The Call. Michael Grant

Matthew agreed, not sure what he had just agreed to.

      “There’s a manual override button,” Camaro pointed out, shifting her grip on Horace’s ankle.

      “Yes,” Mack agreed. “But I don’t see why I should help you torture Horace.”

      “Because we’ll kick your butt,” Matthew said.

      This is where a sensible kid would have said, ‘Good point,’ and pushed the manual flush button. But Mack had never been accused of being sensible. He had an innate dislike for bullies.

      So he said, “You can try.”

      “Try what?” Matthew asked, baffled.

      “He means,” Camaro explained patiently, “that we can try to kick his butt. He’s implying that we are unable to kick his butt.”

      Camaro was an attractive girl in a bodybuilder, zero-per cent-body-fat, sleek and predatory sort of way.

      “You see,” Camaro explained in the pedantic manner that had made her a natural fit for the job of bullying geeks, “he’s trying to trick us into putting Horace down and chasing him.”

      Mack nodded, acknowledging the truth. “You see right through me.”

      “Mack, Mack, Mack,” Camaro said. “You’re cute.”

      “I am,” Mack agreed.

      “I don’t want to beat you up,” Camaro admitted. “So why don’t you just run away?”

      Mack sighed. “OK. But I’m taking this.” He reached down and snagged Matthew’s book bag. It was surprisingly light since it contained no books – just a pack of Red Vines liquorice, a Mountain Dew and a pair of nunchakus.

      This Matthew understood. He released Horace, which put all the weight on Camaro, who was strong but not that strong. Horace plunged but did not swirl. Matthew leaped, but Mack leaped faster.

      Mack was out the door, racing down the hallway with Matthew in lumbering pursuit.

      Timing worked in Mack’s favor. (He had of course noticed the clock on the wall.) The bell rang, ending the school day and kids exploded from classrooms like buckshot from a shotgun.

      Mack unzipped Matthew’s book bag, scattering Red Vines everywhere in the crush of frenzied kids.

      Mack had a detailed map of the school in his head. He knew every door, every locker and every closet. He knew which were unlocked, which exits were alarmed and where an open window might be found.

      He had very little concern that Matthew or Camaro, who had now joined the chase, would actually catch him. He dodged into the chem lab and took the connecting door through to the former chem lab. It was being remodeled following an unfortunate explosion. He noted a ladder and the roller tray of paint that was perched atop the ladder. He placed Matthew’s book bag just so, beneath the ladder.

      The windows were open to allow for ventilation and the painters were on break outside. Mack slid out through the window just as Matthew rushed into the first lab.

      Mack crouched outside, just out of sight but not out of hearing and waited.

      “Hey!” Matthew yelled.

      Pause.

      Mack heard the sound of Matthew’s knees popping as he knelt down to pick up his bag.

      And then… thunk! Followed by a soggy clattering sound and a cry of pain.

      “Arrggh!” Matthew yelled.

      Mack knew he shouldn’t risk it but he did anyway – and peeked. Matthew’s head was dripping with pale yellow paint. It ran down his face and into his yelling, aggrieved mouth.

      Camaro was a half step behind him.

      She spotted Mack and was after him in a heartbeat.

      Across the open space between Building A and Building C, Mack found an open door. He ran into a crush of kids very similar to those he’d left behind. He worked his way against the flow, intending to exit by the far door, the one that led to the gym.

      But then, to his horror, he saw a massive blond beast just coming in through that very door.

      No way he could have known that Stefan Marr would be coming from the gym, having previously forgotten his gym clothes and needing (badly) to take them home to be washed.

      “Bluff it through,” Mack told himself.

      He smiled at Stefan and started to walk very calmly past him. Ten feet and he would be safe. Stefan didn’t even know Mack was fleeing.

      But then Camaro’s voice, a hoarse roar, rose above the happy hubbub. “Bully emergency!” she cried. “I’m declaring a bully emergency!”

      Mack’s eyes went wide.

      Stefan’s eyes narrowed.

      Mack leaped for the door, but Stefan wasn’t one of those great big guys who’s kind of slow and awkward. He was one of those great big guys who was as fast as a snake.

      One massive paw shot out and grabbed Mack’s T-shirt and suddenly Mack’s feet were no longer in contact with the floor.

      He did a sort of Wile E. Coyote beat-feet air-run thing, but the effect was more comical than effective.

      Camaro and a paint-dripping Matthew were there in a flash.

      “Bully emergency?” Stefan asked. “You two can’t handle this runt?”

      “Look what he did to me!” Matthew cried, outraged.

      “You know the rules,” Camaro said to Stefan. “We dominate through fear. A threat to one of us is a threat to us all.”

      Stefan nodded. “Huh,” he said. The word huh was roughly one-third of Stefan’s vocabulary. It could mean many things. But in this case it meant, “Yes, I agree that you have properly invoked a bully emergency, in which all bullies must unite to confront a common threat.”

      “Better round everyone up,” Stefan said. “The usual.”

      Everyone meant all the other bullies. The usual meant the usual place: the Dumpster behind the gym and up against the fence.

      “I am going to mess up your face!” Matthew raged at Mack. He pointed for emphasis with a hand dripping pale yellow paint.

      “Not the face,” Camaro said. “I like his face.”

      Matthew and Camaro went off in pursuit of the others, while Stefan, seeming more weary than highly motivated, stuffed his sweaty shorts into Mack’s mouth and dragged him outside.

      This was the point where Mack should have started begging, pleading, whining and bribing. But the weird thing about Mack was that even though he was afraid of puppets, sharks, the ocean, shots, spiders, dentists, fire, Shetland ponies, hair dryers, asteroids, hot-air balloons, blue cheese, tornadoes, mosquitoes, electrical outlets, bats (the kind that fly and suck your blood), beards, babies, fear itself and especially being buried alive, he was not afraid of real, actual trouble.

      Which, when you think about it, is what tends to get heroes and those around them killed.

      

      A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

      

rimluk was twelve years old. Like most twelve-year-olds he had a job, a child, two wives and a cow.

      No. No, wait, that’s not true. He had one wife and two cows.

      Grimluk’s wife was called Gelidberry. Their baby son’s name was as yet undetermined. Picking names was a very big deal in Grimluk’s village. There wasn’t a lot