3

Surprises

How did the fish protest go, Mom? Ethan asks.

“I’m as forgetful as a frog in love!” Mom grabs her orange purse and pulls out a plastic sack of murky water and sets it on the table. “There you go, Ethan. Surprise!”

Ethan takes the bag. He peers into it, and his mouth drops open.

I lean over and stare into the bag too. “Mom, there are fish in there!” The bag smells like pond scum.

“I was only able to rescue three of the poor things. And I have to warn you, Ethan. Those fish are sick as an alligator in a shoe store. But I thought if anyone could nurse them back to health, it’s Ethan James.”

Colt and I search the attic until we come up with the little aquarium Dad bought me two years ago.

“Remember when your dad won that goldfish for you at the county fair?” Colt asks. “He had to throw quarters onto a plate, right?”

I nod. “Mom said we could have bought a boat with the quarters it took to win that fish. And the poor thing didn’t even last one day.”

Colt helps Ethan set up the tank while I bring in pitchers of water to fill it.

“What will you name them?” Colt asks Ethan.

Ethan shrugs. He sets the plastic bag of fish into the tank water. That way the fish can get used to their new home before leaving the old murky water.

“What kind of fish are they?” Colt asks.

“Goldfish,” Mom answers. She hands Ethan a small can of fish food.

“Goldfish?” I stare into the fish tank. All three fish are gray and shriveled up. “They don’t look gold. They look charcoal. Like somebody had a fish fry . . . and they were the guests of honor.”

That’s it! Ethan signs. His fingers move at lightning speed. They do look burned. So I think I’ll name them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

“What did you say?” Colt squints at Ethan’s fingers.

Ethan finger-spells the names again.

“I have no idea what you’re spelling, Ethan,” Colt complains.

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,” I say. I’m glad I can say it instead of spelling it. Ethan’s only in second grade, but he’s a better speller than I am.

Colt scrunches his eyebrows. “I still don’t get it. Who are Shad and Me-whatever and Bednego?”

Colt’s mother doesn’t take him to church. Neither does his dad when he goes to St. Louis to see him. Every time we’ve asked Colt to go to church with us, his mom says he can’t.

I explain as much as I can remember from Sunday school about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “They were three Old Testament guys who were captured by a mean king. The king tried to make them pray to an idol instead of to God. When they wouldn’t, the king threw them into the lions’ den.”

Ethan shakes his head. Daniel got thrown into the lions’ den. Daniel’s friends—Ethan nods to the fish—were thrown into the fiery furnace.

“I get it,” Colt says. He presses his nose against the fish tank. “These fish do look like they’ve been through the fire, all right.” He looks back to Ethan. “Did they die? The Bible guys, I mean?”

Ethan grins and shakes his head again. They prayed, and God rescued them. They didn’t even smell like smoke when they got out of the furnace. Ethan strokes the tank as if he’s petting his new fish.

Before Colt has to go home, we go to Ethan’s room to check our blogs. Ethan and I share a computer. Last month I had the computer in my room. This month it’s in Ethan’s room. My brother’s room screams “Baseball!” He pitches for his baseball team, and he has pictures of famous pitchers covering one wall. His throw rug is a big, fluffy baseball. And his bed is covered with a Kansas City Royals blanket.

Colt takes Ethan’s desk chair and checks the Starring Larissa blog. “Man, Larissa and her mom have added a ton of stuff since this morning.”

“I still can’t believe you let Larissa get away with that blog name, Colt.”

He ignores me and keeps squinting at the screen.

While I’m waiting on Colt, I take out my blog folder and thumb through some of the recipes. Winnie the Horse Gentler gave me a great idea for a treat you don’t have to cook. I’m going to change the recipe a little and call it Molasses Monster Munch. But my favorite recipe is for Oat and Apple Bars. Cassie and I made two dozen of them. Dream would have eaten every last bar if we’d have let her.

Colt groans. “Ellie, you better read this.”

“A blog starring Larissa? No thanks. I get enough Larissa at school.”

“I’m serious, Ellie. Get over here.”

Something in Colt’s voice makes me walk over to the computer. The first thing I see is an old picture of my horse. The dirty, scraggly pinto in that photo hardly looks like Dream. Her ribs are sticking out, and her ears are flat back.

“Leave it to Larissa to post the worst possible picture of Dream,” I say. “But so what? I’m not going to let her get to me.” I turn my back on the screen.

“I’m not talking about the picture,” Colt says. “Or her version of the story.” He frowns at me. “I’m talking about the comments, Ellie.”

“What comments?” I don’t like the way my stomach feels, like it’s tangled inside.

“Well, there are a bunch of dumb comments after the story. Somebody wrote that he didn’t think the picture was real because the horse looks like a scarecrow. Somebody else tried to make a joke about ‘backyard horses’ being ‘backward horses.’”

Whenever anybody says something mean about Dream, it turns me into a cross between a bucking bronco and a wild mustang. But Dream doesn’t even look like that picture now. “Colt, who cares what strangers have to say about an old picture?”

But Colt isn’t finished. He’s still staring at the screen, still shaking his head. “It’s this last comment, Ellie. You better read it.”

“You read it.” What could somebody say that hasn’t been said already?

“Okay.” Colt glances at me one more time. Then he reads the comment. “It says: ‘Hey! The horse in that picture—that’s my horse!’”