Twist, p.1
Twist, page 1
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
Feiwel and Friends ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
To Bill, because after half a lifetime there’s still no one I’d rather have adventures with than you.
1
Bushwhacked
It was a green and stormy night. Tornado season in Oklahoma was like that.
People with common sense had already gotten where they were supposed to be—a closet or a bathtub—any room with no windows was good, unless you lived in a trailer, and then it was better to leave completely. Just another day in Tornado Alley.
But tonight the weather had caught Michelle at the worst possible time. She was already riding her banana-seat bike home from Dana’s when she realized the sky wasn’t just darkening, it was going green. That was a bad sign. Then she realized the clouds had dropped down to form a long wall across the sky. That was even worse.
She still could have been okay, except she took the back way home.
The path cut across a field, but kids had been using it for years, so there was a smooth, dusty track worn by the ghosts of other bike tires. Someone had been on it just a few minutes ago, because in the glow of her bike light Michelle could see dust floating above the path ahead of her. Even though she had glasses on, she blinked, like the particles were going to get in her eyes.
The sudden howl of an animal shocked her, and she swerved. Her bike light flickered as she hit a chuckhole, a big one that hadn’t been there last time she’d taken this path. The beaded hair ties at the ends of her long red braids bounced against her back.
“Whoa!” she said out loud to no one, squeezing her brakes. Then she hit another hole and almost flipped her bike. She rode right off the path, wading to a stop in the tall grass. She wheeled her bike around so she could use her light to see.
Right in the middle of the path was a huge pawprint. Something growled, much closer than the howl had been.
Lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled way too quickly for comfort. On the other side of the path, something enormous moved through the grass. It was louder than the rush of the storm, and Michelle thought she saw the tips of bristling fur before the glare of lightning washed across her glasses and blinded her.
Back on her bike, pedaling as fast as she could, Michelle tried to quiet her breathing so she could listen to the thing that was following her. She could hear the panting of the beast and the crashing of its body through the grass as it chased her. Then it was on the path, and its paws were silent but its breathing was getting closer.
Above them, the storm clouds rolled across the Oklahoma sky.
Michelle was in the home stretch now. She could see the lights of her street in the distance. But she was also on a downhill slope. Pedaling couldn’t help her anymore. All she could do was hold on and steer. She jumped a bump in the path, then another. She bounced on her seat, and her glasses bounced on her nose.
Then she fell.
The bike skidded out from under her on the dusty path. The handlebar hit her on the knee, hard, and her glasses flew off. There wasn’t any time to look for them. There wasn’t even time to scream. With an echoing howl, the creature sprang.
She lived, but only because the storm had confused the view enough that the monster attacked her bicycle and not her. She pulled herself backward into the sea of grass, her hurt leg dragging on the ground.
On the path, she could hear the squeal of metal and the snarls of the creature as it found a machine instead of meat. Then she heard a snort as its head swung up, fixed on her location. Quick as the lightning overhead, she rolled over and dragged herself to her feet. She limped down the hill toward a drainage ditch as enormous rain drops began to splatter all around her. Lightning flashed, and the thunder was deafening.
She slipped and fell again, this time tumbling downhill into the water at the bottom of the ditch. The rain was blinding. She got up onto her hands and knees as best she could. She started to head up the hill toward the tall wooden fence that enclosed her yard. There was no gate on the back, but she could scream for help, and maybe someone would hear her.
Then an enormous, dark shadow crossed in front of her.
Michelle made for the concrete arch that separated the ditch from the cow pasture. The water in the ditch was rising as the rain ran downhill across the hard-baked summer dirt instead of soaking in. Water got up her nose, and she choked but kept going. She didn’t look behind her. She could hear splashing, panting, grunting, but she was too afraid to look, or think, or stop. She half swam across the archway, no longer afraid of the water moccasins her parents had told her a million times were in here and could kill her. Then she hit the other side … and her fingers found wire instead of freedom.
The farmer had run fence across the arch.
She turned to go out the way she’d come in, but it was already too late. The creature loomed across the entry. A flash of lightning illuminated its hairy bulk, and she realized it had one great paw up on top of the arch and was leaning down to look in at her, its posture like a person’s. Lightning flashed, and its sharp teeth gleamed. Without her glasses she couldn’t be sure, but she thought it smiled.
Then it moved. She dodged, but she was a mouse in a trap. There was nowhere to go. Outside the arch, every animal in earshot made itself smaller as the monster pounced. Michelle screamed and screamed. And then she didn’t.
The monster’s howl echoed across the neighborhood, amplified by the concrete arch. Michelle’s neighbors cowered in their closets, fearing tornadoes more than anything, and being completely wrong.
As Eli Goodman finished reading, his teacher, Mrs. Benton, clutched her heart. He guessed she hadn’t expected him to be quite so bloodthirsty. Maybe she didn’t read a lot of scary stories. The first character who saw the monster never got to live. Everybody knew that.
A few kids said “Whoa” softly. One or two even clapped. It would have been enough to make him want to try that new moonwalk move of Michael Jackson’s, except that Scott Gabler was looking around like he smelled something his dog had delivered. He smirked at Eli as his crony, Brandon, muttered in his ear. Eli looked away, but he could still hear them laugh.
“So,” said Mrs. Benton, widening her eyes at the class as if to say Wasn’t that something, “who has questions about ‘The Howler’?”
Adriana raised her hand.
“Do you write stories like that a lot?”
“I write screenplays, too.”
“You mean movies, like E.T.?”
“More like the Twilight Zone movie, but yeah.”
“So you want to work in Hollywood when you grow up?” asked Scott. It might’ve been a reasonable question without the smirk.
“That’s the idea.”
“That’s, like, a lofty goal. Not that many people get to work in Hollywood, right?”
Eli’d heard enough.
“So you’re saying if something is difficult, I should give up?” he asked.
Scott wasn’t used to being challenged. He twitched. Eli thought Scott looked just like a jackrabbit, but if he wrote that into a story it would sound made-up, a fact he found annoyingly unfair.
“I’m just saying, maybe you need a backup plan.”
Mrs. Benton didn’t generally meddle in arguments unless someone was using fighting words. She liked to say tough questions built brain plasticity, whatever that was. Eli didn’t care. He was mad.
“Backup plans are for people who don’t believe in what they’re doing.”
“Or people who aren’t any good at it.”
“What’s the career outlook for people who are obsessed with computer games?”
Eli knew that was a direct hit. Lately all Scott could talk about was Zork.
Just as a collective “Oooooooooh” began to rise, Mrs. Benton cut in.
“You know,” she said, “you two have given me an interesting idea.”
The class, smelling trouble, got quiet fast.
“Let’s discuss a new topic. A project.”
“Project?” said Jay through blue lips. The boy had a bad habit of putting markers in his mouth when he was thinking. Eli would’ve paid good money to get him to stop, because at first glance he always thought Jay had been poisoned. It was, he guessed, the downside of being a horror writer.
“Yes, but the good news is that you don’t have to go it alone. You’ll have help.”
“This is a group project?” asked Neha Prasad, looking up from her sketchbook.
It sounded more like an ambush to Eli, and from the look on Neha’s face, she agreed.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Benton. “Let’s call this … the Venn diagram project.”
Eli knew what a Venn diagram was. It was a chart made out of circles. It was supposed to show where different subjects overlapped—and where they didn’t.
“I’m going to break you into tea
“What if they don’t?” asked Scott with a scowl. Eli pictured his and Scott’s Venn diagram circles repelling each other like magnetic opposites, same as they did in real life.
“They will,” said Mrs. Benton with a smile designed to have the same effect as a firm hand on Scott’s shoulder. “In fact, I’m so confident about this that if you can’t come up with any commonalities yourselves, I’ll sit down with your team over a lunch period and we’ll brainstorm. I personally guarantee you we’ll find one.”
Scott shut his mouth. Nobody wanted to give up a lunch period, even for Mrs. B.
Court Castle’s hand went up next. She was leaning back in her chair like it was a rocker, her long blond braid dangling over the back. This naturally made Eli picture her whacking her head on the floor. If he wrote it into a story, though, the floor wouldn’t be carpeted. That way the thud would be louder.
“So, after we have this little meeting of the minds,” Court drawled, “what do we do next?”
“I’ll come up with a list of activities to help you explore your shared interest as a group,” said Mrs. Benton. “You’ll complete one, document it, and present your results to the class.”
“I hate group projects,” muttered Kelly. Eli, who was still awkwardly standing by Mrs. B’s desk, would have to remember how much she could hear from the front of the room.
Not that he disagreed. Kelly’s disgust for group projects was pretty much universal. One kid always ended up doing most of the work, and since this was the pull-out program for gifted students, everybody in Mrs. Benton’s class had been that kid.
“Have a little faith,” said Mrs. Benton, smiling at Kelly. “Now, to choose the groups. You can sit down, Eli.”
She put her hands on her hips and gave the class a good once-over. Then she started rattling off names. Eli waited, and sure enough …
“Group five will be Neha, Eli, Court, and Scott.”
Eli rubbed one dark-skinned hand across his close-cropped hair, then shook his head. Like he’d figured, it was an ambush. A setup to make him and Scott appreciate each other.
Scott was like a piece of gum on hot Oklahoma pavement, and somehow Eli had gone and stepped in him. Everywhere he went he dragged a long trail of Scott behind him. For other folks it was free entertainment, but Eli wasn’t laughing. He was sick of being stuck with that kid.
2
Ripped Off
Eli’s story had made Court’s hair stand on end, and that took some doing, because her braid was long enough to sit on. It wasn’t just that his writing was good, though it was. It was that Court knew exactly how it felt to be that kid biking home at night, speeding up at the thought of claws reaching for her in the dark. Court was new to the Academic Resource Center, but she’d been in the same regular class as Eli for two years, and yet somehow it felt like this was the first time she’d gotten a good look at him.
“Michelle screamed and screamed. And then she didn’t,” read Eli, and when the monster howled, Court got goose bumps.
She was still wondering if it was okay to clap when Scott started in on Eli, and then Mrs. B got that crafty look in her eye. Court was just cottoning on to how diabolical this project was when the bell rang. There was a rush as kids started shoving their stuff into their bags, but all Court wanted to do was talk to Eli. She abandoned her belongings and made a beeline in his direction, but Mrs. Benton got to him first. She started bending his ear about submitting his story to a kids’ magazine.
Court dawdled at his elbow, but before long she started to fidget. Being the last kid on the bus was no fun. She could end up next to someone who picked their nose. She grabbed her books and bagged them up on the run. She’d catch him later. After all, they both rode bus thirty-five.
You could have knocked Court over with a feather when she’d ended up in the gifted class. Schoolwork had never been topmost in her mind. School was fine, it just took too long and happened indoors. When it came to buildings, her head, and rules, Court had always liked outside much better than in. Then her fourth-grade teacher ran a contest to see who could find the most moth and butterfly specimens, a challenge that was right up Court’s alley. The second-place kid found forty-seven.
Court found seventy-six.
Miss Tavish could maybe be forgiven for suspecting Court had help, but to her credit she didn’t come right out and say so. Instead, she asked Court to tell her more about her collection.
When you know a lot about something, it’s nice to be asked. Court started talking and couldn’t stop. She explained how she’d snuck into three different yards to check grapevines for the Mournful Thyris moth. She recounted her narrow escape when one fella sicced his dog on her and laughed as she ran. She described the hag moth’s caterpillar, a critter so covered with hairy tentacles that people called it a monkey slug. She confided that keeping a bucket of rotting fruit in the garage for moth traps put a strain on things between her and her mama.
Miss Tavish listened until Court ran out of things to say. Then she gave Court an A+, mini-golf tickets, and gifted testing. Now Court went to the ARC three times a week and felt like a fish out of water most of the time. But Eli’s story raised a new possibility. What if ARC class wasn’t the daytime version of an awkward school dance that refused to end? What if it was actually a paradise of unexplored territory? Court loved to explore.
“Hey, Dwight,” said Court to the bus driver as she hauled her stuff up the steps. The radio was turned down low, but Court knew from experience he’d blast it as soon as the bus pulled away from the school.
“Court Castle, heeeey!” said Dwight, and put his hand up for a high five. Court smacked it.
“Hi, Joshie,” she said, ruffling her little brother’s sun-bleached hair. He and two of his friends were in a seat about halfway back, shoving each other and hollering.
“Hello, buttface!” said Joshie, pulling Court’s braid.
Court scoped out the bus and chose a seat right behind Neha Prasad, who already had her sketchbook out and had tucked her dark, shoulder-length hair behind her ears. Court didn’t usually pay much attention to her. Neha was a draws-on-the-bus kid, and Court was an argues-on-the-bus kid from way back. Now it hit Court that Neha could’ve been doing amazing things all along, right under her nose. Court turned sideways and draped her arms across the seat backs, and what do you know? Suddenly she had a killer view.
Eli climbed the bus steps in the nick of time and out of breath. He slumped into the last seat, next to Jay, which Court felt proved her point. Jay was a nice enough kid, but there was no sugarcoating it: a blue mouth was distracting.
As Dwight cranked up Z 104.5 and swung the bus out of the lot, Court craned her neck to see what Neha was doing.
She really has been creating something amazing, Court thought.
Neha was sketching storybook houses. Unlike the boring brick ranches in their neighborhood, all of them hunkered down low in case of tornadoes, Neha’s homes were every color under the sun, and they practically sprang out of the ground. They had clapboard siding, big old windows with window seats inside, and little tiny wooden shingles on their roofs.
Houses like that would have twisty staircases and hidden rooms, places Court itched to poke her nose into. She wanted to open one of the big front doors, prowl through hallways lit by stained glass, and skulk her way upstairs, doing her best to avoid the creaks.
Which one of those doors would she try first? To her eyes they were as different as fingerprints. There were doors that had two halves that opened separately, top and bottom. There were paneled doors, and doors with rounded tops. Court had never considered whether doors might have personalities before.
She was still debating between a yellow split door with the top already swung open and a red one with curved moldings when it happened.
The red door winked at her. Blinked an honest-to-goodness eye she hadn’t even known it had, right exactly where the peephole ought to be. She blinked back at it, surprised.
Court leaned closer to Neha, who was coloring a brick walkway and didn’t notice Court hanging over the back of her seat. The bus swerved, and Court had to hang on tight to keep from landing in Neha’s lap. Dwight was trying to open a carton of milk from the cafeteria while he was driving.
