The Trouble with Weasels Page 2

  One single Stink Dragon can bring down the property value of an entire village. They slither around leaving an awful sulfur-smelling trail of goo wherever they go. The village of Handel had an infestation of Stink Dragons two years ago and it just ruined them. They ended up burning the whole town down and starting over, just to get rid of that disgusting lingering fart smell. Nobody likes Stink Dragons. Period. End of story.

  So, calling someone a Stink Dragon is such an offensive put-down, I have to admit I’d never heard it said before. When Prince Roquefort said that to me, it was as if all the air left the building. Suddenly, everything in my vision went red, the hairs stood up on my ears, and I did something I swore I would never do. I pushed Roquefort. Hard.

  Now, Roquefort is not a big guy. He’s actually shorter than Kevin, which is saying something. Granted, he’s round enough that I didn’t think he’d go down as easy as he did. But down he went. Right on his stupid butt. His little prince hat went flying and Roquefort was laid out flat. I knew immediately I was in trouble.

  One of the prince’s brainless ogres jumped into action and grabbed me tightly by both arms while the other quickly checked Roquefort for injuries. As he was helped to his feet, the tiny tyrant’s face was a dark red, verging on purple. I’m not sure if it was from anger or embarrassment, or maybe both. He was so mad, I thought his head might pop like a balloon (and kind of hoped it would). He spun on his ogre henchmen and yelled, “UP!! Up! Up!” The larger ogre, I think his name is Buddy or something, picked up the prince and held him right in my face.

  “You just made a true enemy, rodent!” he sputtered, spit flying. (Technically, trolls are not part of the rodent family, but I decided to let that one slide.) “I challenge you to a JOUST!!” Let me tell you, the crowd was eating this up. They were murmuring up a storm.

  Now, a middle school joust is different from the ones you see knights in armor doing in the movies. It involves riding on the backs of oversized Swampfrogs, and the lances used are made out of Nerf. Which isn’t to say it isn’t kind of dangerous. Swampfrogs hop at a pretty good clip, and a Nerf lance can knock you off your ride. So I didn’t take this challenge lightly.

  “You’re on,” I said through clenched teeth. I’m not sure what I was thinking. “When? After school?”

  Roquefort put his hands on his hips and thought for a moment. “No. I have harpsichord lessons right after school. How about tomorrow before school?”

  This gave me pause. “Seriously? Before school? I’m not exactly a morning person.”

  Roquefort pulled out his phone and began tapping away at it.

  “Hmmm. What about later this evening? Like six-ish? Behind the gym?”

  That worked for me. “I’ll be there.” We quickly exchanged contact info. As Roquefort and his thugs walked off, I felt the tension drain out of me, leaving me feeling like a big steaming pile of stupid.

  As the crowd dispersed and Chester and I set off for class, I overheard someone quietly snicker and say, “Stink Dragons. That’s so perfect.” It probably wouldn’t have hurt so much if it didn’t feel so true.

  · 7 ·

  DINING IN DISTRESS

  We were at lunch, and Kevin had just heard the whole story. Word of my dust-up had spread through the school quickly, but he hadn’t learned the gory details until just then.

  “You always feel like you’re going to throw up,” I said as I peeked inside my lunchbox to see what my mom had packed in there this morning.

  “But this is bad. This is really bad. He’s the prince! He could throw us in prison or some-thing. I’d get eaten alive in prison! Literally!”

  “Calm yourself. And besides, it’s just me he’s all bent about.” I patted Kevin on the back. Chester nodded vigorously and tried to talk through a mouth full of peanut butter and mulberry preserves.

  “Ifsh ’onna be fine. You’ll shee.”

  Kevin actually looked a little green around the gills. “Zarf is gonna die! I can’t eat. There’s no way I could eat anything.” He pushed his lunch away and put his head in his hooves. His meal was a little miniature trough full of garbage and banana peels and stuff. I couldn’t eat a lunch like that on the best of days.

  “What if I told you I had some of my mom’s mutton?” I asked, reaching into my lunchbox. Suddenly, Kevin didn’t look so sick.

  “Well, I . . . if you . . . Okay. Perhaps I could choke down a bit of . . . I think I could do that.”

  I handed him the mutton, and my timid little friend tore into that leg of lamb like he was a velociraptor. I pulled out the rest of what my mother had packed—a plastic bag full of mung beetles and a Tupperware container holding three field mice. Before you judge me too harshly, remember that I am a troll, and trolls are carnivores. Sorry. Also, field mice happen to be delicious. Especially with some ranch dressing to dip them in. Besides, while I was eating the beetles, one of the mice opened one eye, saw that the coast was clear, and took off like a shot.

  He must have just been napping when my mom found him.

  Suddenly without a main course, I made my way to the cafeteria line to see what Ms. Locks had on the menu. Nine times out of ten, it was porridge and homemade bread. Ms. Locks and I even had a little porridge ritual. Every time, I’d get up there and ask her, all innocent like, “How’s the porridge today? Too hot? Too cold?”

  And she’d answer me back in her gruffest lunch lady voice.

  She always acted all angry about it, but then I’d catch her giggling as I walked away. A few times she’d caught my eye and given me a wink too. I liked it, ’cause a lot of the kids were scared of her. Ms. Locks is not a small woman, and she’s once or twice threatened to sit on kids if they didn’t behave. She’s apparently a pretty serious bear hunter, and there was even a rumor that she was a witch.

  I doubted the witch part, and thought she might have started the rumor herself just to keep kids in line. So I let her growl at me, but it was our little running joke.

  Today as I reached the end of the line, she leaned over and caught me by the shoulder. “OH, YOU’RE IN TROUBLE TODAY!” she announced in a loud voice so the other kids could hear. She pulled me around the corner into the kitchen, behind the cauldrons. Then she leaned in with a concerned smile. “You all right?”

  I was caught off guard. “What? Oh. ’Cause of the joust?”

  “Yeah. I heard about it. You ever been in a joust?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Listen, get there early. And make sure you get to choose your own Swampfrog. If you’re gonna win, you need a sturdy frog. Don’t let the prince decide.”

  “Okay.” I was looking around, wanting to get back to Kevin and Chester. Nothing could destroy a kid’s reputation faster than being seen hanging out with the lunch lady. Not that I really had a reputation to destroy.

  “And don’t let that little turd give you any trouble, okay?” She gave me a shake. “If he does, you tell him to come talk to Goldie, all right? I was babysitting his daddy the king back when he was still in diapers.”

  She gave me one last meaningful look before letting me go.

  I backed out of the kitchen rubbing my arm. “Thanks . . . I think?”

  When I got back to the table, it looked like a minor mutton massacre had taken place. Kevin was sitting there holding a gnarled bone, sullenly picking his teeth.

  Chester sat across from him intently studying a book of old jokes. He was so absorbed in his studies, he was unaware that a big gooey piece of meat was stuck to the side of his jester’s cap.

  “Now that,” I told him as I sat down, “is pretty funny.”

  · 8 ·

  DEAD TROLL WALKING

  The rest of the day was spent being pointed at. A lot of people stared. I heard the term “Stink Dragons” whispered behind my ba
ck a few times. Altogether just a great way to spend an afternoon.

  So after school, with a few hours to kill before the Big Showdown, Kevin and Chester and I headed to our favorite hangout spot—the tree house. It’s a short walk, but it felt long because Kevin was spazzing out so badly.

  Having a friend who’s a World Class Worrier can be bad enough, but when they have an actual, legitimate reason to worry, it’s like pouring gas on a fire.

  Now, there are a lot of types of trees in which you could build a tree house. You could put one in an elm, an oak . . . maybe even a garbagefig tree, if you don’t mind the smell. But of course we weren’t that smart. We built ours in a Wishing Tree.

  That may sound great, a Wishing Tree, but let me explain. It turns out the Wishing Trees around here don’t GRANT wishes. They MAKE wishes. Constantly. And it can get really tiring.

  We figured out a while back that if we give our particular tree enough peanut butter, it shuts him up for a while. But we have to put up with his NUM NUM NUM noises and smacking his lips a lot while he eats it. We’ve all pretty well learned to tune it out.

  When we showed up today, the tree started right in with us. “Man, I really wish I wasn’t losing my leaves like this. I’m getting bald patches.” “Boy, I wish I had a girlfriend.” “Man, I wish I could ride a motorcycle.” That motorcycle wish was a constant one, though having been stuck in the exact same spot his whole life, I couldn’t blame him for dreaming about moving around a bit.

  We loaded him up with a full jar of extra-sticky peanut butter, which usually gives us about forty-five minutes of peace. Then we climbed up through his branches to our rickety old tree house. It creaked and groaned and shifted around a lot, but it was Home Sweet Home.

  Chester pulled an enormous bag of Wizard-Os out of his backpack and asked the question of the day:

  I had to think about it for a minute. “I guess so. Although I think I’m more nervous about riding the stupid frog than I am about the prince. What if I fall off in front of everybody? You know Sierra’ll be there.” (We don’t need to talk about Sierra. Cute girl. Enough said.)

  Kevin let out a quick little whimper. “I think you need to be less worried about damaging your reputation and more worried about damaging your spine. Or your central nervous system!”

  I rolled my eyes and lay down on my back, listening to the muted slurping and munching coming from the tree below. I let out a long sigh.

  “What’s that mean?” Chester asked through a mouth full of cheesy snack puffs.

  “It’s just something my gramps says. Means it’ll all be okay eventually.”

  We were all quiet for a while, listening to a breeze blow through the leaves. Sometimes those are the best moments with friends. When you all stop yammering for a minute.

  Chester pulled out the latest issue of the Knoble Knight comic—a series based on the real-life adventures of a super-brave knight who had died in battle a few years back.

  Chester was obsessed with the knight. I know for a fact that most of his underwear are Knoble Knight–themed. I also know that if he weren’t destined to be a court jester, his dream would be to go to knight school.

  The three of us just hung out for a while. We played gin rummy with a deck of bikini-maiden cards we kept hidden in a hole in the tree. Kevin and I listened to some truly awful Rapunzel jokes that Chester was working on. I got the high score on Angry Dragons on my phone.

  We just killed time until there was no more time to kill. Then we headed off to the joust.

  · 9 ·

  FROG ON YOUR THROAT

  I’ll admit I was shocked by the size of the crowd that had gathered behind the gym. By the time we got there, it seemed like half of the school was milling around. A few of the artsier students had silk-screened some joust T-shirts and were loudly selling them.

  They were all standing just off of the athletic field, close enough to the building that they couldn’t be seen by any teachers heading to their cars in the parking lot.

  Everyone noticed us approaching and grew silent. The crowd parted to reveal Prince Roquefort and his ogres leaning against an elaborately decorated wagon. One from the king’s personal collection, obviously. Sitting atop the wagon was a large cage, containing four irritated-looking Swampfrogs.

  “So you didn’t wuss out after all,” the prince said in a voice like nails on a chalkboard. His eyes were at half-mast, giving him a look both sinister and dim-witted. Okay . . . mostly just dim-witted.

  “No, no. I’m all in, Your Splendiferousness,” I said as I bowed sarcastically, hearing a little nervous squeak out of Kevin. I was acting pretty tough, but I’ll admit I was nervous. I even had that nervous have-to-pee feeling. Why does your body always want you to go to the bathroom when you get nervous? Maybe it figures there’s not too much trouble you can get into in the john.

  “I’ve brought four of our best Swampfrogs from the royal stables. Obviously, as I’ve provided them, you may choose your frog.” The prince was really enjoying his role in this. “Fair is fair.”

  So I approached the cage with Chester and a shivering Kevin close behind me. The ogre that I’m pretty sure wasn’t named Buddy opened the door just wide enough for me to reach in and grab a frog. Remembering Ms. Locks’s words of advice, I grabbed the largest, meanest-looking one by a horn and pulled. I was unprepared for what happened next.

  This stupid Swampfrog bolted like an escaped mental patient. But I held on. I’m not entirely sure why I held on as this insane amphibian jumped around the field smashing my face repeatedly into the ground—but I did. No way was I letting one of the royal Swampfrogs get away. I’d never hear the end of that.

  Chester had grabbed a long piece of rope from one of the ogres, and was coming across the field to tie me to the frog—standard practice—when he caught a giant flipper-foot to the jaw.

  His jester hat went flying as I heard his teeth slam together, but he kept coming. He dove on us and started looping the rope around me and the frog as best he could.

  Kevin was yelling, “Rub its nose! I read it online!”

  I was completely out of breath. “Frogs don’t . . . I don’t . . . Frogs don’t have noses, do they??” I gasped.

  “Then rub where a nose would normally be! It calms them down!”

  So Kevin and I frantically rubbed away at its gooey face and—I have to give Kevin full credit here—it worked. After a couple of minutes, the frog was just lying there, purring. Purring! Who knew?

  We all lay there for a few moments, gasping for breath. My face was throbbing and my ears were ringing.

  I rolled the frog over until I was sitting on its back, the rope tied across my lap. I looked down at my friends, sprawled out on the ground around me. Kevin was whimpering again. Chester’s lip was bleeding pretty badly.

  · 10 ·

  JOUST THE TWO OF US

  I slowly got the feel for riding my Swampfrog. Now that he wasn’t completely freaking out, it was only mildly terrifying. So I took my trusty steed on a couple of laps around the goal posts, testing his hops and getting my balance, and then headed back over to the (highly entertained, at this point) crowd.

  Sitting there calmly upon his own frog was the prince, with not a hair on his head out of place. He was holding his lance upright and looking all regal. Jerk.

  “I have to say, that little show was worth the price of admission all by itself,” he smirked.

  “Whatever,” I said, still considerably out of breath. I felt like I might yarf, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else know that. “Let’s do this.”

  So Buddy the ogre handed me my Nerf lance, and the prince and I headed out onto the field. The lance felt good in my hand. It was squishy, but had a firm core. No one would get seriously hurt by one of these, but you could get popped pretty good with a direct bl
ow.

  At this point, to my surprise, Chester stepped out onto the field with us, still adjusting his hat and brushing grass off of his tunic.

  He shouted as he turned to the crowd and raised his hands in the air. “My name is Chester Flintwater and I will be your master of ceremonies for the joust today!”

  A groan went through the crowd. Chester was notorious, and not in a good way.

  “Before the main event, I thought I would start you all off with a few jokes!” Another loud groan from the crowd.

  “Okay. Joke one! You ready? Where does King Cheznott hide his armies? Huh?” No one responded, but Chester was going for it. “Up his sleevies!!”

  There was complete silence from the gathered students except for someone in the back who coughed quietly.

  “Arms? Sleeves?” He was visibly deflating at the lack of laughs. “No?” His smile slowly turned into a grimace as if the crowd had disappointed him. “Fine,” he said, almost under his breath. “Here’s Prince Roquefort and Zarf to . . . you know.” He walked off the field dejectedly.

  So Prince Roquefort and I shook hands, which is customary, but it wasn’t easy, as he was giving me his shifty little cheese-eating grin the whole time.