“No, they… you know, regurgitate.” Nina opened her mouth and did a very believable impression of vomiting.
“Gross.”
Nina picked up a piece of tuna and dangled it over the chicks’ heads. They opened their mouths and bounced. “Oork! Oork!” She dropped the morsel into one mouth, and the chick happily gummed it down.
Joel sat up, selected a piece of tuna, and dropped it into the other chick’s mouth. That bird, too, eagerly swallowed the food.
“We should call them Hungry and Eat-y,” Nina proposed.
“The Popper Penguins were named after famous travelers,” Joel said. “We don’t know if these are boys or girls yet, but what if we named them Ernest, for Ernest Shackleton, who went to the South Pole, and… and—”
“Mae, for Mae Jemison!” Nina said. “She went to space.”
“Perfect.”
“That’ll be the more energetic one. Your shyer one can be Ernest.”
Joel picked Ernest up and looked into his eyes. “You can be as shy as you want. We’ll take good care of you.”
“Kids!” their mother called from downstairs. “You promised to help me, since you’re not actually sick!”
“We’ll take these two down to the basement and then go help Mom,” Joel whispered.
They each scooped a chick into their T-shirts and hustled downstairs.
They opened the basement door—which squeaked. “Kids, now! I’m not messing around,” their mom called.
“Sorry, Mom!” They deposited the chicks, their fleece blankets, hot-water bottles, and tuna fish in the middle of the basement floor, then raced upstairs.
As Joel closed the basement door, all he could hear were the bewildered oorks of the chicks.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to pull this off for too long,” Nina whispered to Joel as they rushed toward their mother.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull it off for a day,” Joel replied.
It would turn out to be closer to ten minutes.
THE WAY OF ALL GOLDFISH
THE FIRST TASK of the day was to finish unloading the moving truck so their mother could return it. Each time Joel went to get a box, he tried to pick one that was labeled BASEMENT, so he could check on Ernest and Mae. But Mrs. Popper wasn’t playing along. “We should save the basement boxes for the end, kids. That’s the last priority. Start with the bedroom stuff, so we can get this house feeling like a home.”
“If only she knew,” Nina said under her breath as she dragged a floor lamp through the front door, passing right under the old PENGUIN PAVILION sign.
Joel put his hands on his hips and looked around the moving truck. “Mom, where’d you wind up putting the goldfish?”
“Winkles and Joffrey?” she said, wiping her brow. “I think it might have been the basement.”
Joel nearly dropped the box he was holding. “You put them in the basement?” He ran out of the truck and into the house. “Nina! The goldfish are in the basement!”
“So what?” Nina said. Then she saw Joel’s horrified expression. “Oh! The basement!”
They threw open the door and ran down the steps.
They were just in time to see the goldfishes’ tails disappear down the penguin’s open beaks, one in each. Slurp, slurp. “Oork, oork!”
The chicks waddled forward and back, turning in circles and raising their little wings, clearly pleased with themselves.
Nina stood openmouthed. “Goodbye, Winkles.”
Joel put his arm around her shoulders. “Goodbye, Joffrey.”
Emboldened, Mae hopped up onto the first step and then the second. Ernest looked at Mae in wonderment, then tried to hop onto the first step. It didn’t go nearly as well. He hit the step mid-belly and then fell back to the floor, astonished. “Oork! Oork!” he cried.
Joel rushed to cradle him, while Nina played defense, positioning her feet along a step to prevent Mae from jumping any higher, looking just like a soccer goalie trying to block a shot.
Mae might have been only a few hours old, but she was already clever. She waddled left on her step and then took a surprise waddle to the right before jumping, skirting right by Nina.
Then Mae was up and out of the basement door and into the rest of the house.
“Oh no, oh no,” Nina cried as she scrambled after the fast-moving chick.
The baby penguin was already in the kitchen, pecking at the corner of a cardboard moving box, when Nina caught up to her. She scooped up the cuddly little chick. “You have to stay in the basement, naughty Mae!”
Nina heard a loud gasp. She turned and nearly dropped the chick in surprise.
There, mouth open in a wide O of astonishment, was Mrs. Popper.
GROUNDED?
IT WAS A very somber family meeting. Or it would have been a very somber family meeting, if two penguin chicks hadn’t been wandering around the dining room table. Mae and Ernest oorked with curiosity, frequently lifting their wings up and down until someone cuddled them.
“I cannot believe that you kids thought it was okay to lie to me,” Mrs. Popper was saying. She had to break off, though, when Ernest stood in front of her and fixed her with an intense stare. “What do you want?”
“He wants you to hold him,” Joel explained.
Mrs. Popper nervously picked up the chick and cradled him in the crook of her elbow. Her expression melted. “Is that better, Ernest? Anyway, what was I saying, oh, right, I’m very mad at you for thinking you could lie to your very own mother—what do you want? Are you hungry, little Ernest? Aww!”
“They really love tuna fish,” Nina said quietly.
“Well, we should stock up,” Mrs. Popper said. “We have only a couple of cans left.” She struggled to turn her expression stern again. “This doesn’t mean that I’m okay with your lying to me. You two are still in big trouble.”
Joel nodded solemnly. “Yes. Big trouble. Got it.”
“We didn’t want you to send them to the zoo!” Nina wailed.
“We think they should live with us,” Joel clarified.
“They cannot live with us,” Mrs. Popper said. “That’s not negotiable. Penguins
