Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (4 page)

BRUNETTE GIRL

A leprechaun!

BLOND BOY

Let’s steal his gold!

LEPRECHAUN

… Why ask for gold.

How about a golden

sweet cereal.

BLOND GIRL

Breakfast magic!

BLOND BOY

Burlap Crisp makes morning

fun! Let’s eat!

LEPRECHAUN

I don’t care what you do.

ANNOUNCER

Burlap Crisp! A

good cereal from the good

folks at Goodco! There’s

a Little Bit of Magic

in Every Box!

The screen resumed its slide show.

“Clover didn’t seem like he wanted to be there,” muttered Allie.

“That was his character,” said Stephanie. “Back then he was called Clover the Angry Leprechaun.”

“How did they make the bowls change?” asked Dubois.

“Camera tricks!”

“But you said it was live.”

“Oh my goodness!” said Stephanie. “What a treat—children, look behind you!”

Erno didn’t have a good gauge of Stephanie’s enthusiasm yet, so when he turned, he half expected to see the Snox Rabbit or an actual coconut vampire and not a pair of middle-aged men in short sleeves and ties holding briefcases.

“Wow,” Denton muttered. “That
is
something.”

It sort of
was
something, though—one of these men was Mr. Wilson. Erno didn’t know the other one.

Emily virtually sparkled beside him. “Dad!” she said. She waved her hand, then put it away again when the other sixth graders began to snicker.

Mr. Wilson had the uncomfortable half smile of someone who was being forced to sit quietly while people sang “Happy Birthday” at him. He nodded and grunted some acknowledgment.

“Children,” said Stephanie, “about twice a day two
representatives come to take samples from each of the product lines so they can compare them to small batches of ‘perfect cereal’ back at headquarters! We never know quite when they’re going to show up. Gentlemen, don’t let us keep you from your very important duty!”

Mr. Wilson and the other man proceeded through the lobby and through a door marked
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Stephanie ushered the sixth grade into a public hall and gestured to a long window that ran the length of the left wall. “Let’s just watch these men do what they do.”

Mr. Wilson and the other man stood in a white room atop a grating while a Hydra of nozzles blasted them from every direction with compressed air. Mr. Wilson’s combover flapped festively and settled over the wrong ear. Kids snickered again and stole glances at the twins. After their decontamination the men stepped forward to select pink matte rubber suits off the wall. They pulled these on, complete with gloves and a hood with something like a diver’s mask in front. They still had their briefcases. They looked like marshmallow men going to work.

Stephanie and the kids watched from behind a barricade as the marshmallow men stepped out onto the production floor and collected cereal samples in their briefcases. The conveyor belt operators in their shower caps and white smocks stood at crisp attention as the marshmallow men moved about. Erno could no longer
tell which figure was Mr. Wilson until they both reentered the white room, removed their suits, handcuffed the briefcases to each other’s wrists, and left.

Erno heard the new boy whisper “That was your dad?” to Emily.

“Yes. Erno’s too.”

Erno looked at the new boy, and the new boy smiled back. Then he lost him as the tour began moving again.

They were back at school in time for lunch. Some days Mr. Wilson gave them money to buy their lunch, and other days, like today, he made them lunches himself. Erno had some money he’d earned by house-sitting for neighbors, and he hoped the school cafeteria was serving something he liked. Mr. Wilson made really terrible lunches.

It so happened that they were serving pizza, or more accurately a kind of impersonation of it, as though the whole concept of pizza had been rather poorly explained to the cafeteria workers by people who’d only read about it in books and didn’t really like children much. Erno’s brown bag, on the other hand, contained a baloney salad sandwich, thick with mayonnaise and pickle. Bad pizza beats good baloney salad, he decided. After buying lunch he tossed his bag in a waste bin.

It wasn’t easy to decide where to sit. Erno had joined Emily for lunch the day before, but he’d disappointed her
on the field trip bus. And now he could see her there, at the big table in the corner, all alone with her baloney salad and orthodontic headgear. For years she’d had a friend named Jill, and things had been simpler: he would sit with Emily when Jill was absent, and occasionally when Jill wasn’t absent, so it wouldn’t be so obvious. But Jill’s family had moved to Michigan.

“You sitting with Frankensister today?” Denton called loudly to Erno, so Erno sat down next to him if only so the boy would have no further reason to shout.

“Frankensister
love
Erno,” moaned Louis. He did it at least once a day.

Because one day Roger had remarked that Emily was pale like a vampire, and Louis had pointed out that her metal headgear made her more like a robot, and then it was generally agreed without any help from Erno that the halfway point between a vampire and a robot was a Frankenstein. Which was why today and every other day Erno had to listen to the three boys make Frankenstein noises and wave their arms around.

“Doesn’t even sound like her,” Erno muttered.

“Lighten up,” said Denton. “Hey, did you guys see the new episode of
Agent SuperCar
last night? With all the explosions?”

Roger and Louis had, and they immediately started talking loudly about it, quoting their favorite parts. Erno
stayed quiet, thinking it best not to remind them once again that the Utz kids did not own a television.

“And remember when Agent SuperCar said ‘Regular or unleaded?’” Denton shouted. “And then he sprayed the polar bears with gasoline and they all exploded?”

“That was so great.”

“Explosions are the
best
.”

Erno ate his pizza and watched Emily across the
cafeteria
. Back when Jill had been around, Erno and his friends had had an unspoken arrangement: he let them make fun of Jill, and in return they didn’t make fun of Emily—not to her face, at any rate, nor his. But now these so-called friends had begun to circle Emily like hyenas. Erno realized with a start that he didn’t know what the deal was anymore.

And as he watched Emily she turned—very suddenly, in fact, considering she didn’t have full use of her neck—and looked directly at Erno. She looked at him looking at her. After a moment her attention returned to a small slip of pink paper in her small, pink hands. She studied it as though it was a diabolical puzzle, which it probably was.

“Oh,” Erno said softly. “Oh no.”

Denton stopped speaking midsentence and faced him. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I’ll … be right back.”

“Whatever. Free country.”

Erno stood miserably and shuffled back to the garbage can in which he’d tossed his lunch bag and sighed. The can squatted there in the corner, short and fat and topped with a quivering mound of trash and half-eaten food. Breathing deeply (through his mouth), he rolled up his sleeve and plunged his arm into the mess, pushing wrappers and pizza crusts aside. He dug, ignoring banana peels and peanut butter and the insults his behavior was beginning to draw from the rest of the cafeteria crowd.

“What’s the matter, Utz? Aren’t they feeding you enough at home?”

“Erno! Over here! You can have this pudding I dropped.”

“What are you doing?”

Erno looked up at this last remark. He hadn’t noticed the new boy standing just across the can from him. It was a fair question.

“Um, I lost my lunch bag in here.”

“You’re not still gonna
eat
it, are you?”

“No! No, it just has this piece of paper inside it I need. With … a phone number written on it.”

“Oh,” said the boy. “Well, here.” He used his binder to shovel some of the garbage aside, and with this help Erno quickly found the bag.

Inside, beneath the carrot sticks and sandwich, was a tight roll of pink paper secured with tape. He pried free
the tape, and the paper uncoiled like a party favor, and the secret message, which was most plainly not a phone number, divulged its hidden mysteries:

THIS IS NOT A CLUE.

“Son of a—” said Erno, and he threw the paper back in the trash.

The other boy was eyeing him strangely. Well, maybe not so strangely, considering.

“Um, thanks,” Erno said. “I think I’m gonna go wash my hands.”

“I’ll come with you. I want to wipe off my binder.”

They walked out of the cafeteria and through the wide halls. Erno couldn’t help liking this new kid: he had a kind face that was unassumingly handsome, if that was possible.

“Thanks again,” Erno said. “You didn’t have to help.”

“My name’s Scott,” the boy answered. “I just started here this morning. I’m in Ms. Egami’s class.”

“I’m Erno. I’m in Mr. Klum’s class, right next door to you.”

“Erno? Erno Utz?”

“Yeah,” Erno said, surprised.