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“Can Delphine come out an’ play?”
Cosima Niehaus stood eagerly on the doorstep of the Cormier’s big white house, dwarfed by the large backpack she was wearing but undaunted by neither its weight nor the skeptical gaze of Doctor Agathe Cormier.
“Does your mother say it’s all right?”
“Yup! We’ll just go to the park an’ back. It’s for science,” she added brightly, clearly believing that this would convince Delphine’s mother immediately.
“Science? What sort--”
“Maman.” Delphine appeared suddenly, tugging on her mother’s skirt. She looked like Cosima’s opposite in every way--a thin girl, already willowy, with light brown curls pulled back into a neat Dutch braid, in a clean white dress that fell to her knees--nothing like tiny Cosima in her too-big overalls and t-shirt, most (but not all) of her dark wavy hair pulled back into a loose ponytail and glasses perched on the edge of her nose. Neither the Niehaus nor the Cormier family had really expected their girls to get along, as close in age as the two were--and yet, almost from the start, the two girls had become inseparable. “Maman, laissez-moi aller. S’il te plait.”
“Delphine…”
“S’il te plait, Maman.”
Delphine’s mother sighed, caught between two pairs of pleading eyes, and finally laid a hand on her daughter’s head.
“You must both be home by dinner.”
“Oui!”
“Okay!”
Cosima’s hand wrapped around Delphine’s and tugged, the both of them grinning and dashing down the path toward the park, Delphine barely remembering to wave goodbye to her mother as they went.
“Yes!” Cosima cheered once they were out of earshot. “I thought today was gonna be boring an’ I’d have to hang out with Felix.”
“You like Felix,” Delphine pointed out, giggling all the same.
“Yeah, but he likes dress-up an’ makeup. He’d never go frog-hunting with me.”
“Frog-hunting?”
“Yeah. It’s just the right time of summer--there’s gonna be tons of ‘em around the creek in the woods.”
“Um, what is ‘frog’?” Delphine asked, blushing slightly as they ran.
“Oh, um…” Cosima stopped, trying to figure out how to explain it. “They’re...green? An’ small, an’ hoppy? They go ribbit ribbit an’ in the stories if you kiss them, they turn into princes.”
“Une grenouille!” Delphine’s eyes lit up with understanding and Cosima grinned. “They live in the water and the lily pads!”
“Yeah, yeah! A gren-oo-li,” Cosima said, scrunching up her face when Delphine giggled at her pronunciation. “I wanna catch one for science.”
“Science?”
“Yeah, that’s what this is for.” She dropped Delphine’s hand to root around in her backpack. “I got all the stuff for it too. A net, an’ a tank, an’ flies!” she added excitedly, pulling out a jar full of the buzzing creatures. “They eat flies, you know.”
“Oui, je sais.” Delphine cautiously took the jar from Cosima, turning it this way and that. “Did you catch them all yourself?”
“Uh huh.” Cosima’s grin faltered. “You’re not grossed out, are you? Cuz I didn’t do anythin’ gross. But I needed to feed it somethin, an’ they eat flies, they do--”
“I’m not, ah, grossed,” Delphine said quickly. “It’s good, yes? The frog needs to eat.”
“Really?” Cosima’s grin was smaller, almost cautious, but somehow warmer than before.
“Really,” Delphine confirmed with a nod. After a moment she added, “Of definitely course.”
“Of definitely course?”
“Yes?”
“Okay.” Cosima grinned again, grabbing Delphine’s hand again to tug her along.
“Where are we going?” Delphine asked as they reach the edge of the park. “I thought we were supposed to stay at the park.”
“There aren’t any frogs here,” Cosima explained, tugging her toward the trees. “We have to go into the woods, to the creek.”
“Maman always says not to go into the woods.”
“Do you want to stop?” Cosima stopped at the edge of the woods, looking at Delphine with concern. “We don’t have to go if you don’t wanna. It’s really fine.”
“I’ll be with you?” At Cosima’s nod, Delphine nodded as well. “Then it will all be fine. If it’s with you I’ll go.” Delphine shifted her grip so that their fingers were interlaced and smiled.
“Okay.” Cosima squeezed her hand, and Delphine squeezed back. “Let’s go!”
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“Is this the right place?”
“Yup!” Cosima slipped out of her sneakers and socks, taking a few cautious steps into the mud at the creek’s edge. “You gonna come? You can’t catch frogs if you don’t get close!”
Delphine looked down at her pretty white shoes, the ones that perfectly matched her white dress, and then looked at the muck around the water. Slowly she pulled her feet out of her shoes, placing a cautious toe in the ooze.
“Spongieux!” she squealed, half-stumbling forward, only for Cosima to reach out and grab her arm.
“It’s great, right?”
“I don’t know,” Delphine admitted, toes curling in the muck. “It surprised me.”
“It’s sup’osed to be good for your skin,” Cosima explained, holding onto a net with one hand and Delphine’s hand with the other. “Mom puts it on her face sometimes. Somethin’ about pores.”
“I do not care about the skin on my feet,” Delphine muttered, but took a few steps further anyway. “Are you sure there are frogs here?”
“Totes. You just gotta know where to look. An’ be quiet.”
“You’re sure we will find one?”
“Yup.” Cosima grinned. “Of definitely course.”
“Of definitely course.”
They both took a few steps further into the mud, Cosima with the net slung confidently over her shoulder and backpack clunking along, while Delphine was now holding onto the plastic tank they’d brought along like a shield.
“We hafta be quiet,” Cosima emphasized as she sloshed through the shallows.
“What science is this for?”
“I really wanna see a frog up close,” Cosima explained.
“Ah.”
“There’s one!”
“Ah, Cosima--”
But Cosima had already leapt forward, net outstretched, and promptly fallen face-first into the mud.
“Cosima!”
“I’m fine!” She sat up, wiping mud from her face with muddy hands. “We’re gettin’ that frog, though.”
“Surely we can get another,” Delphine said, eyeing the fat green frog that was currently making its escape.
“Yeah, but it’s personal with her,” Cosima replied, pulling herself up and rushing after the frog, net held above her head like a samurai sword. Delphine followed in her wake as fast as she could, empty tank clutched in both hands.
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“We actually caught one.”
Cosima and Delphine stared at the rather-indignant frog in the small plastic tank.
“I did not think we would.”
They both crouched in the grass, Cosima’s glasses askew and stained, her overall strap slipping. Delphine was in a similar state of disarray, her white dress spattered with dirt and curls falling around her face instead of neatly tucked in her braid.
The frog croaked.
“Now we must do science, yes?” Delphine was still slightly breathless, trying in vain to tuck her stray curls behind her ear. “You said we must look at it up close?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a magnifyin’ glass in my bag,” Cosima said eagerly, turning to search in said bag. “It’s my science bag--Mom helped me make it. She doesn’t know I put a jar of flies in, though, but it’s got everythin’ else sciency.”
Said magnifying glass had a lens nearly as large around as Cosima’s face itself, and she pulled it out eagerly, holding it up to the tank. The frog croaked unhappily, but didn’t move.
“D’you wanna see?”
“Ah…” Delphine took the glass hesitantly, squinting at the frog’s green skin. “It is, um, slime?”
“Yeah, slimy. A lot of ‘em are. It’s supposed to help ‘em breath through their skin.”
“Skin? Not mouths?”
“Uh huh. It said so in a book I was readin--helps ‘em be hydrated too, which Mom says means so they have enough water. ‘S not too gross or anythin’, right?” Cosima asked, watching Delphine’s face cautiously.
“Non, c’est--it’s very interesting. Maman never lets me do things like this.” The frog jumped to the other side of the tank and Delphine followed it to with the glass before looking up at Cosima. “You are very worried about grossed. Why?”
“‘S nothing,” Cosima muttered, fiddling with a loose thread on her overalls. “Some of the boys at school were sayin’ that I was gross, that’s all.”
“For science?” Delphine huffed indignantly, turning to face Cosima. “Science shows you are smart. They are the gross ones.”
“Yeah,” Cosima agreed, a small smile playing at her lips. “An’ dumb, an’ loud. They could never catch a frog.”
“Yes,” Delphine said, “And you can. You’re already better than any boy.”
“You too!” Cosima said, making Delphine grin shyly. “We’re both way better than any boy.”
“C’est vrai,” Delphine giggled, “Ah, I mean, it is true.”
“Totes!” Cosima said firmly, making Delphine laugh again. “An’ you know what the stupidest thing is? Everyone says we’re gonna marry a boy one day.”
“I don’t want to,” Delphine said immediately. “Maman says I will want to one day, but I don’t think I will. None of the ones at school, at least.”
“Me too. But you hafta get married, everyone says.”
“Marriage is not so good anyway,” Delphine muttered, small shoulders slumping. “Maman and Papa only argue all the time now, and they’re married.”
“At least we don’t have to get married till we get big.” Cosima huffed grumpily before suddenly brightening. “I know! When I get big, I can marry you, and then we won’t have to marry any boys.”
“You will?” Delphine asked, shyly hopeful.
“Yeah, ‘course. I’ll get big an’ marry you, an’ we’d never-ever fight.”
“Never-ever?”
“Well…” Cosima thought hard for a moment, then nodded. “Probably sometimes. Grownups do a lot. But I’d always find you after an’ kiss you lots, so we would both be un-mad an’ happy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“When we get big and I marry you,” Delphine said with a burst of confidence, “I will never-ever leave you.”
“Like in fairy tales?” It was Cosima’s turn to frown cautiously. “Cuz those aren’t real.”
“I will make it real,” Delphine said with a firm nod. “We can get married and live in the Kingdom where nobody dies. We can have the ever-after.”
“Together?”
“Oui. Together.”
They both lay back in the grass, lacing their fingers with each other’s.
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“Delphine! Qu'avez-tu fait? Ton robe…”
Delphine gave Cosima a small wave as her mother ushered her inside, trying to brush bits of grass off Delphine’s no longer quite so white dress. Cosima waved proudly before trotting back to her own red house next door.
“Mom!” Cosima called, wedging the unlocked door open with her foot, clutching the tank in both hands. “Mom, look!”
“What’ve you found?” Esther Niehaus called as she crossed over to greet her daughter, tying back her long dreads as she went.
“We caught a frog!” Cosima held up the tank with said frog proudly as her mother knelt to look.
“Wow,” she said with a grin. “Looks like you caught a Northern green frog! Is that how you got all muddy?”
“Yeah,” Cosima said dismissively, “I’ll take a bath later. But Mom, we can keep her, right? I told Delphine I’d keep her an’ she could come over an’ see her!”
“So long as you don’t try to keep flies in the house,” her mother laughed, not noticing the way Cosima bit her lip worriedly.”What are you going to call her?”
“We couldn’t agree,” Cosima explained, “Cuz Delphine wanted to call her after Marie Curie, but I wanted to use Charles Darwin’s name. An’ then we talked about made-up characters, but she wanted to call her after a made-up elephant, but I wanted to call her after Hermione.”
“And what did you decide?”
“We made a comp’mise. Darwin-Marie Hermione-Celeste Cormier-Niehaus.”
“Well that’s a...very big name,” Esther commented, looking at the grumpy frog. “We’ll go to the pet store and get her--”
“Darwin-Marie Hermione-Celeste Cormier-Niehaus.”
“Right. We’ll get Darwin-Marie some proper tank equipment tomorrow, okay?”
“Can Delphine come? She helped catch Darwin-Marie Hermione-Celeste Cormier-Niehaus, after all.”
“If her parents say it’s okay,” Esther laughed. “You two must’ve had a lot of fun today, huh?”
“Yeah,” Cosima said. “I’m gonna marry her when we get big.”
“Oh darling,” Esther said gently, laying a hand on her daughter’s dark waves of hair. “I think that’s wonderful.”
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That night after she’d been sent up to bed, Delphine crept up to her bedroom window, the one that faced the Niehaus house, and smiled when she saw a light still on.
She waved, and from her bedroom window, Cosima waved back.
A few moments later, Cosima lifted Darwin-Marie Hermione-Celeste Cormier-Niehaus to the window, and made her wave as well.