1After they cut down the sycamore tree, it seemed like everything else fell apart, too. Champ died. And then I found out about the eggs. It was Champ’s time to go, and even though I still miss him, I think it’s been easier for me to deal with his death than it has been for me to deal with the truth about the eggs. I still cannot believe it about the eggs.

2The eggs came before the chickens in our case, but the dog came before them both. One night when I was about six years old, Dad came home from work with a full-grown dog tied down in the back of his truck. Someone had hit it in the middle of an intersection, and Dad had stopped to see how badly it was hurt. Then he noticed that the poor thing was skinny as a rail and didn’t have any tags. “Starving and completely disoriented,” he told my mother. “Can you imagine someone abandoning their dog like that?”

3The whole family had converged on the front porch, and I could hardly contain myself. A dog! A wonderful, happy, panty dog! I realize now that Champ was never much of a looker, but when you’re six, any dog—no matter how mangy—is a glorious, huggable creature.

4He looked pretty good to my brothers, too, but from the way my mother’s face was pinched, I could tell she was thinking, Abandon this dog? Oh, I can see it. I can definitely see it. What she said, though, was simply, “There is no room for that animal in this house.” “Trina,” my dad said, “it’s not a matter of ownership. It’s a matter of compassion.” “You’re not springing it on me as a… a pet, then?” “That is definitely not my intention.”

5“Well, then what do you intend to do?”

6“Give him a decent meal, a bath… then maybe we’ll place an ad and find him a home.” She eyed him from across the threshold. “There’ll be no ‘maybe’ about it.” My brothers said, “We don’t get to keep him?” “That’s right.”

7“But Mo-om,” they moaned.

8“It’s not open to discussion,” she said. “He gets a bath, he gets a meal, he gets an ad in the paper.” My father put one arm around Matt’s shoulder and the other around Mike’s. “Someday, boys, we’ll get a puppy.”

9My mother was already heading back inside, but over her shoulder came, “Not until you learn to keep your room neat, boys!”

10By the end of the week, the dog was named Champ. By the end of the next week, he’d made it from the backyard into the kitchen area. And not too long after that, he was all moved in. It seemed nobody wanted a full-grown dog with a happy bark. Nobody but four-fifths of the Baker family, anyway.

11Then my mother started noticing an odor. A mysterious odor of indeterminate origin. We all admitted we smelled it, too, but where my mother was convinced it was Eau de Champ, we disagreed. She had us bathing him so often that it couldn’t possibly be him. We each sniffed him out pretty good and he smelled perfectly rosy.

12My personal suspicion was that Matt and Mike were the ones not bathing enough, but I didn’t want to get close enough to sniff them. And since our camp was divided on just who the culprit or culprits were, the odor was dubbed the Mystery Smell. Whole dinnertime discussions revolved around the Mystery Smell, which my brothers found amusing and my mother did not.

13Then one day my mother cracked the case. And she might have cracked Champ’s skull as well if my dad hadn’t come to the rescue and shooed him outside.

14Mom was fuming. “I told you it was him. The Mystery Smell comes from the Mystery Pisser! Did you see that? Did you see that? He just squirted on the end table!” My father raced with a roll of paper towels to where Champ had been, and said, “Where? Where is it?”

15All of three drops were dripping down the table leg. “There,” my mother said, pointing a shaky finger at the wetness. “There!”

16Dad wiped it up, then checked the carpet and said, “It was barely a drop.” “Exactly!” my mother said with her hands on her hips. “Which is why I’ve never been able to find anything. That dog stays outside from now on. Do you hear me? He is no longer allowed in this house!”

17“How about the garage?” I asked. “Can he sleep in there?” “And have him tag everything that’s out there? No!” Mike and Matt were grinning at each other. “Mystery Pisser! That could be the name for our band!” “Yeah! Cool!”

18“Band?” my mother asked. “Wait a minute, what band?” But they were already flying down to their room, laughing about the possibilities for a logo.

19My father and I spent the rest of the day sniffing out and destroying criminal evidence. My dad used a spray bottle of ammonia; I followed up with Lysol. We did try to recruit my brothers, but they wound up getting into a spray-bottle fight, which got them locked in their room, which, of course, was fine with them.

20So Champ became an outside dog, and he might have been our only pet ever if it hadn’t been for my fifth-grade science fair.

21Everyone around me had great project ideas, but I couldn’t seem to come up with one. Then our teacher, Mrs. Brubeck, took me aside and told me about a friend of hers who had chickens, and how she could get me a fertilized egg for my project.

22“But I don’t know anything about hatching an egg,” I told her.

23She smiled and put her arm around my shoulders. “You don’t have to be an immediate expert at everything, Juli. The idea here is to learn something new.” “But what if it dies?”

24“Then it dies. Document your work scientifically and you’ll still get an A, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

25An A? Being responsible for the death of a baby chick—that’s what I was worried about. Suddenly there was real appeal in building a volcano or making my own neoprene or demonstrating the various scientific applications of gear ratios.

26But the ball was in motion, and Mrs. Brubeck would have no more discussion about it. She pulled The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens from her bookshelf and said, “Read the section on artificial incubation and set yourself up tonight. I’ll get you an egg tomorrow.” “But… ”

27“Don’t worry so much, Juli,” she said. “We do this every year, and it’s always one of the best projects at the fair.”

28I said, “But…,” but she was gone. Off to put an end to some other student’s battle with indecision.

29That night I was more worried than ever. I’d read the chapter on incubation at least four times and was still confused about where to start. I didn’t happen to have an old aquarium lying around! We didn’t happen to have an incubation thermometer! Would a deep-fry model work?

30I was supposed to control humidity, too, or horrible things would happen to the chick. Too dry and the chick couldn’t peck out; too wet and it would die of mushy chick disease. Mushy chick disease?!

31My mother, being the sensible person that she is, told me to tell Mrs. Brubeck that I simply wouldn’t be hatching a chick. “Have you considered growing beans?” she asked me.

32My father, however, understood that you can’t refuse to do your teacher’s assignment, and he promised to help. “An incubator’s not difficult to build. We’ll make one after dinner.” How my father knows exactly where things are in our garage is one of the wonders of the universe.

33How he knew about incubators, however, was revealed to me while he was drilling a one-inch hole in an old scrap of Plexiglas. “I raised a duck from an egg when I was in high school.” He grinned at me.

34“Science fair project.”

35“A duck?”

36“Yes, but the principle is the same for all poultry. Keep the temperature constant and the humidity right, turn the egg several times a day, and in a few weeks you’ll have yourself a little peeper.” He handed me a lightbulb and an extension cord with a socket attached. “Fasten this through the hole in the Plexiglas. I’ll find some thermometers.” “Some? We need more than one?”

37“We have to make you a hygrometer.”

38“A hygrometer?” “To check the humidity inside the incubator. It’s just a thermometer with wet gauze around the bulb.”

39I smiled. “No mushy chick disease?”

40He smiled back. “Precisely.”

41By the next afternoon I had not one, but six chicken eggs incubating at a cozy 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

42“They don’t all make it, Juli,” Mrs. Brubeck told me. “Hope for one. The record’s three. The grade’s in the documentation. Be a scientist. Good luck.” And with that, she was off.

43Documentation? Of what? I had to turn the eggs three times a day and regulate the temperature and humidity, but aside from that what was there to do?

44That night my father came out to the garage with a cardboard tube and a flashlight. He taped the two together so that the light beam was forced straight out the tube. “Let me show you how to candle an egg,” he said, then switched off the garage light.

45I’d seen a section on candling eggs in Mrs. Brubeck’s book, but I hadn’t really read it yet. “Why do they call it that?” I asked him. “And why do you do it?” “People used candles to do this before they had incandescent lighting.” He held an egg up to the cardboard tube. “The light lets you see through the shell so you can watch the embryo develop. Then you can cull the weak ones, if necessary.” “Kill them?”

46“Cull them. Remove the ones that don’t develop properly.” “But… wouldn’t that also kill them?”

47He looked at me. “Leaving an egg you should cull might have disastrous results on the healthy ones.” “Why? Wouldn’t it just not hatch?”

48He went back to lighting up the egg. “It might explode and contaminate the other eggs with bacteria.” Explode! Between mushy chick disease, exploding eggs, and culling, this project was turning out to be the worst! Then my father said, “Look here, Julianna. You can see the embryo.” He held the flashlight and egg out so I could see.

49I looked inside and he said, “See the dark spot there? In the middle? With all the veins leading to it?” “The thing that looks like a bean?”

50“That’s it!”

51Suddenly it felt real. This egg was alive. I quickly checked the rest of the group. There were little bean babies in all of them! Surely they had to live. Surely they would all make it!

52“Dad? Can I take the incubator inside? It might get too cold out here at night, don’t you think?” “I was going to suggest the same thing. Why don’t you prop open the door? I’ll carry it for you.” For the next two weeks I was completely consumed with the growing of chicks. I labeled the eggs A, B, C, D, E, and F, but before long they had names, too: Abby, Bonnie, Clyde, Dexter, Eunice, and Florence. Every day I weighed them, candled them, and turned them. I even thought it might be good for them to hear some clucking, so for a while I did that, too, but clucking is tiring! It was much easier to hum around my quiet little flock, so I did that, instead. Soon I was humming without even thinking about it, because when I was around my eggs, I was happy.

53I read The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens cover to cover twice. For my project I drew diagrams of the various stages of an embryo’s development, I made a giant chicken poster, I graphed the daily fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and I made a line chart documenting the weight loss of each egg. On the outside eggs were boring, but I knew what was happening on the inside!

54Then two days before the science fair I was candling Bonnie when I noticed something. I called my dad into my room and said, “Look, Dad! Look at this! Is that the heart beating?” He studied it for a moment, then smiled and said, “Let me get your mother.” So the three of us crowded around and watched Bonnie’s heart beat, and even my mother had to admit that it was absolutely amazing.

55Clyde was the first to pip. And of course he did it right before I had to leave for school. His little beak cracked through, and while I held my breath and waited, he rested. And rested. Finally his beak poked through again, but almost right away, he rested again. How could I go to school and just leave him this way? What if he needed my help? Surely this was a valid reason to stay home, at least for a little while!

56My father tried to assure me that hatching out could take all day and that there’d be plenty of action left after school, but I’d have none of that. Oh, no-no-no! I wanted to see Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter and Eunice and Florence come into the world. Every single one of them. “I can’t miss the hatch!” I told him. “Not even a second of it!” “So take it to school with you,” my mother said. “Mrs. Brubeck shouldn’t mind. After all, this was her idea.”

57Sometimes it pays to have a sensible mother. I’d just set up for the science fair early, that’s what I’d do! I packed up my entire operation, posters, charts, and all, and got a ride to school from my mom.

58Mrs. Brubeck didn’t mind a bit. She was so busy helping kids with their projects that I got to spend nearly the entire day watching the hatch.

59Clyde and Bonnie were the first ones out. It was disappointing at first because they just lay there all wet and matted, looking exhausted and ugly. But by the time Abby and Dexter broke out, Bonnie and Clyde were fluffing up, looking for action.

60The last two took forever, but Mrs. Brubeck insisted that I leave them alone, and that worked out pretty great because they hatched out during the fair that night. My whole family came, and even though Matt and Mike only watched for about two minutes before they took off to look at some other demonstration, my mom and dad stuck around for the whole thing. Mom even picked Bonnie up and nuzzled her.

61That night after it was all over and I was packing up to go home, Mom asked, “So do these go back to Mrs. Brubeck now?”

62“Do what go back to Mrs. Brubeck?” I asked her.

63“The chicks, Juli. You’re not planning to raise chickens, are you?” To be honest, I hadn’t thought beyond the hatch. My focus had been strictly on bringing them into the world. But she was right—here they were. Six fluffy little adorable chicks, each of which had a name and, I could already tell, its own unique personality.

64“I… I don’t know,” I stammered. “I’ll ask Mrs. Brubeck.” I tracked down Mrs. Brubeck, but I was praying that she didn’t want me to give them back to her friend. After all, I’d hatched them. I’d named them. I’d saved them from mushy chick disease! These little peepers were mine!

65To my relief and my mother’s horror, Mrs. Brubeck said they were indeed mine. All mine. “Have fun,” she said, then zipped off to help Heidi dismantle her exhibit on Bernoulli’s law.

66Mom was quiet the whole way home, and I could tell—she wanted chickens like she wanted a tractor and a goat. “Please, Mom?” I whispered as we parked at the curb. “Please?” She covered her face. “Where are we going to raise chickens, Juli? Where?” “In the backyard?” I didn’t know what else to suggest.

67“What about Champ?”

68“They’ll get along, Mom. I’ll teach him. I promise.” My dad said softly, “They’re pretty self-sufficient, Trina.” But then the boys piped up with, “Champ’ll piss ’em to death, Mom,” and suddenly they were on a roll. “Yeah! But you won’t even notice ’cause they’re yellow already!” “Whoa! Yellow Already—cool name.” “That could work! But wait– people might think we mean our bellies!” “Oh, yeah—forget that!” “Yeah, just let him kill the chicks.” My brothers looked at each other with enormous eyes and started up all over again. “Kill the Chicks!

69That’s it! Get it? ” “You mean like we’re chick killers? Or like we kill the chicks?” Dad turned around and said, “Out. Both of you, get out. Go find a name elsewhere.” So they scrambled out, and the three of us sat in the car with only the gentle peep-peep-peep from my little flock breaking the silence. Finally my mother heaved a heavy sigh and said, “They don’t cost much to keep, do they?”

70My dad shook his head. “They eat bugs, Trina. And a little feed. They’re very low-maintenance.” “Bugs? Really? What sort of bugs?”

71“Earwigs, worms, roly-polys… probably spiders, if they can catch them. I think they eat snails, too.” “Seriously?” My mother smiled. “Well, in that case… ” “Oh, thank you, Mom. Thank you!”

72And that’s how we wound up with chickens. What none of us thought of was that six chickens scratching for bugs not only gets rid of bugs, it also tears up grass. Within six months there was nothing whatsoever left of our yard.

73What we also didn’t think of was that chicken feed attracts mice, and mice attract cats. Feral cats.

74Champ was pretty good at keeping the cats out of the yard, but they’d hang around the front yard or the side yard, just waiting for him to snooze so they could sneak in and pounce on some tender little mousy vittles.

75Then my brothers started trapping the mice, which I thought was just to help out. I didn’t suspect a thing until the day I heard my mother screaming from the depths of their room. They were, it turns out, raising a boa constrictor.

76Mom’s foot came down in a big way, and I thought she was going to throw us out, lock, stock, and boa, but then I made the most amazing discovery—chickens lay eggs! Beautiful, shiny, creamy white eggs! I first found one under Bonnie, then Clyde—whom I immediately renamed Clydette—and one more in Florence’s bed. Eggs!

77I raced inside to show my mom, and after a brief moment of blinking at them, she withered into a chair. “No,” she whimpered. “No more chicks!” “They’re not chicks, Mom… they’re eggs!” She was still looking quite pale, so I sat in the chair next to her and said, “We don’t have a rooster… ?”

78“Oh.” The color was coming back to her cheeks. “Is that so?” “I’ve never heard a cock-a-doodle-do, have you?” She laughed. “A blessing I guess I’ve forgotten to count.” She sat up a little and took an egg from my palm. “Eggs, huh. How many do you suppose they’ll lay?” “I have no idea.”

79As it turns out, my hens laid more eggs than we could eat. At first we tried to keep up, but soon we were tired of boiling and pickling and deviling, and my mother started complaining that all these free eggs were costing her way too much.

80Then one afternoon as I was collecting eggs, our neighbor Mrs. Stueby leaned over the side fence and said, “If you ever have any extra, I’d be happy to buy them from you.” “Really?” I asked.

81“Most certainly. Nothing quite like free-range eggs. Two dollars a dozen sound fair to you?” Two dollars a dozen! I laughed and said, “Sure!” “Okay, then. Whenever you have some extras, just bring ’em over. Mrs. Helms and I got to discussing it last night on the phone, but I asked you first, so make sure you offer ’em up to me before her, okay, Juli?”

82“Sure thing, Mrs. Stueby!”

83Between Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms three doors down, my egg overflow problem was solved. And maybe I should’ve turned the money over to my mother as payment for having destroyed the backyard, but one “Nonsense, Julianna. It’s yours,” was all it took for me to start squirreling it away.

84Then one day as I was walking down to Mrs. Helms’ house, Mrs. Loski drove by. She waved and smiled, and I realized with a pang of guilt that I wasn’t being very neighborly about my eggs. She didn’t know that Mrs. Helms and Mrs. Stueby were paying me for these eggs. She probably thought I was delivering them out of the kindness of my heart.

85And maybe I should’ve been giving the eggs away, but I’d never had a steady income before.

86Allowance at our house is a hit-or-miss sort of thing. Usually a miss. And earning money from my eggs gave me this secret happy feeling, which I was reluctant to have the kindness of my heart encroach upon.

87But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mrs. Loski deserved some free eggs. She had been a good neighbor to us, lending us supplies when we ran out unexpectedly and being late to work herself when my mother needed a ride because our car wouldn’t start. A few eggs now and again… it was the least I could do.

88There was also the decidedly blissful possibility of running into Bryce. And in the chilly sparkle of a new day, Bryce’s eyes seemed bluer than ever. The way he looked at me—the smile, the blush—it was a Bryce I didn’t get to see at school. The Bryce at school was way more protected.

89By the third time I brought eggs over to the Loskis, I realized that Bryce was waiting for me. Waiting to pull the door open and say, “Thanks, Juli,” and then, “See you at school.” It was worth it. Even after Mrs. Helms and Mrs. Stueby offered me more money per dozen, it was still worth it. So, through the rest of sixth grade, through all of seventh grade and most of eighth, I delivered eggs to the Loskis. The very best, shiniest eggs went straight to the Loskis, and in return I got a few moments alone with the world’s most dazzling eyes.

90It was a bargain.

91Then they cut down the sycamore tree. And two weeks later Champ died. He’d been spending a lot of time sleeping, and even though we didn’t really know how old he was, no one was really surprised when one night Dad went out to feed him and discovered he was dead. We buried him in the backyard, and my brothers put up a cross that reads: HERE LIES THE MYSTERY PISSER

92P.I.P.

93I was upset and pretty dazed for a while. It was raining a lot and I was riding my bike to school to avoid having to take the bus, and each day when I’d get home, I’d retreat to my room, lose myself in a novel, and simply forget about collecting eggs.

94Mrs. Stueby was the one who got me back on schedule. She called to say she’d read about the tree in the paper and was sorry about everything that had happened, but it had been some time now and she missed her eggs and was worried that my hens might quit laying. “Distress can push a bird straight into a molting, and we wouldn’t want that! Feathers everywhere and not an egg in sight. I’m quite allergic to the feathers myself or I’d probably have a flock of my own, but never you mind. You just bring ’em over when you’re up to it. All’s I wanted was to check in and let you know how sorry I was about the tree. And your dog, too. Your mother mentioned he passed away.” So I got back to work. I cleared away the eggs I’d neglected and got back into my routine of collecting and cleaning. And one morning when I had enough, I made the rounds. First Mrs. Stueby, then Mrs. Helms, and finally the Loskis. And as I stood at the Loskis’ threshold, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Bryce in the longest time. Sure, we’d both been at school, but I’d been so preoccupied with other things that I hadn’t really seen him.

95My heart started beating faster, and when the door whooshed open and his blue eyes looked right at me, it took everything I had just to say, “Here.” He took the half-carton and said, “You know, you don’t have to give us these….” “I know,” I said, and looked down.

96We stood there for a record-breaking amount of time saying nothing. Finally he said, “So are you going to start riding the bus again?”

97I looked up at him and shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been up there since… you know.” “It doesn’t look so bad anymore. It’s all cleared. They’ll probably start on the foundation soon.” It sounded perfectly awful to me.

98“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to get ready for school. See you there.” Then he smiled and closed the door.

99For some reason I just stood there. I felt odd. Out of sorts. Disconnected from everything around me.

100Was I ever going to go back up to Collier Street? I had to eventually, or so my mother said. Was I just making it harder?

101Suddenly the door flew open and Bryce came hurrying out with an overfull kitchen trash can in his hands. “Juli!” he said. “What are you still doing here?” He startled me, too. I didn’t know what I was still doing there. And I was so flustered that I would probably just have run home if he hadn’t started struggling with the trash, trying to shove the contents down.

102I reached over and said, “Do you need some help?” because it looked like he was about to spill the trash. Then I saw the corner of an egg carton.

103This wasn’t just any egg carton either. It was my egg carton. The one I’d just brought him. And through the little blue cardboard arcs I could see eggs.

104I looked from him to the eggs and said, “What happened? Did you drop them?” “Yeah,” he said quickly. “Yeah, and I’m really sorry about that.” He tried to stop me, but I took the carton from the trash, saying, “All of them?” I opened the carton and gasped. Six whole, perfect eggs. “Why’d you throw them away?” He pushed past me and went around the house to the trash bin, and I followed him, waiting for an answer.

105He shook the garbage out, then turned to face me. “Does the word salmonella mean anything to you?” “Salmonella? But… ”

106“My mom doesn’t think it’s worth the risk.” I followed him back to the porch. “Are you saying she won’t eat them because—” “Because she’s afraid of being poisoned.” “Poisoned! Why?”

107“Because your backyard is, like, covered in turds! I mean, look at your place, Juli!” He pointed at our house and said, “Just look at it. It’s a complete dive!” “It is not!” I cried, but the truth was sitting right across the street, impossible to deny. My throat suddenly choked closed and I found it painful to speak. “Have you… always thrown them away?” He shrugged and looked down. “Juli, look. We didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” “My feelings? Do you realize Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms pay me for my eggs?” “You’re kidding.”

108“No! They pay me two dollars a dozen!”

109“No way.”

110“It’s true! All those eggs I gave to you I could’ve sold to Mrs. Stueby or Mrs. Helms!” “Oh,” he said, and looked away. Then he eyed me and said, “Well, why did you just give them to us?” I was fighting back tears, but it was hard. I choked out, “I was trying to be neighborly…!” He put down the trash can, then did something that made my brain freeze. He held me by the shoulders and looked me right in the eyes. “Mrs. Stueby’s your neighbor, isn’t she? So’s Mrs. Helms, right?

111Why be neighborly to us and not them? ”

112What was he trying to say? Was it still so obvious how I felt about him? And if he knew, how could he have been so heartless, just throwing my eggs away like that, week after week, year after year?

113I couldn’t find any words. None at all. I just stared at him, at the clear, brilliant blue of his eyes.

114“I’m sorry, Juli,” he whispered.

115I stumbled home, embarrassed and confused, my heart completely cracked open.