The New Girl’s New Bug

By My Little Worm Cliff — Featuring: Ant Crush

Henry couldn’t help himself. He knew from the first moment that the new girl walked into class that he was in love with her.

Henry was a reasonable, sensible, logical, cool-headed sort of boy. He didn’t fall in love, not often, hardly ever.

But there was just something special about Katelyn.

She took the seat beside him, smoothing her skirt as she sat, causing the fabric to stretch tight for a moment against the curve of her bottom and his heart burst into flame

She smiled at him and his spine tingled. She borrowed a pencil from him and promptly began to chew on the wood, making perfect, moist little marks, and he melted like a marshmallow.

Of course the other kids ignored her, even though she was astoundingly beautiful, with glossy dark hair, deep, mysterious eyes, a pretty dress and new black shoes. Theirs was a cliquish school and it would be many months before ”they” would allow her to break into any social circles. Henry was in no social circles and frankly, didn’t care.

Mr. Sagamin droned on about history. Henry dreamed on about Katelyn. Purple dreams. Dreams of touching her hands, of holding her, of feeling her warmth and of the sun-warmed scent of her hair.

She slipped a piece of gum out of its wrapper. She dropped the wrapper on the floor beside her desk. She opened her mouth and laid the stick upon her tongue and her creamy white teeth came crashing down to destroy forever its squarish symmetry, to grind it into pink goo.

Katelyn, being new, was perhaps unaware that Mr. Sagamin had eagle eyes and a heart like a cold, hard rock. The old man espied the wrapper upon the floor and the veins bulged upon his forehead.

“WHO is chewing gum in my class and WHO is the litterbug who is going to pick up trash from the playground for the next four days?” he roared.

Henry saw Katelyn flinch, steeling herself for the punishment to come.
His heart pounded in his chest. He knew what he had to do. He had only a second to do it and no time to second guess. He wrenched an old, hard piece of gum from under his desk – who knew what foul kid had stuck it there and when, but Katelyn was worth it – and he shoved it into his mouth, struggling to keep from being sick – and began to chew noisily and took the added measure of snapping his pencil in half – CRACCKK — drawing Sagamin’s immediate attention, judgment and fury.

“MR. HENRY MARTIN! You little cretin!”

Henry had never been in trouble before, at least not to this degree. But for Katelyn, he would take on Mr. Sagamin and anyone else who got in the way.

Mr. Sagamin barreled down the aisle and stood before Henry, his eyes blazing. Katelyn was casually watching the proceedings, STILL chewing her gum. “Swallow it, swallow it!” Henry wanted to scream at her.

No such thing. She just watched with a sort of amusement, which should have infuriated Henry but in truth only swelled his passion for her all the more.

“MR. HENRY MARTIN! You are on detention for one week. You will clean litter from the playground for one week. You will clean all the gum from beneath the desks in this classroom as well. And I will have a conference with your parents this Friday!” the man thundered.

Henry knew his world had been smashed to pieces and rearranged. He knew that much pain lay ahead. He didn’t care. He watched as the insouciant Katelyn now calmly took her gum out of her mouth and wedged it firmly beneath her desk, then smiled – or was it smirked? — at him without an ounce of any apparent gratitude.
The class ended. The students barreled out the door. Henry slumped in his seat, his mind a whirl, his soul on fire.

Katelyn brushed past him, casually dropping the wrapper from a new piece of gum, on the floor beside him as she slipped by.

He picked it up, not wanting to endure more punishment from the teacher. He walked slowly out to get his lunch.

The noise and commotion of the other kids was insufferable today. He slipped down a hallway and out the loading dock door to his secret place behind a big tree, where he liked to eat his lunch sometimes. It was of course totally against the rules to be out here – one of the few rules he had broken, before today at least.
“Nice place,” she said. He jumped, and nearly dropped his lunch. How the heck had she followed him out here, without his knowing?

“Give me your jacket,” she said. He slipped it off and handed it over. She dropped it upon the ground and primly sat down upon it, drawing her legs up underneath her and wiping the dust from her shoes with the sleeves.

“I like you, worm,” she said.

Him? He was a worm? What kind of thing was that to say? How could she like him and say that? He was terribly confused.

She stretched her well-chewed gum over her pink tongue and snapped it, noisily. He began to tremble, loving her so fiercely, enthralled by every sight and sound of her.
“That gum you had today couldn’t have tasted very good,” she said. “I’ve got some that you’ll like better. In his naivette, he assumed she would offer him a piece from her pack. Not hardly. She extended her tongue, with the wad of gum upon it, glistening with her saliva and then he realized what was coming and felt the blood rush to his head as the wet tip of her tongue brushed his lips and pushed her gum into his mouth, along with a ball of her spit.

She sat back and smiled softly as he struggled to keep from floating away into outer space, as his mouth filled with not only the still-strong mint flavor of the gum but also the shot of hot, fresh saliva that had accompanied it – girl saliva, foamy, germy and indescribably delicious.

He was no longer hungry. He had no desire to sully his own mouth with food and ruin the flavors of her that now filled it. But she was hungry and finished off his lunch – a sandwich, a soda, a Twinkie – quite handily, tossing the lighter trash upon the ground with casual abandon, flinging the heavier trash gleefully over the fence into the adjoining forest. She chewed with her mouth wide open, and he watched enraptured as her sharp teeth and moist tongue pulverized the food into a gooey, beautiful mess.

Just when he thought it couldn’t get better, she found the Hershey bar in his lunchbag.

“My favorite!” she said. She crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it away into the grass. Then she licked her lips and bit into the bar, shearing off a crescent of chocolate with her gleaming teeth like some kind of beautiful little shark.

“Want some?” she asked mischievously?

Uh-huh, he surely did.

She chewed the chocolate into a smooth and creamy froth, working it around her teeth and tongue and gums. Then, she reached out and pressed on his shoulder, pushing him to the ground. She leaned over him and suddenly he realized that gum wasn’t the only thing she shared secondhand. She pursed her lips and expelled a hot, liquefied chocolate stream, aiming carefully into his trembling mouth. Euphoria flooded over him. She worked her tongue around her mouth, gathering up what remained of the chocolate and a copious amount of saliva and spat it into his eager lips.

Then, apparently bored of this game, she stood up and stretched and looked around.

A line of ants had found their picnic and Henry was about to have his world rocked again.

A tender-hearted soul, he never killed any bug. But now he watched silently as she crept over and glared at the little anty invaders. She lifted her shoe and with one step, crushed a dozen or so of them, twisting firmly to ensure that they were obliterated.

Henry watched amazed as she began a playful ballet routine, humming the melody of Swan Lake and casually snuffing out the lives of the hapless ants beneath her small and pretty feet.

Here was a girl who looked like an angel, looked like the kind of sweet, soft pretty girl who would wear bows in her hair and hold bunnies on her lap and pose for pastoral paintings surrounded by flowers and unicorns – and she was taking obvious pleasure in wreaking cruel destruction upon tiny, innocent lives like the meanest little boy, in squashing them beneath her petite and adorable little feet.

He wanted to inhale those feet, to trace every inch of them with his tongue, to nibble each murderous little toe and rub his lips across her bare soles and anoint each ankle with a kiss!

Oh, but she wasn’t done. A few of the ants had dared to climb upon her shoes. She leaned and picked one off and held it in front of her face, squinching her eyes and mouth into an angry scowl.

“Bad little bug!” she said. “I wanted to step on you but you did not behave!”

And as Henry watched, shocked and horrified, she extended her tongue and dropped the little pest upon it and then chewed it to bits, extending her tongue teasingly afterwards to reveal the ruins that remained.

So suffered two or three more ants while Henry labored valiantly to breathe.

Then, without a word of goodbye, she sauntered off, sashaying back into school. Henry realized, suddenly and to his horror, that the bell must have rung long ago and that he was going to be very late to class. He also realized that Katelyn did not care. She was simply not going to get in trouble at all and she knew it, because his job was to make sure of that, even he had to sell his pathetic little soul to Satan to make it so.