How to Slay a Dragon (32 page)

“We don’t have all day, Mr. Hart.”

“Sure seemed like it when you were lecturing,” Greg said too softly for anyone to hear.

“What was that?” Mrs. Beasley’s voice rang out. The woman could hear a feather drop at fifty paces.

“I said, I’m coming.”

Greg glanced one last time at Kristin, climbed out of his chair with un-Manny-like grace, and trudged toward the front of the room, where Manny stood staring dumbly at the whiteboard. The mutant boy’s frame rose like a mountain, growing higher and higher the nearer Greg approached, until finally Greg reached the board and Manny’s navel turned to greet him.

“I’ll get you for this, Hart.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“I don’t see any writing,” observed Mrs. Beasley.

Manny stared at the board as if it were covered with hieroglyphics. Greg watched him struggle a few seconds, then snatched up a marker and scribbled the answer to the problem Mrs. Beasley had posed the class.

“Not bad, Mr. Hart,” said Mrs. Beasley. It was possibly the nicest thing she’d ever said to him. She turned then and asked if everyone understood Greg’s solution. Greg suspected she was hoping they didn’t.

“You tryin’ to make me look stupid, Hart?” whispered Manny.

“No need for that.”

Manny couldn’t have possibly picked up the insult, yet his single brow bent itself into a vee. “After school,” he growled. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

Mrs. Beasley whipped around and glared over her spectacles at the two of them, her eyes wide and calculating. Greg stared back, afraid to move. He’d once faced an ogre in an enchanted forest, a mysterious witch in the gloom of her decrepit shack, and a dragon at the center of its white-hot lair. None offered the same level of intimidation Mrs. Beasley could muster. Finally her frown began to straighten. Soon Greg barely recognized her.

“You may sit down,” she informed them both. She then walked to the board, scratched out another problem, and directed her wrath at another student.

Greg exhaled slowly and returned to his seat, preoccupied now with the clock. Time passed so slowly, he half expected to witness the hands creeping backward, but in the end the bell rang and Mrs. Beasley granted everyone permission to leave. Even so, Greg stayed put while the others packed up their books and spilled out of the room. Math was the last period of the day, and Manny was sure to be waiting outside.

“Aren’t you going home?”

Greg’s eyes snapped forward, where Kristin Wenslow’s freckled face hovered high above him. His heart lifted. For a second he forgot Manny was waiting to pulverize him. “Kristin?”

“The bell rang. Didn’t you hear?”

“Yeah, I . . . uh . . . just wanted to finish jotting down some notes before I left.”

“But your books are all packed up.”

“Huh? Oh, right. I’m done now.”

Kristin continued to stare down at him, the overhead lights framing her soft hair like a halo. Greg considered reaching out and touching her, but stopped when he imagined her shrieking and knocking over desks trying to lurch out of his reach.

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“Are you going to leave or what?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Greg. “I mean no! I just remembered I need to jot down a few more notes first. Don’t worry. I’ll make the bus.”

Kristin bit her lip in the cutest way. “If  you  say  so. I . . . um . . . guess I’ll see you later.” And just like that, she wriggled her shoulders to center her backpack, offered a confused smile, and ambled out of the room.

Greg stared dumbfounded at the door. He’d have given anything to go with her—anything at all—but if he had to be flattened by Manny Malice, he could at least do it without Kristin watching. Again he checked the clock. Three forty. He’d need to leave soon or miss his bus and have to walk home. On the other hand, if he stayed put, at least he’d be able to walk . . . .

Finally he arrived at a decision. He reached behind his chair for his backpack and jumped when something coarse and wet streaked across his knuckles.

“Rake! You scared me.”

Displaying the same reluctance Greg had been feeling, a small creature never before seen in Mrs. Beasley’s classroom peered out from the pack and gradually emerged to explore Greg’s fingers with its tiny pink tongue. Greg nearly smiled in spite of his impending doom.

Roughly the size of a squirrel, but with shimmering blue-black fur and a long tail that could easily wrap twice around its body, Rake was a shadowcat, the only one of its kind on Earth. More importantly, he was Greg’s closest friend. The two had spent nearly every moment together since they first met six months ago on the distant world of Myrth, a land of monsters and magic where Greg had once gone to slay a dragon.

Okay, technically Greg didn’t go to Myrth to slay a dragon. He went because he was too slow to react when the magicians there opened a rift between worlds and snatched him out of the woods behind his house. But
they
had done so with the intention of having him slay a dragon, so Greg felt that should count for something. If nothing else, it made for a better story—or at least it would have, if he could have ever risked telling anyone. He’d tiptoed around the subject with Kristin once, but quit when she felt his forehead and asked him to lie down until she could bring the school nurse. Still, it was the only time she’d ever touched him, and Greg wanted more than anything to touch her back. Telling her more about Rake just didn’t seem the best way to go about it.

“Come on, Rake,” Greg said with a sigh, “get in the pack. We don’t want to be late for our beating.”

The shadowcat stared at him quizzically, leaned forward, and smashed a furry cheek into Greg’s hand.

“Not now. We’re going to miss our bus.”

As if understanding, Rake crawled obediently into the pack. Greg quickly cinched up the straps. If anyone were to ever see Rake . . . well, Greg didn’t know what he’d do. Then again, if he didn’t figure out a way to slip past Manny Malice and onto his bus, what difference did it make? Just because he was going to die didn’t mean the secret of the shadowcat had to die with him.

After a few whispered reassurances to his backpack, Greg headed for the side exit, slipped outside, and scurried along the wall toward the front of the building, all the while thinking about that one miraculous day last fall, when he had actually fought Manny Malice and won. Using his skill in chikan, an ancient martial art he’d learned on Myrth, Greg had used a stick to trip up Manny and send him cartwheeling into the bushes. For months Greg had viewed that as the happiest moment of his life. Today it seemed the stupidest. Manny would be ready this time, and Greg didn’t have a stick.

At the edge of the building he paused to peer around the corner. The first of the buses, lined up across the lawn about a hundred yards away, were already beginning to pull out from the curb. No problem. The coast was clear, and while he never thought so at the time, Greg was lucky enough to have spent much of his life as the smallest boy in school, which meant he was far more experienced at running than most boys twice his size, a necessity, since that was normally who he was running from.

With the same determination he’d once shown when chased by a fifteen-foot-tall ogre, he abandoned the safety of the wall and darted across the lawn. Not a bad effort, really. He made it nearly halfway to the curb before Manny stepped out from behind a large bole to block his way.

So, this time the ogre was ahead of me
.

Greg managed to grind to a halt an instant before his face collided with Manny’s stomach, but his pack was slower in stopping. Despite a lot of frantic flailing and grabbing, Greg felt the bag fall from his shoulder, tossing a bewildered Rake onto the lawn.

“Going somewhere, Hart?”

Greg didn’t hear. His only thought was to dive on top of Rake, who let out a panicked screech not of this Earth.

“What a baby,” Manny jeered. “You scream like a girl. Get up and fight like a man.”

With Rake barely pinned beneath one shoulder, Greg didn’t dare get up. He reached blindly backward for his backpack, managed to snag one strap . . .

Manny casually stepped on the fabric before Greg could reel it in. “What’s the matter? Too weak to wift your wittle backpack?”

With a maniacal laugh, Manny slid his foot away, taunting Greg to try again. Greg took a deep breath, gripped Rake’s fur, and squirmed to his knees, yanking on the pack as he went. This time Manny was less subtle about stomping on it.

Aw, man.
Greg stared at the enormous legs before him, fantasizing over how they might look dangling from a dragon’s jaws. He followed them up to Manny’s even larger torso, but before he could look much higher, a bright pinpoint of light suddenly split the air with a sizzling zap and caught Greg’s eye.

Manny’s smile faded. He turned hesitantly to see what Greg was staring at. Greg didn’t need to look. He had seen this phenomenon twice before. He had an idea Manny shouldn’t be seeing it now. Panicked, he jumped up and lunged for Manny’s shoulders.

He probably should have let go of his bag first.

In a disturbing reenactment of David and Goliath, Greg whirled the backpack in a wide arc that struck Manny squarely in the ear. Manny let out a yowl befitting his size and dropped to his knees, but Greg took little notice. He barely got out one hysterical screech himself before the space ahead burst wide open, roaring louder than a dozen angry Manny Malices, and sucked him off his feet.

Photographs by Nancy Allen