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“Maybe, if I can think of the right words, I can evento hit me I’ll make you a deal, okay?”

“Yes,” Max breathed

“If my desk hasn’t talked by the time we’re out of this school, you can hit er then And if it does—”

“You get to hit me?”

“Sure, if that’s what et to hit you Sound fair?”

It worked better than Thoht it would His parents wereby now Max nodded He looked like he was going to cry Thomas felt it best to exit while he was still , as if he could give them all the slip and vanish like a spy in a comic book But he couldn’t, not in real life Max came to and flailed out with his foot He knew he’d been shown up soer than a , the Secretive Satchel flying open, his baseball and his pencil and Inspector Balloon skittering out under the toothy ym His mittens did not unravel into real paws They landed in a freezing, half-dried mud puddle One of his Golden Galoshes came loose as he landed on the pave foot soaked through in a y water

Goodbye, shoe

“What’s that?” one of Max’s friends shrieked “Is that your diary, Thomas?”

The Other Children gasped all together at this juicy bit of fresh meat thrown before them Thomas scrambled for Inspector Balloon, but Max was faster He seized it and held it up like a hunter parading the head of a vanquished lion Only then did a snag in his plan seem to dawn in his eyes

“Well, but I can’t read it, though”

Thootten to the letter L today But it was not to be: A girl in the back of the throng trilled out:

“Make hiely flat and soft, but it carried over all their heads and into Max’s ear

Max, triumphant, shoved Inspector Balloon back into Thomas’s muddy hands “Read it or I’ll thump you till your mummy won’t know you,” he barked “Nice and loud, Bobby’s deaf in one ear”

Thomas wiped the rainwater off of his notebook He shoved the Carnivorous Mittens in his pocket and sniffled They would hate him forever if he read them his rules They would stare at him like his father did and tell him to shut up shut up shut up They would knoasn’t Normal That he had no Cos the way they could understand thedoed for his house full of things that he wanted so desperately to be alive but stubbornly refused Real alive things were terrifying And they could pull out your stuffing if you disappointed them But none of the Great Battles of Britain had o home and have some milk and a sulk

Thomas tried to make his eyes deep, endless pools with soft stars in thetooand they just stayed a little boy’s red eyes He tried to make his voice kind and hushed and seductive, but it cracked and shook like a skinny twig in the wind