The Word Eater (3 page)

Mr. Archibald Mack's voice snapped her out of her daydream.

“Any thumbtacks?” he said.

“Any thumbtacks?” bellowed Boris, his bodyguard.

Lucia jumped and stared at the empty boxes in front of her. She was sitting at the Mack Industries thumbtack packing table with twenty other children. Their orders were to keep making and
packing tacks, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't do it. The children over at the machine kept pouring the steel, but the thumbtacks would vanish before they could pop open the molds.

Mr. Mack, a handsome man in a sharp white suit, gritted his sharp white teeth. “Stop production!”

“Stop production!” Boris yelled.

Thrilled, Lucia stood up. “That means we get to quit—”

Mr. Mack smiled at her. “That means nothing of the kind. I'm giving you other work to do. Clean this place from top to bottom. And I want the chalkboards and desks and school things put into place. The FBI is coming on Friday to investigate the thumbtack mystery and—”

“The FBI!” Lucia blurted out. “They'll see what you're doing and close you down for good, Mr. Mack. You work us like slaves and you're cruel to the puppies—”

Mr. Mack's neck and face turned an angry red, and the sweep of blond hair above his forehead began to shake. He looked like a long white stick of dynamite about to explode, but he didn't explode. He smiled sweetly. “The FBI is going to find children learning to read and write at the Mack Technical School.”

“But this isn't a school.”

“We have books and report cards and test scores.” Mr. Mack gestured toward a pile of books and papers gathering dust in the corner of the workroom.

“Those are fake and you know it.”

“Why don't you just leave then, if you think my school is so horrible?”

Lucia glared at him. Hundreds of Attackaterriers prowled the grounds. There was one safe exit, and Boris unlocked it only when the shift was over.

Mr. Mack laughed and Boris joined in. Then he said, “Scrub the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the tables. Scrub the air.” His nostrils flared as he inhaled. “It stinks in here.”

“You're not going to get away with it, Mr. Mack,” Lucia said.

“Maybe she got a point,” Boris whispered.

“I'm not worried about the FBI,” Mr. Mack said as he headed back to his office. “I'll charm the FBI into thinking I adore children and puppies.”

Lucia tugged on her long black braid. “Well, at least the puppies are safe.”

Mr. Mack turned around. “What do you mean?”

“We know what you do over there.” She pointed to the Attackaterrier training facility connected by a long corridor to the thumbtack factory. “You stick thumbtacks into their paws to make them mean.”

“I do?” Mr. Mack said with a look of false concern. “That does sound cruel.”

“Maybe she got another point,” Boris whispered. “You can't do the Attacka method of training without thumbtacks.”

“True. Puppies need a solid year of my Thumbtack Tactics before they become vicious enough to win the ‘Mack's Attackaterrier' seal of approval.”

“So,” said Lucia brightly. “You can't do any more training, can you?”

The other children grinned.

Mr. Mack scowled at the skinny girl in the center of the crowd. Maybe she led them all in a plot to get rid of the thumbtacks. They certainly looked happy about it. Well, he could change that in a second.

“It's true that I can't do the training today. But I've already ordered a dozen cases of thumbtacks from my competitor. As soon as they arrive and the FBI leaves, I'll be back in business.”

Lucia's smile disappeared.

“And don't forget,” Mr. Mack warned, “the adult dogs who are guarding this factory are as mean as ever. The training they had when they were puppies is wired into their memory. All the thumbtacks in the world could disappear and they'd still be mean. So don't even think about leaving.”

Underneath the surface of the soil, Fip inched along. He had been crawling all night, past colonies of ants, slugs, mites, and fungi, determined to find a home and food for himself. Just because the clan had given up on him didn't mean he would give up. He poked his head through the soil and looked around hopefully.

Unfortunately for him, the Cleveland Park Middle School Environment Club had cleaned the playground. Not a scrap of paper to be found. A lump formed in Fip's throat and his skin prickled.

A voice surprised him from behind. “Who's skinching? You sound too young to be out alone.”

Fip turned around to face an enormous blob of a worm. “I'm of the Gamorm Clan,” the worm said. “And you?”

“Lumbricus Clan, sort of,” said Fip. “I guess I'm looking for a new clan.”

“Tank up your gizzard!” said the large worm as it pushed a piece of rotted bark toward Fip. “You sound like you need plumping.” The Gamorm worm began chewing on the moldy bark.

Fip wriggled closer, wondering if this Gamorm Clan would take him in. “Smells ummy!” he said, trying to be polite. He sucked up a fleck of the bark rot. “Bluch!” He spit it out and was about to
apologize when the air around them darkened. Fip's instincts should have propelled him into the nearest hole. He should have known it was a bird on the lookout for fat, juicy worms. But little Fip didn't go underground. Unfortunately, he screamed and grabbed the fat, juicy worm's rear end.

In a flash, the crow pinched the Gamorm worm in her beak, and before Fip could even think to let go, they were off the ground.

In Mr. Markus Droan's first period science class every seat was full, yet Mr. Droan sat behind his desk calling out the roll. Winny Auster. Here. Randy Butler. Here. Sharmaine Cabott. Here.

Lerner Chanse sat in the far back corner staring out the large window next to her desk. She had tried pretending she was sick, but her parents didn't buy it. Now she had to face another day and the same dare, which she didn't think was fair. After all, Bobby Nitz had his hawk eyes pinned on her, ready to pounce.

Lerner pushed her bangs out of her eyes and watched the red leaves of a distant maple shake in the strong wind. She'd tell the MPOOEs to forget it. Who needed them? She'd build a cocoon around herself. She'd go underground, become a SLUG. The school year would be over, anyway, in only nine months.

Out of nowhere, a huge crow flew toward Lerner's window. Lerner ducked instinctively, but the crow didn't thump against the glass as she'd expected. Instead, it landed awkwardly on the ledge, gobbled something in its beak, and flew away.

Bobby laughed at Lerner's response. “Did you think it was going to fly in and eat you, Helmet Head?”

As usual, Lerner ignored him. The window was an ancient kind that pushed open from the bottom, and it was open a crack. Lerner reached over to close it and noticed a tiny movement on the white concrete ledge. A bug? A caterpillar? She opened the window more and leaned out for a closer look. A rosy worm, about the length of two rice grains, wriggled toward the window as if trying to find a place to hide. Lerner wasn't crazy about worms, but she didn't like the thought of him being gobbled up by some obnoxious crow.

She picked him up and set him on her desk, next to an article she had cut out of the newspaper.

The little worm was Fip, who had dropped to the ledge the millisecond before the crow had eaten the Gamorm. Now, a tangy whiff flooded Fip's sensors.
Food! Food!
He stretched out and sniffed in wonder at the words of the article laid out before him. A smorgasbord! He skinched
onto the paper and began nibbling the nearest thing to his mouth, the letter
J
.

“I suppose no one thought to bring in an article for extra credit,” Mr. Droan said.

Lerner raised her hand, forgetting about the worm. “I brought in an article from the
Washington News
,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn't. Everyone in the room turned around to stare at her.

After a moment of silence, Mr. Droan raised his bushy eyebrows. “Well, there's a first time for everything. Two points for Ms. Chanse.”

Reba rolled her eyes and Randy snickered.

Sharmaine, the MPOOE who sat in front of Lerner, turned around and whispered helpfully, “Extra credit is not considered cool.”

Lerner felt like crawling under a rock.

Mr. Droan handed out work sheets and told them to work quietly. Then he created his usual barricade by propping his grade book on his desk. Behind it, he cracked open a paperback book with a red foil cover (
Burning Heart of Desire
). As he began reading the first page, he reached into his pencil drawer and pulled out a half-empty bag of chocolate chips.

Lerner stared at the work sheet.

If she had to be a SLUG in Washington, D.C., why couldn't the classes, at least, be interesting? In history, they did long reports that the teacher didn't bother to grade. In language arts, they didn't read books; so far Ms. Findley just gave spelling tests and handed out grammar work sheets. And they never did any experiments in science. If Lerner didn't see Mr. Droan outside on recess duty, she'd hypothesize that his rear end was chemically bonded to his chair.

She glanced at her newspaper article, which Mr. Droan hadn't even bothered to look at or read. Newspaper articles were more interesting than work sheets. Why couldn't they study real science news?

Lerner imagined herself standing up and ripping the work sheet into confetti. “You call yourself a teacher?” she'd say to Mr. Droan. She imagined all the other students standing up, uniting to demand change.

It would never happen. The MPOOEs were too snobbish and the SLUGs were too spineless. She glanced around the room. Hardly anyone was working. Reba and Randy, the gossip queen and king, were passing notes, probably nasty ones about her. Bobby Nitz was folding his work sheet into a paper airplane, and Julio, an artistic SLUG, was sketching cartoons on his desktop.

Lerner was about to crumple up the article when a small movement caught her eye. That little worm she had rescued was wriggling around. She noticed something—or rather, a lack of something—as he inched to the right. There was a blank space in the article. She peered closer. The worm was hunched down, his body pulsing. Underneath what seemed to be his head, the letter
r
disappeared. The worm curled into a ball and seemed to fall asleep. Lerner looked at the blank space in the article. The words
Jay's Star
had disappeared.

In a distant galaxy, the reddish light of Jay's Star began to flicker as though a huge breath were trying to blow it out. One second, two seconds, three seconds, and then—
poof!
—the star and its light vanished completely.

In the science classroom, Lerner put the worm in the palm of her hand. He felt rather nice—cool and smooth like Play-Doh. “I've never heard of a worm eating words,” she whispered.

She slipped the worm into a neglected terrarium on the shelf next to the window. That should be a safe place for him to live. A little dirt, a few dead leaves. No predators. What more could a worm want?