by R. L. Stine
“I’m going to give you several tests as part of the Final Exam,” she said, when she finally stopped laughing. “The tests will let us see who at this camp is tough. Which of you will do anything to beat the other campers.”
An ugly grin sent the folds of her face shivering. “Today, we will have an Earth Science experiment.”
She reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a long, fat purple worm. She dangled the worm high so everyone could see it, and her grin grew even wider.
“Let’s see how many of these you can eat.”
Kids moaned and groaned. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I gazed at the long worm dangling from Mrs. Maaargh’s clawed hand. It gleamed wetly under the bright ceiling lights. It’s at least six inches long, I thought. Did she really want us to eat worms that big?
I knew the answer. So did everyone else in the class. She was a monster. She didn’t care if we choked on worm meat or not.
We were there to prove we were winners. I knew the other kids would do anything to keep from taking my place at the bottom of her chart.
Down the row of desks, I saw Ricardo raise his hand. “Mrs. Maaargh? Does it matter if we eat the head first or the tail first?”
The thought of gulping down one of those wet purple things made my stomach lurch. I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep my breakfast from spewing.
Mrs. Maaargh pulled a large red bowl from under her desk. I could see worms curling over the top of it. She climbed to her feet and carried the bowl to the front row of kids. Her huge, pillowy bare feet made a squishy, plop plop plop sound as she walked.
“Eat them any way you like,” she said. “You can put a cherry on yours, if you like. I’m giving each of you a worm. They’re nice and cold. I kept them in my fridge.”
She handed a worm to the first girl in the row. It slid out of the girl’s fingers and dropped onto her desktop.
“You have to squeeze them to hold on to them,” Mrs. Maaargh scolded her. “Hold the worm high over your open mouth. When I blow my whistle, let go. Drop them into your mouth and chew them up or swallow them whole.”
Kids groaned again. Mrs. Maaargh moved down the row, handing out wriggling worms.
This is totally sick, I thought.
I saw Sophie take her worm. It tried to curl itself around her wrist. She had to pull it off in order to hold it over her mouth.
Sophie stared hard at her worm. Her hand didn’t tremble. I could see she was determined to eat the worm. She didn’t like being so close to the bottom of the chart.
The boy next to her looked sick. His face was actually green. But he took the worm from Mrs. Maaargh and gripped it tightly in front of him.
“Some of these worms still have dirt clinging to them,” Mrs. Maaargh said. “Sorry I didn’t do a better job of cleaning them off.”
She handed me a very long one. It had chunks of brown dirt up and down it.
I pinched one end and held it up. The worm twisted and wriggled and tried to get free.
My stomach heave-ho’d again. I was having trouble keeping my breakfast down. Glancing around the room, I saw that other kids had the same expression on their faces.
One girl covered her eyes with one hand while she held the worm in the other. The dude next to me was hyperventilating, panting like a dog. His chest heaved up and down. His hand trembled in the air, making the worm swing from side to side.
Mrs. Maaargh blew the whistle.
A heavy hush fell over the room. The whistle still rang in my ears.
Kids held their worms high. But no one moved to be the first to drop the worm into their mouth.
My chest tightened in panic. My skin suddenly tingled as if an electric charge was shooting through me.
I was desperate. Desperate to do something right. I had to climb off the bottom rung of the chart. I had to be a winner.
I held my breath. I swung the worm over my mouth.
Can I do it? Can I swallow it?
Yes.
I opened my fingers and let the worm drop.
I almost missed my mouth. The worm hit my cheek and started to crawl.
I inhaled hard — and sucked the worm inside. It felt cold and wet on my tongue. And I could feel the clumps of dirt on its skin.
Choke it down. Choke it down, Tommy.
I started to gag. I made a loud choking sound. I gagged again.
It wouldn’t go down. I couldn’t force it down.
Then finally … finally … the worm scraped the back of my tongue and started to slide.
Ohhhhhh. It tasted sour. So bitter.
I made a gulping motion and it slid the rest of the way. Off the back of my tongue and down my throat.
Oh, wow.
I pressed both hands over my stomach to try to make it stop churning and bubbling.
I did it! Success!
It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever done in my life. But I swallowed the thing. Did that make me a winner?
I gazed around the room. Silence. To my surprise, kids were staring at me.
And then another surprise: They were all still holding on to their worms.
Huh? What’s up with that?
Ricardo lowered his eyes and shook his head sadly. Sophie frowned at me.
“You failed, Tommy.” Mrs. Maaargh’s raspy voice made me jump. The folds of flesh on her cheeks rumbled as she shook her head at me. “I should have known you’d be the one.”
Failed?
“I — I — I don’t understand,” I choked out. I still had the metallic taste of the worm on my tongue. “What do you mean?”
Everyone watched me in silence.
“Tommy, this was a test of courage — remember?” Mrs. Maaargh said. “It was a test to see who in this room had the courage not to eat an innocent earthworm. Anyone who would eat an earthworm is a loser.”
“But — but —” I sputtered.
Everyone else in the class still held on to their worm. Everyone but me.
“Everyone showed courage but you,” Mrs. Maaargh growled.
“But it took courage to swallow that thing!” I cried. “I nearly choked on it and —”
“Look at your classmates,” she said. “Look how much more courage they showed by not following my instructions.”
I realized there was no way I could argue with her. I watched her fiddle with some names on the chart. You-know-who stayed on the bottom. Yours truly, Tommy the Loser.
She held up the big bowl. “Pass your worms to the front. Good job, everyone.”
It took a minute or two to collect all the worms. Then she walked over to a table at the side of the room. “That test made me hungry,” she said. “My stomach is growling like a hungry grizzly bear.”
I saw a glass cage on the table. There were little white creatures with long pink tails crawling around inside it. White rats.
Mrs. Maaargh lifted the cage lid. She reached in and pulled out a white rat by its tail.
It squeaked as she dropped it into her mouth and chewed it up noisily. She chewed for a long while, a big smile on her face. Then she swallowed it with a loud gulp.
“I like them plain,” she said, wiping her flabby lips with the back of one hand. “I hate spicy food, don’t you? It doesn’t agree with me at all. I guess I have a sensitive stomach.”
A sensitive stomach? She just ate a rat, and she says she has a delicate stomach?!
I knew I should shut up, but I couldn’t help myself. “Mrs. Maaargh,” I said, “you said I shouldn’t eat an innocent worm. But you just ate an innocent white rat.”
Some kids gasped. I guess they thought it wasn’t smart to argue with The Teacher.
“Yes, I know, Tommy,” Mrs. Maaargh rasped. “But I have an excuse. I’m a MONSTER.”
She tossed back her head and laughed so hard, chunks of the rat came flying out of her mouth.
That evening after supper, Ricardo and I were trying to relax in our cabin. He hunched on one cot, and I sat across f
rom him on the floor, my back against the wall.
Crickets chirped outside the cabin window as the sun lowered itself behind the trees. The air grew cooler. I could hear the beats of someone’s music far down the hill.
“Why did your parents send you here?” I asked Ricardo.
He rubbed some mosquito bites on his arm. “It was my dad’s idea,” he said. “He’s a big-deal money guy. He has these fancy offices on Wall Street. I don’t really know what he does. But he says he makes a ton of money for people.”
I shifted my weight on the floor. “And he sent you here because …?”
“Because he says you have to be a total winner to make money on Wall Street. He says you have to be able to compete against anybody so you can win win win. So when he saw the ad for this camp, he signed me up that day.”
Ricardo sighed. “There’s only one problem….” His eyes gazed out the window.
“Which is?” I asked.
“I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to be a money guy on Wall Street. I don’t want to win win win.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
He shrugged and scratched his bites some more. “I don’t know. I’m just a kid, right? How should I know? Do you know what you want to do?”
I snickered. “For sure. I have big plans. My plan is to be eaten by a monster at the age of twelve.”
His expression turned serious. “Good you can joke about it,” he murmured.
“What else can I do?” I said. “Everything I do here is wrong. No way I can pull myself up from the bottom of the chart.”
“Seriously,” Ricardo said. “You got off to such a bad start with Mrs. Maaargh. It’s like she already made her mind up.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “I’m doomed. Totally. There’s no way off this island. And no way to call home or get a message out or anything.”
“Your face is still purple,” Ricardo said. “At least you weren’t the first kid to try to phone home.”
“Hey, dudes!” Sophie poked her head in the door. She stepped in. She had a red-and-white polka-dot bandanna tied in her hair. She wore a dark sweatshirt pulled down over white tennis shorts. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” Ricardo muttered.
“We’re talking about how much we love this camp,” I said.
Sophie dropped beside me on the floor. “Seriously. Let’s all sing the camp song together.”
I gave her a shove. “Is there really a camp song?”
She straightened her bandanna. “For sure. Don’t you know it?” She started to sing: “Don’t come unglued … or you’ll end up as food….”
I groaned. I suddenly didn’t feel like joking anymore. I swallowed hard. “That ugly monster really is going to eat me next week. And we’re sitting here talking like everything is normal.”
Sophie grabbed my arm. “That’s why I risked coming up here, Tommy. I hope no one saw me. I have an idea for you.”
“An idea?”
She nodded. “I have an idea for how you can get on Mrs. Maaargh’s good side. You can bring her flowers.”
I jumped to my feet. “Are you totally nuts? Do you really think —”
She raised a hand to shut me up. “Just listen to me. Give me a chance. I think this will help you. Really.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Okay. Go ahead. Talk.”
“There’s a big patch of beautiful wildflowers in the middle of the island,” Sophie said. “Go pick some tomorrow morning. Bring Mrs. Maaargh a big bouquet of flowers. And tell her you want to apologize for the bad start you got off to here. She’ll be touched. She really will.”
“She’ll just eat the flowers,” I said. “She’ll eat the flowers as an appetizer before she eats me.”
“Hey, dude, it’s worth a try,” Ricardo said. “What have you got to lose?”
I sighed again. “You’re right. What have I got to lose?”
“She can only eat you once, right?” Ricardo said.
“Thanks for cheering me up,” I said.
“Just don’t let anyone know I helped you,” Sophie said. She peeked out of the cabin, glanced both ways, then disappeared.
The next morning, I went off in search of wildflowers. I had a good feeling about this. I thought maybe I could change Mrs. Maaargh’s opinion of me.
Guess how it worked out.
It was a hot summer morning. The air felt sticky and wet. Waves of buzzing white gnats flew over the camp.
I didn’t eat much breakfast. I choked down a dry piece of toast and half a glass of pulpy orange juice. I guess I was too excited about my mission to find Mrs. Maaargh a wildflower bouquet.
The first activity of the morning was Sports Hour. Counselors called the guys to the playing field near the beach. We had a choice of Full Contact Tackle Chess or Dodge the Javelin.
I stayed back by the trees and watched the guys choose up sides. When I was sure no one was watching, I turned and darted into the darkness of the woods.
I moved quickly, listening for someone to shout out, to call me back. But their voices faded behind me as I trotted through the tangled trees. Tree frogs croaked loudly in the limbs above my head. I kept stumbling over fallen branches and upraised roots.
Glancing up, I saw several big blackbirds lined up on a low tree branch. They all had their eyes on me. Their ragged wings were pulled back as if they were planning to swoop to the attack.
I shivered and hunched my shoulders as I ran under the branch.
Something scuttled over my feet. Too big to be a squirrel or rabbit. I squinted down at it, but it vanished into the carpet of brown leaves.
This island is creeping me out.
Another group of large blackbirds began to squawk in a nearby tree. I spun around. The camp was far behind now. I was surrounded by smooth-barked trees and shrubs with vines like tendrils.
I couldn’t hear any voices from the camp. The only sounds were the cries of the birds and the crunch of dead leaves under my shoes.
Sophie said there was a clearing with a wide patch of wildflowers in the middle of the island. I wondered how long I had to make my way through these hot, damp woods before I found it.
I was breathing hard, my T-shirt soaked to my back, when the clearing finally came into view. I stopped at the edge of the trees and shielded my eyes with one hand from the sudden splash of bright sunlight.
Sophie hadn’t made it up. I stared at a wide circle of flowers so bright the colors vibrated. Blues and purples and yellows, all tumbling over each other. Waving in the hot breeze and shimmering under the cloudless sky.
I took a few steps to the edge of the wildflower patch. As I came closer, I saw bees hovering over the blossoms, and fluttering white butterflies, and even a hummingbird or two.
I’m not a big flower person. My dad competes in a flower show each year. And, of course, he has to grow the biggest, best plants in the show and win all the blue medals. Win win win.
He’d go berserk if he saw these flowers. They were so much more beautiful than his.
I bent down and started to pick some. I decided to gather three or four different colors. Bees buzzed out of my way as I wrapped my fingers around the stems and tugged them up. The ground was soft. They lifted easily.
It didn’t take long to have a nice bouquet. They smelled so sweet. I held them in one hand and brushed a bee away with the other. Then I turned and started back to camp.
The woods confused me. For a while, I thought I was lost, making the same circle in the trees. Finally, I remembered to keep the sun behind me. And I found my way easily.
The Tackle Chess match was still going on. Guys were grunting and groaning over a big chessboard, tackling each other after every move.
I kept to the trees until I came to the circle of cabins. I ducked behind a tall shrub when I saw Uncle Felix. He was carrying a javelin in one hand, swinging it as he walked. The javelin was almost as tall as he was.
I wondered how the Dodge the
Javelin competition went. Thinking about it made me shudder. The loser could go home with a big hole in his body.
I waited till Uncle Felix was out of sight. Then I made my way into the staff office building. My hand trembled. I nearly dropped the bouquet.
I was happy to see Mrs. Maaargh in her office. I knocked on the door, then stepped inside.
My heart started to pound. This was my big chance. I didn’t want to blow it.
This has to work.
I stepped up to her desk. “I — I thought you might like these,” I stammered. And I pushed the big bouquet of wildflowers into her hands.
Mrs. Maaargh jumped to her feet. She gazed down at the bouquet in her hands, and her eyes bulged until they were as big as tennis balls.
“Uurrrrrrk.” She opened her mouth in an ugly groan. “Urrrrrrk.”
Then she tossed back her head and let out an explosion of a sneeze that shook the room. The flowers flew from her hands and scattered over her desk and the floor.
She sneezed again.
“Uurrrrrrrrrk!” Another groan from deep in her throat.
And then a sneeze so powerful I thought her head had exploded.
Enormous gobs of yellow snot splattered the office walls. Another sneeze sent a thick puddle of snot to the ceiling. It stuck for a moment — then dropped onto my head.
“Ohhhh.” I slapped at the sticky, yellow goo with both hands. It dripped down my forehead and the back of my head.
I started to shake. One more giant snot blast in my face, and I wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Mrs. Maaargh’s eyes spewed tears. Her fat face turned purple. She sneezed another splat of yellow snot onto the office door.
Her whole body heaved and shook. Finally, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself, held her breath — and the sneezing attack ended.
I was still trying to wipe the sticky snot from my hair and face. “Let me guess,” I said softly. “You’re allergic to wildflowers.”
Her eyes bulged again. Her face turned an even darker purple. She bared her rows of pointed teeth — and roared.