The Benefits of Being an Octopus

I settle onto the couch with the chocolate pudding I saved from Friday’s school lunch. This silence is amazing. Well, it’s not complete silence-Hector is spinning the whirring dragon on his baby seat while he eats Cheerios-but it’s pretty close. I savor a spoonful of pudding. How long do I have before Bryce and Aurora burst out of our bedroom arguing about something? When I left them in there Aurora was pretending to be Bryce’s cat, and he was pretending to feed her milk, but that can’t last. I mean, they’re four and three. That’s not how it works. I take another bite with my eye on the bedroom door, but it stays closed.
This never happens.
I glance down at my backpack. My debate prep packet is inside, and I’m actually tempted to work on it. I’m not a kid who does homework. And I definitely don’t do big projects, which usually require glitter and markers and poster board and all sorts of things. None of which I have. Plus, last year in sixth grade, when I actually turned in a poster project, Kaylee Vine announced to the whole class, “Everyone! Alert the authorities! Zoey Albro turned in a project. The world must be ending.” Then she made that ahgn ahgn ahgn sound like a fire drill, and did it every time she passed me in the hall for the whole next week.
But this project doesn’t need any glitter. And everyone else won’t have fancy poster boards with foam letters that make my flimsy piece of newsprint that the teacher gave me look like gray toilet paper. All I need is to know something and I do. And maybe, just maybe, if I do this-and if I can rock it-all the other kids will have their minds blown, and it’ll be completely satisfying to watch. “Who would have guessed,” they’ll say, “that Zoey knew so much cool stuff? I had no idea! I thought I knew who she was, but clearly I didn’t at all.” Maybe Kaylee Vine would even stop holding her nose and switching seats on the bus to get away from me.
I take out the debate prep packet and lean over the coffee table. Which animal is the best? Support your selection with as many details as possible, including what it takes to survive in a variety of situations. Ms. Rochambeau, the social studies teacher, says this debate will help us understand the debates that led up to the Civil War, and Mr. Peck, the science teacher, says it’ll be a good assessment of all the work we’ve been doing about animals.
And the thing is, I already know which animal is best. The octopus. When Bryce was a tantrumming toddler and Aurora was a baby, we moved four times over the course of that year. But the one constant was this little TV/DVD combo that we toted around with us and an old DVD from the library free shelf: The Mysterious and Fascinating World of the Octopus. That DVD would send Bryce into an instant trance, and we watched it so often that I happily memorized every word of it.