Eva and I should have been more sneaky about where we were getting our caterpillars, because now everyone at recess knows about our caterpillar tree, about how we bring them inside to be our pets in the cubbies of our desks, about the way we feed them leaves and clovers and fill bottle caps with water for them and how we pet their fuzzy little bodies while Ms. Russo reads aloud and writes on the board, how we decide that our caterpillars are sisters and that we are their parents and how, at recess, I walk under the bars of the jungle gym and go, honey, I’m home! and Eva goes, oh, honey, how was work? and I go, good, honey, how are the girls? and the girls are fine and everything is perfect every time.

By the time we get to our caterpillar tree, almost everyone in our class is already standing around it and laughing as if it is their tree, laughing as if they are their caterpillars to hold, letting them crawl on their arms and through their fingers, flowing all over their hands like the raindrops you watch on the other side of the car window, how they trickle and race, how one absorbs the other and how they spray apart.

“I told you not to tell Kyle.” I cross my arms. We stand back from everyone, watching.

Stupid loudmouth Kyle. Stupid Kyle who does not respect our caterpillar tree, the caterpillar tree that should be free of boys who are too rough, swinging their sticks instead of gently placing them in front of the caterpillars for them to crawl onto, our caterpillar tree that I found first and specifically only showed to Eva, showing her how, if you stand back and look, the bark looks like it’s moving, goopy with caterpillars, the blob of them rolling like grey ripples in a lake when you drop a stone in, but thick like syrup.

Eva doesn’t see the issue. “It’s okay, Nat. There’s millions of them.”

“That’s not the problem,” I start, and I look over my shoulder at the lunch aides, who are blowing their whistles over by the playscape at kids who are running up the slides. Before I can tell Eva that they might see us and make us stop playing with the caterpillars, she is already moving toward everyone to show them what they need to make caterpillar desk houses.

“Just pick leaves that are really bendy. They need to not break when you fold them, like this. You can staple a bunch together to make a leaf rug. You can use Nat’s stapler. And make sure you bring sticks and extra leaves and acorns and stuff so they don’t get bored, and clovers so they don’t go hungry.”

Just like that, everyone is picking caterpillars from the crawling grey swarm and we’re all in competition with each other to make the best caterpillar desk house, and everyone wants to use my stapler all the time, always taking it from me even when I don’t even have any more staples. That girl Anna who never stops talking sits in the grass next to Eva and shows her how to braid and twist and tie clovers and dandelions, and I just know that Anna’s and Eva’s caterpillar houses will be so much prettier than my stupid stapled leaf rug, so much cozier than my bundles of sticks tied with hair elastics like the worst Lincoln Log house you ever saw. Their caterpillars are going to live the life in Anna’s leaf-and-clover hammocks while I wonder how I can make it up to my caterpillar, how I can explain myself. Maybe that’s why none of me or Eva’s desk caterpillars have ever lived for more than a couple days, because we needed Anna to show us how to make good houses.

I look at my caterpillar, who sits on my wrist, barely even moving. I’m sorry, Fuzz Lightyear. I’m sorry I don’t know how to make stuff out of flowers, I think, wondering how to make her understand.

I already know that Fuzz is going to die, so I return her to the tree and sit on a swing, watching everyone poke at the caterpillar tree.

I don’t choose my next caterpillar, Fuzz Lightyear Junior Junior Junior Junior Junior, until the lunch aides blow their whistles and everyone hides theirs in their pockets and hats before lining up to go back inside. I go to the caterpillar tree and I pick one on the outskirts of the squishy grey blob, one who looks like she was taking a break she really, really needed.

***

Now, every recess goes like this: everyone whose caterpillars vanished or who did not survive the night picks new ones off the tree, plus expands their caterpillar houses. 

Everyone has gotten good at making caterpillar houses. Anna’s has taken over the whole length of her desk cubby and every day, she adds fresh leaves, stones, dandelions, wildflowers, and clovers. Her caterpillar is named Catty, which Eva says is cute and I say is stupid but only when she can’t hear me. Catty has lived longer than any of our caterpillars.

I crane my neck to look at my own caterpillar house while Ms. Russo reads the instructions on the Math Minute as if we haven’t been doing Math Minutes for three years now. Even I have gotten better at making caterpillar houses. I have rocks and wood chips mostly, some mushrooms, and yellowing leaves that are getting more impossible to bend every day.

Fuzz Lightyear is sitting in a part of my desk cubby where there aren’t even any leaves or flowers. She just sits there on the cold metal, hardly moving at all. I’m killing her and I don’t know how to stop it. I reach my finger out to her, waiting for her to crawl onto it just like she did the first and second days. Eventually she does, but it’s not the same. 

What the hell, Fuzz, what the hell, I think, what do you want from me?

I imagine her returning my question with so much anger—really, seriously, what do I want from you!? How about me? What do you want from me?—so much caterpillar sadness, more than I thought she could hold in her tiny caterpillar body.

I don’t know, I tell her in my head, I don’t know, I’m sorry.

And Fuzz looks up at me and cries real tears, yes, real caterpillar tears from her little caterpillar eyes, giant salty drops, and she says, No, tell me why, Nat, tell me why. 

I don’t know, I tell her in my head, I don’t know what to tell you, Fuzz.

Then there is Ms. Russo, standing right there behind my desk, Math Minute sheets in hand. But she is not placing each one face down on our desks. She is looking inside my desk, eyebrows scrunched. She picks up the wood chips and rocks and holds them out to me as if she has never seen wood chips or rocks before.

“What’s all this?” she asks, pushing up her plastic green glasses on her long bony nose.

Everyone looks at me and I know they’re so mad at me, the one who let it slip, who ruined it after just a few days. Kyle whispers something to Sean and they both laugh.

“A caterpillar house,” I say, eyes down and cheeks red.

“Caterpillar?” Ms. Russo repeats.

“Yes, houses. For caterpillars.”

Ms. Russo’s eyes drop to where my hand is cupped over Fuzz. She bobs her chin and I uncover her little body. Ms. Russo raises her eyebrows, maybe surprised to see I was telling the truth. She moves to the other side of our desk cluster and peers into Eva’s desk, then looks up at everyone.

“Who else is keeping caterpillars in their desks?”

No one raises their hand, so Ms. Russo walks around to every single one of us, looks into our desks, and writes names on a pad. Then she writes the names of almost everyone in the class on the board with a red marker. We will go out at recess, return our caterpillars to their tree, and come back inside to sit at our desks in silence for all of recess.

Kyle raises his hand. “What if our caterpillar is already dead?”

And almost everyone else nods, wanting to know what to do with their dead caterpillars.

Ms. Russo sighs and rubs her forehead, pinching the skin between her eyebrows. She sets the rest of the Math Minutes down and throws her pen onto her desk. “Throw them away.”

Kyle and Sean move to the trash can. The room is so quiet, I swear I can hear the little caterpillar bodies landing in the mound of wrappers and balled up pieces of paper.

“You’re all too old for this. I expect this from first graders, not you. Do you think your middle school teachers will tolerate this? Are you first graders, or are you sixth graders?”

And Ms. Russo scolds and scolds about middle school, about how much harder it will be, about how serious our teachers will be, about how middle school is preparation for high school and how high school is preparation for college and how it’s time to stop acting like kids. Eva drops her head to folded arms on her desk. I keep my gaze down and stare at the blank side of my Math Minute, wondering if she will be mad at me for this, wondering how I could be so stupid, how wrong this was. I reach toward Fuzz with a finger and she is so stiff, like a crispy leaf shrunken into a hollow little roll. There won’t be as many butterflies in the summer and it’s all my fault.

At the start of recess, we walk slow and sad to the caterpillar tree. Eva and I drag behind in the back of the line and when we get to the tree, I go to place Fuzz back onto the bark. She falls at first, like she doesn’t even know how to hold on, like she has never sat on a tree before, and I catch her in cupped hands. She feels stiff, like she is turning into wood. I hold her up to the tree again and she crawls slowly onto the bark. Fuzz holds on, but doesn’t move at all.

***

It’s kickball day in gym and I stand in the outfield, lazily kicking the ball when it comes my way and constantly pulling at my pinny to keep it from touching my neck, this disgusting pinny, this thing that smells like it’s never been washed, heavy with so many other kids’ disgusting sweat, disgusting kids’ sweat that will be mixed with my sweat and stuck to me until I shower tonight. I tug it down and tug it down, trying to keep it off my skin, this thing that could swallow me up, drown me in muddy sweat.

After gym, me and Eva run from the field and race each other back to the school. Eva is faster than me and always has been, but she stops when she gets far ahead, letting me catch up to her. My red pinny sticks to me like gum, all wet and heavy against my t-shirt and the part of my neck that touches it.

Eva is already almost to the school when I start tearing it off. The next thing I know, I’m shirtless. I drop to my knees, curling my chest toward the grass, my hands in my armpits.

I wrestle with the red and green blob, my t-shirt with a cartoon cat that says as if! stuck inside the pinny, and I’m trying to get this ball of shirt and pinny out of ball form. I finally separate the green from the red, but I don’t even recognize this t-shirt anymore. Where is the neck hole? Where are the arm holes? My fingers buzz and I rip my hands through it, trying to find a way in. This t-shirt, so goopy and sticky and thick that I could eat it with a spoon. It hates me, it wants to embarrass me for as long as possible, it wants everyone to look at me, to whisper about me at lunch and look away and laugh when I look at them. My t-shirt is like oobleck in my hands, something I have never seen before.

One of the first girls in our grade to wear a bra. This is what everyone will notice and tell each other next year in middle school: Nat ripped her shirt off in gym class, Nat was totally topless and everyone saw, everyone saw her training bra, all sweat-stained and twisted up in the back. Anna and Eva and all the other girls will see that I’m one of the bra girls now and they will probably talk about me, too.

Ryan, the loud blond jock I sometimes watch in class, wondering what it might be like to be him, studying the way he sits because I want to copy it at home, might stop chasing me and pushing me into the wood chips, pushing me off the playscape when he catches up to me at recess, will maybe start doing “are you nervous” to me the same way he does to Eva: sitting next to her at lunch and putting his hand on her knee and asking are you nervous? every time he slides it up her thigh. Ryan will do the same to me, hand on my knee, asking if I am nervous, and I will get those scaly bumps on the back of my neck and I will say no, and he will slide his hand up and ask if I am nervous and I’ll say no, and he’ll slide his hand up and ask if I am nervous and I’ll say no, and I’ll say no, and I’ll try to swallow my spit even though I don’t have any spit to swallow.

But then there is Eva.

“I’ll guard you,” she says, side swept bangs pasted to her freckled forehead.

Eva, my best friend in the whole world, my only friend in the whole world. I could crumble into a million pieces, fall into chunks over her pink and brown Etnies and tell her how sorry I am for always trying to keep her to myself, for getting quiet and annoyed when the boys pick her for kickball and tell her that her hair smells good, how I go sit on the swings while they take turns showing her how to throw a football, how she tells me I can come with her, that I don’t have to sit there all by myself, and then how awful I am—how I look at the ground and say nothing and wait for her to walk away.

My shirt is like cake batter spilled all over my hands, impossible to hold, a shapeless thing, so goopy and alien, so separate from me, something I have never known before.

Then Maggie P. is here, standing on the other side of me. Maggie P.! One of the girls who sits with all the cool girls at lunch, and there’s so many of them, they push two tables together to fit them all. Maggie P. stands solid and still, blocking my back from view without looking at me, without saying a word.

When I’m finally clothed, I stand and give Eva a hug and let go before I want to. Her hair does smell good: L’oreal Kids, Strawberry Smoothie.

I turn to Maggie P., panting. “Thank you, Maggie P. I mean, Maggie.” I wish I could tell her that I have never meant a thank you more in my life. I wish I could tell her I like her braided anklet, the blue and white threads all frayed and sticking out from the knot.

“Yeah, thanks, Maggie,” says Eva.

Maggie P. nods and smiles, then starts walking away without us.

Me and Maggie P. don’t ever speak about this. We don’t ever speak at all, except for when spring comes and we’re all at Girl Scout camp, where almost all of us are sleeping away for a week for the first time ever.

There’s such a bad storm there that we have to take shelter in the dark mess hall, so hot and sticky, the air so humid and thick with sweat and the sounds of Daisies and Brownies crying for their moms, it’s like swimming in it. Sitting there in the dark with my head on Eva’s shoulder, I try not to let her hear me cry, sniffing and shoving tears away when it thunders. I try not to think of the tree that split our tent right down the middle, the tent we had all just been inside of when it fell, the tarp draped over our stuff, all tan and lumpy and soaked.

Whenever I sneak a look at her, Maggie P. is lying on her belly, weaving gimp strips into a long box shape on the floor in the light of her flashlight, laughing with Emily and Anna, totally unafraid. Eva goes to them and talks, then brings back some gimp and shows me how to weave the strips. She goes back to them and comes back to me, goes to them and comes to me.

When all the little kids are asleep, Eva brings her sleeping bag to Maggie P. and waves at me to bring mine, too, and I do, and we put our sleeping bags in a circle with our heads in the center because Eva wants to sleep next to me and everyone else all at once. Maggie P. puts her sleeping bag next to mine and Eva and Anna talk about how their Tamagotchi’s are going to be dead by the time they get back to the tents.

“I used to be afraid of storms, too.”

It’s too dark to see, but I know it’s Maggie P. and I know she’s talking to me, because I can feel her breath on my cheek.

I tug at the zipper on my sleeping bag but it’s already closed all the way. “Storms don’t scare me so much.”

“Oh,” says Maggie P. “Well, they used to scare me a lot. I got over it.”

I take a glowstick out of my pocket and unzip my sleeping bag enough to free my arms. I crack the glowstick and slowly drag it through the dark above our faces, neon green streaks.

“I’m kind of scared of the dark,” I admit. “Kind of.”

Eva takes the glowstick and draws flashy green circles, then hands it back. “Don’t you think glowstick juice would make the best lip gloss ever?” 

“Yeah, but it won’t be glowy if you take it out of the stick,” I say.

“She’s right. The stick is what makes it glowy,” says Anna, who apparently knows everything.

“No, it’s something else in the stick that makes it glowy,” says Maggie P.

“Dare you to bite it, Nat,” says Eva.

And we laugh, and I think about it, repeating: should I? Should I? I don’t know. Should I? And Eva says, do it! Do it! She chants it until the others start chanting it, too, and finally I do. I sit up and I bite it, cracking through the plastic, and the acid goo bursts out, bitter slime covering my tongue in a second. I spit on the floor and gag until I almost puke, staring at the neon splatter on the floor next to my sleeping bag.

I wash the rancid flavor down with Sunny D, before I can even stick my tongue out at Eva to ask her if my mouth is glowing. I decide that I will remember tonight like this: the slime doesn’t taste like acid. It tastes like watermelon candy. I stick my tongue out and Eva squeals with delight because my tongue glows bright green, like a little alien that lives in my mouth. The rain stops and the lights come back on and no one is scared.