Freak the Mighty Rejacket

1 Praise for Freak the Mighty : A small classic, funny-sad, page-turning Suspenseful, touching and swiftlypersuasive about its most unusual central characters,this remarkable book takes you through dark territory, but is written with humour and simplicity. It celebrates language, loyalty and imagination, andleaves you smiling. The Sunday Times As funny as it is touching and convincing. The Guardian Moving and inspirational. Funday Times Uplifting. The Bookseller A heart-breaking tale. Freak the Mightyofferseverything you could possibly wish for in a reading now and prepare to sob your heart out. Red House This is an exciting and emotional read. Highlyrecommended. CarouselFreak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page i An incredibly moving, often witty a wonderfulbook. A captivating, memorable story.

2 Glasgow Sunday Herald I m not a reader easily brought to tears, but this onemade me cry. Books For Keeps This book was Read this book! Teen Titles Book Review Magazine An uplifting and utterly compelling tale. Junior Education This is a gripping, heart-warming story, full oftenderness and laughs cleverly mixed with some scaryand tragic moments. You may want to keep a hankiehandy! Primary TimesAn American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults A Judy Lopez Memorial Award Honour BookFreak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page iiFreak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page iiiThis edition first published in the UK in 2004 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. Copyright 1993 by Rodman rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Scholastic Inc., 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, USAThe right of Rodman Philbrick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.

3 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British /06 ISBN 9780746087251 Printed in Great Britain. Freak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page ivTo the real Kevin, and the real Gwen, with love. Freak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page vFreak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page vi1 The Unvanquished Truth 1I never had a brain until Freak came along and letme borrow his for a while, and that s the truth, thewhole truth.

4 The unvanquished truth, is how Freakwould say it, and for a long time it was him who didthe talking. Except I had a way of saying things withmy fists and my feet even before we became Freakthe Mighty , slaying dragons and fools and walkinghigh above the me Kicker for a time this was day care,the year Gram and Grim took me over and I hada thing about booting anyone who dared to touchme. Because they were alwaystrying to throw a hugon me, like it was a medicine I and Grim, bless their pointed little heads,they re my mother s people, herparents, and theyfigured whoa! better put this little critter with otherFreak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page 1little critters his own age, maybe it will improve , right! Instead, what happened, I inventedgames like kick-boxing and kick-knees and kick-faces and kick-teachers, and kick-the-other-little-day-care-critters, because I knew what a rotten liethat hug stuff was.

5 Oh, I s when I got my first look at Freak , that yearof the phoney hugs. He didn t look so different backthen, we were all of us pretty small , right? But hewasn t in the playroom with us every day, just nowand then he d show up. Looking sort of fierce ishow I remember him. Except later it was Freakhimself who taught me that remembering is a greatinvention of the mind, and if you try hard enoughyou can remember anything, whether it reallyhappened or maybe he wasn t really all thatfierce in daycare, except I m pretty sure he did hit a kid with hiscrutch once, whacked the little brat pretty for some reason little Kicker never got aroundto kicking little it was those crutches kept me fromlashing out at him, man those crutches were cool. Iwanted a pair for myself. And when little Freakshowed up one day with these shiny braces strappedFREAK THE MIGHTY2 Freak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page 2to his crooked legs, metal tubes right up to his hips,why those were even morecool than crutches.

6 I m Robot Man, little Freak would go, makingthese weird robot noises as he humped himselfaround the playground. Rrrr..rrr..rrr..like hehad robot motors inside his legs, going rrrrr..rrrr..rrrr, and this look, like don t mess with me, man,maybe I got a laser cannon hidden inside these legbraces, smoke a hole right through you. Noquestion, Freak was hooked on robots even backthen, this little guy two feet tall, and already heknew what he for a long time I never saw Freak any more,one day he just never came back to day care, and thenext thing I remember I m like in the third grade orsomething and I catch a glimpse of this yellow-haired kid scowling at me from one of those cripplevans. Man, they were death-ray eyes, and I think,hey, that s him, the robot boy, and it was like whoa!because I d forgotten all about him, day care was ablank place in my head, and nobody had called meKicker for a long Max they were calling me, or Max Factor, orthis one butthead in class called me Maxi Pad,until I persuaded him otherwise.

7 Gram and Grimalways called me Maxwell, though, which is3 THE UNVANQUISHED TRUTHF reak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page 3supposed to be my real name, and sometimes Ihated that worst of all. Maxwell, out in the kitchen one night, after supperwhispering to Gram had she noticed how muchMaxwell was getting to look like Him? Which is theway he always talked about my father, who hasmarried his dear departed daughter and produced,eek eek, Maxwell. Grim never says my father s name,just Him, like his name is too scary to s more than just the way Maxwell resembleshim, Grim says that night in the kitchen, the boy islikehim, we d better watch out, you never knowwhat he might do while we re sleeping. Like hisfather did. And Gram right away shushes him andsays don t ever say that, because little pictures havebig ears, which makes me run to the mirror to seeif it is my ears made me look like a butthead, huh?

8 Well, I wasa butthead, because like I said, I neverhad a brain until Freak moved down the street. Thesummer before eighth grade, right? That s thesummer I grew so fast that Grim said we d best letthe boy go barefoot, he s exploding out of his barefoot summer when I fell down a lot, andthe weirdo robot boy with his white-yellow hair andhis weird fierce eyes moved into the duplex downFREAK THE MIGHTY4 Freak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page 4the block with his beautiful brown-haired mum,the Fair Gwen of a falling-down goon would think that washer real name, right?Like I you paying attention here? Because you don teven know yet how we got to be Freak the was pretty cool, even if I do say so UNVANQUISHED TRUTHF reak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page 562Up from theDown UnderThat summer, let s see, I m still living in thebasement, my own private down under, in the littleroom Grim built for me there.

9 Glued up this cheappanelling, right? It sort of buckles away from theconcrete cellar walls, a regular ripple effect, but doI complain about the crummy panelling, or the rugthat smells like low tide? I do not. Because I likeitin the down under, got the place all to myself andno fear of Gram sticking her head in the door andsaying Maxwell dear, what areyou doing?Not that I ever domuch of anything. Grim has itfixed in his head I m at a dangerous age and theyneed to keep me under observation. Like I mightmake bombs or start a fire. Or whack out the localpets with my trusty slingshot or whatever except Inever hada slingshot, it was Grim who had oneFreak the Mighty 08/12/2006 11:41 Page 6when he was my age. The proof is right there in thefamily photo album. You can see this blurry littleminiature Grim with no front teeth, grinning at thecamera and yanking back on his prehistoricslingshot.

10 Good for whacking mastodons, probably. Just proper targets, Grim says, closing up thephoto album, end of discussion. Like, oops, betterhide the evidence. Don t want to give the dangerousboy any that I haveany ideas. My brain is vacant, okay?I m just this critter hiding out in the basement,drooling in my comic books or whatever. All right, Inever actually drool, but you get the , this is the first day of July, already countingdown for the Fourth and wondering where I can get anM80, which is supposed to have the explosive power ofa quarter stick of dynamite or something, and when itgoes off your heart thuds to a stop for a microsecond,wham. Which is probably what Grim is afraid of, eekeek, Maxwell armed with finally I get bored in the down under and I mhanging out in the so-called back yard, your basicchunk of chain-link heaven.