The Friendship Riddle by Megan Frazer Blakemore

them with us, though, because this house is too close to town and people wouldn’t like us to have bees. I still have some honey, though.”
    He told me about swarms, medicated syrup, and mite treatments, and how you get the queen in the mail in a small box. All the while I pictured him walking up to the hive, the bees crawling over his skin-and-bones body, and he trusts, just trusts that they won’t sting him.
    â€œI cried a little when I left my bees behind, but one of my old teachers offered to take them.”
    â€œThat’s funny,” I said.
    â€œHow is that funny?”
    â€œNot that you cried. I mean about the—”
    â€œDo you mean honey is funny? Because it rhymes? Rhymes aren’t necessarily funny, you know.”
    â€œNo, I meant that you keep bees and you’re into spelling bees.”
    â€œI’m not especially into spelling bees. I just like winning.”
    My mouth opened a little, and I closed it right up. Mum’s mother has an expression about how you shouldn’t leave your mouth open, because you’ll catch flies. In this room, who knew what all else might land in there. “You don’t care about the bee?”
    â€œNope,” he said. “I’m still going to crush you, though.” Then, after a brief hesitation, he added, “Sorry. My mom said I should be nice and try not to intimidate you about the bee.”
    He wasn’t intimidating me. He was angering me. Exasperating me, to use a spelling bee word. He didn’t even care about the bee, just winning—no matter what the contest. Rubik’s Cube, spelling bees, map quizzes in Ms. Lawson’s class—it was all the same to him: he wanted to win just to win.
    On a shelf above his desk were butterflies pinned inside wood-and-glass cases. “Where do you even get something like that?” I asked.
    â€œI made them!” He trotted over next to me. “I catch them outside and then put them in one of these.” He held up a glass jar with a white cotton ball in the bottom.
    â€œYou just wait until they run out of air?”
    â€œOf course not.” He twisted open the top and held it out to me. I breathed in and then rocked back. “Formaldehyde. I always have a couple of jars ready. You never know what kind of specimen you might find. I found that blue one outside our house when we first moved in. It was flitting around a peach tree. Isn’t it beautiful?”
    The pin was pressed right through its thorax. I closed my eyes, but it didn’t stop me from imagining the beautiful butterfly flitting around the bushes outside Lucas’s house, only to be unceremoniously dumped into a stinky glass jar. It was probably good that Lucas didn’t talk about this hobby at school.
    I turned around and examined the insects some more. There was a large beetle, its shell an oily yellow and blue. When I peered closer, it skittered away. “So this is what you do on a playdate?” I asked.
    â€œI’ve never had a playdate,” he replied.
    â€œNot a big bug-hunting crowd at your last school?”
    He pursed his lips.
    â€œInsect hunters,” I corrected myself. “Entomologists.”
    â€œMy dad used to say that entomology was wasted on the young.”
    Used to say
. I didn’t ask.
    â€œSo what do you want to do?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know. Normally you talk or play something.”
    â€œDo you want to play chess?”
    â€œI don’t know how.”
    â€œIt’s easy.” He stood up and went to the wall opposite the insects. This one was filled with books. He yanked out a thin brown one—so ugly, my heart actually fluttered that there might be a note in it—and tossed it to me.
Essential Chess.
While I flipped through it, he pulled out a board. “I’ll be black,” he said. “Which means you can be white.”
    â€œI’ve figured out that much, thanks.”
    â€œIt