Attack of the Vampire Weenies (11 page)

“No way,” Eric blurted out.

“Correct again, Eric,” Mr. Bedecker said. “Norway is the right answer.”

Eric was so stunned, and the line of remaining kids was so short, he was caught by surprise when his third turn came around.

“Well, Eric?” Mr. Bedecker asked.

Eric stared at him. He had no idea what the question was.

“Eric, please don't tell me you weren't paying attention,” Mr. Bedecker said.

All Eric could do was mutter, “Sorry.”

Mr. Bedecker looked even more surprised than before. “Very, very good, Eric. I owe you an apology. I see you were definitely paying attention. Runnymede and Epsom are both in the English county of Surrey. I had no idea you were such a serious student of geography. Even I wasn't sure about that one until I checked my textbook.”

Eric looked at Darren and shrugged. Then he looked at the line. It wasn't much of a line anymore. It was just four other kids. He'd almost made it into the top three.

His next turn came quickly. “What is the capital of Macau?”

“Macau?” Eric had never even heard of that place.

Mr. Bedecker nodded. “Correct. Macau is the name of the capital city as well as the country.”

Two more kids got knocked out. Eric had made it to the final three. All of them would compete in the school contest. But first, they'd see who was the winner for the class and, more important, the winner of those gummi worms.

“The rules get stricter now,” Mr. Bedecker said. “No second chances. Make sure of your answer before you speak. Does everyone understand?”

“Yes.” Eric didn't care if they changed the rules.
It doesn't matter. I can't lose
, he thought.
I can say anything and I'll be right.
Somehow, he was riding a lucky streak. He'd seen it happen in sports and on game shows. No reason it couldn't happen during a geography bee. He was invincible. Invulnerable. Unbeatable. He couldn't wait to nail the question.

Eric pushed his tongue against the side of his left rear molar, as if already prying away stuck bits of gummi worm. The bag was as good as his.
Give me your toughest question.
He'd never won anything in his whole life, and he was really enjoying how good it felt to be a champ.

Mr. Bedecker glanced down at the sheet of questions, then nodded, as if he, too, realized that Eric would know the answer. “What is the name of the country that is directly south of the United States?”

Eric barely listened. “Yummy gummi mummy tummy,” he blurted out, confident that anything he said would be correct. Half a second later, it sank in what he'd just done. “Wait. Mexico! I mean Mexico. I know that. Everyone knows that.”

“I'm sorry, Eric. You heard the rules. I have to take your first answer,” Mr. Bedecker said. “I regret to inform you that ‘yummy gummi mummy tummy' is not a country directly south of the United States. Or anywhere else, as far as I know.”

“But…” Eric stood for a moment, waiting for his luck to return, then shuffled over to his desk as the imagined taste of gummi worms faded from his mouth. He sat and watched Cindy win first place, with Bobby coming in second. The bell rang. School was over for the day.

“Come on,” Darren said. “Let's go hang out at my house.”

“I can't,” Eric said.

“Why not?”

Eric picked up his geography book. “I have to study for the school contest. I only have one week, and there's a ton of stuff to learn.”

“Study? You're kidding,” Darren said.

Eric shook his head. “Nope, I'm serious. I have to get ready. There's a lot more to winning than just luck, you know.”

 

THE SPIDER SHOUTER

“Kill it!” Roger shouted.
He pointed at the spider that sat like a small plum in the center of the huge web. “I hate them.”

“They're kind of cool.” Dana walked over toward the corner of the porch and studied the web. “I like spiders.”

“I don't,” Roger said. “They creep me out. They look all swollen in back, like they're filled with green icky stuff.”

“Chill out.” Dana thought the spider was awesome. Not that she'd want one crawling on her or anything like that. She felt Roger, who'd come over from next door to borrow a magazine, was way too nervous about everything. “It won't hurt you.”

“Go away!” Roger shouted at the spider.

The spider skittered to the side of the web near the house.

“Hey, it listened to you,” Dana said.

“No way,” Roger said. “Spiders don't have ears.”

“Sure they do. Everything has ears.” But even as she said that, she realized she wasn't sure.

“Bacteria don't have ears,” Roger said.

“I'm talking about animals and bugs and stuff,” Dana said.

“Well, bugs don't have ears. I'll prove it.” Roger stepped closer to the web—but not too close—and shouted, “Get off the porch!”

The spider dropped down from the web. Dana saw that it was dangling from a tiny glistening line of spider silk. When the spider reached the floor of the porch, it ran to the edge and went over the side.

“It totally heard you,” Dana said.

“No way.” Roger shook his head.

“Come on. I'm looking this up.” Dana ran inside. She was going to check out the answer online, but on the way to her room, she passed her parents' bookcase with the old encyclopedia. She grabbed the volume for the letter
S
and opened it to the page for spiders.

She skimmed the subject lines until she saw “Senses.”

“Okay, here it is. They don't have ears.…”

“Told you.” Roger smirked.

“But they sort of hear. They feel vibrations in their legs. So it felt what you said.” She held up the page to show Roger. “Try calling it.”

“That's stupid. There's no way the spider listened to me. I'll prove it.”

Roger went back outside. Dana followed him to the porch.

“Here, spider!” Roger yelled, like he was calling a dog. “Come here, spider. Hey, spider. Come here.”

Dana watched the porch boards beneath the web. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the spider crawled into sight. It didn't climb back to the web. Instead, it raced right toward Roger with eight tiny legs pumping like it was desperate to reach him.

“Ahhhgg!” Roger ran to the other side of the porch. The spider followed him.

“Ahhg!” he screamed again when he reached the railing. He stomped down on the spider.

“Why'd you do that?” Dana asked. “Spiders are good.” She pointed to another paragraph in the encyclopedia. “It says they help control bad insects.”

“I don't care. I don't want one chasing after me,” Roger said. “You shouldn't have told me to call it.”

“Oh, now you're blaming me? You're the one who called it.” Before Dana could say anything else, a motion to her side caught her attention. Another spider, just as large as the first one, was coming up from the front of the porch.

She watched as it ran toward Roger. She wasn't sure whether to warn him. She didn't want the spider to get stomped, but she didn't think Roger would want the spider crawling on him. She pointed.

“Arggg!” Roger shouted and stomped.

A third spider came from under the porch. And then a fourth.

Roger stomped them both. He let out a howl of anger and fear. But the sound suddenly cut off. Roger grabbed his throat. He moved his lips. A faint whisper came out.

Dana had seen that happen once before. Her father had shouted so loudly at an umpire during a softball game that he'd lost his voice. He hadn't been able to speak above a whisper for three days after that.

Dana saw another spider coming toward them. This one was on the sidewalk, near the front steps.

“Go away!” she shouted.

The spider kept coming. Dana realized it wasn't listening to her. “You tell it,” she said to Roger.

“Go away!” Roger's words, dribbling from his injured throat, barely reached Dana's ears. The spider didn't slow down.

“I guess they don't listen to whispers,” Dana said.

Roger stomped two more spiders that had reached the porch. He pointed to the lawn and whispered, “There can't be that many more.”

Dana glanced at the encyclopedia. At the bottom of the page, above the last paragraph, she saw the heading “Spider Population.”

The edge of the lawn by the sidewalk rippled like the surface of a lake when the breeze kicks up. Spiders were moving over it, bending the blades of grass as they traveled. Lots of spiders.

“We'll stomp them all,” Roger whispered.

Dana shook her head.

“How many?” he asked.

Dana read the last sentence out loud: “Even in a town or city, there can be more than a million spiders in every acre.”

The whole lawn rippled. Dana turned toward the house, but spiders were coming down the walls now, and covering the door. In a moment, they were covering her and Roger like a living coat of brown and black paint.

Roger's shout was more a gasp than a whisper now.

Dana's scream was louder. But it didn't last very long.

 

THE PYRAMID MAN

There came to the
village of Meander a man dressed as a merchant. He wore not the poor clothes of a tinker or peddler, but the rich garb of one who sold silk or silver.

But he bore no such common wares.

The merchant, who spoke not a word, strode through town holding aloft a small pyramid of painted wood. Each triangular side was a different color.

“What's that?” a boy asked.

The merchant smiled and held his hand a bit higher, as if the sight of the item itself were sufficient answer, but still didn't speak.

The boy followed the merchant. Another boy and a girl joined the procession, along with several adults. Soon, all who saw were following, for there was little enough to break the tedium of the day, and this stranger was obviously no ordinary traveler.

“What is it?” one man asked.

“What does it do?” asked another.

But the merchant responded to none of these questions. Holding the pyramid at chest level in his open palm, he continued to walk at the same steady pace. The people followed. Eventually, after circling the village, he reached his wagon where he'd left it, near the edge of a cow pasture. There, standing on a tree stump, he spoke.

“Good villagers, I bring you an amazing offer.” He pointed to the burlap sacks piled in a rough pyramid of their own in the back of his wagon. “Each sack holds one hundred of these wonderful items. For you good people, since you strike me as honest and hardworking, I will sell a whole sack for the small price of two silver coins.”

“But what would we want with them?” an elder from the village asked.

“Don't you see?” the merchant said. “As I am selling them to you, you may sell them to others. Listen carefully, for here is the beauty of it all—you may charge more than you paid, and thus make a handsome profit. Sell a sack for three silver coins, and you'll earn a coin for every sack you sell. Or sell half a sack for two coins, and make an even larger profit.”

“But why would anyone buy the pyramids from us?” a man asked.

“So that they may then also sell them to others,” the merchant said. “Fear not of getting all you need—when you have sold as many pyramids as you can carry, return to me and I will provide more. We can all be rich as kings. Every one of us will gain great wealth.”

He paused.

In the silence, one could hear the idea take hold as man after man and woman after woman imagined a road to riches contained in the sacks piled upon the wagon.

The villagers bought every sack the merchant had in his wagon and soon scattered to the four corners of the land. And these sacks they did sell to others, who did sell them to still others.

The merchant grew rich as a king. Those who bought his pyramids and sold them to others grew rich as princes. And those who bought from them and sold to still others grew rich as dukes. And those who bought from them grew slightly richer. But those who bought next soon found that every man in the land was also selling pyramids. There were no buyers left.

Those who had come late to this wonderful plan went to see the merchant and complain, dragging their full sacks and hoping for their money back. But the merchant, who had become the richest one of all, had already sailed toward other lands far away across the sea, where he could again sell pyramids to the greedy and the foolish.

 

WALK THE DOG

“Priscilla, I need a
favor,” Mrs. Grutcheon said.

Priscilla stood at the door, wondering what her neighbor wanted this time. “I'm doing my homework.”

“Well, that's perfect,” Mrs. Grutcheon said. “You can do it at my house. I just need someone to watch Boopsie this afternoon while I go help my sister make pies for the bake sale.”

“I'm really kind of busy,” Priscilla said. She didn't want to spend the afternoon cooped up in her neighbor's house with her neighbor's dog.

“I keep three video game consoles for when my grandchildren visit, I have all the newest movies, and I just bought a machine that makes milk shakes,” Mrs. Grutcheon said. “You can hang out, play some games, do your homework, have some snacks. And I'll pay you for your time. Please?”

Priscilla let out a loud and long sigh, just to show what a large imposition all of this was. Still, money was money, and milk shakes were wonderful. “Okay. I'll do it.”

“Splendid.” Mrs. Grutcheon clapped her hands together like she was killing a mosquito. “Boopsie will be thrilled to have your company.”

“I'll bet,” Priscilla muttered. She started to follow Mrs. Grutcheon next door.

“Don't you want to bring your homework?” Mrs. Grutcheon asked.