The Fourteenth Goldfish Read online

  “There’s pizza,” I tell him.

  He stands at the counter and wolfs down the rest of the pizza.

  “The lab assistants live on this stuff when they run experiments at night,” he says.

  Then he goes to the fridge, takes out the milk, and pours himself a big glass. He drinks it and pours himself another.

  He waves the carton of milk at me and burps. “Make sure you take your calcium. Everything they say about bone density is true. I lost two inches in the last ten years of my life.”

  “You shrank?”

  “The perils of old age,” he says.

  “At least you got your hair back now,” I point out.

  “I got back more than my hair!” His eyes glitter. “My eyes are twenty-twenty, my hearing is perfect, and my arthritis is gone!” He wiggles his fingers.

  “What did you get picked up by the police for?” I ask.

  “They said I was trespassing on private property,” he says. “I got let off with a warning.”

  “Where?”

  “My laboratory!” His voice trembles with outrage. “I practically built that place! I have credits on nineteen of their patents, you know. You’d think they’d have some respect.”

  I nod even though I have no idea what a patent is.

  “Ever since the company brought in those fasttalking investors, everything’s been different. It’s all maximizing-profits this and minimizing-risks that. They have no respect for science.”

  Then he yawns. The energy seems to go out of him in a rush, like a switch flicked off, and his shoulders slump. The illusion fades, and all at once he looks like any other tired thirteen-year-old boy who needs a haircut.

  “Where am I sleeping?” he asks.

  I’m always the first one up in the morning because I like to cook breakfast. My mom hates cooking and jokes that she doesn’t know if I’m really her kid. But I feel comfortable in the kitchen. There’s an order to it, and it’s fun to experiment.

  Lately, I’ve been making what I call Crazy-Mixed-Up Pancakes. I use a basic pancake batter and add different ingredients. So far, I’ve made a s’mores version (chocolate, marshmallows, graham cracker crumbles), a banana split version (bananas, chocolate bits, maraschino cherry), and a piña colada one (pineapples, coconut).

  This morning, I make an old standby—peanut butter cup. I use peanut butter morsels and chocolate chips. I’m just plating up the pancakes when my grandfather walks into the kitchen. He’s wearing old-man pajamas, the button-up cotton kind, and his hair is tied back with one of my ponytail holders. He must have found it in the bathroom.

  “Something’s wrong with the toilet,” he tells me. “I had to use the plunger.”

  “That happens a lot. Want some pancakes?” I ask him.

  “Thanks,” he says, and takes a plate.

  He eats fast and then helps himself to seconds. Teenage boys really eat a lot, I guess.

  He’s got a bad case of bed head, something I’m all too familiar with; my hair’s the exact same way. It’s frizzy and flyaway and I’ve always hated it. I wonder if I got it from him.

  “I have a good spray that works on frizzies,” I tell him.

  He waves his spoon at me. “I have more important things to worry about than hair. I need to get my T. melvinus out of the lab. It’s what helped me sort out the mechanism for reversing senescence.”

  “What’s senescence?” It sounds like a terrible disease.

  “Senescence is the process of aging.”

  I was kind of right. “So what’s T. melvinus?”

  “It stands for Turritopsis melvinus. It’s a species of jellyfish.”

  “A jellyfish did this to you? Are you kidding me?”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “Why is it so hard to believe? There have always been examples of regenerative abilities in nature.”

  “There have?”

  My grandfather leans forward, his face intent. “Take the planarian flatworm. You can slice it in two and each part will grow into a new worm. The hydra, a freshwater creature, can actually regenerate body parts, and the sea anemone doesn’t appear to experience senescence at all.”

  I have never heard about any of this before.

  “Then there’s Turritopsis nutricula.” His voice is full of wonder. “T. nutricula is a jellyfish that can actually revert its body to the polyp stage. To its younger self!”

  This is so interesting. He’s so interesting. It’s like I’ve never really listened to him before. And maybe I haven’t. Usually when we’re together, he and my mom just bicker.

  “How do you know so much about this?” I ask.

  “Because I’ve been researching it for the last forty years. It’s my side project. I’ve had articles published, you know.”

  I’m starting to think that maybe I don’t know him at all. Not really. It’s like he’s been playing the part of Grandfather in a play, but underneath the makeup is something more. A real person.

  “A few months ago, an Australian diver in the Philippines contacted me because he read on the Internet that I was researching jellyfish. He thought he’d found an odd specimen of T. nutricula. I asked him to ship it to me. The typical T. nutricula is small, a few millimeters. The size of the nail on your pinkie finger.” He holds out his pinkie finger. “But the T. nutricula specimen he sent me was huge, more than three hundred millimeters.”

  “I always get confused about the millimeter-to-inches thing,” I admit.

  “It was a foot in diameter,” he explains. “And there were other anomalies. I knew it was a new species. I even named it: Turritopsis melvinus.”

  “Shouldn’t it have been named after the guy who found it?” I ask.

  He scoffs. “All he did was catch it. I identified it. I was the one who did all the work. I was the one who created the compound. I was the one who tested it on the mice.”

  “You experimented on mice?” That seems way worse than flushing goldfish down the toilet.

  “Adult mice,” he says. “A few days after I injected them with the compound, they reverted to an adolescent stage.”

  “They became teenagers?” I try to picture mice with pimples and long hair.

  “Exactly!” he exclaims. “So I injected it in myself and the rest is history! I was trying to get the rest of the T. melvinus specimen out of the lab when the rent-a-cop busted me.”

  I think for a moment.

  “Couldn’t you just call up your old bosses and tell them what happened? I mean, this is kind of a big breakthrough, right? I bet they’d be pretty excited.”

  “They don’t even know it’s there.” His gaze hardens. “Besides, they’ll just take all the credit. This is my discovery.”

  “Good morning, campers!” my mom trills.

  Today she’s wearing one of her standard outfits—a neon-purple dress that hits her above the knees and high black boots.

  My grandfather gasps when he sees her.

  “Melissa! You can’t go to work in that!”

  “What’s wrong with it?” my mother asks.

  “I can see the top of your thighs!”

  She waves off his concern and starts gathering her bags. “Let’s get moving or we’re going to be late.”

  “Late for what?” he asks.

  “School, of course.”

  “School?” he sputters. “I already went to school. I have two PhDs, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Too bad. You’re going. I called Bernadette this morning.” Bernadette is the middle school secretary and one of my mother’s friends.

  “What did you tell her?” I ask.

  She tips her head at my grandfather. “That Melvin here is my distant cousin’s kid. His dad died and his mom remarried a meth addict. He doesn’t get along with the new stepfather, who he secretly suspects started the fire that burned down the trailer with his dad in it. So he hitchhiked up here and I took him in.”

  “That’s really good,” I tell her.

  “Your dad will be pleased to h
ear it,” she said. “It’s from a play he wrote in college—Hamlet in Fresno. I directed it.”

  My grandfather interrupts us.

  “Why can’t I just stay here? I am perfectly capable of looking after myself!” He sounds like every other teenager in the world.

  “Did you forget that the police released you into my custody? I work with kids. I’m a teacher. I can’t have a thirteen-year-old truant in my house. Someone will see you and I’ll lose my job.”

  There’s a beat of silence as he stares at the floor.

  “Fine. I’ll go,” he mutters.

  “Great.” Then she adds, “By the way, you’re Ellie’s new babysitter.”

  At the end of fifth grade, there was a formal graduation ceremony. Everyone got dressed up, and parents came and took pictures. We even got a diploma with a ribbon around it.

  Afterward, my dad, my mom, her boyfriend, Ben, and I went out for dinner at my favorite Mexican place, a hole-in-the-wall where they give free refills of chips.

  “No offense, Ellie,” Ben said while we waited for our food. “I think it’s a little ridiculous to have a graduation for elementary school.”

  Ben doesn’t say much, but when he opens his mouth, it’s always interesting.

  “I think it’s nice to celebrate their achievement,” my mother said.

  Ben chuckled. “Getting through elementary school is hardly an achievement. Now, middle school? That’s a different story.”

  My father grimaced. “They should give you a medal for surviving that.”

  At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant. But I do now. Middle school is like one of those highway restrooms in the middle of nowhere. It’s dirty and smelly, and it’s crowded with strange people. By the time I graduated from elementary school, I knew everyone. I had watched them grow up and they had watched me. We knew who’d wet their pants in kindergarten, and whose father always screamed too loud at the coach during T-ball games. We had no secrets, and it was comfortable. But in middle school there are so many new kids. Some seem like they’re from different planets.

  Like the goth kid. He’s always in black—pants, T-shirt, thick jacket, heavy Doc Martens. He has a pierced ear, eyebrow, and nose; he must set off metal detectors in the airport. Then there are the two girls who dress like twins even though they’re clearly not. They wear the exact same outfits, down to the same socks. I’ve heard them talk in the halls and they finish each other’s sentences.

  I go through the hot-lunch line and look around for where to sit in the lunch court. We don’t have a cafeteria; we eat outside with seagulls hovering overhead. They’ve been known to swoop down and grab fries off trays.

  The girl who’s my lab partner in science has an open seat next to her. Her name’s Momo and she went to a different elementary school from me. But then I see Brianna; she’s with a bunch of girls from the volleyball team. The seat across from her is free, so I slide in with my bought lunch—crispy corn dog and potato wedges with orange slices.

  “You cut your hair?” I say, surprised.

  Brianna’s hair has always been long like mine. We got bangs at the same time, third grade. We even pool our money so we can buy cool ponytail holders with glittery bows and neon feathers and rainbow ribbons to share.

  But she won’t need those now. Her hair’s been chopped short, in a sharp angled bob. I’d never be able to pull off that sleek haircut—my hair’s way too crazy.

  “It’s easier for volleyball,” she explains.

  She looks pretty, but she doesn’t look like Brianna.

  I point to my lunch.

  “Look! A crispy corn dog!” I tell her.

  She snickers.

  It’s an inside joke. We both love corn dogs. We even made up a commercial featuring the crispy corn dog.

  I say my part, “You can do anything with a crispy corn dog. It slices. It dices.”

  Brianna chimes in, “The crispy corn dog can fold up into a blanket. You can nap on it!”

  We get more and more ridiculous.

  “It writes book reports!”

  “It makes dogs meow!”

  We laugh, and it almost feels like old times.

  I hold out my crispy corn dog.

  “You want half?”

  She hesitates and then gives a little shake of her bobbed head. “Coach is really on our case to eat healthy.”

  “Do you want to sleep over Saturday night?” I ask her.

  She looks uncomfortable. “Tournament.”

  “Right,” I say.

  I remember the time I went fishing at summer camp. I didn’t catch anything, no matter how many times I threw my line with the worm in the water.

  I listen as they talk volleyball. They think the coach is tough, some girl named Serena needs to work on her serve, the hotel they are staying at this weekend has a pool.

  One of the girls stands abruptly with her tray and says, “We don’t want to be late.”

  “Late for what?” I ask Brianna.

  “There’s a team meeting about our fund-raiser,” she explains. “Bake sale.”

  “Bye,” I say, but she’s already gone.

  I stare at my corn dog and wonder if I’m the stupid worm.

  A tray smacks down on the table across from me.

  “Can you believe this?” my grandfather demands.

  He’s wearing navy-blue polyester pants, a button-up shirt with a tie, and a V-neck sweater with his tweed jacket. He definitely stands out fashion-wise.

  “Three dollars for school lunch?” he says. “This is a bargain!”

  He polishes his corn dog off in a few bites and then looks at my untouched lunch.

  “Are you going to eat that?” he asks.

  “Crispy corn dog: it makes you young again,” I joke.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I sigh and push it over.

  The public bus after school is crowded, and someone’s been eating too much garlic. My grandfather has been complaining the whole way home.

  He’s not a fan of middle school. He says it’s boring and a waste of time, especially gym. But it’s the textbooks that have him really riled up. He waves his science book at me.

  “Can you believe it? Not a word! Not a footnote! Totally glossed over!”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Me! I should be in this book!”

  The bus stops and kids shuffle off.

  My grandfather stares at the textbook. “How can they not mention Sagarsky?”

  “Probably because Sagarsky is a quack,” a voice behind us says.

  We turn around. It’s the goth kid. He only takes the bus once in a while; he usually gets a ride from an older kid in a beat-up car.

  “A quack? A quack?” my grandfather sputters. “Who are you?”

  The kid introduces himself. “Raj.” He looks at me, a long tuft of black hair flopping over his forehead.

  “I’m Ellie. Ellie Cruz. And this is my gra—” I start to say, and stop myself. “My cousin. Melvin.”

  My grandfather glares at Raj. “What do you have against Sagarsky, anyway?”

  “My science teacher says it’s quacks like Sagarsky that give real scientists a bad name.”

  “Bad name? Sagarsky’s a respected scientist!” my grandfather protests.

  Raj shrugs. “Well, my teacher says he’s just another in a line of charlatans looking for the fountain of youth.”

  The bus brakes squeal.

  “This is our stop,” I tell my grandfather, pulling him after me. I look at Raj. “Nice to meet you.”

  He nods. “See you around.”

  My grandfather glowers at him as he passes.

  “Not if I have any say in the matter!”

  “I cast my leads!” my mother announces when she walks into the kitchen. “Let’s order takeout to celebrate!”

  She goes to the drawer where we keep menus and starts riffling through them.

  “How about Thai? Or Burmese?” she suggests. “Or there’s a new K
orean barbecue place I’ve been dying to check out.”

  “I don’t eat any of that stuff,” my grandfather says.

  “If you tried it, you might like it,” she cajoles him.

  A belligerent look crosses his face. “I don’t want to try it. I like Chinese food. It’s reliable. You can walk into any Chinese restaurant and know what you’re getting.”

  All this talk of Chinese food has made me hungry.

  “I’ll take a wonton soup,” I say.

  My mother sighs.

  “Fine,” she says, and a little of the excitement goes out of her voice.

  When my mom returns from picking up the food, we settle in on stools at the counter. My grandfather digs around in his carton suspiciously.

  “This doesn’t look like the moo goo gai pan I usually get. This looks spicy. You know I don’t like spicy food, Melissa.”

  “It’s regular old moo goo gai pan, Dad,” my mom says.

  My grandfather takes a bite. Delivers the verdict.

  “It’s not spicy,” he says.

  “Good,” my mother replies. “I was really worried.”

  “Humph,” he says. “Did you ask for extra soy sauce?”

  “Yes, Dad. It’s in the bag,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. “Well, in other news, the kids I cast as Emily and George are amazing!”

  My grandfather’s head snaps up. “You’re doing Our Town? That show is a snooze.”

  He’s right; I’ve seen it before and not much happens. It’s basically just about these people who live in a small town called Grover’s Corners. My mom likes to stage it because it has a big cast, so lots of kids can get a part.

  My mom starts lecturing him like he’s one of her students. “Excuse me, but Our Town is quite possibly the best play ever written about the totality of the human experience.”

  “Too bad it’s so boring,” my grandfather snarks.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s an amazing play. A hallmark of American playwriting. You just don’t have any flair for drama.”

  My grandfather yawns widely.

  The phone rings and I leap up to answer it.

  “Bonjour,” my dad says in a hearty voice.

  I take the phone into the hallway.