A Little Bit of Spectacular Read Online Free PDF Page B

Everyone likes the backyard.”
    She took off into the house, and I followed. She didn’t turn back around until we’d gone through the front door, rounded a corner, walked through the kitchen, passed through a screened-in back porch, and jogged down another set of stairs. Then she stopped and watched me while I took in the backyard.
    It was like nothing I had ever seen. It was a big yard with lots of open space, and it was unusually flat for a yard in Birmingham, which is just one hill after another. But what mostly stood out about the view from Amelia’s back porch was the boxes. There must have been at least twenty white boxes all over the yard. The best way to describe them is to say they were like white coffins without tops. They were wooden rectangles sticking up out of the ground, no more than a couple of feet tall, but long enough that I could have laid down in them and had a few inches leftover. I couldn’t see anything but dirt and grass inside them.
    â€œThey’re for my frogs,” said Amelia, looking very serious.
    â€œFrogs?”
    â€œYeah. I collect them. As pets.”
    I walked over to the white box nearest to us. I could see one frog, but there were a couple of tree branches blocking a lot of the ground, so I could have missed others. There was a bowl of water fitted into a hole in the ground, so it looked like a miniature swimming pool.
    â€œI keep leaves and branches for shade and to give them something to hop over, because frogs need their exercise. Plus they all have water,” Amelia said from behind me.
    It was all so unusual that I forgot to be nervous about talking. My words didn’t freeze up.
    â€œDon’t they die being trapped in there with no food?” I asked.
    â€œOh, I feed them spiders and grasshoppers and whatever bugs I find,” she said. “Plus they can catch their own food. And they don’t drink the water . . .”
    â€œThey absorb it into their skin,” I finished for her.
    She looked at me like I was a potentially interesting frog to add to her collection. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s something I remembered. Like how there’s one frog that has fake eyes on its butt to confuse predators. And that there’s a male frog that swallows frog eggs until they hatch in his throat, then he spits out the babies.”
    She nodded, impressed. “So you’re into frogs?”
    â€œNot especially,” I said. “But they’re kind of cool. So why do you keep them?”
    She looked around, even up at the sky and under the porch, like someone could be eavesdropping from anywhere. The wind blew just as she started to speak, lifting her long dark hair off her neck.
    â€œBecause they might be magic,” she whispered. “If you catch enough of them, one’s bound to be a handsome prince. Or a powerful wizard.”
    I started planning my escape then. I didn’t want to be rude, but I was not going to spend any longer than I had to with a girl with believed frogs could turn into people.
    â€œYeah, well, uhhh . . .” I looked back toward the house. “I think I hear my grandma calling me. Maybe I should just. . . .”
    She laughed out loud. “I’m just messing with you. I want to be a scientist one day, and I really like frogs. I like all amphibians, really, but frogs are the most interesting.”
    She sat down on the bottom porch step and patted the space next to her. She was still smiling, and she didn’t look insane. So I sat next to her and considered what she’d said. I’d never heard of a frog scientist, but it was definitely less crazy than trying to hatch a prince out of one of them.
    â€œSo you do experiments on them?” I asked.
    â€œI’m not Dr. Frankenstein,” she said. “I don’t dissect them or torture them. I keep four frogs in each pen, and I keep a