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The Science of Seventh Grade

46 The Science of Seventh Grade My son is talking and I am typing and we are getting all the facts down we can about the Arctic Tundra. Like: it is covered year round by frozen soil called permafrost, sometimes fifteen hundred feet deep. And: it is the youngest biome, formed just ten thousand years ago. And: the Arctic fox is a primary consumer, also the polar bear, their chief source of food being the collared lemming, warm orb of mammal shown here, cradled in the scientist’s soft palms. And we agree: it is hard to be a lemming in the Arctic Tundra, scrambling at the bottom of the food chain, only partially hidden by the low Arctic scrub, the Tundra perennials that bloom and spray their glory for just a few months before exiting a moonscape of permafrost (sometimes fifteen hundred feet deep), 47 dark outcroppings of rock. Seventh grade is hard. The hazard of algebraic equation, trick of thesis statement, locker combination— even to find the right book at exactly the right time is a risk. Better to carry it all in a pack, scurry bent and huffing through seething halls to the next safe place, find a seat near the window, slump low, and keep an eye on the far horizon where a teacher has been asking questions for ten thousand years, the same frozen fate chained down and down. ...