Amphibian by Carla Gunn Page A

saying the names Hugh Jass and Oliver Closov and Mike Hawk. She didn’t believe him when he tried to explain those ones either.
    Before this year I got a misbehaviour only twice. The first time was when I said
whatever
to a teacher when she told me that I’d have to stay in at recess because I forgot to get my agenda signed to show that I did my homework even though she knew I did all my homework. I thought I had said it quietly enough, but I was wrong and had to go see Mr. Legacie.
    I actually like Principal Legacie. When he’s on lunch-hour duty he often asks me if I have any interesting animal facts to share. I can tell that he’s really interested because he asks questions about what I’ve said instead of just nodding his head and smiling like a lot of people do – including my mother sometimes. One day I told him all about barnacles, which stay attached in the same place for their whole lives. I wasn’t sure if I should tell him about how they make babies since they don’t move around, but I figured I would take a chance with Principal Legacie because I’ve never seen him look shocked or even surprised – I figure that’s because of all the weird stuff he sees every day. So I told him that I read in a book that male barnacles have penises that are four times as long as their bodies and these come out of the shell and search around for a female nearby. Principal Legacie laughed, but then one kid started taking off his pants and he had to go stop him so we didn’t get to talk about it more.
    But all that happened before this year. I have a feeling this will be the year of the misbehaviour for me, just like every year is for Bird. That’s because of what Bird and I are planning for Cuddles.
    At lunch, Bird and I went back to the big apple tree by Mr. Byers’ house and climbed up really high. Usually Bird tests out Mrs. Wardman’s idea that something bad will happen to him if he goes past the place she told him he could go. So far he’s gotten about three math books away from the tree and nothing has happened to him yet.
    When he got past where he was supposed to be and then jumped back, he covered up his footprints by brushing a fir tree branch overthe snow and then he threw the branch away. He said that if the Crime Scene Investigation Unit came to the school to see who had been going past the line, they wouldn’t be able to tell because all they’d see were the tree branch marks. The tree branch wouldn’t have any fingerprints on it because he was wearing wool mittens. They might find traces of wool on the branch but that wouldn’t help them much since many of the other kids have wool mitts too.
    I told Bird that there might be eyewitnesses who saw me and him by the tree and that could lead to us being interviewed as suspects. But Bird said they wouldn’t be able to hold us if they didn’t have any evidence so he thinks we’re out of the woods, but really we were in the woods.
    I told Bird that they might be able to match up the wool they find on the tree branch with the wool on his mittens because no two pairs of mittens would be exactly the same. Bird said that if the CSI s show up at the school, he’ll hide the mitts somewhere and put on his spare pair.
    I said, ‘But where would you hide them on such short notice?’ And he said he would just put them in some other kid’s pocket. I told him to put them in Lyle’s. But then I told Bird that flakes of his skin would be in the mittens and that the skin would be his DNA and not Lyle’s. He said, ‘Oh.’ I think Bird has decided to take his chances.
    Today Bird didn’t try getting more than three books away from the line because he wasn’t himself. He was worrying about taking his misbehaviour form home to his parents. His father said that the next time he got one, he would be in big, big trouble. Bird said that usually means that he won’t