BHS Inkwell 2017-2018

Tomorrow By Ella Warnick

Ellie Lafon

Alvin was about to swallow the worm. We hadn’t thought he would really do it- or even considered the possibility- when we called his bluff moments earlier. Turns out, Alvin was a man of his word. “Man, when I was a kid, I used to eat worms by the handful,” he had boasted, wiggling his fingers to illustrate. “I don’t think I even knew what I was doin’, but hey, my momma didn’t care as long as I was gettin’ my protein. Hell, even now I’ll still get cravings for one of those big juicy ones.”He smacked his lips. “The best.” Beside me, Nadine blanched, but I wasn’t convinced. “Get outta here, man,”Gordo said. “There’s no way in hell you’d ever eat a live worm.” I shook my head in agreement, and Nadine chimed in: “I call bullshit.” Alvin looked hurt now, throwing his hands up defensively, but I could see he enjoyed the attention. He had always been the one to take the dive for laughs or even the sheer looks on our faces. Alvin had been the first to plunge into Devil’s Waterhole off the cliffs, the one to climb the chimney to prove he could do a backflip. He was the one to streak through Joe’s General Store so Gordo had content for his YouTube channel. Common sense wasn’t his strong suit, but there’s a price to pay if you want to be class clown. And sometimes that price might include worms. “You don’t believe me?” “You’ve gotta be kidding me,”Gordo laughed, leaning back in his lawn chair. When he laughed, the light of the fire turned his face yellow, as if it were his own happiness shining out of his peach cheeks. Alvin’s face was crimson. “Prove it, then,” I said. My hands entered the cool dirt beneath my chair. It was still damp from that morning’s downpour, so it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for, waiting inches below the surface. When I finally dredged up a single, writhing worm from the depths, we all turned to Alvin for his reaction. He grinned and his hand shot out across the fire to snatch the worm from mine. It was enthusiasm that scared me.

“Good thing I’m hungry,” Alvin said, and raised it like a glass of champagne during a toast. He dangled the worm’s slippery body between his thumb and forefinger, watching it squirm helplessly as he drew it closer to his mouth. His arm moved like a claw machine: painfully slow and constantly teetering on the edge of release. We stared in horror. It was impossible to tear my eyes away, and if you’ve ever watched an instant replay of a horrible car accident or a fumble during a football game, then you know what it was like to watch Alvin eat the worm. We all knew exactly what was coming- it was just a matter of when- and Alvin was savoring every second of our anticipation. It never touched his lips. I watched his teeth slice through the worm like a spear going through a hot dog, and Nadine shrieked, covering her face with her hands. Gordo and I refused to look away. 1, 2… I counted.Then out came the worm, projected through the funnel of Alvin’s tongue directly into the fire. It sizzled when it hit the smoldering wood. Although it started to melt immediately, the worm continued to move until all that remained of its body was a shriveled, black crisp sitting in the ashes.The three of us laughed while he screamed, repeatedly scrubbing his tongue with the inside of his shirt. Suddenly, the Southern night air was filled with sounds of lonely teenagers being kids again, and I prayed to God that the neighbors could hear us.That was the fifth time I felt at home in that town. As our laughter began to die, we allowed silence to take its place, and we settled back into our seats like sand at the bottom of a lake. I liked that idea. We were just grains of sand in deep water-

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