Nymphs

By Scott Kennel

A sibling is a friend by nature. This is true in some cases, but sometimes...

Me and Jeff sit under a tree at noon hour. It’s sunny and warm and the trees are starting to get their leaves back. It’s nice to be out in a t-shirt and the breeze is the kind that makes you feel warmer, not colder. I crouch on a root because the ground around the tree is muddy. Jeff is a year younger than me, so he isn’t in my class. Lunch is the only time we can hang out.

“Let’s go see if there’s anything weird in the bulrushes,” I say, because I’m tired of sitting here.

We get up and start walking across the football field. At other end, Laura, Caitlin and Dianne are sitting under the trees. We pass them and go down into the ditch with the long grass; they don’t look at us. I glance over to the asphalt to see if there are any teachers—they don’t like us poking around in the ditch. Mr. Derry is walking the other way and won’t see us.

I wade in. Jeff crouches at the edge of the grass, looking around. I know he is scared of getting caught, so he doesn’t go in too far. I push aside bulrushes and grass to see if there are any weird animals, bugs or frogs, but I can’t go in all the way because at this time of year the bottom of the ditch is filled with water.

On the ends of a few blades of grass hang little piles of white froth. At first I don’t see them, but after spotting one or two, they start showing up everywhere.

“Cool, look,” I say to Jeff.

“What is it?”

“They’re little bug larvae, nymphs I think they’re called. They live in these little patches of foam.” I pull off a long blade of grass and start poking at one of the froth piles. Jeff leans forward and tries to look over my shoulder at what I am doing, but he won’t come in, so I pull off a foamy piece of grass and bring it to him.

“There should be a little bug in here, if we poke around.” I start scraping away at the froth with my blade of grass. The foam is thicker than water, sort of like spit when you squeeze it through your teeth really fast to make it bubbly. When there isn’t much foam left, I hook the grass under the last bit and pull out a baby bug.

“See? Told ya.” It is pale-green all over. I hold the bug up to look close; its eyes stick out on either side of its head. If any bug can have an expression, this one looks confused and scared. I guess it should be scared--the foam is what keeps it safe.

“It’s a nymph. I don’t really know what it grows into, but they make those foam things to live in while they’re young,” I say

“Cool,” Jeff says. He doesn’t really know much about these things, so I usually teach him.

“There’s tonnes of them in there, you can go and get one if you want.”

“No, I don’t really want to,” he says. “I don’t want to get my shoes muddy.”

“Alright.” I scrape the nymph onto my finger and hold it up to look it in the eye.

“Do you want to hold it?” I offer Jeff the bug on my finger.

“Sure,” he says, and I give it to him.

I look over at Laura and the girls sitting under the tree up the hill, and then wade back into the bulrushes. They will probably think this is pretty cool. I grab another blade of grass with nymph’s foam on it and start back out of the ditch. Jeff watches and then begins to trail after me, but he stays pretty far back. I walk up the small hill to the trees.

“Hey,” I say to the girls, but mostly to Laura, “Look at this.” I crouch down and hold out the grass with the foam on it.

“Ew, what is that? That’s gross,” Laura says, cringing.

“No, it’s a bug larva. A bug lives in here, see?” I pick some grass off the ground and dig through the foam. “Look,” I pull out the little bug, “it’s called a nymph; they make these piles of foam and live inside it until they grow bigger.”

“Yeah, I said that’s gross. Get that thing away from me." Laura says.

 “Yeah, get that away,” the other girls repeat. They all look disgusted.

“Geez, it’s just a little bug,” I say, getting up. Stupid girls.

“Yeah, exactly, it’s a bug." Laura says. "Go away.”

I turn back down the hill to where Jeff is standing.

“God, can you believe them?” I say to him, “It’s just a bug. Girls are so immature.” I try to say that loud enough for them to hear, but I don’t think I do. I go back into the long grass and put the nymph on a bulrush.

We walk back across the football field and sit under the tree again.

“Don’t worry about what those girls said,” Jeff tells me, “They’re just too dumb to know those bugs are cool. Did I tell you about what the dog did yesterday?”

I listen to what our dog did, and we laugh about it because it’s gross.

When I go back to class I'll see Laura and it will remind me that she was a jerk, but for the rest of lunch I just sit under the tree and listen to Jeff talk, not thinking about her or anyone else at all.