Read The Fourteenth Goldfish for Free Online Page B

and all? Those polyester pants? He reminds me of my grandfather.”
    If he only knew.
    “Uh, yeah. It’s just kind of his style, I guess,” I say.
    “Huh,” he says.
    He’s got a dangling earring in his right ear. It looks like a hieroglyphic.
    “That’s Egyptian, right?”
    “It’s an ankh. It’s the Egyptian symbol for life,” he explains.
    “Cool,” I say. “So you kind of have a thing for ancient Egyptian stuff?”
    “Kind of. Did you know they left in the heart?”
    “What?”
    “When they made mummies, they took out all the organs but they left in the heart.”
    “Why’d they do that?”
    His eyes are serious. “They believed that the heart did the thinking.”
    The detention door bangs open and kids flood out. My grandfather storms up to us, red in the face, his hair bouncing everywhere.
    “What happened?” I ask him.
    “I used the facilities,” he says.
    He’s not making any sense.
    “The facilities?”
    “The toilet!” my grandfather snaps. “I went to the toilet during class without getting a bathroom pass! Apparently that’s a state crime!”
    A bunch of kids who were in detention withmy grandfather shoot him high-five signs when they pass.
    One laughs and says, “Fight the power, bro!”
    My grandfather gives him a withering look.
    “You’re supposed to take a hall pass when you go to the bathroom,” I explain.
    “By the way, the teacher who sentenced me should not be teaching history. She’s twenty-two if she’s a day.” He shakes his head in disgust. “What does she know about anything?”
    “Maybe next time you should just take the pass,” Raj suggests.
    “I prefer to keep my dignity,” he announces.
    As he marches off, hair flying, I realize my mom’s wrong.
    He does have a flair for drama.

My mom gets home from school early. When she walks in the door, she’s carrying two big bags of groceries.
    “Rehearsals are going great, so I let everyone have the day off! I thought I’d make us dinner,” she enthuses. She adds, “I feel like I’ve been neglecting you lately, Ellie.”
    She spends the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen. When we go in for dinner, it looks like atornado hit the place: dirty bowls and measuring cups are piled in the sink, and flour is all over the counter. She must have used every single pot in the house.
    “Dinner is served!” she announces, and places our plates in front of us with a flourish.
    There’s a breaded, fried, patty-like thing lying in the middle of each plate. Next to it is some singed asparagus.
    My grandfather and I both take a bite.
    “So?” my mom asks. “What do you think?”
    It’s mushy, with a weird texture, and has way too much pepper.
    My grandfather makes a face. “What is this supposed to be?”
    “Fried eggplant,” she says.
    His answer is decisive. “Nope. Don’t like it.”
    She looks at me. “Do you like it?”
    I shake my head.
    Her shoulders sag in defeat.
    The eggplant goes in the trash and we order Chinese.

    My grandfather and I are in the kitchen the next day after school, and he’s complaining about my mother’s cooking.
    “If she had paid as much attention to chemistry as she did to this theater nonsense, she’d be a good cook,” he says. He exaggerates the word “theater” so that it sounds like
thee-a-tah
.
    “Chemistry? What does that have to do with anything?”
    He looks at me. “Cooking is science.”
    “It is?” It has always seemed so arty to me.
    “It’s all basic chemistry,” he says. “In fact, science has its fingerprints all over the kitchen.”
    He opens the refrigerator and takes out a block of cheese, waves it.
    “Louis Pasteur discovered a way to kill bacteria in drinks: pasteurization, or heating at high temperatures. It was practically a miracle at the time! That’s why we can drink milk and eat cheese without getting sick.”
    I’d had no idea that cheese was a miracle.
    “I like to cook,” I tell him.
    “Of course you do,” he says, as if it’s