Free Dark Water by Laura McNeal

and I said, “See you, Robby. Happy
le
birthday.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “
Joyeux
good night.”

Sixteen
    T he next morning, the air was as cool as rain, the sky spreading its whiteness through the room like a bad headache. Robby woke me by shaking the box of Corn Pops over my head. “
Bonjour le
you. We’re going for a drive in my birthday present,” he said. “Corn Pops to go?”
    “Someone
le
gave you a
car?
” I asked. I didn’t make it sound like a good thing. “Please tell me it isn’t red.”
    “It isn’t red.”
    I stood up and went to the window from which, in clear weather, you could glimpse parts of the driveway. I looked suspiciously through the trees.
    “It’s red,” he admitted, looking over my shoulder. “I can’t drive it to school, though, until I’m a senior. What kind of sense does that make?”
    I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.
    “So where’s your mom, anyway?” he asked.
    I squinted at a note my mother had left on the coffeemaker:
    Went to farmers’ market with Louise because I trust you to observe the rules. Check out the surprise in the silkworm box!
    “Why is there a hairy white egg over here?” Robby asked. He was studying the worm trays with his usual revulsion.
    “It’s a
cocoon!
” I said in the same voice you might have used to say, “It’s a boy!” My mother and I had been waiting for this moment with an embarrassingly high level of anticipation. A few of the worms had reached their fifth instar, which was the last phase of caterpillar fatness, but instead of spinning one strand of silk one mile long into a perfect oval, as we’d been led to expect, they had turned a pale feverish yellow, then saffron, then mahogany brown, and then died feet up in a sad pool of oozing juices. I was surprised my mother hadn’t dragged me out of bed to behold the reversal of our fortunes.
    I stared at the exquisite white cocoon with maternal pride until Robby said impatiently, “Ready?”
    “You know,” I told him, “for an honor student you have a remarkable lack of scientific curiosity.”
    “It’s not a lack of scientific curiosity,” he said, shaking his head and pouring my Corn Pops for me. “It’s an aversion to worms.”
    I picked through a basket of clean, depressing clothes that no one had managed to fold. We lived basket to basket nowthat we no longer had to spruce up for my dad. “Where are we going in your fancy red car, anyway?” Clearly, he had forgotten that I was grounded.
    “Your favorite place.”
    Paris?
I thought of saying, but the memory of my father’s invitation soured the joke.
    “
Le
river,” Robby said, putting the cereal box away without folding down the liner or closing up the box, a carelessness that was too careless even for us. I resisted the urge to fix the box in front of him. “And one other place,” he added.
    When I hid in the bathroom to change out of my pajamas and think about what would happen if I went to the river while I was grounded, I shouted out questions about where the other place might be, but he wouldn’t say.
    “To see your pal Monsieur Ostrich?” I asked in a French accent.
    “No.”
    “To buy me donuts?”
    “No.”
    “So what kind of car is it? Have you named it yet?”
    “I’m thinking of ‘the Fabricationist,’ ” he said. By now we were standing on the porch. In front of us was a paper sign my mother had taped to the screen door. It said,
    REMEMBER YOU ARE GROUNDED
.
    “I forgot,” Robby said. “You can’t go.”
    “We’ll just have to hurry,” I said, shoving open the doorand walking through fog and avocado leaves until I stood beside a bright red two-door Honda.
    “Are you sure?” he asked.
    “Let’s go,” I said.
    As soon as we passed over the freeway and began to skim along the tight curves of Mission Road, I became even more reckless. “You know what,” I said. “I could show you a different part of the river. I found a new trail entrance the other