Trollhunters (3 page)

He escorted me across the lawn. The front-door security camera whirred as it followed our progress. His feet tangled with my own and I noticed that his socks, as always, were stained green. To
make up for the promotions and bonuses that he didn’t get at work, Dad mowed lawns on the weekends—town parks, cemeteries, even the football field at Saint B. High—and always
dressed like a freak with goggles and gloves. It made me even more popular at school, believe me. He pushed me with a hand that smelled of grass.

“You’ll miss the bus, Jimmy. And if you miss the bus, I’ll have to turn around and drive you to school, and then I’ll be late for work.”

“Can’t I just walk?”

“And you know how hard it was to arrange my schedule so we could both leave at the same time. The boss gave me heck, Jimmy, real heck.”

“You didn’t have to do that. Only babies take the bus.”

He gave me a stern look.

“You can never be too careful. Look at my brother, Jack. How independent he was. How full of spirit. He used to tell me, ‘Jimbo,
nothing
can hurt me.’ But things did
hurt him, despite the fact that he was—”

I recited it with him: “The bravest kid you ever saw.”

Dad turned around in front of his San Bernardino Electronics company van (a.k.a. “the safest vehicle in San Bernardino”), which doubled as transport for his mowing equipment, and
sighed. I noticed his unbuttoned shirt cuff flopping outside of his jacket. He deserved to go to work like that if he wasn’t going to let me grow up and do simple things like walk to school
on my own.

“Well,” Dad said after a moment. “He was.”

He walked over to the van and began to unlock it. I kicked the ground. He was right; the bus was coming. I could hear it over on Maple Street, and I was going to have to run if I wanted to catch
it. But that wrist button stopped me. I kept imagining the younger guys at Dad’s office making fun of the disheveled, anxious man with the Band-Aid glasses who wore his Excalibur Calculator
Pocket like a badge of honor. One victim in this family was enough.

I stepped over to the side of the van, yanked the shirtsleeve free, and in a few swift moves buttoned it. I offered a weak smile. He blinked down at me through dirty lenses.

“The bus, Jimmy.…”

I sighed.

“I’m on it, Dad.”

The school was lined with pumpkins. I tallied them and was up to forty-one before the bus pulled to its usual stomach-lurching halt. Lunch boxes and books went spilling across
the grimy floor and kids took to all fours to fetch the runaway thermoses and escaping pencils. I sat back and stared at the sign outside San Bernardino High.

THE 102ND ANNUAL
FESTIVAL OF THE FALLEN LEAVES
ALL WEEK LONG
SHOW YOUR SPIRIT!

GO BATTLE BEASTS!

You didn’t grow up in Saint B. without the Festival of the Fallen Leaves figuring into your memories in one way or another. Maybe you dressed up like a princess or a robot and marched in
the Kids’ Jubilee. Or maybe you volunteered alongside your parents to help wipe down syrupy tables during the Kiwanis Pancake Blowout. The whole thing originated from a pretty cool story
about some sort of legendary banishing, but I always forgot who was banishing whom and for what.

It didn’t really matter, because the festival had evolved over time as a way for the town to sell itself to itself. For seven days, there were art walks with overpriced masterworks slopped
together by local artisans; there were racks filled with unsellable clothing at bargain prices; there were free band concerts under public park gazebos; there were special deals at car dealerships,
restaurants, and insurance offices. And it all ended right here at Saint B. High with a big football game followed by
Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line
, an abridged production done right
on the field. You got your sports and your culture in one place, without even having to set down your chili-cheese dog.

That year promised to bring them out in droves, and not just because the team was undefeated. Off the western end of the school was Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field, your typical
goalposts-and-floodlights deal with plenty of nooks for kids to smuggle in beer and make out. The next Friday, however, was to be the debut of our jumbotron, a freakishly large video screen that
had been under wraps for weeks as workers completed the installation. Already that morning they were atop the high scaffold, adjusting their hard hats.

The whole moronic festival, which I could not have cared less about, began on Saturday—the next day—which meant that these were the final precious hours before everyone went nuts
decking the town in Saint B. red and white. It was the worst time of year for kids like me, who weren’t good at sports, or drama, or anything, really.

I exited the bus last, and got no farther than the sidewalk before a kid I knew from the unpopular table at lunch came barreling out of the main entrance. He grabbed hold of me to stop his
momentum. We both swung around like we were ballroom dancing. He jabbed a finger at the school.

“Tub…” he panted. “Trophy Cave…”

That was all he needed to say. If there was one spot in school reserved for the darkest acts of bullying, it was the Trophy Cave, a third-floor hallway that housed the school’s trophy
collection. It had once been the location of the French and German classes, but those electives had been cut. The fluorescents had long before either burned out or been tampered with, and the hall
existed as a dim channel of evil to be avoided at all costs, even if it meant being late for class or clenching your bladder for another period. On a regular basis you could hear the blubbers of
underclassmen receiving their first (or fourteenth) wedgies.

Some kids were cursed enough to have their lockers located in this torture chamber. Tobias “Tubby” D., my best friend, was one of them.

Before I reached the Trophy Cave, I knew the identity of the assailant. A steady
SMACK, SMACK
was booming through the hall—the patented sound of Steve Jorgensen-Warner. Steve
dribbled a basketball wherever he went. Classes, the cafeteria, the restrooms, the parking lot. Some teachers, coaches mostly, even let him bounce the ball in class to help him concentrate on
schoolwork while other students ground their teeth in silent irritation.

Steve, obviously, was not just another student. Yes, he was captain of the basketball squad. And yes, he was the star running back of the football team. That still doesn’t give you a
complete picture. He was handsome in the oddest way. His eyes were too small and his nose piggish; he had a ridiculous amount of hair and a couple of teeth that looked like fangs. Yet somehow in
combination these features were sort of mesmerizing. His unnatural muscular bulk and odd way of speaking—crisply, politely, as if he were a foreign student who had learned English in a
class—completed the strange package. There was nobody else like Steve Jorgensen-Warner. What the teachers didn’t know is that there was also nobody crueler.

A crowd had gathered. I hopped to my tiptoes and saw Tub on his knees, his freckled face beet red, gasping for air around a left-arm half nelson. With his right hand Steve continued with the
basketball, simultaneously carrying on an easygoing conversation with one of his teammates. I pushed to the front of the crowd. A runner of spit was hanging from Tub’s bottom lip and he
clawed at Steve’s bicep.

“Air,” Tub gasped. “Need…air…for breathing.…”

Steve apologized to his friend for having to pause their pleasant chat and turned his attention back to the overweight sophomore writhing in his grip. Warped fun house reflections of Tub’s
face were caught in each burnished bronze plaque, championship cup, and framed photo of young adults lined up in identical jerseys, each of them happier and healthier than my wheezing best
friend.

SMACK, SMACK. SMACK, SMACK.

Steve’s fanged smile never touched his eyes.

“You know the deal, Tubby. Five bucks a day. I regret if this wasn’t clear.”

“You were…unbelievably…clear.…”

“Five bucks is a real bargain. I challenge you to find a better deal anywhere.”

“Gave you…all I had…yesterday.…”

“Well, if that’s true, then why aren’t you apologizing?”

“Trachea…crushed…words…difficult…”

“Sorry is such a little word. Why don’t you just say it?”

“Sorry…”

“That sounds halfway genuine, Tubby. Apology accepted. Just have that five bucks by the end of the day and we’ll forgo any further nastiness. Until next time, of course.”

I would have given anything to be the kind of kid who barged from the crowd to push Steve away from my friend. But that fantasy would just get both of us killed. In fact, I began to go in the
opposite direction, but it was against the tide of pressing kids and my feet got tangled. I sprawled backward, to my horror, and fell down inside the circle of torture.

Steve blinked down at me with his beady eyes. He released Tub, who flopped to the floor in a puddle of his own saliva. Steve turned. The basketball smacking slowed to the pace of the whale heart
we’d listened to once in a biology class video. Time stretched out. I felt like one of those athletes caught in the trophy case for all of eternity.

“Ah, Sturges,” Steve said. “You want in on this, too? Great news.”

Over the years I’d taken my share of abuse from Steve Jorgensen-Warner, beginning with a legendary Indian burn in third grade and leading up to a sprained wrist freshman year after
I’d “tripped” down the school’s back steps. None of those beatings, though, had been my fault. Even Tub, locked in fetal position, looked aghast.

“Oh, wow,” I said from the ground. “I should get to class. We should all get to class. Shouldn’t we? I mean, isn’t it time for class? I mean, wow.”

The Trophy Cave amplified my blather.

SMACK, SMACK!
The ball sounded positively invigorated. It was a predictor of mood as reliable as a dog’s tail. A resplendent grin spread across Steve’s face as he came at me
with the ball, dribbling behind his back and between his legs. The guy was in his element. Had there been a hoop, he would have dunked it.

All in all we got away lucky. We both got the “trash compactor,” this nifty procedure in which you are shoved into a locker far too small to fit a teenage human,
then smashed repeatedly with the door until you somehow fit anyway. It’s more painful than it sounds. The coat hooks gouge your scalp, the sharp corners bruise your shoulders, and if
you’re stupid enough to try to stop the door from slamming, you can break a finger. I’ve seen it happen.

Lucky for me, I’d been trash compacted enough to learn how to open lockers from the inside. I relaxed until I heard the smack of the basketball fade, and then let myself out. Tub was
whimpering from the next locker, and I can’t say I blamed him. He was a big guy, and simple physics meant that his extraction wasn’t going to be an easy one. First I told him what he
needed to do to jog the mechanism. That took a while because of the constant stream of swear words coming from the slots in the locker. The bell rang. I sighed. Now we’d be tardy.

Ten minutes later we were recuperating in the boys’ room. Neither of us had any intention of walking into class late with bloodied lips and elbows. So we took our time, washing our wounds
with cold water and blotting them with scratchy brown paper towels.

“Those towels are for brutes,” Tub said. He ducked into a stall and came back with a fistful of toilet paper. He patted it against a scraped elbow. “Ah, now I’m being
properly pampered. Is this a spa? Are we in a spa? When do we get the salt scrubs? The erotic hot-stone rubdowns? Jeeves, our itinerary, please!”

I forced a grin, which segued into a wince. Already my cheekbone was bruising. I ran through my options of concealing it from Dad. Oversize sunglasses? A jaunty scarf? Fantasy face paint? He did
not react rationally when my safety was threatened.

Tub leaned in to the mirror and frowned. I’d like to tell you all about how real beauty is on the inside, because if that’s the case, Tub’s innards must make surgeons swoon.
You could call Tobias Dershowitz chubby, if you were being cute, or husky if you were being diplomatic. The fact is he was fat, and that was only the beginning of his problems. His hair was a
thick, orange, out-of-control hedge. His face spilled over with the kind of freckles that make kids like Tub look like overgrown toddlers. Worst of all were his braces, marvels of modern torment:
whips of stainless steel crisscrossing each tooth separately and lashed to a dozen silver fasteners. The braces clicked so much when he spoke, you expected sparks.