And a snake.

It started in the sixth grade with eggs.

The Baker brothers' names are Matt and Mike, but even now I can't tell you which one's which. You never see one without the other. And even though they're not twins, they do look and sound pretty much the same, and they're both in Lynetta's class, so maybe one of them got held back. Although I can't exactly see a teacher voluntarily having either of those maniacs two years in a row.

And the Baker brothers.

Regardless, Matt and Mike are the ones who taught me that snakes eat eggs. And when I say they eat eggs, I'm talking they eat them raw and shell-on whole.

I probably would've gone my entire life without this little bit of reptilian trivia if it hadn't been for Lynetta. Lynetta had this major-league thing for Skyler Brown, who lives about three blocks down, and every chance she got, she went down there to hang out while he practiced the drums. Well, boom-boom-whap, what did I care, right? But then Skyler and Juli's brothers formed a band, which they named Mystery Pisser.

Eggs scare me. Chickens, too. And buddy, you can laugh at that all you want, but I'm being dead serious here.

"Are you calling me old, young lady? Because it's certainly getting a rise out of me!"

Lynetta just shrugged, implying that my mom could draw her own conclusion.

So Lynetta got another one of her teenage time-outs, and after that any time Lynetta was two minutes late coming home for dinner, my mother would messenger me down to Skyler's house to drag her home. It might have been embarrassing for Lynetta, but it was worse for me. I was still in elementary school, and the Mystery Pisser guys were in high school. They were ripe and ragged, raging power chords through the neighborhood, while I looked like I'd just gotten back from Sunday school.

When my mom heard about it, she completely wigged out. "What kind of parents would allow their children to be in a band named Mystery Pisser? It's vile. It's disgusting!"

"That's the whole point, Mom," Lynetta tried to explain. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just to get a rise out of old people."

"You know perfectly well what for. Now you go in there and adjust your attitude, young lady!"

"For what?" Lynetta snapped back. "I didn't say a thing!"

"Go! Go to your room," my mother snapped.

This, then, is how I wound up in Skyler Brown's garage, surrounded by high school kids, watching a boa constrictor swallow eggs. Since I'd already seen it down a rat in the Baker brothers' bedroom, Pisser had lost at least some of the element of surprise. Plus, I picked up on the fact that they'd been saving this little show to freak me out, and I really didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

"Hey, Brycie boy, wanna jam?"

But that wasn't all. After the snake had glubbed down three eggs, Matt-or-Mike said, "So, Brycie boy, how's he gonna digest those?"

This wasn't easy, though, because watching a snake swallow an egg is actually much creepier than you might think. The boa opened its mouth to an enormous size, then just took the egg in and glub! We could see it roll down its throat.

I'd get so nervous going down there that my voice would squeak when I'd tell Lynetta it was time for dinner. It literally squeaked. But after a while the band dropped Mystery from their name, and Pisser and its entourage got used to me showing up. And instead of glaring at me, they started saying stuff like, "Hey, baby brother, come on in!"

He shook his head and pretended to confide, "He needs a tree. Or a leg." He grinned at me. "Wanna volunteer yours?"

I backed away a little. I could just see that monster try to swallow my leg whole as an after-egg chaser. "No -- no!"

I shrugged and tried not to squeak when I answered, "Stomach acid?"

The piano! What kind of snake was this? How could my sister stand being in the same room as these dementos? I looked at her, and even though she was pretending to be cool with the snake, I know Lynetta -- she was totally creeped out by it.

He laughed and pointed at the boa slithering across the room. "Aw, too bad. He's going the other way. He's gonna use the piano instead!"

The snake wrapped itself around the piano leg about three times, and then Matt-or-Mike put his hands up and said, "Shhh! Shhh! Everybody quiet. Here goes!"

The snake stopped moving, then flexed. And as it flexed, we could hear the eggs crunch inside him.

"Oh, gross!" the girls wailed. "Whoa, dude!" the guys all said. Mike and Matt smiled at each other real big and said, "Dinner is served!"

I tried to act cool about the snake, but the truth is I started having bad dreams about the thing swallowing eggs. And rats. And cats.

Then the real-life nightmare began.

And me.

"They're laying eggs!" She pushed the carton into my hands. "Here, take these! They're for you and your family."

"You know… my chickens? The ones I hatched for the science fair last year?"

One morning about two weeks after the boa show in Skyler's garage, Juli appears on our doorstep, and what's she got in her hands? A halfcarton of eggs. She bounces around like it's Christmas, saying, "Hiya, Bryce! Remember Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter? Eunice and Florence?"

I just stared at her. Somehow I remembered Santa's reindeer a little different than that.

"Oh. Uh, thanks," I said, and closed the door.

"Oh, right. How could I forget."

I used to really like eggs. Especially scrambled, with bacon or sausage. But even without the little snake incident, I knew that no matter what you did to these eggs, they would taste nothing but foul to me. These eggs came from the chickens that had been the chicks that had hatched from the eggs that had been incubated by Juli Baker for our fifth-grade science fair.

Juli, though, managed to write an inch-thick report, plus she made diagrams and charts -- I'm talking line charts and bar charts and pie charts -- about the activity of eggs. Eggs!

It was classic Juli. She totally dominated the fair, and get this -- her project was all about watching eggs. My friend, there is not a lot of action to report on when you're incubating eggs. You've got your light, you've got your container, you've got some shredded newspaper, and that's it. You're done.

She also managed to time the eggs so that they'd hatch the night of the fair. How does a person do that? Here I've got a live-action erupting volcano that I've worked pretty stinking hard on, and all anybody cares about is Juli's chicks pecking out of their shells. I even went over to take a look for myself, and -- I'm being completely objective here -- it was boring. They pecked for about five seconds, then just lay there for five minutes.

I got to hear Juli jabber away to the judges, too. She had a pointer -- can you believe that?

The only thing she could've done to be more overboard was put on a chicken costume, and buddy, I'm convinced -- if she'd thought of it, she would have done it.

But hey -- I was over it. It was just Juli being Juli, right? But all of a sudden there I am a year later, holding a carton of home-grown eggs. And I'm having a hard time not getting annoyed all over again about her stupid blue-ribbon project when my mother leans out from the hallway and says, "Who was that, honey? What have you got there? Eggs?"

"Juli. She grew them."

I could tell by the look on her face that she was hot to scramble. "Yeah," I said, and handed them to her. "But I'm having cereal."

Not a pencil, an actual retractable pointer, so she could reach across her incubator and tap on this chart or that diagram as she explained the excitement of watching eggs grow for twenty-one days.

She opened the carton, then closed it with a smile. "How nice!" she said. "Who brought them over?"

"Grew them?"

"Well, her chickens did."

"Oh?" Her smile started falling as she opened the carton again. "Is that so. I didn't know she had… chickens."

"Well, how do we know there're not… chicks inside these eggs?"

We all had cereal, but what we talked about were eggs. My dad thought they'd be just fine -- he'd had farm-fresh eggs when he was a kid and said they were delicious. My mother, though, couldn't get past the idea that she might be cracking open a dead chick, and pretty soon discussion turned to the role of the rooster -- something me and my Cheerios could've done without.

"Remember? You and Dad spent an hour watching them hatch at last year's science fair?"

Finally Lynetta said, "If they had a rooster, don't you think we'd know? Don't you think the whole neighborhood would know?"

I shrugged. "Like I said, I'm having cereal."

Hmmm, we all said, good point. But then my mom pipes up with, "Maybe they got it de-yodeled. You know -- like they de-bark dogs?"

"A de-yodeled rooster," my dad says, like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. Then he looks at my mom and realizes that he'd be way better off going along with her de-yodeled idea than making fun of her. "Hmmm," he says, "I've never heard of such a thing, but maybe so."

Mom says, "Excuse me," and follows Lynetta down the hall.

"Dad!"

When my mother's gone, my dad says, "So, son, why don't you just ask Juli?"

"It's just a little question, Bryce. No harm, no foul."

"I was going to ask you about that, honey. Did something happen?"

"Lynetta!" my mom says. Like this is the first time she's heard my sister talk to me or something.

"But it'll get me a half-hour answer!"

"Haven't you noticed I haven't been going down there, you idiot?"

Lynetta stands up and shoves her chair in. "Like you care," she snaps, and charges down to her room.

She scowls at me and hisses, "Shut up."

"What? What'd I do now?"

"Well, it's true! How can he not have noticed?"

Lynetta shrugs and says to my mom, "So just ask them, why don't you. Call up Mrs. Baker and ask her."

"Just ask Matt or Mike," I say to Lynetta.

He studies me for a minute, then says, "No boy should be this afraid of a girl."

"Oh," my mom says. "Well, I'd hate to call her eggs into question. It doesn't seem very polite, now, does it?"

"Oh, boy," my dad says.

"But… how can I tell if one of them's a rooster or not?"

"Look, a rooster's going to be bigger and have brighter feathers. You know, those long ones in the back? They're redder or blacker or whatever. And don't roosters have some rubbery red stuff growing off the top of their head? And some off their neck, too? Yeah, the rooster's got all sorts of rubbery red stuff all around its face."

"Roosters are… I don't know… bigger. And they have more feathers."

"Seriously, son. I want you to get us an answer. Conquer your fear and get us an answer."

"That's right." He gets up and clears his cereal bowl, saying, "I've got to get to work and you've got to get to school. I'll expect a report tonight."

Great. Just great. The day was doomed before it had started. But then at school when I told Garrett about what had happened, he just shrugged and said, "Well, she lives right across the street from you, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Sure."

"I'm not afraid of her…!"

"To whether or not they have a rooster?"

"You mean spy?"

"Dad!"

"I think you are."

"Feathers? Like I've got to go and count feathers?"

"No, stupid! My mom says that the male's always brighter." Then he laughs and says, "Although in your case I'm not so sure."

"Thanks. You are giving me big-time help here, buddy. I really appreciate it."

"So just go look over the fence."

"So you're saying I'm supposed to look over the fence for big feathers and rubbery red stuff."

"Well, come to think of it, chickens have that rubbery red stuff, too. Just not as much of it."

"Seriously?"

I rolled my eyes at him and was about to say, Forget it, I'll just ask Juli, but then he says, "I'll come with you if you want."

"Yeah, dude. Seriously."

And that, my friend, is how I wound up spying over the Bakers' back fence with Garrett Anderson at three-thirty that afternoon. Not my choice of covert operations, but a necessary one in order to report back to my dad that night at dinner.

We got there fast, too. The bell rang and we basically charged off campus because I figured if we got to the Bakers' quick enough, we could look and leave before Juli was anywhere near her house. We didn't even drop off our backpacks. We went straight down the alley and started spying.

It's not really necessary to look over the Bakers' fence. You can see almost as well looking through it. But Garrett kept sticking his head up, so I figured I should too, although in the back of my mind I was aware that Garrett didn't have to live in this neighborhood -- I did.

He shrugs. "Looks like a chicken to me."

He shrugs again. "Just does."

At first all we hear is a bunch of feathers flapping, but then one of the birds comes fluttering out. Not very far, but enough so we can see it's got feathers and rubbery red stuff.

"Probably in the coop," he says, then picks up a rock and throws it at the mess of plywood and chicken wire.

"So?" I ask him. "Is that a rooster?"

"How can you tell?"

"Yeah. You got roosters, you got chickens, and then there's hens. What's a hen?"

Garrett was the first to notice their dog, sacked out on the patio between two sorry-looking folding chairs. He points at him and says, "You think he's going to give us trouble?"

We watch it scratching at the dirt for a minute, and then I ask, "What's a hen, anyway?"

"We're not going to be here long enough to get in trouble! Where are those stupid chickens?"

"A hen?"

The backyard was a mess. Big surprise. The bushes were out of control, there was some kind of hodgepodge wood-and-wire coop off to one side, and the yard wasn't grass, it was highly fertilized dirt.

"Chickens! What's a chicken?"

"It's one of those," he says, pointing into the Bakers' backyard.

"Then what's a chicken?"

He looks at me like I'm crazy. "What are you talking about?"

He takes a step back from me and says, "Brycie boy, you are losin' it. That's a chicken!" He stoops down to pick up another rock, and he's just about to let it fly when the sliding-glass door to the back patio opens up and Juli steps outside.

We both duck. And as we're checking her out through the fence, I say, "When did she get home?"

First she had to get all mushy with that mangy mutt of hers. She got down and nuzzled and ruffled and patted and hugged, telling him what a good boy he was. And when she finally let him go back to sleep, she had to stop and coo at the bird Garrett had scared out, and then she started singing.

Garrett grumbles, "While you were losing it about chickens." Then he whispers, "But hey, this'll work great. She's got a basket, right? She's probably coming out to collect eggs."

Singing. At the top of her lungs, she goes, "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it's cold outsi-ye-yide, I've got the month of May. I guess you'd say, what can make me feel this way? My girls. Talking about my little gir-ur-rls…"

The coop wasn't big enough for her to walk in. It was more like a mini lean-to shack that even her dog would have trouble crawling in. Does that stop Juli Baker? No. She gets down on her hands and knees and dives right in. Chickens come squawking and flapping out, and pretty soon the yard's full of birds, and all we can see of Juli is her poop-covered shoes.

She looks inside the coop and coos, "Hello, Flo! Good afternoon, Bonnie! Come on out, punkin!"

Garrett got me back on track. "They're all chickens," he says. "Look at 'em."

That's not all we can hear, though. She's warbling inside that coop, going, "I don't need money, no fortune or faaa-ya-yame. I got all the riches, baby, anyone can claim. Well, I guess you'd say, what can make me feel this way? My girls. Talkin' 'bout my little gir-ur-rls, my girls…"

At this point I wasn't checking the chickens out for rubbery red stuff or feathers. I was looking at the bottom of Juli Baker's feet, wondering how in the world a person could be so happy tunneling through a dilapidated chicken coop with poop stuck all over her shoes.

After all, how could anyone forget she'd hatched six? It was the all-time school record -- everyone in the county had heard about that.

But I was not really sure how to ask Garrett about what he had said. Yeah, they were all chickens, but what did that mean? I sure didn't want him coming down on me again, but it still didn't make sense. Finally I asked him, "You mean there's no rooster?"

"How can you tell?"

I quit checking out Juli's shoes and started checking out birds. The first thing I did was count them. One-two-three-four-five-six. All accounted for.

He shrugged. "Roosters strut."

"Strut."

"Correctomundo."

I attacked my noodles too and gave him a smile. "Uhhuh," I said as I sat up tall to deliver the news. "They're all chickens."

"That's right. And look -- none of them have long feathers. Or very much of that rubbery red stuff." He nodded. "Yeah. They're definitely all chickens."

That night my father got right to the point. "So, son, mission accomplished?" he asked as he stabbed into a mountain of fettuccine and whirled his fork around.

"You didn't ask her?"

I could tell something was wrong, but I didn't know what. I tried to keep the smile plastered on my face as I said, "And what?"

"Uh, not exactly."

"Lynetta!" my mother said. "Be nice."

"Meaning I went over there and took a look for myself." I tried very hard to sound like this was a major accomplishment, but he wasn't buying.

"I didn't have to. Garrett knows a lot about chickens, and we went over there and found out for ourselves."

"Uh… she didn't exactly say anything."

My mom turned to me. "Bryce? Is that true?"

Lynetta came back from rinsing the Romano sauce off her seven and a half noodles, then reached for the salt and scowled at me, saying, "You're the chicken."

"Then exactly what did she say?"

He rested his fork and stared at me. "Is that what she said? "They're all chickens'?"

"Meaning?"

Lynetta stopped shaking the salt. "Mother, he spied. You get it? He went over there and looked over the fence. Are you saying you're okay with that?"

The turning of his fork came to a grinding halt. "And…?"

"Right."

Everyone was staring at me now, and I felt like I had to save face. "What's the big deal? You told me to find out about her chickens, and I found out about her chickens!"

He sighed, then took that bite of noodles and chewed it for the longest time.

"Brawk-brawk-brawk!" my sister whispered.

"Because there's… well, there's… I don't know how to say this nicely."

My father still wasn't eating. "And what you found out," he said, like he was measuring every word, "was that they're all… chickens."

It felt like I was sinking fast, but I couldn't figure out why. So I tried to bail out with, "And you guys can go ahead and eat those eggs, but there's no way I'm going to touch them, so don't even ask."

My mother's looking back and forth from my dad to me while she eats her salad, and I can tell she's waiting for him to address my adventure as a neighborhood operative. But since he's not saying anything, she clears her throat and says, "Why's that?"

"Just say it," my father snaps.

"Well, there's, you know, excrement everywhere."

"Well, it's true!"

"Who's afraid of a girl."

"A coward! Rick, please. Bryce is no such thing. He's a wonderful child who's --"

"Lynetta! You have to eat something," my mother calls after her.

"Oh, gross!" Lynetta wails.

"No, I don't!" she shouts back; then a second later she sticks her head back into the dining room and says, "And don't expect me to eat any of those eggs either, Mother. Does the word salmonella mean anything to you?"

"I don't know, Patsy. I'm more concerned that our son is a coward."

"Oh, gross!" my sister says, throwing down her fork.

Lynetta stands up and says, "You expect me to eat after this?" and stalks out of the room.

"Why?"

"Yeah. There's not even a lawn. It's all dirt and, uh, you know, chicken turds. The chickens walk in it and peck through it and…"

"Dad, I'm not afraid of her, she just bugs me!"

"You mean chicken droppings?" my mother asks.

Lynetta takes off down the hall and my mother says, "Salmonella?" She turns to my father. "Do you suppose they could have salmonella?"

"He tells me they're all chickens! Of course they're all chickens! The question is how many are hens, and how many are roosters."

"No, he didn't!"

"Rick…," my mom was saying, "Rick, calm down. He did find out what you asked him to --"

"You know why! She bugs you, too. She's over the top about everything!"

"What do you mean?"

I could almost hear the click in my brain, and man, I felt like a complete doofus. No wonder he was disgusted with me. I was an idiot! They were all chickens… du-uh! Garrett acted like he was some expert on chickens, and he didn't know diddly-squat! Why had I listened to him?

"Bryce, I asked you to conquer your fear, but all you did was give in to it. If you were in love with her, that would be one thing. Love is something to be afraid of, but this, this is embarrassing. So she talks too much, so she's too enthused about every little thing, so what? Get in, get your question answered, and get out. Stand up to her, for crying out loud!"

But it was too late. My dad was convinced I was a coward, and to get me over it, he decided that what I should do was take the carton of eggs back to the Bakers and tell them we didn't eat eggs, or that we were allergic to them, or something.

"Patsy, that's not the point. The point is, I will not have a coward for a son!"

I was off the hook for all of about eight days. Then there she was again, at seven in the morning, bouncing up and down on our porch with eggs in her hands. "Hi, Bryce! Here you go."

"Yes, sir."

She wound up pushing another carton into my hands, and I wound up ditching them in the kitchen trash before my father sat down to breakfast.

"Fine. Then just throw them away. But from now on I expect you to look that little tiger square in the eye, you hear me?"

"Okay, then."

"What, that you're afraid of salmonella poisoning?"

Then my mom butts in with, "What are you teaching him here, Rick? None of that is true. If he returns them, shouldn't he tell them the truth?"

"Me? Aren't you a little concerned, too?"

"But teaching him to lie?"

I tried to look her square in the eye and tell her, No thanks, but she was so darned happy, and I wasn't really awake enough to tackle the tiger.

This went on for two years. Two years! And it got to a point where it was just part of my morning routine. I'd be on the lookout for Juli so I could whip the door open before she had the chance to knock or ring the bell, and then I'd bury the eggs in the trash before my dad showed up.

The Egg Chick.

Well, guess who's just standing there like a statue on my porch?

I about spilled the trash all over the porch. "What are you still doing here?" I asked her.

Then came the day I blew it. Juli'd actually been making herself pretty scarce because it was around the time they'd taken the sycamore tree down, but suddenly one morning she was back on our doorstep, delivering eggs. I took them, as usual, and I went to chuck them, as usual. But the kitchen trash was so full that there wasn't any room for the carton, so I put it on top, picked up the trash, and beat it out the front door to empty everything into the garbage can outside.

"I… I don't know. I was just… thinking."

"About what?" I was desperate. I needed a distraction. Some way around her with this garbage before she noticed what was sitting right there on top.

She looked away like she was embarrassed. Juli Baker embarrassed? I didn't think it was possible.

Whatever. The golden opportunity to whip a soggy magazine over the egg carton had presented itself, and buddy, I took it. Then I tried to make a fast break for the garbage can in the side yard, only she body-blocked me. Seriously. She stepped right in my way and put her arms out like she's guarding the goal.

She chased me and blocked me again. "What happened?" she wants to know. "Did they break?"

Perfect. Why hadn't I thought of that? "Yeah, Juli," I told her. "And I'm real sorry about that." But what I'm thinking is, Please, God, oh please, God, let me make it to the garbage can.

God must've been sleeping in. Juli tackled the trash and pulled out her precious little carton of eggs, and she could tell right off that they weren't broken. They weren't even cracked.

So I told her we were afraid of salmonella poisoning because her yard was a mess and that we were just trying to spare her feelings. I told it to her like we were right and she was wrong, but I felt like a jerk. A complete cluck-faced jerk.

She stood frozen with the eggs in her hands while I dumped the rest of the trash. "Why did you throw them out?" she asked, but her voice didn't sound like Juli Baker's voice. It was quiet. And shaky.

Then she tells me that a couple of neighbors have been buying eggs off her. Buying them.

And while I'm coming to grips with this incredible bit of news, she whips out her mental calculator. "Do you realize I've lost over a hundred dollars giving these eggs to you?" Then she races across the street in a flood of tears.

Was I really afraid of hurting her feelings?

As much as I tried to tell myself that I hadn't asked her for the eggs -- I hadn't said we wanted them or needed them or liked them -- the fact was, I'd never seen Juli cry before. Not when she'd broken her arm in P. E., not when she'd been teased at school or ditched by her brothers. Not even when they'd cut down the sycamore tree. I'm pretty sure she cried then, but I didn't actually see it. To me, Juli Baker had always been too tough to cry.

还是我害怕她呢?

I went down to my room to pack my stuff for school, feeling like the biggest jerk to ever hit the planet. I'd been sneaking around throwing out eggs for over two years, avoiding her, avoiding my father -- what did that make me? Why hadn't I just stood up and said, No thanks, don't want 'em, don't need 'em, don't like 'em… Give them to the snake, why don't you? Something!