Quit Bugging Me

Chapter 11

Taylor dodged flying food and fleeing students as she ran out of the cafeteria. The hallways roared as teachers and their companions struggled to make themselves heard over the chaos. Not even the half-eaten spaghetti that splattered across her shirt could stop Taylor from looking for Mason, but she couldn't catch so much as a glimpse of him.

She whipped her head around as someone yelled her name over the cacophony.

Ms. Sanderson waved her over to the library. Taylor pushed her way through the crowd and caught her breath next to the bespectacled old lady. "Looking for someone, dear?" Ms. Sanderson asked as her armadillo slowly uncurled itself and twitched its nose cautiously.

"Have you seen Mason? All this noise really spooked him."

"Ah, yes. This sort of thing tends to make him overstimulated. I'll take you to his favorite spot once we get you cleaned up a bit."

Ms. Sanderson got some wet paper towels from the bathroom and gently dabbed away the worst of the pasta sauce. "That might still leave a stain, but that's the best I can do. Now, let's go find your friend."

She led Taylor deep into the nonfiction section where only the smartest kids and the occasional kid with a research project ever dared to go. "He should be over by the books about plants, a few rows down from the art section," she whispered. "Be careful not to startle him."

Taylor whispered a quick thank you before tiptoeing past her most frequently visited aisle. Sure enough, Mason sat trembling with one hand vigorously rubbing a chunk from one of his termite mounds and the other cradling a book in his lap. His breath came out in frantic huffs as termites swarmed across his skin.

Taylor eased down next to him. "Are you okay?"

He shook his head, sending termites raining onto the pages in front of him. "Too much noise," he muttered. "It hurts."

Taylor silently sent her flies over to the end of the aisle to drown out the ruckus outside. "Whatcha' readin'?" she asked in an attempt to distract him from the noise.

"African trees." His fingers scrubbed the chunk of the mound more slowly as he flipped to a page with a drawing of a tall tree with a thick trunk and most of its branches clustered near the top. "This is a baobab. Did you know they can live for over two thousand years?"

"That's really cool. How did scientists figure that out though?"

"They might have counted the rings in one's trunk, but that would be hard to do accurately for a baobab since their rings fade as they age."

"Plus it would be hard to keep track of that many rings. Can you imagine if you lost count?"

"I'd rather not." He leaned back against the shelf as his breathing slowed. "Would you like to see my favorite tree?"

Taylor barely had time to say yes before Mason flipped to a drawing of a giraffe stripping the leaves off a thorny tree. Her eyes traced the thin, delicate lines the artist had used to draw the thorns. She longed to take a shot at painting that tree herself, but even if she had a whole canvas to work with, she couldn't hope to match the beauty she saw in the thin yet resilient thorns in the sketch. "It's so pretty."

Mason's hands fluttered in front of him as he smiled. They reminded her of how her mom's butterflies acted when the sunflowers bloomed. "Pretty neat, huh? Their thorns protect them from almost anything. The only reason giraffes can eat them is because they have long, thick tongues that let them strip off leaves without getting hurt."