Lanaius hugged his Cousin Evelyn last. He was sitting on a couch arm, eating seconds, when she finally arrived, and the whole family shrieked and hugged her. He still had to enter high school, but to hear the aunties talk about the other kids, he was pretty certain he'd be the next one to go to a real college, the kind that wasn't advertised during court shows, or only talked about on ESPN. Evelyn was the most likely to understand the dreams that he had, so when he finally had her undivided attention, he hugged her the tightest. "I gotta show you something!"
"Well, can I eat first?" Lanaius complied; he even brought up a bowl of Nana's banana wafer pudding before his cousin was done with her turkey and greens. When his momma scolded him for it, he retreated to his room and journals, drawing animals and biding time.
He was napping when Evelyn found him. She picked up one of his journals, examining his notes. "You said you wanted to show me something. Are these it?"
Lanaius shot up, grabbing the notebook. "No! But it's my work!" He picked up speed, practically riffling the pages as he talked. "I had a project in class, where we got assigned 'biodiversity'. He said even here, there were animals to study, and he was right! Dogs and cats and birds, but we also got possums and raccoons, and snakes and bugs, and coyotes and mice and - I gotta show you something!" He led her out the door and two houses over.
Lanaius' latest aspiring stepfather had some real estate investments in the neighborhood; managing and maintaining those properties had become a family business. Lanaius' job was monitoring the pest traps; it was one of the few things he could do to help, and a task that only he enjoyed, to the bewilderment of the family. But no one gave it a second thought that he would go into one of the neighborhood rat-holes for a couple of hours, not even Evelyn.
Lanaius handed her a flashlight and led her to the basement. "If I turn on the light, they get real noisy." Improvised tables and shelves held small tubs of bugs - moths, roaches, beetles and worms. "I don't have enough food to keep anything bigger. I tried keeping a rat, but it chewed its way out of the cage, so I don't do those anymore."
He passed her a margarine tub. "Have you ever seen these before?"
The inside of the tub was lined with dirt, and a winged beetle rested on top. Evelyn thought the abdomen looked familiar. "You're growing fireflies?"
"I found 'em near the bridge. They kinda look like these fireflies-" He held out a few fireflies in his hand, then smushed them against a paint stirrer. "Those were dead already." Their luminescence was smeared onto the stick, offering a greenish glow. "Watch this," he said, and started waving the glow toward and away from the tub's contents. The lightning bugs glowed in return - a bright red glow.
"I couldn't find it on the internet. Do you know what it is?"
Evelyn shook her head. She examined one under her flashlight. "What did you do to them?"
"Nothing. That's how I found them."
"How many is 'them'?"
"I got 5 or 6 in there. But one time, I counted 16 flying around at the dog park."
She examined the bug's form: the patterns of its carapace, the barb-tipped antennae, the shape of its wings. "Lanaius, how are your grades?"
"A's and B's."
"You know where you want to go to college?"
"Not yet."
"Well, this bug is going to get you there."
inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Five of the Coolest Species Discovered in 2013"
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