The Fourteenth Goldfish Read Online Free PDF Page B

grandfather stares out the window. His hair is pulled back in another of my ponytail holders, a purple one.
    “Your grandmother loved to ride the bus,” he murmurs.
    “She did?”
    “Yes,” he says. “Her dream was for us to takea bus trip across the country. Stop in little towns. Visit all the tourist traps.”
    “Did you do it?”
    He shakes his head, and something sharp and raw flashes across his face.
    “No,” he says. “I was always too busy with work.”
    My grandmother died when I was three. I have a vague memory of walking in on my mother crying in the bathroom.
    “Do you miss her?” I ask him.
    He blinks fast. “I miss everything about her. I miss her voice. I miss our life together.” He swallows. “I miss seeing her walking around in slippers.”
    “Slippers?”
    He shakes his head as if bewildered. “She didn’t care about jewelry or perfume or any of that. But she liked a good pair of bedroom slippers. The kind that were furry on the inside. I gave her new ones every year on our anniversary. Silly when you think about it.”
    But it doesn’t sound silly to me. It sounds like love.

    We have to switch buses four times. The last bus lets us off on a commercial strip peppered with car dealerships. My grandfather leads me down a side street to a group of buildings. All the buildings are identical—brown brick with dark windows—and they have numbers on their sides. When we reach number twenty-four, my grandfather stops.
    “This is it!”
    “It is?” I ask. I was expecting something shinier, with glass and metal; this seems pretty ordinary.
    But my grandfather seems almost relieved to see the building, like it’s an old friend.
    “Old number twenty-four,” he says.
    He hands me a plastic card attached to a lanyard ring.
    “What’s this for?” I ask.
    “To get in. It’s my key card.” He gestures toward the building. “The security guard will recognize me. It has to be you. I’ve drawn you a map. The
T. melvinus
is in the freezer in my lab.”
    I’m a little nervous. “What if the guard sees
me
?”
    “I have that all figured out,” he assures me. “Just tell him your father works here. Sweet girl like you? He won’t suspect a thing.”
    I swipe the card and slip in a side door without anyone noticing me. I walk down the hall like I have a perfect right to be there, checking my progress by the numbers on the office doors. I’m nearly at my grandfather’s lab when a voice stops me dead in my tracks.
    “Hey, kid, where do you think you’re going?”
    I turn around slowly.
    A middle-aged security guard is standing there, holding a cup of coffee. He has a walkie-talkie at his waist and a suspicious expression on his face. “I asked you a question, kid.”
    I use the cover story. “My dad works here.”
    His shoulders relax. “Oh,” he says. “Right.”
    I give him a little smile and start walking again. Relief pours through my body, the kind of relief you get after passing a test you didn’t study for.
    “Hey, kid,” he calls to me.
    I look back at him.
    “What’s your dad’s name?”
    I hesitate a moment too long.
    Just like that, his eyes narrow and he shakes his head. “We had another one of you crazy kids sneaking in here the other day. Let’s take a walk to my office,” he says.
    In the split second before he reaches me, I see my future: in the back of a police car.
    I start running.
    “Stop!” he shouts.
    I fly out of the building toward the bushes where my grandfather is waiting. When he sees me running, he starts running, too.
    We hide out in a tiny taco place until the coast is clear. Then we catch a bus home.
    “I’m proud of you,” my grandfather says to me.
    “But I didn’t get it,” I tell him.
    He shakes his head. “Scientists fail all the time.You tried. That’s what counts. You have to keep at it. Just like Marie Curie.”
    It feels like a compliment.
    “What did she do?”
    “Marie Curie won a Nobel for her work on radiation.”
    “Do