Ned Vizzini - Battle of the Beasts

“Medical research. Blood flow and reward centres in the brain. Look, I’m grabbing a sandwich and going home. You kids have a great day at school. I love you.” He kissed his hand, reached through the window, and patted each of their heads.

Then he was off, into the deli. The Walkers looked at one another.

“Maybe he’s going insane. Maybe the book cursed him,” Cordelia said.

“Or maybe he’s just got too much money,” said Brendan.

“Maybe I should have wished for like half as much,” Eleanor said guiltily.

They rode in silence the rest of the way to school .

Bay Academy Prep was situated on a sprawling campus with a duck pond. You had to drive through a gate and up over a hill past the pond – which was home to a few cute ducks and more than a few big, dirty seagulls – until you arrived at the main building, which resembled a red sandstone cathedral. It was listed as a San Francisco landmark. It had been very impressive to the Walkers at first, but now it was just school.

The Walkers gave one another fist bumps and went their separate ways.

Eleanor headed left, down a path where she was joined by other kids her age. The third graders had two forces acting on their bodies as they walked to class – the weight of their backpacks, which pulled them back, and their desire to play with their phones, which hunched them forward. Eleanor texted her mom on her starter phone as she walked in. There wasn’t much else she could do on the phone, since it couldn’t go on the internet. Eleanor didn’t mind; she was just happy to be able to text her mom when she needed her.

I miss you mom

Her mom messaged her back.

Is everything okay?

Before Eleanor could answer, she realised that two girls were walking beside her, one on either side: Zoe and Ruby. Not the nicest girls. Both taller than Eleanor, and (she had to admit) prettier. But they’ve each got models as moms – what are they supposed to be, short and ugly?

“Hey, Ruby, did you see what I posted last night?” Zoe asked, speaking right across Eleanor as if she weren’t there.

“Oh yeah!” Ruby said. “It’s awesome! And did you see? I just Instagrammed the funniest picture of my French bulldog.”

Ruby held out her phone directly across Eleanor’s face, so Zoe could see the photo. Eleanor realised they were showing off their phones.

“I know what you’re doing,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to be so obvious. I know my phone’s not as good as yours.”

Ruby looked at Eleanor like she was surprised to see her there. “We’re not doing anything. We were just talking.”

“You think you can make me feel bad, but you can’t. I’ve done a lot of amazing stuff that you would never ever understand. I’ve taken down a real witch.”

“A real witch ?” asked Zoe.

“What are you talking about?” said Ruby. “You got in a fight with Ms Carter?” There was a rumour going around school that Ms Carter, who had dreadlocks and a skull tattoo, was actually a witch.

“No, I—” Eleanor started to explain, but then realised that if she told them any more of the story, she would sound completely bananas. So she just muttered under her breath: “Forget it.”

Ruby put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to calm down. You’re not, like, so important that we just gang up on you to make fun of you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “But you should probably get something better than a grandpa phone.”

Ruby laughed, just a little, and the two girls breezed past Eleanor into school. Eleanor’s head was spinning. She looked back at her phone, at the question “Is everything okay?”

She wanted to get into how Cordelia was mean on the ride over, and how they’d run into Dad and he looked terrible, and how these two girls were making fun of her and she almost spilled the beans about the Wind Witch, and how she just wanted things to go back to normal, the way they were before … but instead she wrote to her mom:

Everything’s fine

She had a feeling that was the way grown-ups handled it.

Brendan, meanwhile, was in the building that had classes for sixth, seventh and eighth graders, and he was rocking his backpack. It wasn’t just an accessory; it was like a force field that let him walk in a different way, with his chest jutting out, looking at everybody. Because what if they look back? What’ll they see? One of the best backpacks in the world, that’s what.

The bell rang; Brendan was late for class. But so what? I can’t walk fast wearing this. This is a backpack for strutting in. He went to his locker and fiddled with the combination without even noticing the guys behind him: Scott Calurio and his posse.

“What do you think you’re wearing?” Scott said.

Scott was Brendan’s own personal bully, a junior-varsity wrestler, beady-eyed and muscular, with meaty hands and a neck wider than his head. He had curly blond hair, which Brendan thought was a big reason he got away with so much. Nobody suspected a bully with cute, poofy hair. Scott targeted people he felt were different, stupid, and poor, and he had a bunch of wrestler friends who helped him in this mission.

“It’s a skull backpack from Japan. With real diamonds on it.”

“Where’d you get it? Off eBay?”

“None of your business … why are you even bothering me? What did I do to you?”

“You’re walking around like you just scored a winning touchdown, which we all know could never happen in this universe,” Scott said, sharing a laugh with his group. “And hey … I’ve been wondering … what happened to your ear?”

“I got shot,” Brendan said, touching his left earlobe. Scott and his cronies laughed, but it was true. Brendan’s missing earlobe was a small souvenir from his adventures in Kristoff’s books – the pirate Gilliam had blasted it off. Brendan didn’t miss it too much, but it was pretty sad that for the past six weeks, his parents hadn’t even noticed it, because they were caught up in their own problems, and now here was Scott Calurio pointing it out.

“Yeah, right,” Scott scoffed. “Your cat probably licked it off!” His goons all laughed – and then they grabbed Brendan and pushed him to the ground. He fought, kicking and clawing, but he couldn’t get any leverage – there were too many of them.

“Hey! Stop! Help—”

“ Shh ,” Scott said. “We’re not gonna hurt you. We’re just gonna take a closer look at this.”

Scott pulled off Brendan’s backpack and squinted at it. The diamonds gleamed under the fluorescent lights. Brendan struggled but it was no use; he tried to scream but a hand covered his mouth. I could bite, he thought, but then I’d get made fun of as the kid who bites people.

Scott palmed the inside lining of the backpack until he found a tag. He tore it out and held it up for Brendan.

“What’s that say, huh? I’ll read it for you, in case you’re dyslexic like your little sister. ‘Old Navy.’ Old. Navy. Now why would a backpack from Japan have an Old Navy tag on it? I’ll bet these aren’t diamonds either. I bet they’re made of glass!”

And with that, Scott ripped six or seven “diamonds” off the backpack, put them in his mouth, and … chewed them up! When they were ground to a fine powder, Scott spit them in Brendan’s face.