Chapter Fifty: Elly

When Mrs. Burkhead announced that the biology state tests would be Thursday and there would be prizes for the best three scores, Mia came up to me after class and asked if I wanted to come over to her house after school on Wednesday (I could ride her bus home with her). have dinner with her family, and we could study before and after dinner. That she had been wanting to repay me for my inviting her over to the sleepover, that her parents always said she should respond that way when someone did something nice for her. She said it had only taken her about an hour to walk home from my house after the sleepover, and we could time our studying to make sure that I got home before dark.

I had no idea that Mia had walked home after the sleepover, I had just assumed that her parents came to get her. I remembered her saying that her father works on Saturdays; does her family only have one car? Dad says we need three, one each for Mom and him, and the jeep for when he goes on fishing trips or when the weather is bad. Dad says he will buy me a car when I get my license, but it will be a used one because I'm bound to put some "dings" on it, he said.

I told Mia I would text my mom to see if I could, and Mom texted back before school ended and said that was fine. When I got off the bus, I was surprised at how small the house was and how little the backyard was. Her parents weren't home from work yet, and Mia said she had to do her chores really quickly before we started studying, and would I mind helping. Of course I said I would be glad to help, and Mia said great; would I mind checking to see if her hens had laid any eggs? Meanwhile she would start her sisters on their homework. that it was her parents' rule that her sisters Isabella and Emma start their homework as soon as they got home from school. Her parents must be strict.

Mia handed me an egg basket and pointed to the backyard, and I went out the backdoor and started looking for the eggs. The hens saw me and got scared and ran inside their house, and the rooster just stared at me and gave me this evil look and then he crowed, like he was saying "Get out of my yard!" I didn't see any eggs anywhere in the yard, and the rooster looked so angry I was afraid to open the door of the henhouse, and he crowed twice in a row and stared at me again. I went back inside the house and told her I was afraid of the rooster and the hens were afraid of me, and I didn't see any eggs in the yard.

Mia started laughing so hard that she couldn't stop, and I kept saying "What, what, what." Finally she said that the eggs would be in the nesting boxes inside the henhouse, and she would pick up Mr. Macho and hold him while I got the eggs...that he wouldn't bite, but he "didn't like strangers being around his hens." Mr. Macho had once bitten off the head of a garter snake that had come into the yard, and all the cats in the neighborhood were scared of him, she said.

I went inside the henhouse and there was chicken poop all over the floor, and it was gross, but I found six eggs in the boxes, and I've got to say that it was exciting to be gathering them. I mean, I know that chickens lay eggs—duh—but to think that those chickens in that yard had laid those eggs, and Mia's family was going to eat those eggs instead of supermarket ones...well, that was kind of neat. Oh, and one of the eggs I picked up, a hen was sitting on the nest when I came up to it, and she left an egg behind when she hopped up, and the egg was still warm. That egg must just have come out of her...wow!

Not long after my chicken egg and rooster adventure was over, Mia's parents came home and Mia's mom told her that she didn't have to help with dinner that night, for us to go study. I asked Mia if she helps with dinner every night, and she said some nights it was her chore to cook dinner for everybody, but most nights she just helped her mama. It made me think that I rarely cooked dinner at my house, and most nights I didn't even help Mom...maybe I should start doing that.

I was really hoping for Mexican-type dishes for dinner, but Mia's mom served hamburgers and French fries for dinner with vanilla pudding for dessert. Mia's dad was really quiet during dinner; I think he seemed nervous that I was there. When we finished eating and went off to her room, I was surprised how small it was. The room was very clean and neat and everything was in its place...not like mine which is, like, a disaster area except on weekends when I have to clean it up.

I had to ask Mia if they often ate Mexican foods, and she looked a little embarrassed and said, "Poppa insisted that Mama serve American food in honor of you being here." She said sometimes they had a traditional Mexican dinner, sometimes they had both American and Mexican dishes, but she couldn't ever remember a meal like this one...that her "poppa had acted very strange" when I asked if I could come over, but she then added that he was glad Mia was paying me back for her coming to my house.

We studied our biology notes for about an hour; we really didn't need to work that long. We both knew just about everything that was probably going to be on the test. About the time we thought we had studied long enough, my mom knocked on the door and it was time for me to go. I'm not worried about the big biology test.