The Mealworm Diaries Read Free Page B

afraid she might step on something breakable.
    â€œWelcome. Welcome. I’m glad you’ve come,” she had said when they first arrived, and she had stretched out her hand to shake his as if he were a grown-up. “Call me Milly,” she said. Jeremy had been relieved that she hadn’t tried to hug him. He’d been hugged too often, by people he hardly knew. He decided that very first day that Milly was all right. She didn’t try to boss him around or pepper him with questions.
    They sat for a while, Milly rocking, Jeremy staring toward Queen Street where the streetcars ran, as if by watching he could make his mother come home earlier. Their pocket of silence seemed to amplify the noises of the city. There was a screech of tires, followed by the clang of a streetcar’s bell and a horn, blaring. A siren wailed, paused as if to take a breath, then wailed again. The whup, whup, whup of a helicopter beat across the sky above them. Toronto was loud. Would he ever get used to the noises?
    A couple of kids whipped by on rollerblades. He watched. It looked like fun. There had been no place to rollerblade where they lived in Nova Scotia. The side roads were dirt and gravel. Only the main roads were paved. But here? He thought about asking his mother for some, then decided not to. They weren’t going to be here that long anyway.
    â€œAutumn’s coming,” Milly said. “There’s something in the air.”
    Jeremy nodded. He gazed toward Queen Street again. From his perch he could see cars flash by the end of their street. He wouldn’t be able to see his mother get off a streetcar, but he’d know the minute she turned the corner and started toward the house.
    He sat, watching the street so carefully that he didn’t notice Thomas, Milly’s ginger cat, until a cold nose probed his hand. Jeremy didn’t move as Thomas folded himself into sitting position and settled down beside him. The cat sat so close that Jeremy could feel his warmth, and he reached over and began to scratch behind Thomas’s ears. It wasn’t long before the cat’s body vibrated with a deep rumbling purr.
    â€œHe likes you,” Milly said. “He’s not always so friendly. Did you have a cat back home?”
    â€œA dog,” Jeremy said, but the catch in his throat stopped him from saying more.
    He was with his father the day they found the dog. It was a blue and brown and golden day, just like this one. Was that only last year? No, it must have been two years ago now. He and his father had been walking along the riverbank, not talking, just walking. After an hour or so they stopped on a mossand lichen-covered rock that jutted out over the water. His father settled on the ground and closed his eyes against the sun. Jeremy tied a line to a stick and baited his hook with a bug. Time and again he tossed it into the water, but if there were fish, they weren’t biting.
    For a while the only sounds were the water tumbling over stones and the short sharp call of a kingfisher. Then there was a new sound. His father sat up, scanning the riverside brush and small trees. The sounds came again from somewhere behind that, from the darkness of taller trees—grunting, whining, whimpering. Even now Jeremy remembered his fear: the tightness in his chest, his breath in his throat. Bear? They had passed some scat earlier.
    â€œIt’s dry and old,” his father had said. “Nothing to worry about. That bear’s long gone.”
    But now Jeremy saw his father stand and tilt his head to listen. Then, without a word, he walked away through the dry grass, pushed through the shrubbery and the saplings and disappeared.
    â€œDad?”
    No answer.
    â€œDad?” Panic filled Jeremy’s mouth with a taste like metal. “DAD!”
    â€œJer? C’mere. Ya gotta see this.”
    Relief. It couldn’t be a bear. He shoved his way through the undergrowth in the direction