The moon isn’t made of Green Cheese, not even the moon over Kansas.

—Salman Rushdie

"So, Phil, you found your froggies right here?" Tessie wriggled her blue-polished toenails down through brown water, testing the muddy bottom of Darwin’s Pond. A pair of swallows swept above the tips of the cattails on the far bank and disappeared into the wild plum bushes along the gravel road. The scoop of Tessie’s red swimsuit exposed her back to the sun. She waded a mucking step deeper, flexing the tanned stretches of her legs. "I can’t believe a new kind of frog just appeared like magic. It’s God’s will."

"Magic doesn’t exist," Phil answered, skirting any direct argument with a minister’s daughter about God’s will. "A new species is the product of adaptation."

In this summer when the Kansas State Board of Education was debating whether evolution should be taught in public schools, the last summer of the Twentieth Century, the summer after Tessie and Phil graduated from Pawnee Bend High School, Phil was fighting for the cause of science by trying to stay rational. This required him to tear his gaze away from Tessie’s hips as she stooped to give her arms to the water. Compiling data in his best scientific manner, he remembered her embracing Darwin’s Pond in the same way at the age of eight, when they couldn’t swim without the company of adults, and at ten, when they could, and at twelve, when her shape changed, and she stopped coming here.  Then six years passed, during which he became more of a geek and she became ever more of a belle, the beauty of the class, the town, the county, and, in his mind, of the state, the country, the planet, and the universe. Her body grew as far from his reach as if she were celestial. Until this morning, while he carried her groceries to her car, when, unaccountably and against all good sense, he had told her about his frogs.

She lingered at the water’s edge. "And what were they adapting to here, your froggies, all by themselves in this little pond?"

"Who knows.?" He warmed to his subject, relieved to be talking about the secret he’d kept for so many months. "Something we haven’t figured out yet, maybe. Change happens for the survival of the species."

Beyond the pond, the pasture sloped upward and folded into low hills, giving contours to the fast-running shadows of the clouds. Two hawks circled in the sky with hardly any movement of their wings, riding the thermal updrafts caused by the sun’s baking of the air. Phil envied their illusion of weightlessness. For a moment he imagined a world with less gravity, where anyone could soar toward the frosty white puffs of cumulus. Quickly he put this unscientific thought away.

"My father," Tessie said, "calls the theory of evolution a blasphemy against the word of the Lord."

"His opinion won’t make the frogs disappear." He risked a stare, taking in her summer-browned arms and her challenging smile before he lowered his eyes. "They evolved, right here, into a new species." Phil watched a grasshopper cling to a stalk. Arguing with Tessie cost him a huge effort. He tried not to think of her standing ten feet away and watched himself instead. His legs looked so skinny, sticking out of his trunks. A swish of water made him look up in time to see Tessie put her Lycra backsides to the sun and dive under the scum.

Outside the spreading rings of her ripples, his frogs stared pensively, rows of bumpy eyes protruding from the water. They put Phil in mind of a church choir. He counted them silently, one frog, two frog, three frog, knowing Tessie would stay beneath the surface until he got to sixty. Cottonwood leaves rustled and showed their silver undersides, making him wish again for lightness. Fifteen frog, sixteen frog, seventeen frog. Muggy heat and the lingering smell of cattle in the dirt tempted him toward the dank pond, to plunge, blind in the murk, scattering frogs, floating and losing his weight while he groped for Tessie with the tips of his fingers. An unscientific move, he scolded himself, an act of desperate ignorance. Forty-eight frog, forty-nine frog, fifty frog.

Tires crunched the gravel of the road behind him. An engine raced once and lowered to an idle. Phil knew the driver must be Tessie’s boyfriend, Rance. He closed his eyes for fifty-nine frog and sixty frog, then watched the pond. As if a summons had penetrated the water, Tessie surfaced thirty feet out, a moss-covered mermaid, and looked toward the road. "Rance, honey."

While she toweled, she kept her eyes almost closed, showing Phil her crescents of wet eyelash. She pulled shorts and a half T over her wet swimsuit and walked past him barefooted.

"Thanks, Phil, for showing me your froggies."

"Don’t tell anybody."

"Oh, I won’t." Her answer sounded careless to him, as if his secret wasn’t worth spreading around. Tessie’s hair released tiny rivers down her neck while her eyes, moist and lively, rose up to Rance in his gleaming truck. "Our last swim at the old pond."

Phil curled into the tussocky brome grass, trying not to show how Tessie’s movements tempted him to grab her. "See you tonight Tess," he called as she ran up the slope. Unsteady on the breeze, a corn-yellow butterfly fluttered past. Phil concentrated on the creature as a specimen, an excuse to keep his gaze from lingering after Tessie, and made himself think of the billions of butterflies who had carried their genetic code faithfully through billions of years to let this little creature flit so easily in the sunlight. Nothing miraculous, just science on the wing. Tessie’s father, Reverend Austin, was wrong about the nature of creation. Phil believed the spreading and changing of life across the Earth were as ordinary as love.

A gasoline roar carried Tessie and Rance away. Phil thought of Tessie’s still-wet legs pressed close to Rance’s dusty jeans and struggled to stay scientific. The frogs crept back to the edge of the pond, not shy of him. He surveyed them with the eye of a student biologist. Mostly Rana pipens, common leopard frogs, and some Rana catesbiana, bullfrogs with their thick heads resting on the surface of the water, and a few of the others, the ones he called his special admirers, a white-spotted tribe who didn’t yet own a Latin name, a species never before identified until he discovered them here.

Reedy croaking from the leopard frogs provoked a throaty answer from the bullfrogs. Among them, Phil heard the small chorus of slightly different voices from the newcomers, croaks ending with a rising note as if they were asking a question over and over. He leaned toward the water, followed the sound, made a quick grab, and came up with a kicking frog. Turning it gently in his hand, he traced his finger across the pattern of dots that made a half circle around the head and trailed down the back. No other frogs in creation bore these markings.

If far-off powers confirmed his discovery, he’d be allowed to choose the scientific name for the new species, and he’d have one shining item to overcome the C’s and D’s in English and history on his applications for scholarships. Three or four times a day all summer, he’d been sneaking away from trimming lettuce or stocking shelves. He’d head for the back door of Wheatly’s IGA, throw his apron on the stacked canned goods in the storeroom, and walk between the dry puddle craters in the alley to the post office. When the glass in the box showed envelopes slanted inside, he’d twist the lock, whispering the pointer home to the numbers as if he knew a sorcerer’s incantation, until the door swung open. He always found the usual junk, and he didn’t know yet whether the National Science Foundation had recognized the new species of frog and allowed him the discoverer’s privilege of naming it forever Rana tessie.People started filing into the American Legion baseball diamond an hour before sunset for the Fourth of July fireworks show. Families spread their blankets on the lawn beyond the outfield fence. Mr. Hampstead, the high school biology teacher, handed Phil a bunch of balloons tethered on strings. "Got ‘em, Phil? Don’t let the wind blow you away."

Phil thought Mr. Hampstead maintained a reasonably cool appearance for a man of twenty-eight. He had short hair, thin glasses, a tight gut, and a wrestler’s grip as he pressed Phil’s fingers around the strings. The balloons, in the red and black of the Pawnee Bend Panthers, were supposed to be a fund raiser for the science club. People were to buy them for a dollar and then release them into the twilight while Tessie, on the pitcher’s mound, sang the Star-Spangled Banner to open the fireworks display. Mr. Hampstead and Phil had cooked up the balloon idea one night after school amid the charts and aquariums of the biology lab, caught in the heady influence of formaldehyde while they dissected a specimen of the new frog species Phil had discovered at Darwin’s pond. The dead frog lay belly up, splayed and pinned to a board so they could make its thigh muscles twitch with jolts from an electrode. Phil held a dishcloth in his lap, ready to throw it over the experiment if anyone interrupted them. Evolution was a touchy subject at Pawnee Bend High in the Spring of 1999. Some students and teachers talked loudly in the hall about the sanctity of creationism. Mr. Hampstead and Phil had decided to keep the frogs a secret until they learned whether the National Science Foundation would confirm the discovery.

"Remember, Phil," Mr. Hampstead instructed as a wire sparked and the frog leg tried to leap, "nothing is real unless it can be measured and classified."

"Hello?" Miss Swift, the new English teacher, stopped at the doorway to the lab. She put her heels together and her shoulders forward. Her pretty nose, wriggling slightly from the formaldehyde, pointed inquisitively toward their mess of knives and guts. Phil threw the dishcloth over the frog. Miss Swift seemed not to notice. "Mr. Hampstead," she asked, "my car is unwilling to start, and I was wondering if you could . . ."

Phil watched all regard for science drain from Mr. Hampstead’s eyes. For the rest of the Spring semester, the English teacher and the biology teacher had been discreet, but the whole school had known they were an item.

Now the July breeze at the ball field used strands of Miss Swift’s dark hair to tickle her cheek as she claimed Mr. Hampstead from the helium canister. Phil thought her shorts were rolled an inch too high for a woman on the far side of college. Mr. Hampstead tilted the helium back on its carriage, the effort making his arms bulge, and wheeled it behind the concession shed. Miss Swift picked up the box of balloons and strings and followed him. They stayed back there a while. Phil sold a couple of balloons, business not going too well. Most people passed by with a smirk as he tried to hold onto the three dozen whapping orbs.

Mr. Hampstead and Miss Swift reappeared, his arm around her waist. Both of them looked self-conscious, Phil thought, as if they’d just agreed to go public with their romance. A blast of wind jerked at the balloons. Phil needed both hands to keep them from flying off.

"Under control, Phil?" Mr. Hampstead asked.

"Sure. You might as well go find a seat."

The lovers wandered toward the stands, unaware of anything but each other. Phil felt himself on the threshold of their world, the land of adults. He wondered whether he should start calling them Bryce and Diane.

The stands filled. Cars cruised the dusty parking lot, searching for open spots. Babies toddled, moms basked in the fading sunlight, and dads shot fireworks all along the outfield fence. Sandy gusts played with the last force of the day’s wind and heat. Biology and physics, Phil told himself, are what makes the world go ‘round.

The tugging of the balloons hurt his shoulders, making him feel scrawnier than ever. His shirttails came loose, and his jeans twisted off line from his belly button. He didn’t dare to take one of his hands away from the balloon strings. His glasses started to slide along his nose, while a committee of sparrows on a light pole watched him squirm.

"Hey, buddy, don’t blow away." Rance tossed his jibe with a friendly enough tone, causing the three guys with him to cut off their laughter and howdy Phil with grins. "Here." With one hand, Rance gathered the strings and effortlessly controlled all the balloons. He took his time playing with them, which allowed Phil to tuck in the flapping shirttail and wipe off the steamy eyeglasses. After Phil was settled, Rance handed back all the balloons but four, which he shared with his friends. A year ago, this group had been the high school aristocracy, the entire backfield of the football team. Now the pumped muscles shown off by their sleeveless shirts looked purposeless. Nature was forcing them out of the niche they’d fit themselves into, Phil understood, and he tried to feel superior.

Rance handed him four dollars. "For the science club?"

"No, I’m supporting my habit."

Rance laughed and his buddies echoed, but Phil realized he’d insulted the strongest guy in the class twice in one day, first by asking Tessie to Darwin’s Pond, now by smart-assing.

Flicking his wrist, Rance caused the balloon he held to bob. "So this money is for your mutant froggie-woggies?"

Surprise brought heat to Phil’s face. His glasses steamed over again as he blurted out, "They aren’t mutants." As soon as he shut his mouth he knew he’d done the wrong thing by admitting the frogs existed. One of Rance’s friends started a ribbit-ribbit chant, and the others took it up. They made a chorus of frog noise loud enough to turn the heads of people nearby as they followed Rance to the stands. Their balloons bounced above their heads.

Phil wanted to be big enough to run after them and make some sort of threat to shut them up. But he wasn’t. Worse, Tessie’s betrayal grew in him, as unavoidable as a sickness. She’d taken his precious secret and given it to Rance. Frustration made Phil’s hands shake so badly that at first he didn’t notice the kid tugging at his wrist. The little boy offered a dollar and asked for a balloon, then Phil saw a line had formed. Rance and his friends had made the balloons popular. Phil sold balloons as fast as he could, stuffing his pockets with money and hardly caring. All he could think about was the rumor of the new frog species getting around town, and some idiot deciding they were an abomination and dumping poison in the pond. Finally his hands were empty. All the balloons were gone, and more children were waiting. Telling them to come back in a few minutes, he went behind the concession shed to see if he could work the helium cannister.

When he attached a balloon as he’d seen Mr. Hampstead do and twisted the handle of the cannister, all he got was a hiss. The balloon stayed flaccid. He gave up on the project, stuffed the wads of dollars further into his pockets, and searched for a lengthening shadow below the grandstand where he could hide. He knew he’d have to tell Mr. Hampstead about how he’d spilled their secret, but right now there was no way to find him. The stands had filled, and the sun was setting. For the next hour Phil would have nothing to do but listen to Tessie sing the national anthem, watch the fireworks, and make himself miserable.

Bats who lived under the awning of the announcer’s booth made sorties into the evening air. Phil loved them for the way their fat bodies and leathery wings made them dart in odd swoops like mice who had learned to fly. They lifted off his anger and frustration, but when they fled to their hiding place, it all came down harder.

The clenching of his fists made squeaking noises, and he remembered he still held unfilled balloons. When he dropped the balloons into the box, the one Miss Swift had carried on her shapely hip, something stirred.

He jerked his hand away, but his feet stayed still. What he saw held him fascinated. Thin white tentacles swayed their tips above the edge of the box, like the arms of some tiny sea creature. Shadows thickened around the concession shed as the sun set. Phil blinked, but the tentacles continued to wave. His hands grazed the rough boards of the shed. Dancing and elongating, the tentacles stretched toward the darkening sky. He watched and then watched harder, until he understood they were the balloon strings, come alive.

And they were not scientific.

Stepping back from the shadow of the shed, Phil glanced around to see if anyone had been watching him lose his mind. In the crowded stands, children in shorts and sandals crawled through adults who hunched forward, shoulder to shoulder, as if there were a ball game to watch on the empty diamond. Further away, reclining forms on blankets lost their faces in the dark. Someone’s paltry Roman candle shot off, the balls of green and blue arcing no higher than the hedge of spruce trees along the road. Eyeing Phil sidelong, a dog trotted past, tail-down and dispirited by the pop and gunpowder stench of the fireworks. A girl twirled a sparkler, the light cutting circles across Phil’s vision. Tessie waited in the dugout on the far side of the field, faintly glowing in her white blouse and miniskirt. Her father, the substantial Reverend Austin, watched her from the front row of benches in the stands.

Against the shed wall, the balloon strings still did their hula. Phil touched a finger to one. Immediately it dropped into the box and became ordinary. He touched the others, squatting by the box and watching closely as the life left each of them in turn, until only one hung in the air. He noticed he wasn’t afraid of them now, and wondered why. Maybe they possessed a power to disarm his caution, like a venom for the brain, or maybe his fear was erased by the numbness of knowing Tessie had betrayed him.

A voice blared from the loudspeakers on the foul poles. "Ladies and gentlemen, please stand while Miss Contessa Austin sings our national anthem." Tessie walked to the pitcher’s mound. A spotlight hit her. The balloons Phil had sold earlier were released to escape through the yellow beam. Phil touched the last dancing string and watched it collapse like the others, then coiled all of them into his palm and put them in his pocket. Vaguely he thought of offering this discovery to Mr. Hampstead, but the lunacy of dancing balloon strings seemed like something better kept secret.

Recorded music cranked through the loudspeakers as Tessie caressed the micro- phone and hit a solid "Oh! say can you see." Like a backdrop for her performance, the first deep golden arc of a solid harvest moon edged slowly above the horizon. Tessie hit the high notes, the rising moon grew, and the strings in Phil’s pocket began to wriggle. He took them out, and they stretched toward Tessie. But though the sight and sound of her filled nearly all his senses, Phil could tell the strings were trying to reach farther. Their purpose lay beyond her. Growing moonlight gave shape to the fields outside the town, and the strings coiled and jerked upward as if they longed to spring from his hand. Phil let his gaze follow the direction of their energy and made himself do what a scientist must do first of all, which is to watch and wonder.

"Maybe," he whispered to himself, "it’s the moon."

Tessie finished singing, the spotlight went out, a bomb burst in air, the crowd ooohed and clapped, and fireworks broke overhead with streaks of gold and red, overpowering the moonlight. The strings dropped lifelessly into Phil’s hand. Tessie crossed the dark baseball field and folded into Rance’s arm. A shower of blue sparks from the exploding sky let Phil follow the tender dip of Rance’s head as he gave her a kiss on the cheek. Rance and Tessie walked around a corner of the stands. Minutes later, Rance’s pickup, with only the parking lights on, drove out of the parking lot.

On his walk home, Phil zigzagged the streets in the muggy night. When he crossed under the yellow pools of insect-filled light from the street lamps, the strings in his pocket stayed lifeless. Between the lights, when it seemed they could feel the moon, they squirmed as if they wanted to escape and tugged at Phil until he was sure they would allow him no peace. He stood on a corner looking at his bedroom window above Wheatly’s IGA. A corner of his mind which had never before possessed a voice told him what he must do, and the rest of him agreed. His decision bore no relation to science. Mr. Hampstead , this new voice said, had taught the wrong lesson. The most important realities can never be dissected.

Easing his father’s grocery van down the alley in neutral until he’d rolled far enough to start the engine without waking his parents, he drove through streets that were empty except for a few late-night cruisers, then took a back route out of town and into the shadowed curves of Lost Creek Lane.

Tire marks showed a way off the gravel road and over the hump of the barrow ditch, into an opening through the trees. Ruts and roots bounced Phil off the van seat. He wondered what explaining he’d do if he got stuck and cost his father a tow bill. A last blind turn, and the trail led onto a wide, sloping ridge. The new-risen moon turned the fields a hazy purple and glinted on the fenders of lovers’ cars.

In a shadow where a wide gully crossed the slope, Phil saw Rance’s truck. An owl hooted in the woods behind the van, and locusts desperate to mate harped their symphony. Miles away over the hills, his frogs would be sleeping in Darwin’s Pond. Keeping them safe was his duty, and magic would be his weapon.

Cursing the flash of the dome light as he opened and shut the door, he left the van and crept down the hill. He winced in the light of an overwhelming moon. The strings in his pocket came alive and danced. No heads were visible in the cab of Rance’s pickup. Phil crawled beneath the tailgate, barely breathing, and rested his hands on the bumper. From inside the bed of the pickup, he heard Tessie’s whisper, pleased and indistinct, answered by a murmur from Rance.

The strings seemed to untangle themselves as Phil pulled them from his pocket. As quickly as he could tie them to the bumper they stretched skyward like earthbound moonbeams. A nighthawk flashed overhead, wingtips sharp in the silver light. Bodies stirred in the pickup bed. Phil tied the last of the strings to the bumper. It snaked through his fingers and stretched beside the others. The five thin white lines undulated like sinuous ghosts.

He crawled away, sprinted up the hill, and squirmed through the window of the van to keep the dome light from coming on. Panting from the run, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the ignition key, he waited until Tessie’s scream and Rance’s panicked shout told him they’d seen the strings. They were still howling, and lights were coming on in cars parked all over the hillside, as Phil eased the van down the lane and drove slowly home.Late the next morning, he sat in a lawn chair on the flat roof outside the back window of his bedroom, with his feet propped on the vent pipe he used as a stool. The odor of tar rose around him as the sun made the rooftop sticky. He held a thick, unopened letter from the National Science Foundation.

The fire escape ladder rattled, announcing a visitor. Phil had been expecting Rance to show up and slap some sense into him. He crouched in his chair and tightened is grasp on the plastic arms. But the face at the top of the fire escape was Tessie’s, and her single-minded concentration, lips tight and eyes focused entirely on Phil, told him Rance wasn’t below her on the ladder looking up her shorts.

She minced across the rooftop, her sandals making delicate prints in the tar. Phil unfolded his spare chair. Her expression became the most important puzzle of his life, yet he couldn’t untangle it. Neither quite smiling nor quite frowning, she took the offered seat, those little shorts of hers riding up. She blinked in the sunlight, and relaxed her fist to show him the five strings. "Phil, what the hell are these?"

"Why would I have the slightest idea?" He saw his lie disappoint her, and wanted to take back the words.

Tessie squeezed a hand into a pocket and brought a wad of dollar bills into the sunlight. "We found this money behind Rance’s pickup."

Phil accepted his second chance to confess. "Balloon profits. Must’ve fallen out of my pocket."

He waited, terrified of the all-too-revealed charms of her body, of the hidden mysteries of her mind, of his lack of a scientific hold on things. Her expression made a choice and became a grin. "You could get shit-kicked, Phil, out on Lost Ridge spooking around."

"I was mad at you for telling Rance about the frogs."

"He’ll shut up about them. These strings, or whatever they are, scared him silly. And I’m sorry I told him."

Phil handed Tessie the envelope from the National Science Foundation. "Tell me what it says."

She rested the slack strings on her knee and slit the envelope with a fingernail.

"Dear Mr. Wheatly," she read, "we are pleased to congratulate you on your remarkable discovery. . . ." The rest washed over Phil like the surf of a warm ocean, unbelievably powerful words and the splash of her voice. She finished, folded the paper into the envelope, laid the magic letter high up on her lap, and gave him the full grace of her eyes. "Phil, you named your frogs after me. Rana tessie."

The strings started to wriggle. He lifted them off her knee, conscious of his fingertips grazing her skin for the first time since a mud fight they’d had at the age of ten, and tied two knots around the curve of the vent pipe where it poked out of the roof at their feet. The strings took life and spiraled up.

Tessie leaned back in her chair as if she’d seen a snake, then she began to giggle. "What makes them work?"

"I don’t know." Phil bent the end of one sting and tied it to her ankle, and then tied another to his. "Magic, I guess, whatever that means."

They laughed together as the lightness ran through them. He felt himself lifting out of the chair and rising to the end of the string, waving in the air like a human balloon. Tessie floated beside him, hair flying , arms and legs spread as she bobbed on her tether, the letter from the National Science Foundation fluttering in one hand. The wind blew the edges of her T-shirt up along her ribs. A pale slice of moon still sailed in the daytime sky.

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