Living on Impulse by Cara Haycak

Author:Cara Haycak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

15

Mia gingerly lifted the fly boxes from the bottom shelf. She treated them gently after the trouble she’d had the day before. She didn’t want to drop one again. But she easily remembered how to do the job, and she changed out five fly boxes at a time without any help from Finkelstein, who worked quietly at his desk.

The job helped take her mind off her worries, but little bits would creep back in. Why was her mother drinking so much all of a sudden? Was she going to stop? Was G.A. going to get out of the hospital? Would she ever have any friends again? Why were things flying so out of control?

When it was time to put a batch of bugs to sleep, Mia unwound the rubber tube from the tank of CO2 gas and placed the tip against the wire mesh lid of the plastic box. She must have left it on too long, because she looked up to find Finkelstein getting concerned.

“Sorry,” she said to him. “Got a little lost in thought.”

“Well, they’re fine, but do pay attention.”

“I am. I will.”

Mia refocused, delivering the latest offspring in groups five and six into their sawdust cribs. She carefully and thoroughly scraped out the contents of each used vial into a breeding box. The work was easy. It was a relief, actually. Mia felt her mind settling down, and for the first time, looking more closely at what she was doing, she saw some teeny tiny white dots buried in the sawdust. These were fly eggs, she realized. Nothing more than white specks. Kind of cool.

“I’m going to bring these boxes to the breeding room,” she said when she had finished and put all the used Pyrex vials in the sink.

Finkelstein gave a wave of his hand, too busy with his calculator to look up.

“So what happens when they’re done breeding?” Mia asked.

“I’ll tell you when we get to it,” he said, still studying his books. “It’ll be in about a week or so.”

“Why wait till then?”

Finkelstein put down his pen. “I don’t want to upset you. It’s a bit gross to the uninitiated.”

“What could be grosser than scraping fly eggs out of a vial?”

Finkelstein was regarding her with that funny smile once again, as if she’d asked directions to the moon. “Are you sure you want me to tell you now?”

“What difference does it make? I have to face it someday.”

“Right you are. Well, after the seven-day mark, we check the boxes every day. You’ll know immediately if the maggots have hatched. And then a few days later, after passing through the pupae stage, they turn into flies.”

“Maggots?”

“Yes.”

“I have to deal with . . . maggots?” Mia looked down at the tray she was holding in her hands. It was full of boxes containing fly eggs, all waiting to be born into their grossness with her help.

“I’m sure you can handle it,” Finkelstein said.

Mia left the lab and went into the breeding room. With a black marker she dated and labeled the five new boxes with an abbreviated form of her boss’s last name, FINK.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.