Max and the Millions

by Ross Montgomery

  Sasha sank back into his chair. Mr. Pitt smiled.

  “The thing is, Max—I know it was Sasha’s fault as well. I could say that the girls were to blame, too. I could even say that it was my fault for leaving fifty young girls under the care of two ten-year-old boys, ha ha! But I’m not going to do that. And do you know why, Max?”

  Mr. Pitt leaned forward, until it seemed like his face was only inches from Max’s.

  “Because I believe in what’s known as getting rid of the rot. Because if St. Goliath’s is ever going to be the best school in the country—which it will—then we want the smartest children. The best athletes. The richest parents. We have plenty of room for people like Sasha…but none for people like you or Mr. Darrow. Not anymore.”

  Sasha stood back up. “Sir, this is outrageous! Max hasn’t done anything wrong! You can’t expel him just because—”

  Mr. Pitt lifted the phone. “It’d be very easy to expel you, too, Sasha! I could call your parents right now and tell them Mr. Darrow’s room was so filthy when I turned up, the floor was infested with bugs! I could write you a permanent record so vile, so disgusting, that no school will ever take you!”

  Sasha looked at the phone, his eyes widening.

  “Your choice. The question is…is Max worth it?”

  Max waited for Sasha to answer—but he didn’t. He was looking at Max helplessly, his face torn.

  “Sasha?” said Max.

  Sasha looked away, then quietly sat down. Mr. Pitt laughed.

  “Excellent choice, Sasha! Why lose your place at St. Goliath’s for someone like Max? By tomorrow, he’ll be a distant memory, just like Mr. Darrow!”

  Max stared at Sasha in disbelief, but Sasha wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was staring at the floor, his face burning red under the hood of his onesie.

  Mr. Pitt took a deep, satisfied breath.

  “Soon, the last traces of Mr. Darrow will be gone. I’ve already cleared that old bedroom, and every inch of it is sitting in the bins, waiting to be destroyed. I tell you, it’s not been easy making St. Goliath’s perfect—the Pitt Building’s cost so much that there’s no money left to pay the builders! But I’m not worried about small details like that. By the time anyone works out that the school is bankrupt, I’ll be long gone. And Sasha will never breathe a word of this to anyone, will you, Sasha?”

  Sasha kept staring at the floor.

  A buzzer rang on Pitt’s desk.

  “Aha!” said Mr. Pitt cheerily. “That’ll be the governors, waiting for me at the school gates! And just in time, too—looks like the builders have finished cleaning the grounds. You two can wait here until I’m done.” He strode toward the door. “Oh, and here you go, boys—something to remember Mr. Darrow by.”

  He placed the model castle on the desk. Max reached out to take it—

  SMASH

  Mr. Pitt crushed the castle to splinters with his fist.

  “I always win, Max. Never forget that.”

  He stepped out the door and locked it behind him.

  Max stared at the shattered castle. The last remnant of the model world—gone. He had done everything he could to help Mr. Darrow, and he had failed.

  Worse than that, he had failed Luke. He had failed millions of tiny people. They had all been relying on him…and now they were gone.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder—Sasha was trying to talk to him.

  “Max, listen—”

  He shoved the hand off.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Sasha—I get it. We were never really friends, were we?”

  Sasha looked surprised, but Max simply turned his chair away.

  “It’s fine—I understand. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

  Max closed his eyes and waited for the old silence to settle over them once again. The one that had always signaled the end of their conversations in the past…

  But the silence didn’t come. Sasha swung his chair back round.

  “How can you say that? How can you say we’re not friends?” he cried.

  Max was shocked by how hurt Sasha looked. “But—”

  “I told you, Max—when I say I’m friends with someone, I mean it!”

  He grabbed Max’s index finger and crossed his own over it. X.

  “Friends, remember?”

  Max was confused. “But…you just sold me out to Mr. Pitt!”

  Sasha rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? I’d never sell you out to that idiot—I was buying us time!”

  He heaved Max out of his chair.

  “Didn’t you hear what he said? He said Mr. Darrow’s room was filled with bugs. He was talking about the tiny people! He was standing right in front of the greatest invention in the history of mankind, and he didn’t have a clue! Which means they’ll be in the bins—they’re still alive! We can still save them!”

  Max’s face fell. “But how? Pitt’s locked us in here and—”

  The door burst open in a shower of wood. Max yelped and flew behind a chair.

  “Hi, guys,” said Joy.

  She rode astride the wooden statue of St. Goliath, which was held aloft by the Sparkle Pony Summer Club. The girls all looked the worse for wear after their sugar bender, but apart from a few who twitched beneath foil blankets, they were ready for action.

  “Joy! Girls!” said Max in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

  Joy jumped off the statue. “We’ve come to get you and Sasha out of here—and help you save the floor people!”

  Max’s eyes boggled. “You know about the floor people?”

  Joy twisted one foot into the carpet.

  “After you ran into the boardinghouse, Sasha told me everything—about Mr. Darrow’s room, and Luke, and what the two of you had been up to. I’d never have done what I did if I’d known! So Sasha and I came up with a plan to trick Pitt and save the tiny world!”

  “She knows where he took the trash bag, Max,” said Sasha. “Let’s go!”

  He tried to drag Max out of the room, but Max pulled back.

  “No, I can’t let you do this. Don’t you realize how much trouble you’re in? You’ve just broken down Pitt’s office door—you’ll all be expelled!” He stepped away from the others. “You still have a chance. Let me go save the floor people on my own. I’ll take responsibility for everything.”

  Sasha shook his head. “Max, we’re doing this together.”

  “But—”

  “No!” Sasha grabbed him again. “You’re the best friend I’ve had since I got here. You’re the one who showed me that small things matter. To never hurt a fly. I didn’t know about any of that before I met you, Max—if you’re doing this, then so am I!”

  Joy grabbed their hands. “Me too.”

  Max looked at Sasha and Joy. They really didn’t care about getting expelled.

  “OK,” said Max. “But we don’t have long—Mr. Pitt’s with the governors right now, and if they see us…”

  Max trailed off. Sasha, Joy and the Sparkle Pony Summer Club were all smiling at each other.

  “Yeah,” said Sasha, “about that…”

  * * *

  Mr. Pitt strolled toward the school gates, whistling a merry tune. Everything was going just as he planned—the school was finished, Max was on his way out, the governors were waiting at the gates to congratulate him….

  Mr. Pitt stopped. There was only one governor at the gate. And the longer Mr. Pitt looked, the more the governor looked like three five-year-old girls wearing a long coat and sitting on each other’s shoulders.

  “Oi, you!” Pitt shouted.

  The three girls leapt off each other and sprinted in different directions. Mr. Pitt chased the slowest and weakest one.

  “Come back here!” he bellowed. “When I catch you I’ll—”

 
He turned a corner and skidded to a stop. Standing in his path was the foreman, along with the rest of the builders. They looked furious.

  “What’s this about us not being paid?” said the foreman.

  Mr. Pitt’s face fell. “Er…pardon?”

  “I just got off the phone with a journalist called Mrs. Max,” said the foreman. “She’s doing an exposé on the school and how there’s no money left to pay us!”

  The builders stepped forward, cracking their knuckles and wielding their sandwich tins and thermos flasks menacingly. Mr. Pitt backed away.

  “That…that’s not true! There’s plenty of money! Now catch those girls, before—”

  “No, Damon,” said the foreman. “We’ve taken enough instructions from you, haven’t we, lads?”

  The builders grabbed Mr. Pitt and started dragging him backward. Mr. Pitt struggled feebly.

  “Let go! Get your hands off me!”

  Just before he was dragged behind the cricket sheds and pummeled mercilessly with sandwich tins and thermos flasks, Mr. Pitt looked up to the windows of his brand-new office. He could just make out Max and Sasha, standing beside the Sparkle Pony Summer Club.

  They were all waving at him.

  Luke sat in prison, waiting for death.

  He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long. The Bin King had ordered every person in the trash bag to search for the Red Queen. After they found her, she and Luke would be executed in front of the whole Floor.

  Luke wasn’t afraid of death anymore—it was all he deserved.

  He looked around his prison. He was inside the great curved belly of the whale. It was cavernous and dark, lit only by a single murky green torch. There was no way out except through the whale’s mouth—and within the mouth were ten guards.

  Luke laughed bitterly. As if he’d try to escape now—where would he go? Who would want to help him, after he’d doomed everyone to a lifetime of slavery and darkness?

  Luke’s heart stung. Not Ivy, that’s for certain. She’d been right all along. Luke had been given more choices than most people were given in their lifetimes, and every choice he had made had been wrong.

  Luke had always thought he was lonely. Now he knew what true loneliness was.

  The door at the end of the stomach opened. The guards had finally come for him.

  “I’m ready.” Luke stood up. “Let’s just get it over with.”

  No reply. Footsteps came toward him in the gloom.

  “You could try to sound a bit more excited about it,” said a voice.

  Luke frowned. The man in front of him was barely visible in the dim green light. He didn’t look like the other guards. He was much older, for one thing. And there was something…odd about him. Something Luke couldn’t put his finger on.

  “Who are you?” said Luke.

  The man didn’t answer. He studied Luke from head to toe.

  “Mmm. They were right. You do look like your father.”

  The man turned away and started wandering around the whale’s stomach, running his hand along the walls and muttering under his breath. Luke was baffled.

  “You knew my father?”

  The man laughed. “I knew all the rulers, back in the beginning. He was a smart bloke, your dad…before he found that castle, at least. Then he turned into a right berk. Power does that to most people—even happened to you, from what I hear!”

  The man sighed, and turned back to Luke.

  “Still, you did a pretty good job before you doomed us for all eternity and so on. Besides, it’s not the mistakes you make that matter, eh? It’s how you fix them.”

  Luke finally realized what was so odd about the man. His hair had no color—it was completely white.

  “Are you…the Wise Man?” he asked.

  The man thought about it.

  “Some people call me that,” he said. “But you can call me Mr. Darrow.”

  Max and Sasha ran down the stairs as fast as they could.

  “Are you sure the builders will be able to stop Pitt?” asked Max.

  “Of course!” said Sasha. “And even if they don’t, the girls have moved on to plan B, remember? All we have to do is find that trash bag!”

  They followed Joy’s directions until they reached the basement of the Pitt Building. At the end was a single door, labeled WASTE DISPOSAL.

  “That’s it!” said Sasha. “We just need to find the bag in there and—”

  They threw open the door…and stopped. The room was filled from floor to ceiling with black trash bags piled up in great tumbling heaps. It hadn’t been emptied for weeks.

  “Which bag is it?” said Max, looking around frantically.

  Sasha shook his head. “I—I don’t know! But it’s got to be one of them…right?”

  Max stared out across the sea of bags. There was no way of knowing which was the correct one. And even if they did find the right bag in time, what if they were already too late?

  “Oh, Luke,” Max whispered, “where are you?”

  Luke and Mr. Darrow walked out of the whale’s stomach. Ahead of them, the throat stretched into darkness.

  “Let’s go!” said Mr. Darrow. “We haven’t got much time!”

  He started walking away, then stopped. Luke was standing at the entrance to the whale’s stomach, staring at him.

  “Aren’t you going to explain any of this to me? Who you are? What you’re doing here? Why you’re helping me escape? The Great One? Demon?” He paused. “You know—everything?”

  Mr. Darrow groaned. “Fine. Mind if we walk and talk? We’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Yes!” Luke leapt forward, and the two of them set off, up the whale’s esophagus.

  “So, let’s start from the beginning,” said Mr. Darrow. “I made the world, and—”

  “Wait—you’re the Great One?” said Luke.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Mr. Darrow. “But don’t go telling everyone. I’ve been trying to keep it quiet. You see, I never meant to create the Floor. It was all an accident!”

  He kept walking.

  “I’ve been a modeler all my life—and my greatest dream was to build a living model. Nothing fancy: just a little paradise with palm trees, lagoons, a few people, that kind of thing. Something to look after. See, an old man like me, with no family, no kids, you get lonely. And when I heard about this special serum that creates life, I was hooked! One drop, add some light and water, and presto! Tiny, living people! Cool, eh?”

  Luke was completely lost. “Er…sure.”

  “A lot of people said it didn’t really exist,” said Mr. Darrow. “But I knew that the serum would be out there somewhere. All I needed to do was look properly. And I’m good at looking properly. Finally, after twenty years of searching, I found it—hidden away in the basement of an old abandoned museum in Massachusetts! Can you believe it?”

  “What’s a year?” said Luke. “What’s a museum? What’s Massachusetts?”

  Mr. Darrow blinked.

  “Er…none of that’s important. What matters is that I found the serum. Finally, after five years of building the perfect sandbox paradise, I was ready to add the serum and create a living world!”

  He blushed.

  “But then I, er…gaffed it all up. I was about to add the serum, and the light in my room switched itself off. I got up to fix it and tripped over a bin in the darkness! I knocked the sandbox paradise to the floor, spilled half the serum on that, and the other half on me. Suddenly I’m shrinking to microscopic size, right in front of my own eyes! Turns out if you get any on your skin, you become tiny too. Who knew?”

  Luke still had absolutely no idea what Mr. Darrow was talking about.

  “I was pretty hacked off, let me tell you! Looked like I was going to be stuck on the floor forever. My only hope was that Max would arrive. I’d
always told him to come to my room if I ever disappeared, so if something went wrong he’d be able to—”

  “Max?”

  “That giant boy you’ve been talking to this whole time. My apprentice. He’s done a great job, that lad; I’m proud of him.” Mr. Darrow frowned. “Don’t know who the other kid is, though. I’m pretty certain he’s the one who’s been stealing my carrots.”

  “Sorry—what are carrots?” said Luke.

  “Anyway,” said Mr. Darrow, ignoring him, “Max turned up, just like I’d predicted, but he didn’t see me shouting at him on the floor. Then when he went, he left the bedroom light on…so the serum came to life! All it needs to work is light and water, and the sand was still wet from the tiny lagoon, remember? So the sand spread across the entire floor, thousands of people turned up out of nowhere, and that’s how the Floor was made! Funny story, eh?”

  They had reached the start of the whale’s throat. Mr. Darrow glanced over the top of its enormous tongue.

  “Humph—looks like the guards are still there,” he muttered. “Never mind. We’ll go out the blowhole.”

  He pointed up. Far above them was a tiny opening—a pinprick glimmer in the darkness. Luke could just make out a long rope dangling down from the opening to the throat. Mr. Darrow chuckled.

  “And to think—I thought joining up the blowhole and the stomach was a mistake! Still, you live and learn.”

  He grabbed the rope and started climbing nimbly up the sides of the whale’s throat.

  “But hang on, you’re the Wise Man,” said Luke, following him. “You told everyone that the Great One made the world!”

  Mr. Darrow shrugged. “Well, yeah—I knew no one would listen to me if I told the truth. So I sort of made up a story instead. I had to find a way of bringing Max back—he was the only one who’d be able to help me return to normal size before Damon came along and—”

  “Damon? Don’t you mean Demon?” said Luke.

  “I mean Damon!” said Mr. Darrow. “See? That moron Malcolm wrote down everything wrong in that stupid Book of the Floor!”