Scurvy Goonda by Chris McCoy

Author:Chris McCoy [McCoy, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89354-4
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

VIII

Carolina Waltz walked through the empty supermarket aisles searching for Ted Merritt. She was starting to worry about what might have happened to him. Not only did she want to apologize and tell him that she never really thought that he was crazy, she also wanted to ask him if he knew where Czarina Tallow might have gone. Has Ted dropped out of school? she wondered. Is he working at the supermarket full-time? She didn’t know where he could have gone, and the Stop to Shop seemed as good a place as any to look for him.

She turned down another aisle and nearly tripped over a man who was sitting on a skateboard in front of a soup display. The man wore headphones and was singing along to a disco song.

Carolina tapped his shoulder, and he looked up at her with watery red eyes.

“Well there,” he said, and winked. “Pretty-pretty.”

A creepy feeling ran all over Carolina’s skin.

“Um, hi,” said Carolina. “I was wondering if you could help me find somebody.”

“I think you just found him.”

“Uh, no,” said Carolina, pressing on. “His name is Ted Merritt. He used to work here.”

“‘Used to’ is right.”

“What does that mean?”

“Come over here and I’ll tell you,” he said.

She didn’t want to get any closer to the man, but she lowered her ear so he could whisper whatever he had to say. His breath smelled like onion soup.

“Curly hair,” he said. “Looks like you take care of it.”

“Tell me what you were going to say,” said Carolina.

“If you ever asked the night manager about it, he’d say that Ted was fired and never came back.”

“Okay.”

“But he did, once. He came back last week, and Jed chased him into the Crusher and hit the switch. I saw it myself. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still stuck in the gears. But you didn’t hear that from me, curly-curly.”

“Can you point out this Crusher for me?” Carolina had a sick feeling in her stomach.

“Ain’t supposed to be in the back if you ain’t an employee.”

Carolina got an idea.

“If you tell me where it is,” she said, “I’ll wait for you back there.”

He grinned, and Carolina could see bits of something—fish skin?—stuck in his teeth.

“Go back through those swinging doors marked ‘Authorized Personnel Only,’” he said. “Hang a left, and you’ll see it—ugly metal thing filled with cardboard.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll meet you behind it, as soon as I finish this shelf.”

Carolina walked away, breathing deeply to prevent herself from dry heaving. She pushed her way through the swinging doors, looked to make sure nobody was around, hung a quick left, and there it was—the Crusher.

Carolina could see straight to the bottom of the Crusher, which appeared to be made of overlapping sheets of steel. Those jaws, the idea of Ted caught in them … And then she spotted something that made her heart sink.

In the back corner of the Crusher, there was a gap between the wall and one of the steel plates. A small amount of light seemed to

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