The Fourteenth Goldfish Read Online Free PDF

again,” he grumbles.
    I dig through a drawer, find a tube, and hand it to him. He smears some cream on his zits.
    “Maybe next time I’ll find a cure for acne,” he says.
    We order Chinese takeout again for dinner. My mom wanted to order sushi, but my grandfather said the person who has the most degrees should get to choose. Since he has two PhDs, he won.
    As we eat, I find myself observing my grandfather and mother, like I’m a scientist, an Ellie version of Galileo. For one thing, our whole seatingarrangement is different. When it’s just my mom and me, we sit next to each other. But my grandfather sits at the head of the counter, like he’s the king. Then there’s the way they talk to each other—or rather
don’t
talk to each other. My grandfather grills my mom with questions I can tell she finds annoying: Does she still have her college transcripts? Would she like to meet with a friend of his in the Stanford biology department to talk about the program? Would she like his help in applying?
    She answers him the first few times, but after a while she stops and just looks at her plate, the way a teenager would. I have a sudden realization: even though my mom’s a grown-up with her own life, my grandfather still treats her like a kid.
    After we finish dinner, I pass out the fortune cookies. My grandfather doesn’t look very happy when he reads his fortune.
    “What does yours say?” I ask him.
    “You are going to have some new clothes,”
he says.
    “Not a bad idea, Dad. Maybe we could get you some clothes with a little style. You look like youshop in the old-man department. I can drive you to the mall,” my mom offers.
    “There’s nothing wrong with my clothes. They’re brand-new! I just bought them a few weeks ago after I turned young.” To me, he says, “I had to because I shrank.”
    Then he turns to my mother. “But now that you mention it, I do need to borrow the car, Melissa.”
    My mom chokes. “
Borrow
the car? I thought you gave up driving.”
    He gives her a look. “Things have changed. And I have an errand to run.”
    “Well, you can’t drive my car,” she replies slowly. “You’re not old enough.”
    He sits up to his full height.
    “I certainly am old enough. Would you like to see my driver’s license?”
    “Dad,” she says, her tone placating. “What would happen if you got stopped? You don’t exactly
look
like your driver’s license.”
    She’s right. With his zits and his long hairfalling out of my ponytail holder, he barely looks old enough to get into a PG-13 movie.
    “I won’t get stopped.”
    “I remember how you drive! You always try to pass from the right lane,” she says with a groan.
    “I get more swing that way,” he says. “Simple physics.”
    “You’re going to end up in an accident.”
    His gaze hardens. “Accident? You want to talk about accidents? Who was the one who wrecked the Volkswagen? Who wrapped it around a tree?”
    “It—it wasn’t my fault,” she stammers. “It was raining. The road was slick. It was dark.”
    “I’d just paid that car off.”
    They stare at each other like bulls in the ring.
    “I need to borrow the car,” he says.
    My mom won’t let him borrow the car.
    “Do you have any idea how many times sheborrowed my car?” he rants on the bus ride to school. He’s furious.
    “Why don’t you just ask her to drive you?” I suggest.
    “She won’t drive me to the lab,” he says. “That rent-a-cop told her he’d press charges if he saw me on the premises again.”
    “Oh,” I say. I see his point.
    But on the bus after school, his mood is completely different. He seems almost happy, excited even. When we reach our stop, he doesn’t get up.
    “Come on. This is us,” I tell him.
    He doesn’t move. “We’re getting off at a different stop today.”
    “We are? Where?”
    His eyes gleam.
    “My lab.”

I take the public bus to school every day, but this time feels completely different—like an adventure.
    My