Back home Belle Lake wasn’t a huge city like Dallas But at least it had hills and you could see mountains and smell ocean air And like pretty much all of western Washington it was covered in green I miss looking in all that green for garter snakes with Jack and Dawson We didn’t have any venomous snakes in Belle Lake Guess how many Dallas has FOUR SPECIES I looked them up online before we moved I know Mom’s excited to live in an area with a larger population of people with Mexican heritage like us but she could have been an accounting manager anywhere We could have moved to somewhere cool like California but noooo she got a job in Texas It’s weird here even without the lizard heads The people talk weird it smells weird and the weather is weird it’s still sunny enough here to wear shorts and flip-flops even though school starts in less than a week WEIRD And speaking of school I’m even more worried than I was before the move Just writing about it makes my
stomach gurgle I realized today that I’ve known all my friends pretty much all my life I’ve never had to make new ones Is making friends like riding a bicycle Will I remember how it works What if I don’t On the one hand Brenton Park will be a whole school full of smart people since it’s a magnet school for kids interested in science And that should make it easier since I know science Highest grades in class always the leader for our projects in school speaker for our Science Squad science guy extraordinaire right But on the other hand writing pick-your-own-path stories and loving science fiction might make me look like I don’t belong there I guess I’ll just have to act like I know what I’m doing and pretend to be Mr Awesome Knower of All Things Especially Things about Spiders I wonder if you could walk a spider Like put a tiny harness and leash on her somehow Then I could take her outside and scare that pinched-up old lady who lives on the other side of our duplex The face she made when the movers unloaded my bug-net-launcher project looked like
she was smelling week-old gym socks stuffed with cooked cabbage Wait til she sees my tarantula Which reminds me I think I will name my tarantula Worf like the Klingon in Star Trek The Next Generation There was that one episode where the actor playing Worf gets red paint on his knees and then in the next scene it’s gone I know my new pet is a girl but she’s a Mexican red knee tarantula Get it Red knee Technically the term Mexican red-knee is used to refer to a couple different species of tarantulas To be specific scientists would use the Latin name Brachypelma hamorii or B hamorii to identify Worf The other species that sometimes gets called a Mexican red-knee is B smithi These spiders look similar to B hamorii but they’re actually two different kinds of spiders B smithi and B hamorii look and act the same to me And all tarantulas have the same mellow temperament and that’s what I really care about The only reason I even know Worf is a B hamorii is because the breeder labeled her cage
Oh there goes my stomach again Maybe it’s just noisy because it’s lunchtime And speaking of lunch maybe I should feed my new tarantula Worf She’s probably really hungry after getting acclimated to her new home in my room I bet she feels like she’s landed on an alien planet too Maybe I’ll put a model of the Starship Enterprise next to her cage to make her feel safe
