How to Slay a Dragon - Bill Allen [2]
No sight in the world could have disturbed Greg more. True, Manny was in Greg’s grade, but he seemed bigger than all the other boys at school combined. Surely he’d have graduated high school by now if he hadn’t been let back so often—perhaps even got a good start on a technical vocation, provided he found one where he didn’t need to think.
A sudden movement caught Greg’s eye, and he knew at once he’d been wrong. There were worse things than the sight of Manny approaching. Kristin Wenslow was there too!
Quite possibly the cutest girl on the planet, Kristin was an unbelievably tiny thing (though certainly no shorter than Greg himself) with long, brownish hair that turned blond at the surface where the sun struck. Did she always have that many freckles? Too bad she didn’t even know Greg was alive. Not that he was complaining—Greg always preferred going unnoticed to being chased by the big kids who did notice him—it’s just, well, sometimes he wished he could be chased by Kristin. He couldn’t believe she was out with a brute like Manny Malice, or that she of all people was going to be here to witness Greg’s inevitable beating.
“Last one there’s a rod and egg,” Manny shouted. With a shove he sent Kristin stumbling aside, and Greg wasted a lot of valuable time watching her flail her arms for balance when he should have noticed Manny running straight at him.
A normal boy would have taken at least a minute to climb the large oak. Manny took a more direct route. He let out a battle cry and jumped, and Greg jerked back as a row of cucumber-like fingers latched onto the edge of the opening in the floor at his feet. Threatening cucumbers, like those left out too long in the sun. Not that they were squishy or anything. On the contrary, they looked big and hard, and Greg had an idea they would look even bigger and harder if Manny rolled them into a fist.
The fingers squeezed. Greg’s bowels squeezed harder. Maybe Manny did resemble the giant he’d just defeated on the pages of his journal, but Greg would have been a fool to think he could fare as well in real life. Manny’s forearm shot up through the opening and braced against the wood floor. In a moment his head would pop into view.
Greg bit back a scream. Above was a loose board in the ceiling. Okay, several. He shoved one aside and scrambled through the upper opening just as Manny pried through the hole below. The escape was so narrow, Greg’s feet were still swaying just inches above Manny’s slicked-back hair when Manny’s head popped through the floor and squinted into the relative darkness. Greg’s breath seized in his throat. Only his mind raced on. For the first time in his life he was glad to be the shortest boy at school.
Slowly, deliberately, he pulled his legs up through the gap, cringing as the wood creaked under his weight. (Fortunately his was the type of tree house that would have sounded more suspicious if it ever stopped creaking.) Not until he made it out undetected did Greg breathe again. He peered over the edge of the roof at Kristin, only to have Manny’s head pop through a hole in the wall not two feet below his own. Greg gasped, threw a hand over his mouth, and eased out of sight.
“Aren’t you coming up?” Manny shouted down to Kristin in the same taunting voice he’d used countless times on Greg.
“I guess,” Greg heard Kristin reply. He fought back the urge to peer over the edge again. Instead he lay motionless, straining to hear as Kristin’s grunts and groans marked her progress up the trunk below.
“What do I do now?” she called out, her voice sweet and innocent and everything Manny wasn’t.
“You need to jump across,” Manny tempted.
“I can’t jump that far.”
“Sure you can. What are you, chicken?”
Greg listened. Out of the silence came a scream. Greg’s head snapped up, followed by the rest of him, and before he could stop himself he jumped to the rescue.
What