“Hold on. I’ve got something!” says Diana.
Fran sits right up, craning her pink head in the direction of the voice. Her expectant smile quickly fades when she sees what her friend is holding. It’s a large grasshopper, lime green with electric yellow legs and bulbous compound eyes. It has wings and the largest antennae you’ve ever seen. It is eerily still in Diana’s pincer grip, but it appears to be looking at all of you at the same time.
“I saw someone eat one on a reality show,” says Diana, eyeing it. “They said it was like a cross between a potato chip and a grape, texture-wise. Good source of protein, though. He’s all yours if you want him.”
Fran’s face is a mask of horror.
“Him?”
“I’m assuming it’s a dude ’cause I caught him resting on a shrub, doing nothing.”
Fran’s face remains a mask of horror.
“I’ve never let a man near my mouth,” she says. “And I’m not about to start with him.”
“I’ll take it,” you say.
You’re not sure why you say this. Possibly it’s the head wound. Or it could be the slowly dawning fact that you’re holding a fishing rod made from a broken stick and you’ve barely ever fished in your life. It seems very possible, suddenly, that insects are your best bet at survival.
“I think you’re supposed to cook them first,” says Troy. “The Anarchist Vagabond…”
You take the grasshopper and stuff it in your mouth.
You bite. It wiggles for a moment, but then it crunches and squirts and you have to close your eyes and do everything in your power to keep from gagging. It tastes incredibly bland and terrible at the same time, like a sour blueberry filled with guts, and you almost have it down when a barbed leg gets stuck in your throat. It takes most of what’s left of your water bottle to wash it down. By that point, the rest of the group is watching in silence.
“I was actually joking,” says Diana. “I didn’t think…”
“You ate a grasshopper,” says Will, a rare hint of reverence in his voice. “You ate that thingraw.”
If you thought about it at all, you could easily vomit right now, but you’re not thinking about the little bits left in your mouth. You’re thinking that this experience could have easily triggered a panic attack, but somehow it hasn’t. And maybe, in its own small way, that’s a triumph.
“That was a RAW GRASSHOPPER,” says Will.
“I know,” you cough.
“I don’t know who you are anymore,” says Fran.
“Are you guys ready?” you say. “That smoke is disappearing fast.”
You manage to keep your voice steady even though this taste will likely never leave your mouth again. At the end of your sentence, you cough again, and then there’s a wing back in your mouth. You spit it into your hand, iridescent and half chewed, and toss it aside.
Troy squints at it.
“Was that a…”
“Yeah,” you say.
You pick up the boat and set it in the water, and then you scramble into the front position, which you think you heard Silas call the “fore” one time. You’re trying, despite your contempt for the man, to remember more of what he told you. Will gets in behind you this time and picks up a paddle. He tips his head back and screams:
“COME ON, NARPS. IN YOUR BOATS! CASE JUST ATE A RAW GRASSHOPPER. LET’S GOOOOOO!”
Fran somehow manages to peel herself off the rocks, and Diana and Troy follow her into the other boat. They all look to you for the lead. Somehow, with that stupid impulsive act, you have become the de facto leader. At least momentarily. So you start paddling, heading toward the remaining tendril of smoke. For a while, Will asks questions about the grasshopper (“Could you taste its brain?” “Do you think it was pregnant?”), but with the ache of work, his patter eventually dies out.
And there isn’t much conversation from the other boat. Just the splash and plunk of wooden blades in water. You’re hoping the sun will start to cut its way through the clouds, but instead it burrows in and the clouds seem to descend even farther until there’s a gauzy fog over the cobalt surface of the lake.
“Are we still headed in the right direction?” says Troy a few minutes later.
People look up in a daze, like the question hadn’t even occurred to them. And you’re one of them. Time has come unspooled again, and you were heedlessly rowing, muscle memory keeping your brain from fully functioning. But when you look up now, you can’t see far in front of you. A wind is blowing, and small waves on the lake lap against the sides of the canoe.
