By the Grace of Todd Page 5

  “Later, peeps.” Spud flashed the peace sign and vanished after his buddy.

  As soon as they were gone, Max turned to me. “Sorry about them, Buttrock. Sometimes they get a little . . . overly excited.”

  “You sure did a lot to stop them,” Lucy harrumphed. Then, grunting at the Toddlians who wouldn’t hop on her hand, she shifted her attention to me. “Todd, you tell them it’s safe now; they don’t seem to believe me.”

  “I don’t speak their language.”

  “No, but they respect you. Lewis bowed to you, remember? We’ve got to try.”

  Max knelt eye level to the desk, where a bunch of them were huddled. “I’m sorry my friends scared you, little buggy people. Hey, they turned their backs on me!”

  Lucy handed me the glasses. “Here, Todd. We’ve got to get them back to their home, and you’re our only hope. It’s your sock and your civilization, after all.”

  I’d never been good at speeches, so I didn’t have any reason to believe they’d listen to me, either. But I put on the glasses and traded places with Max. It was worth a try.

  “Ahem,” I said. I spotted Lewis in the crowd. He turned around and stepped closer when I started talking. The little pigtailed girl—Persephone—was right beside him, and she looked up curiously. The pasty guy, Herman, stood a few paces away, chewing on his fingernail and watching me with those big eyes.

  “Uh, citizens of Toddlandia, I apologize for almost letting Camo eat you. Please get back on the sock and I’ll try to keep you safe from . . . predators.”

  Lewis was so scared I could see him shivering. He blinked his big eyes at me and held up his hands like he was asking, “Why?” Herman just kept shaking his head and muttering to himself. Persephone, I swear, frowned at me, then gently patted Lewis’s shoulders, turning and leading him back onto the sock. The rest of them lined up behind those three.

  Persephone helped Lewis into a hut. When she came back out, she stopped and shook her fist at me. What had I done? It wasn’t my fault Max and his friends had barged into my room. I’d rescued them from Camo, hadn’t I?

  Lucy stood and sighed. “I don’t think they want to communicate with us. That big lout”—she pointed an accusing finger at Max—“and his goons have turned them against us.” She paused, then looked at me. “It’s your fault, Todd. I told you not to let them in here.”

  Max snorted. “You sure pick losers for friends, Buttrock. I thought you were cooler than this.”

  I felt a twinge in my gut. He’s turning on me! All at once, I imagined the beat-downs Max Loving might hand out to someone who’d wronged him. It had to be even worse than the swirlies Duddy and I had gotten from Ernie at Roosevelt Elementary. I remembered the stains and the stinky smells in the abandoned stall of the third-floor boys’ room. I remembered trying to explain to Mom why I was coming home with wet hair—again.

  I shuddered. This can’t happen. Lucy had to get out of there before she landed me on Max’s “dork list”—forever. The more I thought about it, the more it made me angry, too. Really, who did Lucy think she was, waltzing into my room and badmouthing the one guy who could make—or ruin—my middle school experience? She didn’t even go to Wakefield! “Why don’t you just go home if you don’t like the way I take care of them? It’s my house, my room, and my sock, if you hadn’t noticed!”

  Lucy glared at me. Even though she’d just blamed me for turning the Toddlians against us, I don’t think she was expecting me to turn on her. Her eyes got darker, her nostrils flared, and she flipped a braid over her shoulder. “Well . . . excuse me. You’re welcome for all the help!”

  Max stared at the sock like he was in a trance. “See ya,” he said to Lucy.

  “Or not,” she growled, stomping out of my room. A few seconds later she slammed the front door hard enough to make my window rattle.

  I took a deep breath. Don’t sweat it. She was weird, anyway. But now that I was alone with Max, I couldn’t think of anything cool to say. Meanwhile, he was still staring at the sock. I don’t think he even realized I was in the room. “Uh . . . I’m sorry about her. My mom let her in here—we don’t really hang out.”

  Max didn’t respond.

  “So,” I said, desperately trying to save the afternoon, “should we . . . um . . . get together tomorrow after school to work on your catapult?”

  “Catapult?” Max echoed, looking at me like I’d suggested we take belly-dance lessons. “Forget the catapult! Our science project is right here.” He pointed at the desk. “Dude, you have a civilization on your sock! Doncha think that’s enough to earn us both A-pluses in sixth-grade earth science?” Max leaned his head back and laughed. “I can’t wait to see Katcher’s mug when we show him this!”

  I felt a weird surge of emotions then. Relief that Max still wanted to hang out. But also—dread. Or something like fear. Deep down inside, I felt like it was probably a bad idea to expose the Toddlians to the world. Exposing them to middle school was even worse!

  How do I say this to Max? “Um . . . super idea but . . . well, I’m not sure it’s such a good plan to let the sock leave the house? It’s a big world out there and people might—”

  “Would you relax? I’m not Spud and Dick. I’m not gonna let anything happen to your little friends. Didn’t I just prove that?” He reached over and ruffled my hair like I was a little kid. “In fact, why don’t we make a pact that neither one of us tells anyone else about the little guys before our presentation. That way, when we present to the class, everyone will be like, ‘What??? Check out their project!’ and we’ll totally get an A.”

  “Umm, yeah . . .” I stammered, relieved that Max and I were somewhat on the same page. I guess this meant I couldn’t tell Duddy, but maybe Max was right, and it’d only make him that much more excited when he finally saw the little guys in class. I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “Yeah, it does!” Max said, grinning. Then more sternly, he added, “Seriously, dude, don’t tell anyone.”

  “Uh, don’t worry. I won’t.”

  The grin left his face. “Because if you do, you and I are kaput. Got it?”

  I shrunk back. “No, really, I won’t.”

  “Promise?” He glowered.

  “Promise.”

  “Eh, I’m just joshing,” Max replied, his smile back and bigger than ever. “I know you won’t! Stick with me and everything will be cool.” He stood up, the sock in the palm of his hand. “Why don’t I take Bugland with me to give them extra protection. There aren’t any lizards or babies at my place.”

  “I . . . well . . .” Oh man, this was not good. Even taking Daisy and Camo into consideration, Lucy would kill me if she ever found out I gave the Toddlians to Max.

  Max must have seen my panicked look ’cause he threw his hairy arm around my shoulder. “Hey, you can trust me, dude. I promise to take good care of our project, and I’ll take good care of you at Wakefield, too. Why don’t you sit at my table with the Zoo Crew for lunch tomorrow?”

  Was I dreaming? Over the last couple days, nobody had been brave enough to even approach the table where Max and his gang sat. I’d be the second coolest sixth grader in school!

  “Yeah, sure!”

  “Spiffy.” He swaggered to the front door, the sock flapping in his hand.

  “Uh, you might want to hold them real still,” I suggested. “You don’t want to give them an earthquake.”

  Max smiled. “Whatever you say, Little Butty.” He stretched his arm straight out and balanced the sock on his palm. “How’s this?”

  I gave a thumbs-up and followed him to the door to watch him walk down the driveway. If Lucy looked out her window and saw Max leaving with the sock, well . . . What’d I care? It was my sock. Besides, Max had promised to protect them, and given what had become of poor Pinchy, he’d probably do a way better job than me anyway.

  When Max got to the end of
my driveway, he turned around and waved. I felt my stomach turn. He was using the hand that held the sock, and it was flapping back and forth in the wind!

  “Hey!” I yelled, stifling the impulse to run after him. I tried to look cool. “Could you—you know—just hold them still, remember?”

  Max stopped waving. “Oh, right.” He turned, then pulled off his backpack, unzipped it, and made a big gesture of tossing the sock inside. Then he zipped up his pack and threw it on his back, looked up, and gave me a huge, toothy, terrifying grin. “Don’t worry, Buttrock. I’ve got it all figured out.”

  CHAPTER 8

  LEWIS

  One would think that nearly being devoured by a sticky-tongued dragon would be enough of a trial for one day, but no. Soon after the Camo attack, my people and I experienced a catastrophic earthquake that very nearly shook us off our sock home and into the unknown! It was only through the quick thinking of Herman, who advised us to form a Toddlian chain and cling wildly to a loose thread on the sock, that we kept everyone safe. But even when the earthquake was over, our punishments were not—oh no! Then we were hurled into a deep and stinking abyss. It wasn’t a Todd kind of stink, which soothed the nostrils and delighted the senses. No, it was an impostor stench of rotting food and Max’s dirty underwear.

  Was this fabric prison Max’s garbage pit? It was much bigger than our sock home and far more perilous. Before the light dimmed with the closing of its giant serrated jaws, I surveyed the strange and dangerous landscape. Near where I had landed lay a large pink rock riddled with giant, savage teeth marks. Beside it was a core of something pungently sweet covered in the same marks and green, mossy-looking fuzz. The portable prison began to move then, and long, sharp-rooted tree trunks threatened to impale us with every bone-jolting bounce.

  We were surrounded by enormous, smooth-faced walls, too slick to scale. The spirals of silver that grew up the sides were climbable, however. Persephone was the only one of us courageous enough to clamber up the rings to the top of our prison. But when she reached the highest coil, she found the serrated teeth to be impenetrable. We had somehow enraged the Great Todd and were doomed to perish in Max’s Pit of Punishment.

  “Still shaking?” Persephone asked me when she descended from the coils. She patted my back. “Summon your inner strength; you are safe now.”

  “Safe?” I said. “You call this chasm of calamity ‘safe’?”

  “Well,” she said with less enthusiasm, “at least we still have each other. At least we’re still alive.”

  At that moment the pit jerked, slamming us into one of the smooth walls. We slid down the slick surface and onto a mountain of moist, sweat-soured clothing. I had never smelled anything worse than Max’s sweat nor seen anything as horrific as the sticky-tongued dragon. We must have displeased our god terribly that he would punish us so.

  “Maybe a Toddlian has stolen some of his treasures. He became hostile when his possessions were touched by the Adorable One They Call Daisy,” I suggested between slams.

  “Maybe this is what they call a coincidence. Or bad luck,” Persephone said as our heads crashed together. “Ouch!”

  That last slam had knocked off my glasses. I crawled around on the bottom of the abyss, searching for them. I searched my soul for answers too. One thing I knew: it was not by luck that we had almost perished as a meal for that colorful and fearsome dragon. It was not coincidence that handed us over to Max. It was the all-knowing, all-seeing Todd. The most awesome Being in the universe had spawned us, and then given us over to our enemy. I only wished I knew what we had done to deserve it.

  Suddenly the jagged jaws opened, and bright light filled the chasm. I spied my glasses and put them on just in time to leap onto the Great One’s sock as it rose out of the blackness and into the light. Max suspended our sock village in front of his cruel, dark eyes and began speaking in the now-familiar human tongue. “All right, my little buggy-wuggies, let’s see what you’re made of. I want you to watch this carefully, so you can learn the stunts.” He motioned his enormous hand toward a vast screen, with persons cavorting across it in clothes of the brightest hues. One of them sang an eerie, high-pitched melody that caused my skin to crawl. “Time to start training for my A-plus!” Max bellowed with a maleficent grin.

  The brute left us in front of the giant screen to “fetch himself some grub,” whatever foul deed that was. Persephone and I stared around the sock. All our huts had been smashed but one.

  She climbed atop a hill of dirt and shouted, “My fellow Toddlians, why are you sitting around in despair when there are repairs to be made? We must rebuild . . . at once!”

  “Not so hasty, friends,” said Herman, looking up from the book he was studying. “A little more thought is required. While I commend your enthusiasm, I think history suggests that we obey the terrible Max or risk grave consequences.”

  After some discussion, it seemed that everyone agreed with him, so we turned our faces back to the performers. The images on the screen were almost as distressing as our ruined village. A very well-developed male person attempted to ride a single-wheeled contraption across a tiny wire suspended high in the air. He carried a long stick, and a female person stood atop his shoulders, waving to the watchers far below.

  What was he thinking? Did he not realize that if he fell, his entrails and those of his foolish companion would explode on the ground?

  Were these creatures also being punished by the Great Todd? Next, billowing white sheets dropped from the ceiling and persons slid down them, twisting themselves again and again in the fabric. They swung themselves recklessly in rhythm to the mournful song.

  “Beautiful!” said Persephone, with a sigh.

  “Suicidal!” I contradicted. “Can’t you see there is nothing to catch them if they lose their grip and fall?” Large, muscle-bound men grasped the sheets and whipped the clingers in circles while the victims held their bodies stiff, horizontal to the ground. I could stand it no longer. “Desist!” I screamed at the screen. “Stop this madness before you plunge to your deaths!”

  “They cannot hear you,” said Herman. “Nor can they see you. They are trapped in this timeless machine. We can do nothing to help or hinder them.”

  I sat down in despair.

  The next display was the deadliest thus far. Persons in snug-fitting garments were forced to fly through flaming hoops! They ran on some sort of springy surface, turned several flips, then catapulted themselves through the ring of fire. At the very moment I could no longer bear to watch, Max reappeared and froze the victims mid-leap with a magical black box. I had underestimated his powers.

  “I’ve made you kiddies some new toys,” he said as he dropped us, sock and all, onto a large and cluttered wood structure. The “toys” appeared to be miniatures of the ones on the big screen. I was examining these new contraptions when an enormous hand lifted me up by my hair.

  “Have mercy, Great Todd!” I screamed, but Max’s deep voice swallowed up mine.

  “I hope you buggers are in good shape.” With his free hand, the giant dipped a wand in fluid, and lit the hooped end on fire. “Now listen to me, buggy. Your goal is to fly through the center of the hoop without going up in smoke. Course if you do barbecue yourself, it’ll make it more exciting, and there’s about a jillion of you, so no biggie if we crispify a couple during training.”

  He held me over a long strip of rubber. I could not breathe, and my heart felt like it was about to burst.

  “Okay, little buggy, let’s see how well you bounce.”

  I felt myself fall. “GREAT TOOODD!”

  CHAPTER 9

  The next morning, I ran up to Duddy on the school steps, hoping that he wasn’t angry that I hadn’t resisted when Max picked me as his partner. “What’s up, Dudster?” I said, giving him the four-fingered Saki Salute from Dragon Sensei. I remembered Max’s warning not to tell anyone about the Toddlians, but that didn’t
mean I couldn’t tell Duddy about everything else that was going on. “You won’t believe what happened yesterday after school. Guess who—”

  But Duddy wasn’t paying attention to my news. “Hey, Todd!” He turned around and grinned. “Listen, I’ve got some peeps for you to meet. They’re so cool! This is Ike and this is Wendell.”

  That’s when I noticed two guys flanking Duddy. I’d never seen them before, so they weren’t from Roosevelt. Ike was a white-blond beanpole. His hair curled tighter than VanderPuff’s, and his green eyes were big and bulgy like Camo’s.

  Wendell had long, dark hair he wore flipped over his shoulders. His bangs were pulled straight back from his eyes in a ponytail, just like the Dragonmaster-Sensei Nagee, Koi Boy’s mentor. Wendell bowed to me so I could get the full effect of his sumo do. When he straightened, I noticed that he was wearing a limited edition, artist-signed, orange-and-black embroidered Koi Boy T-shirt. I knew it must have cost him big bucks on eBay Japan. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’d kind of been saving up for it myself.)

  Okay, so at least Duddy wasn’t mad at me. But still, it was official: Duddy was a dork magnet, and he’d managed to attract the two biggest ones at Wakefield in under forty-eight hours.

  “Can you believe it, Todd? Wendell plays Nagee and knows all his moves.” Wendell pretended to shoot electricity out his fingertips, sound effects and all. “And Ike is the best Mongee-Poo I’ve ever seen!” Ike hurled himself to the bottom of the steps, then climbed back up, chattering and scratching under his armpits like a crazed monkey.

  A few seventh-grade girls turned around and snickered, and something wilted inside me. What if Max and his friends saw me with these guys? I’d get crammed in my locker for sure.

  “Since you like Emperor Oora,” Duddy continued, “and I can do pretty much anybody, we can play Dragon Sensei for hours. You guys wanna get together today after school?”