It was reflex to jerk back, though Will couldn’t escape his own chest or the stinkbug sitting on it. “We will not cower in the face of tyranny,” he mumbled to himself, inspired by their American Revolution homework.
“I will,” Simon said. “Stinkbugs stink!”
“Then you shouldn’t have messed with the plant,” Eloy said.
Simon nodded. “I see your point and raise it an ‘Aha.’”
“Whatever,” Darryl said, raising a hand to swat the bug off Will.
“Stop!” Will shouted. It was only a stinkbug, but if it freaked out and sprayed, he’d be smelling skunk for hours. Instead, Will inched an index finger toward it and slid his nail under the front feet. He barely held in a shudder, not wanting any sudden movements to make the bug retaliate.
“What are you doing?” Eloy whispered.
“Shh!” Darryl hissed, his breath much harder than Eloy’s —and more disturbing to the bug. It darted forward, all the way up the back of Will’s hand.
Will jerked at how fast it was, but the bug didn’t lose its footing. The tips of its leg were scratchy, like Velcro. Will kept his hand still as he bent his head closer to inspect the bug.
A whiff of something like cilantro and old milk emanated from it, but not strongly. Brown-and-beige–banded antennae twitched at Will from a too-small head resting on extra-wide shoulders. It looked like a miniature football player in pads. Speckles like the dimples on a golf ball dotted its brown body and thick outer wings. Poking from beneath those was another set of wings so pale and thin, they were nearly see-through.
Will turned over his hand slowly, the stinkbug moving in spurts toward his palm. It turned in a circle there, antennae flexing.
“Maybe you’ll get superpowers like Spider-Man when he got bitten,” Simon said.
“He doesn’t need superpowers to stink,” Darryl heckled.
“Ha-ha.” Will made an effort to grin, relieved that Darryl had cooled off enough to talk smack. But Will still had a stinkbug in his hand. “You’d have to eat one of these to improve your breath,” he smack-talked back to Darryl.
“Omigosh, yes!” Simon said to Darryl. “I totally dare you to eat a stinkbug.”
Darryl’s face went red, which might have been from anger in someone else but which Will could tell was from embarrassment when Darryl darted looks at the people who had gathered around or who were watching from a safe distance. “Me? No way. Dare the Mexican. I’ve seen stuff on TV—they eat bugs all the time.”
“Dude, I’m from Rochester,” Eloy said.
Will didn’t say anything. His tongue was frozen in shock at hearing the friend he’d known since kindergarten talk like that. The Mexican? What the heck was wrong with Darryl? He knew better than to talk trash about people because of where they came from. Heck, Eloy might not even be Mexican—he sounded like everyone else in Minnesota—but that wasn’t the point. Darryl hadn’t meant it as a descriptor of where Eloy was from, and everyone around them knew it. Including the two other Hispanic kids in their class, one who had drifted closer to Eloy and the other who was now practically buried in a couch.
Simon giggled the way he did when he was nervous, but it probably seemed to Eloy that he was being laughed at, and suddenly Will was crazy ticked at his friends. They were making the three of them look like prejudiced jerks.
It wasn’t right. Will’s chest was hot, like he was incubating an alien. He almost closed his hands into fists but remembered the bug in time.
The stinkbug that could prove at least Will wasn’t a jerk.
“You’ve been dared, Darryl, so you’d better get your bug ready,” Will said. “’Cause I’ll go first, but you’re next.”
Then he tossed the stinkbug into his mouth.