The Word Eater

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

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 they'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.