“Don’t run over the ant family!” 9-year-old Jane Johnson yelled at her 12-year-old friend and neighbor, Raymond Rocky.
In Maple Grove, Iowa, the afternoon light glinted off the red wagon as it stood at the top of the sloped driveway, its wheels clattering over tiny pebbles. Jane sat inside, gripping the sides and looking nervously toward a line of ants crossing the concrete below.
“Wait, Raymond—stop!” she cried.
But Raymond only grinned. With a quick shove, he sent the wagon rolling downhill. The sudden motion threw Jane backward as the wagon picked up speed, the wind stinging her cheeks. Then, laughing wildly, Raymond ran after her and leapt in beside her.
The sun seemed to wink at the red wagon, daring it to roll faster. Even the ants moved with purpose, as if they knew the children’s game might change their tiny kingdom forever.
“What? They’re only ants! Who cares? I like playing with your wagon,” he said, rolling with her down the driveway. The wagon’s wheels roared like thunderclouds.
The brightly painted red wagon was Jane’s birthday gift from Raymond, but she thought he liked it more than she did.
“I must protect the ants!” Jane said. She scooped up the family of ants with a newspaper on the grass. “Did you know there are such things as fire ants and honey ants?” she said, studying the ants she was holding. “And I love the beetles, and ladybugs, and grasshoppers,” Jane said, scouring the driveway for more insects.
“Your wagon is like the Car of Juggernaut,” Raymond said. “It crushes anything in its path! Like a steamroller!”
The moment Raymond said it — Car of Juggernaut — the name clung to the wagon like a shadow, and the wheels seemed to spin faster than before. Then, Raymond steered the wagon over a colony of ants, crushing them. Jane felt sick to her stomach as he laughed.
“I’m going to save the ants somehow! Stop being so mean,” Jane said. “Don’t you have any mercy?”
Jane pushed him out of her wagon and onto the pavement, taking back her vehicle. It was too small for two people anyhow. Her heart sank.
“This is my gift. You’re not running anybody over anymore!” she said, making sure she didn’t hit bugs with the wheels as she rolled inside the garage.
After Jane jumped out of the wagon, she shut the large, rolling door with the push of a button and put her wagon away. Then, she walked into the kitchen.
“Mom! I need to start an ant farm!” Jane said to her mother as she made dinner. “Raymond is trying to run over all the ants with my wagon.”
“An ant farm?” her mom asked. “Is this a science project for school?”
“It’s my own science project!” Jane said. “My wagon can’t be a battering ram to those poor, little insects.”
“Well, just go in your room, and do your homework,” Mrs. Johnson said, as she picked up the phone to make a call. “You’re bugging me!”
As Jane went into her room to do her homework, she considered that ants live in dirt, and chocolate is about the same color as dirt. So, if she covered the ants in chocolate, they would still be alive, and it would make them extra special and worth saving to people like Raymond.
Then, Pepper, Jane’s tiny black and white dog, barked and jumped on her bed.
“Running over the ants would almost be like running over Pepper!” Jane said. “I would never run over Pepper.”
She hugged her black and white cocker spaniel and kissed him on the cheek.
“Maybe the way to save the ants and start a farm is to cover them in chocolate!” she said to her dog. “I did once hear of chocolate-covered ants. At least this way, they can hide in the sugar, and people won’t step on them. Chocolate is almost like dirt . . .”
So, during the middle of the night, when her parents were fast asleep, she snuck into the kitchen and got all the chocolate out of the refrigerator: chocolate syrup, chocolate bars, chocolate pudding, and cocoa powder. She mixed them all together and microwaved the blend into a thick liquid.
Then, she walked into the driveway and spread as much chocolate as she could over the ants. Under the silver hush of the moon, the chocolate gleamed across the driveway like a spell, and the ants crawled through it as if discovering a new planet made of sweetness.
The moon hung low, curious and kind, watching the small girl with her bowl of melted chocolate. A hush fell over the yard — the kind that comes when even the wind wants to see what will happen next. The ants were like a parade of tiny travelers. The chocolate seemed like a river of midnight spread across the kingdom of ants. If anything, Jane thought she was giving them a sugary treat or dessert.
“Now you’ll be safe, little ones,” she said to the ants, as she poured the chocolate.
She worked on covering the driveway with chocolate until the wee hours, when she finally decided to take the last bits of chocolate and cover the strawberries in the refrigerator. She was sure she had saved the colony from every kind of predator.
As she slipped back to her bedroom, she shut her eyes until the sun shone through the bedroom windows. When she awoke for breakfast a few hours later, she felt nervous when her mother couldn’t find the cocoa to make chocolate milk.
“Jane, how can we be out of cocoa?” her mom asked.
“I’m not entirely sure!” Jane said. She knew she would be in trouble for fibbing. “Do you think Dad might want to take the bus today?”
“Why would I do that?” her dad said, walking into the kitchen with his briefcase.
“Just in case chocolate gets on the tires!” she said. She poured brown sugar and cream on her oatmeal. She mixed in blueberries that her mother placed on the table.
“What?” her dad said, moving the curtain and looking out the window to the driveway. “Why is there chocolate all over the driveway?” her dad asked, astonished.
“I just didn’t want the ants and insects to get run over, and I thought they might be considered special if they were covered in chocolate,” Jane said, noticing chocolate streaking the ends of her tangled hair. “Then, the ants will never be run over by my wagon or anything else!”
“Who in the world gave you this idea?” her mother said. “Did you see some crazy television show?”
“Maybe the driveway could just be the chocolate ant farm,” Jane said. “I think they have started to build a little hill by the side of the grass. They really need a nice home.”
“I will tolerate the chocolate ant farm until it rains,” Jane’s father said, trying not to laugh.
“It had better rain tomorrow,” Mrs. Johnson said, turning on the radio to listen for the weather forecast for the week. “We need to be able to drive the car.”
When the rains came, the chocolate melted away — but the ants had already built a tiny castle at the edge of the grass, stronger than any storm. Jane thought she saw it glisten in the sunlight, like it was smiling. Even Raymond noticed its brilliance.
“Don’t you touch the ants, Raymond,” Jane yelled at him. “Try to be a nice person.”
“I’m trying to do better,” he said. “I have to root for the little guy!”
Every so often, a line of ants marched past the wagon’s wheels as if on parade, carrying crumbs and treasures from their chocolate kingdom. Jane liked to think they were waving at her. Maybe they were — because in that driveway, even the smallest creatures remembered the girl who saved them from the Car of Juggernaut. It now sat quietly in the garage, conquered by kindness.
Copyright 2016 Jennifer Waters
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