The Poison Eaters_ And Other Stories Part 4

"So, what it going to be?" he asked. "You play the fiddle? Or maybe you'd like to try your hand at jump rope?"

She took a long look at him. He was slender and his clothes hung on him a bit, as though he'd been bigger when he'd bought them. He didn't look like a big eater. "An eating contest," she said. "I'm wagering that I can eat more than you can."

He laughed so hard she thought for a moment he was having a seizure. "That's a new one. Fine. I'm all appet.i.te."

His reaction made her nervous. "Wait-" she said. "You never told me what you wanted if I lost."

"Just a little thing. You won't miss it." He indicated the door of the bus with his cane. "Next stop is yours. I'll be by tomorrow. Don't worry about your dog for tonight."

She stood. "First tell me what I'm going to lose."

"You'll overreact," he said, shaking his head.

"I won't," Nikki said, but she wasn't sure what she would do. What could he want? She'd said "no s.e.x," but he hadn't made any promises.

The old guy held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Your soul."

"What? Why would you want that?"

" I'm a collector. I have to have the whole set-complete. All souls. They're going to look spectacular spectacular all lined up. There was a time when I was close, but then there were all these special releases and I got behind. And forget about having them mint-in-box. I have to settle for what I can get these days." all lined up. There was a time when I was close, but then there were all these special releases and I got behind. And forget about having them mint-in-box. I have to settle for what I can get these days."

"You're joking."

"Maybe." He looked out the window, as if considering all those missing souls. "Don't worry. It's like an appendix. You won't even miss it."

Nikki walked home from the bus stop, her stomach churned as she thought over the bargain she'd made. Her soul. The devil. She had just made a bargain with the devil. Who else wanted to buy souls?

She stomped into the trailer to see her mom on the couch, eating a piece of frozen pizza. Doug sat next to her, watching a car being rebuilt on television. Both of them looked tired.

"Oh, honey," her mother said. "I'm so sorry."

Nikki sat down on the s.h.a.g rug. "You didn't kill Boo, did you?"

"The vet said that we could wait until tomorrow and see how he's doing, but he wasn't very encouraging." Long fingers stroked Nikki's hair, but she refused to be soothed. "You have to think what would be best for the poor dog. You don't want him to suffer."

Nikki jumped up and stalked over to the kitchen. "I don't want him to die!"

"Go talk to your sister," their mother said. Doug pushed himself up off the couch.

"Show me how to train for an eating contest," Nikki told him, when he tried to speak. "Show me right now."

He shook his head. "You're seriously losing it."

"Yeah," she said. "But I need to win."

The next morning, after her mother left for work, Nikki called herself out sick and started straightening up the place. After all, the devil was the most famous guest she'd ever had. She'd heard of him, and, what was more, she was pretty sure he knew a lot of people she'd be impressed by.

He knocked on the door of the trailer around noon. Today, he wore a red double-breasted suit with a black s.h.i.+rt and tie. He carried a gnarled cane in a glossy brown, like polished walnut.

Seeing her looking at it, he smiled. "Bull p.e.n.i.s. Not too many of these."

"You dress like a pimp," Nikki said before she thought better of it.

His smile just broadened.

" So are you a a devil or devil or the the devil?" Nikki held the screen door open for him. devil?" Nikki held the screen door open for him.

"I'm a devil to some." He winked as he walked past her. "But I'm the devil to you."

She shuddered. Suddenly, the idea of him being supernatural seemed entirely too real. "My brother's in the back waiting for us."

Nikki had set up on the picnic table in the common area of the trailer park. She walked onto the hot concrete and the devil followed her. Doug looked up from where he carefully counted out portions of sour gummy frogs onto paper plates. He looked like a giant, holding each tiny candy between two thick fingers.

Nikki brushed an earwig and some sour-cherry splatter off a bench and sat down. "Doug's going to explain the rules."

The devil sat down across from her and leaned his cane against the table. "Good. I'm starving."

Doug stood up, wiping sweaty palms on his jeans. "This is what we're going to do. We have a bag of one hundred and sixty-six sour gummy frogs. That's all we could get. I divided them into sixteen plates of ten and two plates of three, so you each have a maximum of eighty-three frogs. If you both eat the same number of frogs, whoever finishes their frogs first wins. If you have a . . . er? . . . reversal of fortune, then you lose, period."

"He means if you puke," Nikki said.

Doug gave her a stern look but didn't say anything.

"We need not be limited by your supply," said the devil. A huge tarnished silver platter appeared on the table. It scuttled over to Nikki on chicken feet and she saw that it was heaped with sugar-studded frogs.

The candy on the paper plates looked dull in comparison with what glimmered on the table. Nikki picked up an orange-and-black-colored candy poison-dart frog and put it regretfully down. It just seemed dumb to let the devil supply food. "You have to use ours."

The devil shrugged. With a wave of his hand, the dish of frogs disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a burnt-sugar smell. "Very well."

Doug put a plastic pitcher of water and two gla.s.ses between them. "Okay," he said, lifting up a stopwatch. "Go!"

Nikki started eating. The salty sweet flavor flooded her mouth as she crammed in candy.

Across the table, the devil lifted up his first paper plate, rolling it up and using the tube to pour frogs into a mouth that seemed to expand. His jaw unhinged like a snake. He picked up a second plate.

Nikki swallowed frog after frog, sugar sc.r.a.ping her throat, racing to catch up.

Doug slid a new pile in front of Nikki and she started eating. She was in the zone. One frog, then another, then a sip of water. The cloying sweetness sc.r.a.ped her throat raw, but she kept eating.

The devil poured a third plate of candy down his throat, then a fourth. At the seventh plate, the devil paused with a groan. He untucked his s.h.i.+rt and undid the b.u.t.ton on his dress pants to pat his engorged belly. He looked full.

Nikki stuffed candy in her mouth, suddenly filled with hope.

The devil chuckled and unsheathed a knife from the top of his cane.

"What are you doing?" Doug shouted.

"Just making room," the devil said. Pressing the blade to his belly, he slit a line in his stomach. Dozens upon dozens of gooey half-chewed frogs tumbled into the dirt.

Nikki stared at him, paralyzed with dread. Her fingers still held a frog, but she didn't bring it to her lips. She had no hope of winning.

Doug looked away from the mess of partially digested candy. "That's cheating!"

The devil tipped up the seventh plate into his widening mouth and swallowed ten frogs at once. "Nothing in the rules against it."

Nikki wondered what it would be like have no soul. Would she barely miss it? Could she still dream? Without one, would she have no more guilt or fear or fun? Maybe without a soul she wouldn't even care that Boo was dead.

The devil cheated. If she wanted to win, she had to cheat, too.

On her sixth plate, Nikki started sweating, but she knew she could finish. She just couldn't finish before he did.

She had to beat him in quant.i.ty. She had to eat more sour gummy frogs than he did.

"I feel sick," Nikki said.

" Don't you know. you know." Doug shook his head vigorously. "Fight it."

Nikki bent over, holding her stomach. While hidden by the table, she picked up one of the slimy, chewed up frogs that had been in the devil's stomach and popped it in her mouth. The frog tasted like sweetness and dirt and something rotten.

The nausea was real this time. She choked and forced herself to swallow around the sour taste of her own gorge.

Sitting up, she saw that the devil had finished all his frogs. She still had two more plates to go.

"I win," the devil said. "No need to keep eating."

Doug sunk fingers into his hair and tugged. "He's right."

"No way." Nikki gulped down another mouthful of candy. "I'm finis.h.i.+ng my plates."

She ate and ate, ignoring how the rubbery frogs stuck in her throat. She kept eating. Swallowed the last sour-gummy frog, she stood up. "Are you finished?"

"I've been finished for ages," said the devil.

" Then I I win." win."

The devil yawned. "Impossible."

"I ate one more frog than you did," she said. "So I win."

He pointed his cane at Doug. "If you cheated and gave her another frog, we'll be doing this contest over and you'll be joining us."

Doug shook his head. "It took me an hour to count out those frogs. They were exactly even."

"I ate one of the frogs from your gut," Nikki said. "I picked it up off the ground and I ate it."

"That's disgusting!" Doug said.

"Five-second rule," Nikki said. "If it's in the devil for less than five seconds, it's still good."

" That's cheating, cheating," said the devil. He sounded half-admiring and half-appalled, reminding her of her boss's son at The Sweet Tooth.

She shook her head. "Nothing in the rules against it."

The devil scowled for a moment, then bowed shallowly. "Well done, Nicole. Count on seeing me again soon." With those words, he ambled toward the bus station. He paused in front of Trevor's trailer, pulled out a handful of envelopes from the mailbox, and kept going.

Nikki's mother's car pulled into the lot, Boo's head visible in the pa.s.senger-side window. His tongue lolled despite the absurd cone-shaped collar around his neck.

Nikki hopped up on top of the picnic table and shrieked with joy, leaping around, the sugar and adrenaline and relief making her giddy.

She stopped jumping. "You know what?"

Doug looked up at her. "What?"

"I think my summer is starting not to suck so much."

He sat down on a bench so hard that she heard the wood strain. The look he gave her was pure disbelief.

"So," Nikki asked, "you want to get some lunch?"

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

There's a certain kind of boy who likes to read only about things that have really happened. Like Alex. He read about the t.i.tanic t.i.tanic and memorized how many people died (1,523) and the name of the boat that picked up the survivors ( and memorized how many people died (1,523) and the name of the boat that picked up the survivors (RMS Carpathia). He read about ghosts and werewolves, too, sometimes, but only when he was certain he was being presented with facts. (The vulnerability to silver bullets, for example, was made up by modern fiction writers-probably any bullet would do.) In one of the books Alex took out of the library, there was a story about a white flower, the scent of which turned people into wolves. He worried about the flower. It seemed to have no proper name for him to memorize.

In the summers, Alex's parents took he and his younger sister, Anna, sailing. For two weeks, they slept on scratchy cus.h.i.+ons in a tiny room in the prow of the boat. Alex mostly sat on deck, his skin tightening with sunburn even though it was slathered with coconut-smelling lotion and his hair stiffening with salt as he read. Sometimes the glow of the sun on the paper was almost blinding.

Anna swung around one of the fasts. She'd been running around the deck all day in a red bathing suit and a floppy hat, dancing up to him and trying to get him to play games with her. Meanwhile, Dad fished off the back and Mom steered lazily. There was barely any wind and the swells were small. Alex was bored but comfortable.

"Want a plum?" Mom called, reaching into a cooler.

"Nah," Dad said. "Alex just wants to sit there with his nose in a book. All this beautiful nature around and he doesn't want to experience any of it."

Alex ducked under the mast and took the fruit, frowning at his dad. He bit into it as he resettled into the c.o.c.kpit. The plum was mealy and less sweet than he thought it would be. The juice ran over his hand.

The book on Alex's lap was about sharks. He imagined them, darting beneath the boat, sleek and hungry. Mako sharks were the fastest-but pelagic, meaning they liked deep water. They seldom surfaced. According to what he had read, the great white shark could swim anywhere. In any kind of water. He kept his eyes on the water, looking for thin, angular fins.

Sharks would eat anything. He considered dropping his plum over the side. He bet that so long as it was moving, a shark would eat it. It was the movement that enticed them.