Project Mulberry Read Free Page A

of the front walk, and a back stoop big enough for the barbecue grill. But that's all. No yard.
    "
Bawk,
" Kenny said. "
Bawk-bawk.
" He bent his arms and flapped them like wings. "I'm a chicken,
bawk-bawk-bawk.
"
    I'd had lots of practice over the years ignoring Kenny's dorkiness, but this time I couldn't. His flapping wing hit my arm, and the rib in my hand went flying. It landed in the kimchee bowl.
    "Kenny!" I yelled.
    "It was an accident!" he yelled back. "I didn't mean to!"
    "Both of you, hush," my mom said. She picked up the rib and put it back on my plate. No way I was going to eat it now—it was all covered in kimchee juice. I kicked Kenny under the table.
    "Mom!" he yelled. "Julia kicked me!"
    What a baby. A snotbrain
and
a baby.
    "Okay, that's enough," my dad said. "Julia, clear the table, please."
    Kenny and my mom left the kitchen. He'd play a computer game and my mom would watch the news while my dad and I cleaned up.
    It wasn't fair that Kenny never had to help. My parents said he'd have to when he was older. Well, I was clearing the table when I was his age. Still, I liked that it was just me and my dad. It never took us long to clean up because we had a routine. Me standing at the table, my dad at the sink: I'd grab a plate, scrape it into the garbage can, hand it to him; he'd rinse it and put it in the dishwasher. By the time he did that, I had another plate ready for him. He didn't even have to look up; he'd just stick out his hand, and I'd put the plate right into it. We were like a machine—a scraping, rinsing, loading machine.
    We were almost done when Patrick knocked at the door and came in. He wasn't a member of the family, so he knocked, but he was
almost
a member of the family, so he came in without waiting for anyone to answer. He yelled hi as he went up to my room to get his backpack, then came down again.
    "Can I help?" he asked.
    "It's okay, Patrick, we're almost finished," my dad said.
    Patrick sat at the table and opened his backpack. Just then my mom came into the room.
    "I thought of a project you might be able to do," she said quietly.
    "Really?" I said at the same time that Patrick said, "What is it?" I stopped scraping the plate I was holding.
    My mom's eyes twinkled at me.
    "Worms," she said.
    ***
    I stared at her for a second. "
Worms?
" I said.
    My mom nodded.
    "We'd raise worms?" I said. "You mean, like, for fishermen to use as bait?"
    Right away a whole bunch of thoughts started jostling around in my mind. I turned to Patrick. "Maybe we could have them in an aquarium, but filled with dirt instead of water, and that way you could see them through the glass."
    Patrick looked doubtful. "Worms," he said slowly. "I don't know. ..."
    Then he started talking faster. "I read a book a while ago. There was this part where the people released bags and bags full of ladybugs on a farm because they were good for the plants. Or something like that. Somebody had to raise those ladybugs to get so many bagfuls, didn't they? Maybe we could raise ladybugs—"
    My mom laughed and held up her hand. "Slow down, you two. I wasn't thinking of earthworms. Or ladybugs."
    I said, "Well, what other kind of worms ... Oh, like caterpillars, you mean? 'The Life Cycle of the Monarch Butterfly' or something?"
    I didn't mean to sound impatient—I knew my mom was only trying to help. But raising caterpillars was more like a science-fair project, not a Wiggle project.
    "Sort of. No, not exactly." My mom took the plate out of my hand and gave it to my dad. "I was thinking you could do a silkworm project."
    I stared at her with my mouth half-open.
    "My grandmother raised silkworms in Korea," my mom said. "I used to help her. It's really quite interesting, and it's not like butterflies. I mean, it is in some ways, but it's more than that. Because at the end you get an actual product—the silk."
    "It's sort of like sheep," Patrick said. "Only instead of sheep and wool, it's caterpillars and silk...."
    I was