Trollhunters (25 page)

“I’ll be back at midnight,” he said.

“You can’t go back to your cave. The rust trolls—”

“I’m a
boy
.” He said it like he was trying to convince himself of the fact. “I’m not going to turn to stone. Just give me some of your clothes and
I’ll wander around town. Sit on a park bench. Like a kid. Just like a regular kid.”

“Fine,” I said. “But this isn’t 1969. Adults see a thirteen-year-old kid by himself, they may ask questions or call the—”

“I can take care of myself.” He snapped his gloved fingers. “Clothes. Now.”

Pinkton was all over me about neglecting my homework. Homework? I tried to recall the meaning of the word as she stood at my desk and ranted while the rest of the class
crunched the numbers on the board. She warned me again about the big test on Friday and how my fate hung in the balance. I looked penitent but it was an act my body remembered from past conflicts.
My eyes were looking past Pinkton at the rest of the classroom.

There were two empty desks.

It meant nothing. I knew that. A bug was going around. Wasn’t there always a bug? Between classes I focused on the festival decorations to avoid noticing banks of lockers that may or may
not have the right number of students opening them. There was a single empty desk in biology. Nothing strange about that. Two people were absent from American lit. Hardly unusual. I considered
talking to Tub before gym class to get a second opinion, but he dressed with atypical speed. He didn’t just look angry, he looked exhausted. That stiff black hair he pulled from his braces
and brushed off his clothes was familiar.

Later I called out to Tub in the hall but was drowned out by a throng of cheerleaders shilling for Steve Smackers. Principal Cole had purchased a warehouse full of these cheap noisemakers two
years before to offset a deficit in the sports budget (plans for that new jumbotron might have had something to do with it). Constructed from hard foam and painted in Saint B. red and white, each
set was made up of two paddles that made a deafening noise when slapped together. They were beyond irritating, and local football fans took to them like monkeys to poop. With Steve’s rise as
a star, they had been dubbed “Steve Smackers”—pretty savvy marketing for pieces of crap that went for fifteen bucks a pop.

It was almost by accident that I found myself at play practice after school. I had meant to rush home to check on Blinky when my eyes fell upon a series of
Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard
Line
posters that led me to the auditorium, the only place unplagued by Steve Smackers. Mrs. Leach was holding court before the gaggle of actors, carrying on about what an insane tradition
this was, and how no one could expect halfway decent Shakespeare with only a week of rehearsal. The kids all stared at her in alarm—what, exactly, had they signed up for?—until she wore
herself out, clapped her hands, and said that we’d begin with act 1, scene 1, though we’d skip the intro, since both our Sampson and Gregory were absent.

Nobody but me found that ominous.

The first big event was the duel between Benvolio and Tybalt. Benvolio, played by a flamboyant theater guy named Jasper, and Tybalt, played by a heavy-metal kid named Frank, made for pretty
believable foes until the fencing foils were drawn. Jasper, having been in a dozen productions, improvised each thrust and parry with comical exaggeration, while Frank, in his first role, whipped
his foil around like he was swatting flies, losing it more than once in the front row of seats.

Mrs. Leach shouted instructions to make the fight simpler, shorter, and less hazardous for the audience. Still, Benvolio and Tybalt continued to lose control of their foils and land on their
asses, and each time they fell our over-eager Lord Capulet shouted his big line: “What noise is this? Give me my long-sword, ho!”

Kids were snickering. Mrs. Leach was in despair. Both fighters were bruised and winded. Something had to be done.

Licking cool-ranch flavoring from her fingers and swigging from a can of grape soda, Claire traipsed out between the duelists. She was a vision of Juliet seen through a steam-punk lens, clad in
black flight pants rolled up to midshin that exposed six inches of skin before her combat boots took over. Her herringbone pea coat was unbuttoned, revealing brown suspenders that dangled from her
hips. Bracelets made of multicolored electrical cable gathered at her wrists, and dual ponytails intertwined to slap at her back like the supply hoses of an oxygen mask. Her round cheeks were
bunched into one of her mirthful smirks.

For the first time that day, I did not think of trolls.

“Your weapon, gentle Benvolio,” she said, holding out her hand.

Jasper shrugged and turned over his foil. Claire bounced it in her palm, testing its weight.

“Sufficient.”

The blade whirled through the air in a figure eight, then another. Her ponytails danced.

“Adequate.”

Her boots hopped to their rubber toes and she scuttled forward and back, the foil whirling through the air like a lasso, above her head, at her sides, as low as the floor.

“Tolerable.”

Claire extended her weapon and playfully tapped the foil held between Frank’s hands. He gulped and extended it as far from his body as he could. That was when all sense of reality went
flying out the window and Claire Fontaine became a warrior goddess. With her blade whistling, she struck Frank’s weapon from six different angles, each of them executed with an extravagant
form that would look good even from the cheap seats. Between blows, she called out bits of advice.

“Circular attacks! Easier to follow the action!”

Frank grimaced and held to his sword for dear life.

“Footwork! Three steps, Benvolio! Three steps, Tybalt!”

Jasper watched her feet, making frantic mental notes.

“Act! This is a play! Recoil from the blows, gents!”

I was as slack-jawed as the rest. She choreographed a routine right then and there, and made it so believable and comprehensible that the whole cast was dying for a go at it. At last she
disarmed Frank with a twist of her wrist. His foil went clattering to the stage, and Claire lowered her own. She exhaled upward, blowing loosened strands of hair from her sweaty forehead. She
saluted Frank with her can of soda and took a drink. Not a drop had been spilled. Everyone was hushed until Lord Capulet remembered his favorite line.

“What noise is this? Give me my long-sword, ho!”

The applause thundered, from me louder than anyone. The gleam in Mrs. Leach’s eye betrayed a rogue hope that she might just pull this off. The noise died out until a single clapping sound
continued from somewhere in the auditorium aisle. We all turned to look, shading our eyes from the stage lights. The clapping had a remarkable consistency, as if it might continue in that manner
until it drove you mad. In fact, it wasn’t clapping at all.

“Marvelous.” Steve Jorgensen-Warner kept bouncing his ball. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Claire blushed and pointed the toes of her boots together as if self-conscious about her exposed calves.

“Lessons,” she said. “Mum and Da had me in fencing for six years.”

“I’m so glad they did,” Steve said. “It’s just magnificent.”

The drama dorks were breathless, caught off guard by this intrusion of flirting into their after-school geekery. Only Mrs. Leach frowned. She didn’t trust a sportsman infiltrating her
hallowed sanctuary.

“Can we help you, Mr. Jorgensen-Warner?”

Steve flashed his movie-star grin. With feet trained on the court and field, he took the stage steps in three agile jumps, the ball smacking upon each step. Thespians, not the most coordinated
bunch, murmured in appreciation. Claire’s eyes were on the star athlete the whole time.

“There’s a bit of an emergency with my grades.” Steve faked an abashed smile. “Coach said there’s a point system I can use to boost my average so I can play on
Friday. Geez,
everybody
is counting on me to play. The whole town, seems like. Anyway, Coach gave me three options.”

He took the ball under his arm and removed a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. Mrs. Leach took it, flapped it like a fan until it opened, and read it aloud.

“A: Trigonometry Contest. B: Build a Solar Panel Science Project. C: Theater Understudy.”

“Coach said it was like being on the bench. I swear I won’t get in the way. I just want to help out however I can.”

Rarely in life does one get to witness such expertise in disarming a hostile adult. Few teachers at Saint B. could rival Mrs. Leach in day-to-day bitterness, and yet she melted right there
before our disbelieving eyes. She folded the note and put it in her pocket. What, was it going into her personal scrapbook?

“Of course, Steve, we’d be happy to have you. It never hurts to have understudies. Your timing is perfect, actually. We have to get our Romeo into costuming. Jim, lend Steve your
script for the balcony scene while we get you fitted.”

So went the cruel twist of fate that led to Steve Jorgensen-Warner exchanging romantic verse with Claire Fontaine, high up in the balcony set, while I stood in a side room wiggling into a
blouse, a pair of tights, and a peplum skirt as two student costumers pinched me in places I would have preferred to go unpinched and sighed about how they’d need to find some heels to offset
my shortness. Was I good at walking in heels? They wanted to know. I nodded—sure, sure, anything to speed through this debacle.

From the stage I could hear the interplay of Claire and Steve’s sweet nothings. Claire, of course, staggered everyone with her tranquility and poignancy. Infinitely more surprising was
Steve, who bashed through speeches the same way he bashed through defensive lines. His reading exuded utter confidence, the quality most lacking in high school actors. Even his mispronunciations
were forceful—it was his way or the highway, and everyone loved it.

“Very nice,” Mrs. Leach said. “How do you have this memorized already?”

“No big deal,” Steve replied. “Comes from memorizing sports plays, I guess.”

“Well, it’s very impressive. Keep going.”

This was getting out of hand. I had to get in there, and fast, before Steve stole the part right from under me. The laces on my heels were only halfway tied before I stumbled out beneath the
bewildering glare of the stage lights.

“I’m ready!” I announced.

Giggles erupted from all sides. I kept charging across the stage even as I began to suspect that my purple skirt and silver tights didn’t cast me in the best light when compared with Steve
Jorgensen-Warner, who looked rather rakish in blue jeans and a shirt—definitively not a blouse—opened to the third button. He dribbled the ball casually with his left hand.

“Let’s just have Steve finish,” Mrs. Leach said.

Something was wrong with my feet. I couldn’t stop my momentum.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I got this, I’m ready to—”

My high-heeled ankles flopped to the side and I rammed into Benvolio and Tybalt, both of whom lost their foils; seconds later my right elbow socked the ear of Friar John and my flailing left
hand grabbed one of Lady Montague’s breasts. By the time she screamed, I was careening out of control. Steve, watching me in bemusement, and Claire, looking down at me from the parapet, were
but blurry impressions before I went headfirst into the balcony set.

You wouldn’t think a human head could punch through plywood, but that’s what happened. The base of the set spun halfway around and I heard a board crack. In seconds the entire thing
was groaning and folding shut like a suitcase. I pushed against the plywood, unplugging myself from the collapsing wood just in time to see the set pitch toward the orchestra pit.