Sister Dearest

Chapter 9 - An Army of Caterpillars

Elody reared up then flung forward, skipping a rock on the pond. Well, trying to skip a rock- it skipped twice and then sunk.

"And that brings the high score to... two," Jenna said.

Dawn clapped. "My turn now!"

The girls were out by one of the local ponds, having a picnic, chatting, and skipping rocks. The picnic was Jenna's idea. The rocks were Dawn's.

Dawn lobbed a rock at the water. Two skips. She high fived Elody.

"Get over here, guys. The soup is going to get cold," Jenna said.

Elody and Dawn walked over to the picnic blanket and sat down to eat.

"Whose idea was it to bring soup to a picnic anyway?" Dawn said, grabbing her thermos.

"Yours," Elody said.

"Right," Dawn said.

Jenna took a drink of the broth of her soup. "It's a little cold, but pretty good." Elody nodded in agreement.

Dawn smiled. "Carmen and I made it together," she said through a mouthful of noodles.

It was quiet for a minute while they all slurped down their soup. Dawn rummaged through the big tote bag she'd brought. She pulled out a sleeve of cookies and waved them around.

Elody grinned. "Nice!"

"Where did you get those?" Jenna asked. "It's not even Girl Scout cookie season."

Dawn raised an eyebrow. "I have connections," she said mysteriously.

"Connections for thin mints?" Elody laughed. Dawn winked and passed the cookies around.

"So, have you guys started on the final project for Mrs. Reed's class?" Jenna asked.

Elody shook her head. "No. I need to go over the instructions again. The girls in front of me wouldn't be quiet when Mrs. Reed went over the rubric," she said. "'Who wears a brown shirt with a blue jacket?'" Elody said mockingly.

"I haven't, either," Dawn said.

There was always a semester-long project in science class, no matter which teacher someone had. This year, it was a genealogy project that Mrs. Reed had invested too much time in to decide to change. Along with Elody, two other students had found out about hidden family secrets, including but not limited to the revelation that a students' stepfather was actually their biological uncle.

The prompt for this year's project was "Who am I?," which was guaranteed to elicit a lot of existentialism, but was simple enough to leave the construction of the project up to interpretation.

"I'm doing mine on how my dad's family is related to royalty," Jenna said.

"That's cool," Dawn said. "I still have to decide. What about you, Elody?"

Elody shrugs. "I'm not sure," she said.

"Are you serious?" Jenna asked. "You totally have to do it on you and Lisa."

Elody shook her head. "No way. I'm still processing this. Plus, I wouldn't want to make Lisa mad."

"Didn't you say that Mrs. Reed felt guilty about this?" Dawn asked. "If you write about Lisa and sound really sad, she'll have to give you an A."

Jenna laughed, taking a bite out of a cookie. "Dawn, you're mischievous."

Elody thought about it for a second. Manipulating a teacher sounded like a terrible idea to her, but there wasn't anything more interesting in the way of genetics that she would have to write about.