Seven-Legged Spiders and Apollo II

AT SCHOOL THE next day everyone was talking about the choral competition and who had given the best performance.

Some said, “Hallvard Tenorsen’s chorus.”

Others said, “The Hallvard Tenorsen Chorus.”

While a number of other others said just, “Hallvard Tenorsen.”

The final, deciding round of the NoroVision Choral Throwdown was tonight. Of course everyone would be watching, and the person they would be paying most attention to was Hallvard Tenorsen.

During lunch recess, the girls sat on the bench in the hallway eating from their lunchboxes and talking about Tenorsen’s long, soft bangs that practically covered those gentle, blue eyes. And those perfect teeth, standing at attention like a whitewashed picket fence in his mouth.

“Seriously,” said Beatrize, who wasn’t just the cutest girl in their class, but was also the best at math, PE, Chinese jump rope, and pretty much everything else that mattered at their school. “I think we ought to start our own chorus and enter the competition next year.”

And as usual when Beatrize expressed an opinion, the other girls nodded in agreement. Everyone aside from Lisa, who had just barely and politely managed to eke out a tiny bit of space at the very end of the bench.

Beatrize flipped her long, blond hair and studied her freshly painted nails: “I’m just dead sure we could win, you know. I mean, look at us, you know? We so totally ooze charm and inner beauty and all that stuff.”

Lisa rolled her eyes, but none of the other girls noticed. And if they had, they would hardly have cared.

“But, like, how can we just start a chorus, huh, Beatrize?” one of the girls asked.

“Easy,” Beatrize said, checking her hair for split ends. “All we need is, like, a conductor.”

“But how do we just, you know, get one of those, huh?”

Someone up above them exclaimed: “A conductor?”

And just then something came plopping down and landed on the floor right in front of them with the slap of two tiny shoe soles, children’s size 11. His eyes shone among the freckles. On his little head he was wearing an enormous orange knit hat with a pom-pom on top, askew. “Super. I’ll take the job,” Nilly said.

“Like, where did you come from?” Beatrize asked.

“That little shelf up there where people put their hats,” he answered, crumpling the paper bag his lunch had been in and tossing it in a perfect arc up and over into the trash can next to Lisa. “When do I start?”

Beatrize rolled her eyes. “What, like we’re going to have some red-haired dwarf as our conductor?”

The other girls snickered.

“Like that would get us a lot of votes,” one of them whispered.

“A few people might find it funny,” whispered another.

“Not very many. He’s hardly more than a dust bunny,” Beatrize said.

“Well, my offer expires in exactly five seconds,” Nilly said. “Four, three . . . so, what do you say?”

And the answer actually sounded like it came from a chorus: “NOOOO!!!”

“No, well then,” Nilly said. “Don’t come to school complaining and saying you never got your chance when we win next year.”

“We?” Beatrize asked.

“Yup,” Nilly said.

“Who’s we?”

“Lisa singing soprano and me as tenor.”

The girls laughed hysterically, but Lisa looked hurt. “Nilly . . . ,” she began.

“Well, do you guys have a name then?” Beatrize scoffed.

“Of course,” Nilly said, writing the letters in the air with his index finger as he pronounced the name slowly and exaggeratedly: “Nilly’s Very Harmonic and Very Mixed Chorus.”

“Ha, ha,” Beatrize laughed disdainfully. “You guys have a, like, chorus with just two people in it? Hallvard Tenorsen must have, like, at least thirty in his.”

“Who said just two?” Nilly asked. “Obviously there’s more of us.”

“Like, who? I mean, like totally, who?” Beatrize scoffed.

“Well, there’s Doctor Proctor singing baritone,” Nilly said, squeezing his eyebrows together as he counted on his fingers, as if it were hard to remember everyone. “And . . . singing contralto we have his fiancée, Juliette Margarine. Well, if she were here. And then of course there’s the castrato; we’ve got Perry, who sings that part.”

“Well, like, who’s Perry?”

“He’s a seven-legged Peruvian sucking spider. He can sing notes so high that an unmusical human ear can’t even hear them. It’s delightful.”

“Bah,” Beatrize said. “You’re just, like, making all this stuff up as usual, Nilly. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a seven-legged Peru . . . Peru . . .”

“Peruvian sucking spider,” Lisa finished her sentence for her and sighed. This was all actually even more embarrassing than usual.

“There isn’t?” Nilly said. “Well, then, say hello to . . .” He whipped off his orange hat. “. . . Perry!”

The girls shrieked, some of them so loudly that they dropped their sandwiches on the floor. Because there, actually sitting on top of Nilly’s head, was a black, bow-legged spider. True, it didn’t look particularly Peruvian, eager to suck, or enthusiastic about singing, but it was a spider. And if you counted, sure enough, it did have seven legs. But since it wasn’t an especially big or an especially hairy spider, the girls quickly recovered their senses.

“But c-c-can it, you know, sing?” Beatrize scoffed.

“Of course,” Nilly said. “Sing something popular, Perry. Yeah, that one! Good pick, Perry!”

The girls stared with their mouths agape at Nilly and the spider, which was standing motionless and bowlegged on top of that fire-truck-red mane of hair of his.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” cried Nilly, who had closed his eyes and was moving his head from side to side, enraptured, as he sang along: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah . . .”

“Seriously,” Beatrize said. “I totally only hear Nilly.”

“Of course,” sighed Lisa. “As he said, sucking spiders sing so high that unmusical ears can’t hear it.”

Beatrize stared at Lisa with her mouth hanging open. Because music was something that mattered at their school, and here was Lisa practically just saying it out loud—that she, Beatrize, was unmusical!

“Hallelujah, hallelujah,” Lisa sang, and started moving her head in time with Nilly’s.

“Seriously,” Beatrize scoffed, standing up. “Let’s go, chorus girls.”

And with that they turned their noses up in the air and marched past Lisa and Nilly and Perry out onto the playground.

“Ugh,” Lisa said. “Those were the girls I wanted to be friends with. And that was the chorus I wanted to be in. Ugh. And I had finally gotten myself a spot on their bench.”

“Well, there’s more room here now,” Nilly said, taking a seat next to her. “And who actually wants to sing in a chorus when they can play in a marching band?”

And when Lisa thought about it, she realized he might be right.

“THAT SURE IS a nice-looking spider.”

The voice made Nilly and Lisa jump. Because they hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Over them stood the bent form of crafts teacher Gregory Galvanius, who was staring at them—or more accurately at Nilly—with what could almost be interpreted as greedy eyes.

“Mr. Hiccup,” slipped out of Nilly’s mouth.

“Mr. Hiccup?” Galvanius asked as his eyelids slid up and down over his slightly bulging eyes, which were trained on Perry. “Is that what you call this fine-looking specimen?”

“Oh, him?” Nilly said. “His friends just call him Perry. Do you like spiders, Mr. Galvanius?”

“Very much,” Mr. Galvanius said, and a long tongue slipped out of his mouth and licked all the way around. “Insects in general, you could say.”

“You don’t say,” Nilly said. “This is a seven-legged—”

“Peruvian sucking spider,” Galvanius said. “And a really nice-looking one, too.” A thin river of drool had started flowing out of one of the corners of his mouth.

Nilly picked up his orange hat and placed it carefully back onto his head, over Perry.

“Cold,” Nilly said by way of an explanation. “Perry’s legs get cold so easily. And when you have seven legs that can get cold, well, that’s a lot of . . . uh, shivering. Huh?”

Lisa realized that she was standing there staring at Mr. Galvanius’s shoes. They looked new. Brand-new. Abnormally new, actually. Yes, now that she thought about it, she’d never seen such new shoes.

“What’s going on here?” they heard a voice say.

It was Mrs. Strobe. Mr. Galvanius hiccuped loudly and blushed.

“Shouldn’t you be on your way to class right now?” she asked.

“B-but the bell hasn’t even rung yet,” Lisa said.

And right then the school bell started ringing—as if it were under Mrs. Strobe’s command. Shrill and buzzing, like a bumblebee trapped in a glass jar.

Nilly and Lisa leaped up and ran to class. And behind them they heard Mrs. Strobe’s authoritative voice say, “Shouldn’t you also be on your way, Gregory?”

“Of course, Mrs. Strobe.”

And with that, Mr. Galvanius bounded away in long, odd hops.

And once Lisa and Nilly were back in the classroom and class had started, Lisa saw Beatrize and the other girls put their heads together, snicker, and send malicious looks in her and Nilly’s direction. And Lisa thought Nilly was right. Who wanted to sing in a chorus when you could play in a marching band? And there was band practice tonight.