Lizard’s face lights up.

“The French teacher!

Ms.—what’s her name—Fletcher.

Because you said Guernésiais is sort of like French.”

At Southern Peaks you can start taking

foreign languages in seventh grade,

which my mother says is ridiculous,

because why leave out the sixth graders?

The younger you are, she says,

the better you are at learning languages

because of something that has to do with your brain.

Maybe Lizard and I should have tried to save

Guernésiais back in elementary school,

but of course Lizard didn’t know about

the lost languages then.

But if we start a Guernésiais-saving club,

lots and lots of kids will know about

the lost languages now.

Guess Who Walks into Lizard’s Living Room?

Lizard’s father!

“Hey, Bumble,” he says,

as if he just saw me yesterday.

“How’re things these days with Bumbleweed?”

I’m surprised he remembers that joke he used

to make years ago

about Lizard’s name for me.

Apparently, there’s some old song

about “tumbling tumbleweeds,”

and he liked singing it to me,

only changing it to “tumbling bumbleweeds.”

“They’re okay,” I say.

“School okay?” he asks then,

and I nod.

I’m not going to ask him,

“How’re things these days with you, Mr. Angelino?

Spying okay?”

His hair is uncombed,

and his cheeks and chin are grizzly,

but my father looks like that, too,

when he’s in the middle of a huge job.

Mr. Angelino’s eyes are red,

what my mom calls “bloodshot,”

which doesn’t sound like

a good thing for eyes to be.

He whistles the tumbling bumbleweed song

cheerfully as he heads past us to the kitchen,

and Lizard goes back to talking about our club

as if we were never interrupted.

But as he whistles,

I get a whiff of his breath,

and it smells like the half-empty glasses

all over the living room

after my parents have their dreaded once-a-year party

for the people in the linguistics department.

And now I think I know

what Lizard’s father does

instead of spying.

The Most Stuck-Up Flower of All

Just last week

Veronica was crying

in front of everybody

because she had to be a flower

instead of being Alice.

Now, at lunch on Thursday,

she acts as if the title of the play

were Lily in Wonderland.

I know that the flowers in the play are

supposed to be stuck-up and think they are

so beautiful and so wonderful,

but in my opinion

the actor-flowers in real life

don’t have a lot to brag about,

names or no names,

especially if your flower only has

one line

that you speak all by yourself.

There is no reason for Veronica

to complain that she couldn’t finish her math homework

because she was too busy practicing her lines

and singing the flower song

to herself in the mirror.

There is no reason for Veronica