“Billy! Up to your room!”
“I just got to eat this worm, Dad. Ho, ho, I’ve won! I’ve won!”
“BILLY! Up to your ROOM!”
“Dad, I—”
His father pointed.
“Dad, if I don’t eat what’s left, I’ll lose; Alan’ll win. It’s just two—”
“Now. The bet is over. You know what I’ve told you about that cistern. NOW!”
“Dad, I’ll lose! I’ll lose! Alan’ll—”
“Then you will learn something. March!”
“You mean I can’t even eat that last little bit? How long could it take me? What could—”
“Billy. Now.”
XXXVIII
$ % // ! ? Blip * / & !
BILLY kicked the bed.
He’d won. All he’d had to do was eat two more bites, two bites.
He kicked the wall.
What’d his father gotten so mad for? Alan had started opening the cistern, not him.
Geez, he hadn’t even let him explain. Twice. Twice he’d won and then something had happened.
And now he was going to lose? After all he’d gone through? Nightmares, fights, thinking he’d been poisoned? All for nothing?
He kicked the bed.
XXXIX
The United States Cavalry Rides over the Hilltop
MRS. FORRESTER?” said Tom, peering through the screen door. “Could I see Billy for a minute?”
“He’s up in his room being punished, Tom. He and Joe and Alan were very naughty this afternoon.”
“Yeah?” said Tom. “No kidding? What’d they do?”
XL
The Fifteenth Worm
BILLY kicked the wall again.
Two minutes. What difference could two minutes have made?
He leaned his forehead against the windowpane, gazing dejectedly out into the backyard.
That’s what always happened—somebody …
Tom’s younger brother Pete appeared suddenly around the corner of the house, running, holding up a little yellow Easter basket … gesturing?
THE WORM! TOM! Pete had brought him a worm! The fifteenth worm!
Billy slammed up the window.
“Catch!” yelled Pete.
“Hurry!
Tom’s talking to your mother!”
He heaved a brick with a string tied to it up to Billy; Billy caught it, hauled the string up hand over hand, the basket came bobbing up the side of the house. Alan and Joe plunged out of the bushes…. Billy snatched the tin can out of the Easter basket, plucked out a huge, squirming night crawler …
“MRS. FORRESTER! MRS. FORRESTER!”
Alan and Joe shouted at the top of their lungs, dancing about on the lawn, waving their arms.
“MRS. FORRESTER! MRS. FORRESTER!”
“TOO LATE!” yelled Billy gleefully.
Throwing back his head, he dropped the squirming night crawler into his mouth … chewed and chewed. Tom and Mrs. Forrester appeared around the corner of the house.
“Too glate!” Billy yelled, still chewing. “Too glate! I gwin!”
He disappeared from the window … a door slammed inside the house, a trampling on the stairs … he burst out the kitchen door … a flying leap off the back steps. He rolled, scrambled up, yelling, “I win! I win! I win!” grabbed Tom’s hands. They danced round and round and round, Pete cavorting beside them.
Joe and Alan slunk off through the bushes.
… round and round and round …
Billy’s mother laughed and went into the kitchen.
… round and round and round … till they collapsed on their backs in the grass.
“I win,” gasped Billy to the blue, cloudless sky. “I win.”
XLI
Epilogue
BILLY leaned the minibike against a tree and started down the path through the woods. Tom and Joe were already sitting by a smoldering trash fire on the riverbank, opening their lunch bags.
“Where’s Alan? At the store?” asked Billy, flopping down by Tom.
“Yeah,” said Joe. “He’s still got two weeks to go.”
“What have you got for lunch?” asked Tom.
Billy looked embarrassed.
“Worm-and-egg on rye.”
“Heck,” said Tom. “Why can’t you ever bring something somebody else likes, so you can trade?”
Billy frowned. He opened his lunch bag.
“I don’t know. I just can’t stop. I don’t dare tell my mother. I even like the taste now.” He scratched his head. “Do you think there’s something the doctors don’t know? Do you think I could be the first person who’s ever been hooked on worms?”
About the Authors
Thomas Rockwell is the author of a number of books for young readers. He was the recipient of the Mark Twain Award, the California Young Reader Medal, and the Sequoyah Award for How to Eat Fried Worms. He lives in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Emily Arnold McCully won the Caldecott Medal for Mirette on the High Wire, and has illustrated over one hundred books for young readers. Her nonfiction work for young adults, Ida M. Tarbell: The Woman Who Challenged Big Business -- and Won!, was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. Emily divides her time between New York City and Chatham, New York.
Copyright © 1973 by Thomas Rockwell
Illustrations © 1973 by Emily McCully
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, 1973
First Scholastic ebook edition, 2016
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
e-ISBN 978-1-338-13282-3
How to Eat Fried Worms Page 6