The Word Eater

by Mary Amato

  Things Are Disappearing . . .

  Quietly, Lerner pulled out Fip’s ink bottle and put her head down on the 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 stars. If the magic was that strong, she’d have to be very careful about what she let him eat.

  Arizona Young Readers’ Award

  Georgia Children’s Book Award Nominee

  Indiana Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee

  Minnesota Maud Hart Lovelace Award Master List

  New Mexico Land of Enchantment Book Award Master List

  Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award Reading List

  Washington Sasquatch Reading Award Nominee

  The

  Word

  Eater

  Mary Amato

  Spot illustrations by

  Christopher Ryniak

  Text copyright © 2000 by Mary Koepke Amato

  Illustrations copyright © 2000 by Christopher Ryniak

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2550-1 (ebook)w

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2679-9 (ebook)r

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Amato, Mary.

  The word eater / Mary Amato.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Lerner Chanse, a new student at Cleveland Park Middle

  School, finds a worm that magically makes things disappear, and she

  hopes it will help her fit in, or get revenge, at her hated school.

  ISBN 0-8234-1468-X

  [1. Schools Fiction. 2. Worms Fiction. 3. Magic Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.A49165Wo 2000

  [Fic]—dc21 99-34007

  CIP

  ISBN 978-0-8234-1468-0 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-8234-1940-1 (paperback)

  In memory of

  Aunt Mil

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Ivan, Maxwell, Simon, and my entire family for feeding me encouragement. Thanks to Rachel, Stephanie, and the Shannon girls for feeding me constructive comments; to the Heekin Foundation for feeding me grant money; and to William Reiss for feeding the manuscript to the wonderful Regina Griffin. Thanks to Natasha Sajé for feeding me heteroglossia and biscotti. And, finally, thanks to Marion “The Librarian” Schwerman for feeding me all the great children’s books that turned me into a bookworm as a child.

  A yellowish cocoon, about the size of a corn kernel, twitched and rolled in the mud. A fat worm sucking up leaf mold felt the cocoon’s vibrations through the mud and stopped eating. Quickly, she drummed a message through the ground to the others. A Birth! A Birth! Within seconds, 253 worms—the whole Lumbricus Clan—squirmed out of their tunnels and gathered into a circle around the cocoon with their leader, the Great Lumbra.

  Finally the jerking stopped, and a baby worm, as small as a grain of rice, poked his head out of the cocoon into the moist October air. He blinked and looked at the worms gathered around him.

  Worms are very sensitive creatures, and right away, this little newborn sensed that he was different. He blinked again. He had eyes, for one. The worms around him were eyeless, yet they seemed to be looking right at him.

  “Why hasn’t he jumped out?” a worm whispered.

  “Is something wrong with him?” asked another.

  “Could be a Nothing Birth,” the Great Lumbra said in a gritty, ominous voice.

  The little worm snapped to attention. They were waiting for him to jump out of his cocoon! Eager to make a good impression, he summoned up his strength, squeezed his eyes shut, and jumped. He imagined soaring out, turning a somersault in midair, and landing in the center of the clan’s circle. Instead, he slid down the side of the cocoon and plopped headfirst in the mud.

  The worms gasped.

  The Great Lumbra frowned and shook her fat head. “The vibration is runtly and weakish! He won’t pass the tests.”

  The sound of the Great Lumbra’s voice made the baby worm’s skin prickle with dread. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but it didn’t sound good.

  One hundred yards from the ditch where the Lumbricus Clan lived, a girl named Lerner Chanse was sitting on a swing. Her skin was prickling with dread, too, from the sound of another voice: the voice of Reba Silo, the queen of the MPOOE Club.

  “The only way you can get into the MPOOE Club is to pass a dare,” Reba was telling her. “We thought up a good one for you. Actually, I thought it up. I rule when it comes to dares.”

  The two girls were sitting on rusty swings at the bottom of the Cleveland Park Middle School playground. All the other sixth graders were up on the blacktop next to the school pretending to have lunchtime recess while secretly watching the newcomer and the queen.

  “Here’s what you have to do,” Reba continued. “Steal Mr. Droan’s grade book, change Bobby Nitz’s grade from D to A, and return it to Mr. Droan! Isn’t that excellent?”

  It didn’t sound excellent to Lerner. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Nobody likes Bobby. Why do you want me to make his grade better?”

  “That’s the double-whammy part!” Reba said, enjoying herself. “See, if you don’t get caught, then eventually Droan will notice the change in the grade book, and he’ll think Nitz did it! I mean, who else would? Nitz will get in big trouble. Isn’t that excellent?”

  Lerner pushed up her glasses. “What happens if I get caught?”

  “Don’t worry about that. If you get caught, you’ll just get suspended or something. The important thing is that even if you’re caught, you’ll still become a MPOOE because you did the dare.” Reba hopped out of her swing, clearing the puddle underneath it, and looked back at Lerner. “It’s an honor to get a dare, you know. And if you don’t take the dare . . . well, you know what happens to people who aren’t MPOOEs.”

  Lerner knew. Everybody knew. If the Most Powerful Ones On Earth (the MPOOEs) gave you a dare and you did it, then you were in the MPOOE Club. You got to wear a MPOOE wristband, and go to secret meetings, and basically own the school. Reba started the club, and when she decided to let boys in, it gained a kind of authority that no other clique had. If you weren’t in the club, then you were a Sorry Loser Under Ground (a SLUG), which meant you were nothing. Lerner didn’t really care about being a MPOOE, but she didn’t want to be a SLUG for three reasons:

  1. She didn’t like the sound of the name.

  2. The other SLUGs never looked like they had any fun.

  3. Bobby Nitz was a SLUG.

  Lerner stared at the mud under her swing and wished that everything would disappear: the dare, Reba, the MPOOE Club, Mr. Droan, the whole school—poof! On second thought, she said to herself, I wish the entire city of Washington, D.C., would disappear.

  “It’s now or never,” Reba said, gesturing up at Mr. Droan on the blacktop. “Recess is almost over.”

  Mr. Droan and Ms. Findley were sitting on a bench near the school door. Mr. Droan’s canvas tote bag was propped against the bench, his green grade book sticking out like a giant ticket.

  Lerner sighed and got off the swing. All around the playground, heads turned in her direction. She felt like a bug under a microscope. “Does everybody on the planet know about the dare?”

  “The MPOOEs know, and th
ey’re sworn to secrecy.”

  Lerner inched up the grassy slope toward the teachers’ bench. The wet earth squished beneath her old sneakers, moisture leaking up through a crack in one sole. Was she really going through with it?

  The dare bothered her. She didn’t like Bobby Nitz—he was mean and smart mouthed and, unfortunately for Lerner, her next-door neighbor. But she didn’t think he should get in trouble for something she did. Lerner Chanse had principles. She didn’t think she should have to pass a test to make friends, either. So why was she headed toward that green grade book?

  The circle of worms around the newborn was perfectly still. The newborn looked nervously from worm to worm to worm to worm. Why wasn’t anybody moving? Why wasn’t anybody saying anything?

  The little worm didn’t know it, but the Great Lumbra and her clan were all waiting for him to skinch. It was the first test. If a newborn was strong enough to skinch, then Lumbra would sense the particular vibration made by the skinching worm, and that vibration would become the newborn’s name.

  Unfortunately, the newborn was too scared to move one little scooch, let alone a whole skinch.

  After a few minutes, Lumbra sighed and addressed the crowd. “The newborn is too weakish to skinch. I hereby proclaim a Nothing Birth. We leave him to die.”

  Leave him to die? That didn’t sound good. The little worm picked his head up and began moving all the hairlike bristles on his underbelly back and forth, moving forward.

  The others waited to hear if Lumbra would accept the worm’s effort. Lumbra pressed her great underbelly to the ground and tried to feel the particular vibration the worm was making. A less than nothing sound . . . Fip . . . Fip . . . Fip.

  Turning to her clan, the old worm muttered, “He passes the first test. His name is Fip. If he is strong enough to eat the First Bite of dirt, then we welcome him to the Lumbricus Clan.” She drew a ritual circle in the mud and sniffed around, frowning. “Where is the runtly one?”

  “I believe you’re sitting on him,” said Rashom.

  Lumbra skinched out of the way. “Hoisters, come!”

  Two strong worms wriggled under Fip, hoisting him up according to custom. “May his gizzard churn!” Lumbra chanted.

  BAM! Bobby Nitz slammed a basketball against the brick wall of the school and watched Lerner Chanse out of the corner of his eye. He had overheard Reba and Randy plotting the dare in the library, and he was burning mad. BAM! He slammed the ball harder. He was also jealous, although he wouldn’t admit it. Chanse was new, and she was already getting a dare. BAM! The MPOOEs would never give him a dare even though he had more guts than anybody in the whole school. BAM! He hated them all.

  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.