Dennis carefully poked the knot with the tip of the knife.
As he did so, the blade and the toothpick buzzed, causing Dennis to jump and toss both to the ground. The X-Acto blade clanked loudly against the linoleum floor, while the toothpick bounced and rolled under the desk.
“I’m losing it,” Dennis said to himself. “Losing it. My father was right.”
Dennis’s father, Chuck, had always been worried that his son, like him, would someday lose his mind, run away from his family, hide out in an abandoned building for a year, and eventually be committed to an asylum.
“A toothpick,” Dennis muttered. “I got a sandwich and there was a toothpick in it. Lots of people get lots of sandwiches with toothpicks in them.”
He tried to take his mind off the little sliver of wood lying beneath his desk, but it was nearly impossible.
“There’s a toothpick on the floor,” he mumbled. “So what?” A slight red crept into his cheeks, making his white head look like parts of it had been laundered in a load filled with red socks.
Dennis glanced at the small digital clock on his desk. The glowing numbers changed up one.
Dennis couldn’t take it any longer.
Frantically, he pushed his chair back and fell to his knees, feeling under the desk for the toothpick. He found a washer, a paper clip, and an old fortune cookie slip. It read: “Dare to dream.” Dennis remembered the day he had tossed that down. Not only was it not technically a true fortune, it was a painful reminder of his dreamless life. He tossed it aside again and pushed the desk back so as to be able to reach further under.
He didn’t know why, but he was desperate to find that toothpick. He groped around under the desk until his fingers brushed against the toothpick’s purple top and he took hold of it and pulled it out. As he got up from the floor and settled onto his chair, he laid the toothpick on the blotter on his desk and studied the little stick.
The toothpick vibrated.
“What the . . . ?” Dennis muttered, furrowing his brow. Two seconds later the toothpick vibrated once more and rolled to the side just a bit.
Dennis rubbed his eyes. He glanced around the little room, then fumbled through his top drawer and pulled out an even thinner
X-Acto knife. Holding the toothpick beneath the magnifying glass, he used the point of the knife to touch the tiny knot on the toothpick just below where the purple plastic top was attached.
The knife buzzed.
The hair on the back of Dennis’s neck stood like the quills of a threatened porcupine. Dennis pushed the tip of the knife just slightly into the wood, and, like a miniscule cork being fired from a pent-up bottle of champagne, the tiny knot of wood popped out and shot up. It ricocheted off the magnifying lens and desk and into Dennis’s right eye.
Screaming, Dennis dropped the knife and reached for his eye. But his concern for himself was short-lived as a much higher-pitched and more alarming scream sounded. Dennis let go of the toothpick to cover his ears. He looked around frantically. The noise seemed to be growing. He glanced at the toothpick, realizing that the tiny hole he had just opened was the source of the screaming. He pushed his index finger over the opening to shut it up.
The toothpick bit him.
Dennis drew back his hand and leaped up off the chair. The toothpick was still wailing. Panicking, Dennis reached for a broken stapler and slammed it down on the toothpick.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” it wailed, much louder than one would expect something so small to do.
Someone outside the closet began banging on the door.
Dennis moved the stapler off the toothpick. He tore off a piece of Scotch tape from a dispenser on his desk and stuck it over the hole he had made, taping the toothpick to the desk and putting an abrupt end to the screaming. But beneath the tape, the toothpick was still vibrating madly.
The banging on the door stopped and someone yelled, “What’s going on in there?” The door handle jiggled as whoever it was tried to make his way in. Dennis, of course, always made sure the door was locked. He had been interrupted too many times straightening staples or sorting pencils.
“Are you all right?” the voice asked with more disdain than sympathy.
“Fine,” Dennis lied, noticing for the first time that the spot where the toothpick had bit him was bleeding. “I’m fine. The toner in the copy machine was leaking,” he lied again. “There was a leak in the toner,” he repeated, as if saying it twice would make it true.
Dennis tore off another piece of tape and secured the bottom half of the gyrating toothpick. The stapler he had hammered it with had done some damage. One end of the toothpick was slightly bent, and the tip had been split, creating what looked like tiny legs with a short, striped tail hanging down between them.
The vibrating ceased. Dennis just stared. He was trying desperately to make sense of what was happening but had no answers. He thought for a moment that he was simply dreaming, but that didn’t seem likely because Dennis never dreamed. According to his father, this inability to dream was a family trait; the men in the Wood family didn’t dream. When they closed their eyes at night they saw nothing but gray. Dennis had always wanted to doze off and see things in a way his sad life didn’t offer, but it never happened. So he built models and pretended that he was someone else doing something altogether different from his actual activities.
Now, however, here he was, gaping at a toothpick taped to his desk and wondering if he really wanted to experience something different from what his days had always offered.
He decided he might.
After a few moments, Dennis peeled the tape off the top end of the toothpick to see if it would scream again.
Silence.
Dennis touched the purple, hairlike fringe and pulled back.
“Happy?” the toothpick whispered fiercely. “Captured Ezra, have you? Well, you’ve got me, now finish me off, coward!”
“What?” Dennis asked, confused.
“End it!” Ezra snarled. “But before you do, I want to see you. I want to see who cheated fate and did Ezra in. Slice me an eye.”
“E . . . e . . . excuse me?” Dennis asked nervously, more than just a little unsettled by what was happening.
“An eye, you fool!”
“I can’t cut you—”
“I demand to see!” Ezra screamed.
Dennis picked his X-Acto knife back up. He looked at the blade reflecting under the glow of the humming fluorescent light. There was perspiration on his forehead, and the palms of his hands were moist and cold.
“Do it!” Ezra yelled. “Slice me an eye!”
Dennis put the tip of the sharp blade against the toothpick. He had no real idea of what constituted proper feature arrangement for a toothpick, so he skimmed the edge of the knife across the base of the purple fringe and above the hole he was getting yelled at through. It was only a light cut, but it did the trick. The single horizontal cut opened just a bit and then fluttered due to the brightness of the light. The eye closed and the mouth sighed.
Dennis felt his own forehead to see if he was ill. “It’s happened,” he moaned. “I’ve lost my mind.”
Dennis stood up and began pacing the small space. He grabbed a blue paper towel from a metal shelf and wiped his forehead and hair.
“Sit down,” Ezra ordered.
Dennis sat.
“Listen,” Ezra whispered, causing Dennis to lean in closer. “All I want to be able to do . . .”
Ezra pushed himself up and out of the tape and sprang from the desk directly onto Dennis’s forehead, where he bit down hard. Dennis screamed, swatting at Ezra as if he were a pesky fly. The blow knocked Ezra loose, and he landed on Dennis’s left shoulder.
“Ahhhhhahhahh!” Ezra screamed just before sinking his mouth into Dennis’s neck.
Dennis slapped his neck, trying to stop Ezra, but he was too slow. Ezra was now on top of his head, violently jumping up and down.
The banging on the door started again.
“Wha
t’s going on in there?” a voice demanded. “Should we call someone?”
“I’m fine,” Dennis yelled back, looking frantically around for Ezra.
“You’re not fine!” Ezra screamed, diving from off a high metal shelf. “I will finish you!”
Dennis spun, accidentally knocking over a large, open jar of rubber cement. The dark bottle rolled to the edge of the desk and dropped to the floor with an impressive splack. Rubber cement oozed out over the floor as Dennis batted the air like a six-year-old girl who has just seen a big, scary bumblebee.
Ezra dug into Dennis’s right hand with his pointed tail, and Dennis pushed away, sending Ezra to the ground and into the spreading splotch of rubber cement. Ezra lay trapped on his back, more angry than ever, growling maniacally. He writhed in the sticky goo, screaming for Dennis’s head.
“What’s going on in there?” Dennis’s coworkers outside the door yelled. “Open up right now!”
“Please stop screaming,” Dennis whispered fiercely to Ezra. “I’ll get you out, just stop screaming!”
Ezra closed his mouth hole for a second and stared Dennis down with his one eye. He opened his mouth and blew.
“You have thirty seconds,” Ezra hissed.
“How do I know you won’t just start biting me again?” Dennis asked.
“It’s a chance you’re going to—”
Ezra’s threat was cut short by the sound of people slamming up against the door. Dennis’s coworkers had lost all patience. They were working the doorknob with a screwdriver, trying to pop it open and find out what was happening inside Dennis’s closet.
If this scene were in a comic book, you would have been able to see a tiny wooden lightbulb go on above Ezra’s head. But this was not a comic book, so all Dennis saw was a slight mischievous smile from Ezra’s mouth.
“You hate it here,” Ezra said, giving voice to a secret that Dennis for years had been too afraid to admit.
Dennis nodded warily.
“You would do just about anything to get away from this place, wouldn’t you?”
Again Dennis nodded, this time with more surety.
Ezra looked closely at Dennis. Ezra wasn’t exactly coming from a position of strength. He was, after all, a party toothpick stuck to the floor with rubber cement. But he was exuding enough anger and rage to seem like a four-story-tall giant.
“Pull me out, and I’ll take you with me,” Ezra offered wickedly.
Dennis looked at Ezra like a fish that had been held from water for hours and was now being offered an entire lake.
“Take me where?” Dennis whispered.
“Foo,” Ezra spat.
Dennis had no idea where Foo was, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t located in the building he now cleaned, or in the city he had resided in for the last twenty-eight years.
Dennis reached for Ezra just as the door to the closet was finally forced open. He closed his hand around the toothpick and stood up to face those who had so rudely barged in.
“What is going on?” a short woman with big teeth and skinny legs demanded.
“Who were you screaming at?” asked Randall, the firm’s newest partner.
“I’m sick,” was all Dennis said.
He squeezed out the door, pushed into the hall, and ran toward the elevator. He rode twenty floors down to the lobby, where he walked quickly across the tile floor and out the front revolving door. It wasn’t until he was three blocks away that he finally opened his fist and looked at the sticky toothpick in his hand.
Ezra growled.
“I’m sorry,” Dennis apologized. “I didn’t want anyone to see you.”
“You have the spine of a used tissue,” Ezra said meanly. “We could have taken them.”
“You were stuck in glue,” Dennis reasoned.
Ezra spat.
“You’re a toothpick,” Dennis added.
Ezra didn’t like that. “Pig!” he shouted, jumping from Dennis’s hand onto his forearm. He began rubbing himself against the hairy skin, giving Dennis one terrific burn.
Dennis blinked to stop himself from crying. On the basis of a promise from a very hostile toothpick, he had just walked out on the only job he had ever had, and now he had a wicked burn to go with the bite marks on his forehead.
Ezra scrambled up Dennis’s arm and stopped on top of his shoulder. He was breathing as heavily as a toothpick could.
“Sorry,” Dennis offered.
“Boy, I’ll say,” Ezra replied coldly. “If you’re going to come with me, you have got to watch what you say. I might be what you see before you, but I will not always be.”
That was too deep for Dennis.
“I need arms,” Ezra insisted. “I’m not waiting for fate to mold me.”
Dennis stared dumbly at him.
“Bite me,” Ezra instructed.
Dennis felt like crying again. It’s not easy, after all, to be insulted by anyone. It’s even worse when you’re being insulted by a small piece of wood that was once holding your sandwich together. Before Dennis could begin crying, however, Ezra worked himself up Dennis’s face and forced his way into his mouth. It wasn’t too hard, seeing as how Dennis was already in the process of dropping his jaw. After getting inside, Ezra stretched out across Dennis’s front bottom teeth. He eyed the top teeth up above and then scooted over just a bit.
“Do it.”
“Do uht?” Dennis asked, his mouth still hanging open.
“Bite me!” Ezra insisted.
Dennis gingerly closed his mouth.
Ezra hollered, “That’s the worst biting I’ve ever seen. Bite, you baby!”
Dennis opened his mouth and chomped down hard.
This time Ezra screamed for an entirely different reason.
Dennis released, and Ezra called him a coward. Somewhat irritated by Ezra’s bad attitude, Dennis ground his front teeth together. He could feel Ezra beginning to split in two. After grinding for a few moments, Dennis spat Ezra out onto the sidewalk.
Ezra bounced a couple of times and came to a stop. Glaring at Dennis with his single eye, he spat and growled. Dennis knelt down and instantly began to apologize.
“You are an emotional toddler,” Ezra declared.
Dennis had never felt more confused in his life. And it is somewhat important to point out that Dennis had been plenty confused in his life. Like the time his mother told him she needed to go out for just a moment and then never came back. That was confusing. Or all the times his father would say he loved him and then would leave him for weeks to fend for himself. That was confusing too.
Now a toothpick had called him “an emotional toddler.” That was also confusing.
Dennis reached to pick up Ezra but stopped when the toothpick ordered him to leave it alone. Dennis stared at the poor little thing as it writhed and moaned on the ground. Ezra’s torso was wet and bent, thanks to the biting he had just endured. Ezra wriggled and yelled and took advantage of his soggy, chewed condition by painfully ripping a small strand of wood away from his side and forming an arm. The pain didn’t slow him. He gasped as he struggled to rip a second appendage away from his body.
He succeeded, but the pain was too much. The tiny toothpick, which now had two arms, closed his only eye and passed out.
Dennis sat down on the curb and tenderly picked Ezra up. He laid the beat-up toothpick on his knee and folded a bit of his trousers over him. Ezra’s damp purple-fringed top looked like an odd bug resting on his leg. Dennis shifted his position and leaned his back up against a huge dumpster. As he looked at the battered little toothpick, Dennis couldn’t help it. He began to cry. This time in earnest.
ii
The tiny chair just outside the classroom door was considerably less than comfortable. Tim Tuttle shifted in the seat and thought about just how he would phrase the questions he wanted to ask Winter’s teacher. He wadded and tugged at the blue baseball cap he held in his hands. His heart was beating loudly.
After keeping Tim waiting another fifte
en minutes, Mr. Bentwonder came to the door. He looked down the hall in both directions and let his eyes settle on Tim. Mr. Bentwonder sighed heavily, as if he had just solved every problem in the world and nobody had taken the time to thank him. He then blew his nose into a dirty handkerchief, shoved it into his pocket, and announced that he would see Tim now.
After they were seated in Mr. Bentwonder’s office, Tim said, “Thank you so much for meeting with me.”
“A teacher’s time is a precious thing,” Mr. Bentwonder breathed, his fat, mushy face jiggling as he spoke. “Now, how may I enlighten you?”
“I have a question about one of your students.”
“You may have heard wonders about my intellect, but I’m afraid I can’t read your mind,” Mr. Bentwonder said, feigning modesty. “To which pupil are you referring?”
“I’m sorry,” Tim said. “Her name is Winter. Winter Frore.”
Mr. Bentwonder’s face went from pink to pale in two seconds flat. He began to stammer and cough. He pulled his dirty handkerchief back out to cover his mouth, but that did nothing but leave his nose open to spray. He coughed so violently that Tim stood and started patting him on the back in support.
“Are you okay?” Tim asked.
Mr. Bentwonder brushed him away and tried to compose himself. He closed his eyes and patted his fat cheeks. “What about her?” he asked defensively. “She is no longer my pupil.”
“What happened to her?” Tim asked.
“I’ve already told the police,” Mr. Bentwonder sniffed. “It was the worst experience of my professional life.”
“So she was expelled?”
“She would be if she walked in that door again,” he said like a spoiled baby. “She put a spell on all of us.”
“A spell?”
“On the entire class.” He shook his head in disbelief. “One moment I’m filling their brains with information that might very well propel them to greatness, and the next thing I know the entire classroom is . . . frozen.”