Fuzzy Mud

by Louis Sachar

  Senator Wright: And there are more than a million of these ergies in every gallon of Biolene?

  Jonathan Fitzman: A million? Try a trillion. Or a quadrillion. Or, I don’t know, what comes after that? A gazillion!

  Senator Wright: Try to control your arms, Mr. Fitzman.

  Jonathan Fitzman: Sorry. I don’t even have a chair at my desk in my office. I have to keep moving.

  Senator Foote: So you are no longer working out of your parents’ garage?

  Jonathan Fitzman: No, I’ve got this incredible laboratory now. My biology professor might not have thought much about the ergie, but some other folks did. Some very rich ones.

  Senator Foote: How much does it cost SunRay Farm to produce one gallon of Biolene?

  Jonathan Fitzman: I’m not the business guy. I’m the whadda-youcallit, the guy who thinks it all up and figures out how to do it. But I’d say the first gallon cost us somewhere around five hundred million dollars.

  Senator Wright: Five hundred million dollars. And what about the second gallon?

  Jonathan Fitzman: About nineteen cents.

  “Be careful not to step in that,” Tamaya warned as Chad Hilligas made his way around the strange mud. “What do you think all that weird fuzzy stuff is?” she asked.

  She might as well have been speaking a foreign language, the way Chad looked at her. He spit on the ground, then looked her in the eye and demanded, “Where’s Marshall?”

  His tone was nasty, but Chad was her only hope, so she had to be nice to him. “He’s climbing up on a ledge trying to find the way back home. We got lost. When I heard you coming, at first I thought you might have been that crazy hermit you were telling me about, but then I saw your blue sweater, so…” She shrugged and smiled.

  Chad spit on the ground again, then walked past her, heading after Marshall. He stopped as Marshall appeared from around the side of the hill.

  Marshall hesitated just a second when he saw Chad, but then continued on down, as if nothing were the matter. “Hey, Chad,” he said.

  Tamaya sensed something was wrong. She could hear it in Marshall’s voice.

  “I waited for you,” Chad said.

  “I know,” Marshall said. “I was on my way there, but then Tamaya said she knew a shortcut through the woods. What was I supposed to do? I have to walk home with her.”

  “My mom won’t let me walk home alone,” Tamaya explained.

  Chad glanced at her, then turned back to Marshall. “You trying to make me feel like a fool, just standing there on the corner waiting for you?”

  “No.”

  Chad stepped toward him, then pushed him backward. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

  Marshall regained his balance. “No.”

  With sudden ferocity, Chad lunged at him. He slugged Marshall in the face, and then in the side of the neck.

  Tamaya screamed.

  Marshall tried to protect himself, but Chad hit him twice more, then grabbed him by the head and threw him to the ground.

  “Leave him alone!” Tamaya shouted.

  Chad glared at her. “You’re next, Tamaya,” he said.

  Marshall tried to get up, but Chad’s knee caught the side of his head, knocking him back down.

  Tamaya didn’t think. She just reacted.

  She reached into the fuzzy mud and grabbed a handful of thick and gooey muck. She ran at Chad, and as he turned toward her, she shoved it into his face.

  He lunged at her, but she was too quick, stepping to the side.

  Chad stumbled past her, then bent over and covered his face with his hands.

  For a moment, Tamaya was too scared to move.

  Marshall scrambled to his feet. He grabbed both backpacks and shouted, “Run!”

  Tamaya ran as hard as she could, for as long as she could, until it felt like her lungs would explode. She didn’t know if Marshall had seen the way home or if they were running deeper into the woods. She didn’t care, just so long as she got away from Chad.

  She was still running when her foot caught in a tangle of vines, and the next thing she knew, she was sprawled across the dirt. Her heart pounded, and her hands stung from the fall. She took several long deep breaths as she tried to make herself get back up, but she just didn’t have any strength left.

  She was afraid to look behind her.

  Marshall had stopped running after he’d heard her go down. She saw him heading back toward her, still holding both backpacks. She could tell from the way he walked that Chad must not have been too close. She turned. Chad was nowhere to be seen.

  She pushed herself up into a sitting position as Marshall approached.

  “You okay?”

  “I think so.”

  Her knees were scraped and bloody, and her left wrist hurt from when she’d fallen, but she didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong. Besides, Marshall was a lot worse. Dried blood and snot was caked beneath his nose. Sweat dripped off his face.

  “You think he’s still coming?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know. But if not today, tomorrow.”

  Tamaya knew that was true. Chad’s words still echoed inside her head. “You’re next, Tamaya.” And that was before she had smashed mud in his face.

  She got back up to her feet and took her backpack from Marshall. They continued walking the way they had been going.

  “Is this the way?” she asked. “Were you able to see anything from the ledge?”

  “Not really,” said Marshall.

  “So what’d you do, anyway, to make him so mad?”

  “I answered a question in class.”

  Tamaya didn’t get it. “So?”

  “It’s different in the seventh grade. You’re not supposed to act like you know anything.”

  The sky was beginning to turn dark. Tamaya worried that it wouldn’t be long before they wouldn’t be able to see anything.

  “Look, smoke!” Marshall declared.

  “Where?”

  “It’s smoke from a chimney,” he told her.

  She tried to follow where he was pointing, and then she saw it too, gray smoke against a gray sky.

  They hurried toward it, although, for all Tamaya knew, it could have been coming from the home of the crazy hermit. She imagined them as Hansel and Gretel going to the home of the evil witch.

  As they got closer to the source of the smoke, however, she saw that there wasn’t just one isolated home but a whole street of houses, with parked cars and front lawns.

  Tamaya stepped over a short metal barrier onto a road. She felt like getting down on her hands and knees and kissing the asphalt, but Marshall might have thought that was too weird.

  She glanced back at a road sign that read DEAD END.

  The streetlights came on as they were walking away from the woods. Tamaya suggested that they knock on somebody’s door to see if they could get a ride home, but Marshall said they didn’t need to. He knew the way. It wasn’t too far.

  Tamaya’s right hand began to tingle, and she rubbed it with the other. It didn’t exactly hurt. Her skin just felt sort of fizzy, like a freshly opened can of soda.

  2 × 1 = 2

  2 × 2 = 4

  The following is more of Jonathan Fitzman’s testimony from the secret Senate hearings:

  Senator March: Excuse me, Mr. Fitzman, but I’m having a hard time getting my head wrapped around this. You said there are more than a trillion of your ergonyms in every gallon of Biolene.

  Jonathan Fitzman: A lot more.

  Senator March: These are man-made organisms, right? So how could you possibly make that many?

  Jonathan Fitzman: [Laughs.] You’re right. That would be impossible. I had to make only one.

  Senator March: I don’t understand.

  Jonathan Fitzman: One ergonym, capable of reproduction. That was the hardest part. That’s what took me so long. The first few ergies I made were unable to survive the cell division process. The poor little fellows kept exploding.

  Senat
or March: What do you mean, exploding?

  Jonathan Fitzman: Kaboom! [Laughs.] In the lab, we can watch the images from the electron microscope projected onto a giant computer screen. It’s quite cool. Every time one of my ergies got to the cell division stage—kaboom!—it looked like the Fourth of July.

  Senator Wright: But eventually, I take it, you were able to create an ergonym that didn’t explode?

  Jonathan Fitzman: The perfect ergonym. It took two and a half years and five hundred million dollars, but we did it. One little ergie. And thirty-six minutes later, we had two. The second one was an exact copy of the first. And thirty-six minutes after that, four. Then eight. Then sixteen. Every thirty-six minutes, the population just keeps on doubling.

  Senator March: Even so, to get the trillions of ergies you need for just one gallon of Biolene, it would take years.

  Jonathan Fitzman: Not at all. Do the math. In twelve hours we had more than a million of the little guys, and by the next afternoon, more than a trillion. [Sings.] One little, two little, three little ergonyms. Four little, five little, six little ergonyms.

  Weeds and clumps of grass poked through the cracks in the sidewalk. Tamaya crossed the street, sighed, then started up the wooden steps of her front porch. The middle step wobbled beneath her foot. Marshall’s stupid shortcut had made her more than two hours late. Of course, she realized there never had been any shortcut, but that was the stupidest part about it. If he was afraid of Chad, he would have been safer walking along normal streets, with lots of people and cars around.

  Her house was dark. Her mother occasionally worked late, and Tamaya hoped with all her heart that this was one of those days.

  She wore her house key on a chain around her neck, but when she reached for it, all she could feel was the empty chain. Filled with panic, she almost broke the chain as she tugged on it. Rotating it around her neck, she found the key.

  She breathed a huge sigh of relief. Somehow it had twisted back behind her. Still, she knew her troubles were far from over.

  She unlocked the door. “Hello?” she called as she opened it. “I’m home!”

  There was no answer. So far, so good. No questions, no lies.

  Tamaya switched on lights as she moved quickly through her house toward her bedroom. The rooms were smallish, and each was painted in bright bold colors; a red-and-blue kitchen, a yellow living room, a green hallway. Tamaya’s room was turquoise with a yellow closet door and a yellow window frame. She dropped her backpack and collapsed onto the bed, but only for a moment.

  Her right hand still felt all tingly. She went into the bathroom and examined it under the light. Tiny red bumps were sprinkled over her palm and fingers.

  She washed with antibacterial soap and hot water—as hot as she could stand. Using a washcloth, she cleaned the dirt and blood off her arms and legs.

  She was putting a Band-Aid on her knee when the phone rang. She wondered if her mother had been trying to call her for a long time. She rushed into her mother’s bedroom and answered just before the fourth ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, sweetie. Sorry I’m running so late.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. Guilt pumped through her veins.

  “How does pizza sound to you?”

  “Good.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Tamaya said, trying her best to sound normal.

  “Mushroom, peppers, and onions okay?”

  “No onions.”

  “I’ll tell them to just put the onions on my half.”

  Tamaya didn’t argue, even though she knew her half would still taste oniony.

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Love you.”

  “Love you too,” Tamaya said. She waited until she heard the click on the other end, then hung up.

  She finished with the Band-Aid, then returned to her bedroom, where she changed out of her dirty clothes and into flannel pajamas. There was no reason that should make her mother suspicious, she thought. Now that the nights were colder, she and her mother both liked getting into their soft and cozy pajamas, although usually after dinner. They’d drink hot apple cider and either watch TV together or, more often lately, work side by side.

  She gathered up her dirty clothes and took them to the laundry nook.

  There was nothing suspicious about her doing her own laundry either. She’d been doing it ever since she’d needed her favorite purple top for Monica’s birthday party last year. Once when Marshall and his mother had been at her house, Tamaya’s mother had said, “I suppose if Tamaya waited around for me to wash her clothes, she’d have to go to school naked.”

  Tamaya had been so embarrassed and so mortified by what her mother had said, in front of Marshall, that she’d run to her room and hadn’t come out until after Marshall and his mother had left. Even now, she blushed thinking about it.

  She dumped her dirty clothes into the washing machine, added soap, set the temperature, and then started it up. Listening to the swish of the water, she imagined she felt something like the way a murderer felt after he successfully destroyed all the evidence.

  Her right hand was still tingling like crazy. She went into her mother’s bathroom and searched the drawers and cabinets, not sure what she was searching for. She came across a blue jar of something called “restorative hand cream.” The label said it was for dry, cracked, and irritated skin.

  Tamaya removed the lid and dipped her fingers into the white, chalky ointment. She smeared it all over the bumpy spots. It felt cool and soothing. It seemed to work almost immediately. The bumps didn’t look as red, and the tingling wasn’t as bad.

  From the other side of the wall, she could hear the rattle and buzz of the garage door opening. Her mother was home.

  2 × 4 = 8

  2 × 8 = 16

  Her mother set down the pizza, kissed Tamaya on the cheek, and said, “Help yourself. I just need to answer this one email.”

  The pizza box smelled of onions. Tamaya had to pick off a few strays before putting a slice on her plate. She had to do it all left-handed, so as not to get any of the restorative hand cream on her food.

  One email turned into six, but that was fine with Tamaya. The more her mother was wrapped up in work, the fewer questions Tamaya would have to answer.

  Her mother had made a salad as she’d read through her emails. She rarely did only one thing at a time.

  “So, did Ms. Filbert like your report?” she asked as she set the salad on the table.

  “We ran out of time,” Tamaya told her. “She didn’t get to mine.”

  “That’s too bad,” her mother said. “You worked so hard on it.”

  Her mother’s hair and eyes were dark like Tamaya’s, but she had lighter skin. She liked colorful clothes. Her green eye shadow matched her blouse.

  Tamaya shrugged. “I’ll do it tomorrow. No one cares about Calvin Coolidge anyway.”

  Tamaya would have preferred to give her report on a different president, but by the time Ms. Filbert had gotten around to calling on her, all the good presidents had already been taken.

  That was typical. Tamaya had sat quietly with her hand raised, but then someone else had shouted out, “I want Lincoln,” and then someone else had claimed Washington. Ms. Filbert had assigned those presidents to the shouters, even though she had just told the class, “Sit quietly and wait until I call on you.”

  It was Ms. Filbert who had suggested Calvin Coolidge to Tamaya when it had finally been her turn. “He was a lot like you, Tamaya,” she had said. “They called him Silent Cal because he was known for being quiet.”

  Ms. Filbert had said “being quiet” as though it were some sort of abnormal behavior. You’re the one who just told everyone to sit quietly, Tamaya had thought.

  —

  After dinner, Tamaya and her mother were working side by side on the living room sofa. The TV was on, but they were hardly watching. Her mother had a computer on her lap, and Tamaya’s notebook paper was on the coffee
table next to her history book.

  She wasn’t supposed to just look things up on the Internet. Tablets and smart phones were prohibited at Woodridge Academy. The headmistress, Mrs. Thaxton, wanted the students to do it the old-fashioned way. Even calculators were off-limits.

  Tamaya’s mother looked up from her laptop and asked if Tamaya had washed her hands after dinner. “You have pizza sauce on you.”

  Tamaya looked at her hand. It wasn’t pizza sauce. Despite her mother’s hand cream, the red bumps had returned. They had gotten bigger, and there seemed to be more of them. The tingling sensation had also returned, although she hadn’t noticed it so much until now.

  She couldn’t keep it from her mother any longer. “It’s not pizza,” she said. “I think I might have some kind of rash.”

  She held out her hand.

  Tamaya and her mother each had the same habit of biting their lower lip when thinking hard. Her mother was biting it now as she examined Tamaya’s rash.

  “It feels all funny too,” Tamaya told her.

  “Do you know how you got it?”

  “I noticed it after school” was all she could say. She had promised Marshall not to tell her mother or anyone else about the woods. “I put some of your stuff on it.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Restorative hand cream? In a blue jar?”

  “Good,” her mother said. “I use it all the time. It absolutely works miracles.”

  Tamaya was glad to hear that.

  “I’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning,” her mother told her, “but if you want, I can cancel and take you to see Dr. Sanchez.”

  “No, it’s not that bad,” Tamaya said. “I’ll put more of the hand cream on it before I go to bed.”

  “We’ll see how it looks in the morning,” her mother said.

  —

  Later, Tamaya thought that maybe she should have agreed to let her mother take her to see Dr. Sanchez. At least she wouldn’t have had to worry about Chad ambushing her on the way to school.

  “You’re next, Tamaya.”

  Still, would a seventh-grade boy really beat up a fifth-grade girl at school, with teachers all around? She doubted it. He might just push her down or something, but then she could blame her torn sweater on him. Then Chad’s parents would have to buy her a new one. In a way it was sort of true. If it weren’t for Chad, her sweater wouldn’t have a hole in it.