pencil, and we'll keep them right here on the porch for you to use."
    Kenny disappeared into the house on his mission.
I could hardly wait until the door closed behind him.
    But Patrick rushed right in before I could say anything. "Jules, trust me, this will work. If he feels like he's part of the project, he won't wreck it. Besides, I've been keeping my stuff here for ages, and he never bothers it. He only messes with
your
stuff—that's why I wanted him to feel like it was him and me together on this."
    I didn't say anything at first. I was thinking.
    Reverse psychology, that's what it was. Patrick was using reverse psychology on Kenny. To keep him away from the project, we'd let him get close to it.
    Scary. Because if it didn't work...
    "Okay," I said at last. "I trust you fine. It's
him
I don't trust. If you're sure this will work—I just hope we don't regret it." Then I thought of something else. "Patrick, how come you don't do this kind of thing with
your
little brothers? I mean, it's like you've given up at your house—you just bring everything over here."
    Patrick sighed. "It's different when there are three of them," he said. "I'm just way too outnumbered. Besides, it's weird with little brothers—I guess it's easier to be nice to someone else's."
    Â 
    Patrick tied the pencil and pad together and hung them from a nail on the wall. The string was long so Kenny could reach them easily. "I'm gonna get started right away," Kenny said. He stared at the thermometer hard, then said, "Sixty-one. It's sixty-one degrees today." He wrote it down and held out the pad so Patrick could see it.
    "Good job," Patrick said. "Okay, we're done for today."
    We went inside. Patrick got out the brochure again. "Six to twenty days," he said. "That's what it says—our eggs will hatch sometime from six to twenty days after we get them."
    Twenty days! That was nearly three weeks! "I hope it's six," I said.
    It wasn't, of course.
    I checked the eggs at least four times a day. When I got up in the morning. When I got home from school. After dinner. Before bed. And sometimes in between those times as well.
    Nothing was happening. The eggs looked exactly the same as when we'd first gotten them—gray with a tiny black dot inside. The dots looked like periods.
    Patrick had been videotaping every day, but on day six he stopped. "All the tape so far will look exactly the same," he said. "I'm gonna wait until something happens before I film again."
    Kenny's numbers already filled up the first few pages of the little pad because he wrote so big. By day eleven, there was still no change in the eggs. "Maybe they're duds," I said to Patrick. "Maybe we should write to the company and tell them."
    Patrick looked worried, too, but he shook his head. "Not yet, Jules. We have to wait until at least day twenty-one."
    On day fifteen, Kenny was waiting for us on the front walk again.
    "You guys—come see!" he screeched.
    We dropped our backpacks at the door and pounded through the house to the back porch.
    When I first looked, everything seemed the same. Glass dish. Three leaves. No worms.
    But then I looked closer.
    The little black periods had changed into commas. "See? See?" Kenny said. "They look different, don't they?"
    "They sure do," Patrick said. He grinned at me and then chucked Kenny on top of his head. "Good job, kid." Kenny grinned back at him. "Time to