Bringing Down the Mouse Read Free Page A

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    From the long corridor of aluminum lockers, Charlie moved into the brightly lit, semicircular front atrium, which was dominated by the glass revolving doors. Five minutes to the opening bell, the doors were pretty much pinwheels of glass, spitting students into the school’s main building in a steady metronome of motion. When the school had been built back in the seventies, it had seemed as good a design as any.
    Like most modern interpretations of things that were very old, the Nagassack front entrance didn’t make a lot of sense. The revolving door, fluorescent lights,and space-age windows made the place look like one of the high-tech firms out on Route 128. Meanwhile, the wooden rafters, paneled walls, and intensely wild brush that ringed most of the campus made you feel as if you were standing in the foyer of some sort of hunting cabin. Skulking toward the vending machine, Charlie wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen moose antlers jutting out from the nearest wall.
    Almost there, Charlie mouthed to himself as he covered the last few yards. His sneakers were almost soundless against the tiled floor. He could feel Jeremy’s eyes on him from his secure position back by the lockers. A few more steps . Charlie could almost make out his reflection in the front glass of the vending machine, and a burst of anticipation moved through him. The machine was more than simply a depository for some bizarre, phenomenally healthy form of snack food. At Nagassack, the vending machine was an anchor in the chaotic, ever-changing flux of life. Only two weeks into sixth grade, the quest for Yum Yum Chippers had become an integral part of Charlie’s routine.
    He tiptoed the last few feet to the machine. Glancing around to make sure he was still unnoticed, he dug a hand into his back pocket, counting out the proper number of coins. His jeans were loose, which made findingthe right coins significantly easier. In point of fact, all his clothes were loose; he was positively swimming in his collared long-sleeve shirt, and his socks were balled up around his ankles. Like his best friend, Jeremy, Charlie had always been too skinny. Up until very recently, that hadn’t mattered. Charlie wasn’t exactly sure when kids had started to notice how different other kids could be, but things seemed to be getting progressively worse. Not Lord of the Flies , fight-to-the-death-on-a-jungle-island worse, but bad enough.
    He retrieved the coins from his pocket and quickly shoved them into the slot halfway up the vending machine. Then he hit the correct button with his palm, and watched as the corkscrew mechanism behind the glass slowly twisted the Yum Yum Chippers toward the front. “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.” And then finally, the chips plummeted the few feet to the base of the machine. With a motion like a striking snake, Charlie’s right arm shot out and into the machine’s retrieval bin, and his fingers closed on the smooth, crinkly surface of the Yum Yum Chippers bag. Grinning, Charlie turned back toward Jeremy and the safety of the lockers.
    â€œWell, look what we have here. My favorite little buddy with my favorite snack.”
    Charlie exhaled as he looked up into the oblong,doughy face of Dylan Wigglesworth. He could hear Liam Anthony and Dusty Bickle cackling from somewhere behind their leader, but he couldn’t see past the mountainous giant’s hulking form.
    â€œDylan, doesn’t this get old after a while?”
    Charlie tried to sound tough, but inside, he was mostly liquid. It was true, this had been going on for quite a while now; after all, he, Dylan, and most of his class at Nagassack had been going to school together since kindergarten. In the beginning, they had all been roughly the same size, and Dylan had simply been a run-of-the-mill jerk, making fun of Charlie and pretty much everyone else, just for the sheer pleasure of it. But as their physical geometry changed, and