Freak the Mighty

  “Huh?”

  “Write it down, dummy. I was going to do it, but now it looks like I’ll be busy getting used to my bionic body. It’ll probably take me weeks just learning how to walk with long legs.”

  I put the book down.

  “You’re the one with the brain,” I say. “I’m the long legs.”

  “Don’t get me upset,” he warns. “I won’t have the time, so you’ll have to do it. Just write it all down like you’re talking. Put in all the fun we had, the cool things we did. Our adventures.”

  “But you know I can’t write, Kevin.”

  “It’s all in your head, Max, everything you can remember. Just tell the story of Freak the Mighty, no big deal.”

  I pick the book back up but I don’t say anything more about how hopeless it is, me trying to write stuff down, because I don’t want to set off the telemetry. He does that himself about a minute later when he starts to cough and before I can say anything, the room is swarming with nurses and Dr. Spivak is telling me I have to leave.

  “Out this second, young man, and let us do our jobs.”

  They let me wait outside the ICU with the Fair Gwen, who is just standing there at the window wringing her hands and not saying anything, and then finally they come out and say he’s okay, it was just a bad spell, that they have him stabilized.

  A while later Gram comes into the hospital and she drives me home. Nobody talks much at supper that night, except when Grim opens his big mouth and says, “Poor Gwen looks like she’s in terrible pain.”

  I go, “Poor Gwen? She’s not the one having the special operation.”

  Grim and Gram just look at each other like they can’t believe I’m so dumb, and finally Gram says, “Maxwell, dear, make an effort to eat your vegetables.”

  That night I put the empty book in the pyramid box for safekeeping, and for good luck.

  The deal is, I’m not supposed to bother anybody at the hospital. Yeah, right, like me being there is going to screw things up. The way everybody is acting around here, you’re supposed to shut up and not do anything but wait, which makes me crazy.

  So early the next morning when Grim is still snoring loud enough to rattle the windowpanes, I get up and sneak out of the house. The way I figure, I can check on Freak and be back in time for breakfast, no harm done.

  It doesn’t work out like that, to say the least.

  The sun is just coming over the millpond and there’s this spooky mist on the water. You can hear all the frogs making a racket under the lily pads and the mosquitoes sound like bullets whizzing by and I have to kind of slap and run until I get clear of that smelly old pond.

  Moving fast, like the sun is chasing my heels, I’m running down this long faint shadow of me that stretches out ahead, you can’t ever catch up with it.

  I’m thinking with my feet, like the rest of me is still asleep.

  Not that I’m completely alone. There’s this one old guy, he’s actually out cutting his lawn, he’s got these headlights rigged up on his rider mower, and he’s wearing pajamas, too, like it’s normal, everybody does it.

  When I get to the hospital the streetlights are just starting to click off. The lobby is empty and there’s nobody at the desk to tell me I can’t be visiting patients at the crack of dawn.

  There are plenty of nurses in the ICU, though, and they see me coming. This one woman runs right out from behind the telemetry station and she’s got her hands up to her mouth and I’m pretty sure she’s trying to shush me, even though I’m not making any noise.

  She’s not telling me to be quiet, though, she’s saying, “Oh, my God, you must be Maxwell,” even though she’s never seen me before in her life.

  I go, “Is Kevin back yet?”

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” she says.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Oh dear,” she says. “Oh dear.”

  Now more nurses are coming out of the ICU. One of them is the one I accidentally bumped into yesterday and when she sees me, she goes, “Better page Dr. Spivak, Kevin was her patient.”

  That’s when I notice that some of the nurses are crying and looking at me strange and all of a sudden I just go nuts.

  Just go nuts.

  I’m saying, “No way! No way!” and this nurse is trying to throw a hug on me and I push her away.

  Then I’m running down the hall and it’s like I’m Kicker again, ready to just blast anybody who dares touch me, and I have to keep running, I’m skidding around the corners and bumping into walls and no one can touch me even if they’re brave enough to try, I just keep running and running until I get to these glass doors that say MEDICAL RESEARCH.

  The doors are locked and it’s dark inside.

  Behind me people are shouting to call the guards, and I punch my hand right through the glass and I’m inside, skidding over broken glass through the dark, and I keep going until I come to this other set of doors.

  NO ADMITTANCE

  No glass this time, they’re solid so I can’t punch through, and I’m kicking and kicking and slamming into the doors, and that’s when all the hospital cops catch up with me.

  A bunch of them jump on me and I keep going, running around in circles like an accident of nature until finally there are so many of them on me, I can’t stand up anymore.

  They’re putting handcuffs on my wrists and my ankles and they’re sitting on me and going, “We’ll have to medicate him,” and this one cop says, “With what, an elephant gun?”

  That’s how Dr. Spivak finds me, covered with cops. She’s this worried face leaning down. Her eyes are red and blurry and she’s saying, “I’m sorry, Maxwell, we did our best. Better let me bandage up that hand, you’re bleeding.”

  “He believed you,” I say. “You said you could give him a new body and he believed you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The special operation,” I say. “The Bionics Unit.”

  Dr. Spivak makes the cops let me up and says she’ll be responsible, but they leave the handcuffs on me just in case, and the cop who was talking about needing an elephant gun has this nightstick out and he’s ready to bop me if I make a move.

  Dr. Spivak sighs and says, “Somebody get me a coffee, please,” and then she looks at me and goes, “you’d better tell me all about it.”

  So while she’s bandaging up my hand, I tell her about how Freak has been coming to the medical research lab every few months to get fitted for his new bionic body, and Dr. Spivak’s face goes soft and she nods to herself and says, “Well, that explains it.”

  “It was all a lie, wasn’t it?” I say. “You were just telling him that so he wouldn’t be scared.”

  “You know better than that, Maxwell. You couldn’t lie to Kevin. I tried a little fib on him when he was about seven years old, because I didn’t think a child could handle the whole truth, and you know what he did? He looked his disease up in a medical dictionary.”

  That’s when I know she’s telling the truth. Freak and his dictionary.

  “Kevin knew from a very young age that he wasn’t going to have a very long life,” she says. “He knew it was just a matter of time.”

  “So he was lying about getting a robot body?”

  Dr. Spivak is shaking her head. “I don’t think it was a lie, Maxwell, do you? I think he needed something to hope for and so he invented this rather remarkable fantasy you describe. Everybody needs something to hope for. Don’t call it a lie. Kevin wasn’t a liar.”

  “No,” I say. “But what happened to him really?”

  “I could tell you all the medical terminology,” she says. “But what finally happened is his heart just got too big for his body.”

  There was talk about arresting me for busting up the hospital — the cop with the nightstick was in favor — but finally they released me into the custody of Grim.

  On the way home he goes, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Just leave me alone,” I say.

  “Y
ou got it,” he says.

  That was a year ago.

  I hid in the down under for days and days and kept the door closed, which is why I missed the funeral and the Fair Gwen going away. Gram told me about it afterwards, how she couldn’t stand to live in the house with Kevin gone, and who could blame her?

  Grim threatened to unscrew my bedroom door but he never did, he just kept saying I should come out for Gram’s sake, and sometimes she’d come down and say I should come out for Grim’s sake, and so on and so forth until finally I gave up and came out.

  I don’t know if this makes sense, but for a long time I felt like I was a balloon and somebody had let the air out of me. I didn’t care if I ever got the air back, because what does it really matter if we’re all going to die in the end?

  That’s how down I was feeling, and sorry for myself. Grim tried to tell me it isn’t how long you’ve got that matters, it’s what you do with the time you have, but that sounded so lame and puny next to Freak dying that I just didn’t want to hear it.

  This one day just before school was supposed to start I was moping around the back yard and thinking again how pointless and stupid everything was and Grim comes over and says, “You know what? Most of us go all the way through life and we never have a friend like Kevin. So maybe you should count yourself lucky.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say.

  “Suit yourself,” he says. “But let’s get one thing straight. You’re going back to school if I have to hitch a rope to the bumper and drag you there, is that clear?”

  So I went and I hated every minute of it, and I especially hated how people kept feeling sorry for me, as if it was me who died.

  Finally one time even Tony D. came up to me and said it was a shame what happened, and I could see that he really meant it, and I just blew up and told him if he ever felt sorry for me again, I’d put him headfirst in the millpond and pound him down into the mud like a fence post. So we’re enemies again, which is just the way I like it.

  Not too long after that — this was winter by then — I saw Loretta Lee in the street. She still had on the neck brace and you could smell booze on her breath, but what do you expect, a miracle just because she lost her head and acted good for a couple of minutes?

  Anyhow, Loretta sees me and she says, “Did you hear about Gwen? She’s in California and she’s got a new boyfriend. His name is Rick and they’re crazy about each other, ain’t that good news?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Take it from me,” she says, “it is. So what are you doing these days?”

  “Nothing.”

  She gives me this long look and she goes, “Nothing is a drag, kid. Think about it.”

  I thought about it all the way home.

  That night I pulled the pyramid box from under the bed and got the empty book out of the pyramid and I’m thinking, who are you kidding, Maxwell Kane, you haven’t got a brain, and that’s the truth, the whole truth, the unvanquished truth is how Freak would say it.

  So I wrote the unvanquished truth stuff down and then kept on going, for months and months, until it was spring again, and the world was really and truly green all over. By the time we got here, which I guess should be the end, I’m feeling okay about remembering things. And now that I’ve written a book who knows, I might even read a few.

  No big deal.

  A

  AARDVARK, a silly-looking creature that eats ants

  AARGH, what the aardvark says when it eats ants

  ABACUS, a finger-powered computer

  ABCISSA, the horizontal truth

  ALGORITHM, math with a rock-’n’-rock beat

  ALIMENTARY, what Sherlock Holmes said to Dr. Watson about where the food disappeared

  ALLEGORY, a peculiar kind of story that’s often pretty gory

  ARCHETYPE, what Max sees when he dreams of architects

  ARITHMETIC, inventing with numbers

  ARMOR, a robotlike suit worn by knights of old

  B

  BIG LIE, ignorance is bliss

  BIONIC, a way to improve on the human condition

  BLOVIATE, to expel hot air in the form of words

  BOATS, shoes big enough to fit Maxwell Kane

  BOOK, a four-letter word for truth serum

  BRAIN, a muscle that improves with exercise

  BUTTHEAD, one who can sneeze a hot dog through his nose

  C

  CAMOUFLAGE, how a camel blends into the desert

  CIGARETTE, something that should be obscene, not smoked

  COPACETIC, the Fair Gwen’s word for “everything is cool”

  CRETIN, another name for Blade

  CRITTERS, small, irritating children, also known as rug rats

  D

  DEMEANOR, the meaner your face, the worse your demeanor

  DICTIONARY, a source of knowledge, fun, and rude jokes

  DOWN UNDER, a land far away in Maxwell’s basement

  DYAD, another word for Max and Kevin

  DYNE, unit of energy needed to move a gram one centimeter per second per second

  E

  EDIFICATION, education that tastes good

  ERG, a measure of energy equal to one dyne per centimeter

  EXCALIBUR, a sword with magic powers

  F

  FEALTY, loyalty with an “F”

  FOLDEROL, Grim’s word for nonsense

  FOOD, fuel for humans, preferably so-called junk or UFO

  FOOZLE, to make a stupid mistake

  FORNAX, a cool-sounding constellation

  FORMICIDAE, a type of insect never found in Kevin’s pants

  FURFURACEOUS, covered with dandruff

  G

  GADZOOKS, what Grim says when surprised

  GALAHAD, son of Lancelot, finder of the Holy Grail

  GOON, a four-letter word for Max in a bad mood

  GRAM, a sweet lady of light

  GRIM, a gentleman of the old school, before they tore it down

  GRUEL, whatever you want more of

  H

  HABERDASHER, a person who chases after windblown hats

  HAIKU, versification

  by the quantum mechanic

  means numberless sum

  HAMMERHEAD, a know-it-all

  HERSTORY, the past, from the female point of view

  HIEROGLYPHICS, Max’s handwriting

  HISTORY, the past, from the male point of view

  HOLUS-BOLUS, all at once

  HUMAN, an improbable, imperfect creature

  I

  IAPETUS, a cool-sounding moon that orbits Saturn

  ICARUS, a high-flyer, as in “to do an icarus”

  ICHTHYOLOGY, the study of icky foods, for instance fish

  IDEA, a seed you plant in your head

  IGNEOUS, too hot to eat

  INCANDESCENT, an excellent idea

  INTERGALACTIC, out of this world

  J

  JABBAWOCKY, the language of Jabba the Hut

  JILLION, millions and millions

  JITTERBUG, a nervous cockroach

  JOCULAR, amusingly athletic

  JOCULARITY, a joke made by a jock

  JOULE, a measure of energy equal to ten million ergs

  JURASSIC, cool, excellent, what the Fair Gwen calls “far-out”

  K

  KAZOO, a place where weird-sounding musical instruments are kept in cages

  KEVIN, a unit of measurement equal to 70 centimeters

  KINETICS, the study of small families

  KNIGHT, rhymes with bright and fight and right

  KONG, another word for falling down

  L

  LACRIMATION, an emotional display to be avoided

  LAGOON, a French gangster

  LANCELOT, King Arthur’s bravest knight

  LEXICOGRAPHY, what Webster invented, Kevin perfected

  LIBRARY, where they keep the truth serum, and the magic carpets

  LIFTOFF, what happens when you open a book

  LIMERICK, a mighty dude ca
lled Max,

  saved his pal from bad attacks,

  then they conquered the world,

  with banner unfurled,

  and time left over for snacks

  M

  MAGNESIUM, the white sparkles in skyrockets

  MASSIVES, fat heads who assume that television tells the truth

  MATH, you have nothing to fear but math itself

  MAX, a unit of measurement equal to 190 centimeters and still growing

  MEGAPOD, Max’s shoe size

  MIDGET, a word used by people with small minds

  MUCIFEROUS, any disgusting food, as in muciferous tapioca

  N

  NANOSECOND, one-billionth of a second

  NEANDERTHALS, what we all were before plumbing was invented

  NICOTINE, a toxic waste of time

  NONILLION, millions of septillions

  O

  OBFUSCATE, a needlessly confusing word for needlessly confusing

  OBSTINATE, Kevin when he knows he’s right

  ODORIFEROUS, sneaker perfume

  OLFACTORY, where they manufacture smells

  ORNITHOPTER, a big word for mechanical bird

  P

  PERCIVALE, a knight who saw the Holy Grail

  PHYSICS, what matters to energy

  POSTULATE, when you presume to assume

  POTASSIUM CHLORATE, the womp in a skyrocket

  POTASSIUM NITRATE, the bang in a skyrocket

  PRIMORDIAL, the good old days

  PRIMORDIAL OOZE, boring conversation about the good old days

  Q

  QUADRILLION, more than a billion, less than a quintillion

  QUANTIC, more than enough, as in “quantic amounts of carrots”

  QUANTUM, imaginary sums of impossible numbers

  QUEST, an adventure in which you have to use your imagination

  QUINTILLION, more than a quadrillion, less than a septillion

  R

  READING, beaming up into books

  RELATIVITY, the study of mysterious relatives

  ROBOTICS, the science of designing and building robots

  ROBOT, a mechanical entity, sometimes endowed with human characteristics

  ROUND TABLE, where King Arthur passes out the snack food

  S

  SAUROPOD, a vegan

  SEISMIC, so exciting it makes you vibrate