Turtle Boy Read online

  “COWABUNGA!” he calls as he jumps from the excavator. He doesn’t drop straight down, but rather, he steps off and shoves away from the side of the machine with one foot. He hits the ground and absorbs the impact with his legs, dropping into a crouch with one hand on the ground.

  “DID YOU SEE THAT!” he shouts. “WHOO! L’ART DU DE-PLACE-MENT!” He’s holding up his good arm and marching around in victory until he bumps against the chain-link fence.

  He’s on the other side.

  “Uh-oh,” he says. “How are you going to get in?”

  “How are you going to get out?” I ask.

  * * *

  • • •

  We walk along the length of the fence, and a few minutes later, near some high grasses, the lawn has been dug away—not exactly a tunnel, but deep enough that I can get down on my back and shove myself under inch by inch. I stand up and brush clumps of dirt and grass off my shirt and pants.

  I’m not alone in my sanctuary, but at least I’m back in the Back 40.

  We walk for a long time, looking for a suitable place for Max to injure himself on camera. First, he considers the old wooden fence that runs along one section of the boundary of the Back 40, but it’s full of splinters. Then he suggests we go back and film at the excavator, but that’s obviously a terrible idea.

  I purposely lead him in the opposite direction, deeper into the Back 40, down a hill and through a wooded area. I don’t usually come here because there are so many mosquitoes.

  “Come on!” says Max. “I think I see a pond!”

  Max plows ahead under the shade of the trees. The branches grab and scratch as we push through them. I hope I can find a trail that will loop back to the parking lot without going past the excavator.

  I pass through a cloud of mosquitoes, waving my arms like a windmill to shoo them from my face.

  “Max,” I say. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  “What are you getting so freaked out about? I thought you were Mr. Back 40!”

  Before I can answer, I hear him gasp.

  About fifteen feet before us, there’s a sign with a skull and crossbones on it.

  “Awesome!” he says. “It’s a pirate hideout!”

  “No, we have to go back. That symbol means there’s poison ivy.”

  “Oh, whatever,” he says. “It won’t hurt us if we don’t touch it. Remember the thing from Ms. Kuper’s class? ‘Leaves of three, let them be.’ ”

  “ ‘Skull and bones, head for home,’ ” I say, walking back toward the trail.

  Then Max lets loose a loud whoop and begins to charge forward through the trees. I follow cautiously, eyes peeled for poison ivy, until we arrive at the edge of a pond. This is nothing like the marshy area, full of cattails and reeds, where I caught my other specimens. Here, the water is deeper, wider, alive—not just with the ripples in the breeze but with a swarm of tadpoles.

  I kneel down to look closer. It’s hideous, and also sort of beautiful, in a way. For a few minutes, nothing exists except me, the pond, and the tadpoles. No Max. No school. No Turtle Boy. Only this living, underwater cloud.

  “Ooh!” says Max, suddenly pointing over my shoulder. “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”

  I focus farther out and see it: a small turtle climbs out of the water to bask on a log. It’s about four or five feet away from shore.

  “Turtle,” Max says under his breath. “What kind is it?”

  I open my mouth, but I can’t speak.

  Yellow flecks on the shell and a bright yellow chin: a Blanding’s turtle.

  They’re rare; super-rare. I desperately want it.

  “We should catch it,” Max says. “Come on!”

  He starts taking off his shoes, and I realize what’s happening.

  “You’re going in the water?”

  “Well, it’s not going to swim to us. Come on!”

  He strips down to his underwear, but I don’t move. I can’t do this. I’m terrified of going in water that isn’t a pool, especially water where I can’t see the bottom. I’m certain there’s leeches in there.

  Suddenly, Max leaps forward, arms extended, and he splashes into the pond. At first, I think he’s slipped and fallen in too deep, but no, he’s standing—or crouching, actually—and he’s thrusting his good arm beneath the surface.

  Then he rises, waist-deep, holding the turtle with one palm against the crook of his braced arm. He looks as shocked as I am.

  It’s small, and it rotates its legs, as if swimming through the air.

  “Don’t drop it,” I say. “Give it here.”

  I take the turtle and lift it up to look at the plastron, the under shell. If it’s a female, there will be an indentation.

  “It’s a male,” I say.

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  I turn and start walking back up the trail toward my bike. Max is calling after me, but I don’t answer. My heart is pounding. I’ve never seen a Blanding’s turtle in real life.

  And this one’s mine.

  Four terrariums. Five turtles.

  I was so excited to get my hands on the Blanding’s turtle, I forgot to consider where I’d keep it.

  My old box turtle and the new Blanding’s turtle will need to be roommates. I lower the Blanding’s turtle into my box turtle’s tank. The two turtles ignore each other. I fetch a housewarming present: some live crickets. As I’m scooping them out of the carrier with a plastic tube, I hear the roiling of water and hurry over to see the smaller Blanding’s turtle nipping at the neck of the larger box turtle.

  I was afraid this would happen. I drop a few crickets on opposite sides of the tank. The turtles continue to tussle for a few seconds until they freeze, sensing the crickets. The Blanding’s turtle drifts off, away from the box turtle, and then each of them bolts after its own cricket. They snap up their treats and float, satisfied, for a few minutes. Maybe they’re done fighting.

  For the rest of the day, I stay in my room, reading and keeping an eye on the new turtle, and at about four o’clock, Mom comes home. I hear the creak of the stairs and a knock on my door, and now I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake: I should have intercepted her downstairs. In a moment, she’ll be in my room. Last summer, when I brought the box turtle home, she gave me a stern talking-to. No more terrariums. No more turtles. If she notices the new turtle, she’ll definitely make me let it go.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

  Her tone is much nicer than when she left. Maybe she feels bad for giving me a hard time earlier. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that the box turtle has climbed up on top of the basking platform, but the Blanding’s turtle has crawled into the hiding area. If it stays there, I’m safe.

  Then, as if reading my mind, Mom looks directly at the terrarium and gives it an odd look.

  “That’s not a new turtle, is it?” she asks.

  “It isn’t new,” I say truthfully. “That’s my Terrapene carolina. I’ve had it forever.”

  From my spot on the bed, however, I can see the Blanding’s turtle starting to rustle around.

  I tell it in my head, Stay there.

  The Blanding’s turtle relaxes its limbs. It’s looking at me.

  Mom shrugs. “I thought I’d heat some chicken soup for an early dinner,” she says. “I’ve only got the canned kind, but I’ll doctor it up.”

  “Yum!” I say. “I’m starving! When can we eat?”

  “Come down in ten minutes,” she says, and gives me a strange look before shutting the door.

  I flop onto my bed with a loud sigh. I can hear the turtles in their terrariums. And I can hear Mom’s feet on the stairs. If I had really good ears, on the other side of town, I’d be able to hear Dena’s Bat Mitzvah party. I’d hear the sound of kids dancing and laughing and having fun and not carin
g whether or not I’m there.

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s the middle of the night. I awaken to the sound of splashing water. I roll over, flip on a terrarium lamp, and peer through the glass to see the large box turtle’s jaw clamped onto the back claw of the Blanding’s turtle.

  I leap out of bed as the Blanding’s turtle thrashes to get free and pull it out of the terrarium. Holding it up to the light, I watch as a bead of blood wells around its claw. The box turtle has bitten one of its toenails off—maybe even the toe. It’s bleeding badly.

  When a turtle is injured, it needs to be kept warm or it can go into shock and die. Quickly, I gather three lamps from three terrariums and grab my two cricket carriers. I lift the lids off the carriers and dump several hundred crickets from one into the other. This means I’m mixing adults and maturing crickets, which will screw up the colony a bit, but I can’t worry about that now. I steal a dish of water from the musk turtle and position my three heat lamps to concentrate their light down into the cricket carrier. The Blanding’s turtle has crawled a few steps across my bed, leaving a few tiny red streaks. I lift it gently and lay it in its new infirmary.

  I can’t keep it there for more than a day or two. I can’t put it back with the box turtle. And now, I can’t let it go, not with an injury. Tomorrow, I’ll have to come up with an excuse to go to Herb’s Herps so I can buy a larger terrarium, one that can house two turtles. Then I’ll need to cook up a way to justify another terrarium to Mom. But it’s even more complicated than that; large terrariums are expensive, and I only have about twenty dollars.

  How did I get myself into this mess?

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day, I’m at Herb’s Herps, and I push through the curtain of long, transparent plastic strips that keep the warmth and humidity in the live-animal section of the store, even on cold days. The air is musty and it’s very quiet. That’s what I like about it here. Most herps—like turtles, frogs, and snakes—don’t move much. They like to find a nice spot where they won’t be bothered. They can sit motionless for ages.

  Gwen clumps over in her black boots, wearing her usual green apron over denim overalls. She’s the only bad thing about Herb’s Herps. She always tries to lecture me about herps when I’m the one who should be working in a place like this. I know at least ten times more than she does, even though she’s probably in high school.

  “What’s the cheapest thirty-gallon terrarium?” I ask.

  “Is it for an iguana?” she asks. She’s taunting me. She knows I only do turtles.

  “It doesn’t need to be watertight,” I add, ignoring her question.

  She points to a small tank on a shelf. The price tag says $120.

  “I only have twenty dollars,” I say.

  “Well, you can’t buy part of a terrarium,” she says. “It’s pretty much all or nothing. Better start saving your allowance.”

  “I have to construct an infirmary right away,” I say. “I have a turtle with a major injury.”

  “What kind of injury?” she asks, getting suddenly serious.

  “Territory squabble with another turtle,” I say. “It got bit.”

  She looks up toward the cash register, where Herb Tsab, the owner of the store, sits with his nose buried in a book on herpetology. He’s kind of a big deal among herpetologists—he even has his own Wikipedia page. He came to Wisconsin from a small town near Hanoi about forty years ago. I’ve read about how he was trying to start a marine conservation program there, but the Viet Nam War ruined it. He moved here with a large group of Hmong refugees. Hmong is an ethnic group that allied with America during the fighting. I had trouble following the details of the war, but it was violent and sad. Now, Herb seems so peaceful, surrounded by dozing herps and the burble of water filters.

  “Listen,” Gwen says quietly, leaning in closer. “This is your lucky day. My dad just threw a cracked terrarium out by the garbage in the back. It’s, like, a fifty-gal. If you want it, it’s yours.”

  Her dad? Herb Tsab is Gwen’s dad?

  “Well, h-how much is it?” I stammer.

  “Shhhh!” she whispers. “I said it’s garbage, Einstein. It’s free. Here, use the service door, go around the corner, walk to the back, and get it!”

  She pushes open a door between two sets of shelves and I step into the alley between Herb’s Herps and the hardware store. Here’s the dumpster. And the terrarium. I can’t believe this crazy stroke of luck. I hoist the terrarium up and place the open side over my head, so I’m hugging the whole thing with my arms and supporting the top of it, like a very heavy transparent helmet. I can’t see very well, but this is the only way I can carry such a bulky thing alone.

  I begin the slow, semi-blind walk, around the building and back toward the front of the store, where Mom is waiting, the driver’s-side window rolled down. “What is that?” she asks. “I thought you were getting crickets!”

  “Free terrarium!” I say, hoping to sound thrifty and practical. “Can you open the trunk?”

  “You have four terrariums already, Will. Why do you need a fifth? And don’t tell me it’s for another turtle. We’ve already gone over that.”

  The trunk pops open, and with some difficulty, I lower the terrarium inside.

  “It’s a backup,” I say. “It’s always good to have a backup.”

  The next morning, I check on the Blanding’s turtle in its new terrarium. The injured toe doesn’t look good at all. It’s swollen and probably infected. If an endangered Blanding’s turtle died on my watch, I’d never be able to forgive myself. I need to talk to Ms. Kuper about this.

  Before lunch, I head to the sixth-grade wing, all the way to the end, where Ms. Kuper’s bio lab is the last classroom. Inside, she’s standing at a big metal sink full of soapy water and gear. I haven’t seen her since she announced the bad news about the Back 40 on the first day of school.

  “Will Levine!” she calls brightly. “Long time no see! How’d your first week of school go? How was your summer?”

  “Fine,” I say, laying my backpack on the floor. I don’t want to tell her about my diagnosis or surgery, even though she’d probably be really nice about it.

  “Hey, I have a question,” I say. “How do you treat an infection on a turtle’s toe?”

  “Depends on the type of injury,” she says, scrubbing a set of hoses. “Can you be more specific? What kind of turtle is this?”

  “Oh, this is hypothetical,” I say. I need to be careful or she’ll figure out that I have wild turtles at home, which is illegal, or that I’ve been in the Back 40.

  “Okay,” she says, playing along. “Can you describe this ‘hypothetical’ injury?”

  “The tip of one of its toes is…gone.”

  “That’s usually a result of territorial aggression,” she says. “Or mating aggression. You’d normally see that kind of thing in wild turtles, not pets. Did you get a turtle at Herb’s Herps?”

  “How do I treat it?” I ask, ignoring her question. “The hypothetical injury?”

  “You actually bring it in so we can actually treat it, Will!” she says. “It sounds like we’re talking about a serious injury, and I’m not going to dispense advice without seeing it for myself. ”

  Ms. Kuper looks at me for a second.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me, Will,” she goes on. “You and I go way back, you know? I’d like to think that we don’t tell each other silly lies when the simple truth would be just fine.”

  I figure I might as well go ahead and explain. At least, partially explain.

  “I have a great new turtle specimen,” I say. “And I put it in too small a terrarium with another turtle, and they fought, but I separated them.”

  “Two turtles,” she says, sounding increasingly concerned. “Or are there more? How m
any turtles do you have now, Will?”

  “Three,” I lie.

  She peers at me a moment longer through her large glasses.

  “Okay, four,” I say. “A box turtle, a musk turtle, a snapping turtle, and a painted turtle.”

  I don’t mention the Blanding’s turtle.

  “Answer me something,” she says. “Honestly. How many of those turtles did you catch in the Back 40?”

  “Maybe one or two,” I say, looking down at my shoes. This is not going in a good direction. “But the other two I found crawling around the school parking lot after a big rain. I basically saved them.”

  “You of all people should know that’s not an excuse,” she says. “No matter where you find them, we don’t catch wild animals and keep them as pets. Plus, you know that catching wild turtles is against the law. You need to release the healthy ones immediately.”

  “I will,” I say.

  “And as for the injured one, you’re going to dab some iodine on the infected toe once a day, and when it’s healed—it should take a week or two, tops—you’re letting it go. I know it feels like winter is far away, but it’ll start getting cold soon, and then you’ll be endangering them. They need to overwinter, and as soon as it gets cold out, it’ll be too late.”

  “But the Back 40 is off-limits,” I say. “You said so on the first day of school. And there’s a fence. I can’t get back there.”

  I’m not going to tell her I found that spot where I can shove myself under the fence. And now I won’t be able to ask why the Back 40 is off-limits. She’s discovered my turtle collection, and I have to escape this conversation as quickly as I can.

  “Bring them to me, and we can let them go together,” she says.

  I nod and start to inch toward the door.

  “And don’t be a stranger,” she says. “Even if I’m not your teacher anymore, you can still come by the bio lab and say hi. Oh, and take this.”

  She hands me a small plastic bottle of iodine. I take the bottle, wave goodbye, and hurry into the hall.