Project Mulberry: Chapters 1–5

“Make them stay with you,” Patrick said. “I can’t go barging in with all of them.”

I braced myself for his reaction.

“Goats.”
“No.”
“Sheep.”
“No.”
“Swine.”

“Why is it called Animal Husbandry? Are we only allowed to work with male animals?”
Mr. Maxwell laughed. “No, Patrick, we work with both male and female animals. It’s called husbandry because it’s raising animals, taking care of them—”

“Hmm. I think maybe it’s because the word ‘husband’ has another meaning, one that not many people use anymore. It means to guard or watch over—like if someone’s resting, we say they’re ‘husbanding their strength.’”

My mom hates snakes, which means she probably wouldn’t be too keen on lizards, either.

“Gak,” he said, which is what he always says when he’s frustrated.

“She won a ribbon for the jam. For the cooking part—you know, that cooking and sewing category.”
“Domestic Arts,” Patrick said.

But we had our main jobs, and it suited us both.

Way back in colonial times, the king of England tried to take away Connecticut’s government charter.

“But almost everyone kept poultry,” she went on. “I know a little bit about chickens.”

It has a little square of grass on one side of the front walk, and a back stoop big enough for the barbecue grill.

Patrick said that whoever invented exponents must have been either really lazy or really impatient. They got sick of writing all those zeroes, so they invented a way to do it quicker.

We were supposed to learn the countries that were now located where they used to live: Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and parts of Mexico. Patrick made up an acronym to help us remember the countries: BEG-Mex.

If those guys couldn’t tell the difference between a friend and a girlfriend—well, that made them too dense to be worth worrying about.

In sixth grade, we built a model of a water molecule, a Pleistocene-era miniature landscape, and a Revolutionary War diorama.

And if we ran into an impossible snag, we’d have to give up the idea, and it wouldn’t be because of me.

Who knew that a little baby—one that couldn’t even walk yet—could be such a maelstrom of destruction? A maelstrom—a word I learned from Patrick, who had picked it up somewhere in his reading—is a giant, violent whirlpool. It had seemed like a very unusual word at the time, but a few months after I first heard it, I saw it on a computer game. It was a weapon you could use to destroy enemies.

Ideas jostled around in my brain and I tried to get them organized.

In my parents’ bedroom there was a framed picture of some flowers. Not painted flowers—embroidered ones. My mom made it ages ago, when she lived in Korea. It was really good; she’d used millions of tiny stitches.

For heaven's sake, he lives with you, and it’s not a very big apartment. You’re bound to run into him in most chapters.

We stopped at several places on the way to school. The gas station on the corner of our street. The convenience store across from our school. Three or four big utility poles on busy corners.

My stomach lurched a little.

“Green chassis, darker green vinyl top. From the seventies, Jules. That’s really old. There can’t be many of them around.” Patrick was already on the job, looking at every car on the street.

You don’t want to do the project, but you don’t want to let Patrick know that, and it occurred to me that you’re living kind of a double life, which means you’re acting like a secret agent.