21 - Go Eat Worms! (7 page)

Todd didn’t eat. He stared thoughtfully at the peanut butter covered with
smears of grape jelly. “They’re going to drive me totally crazy,” he muttered.

“What?” Danny asked with a mouthful of sandwich.

“Nothing,” Todd replied. His head itched. He pulled off his cap and reached
up to scratch it. He expected to find a worm in his hair. But there wasn’t one.

Every time he opened his bookbag, he expected to find worms. Every time he
ate a meal, he expected to see a worm bobbing or wriggling or crawling or
swimming through his food.

He was starting to imagine worms everywhere. Everywhere.

Todd had dinner at Danny’s that night. Danny’s mother served fried chicken
and mashed potatoes. Then she and Danny’s father argued all through dinner about
where to go on their vacation, and whether or not they should save the money and
buy a couch instead.

Danny seemed really embarrassed about his parents’ loud arguing.

But Todd didn’t mind it at all. He was so happy to relax and eat and not
worry about finding any long, purple worms on his plate or in his glass.

He and Danny went up to Danny’s room and played video games for a few hours
after dinner. Danny had a game called Worm Attack. Todd made him bury it deep in
the closet.

Danny’s father drove Todd home at about ten. Todd’s parents were already
dressed for bed. “Your mom and I both had rough days,” Mr. Barstow explained.
“We’re hitting the sack early. You can stay up and watch TV or something if you
want, Todd.”

Todd didn’t feel sleepy. So he went into the den and turned on the TV. He
watched a
Star Trek
that he’d already seen.

He was yawning and feeling tired by the time the show went off at eleven. He turned off all the lights and made his way up
to his room.

He realized he was feeling really good, really relaxed. I haven’t thought
about worms all night, he told himself happily.

He climbed out of his clothes, tossing them onto the floor, and pulled on his
pajamas. A warm, soft wind was fluttering the curtains at the window. He could
see a pale half-moon in the black nighttime sky.

Clicking off the bed table lamp, Todd pulled back his covers and slipped into
bed.

He yawned loudly and shut his eyes.

Tomorrow is Saturday, he thought happily. No school.

He turned onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow.

He felt something wet and warm wriggle against his cheek.

Then he felt something moving under his chest.

“Oh!” He jerked himself upright, pulling himself up with both hands.

A long, wet worm clung to the side of his face.

He reached up and pulled it off.

He jumped out of bed. It took a short while to find the bed table lamp in the
darkness. Finally, he managed to click it on.

Blinking in the light, he saw a worm stuck to the front of his pajama shirt.
Three long, brown worms were crawling on his sheet. Two more were stretched out on the pillow.

“No! No! Stop!”

It took Todd a while to realize that the shrill screams were coming from
him
!

“I can’t take it anymore!” he shrieked, losing control.

He pulled the worm off his pajama shirt and tossed it onto the bed beside the
others.

“Regina! Regina—you’ve got to stop it! You’ve
got
to!” Todd
screamed.

He spun around when he heard footsteps at the bedroom door.

“Mom!” Todd wailed. “Mom—look!” He pointed frantically to the worms
crawling on his pillow and bedsheet.

Mrs. Barstow raised both hands to her cheeks in surprise.

“Mom—you’ve got to stop Regina!” Todd pleaded. “You’ve got to stop her!
Look what she did! Look what she put in my bed!”

Mrs. Barstow moved quickly into the room and put an arm around Todd’s
trembling shoulders. “But Regina isn’t here, Todd,” she said gently.

“Huh?” He gaped at her in shock.

“Regina is at a sleepover at Beth’s,” his mother explained. “Regina isn’t
here!”

“We’ll have to have a long discussion about this in the morning,” Mrs.
Barstow said, her arm still around Todd’s shoulders. “Maybe your worms are
escaping from the tank somehow.”

“Maybe,” Todd replied doubtfully.

His mother lowered her eyes to the bed. “Yuck. Take the worms back
downstairs, Todd, and I’ll change the sheets.”

Todd obediently lifted the worms off the sheet and pillowcase. Two of them
were mashed. But the rest were wriggling and squirming.

They’re taking their revenge, Todd thought with a shudder as he carried them
out of the room.

Regina was right.

The worms are paying me back.

The worms dangled from his hand as he carried them down to the basement. He
dropped them into the tank. Then he leaned over it, staring down into the soft,
wet dirt.

Most of the worms were below the surface. But a few crawled across the top.

“Hey, guys,” Todd called down to them, lowering his face over the top of the
glass aquarium. “Hey, guys—can you hear me?”

He had never talked to his worms before. And he felt very uncomfortable
talking to them now.

But he was desperate.

“Listen, guys, I’m really sorry,” Todd said, speaking softly. He didn’t want
his voice to carry upstairs. If his mom or dad heard him talking to the worms,
they’d know he was totally Looney Tunes.

“I’m really sorry about what happened,” he told them. “I mean, about cutting
that one in half. It will never happen again. I promise.”

Leaning over the tank, he stared down into the dirt. The worms didn’t seem to
be paying any attention to him. Two of them were crawling against one of the
glass walls. Another was burrowing into the dirt.

“So do you think you can stop following me around?” Todd continued, giving it
one last try. “I mean, I don’t want to get rid of you all. I’ve been collecting
worms for a long time. But if you keep this up, well… you’ll all have to
go.”

Todd lifted his head out and stood up straight. I can’t believe I just did
that, he thought.

Maybe I
am
totally nuts.

He glanced quickly around the basement, expecting Regina and his parents to
pop out from behind the furnace, crying, “April fool!”

But no one else was down there. Luckily, no one had seen him actually
pleading with the worms!

Feeling really foolish and confused, Todd trudged back up to his room. His
mother was waiting for him in the hall outside his room. “What took so long?”

“Nothing,” Todd muttered, feeling himself blush.

She swept a hand through his wavy, dark hair. “I never get to see your hair,”
she said, smiling. “It’s always under that awful cap.”

“Yeah. I know.” Todd yawned.

“Go change your pajamas,” she instructed him. “Those have worm juice all over
them. I’ll run you a hot bath.”

“No. No bath,” Todd said sharply. “I’m too tired.”

“You don’t want a bath after rolling around on worms?” Mrs. Barstow demanded.

“Tomorrow. Okay?” he pleaded.

“Okay,” she agreed. “But change your pajamas. Good night.”

Todd watched her make her way downstairs. Then he returned to his room and
changed into clean pajamas. He inspected the bed carefully, even though the sheets were new. Then he examined the pillow.

When he was certain there were no worms, he turned off the light and slipped
into bed.

Lying on his back, he stared out the window at the pale half-moon—and
thought about the worms.

Regina was sleeping over at Beth’s—but the bed was full of worms.

How?

How were they wriggling into his backpack? Into his notebooks? Into his
breakfast? His lunch?

The room began to whirl. Todd felt dizzy. So sleepy. So very sleepy…

But he couldn’t stop puzzling about the worms. Such a mystery.

The night sky grew darker. The moon rose away from the window.

It’s so late, Todd thought, and I can’t get to sleep.

Maybe I do need a hot bath, he told himself, lowering his feet to the floor.
Baths always relaxed him.

He crept silently out of his room and down the hall to the bathroom. He
didn’t want to wake his parents. Closing the bathroom door behind him, he
clicked on the light. Then he turned on the water and filled the tub, making it
nice and hot.

When the water was nearly to the top, he pulled off his pajamas. Then he lowered himself into the steamy water. “Mmmmmm,” he
hummed aloud as he settled into it. The hot water felt so good, so soothing.

This was a good idea, he told himself, resting his head against the back of
the tub. He smiled and shut his eyes. Just what I needed.

A soft splash made Todd open his eyes and glance at the faucet. Had he
forgotten to turn it off?

Another splash.

“Ohh.” Todd let out a soft moan as a fat purple worm slid out of the faucet
and hit the water. “Oh, no!”

Splash.

Another worm dropped from the faucet. Then two more. They hit the surface of
the water and plunged to the tub bottom just past Todd’s feet.

“Hey—!” He pulled his feet away and drew himself up to a sitting position.
“What’s going on?!”

As Todd stared in horror, brown and purple worms tumbled from the faucet,
three and four at a time, splashing into the tub. He raised his eyes to see more
worms—sliding down the tile wall, plopping onto the water, onto his legs, onto
his shoulders.

“No—!”

He struggled to climb out, trying to push himself to his feet with both
hands.

But the tub bottom was covered with wriggling, swimming, slithering worms.
And his hands kept slipping out from under him.

“Help—!”

Breathing hard, he managed to climb to his knees.

Worms clung to his back, his shoulders. He could feel them crawling over his
hot, wet skin.

More worms tumbled down the wall. They seemed to be raining from the ceiling.
More and more poured out of the faucet.

They had turned the entire tub into a seething, wriggling sea of brown and
purple.

“Help—somebody!” Todd shouted.

But the worms were pulling him now. Pulling him down.

He could feel their wet grasp, hundreds of tiny prickles, as they held him
tightly and tugged him down, down, into the churning water.

They plopped onto his head. Crawled over his face. Dangled from his quivering
shoulders.

Covered him. Covered him, and continued to rain down, to pour down, and pull
him down with them, into the wriggling, dark sea of warm, wet worms.

“Please—help me!”

Todd struggled and squirmed. He twisted his body, trying to swing his arms
free.

But the worms held on, forcing him down, pulling him into the slimy, brown
water. And more worms rained down, curling and uncurling as they slid down the
wall, dropped from the ceiling, and poured from the faucet.

“Oh!”

He let out a startled cry as he tugged himself back to a sitting position. He
thrashed his arms hard, sending a spray of water over the side of the tub.

He blinked. Once. Twice.

And the worms disappeared. All of them.

“Huh?” His mouth dropped open as he gazed into the tub. The ceiling light
reflected in the clear water.

Hesitantly, he moved his toes. He splashed the water with both feet.

Clear. Perfectly clear and clean.

“Wow,” Todd murmured, shaking his head. “Wow.”

The wriggling, tumbling worms lingered in his mind. Despite the heat of the
bathwater, a cold shiver ran down his body.

He climbed quickly out of the tub and wrapped a large, green bath towel
around himself.

A dream. It had all been a disgusting dream.

He had fallen asleep in the bathtub and had dreamed up all of the worms.

He shivered again. He still felt shaky. He could still feel the itchy
pinpricks all over his body.

Drying himself quickly, he let the towel slip to the floor and pulled on his
pajamas. Then, as he hurried back to his room, eager to climb under the covers—he had an idea.

He had an idea about how to solve the worm mystery.

It was so simple, he realized. Such a simple plan.

But it would tell him once and for all how the worms were escaping from their
tank and getting into his things.

“Yes!” he cried in an excited whisper. “Yes!”

Finally, he had a plan. He knew exactly what to do.

It will have to wait till Sunday night, he told himself, climbing into bed
and pulling up the blankets. But I’ll be ready then.

Ready for anything.

Thinking about his plan, Todd fell asleep with a smile on his face.

The weekend passed slowly. Todd and Danny went to a movie on Saturday. It was
a comedy about space aliens trying to run a car wash. The aliens kept getting
confused and washing themselves instead of the cars. In the end, they blew up
the whole planet.

Danny thought it was very funny. Todd thought it was dumb, but funny.

On Sunday, Regina came home from Beth’s. The whole family drove upstate to
visit some cousins.

“It was a no-worms weekend,” Todd told Danny over the phone after dinner on
Sunday evening.

“Way to go!” Danny replied enthusiastically.

“Not a single worm,” Todd told him, twisting the phone cord around his wrist.

“So are you going ahead with your plan?” Danny demanded.

“Yeah. Sure,” Todd said. “I have to. They just took the weekend off. For sure. Tomorrow is school. That means more worms in
my backpack, in my books, in my lunch.”

“Yuck,” Danny murmured on the other end of the line.

“I’ve got to solve the mystery,” Todd told him. “I’ve
got
to.”

“Well, good luck,” Danny said. “I’ll meet you tomorrow morning. Outside of
Miss Grant’s class, okay? Get there early so you can tell me how it went.”

“Okay,” Todd replied. “See you tomorrow.” As he hung up the phone, he felt
excited and nervous and eager and frightened, all at the same time.