Max and the Millions

by Ross Montgomery

  “I almost forgot to tell you—Mr. Pitt was talking about the new building! It’s going to be amazing—there’ll be an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a new sports hall…”

  Max nodded, but he wasn’t really paying attention—he was trying to spot Mr. Darrow. If he didn’t find the janitor soon, then he wouldn’t get a chance to show him the model castle before the holidays. He glanced back at Sasha, who was still talking.

  “…and a rooftop planetarium and a sushi kitchen and an augmented-reality science lab…”

  Max kept one eye on Sasha while searching the playing fields with the other. Maybe Mr. Darrow was in his vegetable patch. That was where he usually went when things at St. Goliath’s needed fixing. Max could sneak over there when the speech was over. Then maybe, finally, Mr. Darrow would tell him about the secret project, and…

  “…Mr. Darrow’s disappeared, too. No one knows where he is!”

  Max slammed to a halt. Sasha kept on walking.

  “Can you believe it? He didn’t turn up for work this morning, and when they went to his room, it was empty! He left everything behind—his clothes, his money…and you know what else they found? Models! Hundreds of them! Turns out he was a complete genius at building things, and no one had any idea!” Sasha shook his head. “Weird, right? I mean, everyone knew he was odd, what with all the shouting and swearing, and the fact that he never actually fixed anything, but to disappear without telling anyone? It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  There was silence. Sasha turned round.

  “I said, it doesn’t make any…”

  Sasha was alone. Max had left some time ago.

  Max stood in the staff corridor. The door in front of him was scuffed and dirty, just like the nameplate.

  MR. DARROW

  Children weren’t supposed to go anywhere near staff bedrooms. It was one of the most important rules at St. Goliath’s. You got detention just for setting foot on the top floor of the boardinghouse. Who knew what punishment you’d get for breaking into one of the rooms.

  But Mr. Darrow had made Max promise.

  If one day I suddenly disappear—no warning, no message, no nothing—go straight to my room. Make sure no one sees you…especially not Mr. Pitt.

  Why?

  You’ll know when you get there.

  Max didn’t like breaking rules. It made you stand out—and Max stood out enough already. People were always pointing at his hearing aids, treating him like he was stupid instead of deaf. Mr. Pitt showed him off like a performing seal every time a visitor came to the school.

  “This is Max, who, as you can see, has hearing problems. ISN’T THAT RIGHT, MAX? Here at St. Goliath’s, we make sure children with disabilities feel just like normal ones. ISN’T THAT RIGHT, MAX?”

  Then he’d pat Max on the head, shove him into the wrong classroom, and take the visitors to see the swimming pool.

  Max had lost his hearing when he was four years old. He couldn’t remember what it was like to not be deaf…but he could remember his last school. Max had loved it—a little brick building with small classrooms and nice teachers. Max had found it easy making friends there. If he didn’t understand something, the teachers would repeat it until he did.

  Then two years ago, Great-Aunt Meredith had sent him to St. Goliath’s. Suddenly Max was surrounded by hundreds of children in huge classrooms, and teachers who didn’t care whether Max understood or not. The only help he ever got was an hour-long visit from a teacher of the deaf who would ask if his hearing aids still worked, barely answer his questions, and then leave. Max never saw the same teacher twice.

  But Mr. Darrow was different. He never talked down to Max or treated him like he was a special case—in fact, he was just as rude to Max as he was to everyone else. He might be grumpy, but he was kind too; he took the time to listen. He would explain things as many times as he had to until Max understood.

  Why would he have left?

  Max turned to the framed picture beside the door. It was a watercolor painting of a welcome mat. He carefully reached behind the painting and found the key taped to the wall—just where Mr. Darrow had told him it would be. Max gave one final glance down the corridor, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  The bedroom was pitch dark. Max reached for the light switch and turned it on. A spray of sparks shot out and scorched his fingers.

  “Ow!” said Max.

  A bulb flickered weakly. None of the electrics in St. Goliath’s worked properly. Boarders had gotten used to the fact that pressing a light switch usually made the bulb explode, or set off all the fire alarms, or resulted in a far-off scream from down a corridor. This was because Mr. Darrow was the worst janitor in history. Instead of doing his job, he was always focused on some unnecessary task, like sorting ten thousand screws into different sizes while the school fell down around him. It was no secret that he and Mr. Pitt despised each other.

  Max looked round the bedroom. It was huge, grim and empty. Beside the door was a desk with a heap of old clothes next to it. The floor was covered with hundreds of bits of wire and screws and splinters of wood. On one side of the room was an overturned bin full of old food; on the other side was an unmade bed. There was one window and a broken ceiling fan…and that was it. It was pretty depressing, to be honest.

  But then, of course, there were the models.

  Max’s eyes sparkled. He had never seen them all together like this. Mr. Darrow always brought one or two to show him during their model-making lessons, but here…there were so many of them. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. And each one was so beautiful, so perfectly constructed, that you would never guess it had been made by human hands.

  Max picked up the nearest model. It was a blue whale, no bigger than a goldfish. Its surface was mottled with tiny die-cast barnacles. Each eyeball was an individually carved piece of glass. It was faultless. No matter how many times Max studied the model, he always expected it to start breathing.

  He remembered the very first time he had seen the whale—the day he met Mr. Darrow. Max could remember that meeting like it was yesterday. It was hard to forget being beaten over the head with a butternut squash.

  “Get out my shed!”

  Mr. Darrow had chased Max out of the shed, whacking him with the squash.

  “I’m sick of you stupid kids! Breaking into my vegetable patch, stealing all my carrots…!”

  Max wasn’t trying to steal Mr. Darrow’s carrots. He’d gone wandering round the school to find somewhere quiet to work on his models and stumbled upon Mr. Darrow’s potting shed. It was perfect—peaceful and secluded, on the other side of school, where no one would find him. Or so he thought.

  “I wasn’t stealing anything, I swear!” Max cried. “I was making this!”

  Max held up his latest work. It was a model of himself as a brave warrior king, complete with crown and sword, carved into the end of a pencil. Mr. Darrow stopped.

  “You made that?”

  Max was surprised—he’d expected another whack with the squash, or at the very least to be laughed at…but Mr. Darrow was transfixed. He took the model and studied it carefully.

  “Mmm—not bad,” said Mr. Darrow. “Nice symmetry, both arms kept a uniform length, good texturing grooves on the robes…Face is a mess, though. What you carving with?”

  Max held up his old math compass. Mr. Darrow snorted.

  “Well, that’s your problem right there! Might as well be carving with a brick.” He handed the pencil back to Max. “What’s your name?”

  “Max.”

  Mr. Darrow reached into his pocket.

  “Here, Max—tell me what you think of this one. Finished it yesterday. Like to know your opinion…from one model-maker to another.”

  Mr. Darrow placed the whale in the center of Max’s upturned palm. Max stared at the model for some tim
e, almost in shock. He had never seen anything so perfect before.

  “I know,” said Mr. Darrow, shaking his head. “It’s a mess. The inside’s even worse.”

  Max blinked. “There’s…an inside?”

  Mr. Darrow took a set of tweezers from his pocket and opened the whale’s mouth. Max was floored. Inside were two precise rows of perfectly sculpted teeth, lined with krill, and a wide speckled tongue draped with seaweed. A bent snorkel no thicker than a human hair stuck out of the roof of the whale’s mouth. You could see all the way down its glistening throat. Mr. Darrow pointed with the tweezers.

  “See there? Linked the blowhole to the stomach so I could carve the epiglottis. Don’t know what I was thinking—they’re two completely different organ systems! Ah well.”

  Max was amazed. “But…this is the best model I’ve ever seen! I’d give anything to make something as good as this!”

  Mr. Darrow shrugged. “I’ve been practicing my whole life, Max. Maybe one day—if you never get married or have any children and hate your job—you’ll be as good as—”

  “Will you teach me?”

  The second Max said it, Mr. Darrow’s face changed. Max could remember the exact look in the janitor’s eyes when it happened. It was like he’d stumbled over the piece of a puzzle he’d lost years ago and then forgotten about.

  “Teach you?” Mr. Darrow said, almost to himself.

  “I’ll practice every day,” said Max. “I’m a hard worker.”

  Mr. Darrow was silent for some time. He chewed thoughtfully on what was left of the squash.

  “You know, Max…you may be in luck. I could do with an extra pair of hands. An apprentice, if you will. Someone to help me with a big project I’ve been working on.”

  “Another model?” said Max.

  For the first time, Mr. Darrow had laughed.

  “Sort of…and sort of not. To tell you the truth, it’s more than just a model. It’s going to change the world.”

  Max’s eyes widened. “What is it?”

  Mr. Darrow shook his head. “I can’t tell you—not yet, anyway. First we have to work on that shoddy carving of yours, get you some decent tools. Then, when you’re finally good enough, I’ll let you in on it. It’ll be hard work, you know—don’t think I’m going to go easy on you!”

  Mr. Darrow had looked at him—and said something no one had said to Max in a very, very long time.

  “Did you understand me, Max?”

  * * *

  Max looked around Mr. Darrow’s bedroom. He’d thought he understood—but he was wrong. He had spent a whole year working with Mr. Darrow, spending every break and lunchtime at his vegetable patch and learning new modeling skills. He’d carved and scraped and sanded until his hands had almost bled. He’d thought they were friends…but now Mr. Darrow was gone.

  He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Max picked up the goggles from the desk beside him. Mr. Darrow had left them too, just like he’d left everything else. It didn’t make any sense. The goggles were his most prized possession—he’d let Max wear them only once or twice, and with strict supervision. After all, they were the only ones of their kind in the world.

  Just like the models.

  That’s when Max realized. He looked at the shelves of models, his heart soaring.

  “He can’t have left! He’d never leave the models behind!”

  Suddenly it all made sense. Mr. Darrow hadn’t disappeared—it was something to do with the secret project. That was why he’d told Max to come up here—so he would see the models. So he would understand that Mr. Darrow hadn’t abandoned him. He was coming back.

  Max looked round the room frantically. He was about to leave for eight whole weeks—he had to leave a message for Mr. Darrow, something that showed Max understood. But there wasn’t a single pencil or a sheet of paper in sight.

  Max took the model castle out of his pocket and grabbed a scalpel from the desk. He quickly carved a series of tiny letters in the base, just above his name:

  Then he walked to the middle of the room and placed the castle on the floor. If Mr. Darrow came back—no, when he came back—it would be the first thing he’d see. He’d know straightaway that Max had come up here, just like he’d asked, and…

  Max stopped. There was something on the floor in front of him, nestled among the screws and splinters and wires. Something so small it was easy to overlook. Max was good at noticing small things—when you’ve lost your hearing, you rely on your other senses more than most people. People often forgot to get Max’s attention before they started talking to him, so he had learned to keep his eyes peeled at all times. He’d see tiny movements, small changes, minute differences….

  He’d notice unusual things.

  Max picked up Mr. Darrow’s microscope goggles and pulled them over his head. The room immediately warped and shifted around him. Max could see every speck of dust. Looking at the back of his hand was like looking at the surface of the moon. He turned to the floor, focused the lenses…and frowned.

  “What the…?”

  Max felt a sudden bang through his feet. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it—but Max did. A door had been slammed on the floor below. There was another bang, and another.

  The speech had finished—everyone was coming back. In a few seconds, the staff corridor was going to be filled with teachers.

  Max tore off the goggles and flew out the door. He fumbled for the light switch as he went.

  Click.

  The light stayed on. Max panicked.

  “Come on!”

  Click click click.

  It was no good—the light wasn’t switching off. Max could feel the noises getting stronger and stronger through his feet. He was going to have to leave the room as it was.

  Max took one final look at Mr. Darrow’s bedroom. There were lots of things he didn’t understand—where Mr. Darrow had gone, why he had left…

  But the thing on the floor made the least sense of all.

  Why was there sand in Mr. Darrow’s bedroom?

  And why was it covered in tiny palm trees?

  “Weird,” said Max.

  He closed the door.

  Max’s footsteps faded down the corridor. The bedroom fell into silence once more.

  The light stayed on. It filled the empty room, casting shadows on the models, their glass eyes sparkling.

  Of course, the room wasn’t really empty. There’s no such thing as an empty room. There’s life wherever you go—mice under the floorboards, moths in the curtains, dust mites in the air…there’s a whole universe living alongside us and we barely even notice it.

  Take the handful of sand on the floor. If Max had studied it for a little longer, he might have seen that it was covered in more than just tiny palm trees. He might have seen that its surface was also flecked with spots of red, green and blue.

  He might have seen that the spots were moving.

  But Max didn’t see the spots tremble and then disappear. He didn’t see the sand grow and spread across the floor all by itself. No one did. The world is filled with millions of miracles that no one sees.

  No one saw what emerged from the sand, either. It was almost too small to make out…and even if someone had seen it, they probably wouldn’t have believed their eyes.

  It was a tiny wooden hut.

  The summer holidays were almost over. Mr. Pitt stood at the school gates, practicing his speech.

  “…delighted to welcome you all back to St. Goliath’s….As you can see, the Pitt Building is finally complete….”

  Not true. The builders had tried to explain to Mr. Pitt that eight weeks wasn’t enough time to build everything he’d asked for, but Mr. Pitt was insistent. The school governors were going to arrive at the end of the day, and if they didn’t like what they saw, then Mr. Pit
t was as good as sacked. He told the builders that if the work wasn’t finished on time, they’d be facing a lawsuit so big it’d make their eyes water.

  Mr. Pitt wasn’t worried—he always got what he wanted. Besides, he had a triumphant speech to prepare.

  “As headmaster I pride myself on placing students first…care and concern for each one of you, blah blah blah…”

  He stopped. A boy with a suitcase was walking through the school gates ahead of him.

  “Oi, you!” yelled Mr. Pitt. “What are you doing? This is private property!”

  The boy stopped in his tracks. “I—I’m Max, sir. I go to school here.”

  “Never heard of you!” Mr. Pitt barked. “Now get lost, before I shove that suitcase…”

  The headmaster saw Max’s hearing aids and finally remembered who he was. He switched from anger to friendliness like someone changing channels on a TV.

  “Ah, Max! How wonderful to— I SAID, HOW WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU.”

  The shout made Max’s hearing aids give a whistle of feedback, and he winced. “You don’t need to shout, sir, it actually makes it harder for me to—”

  “WHY ARE YOU HERE, MAX? TERM DOESN’T START UNTIL MONDAY.”

  Max sighed and took a step back so Mr. Pitt couldn’t spit on him quite as much.

  “My great-aunt Meredith booked my ticket back for today, sir,” he explained. “I tried to tell her it was too early, but she just fell asleep. Can I stay in the boardinghouse until term starts?”

  Mr. Pitt grimaced. “IS THERE NOWHERE ELSE YOU CAN GO?”

  Max looked around. “Er…I guess I could sleep out here under my suitcase.”

  Mr. Pitt thought about it.

  “THAT’S A KIND OFFER, MAX, BUT SOMEBODY MIGHT SEE YOU.” He sighed. “I SUPPOSE YOU’LL HAVE TO STAY IN THE BOARDINGHOUSE.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “WE’LL BILL YOUR AUNT FOR THE EXTRA DAYS. THIS WAY, PLEASE.”