Grasshopper Magic Read online

  Abner’s nose itched. He twisted his neck to see if he could rub it on his shoulder, and caught a flash of movement through the kitchen doorway. His brother and sisters had opened the jar of grasshoppers and spread them out on the table.

  “Hold still, please,” said Mrs. Delgado again. “What are you trying to see?”

  Abner pointed through the doorway. “They’re counting the grasshoppers they caught.”

  “Ah!” said Mrs. Delgado. “They have caught grasshoppers to eat!”

  Abner looked at her. Was she serious?

  “Not to eat,” he said. “Just to get rid of them.”

  Mrs. Delgado almost dropped her tape measure. “Get rid of them? Oh, no! Such crunchy, delicious treats!”

  Abner looked at her in horror. Tate, Derek, and Celia poked curious faces around the door.

  Mrs. Delgado laughed. “Back in my home country, we would catch all the grasshoppers we could find. Then we would eat them like you eat pretzels!”

  Abner didn’t say what he was thinking. But his face showed it.

  Mrs. Delgado laughed and laughed. Her upper arms shook, and she hugged herself to keep the laughter in. “You have never tried them, or you would not twist up your face like that, as if you had tasted something bad. I roast them with garlic and salt, and they are oh so good! My own little boy, he loves them. I make them for you for lunch, no?”

  “No,” said Abner firmly. “Wait—I mean yes, ‘no’ is the right word. I mean …” He looked at his brother and sisters, despairing.

  Tate looked right back at him. “It would be a very brave thing,” she said, “to eat a grasshopper.”

  A salty smell of garlic filled the house. It smelled like pretzels baking, only not quite. Abner stood perfectly still as Mrs. Delgado fitted the half-sewn pieces of his costume on him. He tried not to think about what was in the oven.

  He heard a clatter and some scraping sounds from the kitchen. Derek was probably opening drawers. Celia was probably dropping silverware. And Tate was probably making the sandwiches.

  Normally, Abner was fussy about his sandwiches. If the sandwich was peanut butter and jelly, he liked his bread toasted. If it was ham and cheese, he liked Swiss cheese and extra ham. If it was tuna salad, he liked sweet pickles chopped in with the celery.

  But now he didn’t care what they gave him, so long as it didn’t include bugs. He looked at the picture of General Abner Willow. The man had been brave, sure, but had he ever eaten a grasshopper?

  “There!” said Mrs. Delgado. “You can get down. And now to the kitchen!”

  The four Willow children watched with horror as Mrs. Delgado removed a tray of small, lumpy brown objects from the oven. Even when they were baked, there was no hiding that they were bugs. Little legs stuck in the air like bent twigs. Big, crusty heads looked at them with glazed golden eyes.

  Abner tried not to shudder.

  Mrs. Delgado was humming to herself. She swept the grasshoppers off the tray and into a large bowl. She handed the bowl to Tate, who nearly dropped it.

  “You will take them to the porch to cool, no?” said Mrs. Delgado. “Abner will help me carry my things out to the car. My neighbor, she cannot watch my little boy anymore today, so I will sew the rest at my home.”

  Abner felt a wave of relief as he stacked the bolts of fabric in Mrs. Delgado’s backseat. She was leaving. Soon she would be gone, and she would never know if they ate the grasshoppers or not.

  But as Mrs. Delgado walked out with her sewing machine, she stopped on the porch and set it down. “Now!” she said, beaming all over her dimpled face. “Let’s see if you like these grasshoppers I have baked!”

  Abner stared at the bowl of shiny brown bugs. He didn’t think he could do it.

  “Don’t worry about the wings. They will not get stuck in your teeth,” said Mrs. Delgado. “I pulled them off for you.”

  Derek clutched his stomach and turned away. Celia put her hands over her mouth.

  Abner saw Mrs. Delgado’s happy face begin to look worried. Had they hurt her feelings? Maybe she missed the place where she had grown up, a place where everyone knew that grasshoppers were a perfectly good snack.

  Just get it over with, he told himself. You only have to eat one. You can barf later if you need to.

  Before he could change his mind, Abner popped a grasshopper in his mouth. It felt warm and twiggy, but he told himself it was just an extra-bumpy pretzel. He gritted his teeth and bit down. It crunched. And squished.

  He swallowed very fast.

  He ran his tongue around his teeth to make sure there were no legs stuck there. The taste that was left on his tongue was … sort of buggy. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he had expected. He smiled at Mrs. Delgado in the joy of his relief.

  “You like my grasshoppers?” she cried. “Wonderful, bueno, very good! And now who else will try?”

  Celia and Derek put their hands behind their backs.

  “I might,” said Tate, “a little later.”

  Mrs. Delgado laughed again. She really was a remarkably cheerful person, Abner thought, for someone who liked to cook bugs.

  “You will enjoy them,” said Mrs. Delgado. “My little boy, he likes them very much, but I do not often have the time to catch them. And he is only two, so he cannot catch them very well on his own.”

  “Take some home for him!” urged Abner. “Take them all!”

  Tate ran to the kitchen and returned with a plastic bag. “You can put them in this!”

  “Oh, I couldn’t take them all. I must leave enough for you, and your parents, too. But I will take a few,” she said, scooping a handful into the bag. “I will save them for my little boy—all but this one.” She popped it in her mouth, and the children heard the crunch.

  “Mmmm! So good!” She hefted the sewing machine in her sturdy arms. “Your costume, it will be ready tomorrow morning. You come to my house at the corner of Oak and Main Streets, no? The parade, it starts across the road, at the school.” She walked to the car with a light, springy step. “¡Adios!” she called. “Goodbye!”

  “Wow, she’s really strong,” said Tate. “She’s almost bouncing on her toes, and she’s carrying that heavy sewing machine.”

  “She’s just a happy, bouncy sort of person,” said Abner. He sat down, feeling good. He had done it. He had eaten a grasshopper, and none of the others had dared. Maybe he was getting braver, after all.

  Derek and Celia were looking at him with awe. Tate gazed at the bowl, still half-filled with grasshoppers. “How was it, Abner?” she asked. “How did it taste?”

  “Not bad,” said Abner, “for a bug. But I don’t want to eat any more. I almost barfed right then and there.”

  “No joke,” said Derek. “It’s weird to eat grasshoppers.”

  “I wonder,” said Tate. “Maybe people just like the foods they’re used to. I heard that people in other countries think the foods we eat are weird. Somebody told me once that only Americans like peanut butter.”

  “Really?” said Derek. “How could you not like peanut butter?”

  Tate shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I heard. Anyway, Mrs. Delgado and everybody in her country like grasshoppers. So they’re probably worth a try.”

  Abner heard an unmistakable crunch. He looked up to see Tate with a grasshopper between her teeth.

  Derek and Celia looked at Tate with disbelief.

  “Hey, they’re pretty good,” said Tate, and she reached for another.

  Abner’s mouth fell open. Tate had wrecked everything. He only felt brave because he had done something no one else dared to do. So now that Tate had eaten a grasshopper, he would have to eat two. No, three—no, four—

  Abner looked at Tate in horror. She had taken a whole handful! She was eating them like potato chips!

  He pulled the bowl toward himself. “Listen,” he said, “quit it, Tate! You wanted me to eat the grasshoppers, so I’m eating the grasshoppers! I’m going to eat all of them!”

&nbs
p; He crammed the crunchy brown bugs into his mouth as if he were eating a whole bag of pretzels at one sitting. He blocked Tate with his shoulder as he scooped the bowl clean. He chewed and swallowed and did not throw up. And when he finished the last one, he leaned back and gave a long, satisfied belch.

  There. Now he really was the bravest.

  “Well, that was piggy,” said Tate after a silence.

  Derek grinned. “It was kind of awesome, though.”

  Celia gazed at her big brother with respect. “You ate a whole bowl of bugs.”

  “I sure did!” Abner was filled with sudden energy. “Come on, Seal,” he said, calling her by her baby name. “I’ll swing you around by your hands.”

  Celia stood up at once. That was one of her favorite things to do. She reached for Abner’s hand and held on tight as he jumped off the porch.

  He jumped off the porch, but he didn’t stay on the ground. He bounced up. He bounced as high as the roof, and Celia bounced with him, her pigtails flying and her hand gripping Abner’s in a panic.

  Abner’s brain went into shock. But his body reacted, even in the air. He grabbed Celia’s free arm and pulled her in tight. He didn’t know how he had jumped so high, but he knew he could not drop his little sister.

  Tate and Derek stared, openmouthed. Their heads tilted backward, then forward, as Abner and Celia began to come down.

  They hit the ground with a solid thud. Celia stumbled and clutched Abner with both hands. He took a quick step to get his balance, and they bounced up again.

  Sproing! Up they went, higher than ever. Abner scraped his arm against a tree branch. Celia’s hair got caught in some twigs and yanked painfully as she came down.

  “Let go of me!” shrieked Celia as they dropped to the ground.

  Abner let her hands go as he landed. He fell onto his knees and stared wildly at his brother and sisters.

  “Don’t move!” Tate called. “I’m coming!” She jumped off the porch steps and headed toward Abner and Celia. But she never got there. Her first step bounced her high into the oak tree. She grabbed a branch, hung there, and looked down.

  “Wow,” said Derek. He leaped up. “It’s magic! It’s happening again!”

  Derek jumped up and down and looked at his feet in disappointment. “Hey, it doesn’t work for me.”

  “Me neither,” said Celia, who was trying it herself.

  Tate let go of her branch and climbed down. When her feet hit the ground, she sprang up again, and again. Finally she landed on her hands and knees next to Abner, breathing hard. Carefully, she rolled over and sat on the grass, with her legs straight out in front of her.

  “It must be grasshopper magic,” she said. “That’s why Derek and Celia can’t jump like we can. They didn’t eat any grasshoppers.”

  “But Mrs. Delgado didn’t bounce like this,” Abner argued.

  “She only ate one grasshopper,” said Tate.

  “Plus, she’s heavier,” said Derek. “And she was carrying that big sewing machine.”

  “Sit on Abner’s feet, Derek,” Tate said. “Maybe you can keep him on the ground.”

  Derek sat on his brother’s feet and gripped his legs. “Okay, now see if you can still jump.”

  Abner bent his knees a little. Then he tried a hop.

  “Wheeeee!” cried Derek as they sailed into the air.

  “Fall forward!” cried Tate as Abner and Derek came down again. “Don’t let your feet touch the ground!”

  Abner did not want to fall forward. He thought he might squish Derek.

  Thump!

  “Let’s keep bouncing!” shouted Derek as they went up again. “We’re grasshoppers!”

  Abner laughed out loud as the air whistled past his ears. If he had to be a grasshopper boy, he might as well enjoy it. He got a good grip under Derek’s arms, and the next time they came down, Abner sprang up with all his strength. They bounced so high, they startled three crows right out of a tree. The boys leaped all over the yard in great, bounding grasshopper jumps, chasing the crows and whooping with glee.

  Celia looked at Tate. “It does look like fun,” she said. “I’m not scared anymore.”

  Tate bent over to let Celia get on her back. And then they were off, too, leaping, almost flying with each springy bound.

  “Let’s go on top of the house!” cried Derek.

  Abner took three big jumps and dropped Derek gently on a part of the roof that was almost flat. Then he bounced once and landed on his hands and knees, his feet tucked up behind him. “Yeeouch!” He sat up on the roof shingles, rubbing his knees.

  “It worked,” said Derek. He stood up and shaded his eyes as Tate came in for a landing, with Celia on her back.

  “Oooof!” said Tate, scraping to a stop. Celia tumbled off, and Tate caught her just before she slid out of reach.

  “Careful,” Abner told Celia. “If you and Derek fall off, you won’t bounce.”

  The rooftop was patchy with moss, old strips of tar paper, and shingles that looked as if they’d been there a long time. Abner and Tate didn’t want to crawl over the rough shingles on their hands and knees. But Celia and Derek walked all over the roof, their bodies at a slant.

  “Hey! There’s my rubber ball!” Derek’s voice came floating over the roof’s peak. “It got stuck in the gutter!”

  Celia had found the brick chimney top. She didn’t want to mention it to the others, but she wasn’t sure Santa could get down such a small hole.

  Abner and Tate sat side by side, taking in the view. The house was at the top of a hill and was ringed with trees. Their long gravel driveway curved down to a stone arch bridge over a blue river, and after that were farmers’ fields and barns and tall silos. The dust still hung over the gravel roads where Mrs. Delgado’s car had passed. In the distance, they could see the clustered buildings of the town.

  “I bet the parade will go down Main Street,” said Tate. “Do you think you’ll read your speech on the courthouse steps?”

  Abner was hot and sweaty, and he didn’t want to talk about the parade or the speech. He wiped his forehead and changed the subject. “Let’s jump down and get some lemonade. I’m baking up here.”

  The Willow children sat on the porch, cooling off. Abner and Tate had their feet up on the railing so they wouldn’t accidentally start bouncing. Derek had found a book on insect facts and was reading parts of it out loud.

  “Hey, listen,” he said. “A grasshopper can leap twenty times the length of its body!”

  “That sounds about right,” said Abner, who had made some amazing leaps in the backyard.

  “Let me see that,” said Tate. She scanned the page and then said, “Here we go.” She stabbed a sentence with her forefinger. “ ‘Grasshopper eggs are laid one to two inches underground, and stay there through the winter.’ That’s it! That’s how the magic got in. The grasshoppers were underground all that time, just soaking it up.”

  “We’d better figure out how to deal with it, though, before Mom and Dad get home,” said Abner.

  Tate said, “Maybe we’ll use it up faster if we keep on bouncing.”

  “Abner will have to bounce a lot more than Tate,” said Celia. “She only ate a handful. He ate half a bowl.”

  Derek nodded. “He’s got a lot more grasshopper magic to get rid of. Hey, Abner, maybe we can weigh you down with rocks! We can make you as heavy as Mrs. Delgado, and you can carry heavy things, too, like Celia and me!”

  “That might help,” said Abner. “Only I ate so many. Mrs. Delgado just ate one.”

  “But she brought more home with her,” Celia said. “When she eats them, she’s going to really start bouncing.”

  “Mrs. Delgado isn’t going to eat them,” said Derek. “Remember? She said she was going to give them to—” He stopped abruptly.

  There was a stricken silence. They all remembered what Mrs. Delgado had said.

  “She’s going to give them to her little boy,” Tate finished in a whisper. “And he’s only two.”
/>
  The four Willows looked at one another. They knew the trouble a two-year-old could get into if he was able to bounce higher than his mother could reach.

  “He could bounce into traffic,” said Celia. “He might get run over!”

  “He could bounce into a lake,” said Derek. “He might drown!”

  Tate’s face was pale. “He could bounce high enough to hit a power line. He might get electrocuted.” She turned to Abner. “We have to get those grasshoppers back!” She gave a great bounding leap toward the road.

  “Wait!” Abner shouted, bouncing after her. “Stop!”

  Tate looked at him wildly. “We can’t wait. She might be giving him the grasshoppers right this minute!”

  Abner shook his head. “First, let’s call her house.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Tate bounded back to the porch, crashed into the banister to stop herself, and grabbed Derek’s and Celia’s hands. “Go in and look on the message board,” she said. “Mom wrote down Mrs. Delgado’s number there. I’ll crawl inside and make the call.”

  Abner sat on the porch steps, thinking hard. The general wouldn’t have ridden straight into battle without a plan. Abner wasn’t going to, either. The first thing he had to figure out was how to keep the bouncing under control.

  By the time Tate and the others came back, he had worked out a long, low bounce, a flat-foot shuffle, and a side-of-the-foot step. That would have to be enough. “Did you talk to Mrs. Delgado?” he asked.

  Tate said, “No, but I left a message. I said not to let anyone eat the grasshoppers, because we had to show them to our dad to get the money.”

  “Not bad,” Abner said. “It sounds kind of selfish, but it’s better than telling her they’re magic. No grownup would believe that.”

  “But we can’t just wait and hope she’ll bring them back,” said Tate. “We have to do something.”

  “We will,” said Abner. “We’re going to bounce all the way to her house at Oak and Main.”