“Take it easy, Maxi Pad. We’re just having a little fun,” the gang-banger says. “You got a problem with that?”
The girl shakes her fist at him and goes, “Give it back or else.”
The gang-banger looks at her puny little fist and smirks. “Oooh,” he goes. “You gonna hit me?” Then he dances around, taunting her, and I see he’s got hold of this small green backpack. A girl’s backpack, for carrying school stuff.
“Give it back to her,” I say.
He crosses his eyes and makes an oink-oink noise. “Pig boy,” he says. “You better go home to Granny.”
I try to grab it but he darts away, his teeth flashing white because he’s having such a good time. “Moron Max,” he laughs. “You’re scaring me.”
The red-haired girl makes a move but she can’t touch him.
“Bookworm, bookworm, ugly little bookworm,” he chants.
“Shut up!” she says. She’s so mad her eyes look like they’re full of green electricity.
“Worm girl!” the gang-banger cackles. “Whattaya have in here, worm food? Is that it?”
He opens up her backpack and roots around inside with this totally mean look on his face. Then he goes, “Whoa! What have we here?”
He pulls out a couple of paperback books and tosses them over his shoulder. Pages scatter and blow away like white leaves.
“Oh, you’re real tough,” the girl says. “You can beat up a book. I bet you never even read a book.”
Then the gang-banger whistles and pulls something else out of the backpack. A hard plastic helmet with a light on the front, like miners wear so they can see in the dark.
“Don’t you dare touch that!” the girl shouts. Then she goes mental and tries to grab the miner’s helmet.
He grins and ducks away. “Finders keepers!” he shouts. “Losers weepers!”
But Worm isn’t weeping, she’s going nuts. Jumping up and trying to grab the helmet. He keeps dancing away, laughing in her face.
I wait my chance, and when he isn’t looking I get behind him and lift the helmet off his head.
“Hey!” he bellows.
But I hold the miner’s helmet up high and he can’t reach it.
“Gimme that,” he says, “or I’ll punch your lights out.”
“Try it.”
The gang-banger curls up his fists and sets up on his feet like a boxer and for a moment I think he really is going to punch me. Then he looks at the girl and he looks at me and he spits on the ground by my feet.
“Who cares about your stupid junk,” he says, and saunters away like he couldn’t care less. Like he’s the coolest dude in the whole wide world because he ripped up a book and scared an eleven-year-old girl.
The girl has eyes like green laser beams and this fierce look on her freckled face, like she thinks I’m the enemy, too.
I go, “Here,” and give her the helmet.
The way she holds it in her hands, you know it means something special.
“What’s it for?” I ask.
“None of your business,” she says. And then she hugs the scratched-up old helmet to her chest and runs away, her thick red hair flying up like it wants to wave good-bye.
My brain didn’t know it yet, but that’s when trouble really started, the day I met a girl called Worm.
Copyright © 1998 by Rodman Philbrick.
This book was originally published in hardcover by the Blue Sky Press in 1993.
Copyright © 1993 by Rodman Philbrick.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Cover art by David Shannon
e-ISBN 978-0-545-60027-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Rodman Philbrick, Freak the Mighty
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