The Word Eater (2 page)

Lerner inched her way up the playground hill, sure she was going to throw up. She brushed her bangs off her forehead and pushed on her glasses, aware that everybody was staring at her. She had a sudden and horrifying thought: With her short legs and her short blond hair, she looked like a baby boy in an antique photograph. She might as well wear a sailor suit. To make matters worse, her bangs needed a trim, but she refused to have her hair cut by anyone other than Mrs. Wellbloom, her old neighbor, and her mother stubbornly refused to fly her back to Wisconsin just for a trim.

Lerner reached the top of the hill. On the basketball court, Reba's boyfriend, Randy, stopped guarding for a second. Looking at Lerner, he rubbed the MPOOE band around his wrist. She could feel her face redden in the cool air.

DON'T GO THROUGH WITH IT! A voice inside her head screamed. WHO NEEDS TO BE IN THE LOUSY MPOOE CLUB?

Lerner glanced around. Bobby Nitz was off in the corner, slamming a basketball against the school wall.

“The singing potato is
not
on the underwear commercial, it's on the chips commercial,” Mr. Droan was saying over the noise. “As in
po-ta-to
chips, get it?”

Lerner passed the bench slowly, tipping Mr. Droan's book bag over with her foot.

“Well, you don't have to be so huffy about it, Markus,” replied Ms. Findley.

The bag's contents spilled out. Lerner knelt down, setting her backpack on top of Mr. Droan's grade book, and pretended to tie her shoe. She was just about to stand up, gripping the grade book underneath her own backpack, when . . . BAM!

Bobby's basketball slammed into her. She dropped everything and fell backward.

“Look what you did, Nitz!” Mr. Droan screamed.

Bobby bent down and stuffed Mr. Droan's things back into his tote bag.

The teacher snatched it from him. “Apologize to Ms. Chanse!”

Lerner stood up, rubbing a scraped elbow.

“Sorry, Helmet Head,” Bobby said. His smug smile told her that he knew about the dare, that he wasn't sorry at all. A mixture of guilt and anger rocked Lerner. She had expected to be caught by Mr. Droan, not by Bobby.

The bell rang, and everybody headed in. Reba caught up to Lerner. “I saw the whole thing,” she said. “Nitz slammed into you on purpose. He must have found out about the dare.”

Lerner brightened at Reba's sympathetic tone. Maybe the MPOOEs would forget the whole thing and just let her in the club.

“I'll give you one more chance tomorrow at recess,” Reba said. “Same dare.”

Lerner's heart sank. “But Bobby knows! He'll just botch it up again.”

“That's your problem,” the queen said. “Isn't it?”

Bobby Nitz was ecstatic. Not only had he sabotaged the MPOOE plan to get him in trouble, but he had also acquired a prize. A package of thumbtacks had spilled out of Droan's bag, and he had pocketed it without being seen. One hundred gleaming weapons!

He tore off the paper label, dropping it on the ground as if the world were his personal garbage can. Who would his first victim be? He ran into the school and down the hall to language arts. The room was empty. He put two thumbtacks on Ms. Findley's chair and slid into his own seat.

Bitsy Findley walked in. As usual, she had two pencils sticking out of her head—one behind each ear—like antennae. “Take out a sheet of paper and clear your desks,” she announced as the students filed in. “Time for the spelling test.”

Bobby Nitz gripped the sides of his desk with barely containable glee. She'd give them the first word and then sit down. She did this every time. He couldn't wait.

“Time for the First Bite!” the Great Lumbra chanted. “Hoisters, lower!”

The hoister worms were slowly lowering Fip into the muddy center of the ritual circle when a piece of paper, carried by the wind, tumbled in. Knocked off balance, the hoisters let Fip drop. He landed right on top of the paper.

It was just an ordinary piece of litter, a label. But in all the naming ceremonies the Great Lumbra had conducted over the years, not one worm was ever set down on a piece of paper to eat its first meal.

No one moved, except Fip. He lifted his head. Something smelled tangy and sharp. He wriggled all the bristles on his belly forward and back until he moved over to the big, black
M
on the paper.
Fip
 . . . 
Fip
 . . . 
Fip
. Everyone listened in amazement.

Ummy! Um! He said to himself and nibbled the
M
right off the paper.

Lumbra's mouth fell open. She had never heard anything like it. Fip chomped away until he had eaten the inky letters off the label. All that was left was the price. He skinched off the paper, burped, and beamed at the crowd.

Ms. Findley stood at her desk, about to enunciate the first word of the spelling quiz. Suddenly, the papers posted on her bulletin board fluttered to the floor.

The entire class watched the brief paper shower, not knowing what to make of it. Ms. Findley didn't know what to make of it, either. What happened to the thumbtacks? she wondered. Disliking distractions, she quickly scooped the papers off the floor and began the quiz.

Bobby Nitz had precisely two thumbtacks on his mind and couldn't wait for his teacher to sit down on them.

“
Saturate
,” Ms. Findley said. “The first spelling word is
saturate
. I plan to saturate your brains with spelling words.” The teacher laughed at her little joke and sat down.

Bobby leaned forward.

Ms. Findley smiled as if she were sitting on heaven's softest cloud and said, “Word number two is—”

“No way!”

“Excuse me, Bobby?” Ms. Findley peered over her list at him.

“What happened to . . . uh . . . I was wondering if your chair is comfortable, Ms. Findley.”

“How very odd of you to be concerned,” said Ms. Findley. “My chair is perfectly fine. Word number two is
weary
. Ms. Findley is weary of interruptions.”

Bobby leaned over to see if he could spot the thumbtacks on the floor. Maybe they had fallen under Findley's desk. What else could have happened? He didn't see them anywhere. Oh well, he had plenty more where they came from. He pulled the thumbtack case out of his pocket and got the second surprise of the day.

Empty. Every last thumbtack had vanished.

Fip sat looking at his clan with a full gizzard and a huge grin.

But instead of gathering around him to welcome him, the other worms were backing away. “A Lumbricus worm that doesn't eat dirt? How can it be?” said Pumama.

“It can't count as a First Bite, can it, Lumbra?” asked Rashom.

The little worm's smile faded. Being a newborn, he didn't understand everything that was happening, but he knew he had done something wrong. Quickly, Fip skinched over to Lumbra and sucked a fleck of dirt into his mouth. See! he tried to say, I'm one of you! But the dirt caught in
his throat and he choked. Tears stung his eyes. Through them, he looked up at the leader.

The old worm turned her back to him and began skinching down the mouth of a tunnel. A Nothing Birth. One by one the other members of the Lumbricus Clan followed her down. Fip was left alone.

Bobby Nitz woke up early, still wondering about yesterday's thumbtack mystery. He tiptoed into his father's den, turned on the computer, tapped into the Internet, and called up the online news. In the search command field, he typed THUMBTACK. The cursor blinked, the machine hummed, searching for any and all appearances of the word THUMBTACK in newly filed articles. Three hot-off-the-press stories appeared on Bobby's screen. He had to print them quickly before his father woke up. Mr. Robert Nitz, Sr., didn't appreciate Bobby messing around with his computer.

The mystery was bigger than Bobby thought. Why, he wondered, did only Mack's Thumbtacks disappear? And why wasn't this Mr. Mack guy commenting? And what did thumbtacks have to do with Attackaterriers?

On Bellitas Island, Lucia closed her eyes and made a wish.
This magic that made the thumbtacks disappear
, she said,
I want more of it. I want the whole Mack Industries to disappear
.