The Word Eater (5 page)

When she walked into the library, Mrs. Popocheskovich looked up from the
Improve Your English
book she was reading and smiled. “Hello, Cookie!” the librarian whispered. “Are you feeling so much happy today?”

Lerner smiled back. On the very first day of school, Mrs. Popocheskovich had told Lerner that she was new to Washington, D.C., too. And Lerner liked her from the start. She liked the way she mixed up words in sentences, and the way she wore her paper white hair in an exotic twist on the back of her head, and the way she called her “Cookie.” With her accent, it came out sounding like “kooky.”

Lerner showed her the pass, and then Fip. “I need a book about worms. I want to find out about this little guy's species. And I need some kind of container to put him in.”

“A book about worms. That I would not have guessed,” Mrs. Popocheskovich said. She was usually very good at guessing which books her students would like.

The librarian found an old ink bottle and pricked the rubber top a few times. The container was perfect, small enough to fit in Lerner's pocket.

Fip woke up with a start when Lerner dropped him into the bottle, but when he saw her eyeballs through the glass, he relaxed. She was the one who gave him food. She would take care of him. He took one whiff of the residual smell of ink and fell in love with his new home.

Word traveled fast. While Lerner was reading up on worms, the playground was buzzing with the news that she was not going to follow through with the dare. By the time she got to language arts, there was a note waiting on her desk in Reba Silo's handwriting.

Lerner read it over three times. Just this morning, those words had power over her. But now, they seemed silly. Who cared if the MPOOEs called her a SLUG? Lerner had something much more interesting than the MPOOE Club to entertain her: She had magic. Genuine, Grade-A magic. Lerner made a few corrections to Reba's note:

“Sharmaine,” Lerner whispered, tapping her on the shoulder with the note. “Pass this back to Reba.”

As Sharmaine's hand reached around to grab the note, Mr. Droan looked up.

“Congratulations, Ms. Chanse. You've just earned an after-school detention for you and your friend, Ms. Cabott.”

Sharmaine turned and glared.

“I'm sorry!” Lerner said. Of all the MPOOEs, Sharmaine was the one Lerner was hoping would become her friend.

“Lerner is NOT Sharmaine's friend, Mr. Droan,” Reba announced.

“Thank you so much for that important news flash,” Mr. Droan said.

Lerner reddened. Reba still had some power over her.

After school, Bobby went to the library and called up the online edition of the news to see if there was any news about spinach soufflé. He typed the words into the search command field, and a new article materialized on his screen.

“Welcome to after-school detention, Ms. Chanse and Ms. Cabott,” Mr. Droan said. “You may sit on opposite sides of the room and contemplate the errors of your ways.”

Lerner sat down and smiled. Finally, some quiet time to think about this whole thing with Fip.

“Do you think this is amusing, Ms. Chanse?” asked Mr. Droan.

Lerner pressed her lips together. Mr. Droan snorted and tucked his hands under his armpits. Leaning back in his chair, he dozed off. Quietly, Lerner pulled out Fip's ink bottle and put her head down on her desk so that she could stare eye to eye with him.

She tried to think through what she knew and what she didn't know about this little creature. He ate the words
spinach soufflé
and spinach soufflé disappeared, but not spinach. If he had just eaten the word
spinach
, would all spinach have disappeared? She smiled at the thought, then a little shiver crawled up her spine. Could the magic be that far-reaching? If Fip had eaten the word
stars
instead of
Jay's Star
would all the stars in the world have disappeared? Lerner tried to imagine a sky without any stars. If the magic was that strong, she'd have to be very careful about what she let him eat.

Vaguely, she remembered teachers complaining on Monday about thumbtacks that had disappeared. Was Fip responsible for that?

Fip stretched, and the simple shape and small size of his body hit Lerner like a reality check. I'm crazy, Lerner thought. An itsy-bitsy worm couldn't have the power to make things disappear, could it? She had to do an experiment. She emptied out her backpack to see what word or words she could give him to eat.

Her pocket calendar caught her eye. What about a number? What would happen then? What about a whole date? Could a day disappear? Lerner thought about the day her parents loaded her into the moving van, the day her
father closed the door on their wonderful old yellow house in Wisconsin. September 1. That was a day Lerner would like to erase.

Lerner's heart pounded. That was it! She'd let Fip eat September 1. If that day never occurred, then her parents wouldn't have moved and she'd beam back in time to her old house.

Before she could change her mind, she shook Fip out of his bottle. She had already torn out the page for September, but there was a mini calendar for the whole year on the back page. She set him on the number
1
under September.

Fip sniffed it. Hesitantly, he took a bite out of the bottom of the number. Crunchly! Crunchly! Much different from a letter. Jaws working, he crunched the rest of the number. How would he describe it? Oaky with a smatch of iron.

Lerner picked him up, her hand shaking. Was it nervousness or was something magical happening? It felt like a swarm of hornets were migrating from her stomach to her heart. She closed her eyes. Was she moving? Was something happening?

She opened her eyes, and there was Mr. Droan with his eyes still closed, itching his eyebrow with a pinkie. She looked down at the calendar. The date was gone. Something magical should have happened. Then, she noticed that it was next year's calendar, not this year's.

Oh great! What did that mean? What would happen next September? She wanted to change the past, but she wasn't so sure about messing with the future. Would the world lose a day?
Could
the world lose a day? Lerner's stomach turned. Did she just do something terrible? She'd have to wait a long time to find out. Why had she been so reckless? She needed to pick something uncomplicated to try. Something she could see.

Mr. Droan stood up and stretched. A button popped off his shirt and rolled across the room. “All right, girls. Detention is over.”

Lerner stuffed everything in her backpack, ran out the door and down the long, empty hallway.
She had missed the bus, so she was going to have to walk again. Good. It would give her time to think. Her mind was spinning. As she raced down the hall, she noticed every word of every sign, poster, and label. For the first time, she was aware of how much print there was in the world, and she was aware of not just the words, but also the realities that the words represented.
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