Trollhunters Read Free Page B

forgot who was banishing whom and for what.
    It didn’t really matter, because the festival had evolved over time as a way for the town to sell itself to itself. For seven days, there were art walks with overpriced masterworks slopped
together by local artisans; there were racks filled with unsellable clothing at bargain prices; there were free band concerts under public park gazebos; there were special deals at car dealerships,
restaurants, and insurance offices. And it all ended right here at Saint B. High with a big football game followed by
Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line
, an abridged production done right
on the field. You got your sports and your culture in one place, without even having to set down your chili-cheese dog.
    That year promised to bring them out in droves, and not just because the team was undefeated. Off the western end of the school was Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field, your typical
goalposts-and-floodlights deal with plenty of nooks for kids to smuggle in beer and make out. The next Friday, however, was to be the debut of our jumbotron, a freakishly large video screen that
had been under wraps for weeks as workers completed the installation. Already that morning they were atop the high scaffold, adjusting their hard hats.
    The whole moronic festival, which I could not have cared less about, began on Saturday—the next day—which meant that these were the final precious hours before everyone went nuts
decking the town in Saint B. red and white. It was the worst time of year for kids like me, who weren’t good at sports, or drama, or anything, really.
    I exited the bus last, and got no farther than the sidewalk before a kid I knew from the unpopular table at lunch came barreling out of the main entrance. He grabbed hold of me to stop his
momentum. We both swung around like we were ballroom dancing. He jabbed a finger at the school.
    “Tub…” he panted. “Trophy Cave…”
    That was all he needed to say. If there was one spot in school reserved for the darkest acts of bullying, it was the Trophy Cave, a third-floor hallway that housed the school’s trophy
collection. It had once been the location of the French and German classes, but those electives had been cut. The fluorescents had long before either burned out or been tampered with, and the hall
existed as a dim channel of evil to be avoided at all costs, even if it meant being late for class or clenching your bladder for another period. On a regular basis you could hear the blubbers of
underclassmen receiving their first (or fourteenth) wedgies.
    Some kids were cursed enough to have their lockers located in this torture chamber. Tobias “Tubby” D., my best friend, was one of them.
    Before I reached the Trophy Cave, I knew the identity of the assailant. A steady
SMACK, SMACK
was booming through the hall—the patented sound of Steve Jorgensen-Warner. Steve
dribbled a basketball wherever he went. Classes, the cafeteria, the restrooms, the parking lot. Some teachers, coaches mostly, even let him bounce the ball in class to help him concentrate on
schoolwork while other students ground their teeth in silent irritation.
    Steve, obviously, was not just another student. Yes, he was captain of the basketball squad. And yes, he was the star running back of the football team. That still doesn’t give you a
complete picture. He was handsome in the oddest way. His eyes were too small and his nose piggish; he had a ridiculous amount of hair and a couple of teeth that looked like fangs. Yet somehow in
combination these features were sort of mesmerizing. His unnatural muscular bulk and odd way of speaking—crisply, politely, as if he were a foreign student who had learned English in a
class—completed the strange package. There was nobody else like Steve Jorgensen-Warner. What the teachers didn’t know is that there was also nobody crueler.
    A crowd had gathered. I hopped to my tiptoes and saw Tub on his knees, his freckled face beet