The Word Eater (12 page)

Late morning sun streamed through Lerner's bedroom window, spreading out on her yellow quilt like butter on top of French toast. She was sitting up in bed, still in her pajamas, still under the covers, with a pad of paper resting on her knees. She had been trying to do some science
homework, like she was supposed to, but she had set her textbook down and given herself an assignment of another kind. In the form of a table, she was writing an analysis of Fip food, sorting out the good from the bad, the known from the unknown. Feeding Fip was complicated. If she was going to continue giving him words, then she had to thoroughly analyze the situation and come up with a plan.

One good, four very bads, and four don't knows. Not exactly a great record. Lerner wasn't sure what to do next. She needed time to find some answers, but, unfortunately, Fip needed food. She took Fip out of his bottle and sat on her bed. The worm looked up at her hopefully. She could see his facial features quite well now. He had grown a dark, rosy brown and was about the length of a large paper clip. One week and he had quadrupled in size!

“Maybe you could learn to eat dirt for a little while,” she said. “Just until I get a few things straightened out in my mind.” She pinched a bit of dirt from her ivy plant onto a shoe box lid and put Fip in the middle of it. She set it on her bed and lay down next to it. “Just relax and try it,” she said, and closed her eyes. “Worms like dirt.” She'd relax, too, and let Fip be a regular worm for a minute or two.

Lerner's quilt was toasty and soft. She snuggled her head in the crook of her arm and fell asleep.

Fip sniffed at the dirt for a while, trying to work up an appetite. But he finally gave up and skinched off the lid to search for something tastier. He wriggled until he came to a book open at the foot of the bed. Now this was more like it. He climbed on, found an ummy word, and began to chew.

Lerner's eyelids drifted open. She lifted her head and glanced at the shoe box lid. “Fip?”

Her heart started pounding. She scanned the bedspread and saw her science book open at the bottom of the bed. Lerner grabbed the book, open to an illustration of photosynthesis. There! There was Fip inching up to the letters
e
and
n
. The beginning of the word was already gone. Lerner's brain started racing to the boom of her heart. What is it that plants give off?

Oxygen!
Lerner thought. Fip is eating oxygen!
Oxy
and
g
were gone. “Fip! You can't do that! You could get us all killed.” She shook Fip in her fist and began pacing.

Fip shuddered, bouncing around in the cocoon of her hand. What was wrong? Lerner's body was secreting her alarm chemical. Why was she flying around the room? Between two of her fingers, Fip saw the spinning world. The bottle on her desk was getting bigger and bigger. Fip curled into a ball, ready for impact. BAM! He hit the bottom of the bottle. SLAM! The lid crashed into place.

“You're never eating again!” Lerner yelled. She backed away and tried to calm down. Was the supply of oxygen in the air thinning? She grabbed her textbook and looked at the page.
Oxyg
. Did it mean anything? She ran into the family room, where her parents were finishing their morning coffee.

“Oxyg!
DOES IT MEAN ANYTHING? WHERE'S THE DICTIONARY?” Lerner yelled in one breath because she didn't want to waste any.

Her parents looked at each other.

Lerner grabbed the big black dictionary off her mother's desk and batted the pages until she found the
oxy
s.

oxycephaly
oxygen
oxygenate

No
oxyg
listed.
Oxyg
wasn't a word representing a real thing, so Fip's eating had no consequences. She closed her eyes and took a big breath of beautiful oxygen. When she opened her eyes, her parents were staring at her. “Never mind,” she said, and ran back upstairs.

The bottle shook as Lerner pounded into the room. Fip pressed his bristles against the glass. Lerner peered in.

“I'm sorry I was rough,” Lerner said. “You're probably still hungry.” A solution popped into her head. What if she fed Fip nonsense words, such as
oxyg
. She ran to her desk and got out a pen and paper. Putting down one random letter after another, she wrote: Gurkengabel. It just
might work. For the first time all day, she felt absolutely giddy. She ran into the family room. Her parents shut their mouths quickly and looked guilty, as if they'd been talking about her. She smiled innocently and hoisted the dictionary to her chest. “I've got to get one of these for myself,” she said, and ran back upstairs.

gurgle
gurglet
Gurkha
gurnard
guru

No Gurkengabel. Aha! No Gurkengabel. “Have a delicious Gurkengabel!” Lerner sang as she popped Fip out of his bottle. She set him on her notebook page right next to the letter
G
. “Sounds pretty good if I do say so myself. One Gurkengabel! Hold the Mustard!”

The little worm looked at the ink, then up at Lerner. She was acting strange and some of her alarm chemical lingered in the air. But he was starved. Before she could change her mind, Fip gobbled the
Gurkengabel
.

Bobby sat at the computer in his father's den, without the usual fear of being caught flapping around inside his chest like a bat in a shoe box. Through the open door, the light sound of his
parents' voices drifted in. Usually his parents didn't talk at all. Most Sundays, his father worked in his office and his mother tiptoed around the house doing whatever it was that she did.

Even though he was grounded, he was having an amazing day. A lazy, ordinary, stay-at-home day. They had pancakes. And he spent the morning finishing the model bird skeleton that he had been building: wing bones—the humerus, radius, and ulna—just like his own arm bones, only light as paper. Every few minutes, he'd take a break and stick his head out the window to get a breath of fresh air. He'd look over at Lerner's window and try to imagine what she was doing.

He logged onto the Internet and sat for a few seconds, his fingers resting on the keys. What should he search for? He didn't know what she had fed Fip since yesterday. He typed in the key words: mystery and disappearance. One thousand and three matches. Too big to search. Tomorrow, he'd come right out and ask her all about Fip. But would Lerner really talk to him about it? Why should she trust him?

The thought of tomorrow weighed him down. Bobby had already decided that he wasn't going to tattle on the MPOOEs. He was hoping that would gain him a little respect. But who was he fooling? Nothing would change. Tomorrow everybody would go on hating him. Including Lerner.

A substitute sat at Mr. Droan's desk calling out the roll. Winny Auster? Here. Randy Butler? Here. Sharmaine Cabott? Here. Lerner Chanse?

The room was silent.

“She's in the principal's office with Bobby Nitz,” Reba said.

The substitute went on.

Randy whispered to Reba, “I bet they're going to tell Norker that we put the tests in Bobby's locker.”

“They can't prove anything,” Reba said.

“I told you not to do it,” Sharmaine said, and Reba gave her a nasty look.

After ten minutes of work sheet time, the classroom door opened and in walked Bobby, Lerner, and Mrs. Norker with the stack of blank photosynthesis exams. Lerner and Bobby slid into their seats, and Mrs. Norker addressed the class.

“We've had some behavior problems here. Lerner and Bobby have taken responsibility for their actions and have been appropriately punished.”

Reba raised her hand. “What particular actions have Lerner and Bobby taken responsibility for?”

“None of your business, Reba.”

The room was silent.

“If they said anything negative about the MPOOE Club, I hope—”

“Reba, I don't want to hear a word about the MPOOE Club. Enough is enough.”

Mrs. Norker delivered a lecture about good behavior and told them she didn't expect to hear about any more problems. Then she passed out the exams and told them to get busy.

Reba whispered to Lerner, “You'd better not have blamed us for the tests.”

Lerner smiled. “SLUGs don't need to get other people in trouble to feel powerful. Only MPOOEs do that.”

Sharmaine laughed.

Lerner looked around. The principal was right. “Enough is enough.” She ripped a piece of blank paper off the bottom of her exam and wrote:

She handed it to Sharmaine who read it and passed it on. Lerner watched as the note went from desk to desk. For the rest of the period, although they worked in silence, Lerner could feel a certain bond forming between the SLUGs. She didn't know if Sharmaine was a part of it, but Lerner and the rest of the SLUGs were being connected by an invisible thread.

At recess Lerner walked over to the big oak tree, which was where the MPOOEs would often begin their powwows. After a moment, thirteen SLUGs ran over and surrounded Lerner. Bobby followed but kept quiet as the others began talking at once. The words
we
and
us
began bouncing around. What should
we
do about the MPOOEs? The MPOOEs are planning something really horrible against
us
now. The space under the tree suddenly felt like a stage with Lerner in the center under the exciting heat of spotlights.

“I have something very powerful that the MPOOEs don't have,” Lerner said mysteriously.

Bobby's face fell. “You're going to tell them?”

Lerner paused.

Winny looked at Bobby and then at Lerner. “Is he part of this?”

“He knows about it.”

The SLUGs digested this little tidbit of unbelievable news. Bobby Nitz, the lowest of the lowly, was in on something big.

“But is he . . . in?” Winny asked.

“He can't be in. He'll ruin everything,” Julio said.

“In what?” Lerner said. “What exactly is everybody talking about?” But she knew. A thing was forming, a club, centered around her, and this was her moral moment of truth. Was Bobby in or not? Without Bobby, she had a better chance of popularity. But was it fair to exclude Bobby because of his past behavior? What if he was changing? Did he deserve a chance?