Freak the Mighty

by Rodman Philbrick

  “I wish you’d tie those laces, dear,” Gram says when I’m squishing around in the new shoes.

  “That’s the fashion,” the manager says with this heh-heh-heh laugh. “Actually, they’re designed that way. You don’t need to lace up.”

  Just to prove what a jerk he is, I tie up the laces and that makes Gram happy. Which is funny sometimes, how little it takes to make her happy, except you can’t really figure what until you’ve already done it. Does that make any sense?

  Finally we escape from the mall and I’ve got enough new clothes to last me, as Grim points out, a week or so.

  “You could just keep letting down his cuffs,” Grim says. “Except they don’t have cuffs now, what am I thinking?”

  “I think he looks quite handsome,” Gram says. “Maxwell, please turn around. And keep your shirttail tucked in.”

  “Ah, leave him alone,” Grim says. “He’s not a fashion model.”

  “I just can’t get over it,” Gram says. “Our little Maxwell is growing up.”

  “Growing is right,” Grim says. “The boy is certainly growing.”

  The deal is, Freak and I get to be in the same classes. He made the Fair Gwen go in and see all these people at the school, because I wasn’t supposed to be in the smart classes, no way, and finally they all agreed it would be good for Freak, having someone to help him get around.

  Gram acts kind of worried about it and she doesn’t want to sign the papers, like she thinks the L.D. class has done me a lot of good or something, and being in the genius class is just going to make me slower and dumber than ever. But one night I come up the cellar stairs real quiet and Grim is saying, “Let’s give it a try, nothing else has worked, maybe what he needs is a friend, that’s the one thing he’s never had with all those special teachers.” And the next morning she signs the papers, and when we get to school the first day, Freak helps me find my name on the list and it’s true, we’re in all the same classes.

  At first all the other kids are so into looking cool and acting cool and showing off their new outfits, they hardly notice us in the hall, Freak riding high on my shoulders, or the deal where his desk is always right next to mine. That wears off, though, and by the time we leave math, which is just passing out the textbooks and a bunch of numbers chalked on the blackboard, you can hear the whispers in the hall.

  Like, hey, who’s the midget? And, there goes Mad Max; and, excuse me while I barf; and, look what escaped from the freak show; and, oh, my gawd that’s disgusting.

  “Maxwell Kane?”

  This is from Mrs. Donelli, the English teacher, she’s new to the school, and when I nod and raise my pencil, she goes, “Maxwell, will you please stand up and tell the class something about your summer?”

  Which, if she wasn’t new to the school, she’d know better, because getting up in the class and saying stuff is not something I do.

  “Maxwell,” she goes, “is there a problem?”

  By now there’s a lot of noise and kids are shouting stuff like, “Forget it, Mrs. Donelli, his brain is in his tail!”

  “Ask him to count, he can paw the ground!”

  “Maxi Pad! Maxi Pad! Ask him quick about his dad!”

  “Killer Kane! Killer Kane! Had a kid who got no brain!”

  Mrs. Donelli has this look like she stepped in something and she can’t get it off her shoe. The shouting and singing goes on and on, and pretty soon some of the kids are throwing stuff at us, pencils and erasers and wadded-up paper, and it’s like Mrs. Donelli has no idea what to do about it, the room is out of control.

  Then Freak climbs up on his desk, which makes him about as big as a normal person standing up, and he starts shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “Order!” he shouts. “Order in the court! Let justice be heard!”

  For some reason, maybe because he looks so fierce with his jaw sticking out and his little fists all balled up and the way he’s stamping his crooked little feet, everybody shuts up and there’s this spooky silence.

  Finally Mrs. Donelli says, “You must be Kevin, is that right?”

  Freak has this look, he’s still acting really fierce, and he goes, “Sometimes, I am.”

  “Sometimes? What does that mean?”

  “It means sometimes I’m more than Kevin.”

  “Oh,” says Mrs. Donelli, and you can tell she has no idea what he’s talking about, but she thinks it’s important to let him talk. “So, Kevin,” she says, “can you give us all an example?”

  Next thing I know, Freak has his hands on my head and he’s getting himself on my shoulders and he’s tugging at me in a way that I know means “stand up,” and so I do it, I stand right up in class and I can see Mrs. Donelli’s eyes getting bigger and bigger.

  I’m standing there with Freak high above me and it feels right, it makes me feel strong and smart.

  “How’s this for an example?” Freak is saying. “Sometimes we’re nine feet tall, and strong enough to walk through walls. Sometimes we fight gangs. Sometimes we find treasure. Sometimes we slay dragons and drink from the Holy Grail!”

  Mrs. Donelli is backing up to her desk and she says, “Oh, my, that’s very interesting, I’m sure, but could you both just sit down?”

  But Freak is riding me like he’s the jockey and I’m the horse, he’s steering me around the class room, showing off. He’s raising his fist and punching it in the air and going, “Freak the Mighty! Freak the Mighty!” and pretty soon he’s got all the other kids chanting, “Freak the Mighty! Freak the Mighty! Freak the Mighty!” even though they don’t know what he’s talking about, or what it means.

  I’m standing up straight, as tall as I can, and I’m marching exactly like he wants me to, right and left, backwards and forwards, and it’s like music or something, like I don’t even have to think about it, I just do it, and all those kids chanting our name, and Mrs. Donelli has no idea what’s going on, she’s definitely flipped out and more or less hiding behind her desk.

  The whole class is raising their fists in the air and chanting: “Freak the Mighty! Freak the Mighty! Freak the Mighty!”

  I can’t explain why, but it was really pretty cool.

  Anyhow, that’s how Freak and I get sent to the principal’s office the first time together.

  Mrs. Addison, she’s the principal, she takes one look at us waiting outside her office, and she goes, “What have we here?”

  “I’m afraid there has been a slight misunderstanding,” Freak says. “If you’d be so good as to allow me to explain.”

  Mrs. Addison is this really serious-acting black woman with tight gray hair in a bun and these suits that make her look like she works in a bank or something. She has this funny little smile like she’s sucking on a lemon and it quick turns sweet, and then she goes, “By all means. Let’s hear what you have to say. Convince me.”

  I can’t really remember what Freak said, except that he used so many big words, she had to keep looking stuff up in his dictionary, which she seemed to get a real kick out of, but the important thing is, whatever Freak told her, she fell for it.

  I used to think all that spooky stuff about Friday the Thirteenth was just a pile of baloney. But now I’m getting my own personal introduction to what can happen. It’s October, and so far things have been going pretty good, better than I ever expected. Me and Freak are like this unit, and even Mrs. Donelli says she is starting to get used to us, which is her way of admitting that Freak is about twice as smart as she is, and for sure he’s read more books.

  She keeps saying stuff like, “Kevin, we know you know the answer, because you always know the answer, so wouldn’t it be nice if someone else got a chance? For instance, your friend Maxwell?”

  Freak goes, “He knows the answer, Mrs. Donelli.”

  “Yes, Kevin, and I’m sure you’re correct because you’re always correct, but for a change I’d really like to hear Maxwell speak for himself. Maxwell? Maxwell Kane?”

  This is dumb because what does it matter if I
know the answer? If I don’t know, then Freak will tell me and he’ll say it in a way I can understand, which is a lot better than Mrs. Donelli can do. So what I do, I just shrug and smile and wait, because I know she’ll get tired of asking and move on to the next. As a matter of fact I do know the answer — the reason Johnny Tremain got mad and hateful is because he burned his hand in a stupid accident — and I know about that because Freak has been showing me how to read a whole book and for some reason it all makes sense, where before it was just a bunch of words I didn’t care about.

  My reading skills tutor, Mr. Meehan, he says stuff like, “Max, the tests have always shown that you’re not dyslexic or disabled, and this proves it. As you know, heh heh, my personal opinion has always been that you’re lazy and stubborn and you didn’t want to learn. So if hanging out with Kevin somehow improves your attitude and your skills, that’s great. Keep up the good work.”

  It was Mr. Meehan who had a word with Mrs. Donelli, and that’s why she finally gave up on trying to make me talk in class, and instead she waits until study hall, where she asks me the same questions alone and I tell her the answers. She still doesn’t get it, though, because she always goes, “But, Maxwell, if you can speak to me, then you can speak to your classmates, right?”

  Wrong. Big difference. I can’t explain what it is, except that my mouth shuts up when there’s more than one or two people, and a whole classroom full, forget it.

  “Okay, you’re shy about public speaking, but how does that apply to writing down the answers? If you can read, then you can write, right?”

  Wrong again. The reading stuff Freak helped me figure out by showing how words are just voices on paper. Writing down the words is a whole different story. No matter what Freak says, writing the stuff down is not like talking, and my hand feels so huge and clumsy, it’s like the pencil is a piece of spaghetti or something and it keeps slipping away.

  Mrs. Donelli says okay for now, she’s satisfied I can read, but we’ll really have to work on this writing thing, won’t we, Maxwell, and when she says that, I just nod and look away, because inside I’m thinking, forget it, no way.

  Like Freak says, reading is just a way of listening, and I could always listen, but writing is like talking, and that’s a whole other ball game.

  Anyhow, what happens first on Friday the Thirteenth, we’re in homeroom when this note comes from the principal’s office:

  Maxwell Kane, your presence is requested.

  Gulp.

  So Freak and I get up to go and the teacher says, “No, Kevin, you stay here. Mrs. Addison was very specific. Maxwell is to go alone.”

  Freak starts to smart-mouth her, then he changes his mind and he nudges me and whispers, “Just give ’em name, rank, and serial number. Deny everything. You aren’t back by ten hundred hours, we’ll organize a search-and-rescue mission.”

  He offers to lend me his dictionary, in case I want to try out any big words on Mrs. Addison, but I’m already so worried about being called in alone, all I can think is they’re going to put me back in the learning disabled class. I’ve already decided I’ll run away if they do that, I’ll go live in the woods somewhere and jump out and scare people. Anyhow, I don’t take Freak’s dictionary along because my hands are trembly and I might drop it, or Mrs. Addison might ask me a word and I’ll forget how to look it up and prove I’m still a butthead goon.

  Mrs. Addison is waiting outside her office, like she does, and she’s trying to smile but she’s not really a smiling kind of person and I can tell this is serious, whatever it is.

  Like maybe somebody died.

  I go, “Gram! Is Gram okay?”

  “Yes, yes, everybody is fine. Come in and sit down, Maxwell. And please try to relax.”

  Yeah, right.

  Mrs. Addison is sitting there in her big chair and she’s looking up at the ceiling and then she’s looking at the floor, and at her hands, and finally she gets around to looking at me. “This is rather difficult, Maxwell. I don’t know where to begin. First, let me say we’re all very pleased with your progress. It’s nothing short of miraculous, and it almost convinces me you knew how to read at your level all along and were for some reason keeping it a secret.”

  I’m not really hearing what she’s saying because there’s like this little bird fluttering around inside my chest, and it makes me blurt out: “You’re putting me back in L.D., right?”

  Mrs. Addison comes over and pats me on the shoulder. I can tell it makes her nervous, touching me, but she does it anyway, and she goes, “No, no. Nothing like that. This has nothing to do with school, Maxwell. This is a personal situation.”

  “Because if I have to go back in the L.D. class, I won’t. I just won’t. I’ll run away. I will, I will.”

  “Maxwell, this is not about your class work, or even about school. This is about your, uhm, father.”

  My, uhm, father. Which makes me wish all of a sudden I’d done something wrong and Mrs. Addison was just giving me detention.

  She takes a deep breath and folds her hands together like she’s praying and she says, “A request has been forwarded to me from the parole board. A request from your father. Maxwell, your father wants to know if —”

  “I don’t want to hear it!”

  I jump up and cover my ears, holding my hands real tight. “Don’t want to hear it! Don’t want to hear it. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

  What happens when you go nuts in the principal’s office, she calls in the school nurse, and the two of them are trying to hug me and calm me down, and it’s like I’m back in day care or something.

  “Maxwell?” Mrs. Addison is saying. She’s trying to pry my hands away from my ears. “Maxwell, please forget about it, okay? Forget I said it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, okay? And I’ll make sure of that, I promise. I swear on my honor, he can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I’m going to make that very clear to the parole board, and to his lawyer. Very clear indeed.”

  Finally I take my hands off my ears, which wasn’t really working because I could still hear everything they said, and big surprise, I’m sitting in the corner of the room, down on the floor with my knees all hunched up, and I don’t even remember how I got here.

  It’s like I blanked out or something, and the nurse is giving me this cup of water, and the weird thing is she’s crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t,” she says. “I cry easy, don’t you worry about it.”

  I do worry about it, though, because if she’s crying, I must have hit her and I don’t remember it. Which, if you think about it, is really scary. Who knows what I might do and then not remember it?

  The worst thing happens later, in the cafeteria.

  Freak has this thing about American chop suey. He loves the stuff. The gooier the better. You’d never believe a person so small could eat so much, and when he holds up his plate, he always says, “Please, sir, more gruel,” and I always say, “It’s American chop suey, not gruel, I looked up gruel, remember?” and he always goes, “I beg of you, sir, more gruel!” and so finally I go up to get him another helping.

  When I come back, something is wrong. Freak’s face is all red and swollen up and he’s making this huk-huk-huk noise. He can’t talk, all he can do is look at me and try to say something with his eyes and then I’m running to get the nurse.

  “Quick. He can’t breathe! He can’t breathe!”

  Then she’s running as fast as me and she’s yelling for someone to call an ambulance.

  Back in the cafeteria, Freak is turning purple. The nurse grabs him and she’s got this plastic thing she shoves into his mouth and his eyes are closed up tight and one of his legs is kicking.

  I don’t know what to do so I start hopping up and down in one place, and when the kids keep crowding around I push them back, and the next thing Freak’s face is starting to look pink instead of purple and he’s breathing okay.

>   Right about then the ambulance comes, I never even heard the siren, and Freak is trying to talk in the croaky voice as they put him on the stretcher. “I’m okay,” he keeps saying. “Really, I’m okay, I just want to go home.”

  The deal is, once they call the ambulance, you have to go to the hospital and get checked out, that’s a rule. I keep trying to get into the back of the ambulance with him, but they won’t let me. Finally Mrs. Addison has to come out and pull me away until the ambulance leaves with just the light going and not the siren.

  “You’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?” she says, walking me back into the school.

  “It’s not me who had quite a day,” I say. “Kevin is the one. All he did was try and eat his lunch.”

  Mrs. Addison gives me this look, and then she goes, “You’re going to be okay, Maxwell Kane. I’m sure of it now.”

  She’s okay for a principal, but for some reason I still can’t make her understand that it’s not me who had a really bad Friday the Thirteenth.

  And I swear on the dictionary, if Freak ever tries to eat American chop suey again, I’ll dump it on his head or something.

  Gram lets me stay home the next day because Freak is getting out of the hospital, and I’m right on the front step when the Fair Gwen pulls up in her car. Freak is riding in the back, you can barely see him in the window, and he’s got this big grin that makes me feel like everything is going to be okay, the way everybody keeps saying.

  I go, “Is it okay if I carry him inside?” and the Fair Gwen says, “Of course.”

  “He has to rest,” she says. “He stays in the house until I say different, is that understood?”

  In his room, Freak is right away ordering me around, bring me this and go do that, and you’d never guess he’s been sick.

  “A minor incident,” he says. “Easily corrected by biogenic intervention.”