The Fourteenth Goldfish Read online

  Also by Jennifer L. Holm

  The Babymouse series (with Matthew Holm)

  The Squish series (with Matthew Holm)

  Boston Jane: An Adventure

  Boston Jane: Wilderness Days

  Boston Jane: The Claim

  The Creek

  Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf

  Eighth Grade Is Making Me Sick

  Our Only May Amelia

  The Trouble with May Amelia

  Penny from Heaven

  Turtle in Paradise

  The Stink Files series (with Jonathan Hamel)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Jennifer L. Holm

  Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2014 by Tad Carpenter

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Holm, Jennifer L., author.

  The fourteenth goldfish / Jennifer L. Holm. — First edition.

  p. cm

  Summary: Ellie’s scientist grandfather has discovered a way to reverse aging, and consequently has turned into a teenager—which makes for complicated relationships when he moves in with Ellie and her mother, his daughter.

  ISBN 978-0-375-87064-4 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-97064-1 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-307-97436-5 (ebook)

  1. Grandfathers—Juvenile fiction. 2. Scientists—Juvenile fiction. 3. Aging—Juvenile fiction. 4. Families—Juvenile fiction. [1. Grandfathers—Fiction. 2. Scientists—Fiction. 3. Aging—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H732226Fo 2014

  813.6—dc23 2013035052

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Jonathan, Will & Millie—my mad scientists

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Goldie

  2. Puzzles

  3. Ring

  4. Magician

  5. Jellyfish

  6. Crispy Corn Dog

  7. Our Town

  8. The Possible

  9. Fruit

  10. Salk and Oppenheimer

  11. Building Twenty-Four

  12. Raisinets

  13. Ankh

  14. Cheese

  15. Lab Assistant

  16. Slippers

  17. Law of Friendship

  18. Degrees

  19. Genie in the Bottle

  20. Mad Scientist

  21. Candles

  22. Growing Pains

  23. Pizza Delivery

  24. Nobel

  25. Chill

  26. Mummy

  27. After

  28. Observation

  29. Happy Beginnings

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Recommended Resources for Continuing the Conversation

  About the Author

  You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.

  —Galileo Galilei

  When I was in preschool, I had a teacher named Starlily. She wore rainbow tie-dyed dresses and was always bringing in cookies that were made with granola and flax and had no taste.

  Starlily taught us to sit still at snack time, sneeze into our elbows, and not eat the Play-Doh (which most kids seemed to think was optional). Then one day, she sent all of us home with a goldfish. She got them at ten for a dollar at a pet store. She gave our parents a lecture before sending us off.

  “The goldfish will teach your child about the cycle of life.” She explained, “Goldfish don’t last very long.”

  I took my goldfish home and named it Goldie like every other kid in the world who thought they were being original. But it turned out that Goldie was kind of original.

  Because Goldie didn’t die.

  Even after all my classmates’ fish had gone to the great fishbowl in the sky, Goldie was still alive. Still alive when I started kindergarten. Still alive in first grade. Still alive in second grade and third and fourth. Then finally, last year in fifth grade, I went into the kitchen one morning and saw my fish floating upside down in the bowl.

  My mom groaned when I told her.

  “He didn’t last very long,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “He lasted seven years!”

  She gave me a smile and said, “Ellie, that wasn’t the original Goldie. The first fish only lasted two weeks. When he died, I bought another one and put him in the bowl. There’ve been a lot of fish over the years.”

  “What number was this one?”

  “Unlucky thirteen,” she said with a wry look.

  “They were all unlucky,” I pointed out.

  We gave Goldie Thirteen a toilet-bowl funeral, and I asked my mom if we could get a dog.

  We live in a house that looks like a shoe box. It has two bedrooms and a bathroom, which has a toilet that’s always getting clogged. I secretly think it’s haunted by all the fish that were flushed down it.

  Our backyard is tiny—just a slab of concrete that barely fits a table and chairs. It’s the reason my mom won’t let me get a dog. She says it wouldn’t be fair, that a dog needs a real yard to run around in.

  My babysitter Nicole walks into the kitchen, where I’m putting together a puzzle. It’s kind of taken over our table.

  “You’ve been working on that forever, Ellie,” she says. “How many pieces is it?”

  “One thousand,” I say.

  It’s a picture of New York City—a street scene with yellow cabs. I love puzzles. I like trying to figure out how things fit together. How a curve meets a curve and the perfect angle of a corner piece.

  “I’m going to be on Broadway someday,” she tells me.

  Nicole has long buttery hair and looks like she should be in a shampoo commercial. She played Juliet in the production of Romeo and Juliet that my mother directed at the local high school. My mom’s a high school drama teacher and my dad’s an actor. They got divorced when I was little, but they’re still friends.

  They’re always telling me I need to find my passion. Specifically, they’d like me to be passionate about theater. But I’m not. Sometimes I wonder if I was born into the wrong family. Being onstage makes me nervous (I’ve watched too many actors flub their lines), and I’m not a fan of working behind the scenes, either (I always end up steaming costumes).

  “Oh, yeah. Your mom called. She’s gonna be late,” Nicole says. Almost as an afterthought, she adds, “Something to do with getting your grandfather from the police.”

  For a second, I think I heard wrong.

  “What?” I ask. “Is he okay?”

  She lifts her shoulders. “She didn’t say. But she said we can order a pizza.”

  An hour later, my belly is full of pizza, but I’m still confused.

  “Did my mom say anything about why Grandpa was with the police?” I ask.

  Nicole looks mystified. “No. Does he get in trouble a lot?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I mean, he’s old
,” I say.

  “How old is he?”

  I’m not quite sure. I’ve never really thought about it, actually. He’s always just looked “old” to me: wrinkled, gray-haired, holding a cane. Your basic grandparent.

  We only see him two or three times a year, usually at a Chinese restaurant. He always orders moo goo gai pan and steals packets of soy sauce to take home. I often wonder what he does with them. He doesn’t live that far from us, but he and my mother don’t get along very well. He’s a scientist and says theater isn’t a real job. He’s still mad that she didn’t go to Harvard like he did.

  A car alarm goes off in the distance.

  “Maybe he was in a car accident?” Nicole suggests. “I don’t know why teenagers get a bad rap, because old people are way worse drivers.”

  “He doesn’t drive anymore.”

  “Maybe he wandered off.” Nicole taps her head. “My neighbor had Alzheimer’s. She got out all the time. The police always brought her home.”

  It kind of sounds like she’s describing a dog.

  “That’s so sad,” I say.

  Nicole nods. “Totally sad. The last time she ran away, she got hit by a car! How crazy is that?”

  I stare at her with my mouth open.

  “But I’m sure your grandfather’s fine,” she says.

  Then she flips back her hair and smiles. “Hey! Want to make some popcorn and watch a movie?”

  Warm air drifts through my bedroom window. We live in the Bay Area, in the shadow of San Francisco, and late-September nights can be cool. But it’s hot tonight, like summer is refusing to leave.

  I used to love how my bedroom was decorated, but lately I’m not so sure. The walls are covered with the painted handprints of me and my best friend, Brianna. We started doing them back in first grade and added more handprints every year. You can see my little handprints grow bigger, like a time capsule of my life.

  But we haven’t done any yet this school year, or even this summer, because Brianna found her passion: volleyball. She’s busy every second now with clinics and practices and weekend tournaments. The truth is, I’m not even sure if she’s still my best friend.

  It’s late when the garage door finally grinds open. I hear my mother talking to Nicole in the front hall, and I go to them.

  “Thanks for staying,” she tells Nicole.

  My mom looks frazzled. Her mascara is smudged beneath her eyes, her red lipstick chewed away. Her natural hair color is dirty blond like mine, but she colors it. Right now, it’s purple.

  “No problem,” Nicole replies. “Is your dad okay?”

  An unreadable expression crosses my mom’s face. “Oh, he’s fine. Thanks for asking. Do you need a ride home?”

  “I’m good!” Nicole says. “By the way, Lissa, I have some exciting news!”

  “Yes?”

  “I got a job at the mall! Isn’t that great?”

  “I didn’t know you were looking,” my mom says, confused.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think I’d get it. It’s such a big opportunity. The ear-piercing place at the mall!”

  “When do you start?” my mom asks.

  “That’s the hard part. They want me to start tomorrow afternoon. So I can’t watch Ellie anymore. I totally would have given you more notice, but …”

  “I understand,” my mom says, and I can hear the strain in her voice.

  Nicole turns to me. “I forgot to tell you. I get a discount! Isn’t that great? So come by anytime and shop.”

  “Uh, okay,” I say.

  “I better be going,” she says. “Good night!”

  “Good night,” my mother echoes.

  I stand in the doorway with my mother and watch her walk out into the night.

  “Did she just quit?” I ask. I’m a little in shock.

  My mother nods. “This is turning into a banner day.”

  I stare out into the night to catch a last glimpse of my babysitter, but see someone else: a boy with long hair. He’s standing beneath the old, dying palm tree on our front lawn. It drops big brown fronds everywhere, and my mom says it needs to come down.

  The boy is slender, wiry-looking. He looks thirteen, maybe fourteen? It’s hard to tell with boys sometimes.

  “You need to put your trash out,” the boy calls to my mom. Tomorrow is trash day and our neighbors’ trash cans line the street.

  “Would you please come inside already?” my mom tells the boy.

  “And when’s the last time you fertilized the lawn?” he asks. “There’s crabgrass.”

  “It’s late,” my mom says, holding the door open impatiently.

  I wonder if he’s one of my mom’s students. Sometimes they help her haul stuff in and out of her big, battered cargo van.

  “You have to maintain your house if you want it to maintain its value,” he says.

  “Now!”

  The boy reluctantly picks up a large duffel bag and walks into our house.

  He doesn’t look like the typical theater-crew kid. They usually wear jeans and T-shirts, stuff that’s easy to work in. This kid’s wearing a rumpled pinstripe shirt, khaki polyester pants, a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, and leather loafers. But it’s his socks that stand out the most: they’re black dress socks. You don’t see boys in middle school wearing those a lot. It’s like he’s on his way to a bar mitzvah.

  He stares at me with piercing eyes.

  “Did you make honor roll?”

  I’m startled, but answer anyway.

  “Uh, we haven’t gotten report cards yet.”

  Something about the boy seems familiar. His hair is dark brown, on the shaggy side, and the ends are dyed gray. An actor from one of my mom’s shows, maybe?

  “Who are you?” I ask him.

  He ignores me.

  “You need good grades if you’re going to get into a competitive PhD program.”

  “PhD program? She’s eleven years old!” my mother says.

  “You can’t start too early. Speaking of which,” he says, looking pointedly at my mother’s outfit, “is that what you wear to work?”

  My mom likes to raid the theater wardrobe closet at school. This morning, she left the house in a floor-length black satin skirt and matching bolero jacket with a frilly white poet’s shirt.

  “Maybe you should consider buying a nice pant-suit,” he suggests.

  “Still stuck in the Stone Age, I see,” she shoots back.

  Then he turns and looks at me, taking in my tank-top-and-boxer-shorts pajama set.

  He says, “Why are your pajamas so short? Whatever happened to long nightgowns? Are you boy-crazy like your mother was?”

  “All the girls her age wear pajamas like that,” my mom answers for me. “And I wasn’t boy-crazy!”

  “You must’ve been boy-crazy to elope,” he says.

  “I was in love,” she says through gritted teeth.

  “A PhD lasts a lot longer than love,” he replies. “It’s not too late to go back to school. You could still get a real degree.”

  Something about this whole exchange tickles at my memory. It’s like watching a movie I’ve already seen. I study the boy—the gray-tipped hair, the way he’s standing so comfortably in our hall, how his right hand opens and closes as if used to grasping something by habit. But it’s the heavy gold ring hanging loosely on his middle finger that draws my eye. It’s a school ring, like the kind you get in college, and it looks old and worn and has a red gem in the center.

  “I’ve seen that ring before,” I say, and then I remember whose hand I saw it on.

  I look at the boy.

  “Grandpa?” I blurt out.

  “Who were you expecting?” he asks. “The tooth fairy?”

  He seems like a thirteen-year-old boy, but when I look really closely I can see hints of my grandfather. The watery blue eyes. The slightly snarky set of his mouth. The way his eyebrows meet in the middle.

  “Is this some kind of magic?” I ask.

  The boy curls his lips
and looks at my mother. “You’re raising my granddaughter to believe in magic? This is what happens when you major in drama.” He says “drama” like it’s a bad word.

  “Whatever, Dad,” my mom says, sounding like a bored teenager.

  “This is science, plain and simple,” he says to me.

  But I don’t see anything simple about it and just shake my head.

  He gives an exasperated sigh. “It should be perfectly obvious. I engineered a way to reverse senescence through cellular regeneration.”

  I stare at him.

  “In layman’s terms: I discovered a cure for aging.” His voice shakes with excitement. “In effect, I have discovered the fountain of youth!”

  I don’t know what to believe. On the one hand, he sounds just like my grandfather. I’m half-tempted to see if he has any soy sauce in the pockets of his jacket. On the other hand, I’m not totally sure I believe any of it. Part of me wonders if this is just some weirdo who stole my grandfather’s ring and is tricking my mom. She’s a sucker for kids with sad stories.

  I turn to her. “Are you sure it’s Grandpa?”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s him, all right.”

  “Of course it’s me!” the boy says indignantly. He whips out an old man’s worn leather wallet and shows me his driver’s license. My grandfather’s cranky face stares back from the photo, and the look in his eyes is exactly the same as on the boy’s face.

  “This is so cool,” I whisper.

  “Cool? It’s historic! They’re going to give me a Nobel!” His voice gets louder. “Melvin Herbert Sagarsky will be a household name!”

  My mom yawns. She’s clearly unimpressed. Or maybe just tired. It’s pretty late.

  “I’m going to bed. Why don’t you bond with your granddaughter?” She gives my grandfather a look. “And don’t put anything strange in the refrigerator.”

  My mom tells stories of how when she was little, my grandfather would keep experiments in the refrigerator. There would be stacks of petri dishes next to the cottage cheese and butter.

  Then we’re alone in the kitchen. My grandfather’s stomach growls loudly.

  “Got anything to eat in this place?” he demands. “I’m starving.”