Нил Шустерман - The Eyes Of Kid Midas

Kevin was speechless. He kept opening his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. What went wrong? The glasses were all-powerful, weren't they? Nicole threw her lunch bag at him, and an apple core fell out, bouncing off Kevin's hair. "You can take your dumb plastic diamond and your stupid glasses and your salami kisses and flush them for all I care!"

You had this coming, you bozo, said a voice inside Kevin's head. You deserve this.

"You're a tiny-minded, tiny-bodied, pinheaded dweeb of a shrimpoid nerd!" Nicole wiped her mouth again.

The pressure on Kevin now was unbearable. All the humiliation, all the rejection. He felt on the verge of some frightening explosion, the way a dwarf star blows up into a supernova.

"You're the shortest, creepiest, dwarfiest little midget on the face of the earth!" shouted Nicole.

Kevin could stand it no longer.

"OH YEAH?" he screamed....

And that's when Kevin, the dwarf star, went nova.

Mr. Kirkpatrick was out sick that day—down with a cold he had picked up at the Divine Watch.

The substitute was a mealy-looking woman in polyester, whose name was so ridiculously long and unpronounceable she herself had problems trying to spell it when she wrote it on the board. In the end, she advised the students just to call her Ms. Q.

Ms. Q. was trying to rein in the terror when Kevin Midas walked in. The classroom was raging with arguments and spitball wars that showed no signs of stopping.

"Please simmer down," Ms. Q. said to the meltdown situation before her. "I'm taking roll."

Kevin slithered into his seat, and Josh, who sat just across the aisle, watched him. "Kevin, you don't look too good," he said. Kevin imagined that if he took off the glasses, Josh would see in his eyes just how "not good" things were.

Kevin ever so gently put his backpack on his desk.

In the front of the room, Nicole's seat was empty. Josh noticed it right away.

"Where's Nicole?" he asked Kevin.

Kevin didn't know exactly how he should answer that question.

"Kevin," Josh asked again, "what did you do to Nicole?"

"She called me a midget," said Kevin.

"And?"

"She called me Shrimpoid...."

"And?"

"And I sort of got . . . mad."

"Where is Nicole?"

Kevin didn't say anything. Instead he nodded his head toward his backpack. The light bulb went on in Josh's head.

"No!" said Josh. "You didn't!"

But before Kevin could answer, his backpack was snatched off his desk.

"The ball is in play!" yelled Bertram as Kevin's pack became the prime object hurtling around the room.

"Noooo!" screamed Kevin. If there ever was a time not to play keep-away with Kevin's backpack, this was it. Kevin, as pale as the cloud-covered sky, leapt out of his seat in absolute terror.

The backpack flew in the air, and Hal, in the back of the room, caught it.

"I'm giving you five seconds to settle down," said Ms. Q.

Kevin reached Hal, only to watch helplessly as Hal threw the pack to Bertram again. Kevin reached Bertram, and the pack flew again. Bertram laughed and bit down on his gum wad, squirting bubble-gum juice in Kevin's face.

"That's it!" yelled Ms. Q., picking up the phone by the chalkboard. "I'm calling the office." But the joke was on her. The phone hadn't worked since school started.

Bertram grabbed the pack by one thin strap and dangled it out the second-story window.

"You don't know what you're doing!" screamed Kevin.

"C'mon, Midas, come and get it," said Bertram brainlessly. "Toro, toro!"

Kevin climbed Bertram's arm as if it were the limb of a tree. Bertram pulled the pack in from the window and prepared to hurl it across the room once more.

What Kevin did next came as a complete surprise, to him as well as to Bertram. He simply had to get that pack back . . . so he hauled off and belted Bertram right in the face.

The pack fell out of Bertram's hands, and Kevin caught it before it hit the ground.

Now the room was a three-ring circus, raging fully out of control. In one corner, a slapping fight had turned into a brawl. In the center ring, a chorus of kids were performing armpit farts, and by the window, Bertram was reeling from Kevin's blow.

Ms. Q. chose to break up the brawl in the corner and drag those two kids out in the hall for a reprimand, leaving the rest of the circus without a ringmaster.

Bertram's lip had been cut against the sharp track of his braces, and his teeth were covered with blood, as if he had just bitten a chunk out of someone. The chain-saw look filled Bertram's face, and Kevin knew there was no escape. He carefully handed Josh his backpack.

"Don't let anyone near her!" said Kevin. The second the backpack was out of his hands, Bertram's foot made contact with Kevin's butt, sending him flying across the room.

"You made me bleed!" yelled Bertram.

Kevin scrambled to his feet, and Bertram stepped on Kevin's toes, firmly pinning his to the ground. "Who do you think you are?" screamed Bertram. "You get a pair of glasses and all of a sudden you think you're king of the world."

He pushed Kevin down, but since his feet were pinned under Bertram's, Kevin came bouncing back like a bobo doll.

"Don't make him mad, Bertram!" warned Josh.

"Why? What's he gonna do?"

Bertram pushed Kevin down over and over again, and Kevin just kept trying to scramble away. He didn't want to fight Bertram—he had better things to do, and this was making him furious! Hadn't the day been screwed up enough?

"I'll teach you to make me bleed!" said Bertram, and with that he spat his gum into his free hand and smeared it across the top of Kevin's head. He kicked Kevin's legs out from under him, and Kevin fell to the floor, his hair impossibly snarled with Bertram's gum.

Bertram laughed. He had won. Just like always.

"You're just a loser, Midas," he said, looking down at Kevin. "That's all you'll ever be, a loser."

With every bit of his body aching, Kevin gritted his teeth in anger and spoke to Bertram with a deadly growl that seemed to climb up from the pit of his stomach.

"Go to hell, Bertram!" said Kevin.

And the glasses began to swirl with color.

It all took place so quickly, everyone was caught off guard, and no one was sure what really happened. No one but Kevin, that is, who saw everything in 3-D Technicolor.

The ground beneath Bertram's feet tore open, and flames brighter than lightning leapt out, wrapping around him like tentacles, pulling him downward. There was a far-away hollow sound—a distant chorus of wailing voices that blended with Bertram's wail as he fell. He grabbed for a chair and took the chair with him.

Bertram slipped into the fiery mouth—as it swallowed him whole.

Kevin caught sight of Bertram's eyes as he dropped into the pit. Then Bertram was gone, and the hole that had split open the wooden floor vanished as if it had never existed.

All that was left of Bertram was the echo of a distant cry that soon became nothing more than the moaning of the wind. And then silence.

Everything was exactly the way it was before; the only thing missing was a chair. And Bertram.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, and kids were still turning their heads to see what that flash of light was.

Ms. Q. came running back into the room. "What was that?" she asked.

"Spontaneous Human Combustion!" screamed Ralphy Sherman, flapping his arms like a crazy pigeon. "Spontaneous Human Combustion!!"

Ms. Q. dragged Ralphy straight to the principal's office.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to unfold around Kevin and Josh like one of their school plays—they were part of the production but hid so far upstage that no one noticed them.