Freak the Mighty (13 page)

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

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 called Max,

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

SEPTILLION, billions of billions

SPASTIC, how the Fair Gwen talks when she’s nervous

STRONTIUM NITRATE, the blue in a skyrocket

T

TELEMETRY, how to make nurses jump every time you sneeze

TELEVISION, the opiate of the massives

TELLURIAN, another word for earthling

TIME MACHINE, your imagination

TRACHEOTOMY, a unique method of whistling the
Star Trek
theme

TROGLODYTE, one who hates books

TUBILIFEROUS, splendid, close to perfect

U

UFOLOGY, see under food; the study of the

Unidentified Frying Objects

UNICORN, a horse who makes a point

V

VAMOOSE, what you say to a moose when you want it to leave

VANQUISH, to defeat in battle, preferably with dragons

VEGAN, a human sauropod

VISCOUS, a thick, vicious liquid

W

WATT, a measure of electricity equal to one joule per second

WRITING, talking on paper

X

XYLOID, another word for blockhead

Y

YONDER, a place that always lies over the next horizon

Z

ZAG, what you do after you zig

ZED, a Z in England

ZEST, the zing in an orange

ZIG, what you do before you zag

ZING, what you taste when you bite into an orange

ZIT, adolescent eruption, not to be confused with teenage volcano

ZOO, an eighth-grade English class