Killer of Giants Read online

forward and propped my hands on my thighs, breathing fast. Raj wasn’t wrong. He’d done nothing to them, but that was beside the point. The law was guilt by association, and he was a dead man. I felt bad that he hadn’t had a choice, but also relieved I wasn’t alone. I straightened. “Let’s go.”

  Gordie, Raj, and I climbed the stairs in silence. A problem that had already hit rock bottom had just dug itself further into hell. We were asking for trouble by staying at school, but it would have been suicide to try to leave. I pushed through the door at the third-floor and we followed the hall to math class.

  Gordie wiped tears from his eyes. “We’re so dead.” 

  5. Equations of Gravity

  Students crowded the narrow hall outside math class. Some talked in small groups while others sat on the floor, dazed and red-eyed from their before-school smoke. Gordie, Raj, and I weaved between them and pushed through the door to class.

  The room was like any other at Cannondale: brick walls covered in layers of black graffiti and chewing gum, and a stale musty smell. A row of yellow windows looked over the front schoolyard. We filed past the whiteboard and sat at the desks by the window.

  The hall crowd filtered into the room, along with a weary middle-aged man who shouldered his way through the door holding a folder and a coffee-stained mug. Twin sisters Maali and Laetitia Harding sat in front of us. Maali eyed the teacher from head to toe and screwed up her nose. “Every day he wears that. Someone needs to tell Sneds that the eighties finished a long time ago.” Theodore Sneddon was the king of old-man clothes: beige shorts, brown shirt, and sandals with white socks. His outfit, and his walrus mustache and suspiciously big hair, made it impossible to take him seriously.

  “Imagine naming your child Theodore Sneddon,” Laetitia said. “That’s Teddy Sneddon… or Ted Sned.”

  On the first day of school every year, Sneds insisted students call him Mr. Sneddon, or Theodore. But every year, they called him Sneds.

  Allie walked into the room, a folder clutched to her chest, and flashed me a smile as she made her way to her desk at the back. It was like she had some kind of pull over me. Just seeing her made my heart beat faster.

  A sharp thwack came from the front of the room as Sneds smacked his folder on his desk. “Quiet please, class.” He frowned, creasing the skin above his nose. “Today we’ll review trigonometry and Pythagoras’ theorem.” He paced behind his desk. “We’ll start with review questions on the whiteboard and then work through the exercises in chapter three.” He pulled a whiteboard marker from his shirt pocket and wrote “Pythagoras’ Theorem.” Using a ruler, he drew three triangles, each with two sides labeled with a number and the third with the letter x. “Now, who can tell me the length of the hypotenuse on the first triangle?”

  Nobody volunteered, or ever did. Sneds seemed to think he got points for asking though.

  Gordie sat slumped in his chair next to mine, staring distantly through the whiteboard to somewhere miles away.

  “Hey, look.” Raj leaned closer to the window.

  On the sidewalk two stories below, Kyle and Fink crouched facing each other, and Bundy hovered next to them. I stood from my chair. “What are they…? Is that smoke?”

  Sneds paced in front of my desk. “Sit down, Maddox.”

  On the concrete in front of Kyle, flickering flames rose from what looked like the remains of my school bag. It’s not like I had much use for it anyway. If this was the worst they did to us today, it was going to be a good day. I sank back into my chair.

  “They’re burning your bag.” Raj stared out the window, seemingly mesmerized by the flames.

  Thwack!

  Sneds slapped his folder on Raj’s desk. “Rajah Akhtar!”

  Raj flinched and dropped into his chair.

  “Mr. Akhtar, please explain to the class how to calculate the length of the hypotenuse using Pythagoras’ theorem.” Sneds took a laser pointer from his shirt pocket. A bright red dot appeared on the first triangle. It would’ve been easier to point with his finger, but Sneds must have figured he was more sophisticated than that.

  Raj rubbed his chin and stared at the whiteboard. He grinned. “This is a trick question, right? Pythagoras was a philosopher – he didn’t do math.”

  A snicker came from the front of the room. Raj was no dummy; he could answer any math question, but he was also smart enough not to let word get around. Nurturing academic talent wasn’t Cannondale’s strength.

  “That’s partly correct, Rajah. Pythagoras was both a mathematician and a philosopher.” Walking over to examine the bruises on Gordie’s face, Sneds said, “I believe ‘twas Pythagoras who once said, ‘we ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.’” He peered out the window and stroked his bushy mustache. “He was also credited with saying, ‘A blow from your friend is better than a kiss from your enemy–’”

  The room erupted with laughter. Allie smiled and shook her head.

  Sneds’ face creased with confusion. “Would anyone like to help Rajah with the length of the hypotenuse?”

  After a long silence, Sneds turned to the board and worked through another dull geometry problem. My mind drifted to what happened earlier. Raj was right. Kyle and his crew were coming for us. And it would be rage and blood – lots of it. I’d be tempted to beg the entire faculty to save us if only the teachers weren’t so gutless. Coach Delroy was better than most, at least he broke up fights, but he wasn’t going to listen to our problems. Teachers didn’t take chances getting involved – it was safer not to. And telling Principal Grendelmeier would land me in the counselor’s office talking to Bundy about my feelings, and end with Bundy beating me to death with a book about conflict resolution.

  Muttering mathematical gibberish, Sneds calculated the hypotenuse of his triangle and wiped the board clean. He wrote ‘Trigonometry’ and sketched five triangles, but this time labeled the angles at each corner. He boomed, “Gordon Radford.”

  Gordie flinched and dropped his pen on the floor. Sneds held up the whiteboard marker. “Come to the front and show the class how to calculate the unknown angle on the first triangle.”

  Gordie lowered his gaze, avoiding eye contact.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Radford?”

  Hesitating, Gordie gave me a defeated look and climbed out of his chair. Every student stared at the bruise around his eye as he limped to the front of the class, nursing his splinted finger. His hands shook as he took the marker from Sneds. Slowly, he removed the cap, and turned to the board.

  The bright red dot moved across the ceiling as Sneds absentmindedly traced a path around the heating vents. “We’re not here to admire the back of your head, Mr. Radford.” He sighed. “Were you not paying attention last week?”

  Gordie turned and gazed at the sea of faces, his cheeks pale and his bruised and scabby forehead beading with sweat. He lifted his glasses and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Normally he wouldn’t struggle with math, but he looked like he was about to have a meltdown.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Radford.”

  I raised my hand. “Sine… or cosine, right?” I didn’t have a clue.

  “Quiet, Maddox. It’s not your turn.” Sneds waited an entire minute, tracing his laser pointer, checking his watch, tapping his foot every long agonizing second. “Sit down, Gordon. See me after class.” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his brow.

  Through the window, gray buildings crowded the gray sky in what looked like a competition for who could be the most gray. Sneds worked through math problems with his marker while talking at the board. I tuned out his muttering and stole a glance at Allie. She never missed a beat when it came to math, always several lessons ahead. Even though I’d gotten to know her a little, I still felt like I hardly knew her. But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t interested in me. I wasn’t smart and I didn’t have popular friends. When it came to cool factor, I was ass out.

 
After the third math problem, Gordie raised his hand and pointed at the door. Without pausing, Sneds gave a reluctant nod, and Gordie stood and made his way across the classroom, head down and arms folded across his chest. He opened the door and looked over his shoulder, his eyes red and his face drained of expression. He lowered his gaze and walked out, shutting the door behind him.

  Whatever was going through his head, he looked like he could do with someone to talk to. I raised my hand and pointed at the door.

  “One at a time, Mr. Maddox.” Sneds stroked his mustache. “Everyone, open your textbooks and work through questions one to eight at the end of chapter three.”

  I tapped Raj’s arm. “Can I borrow some paper and a pen? My pen’s melted on the sidewalk.”

  “Sure. I hate when that happens.” He took a crumpled sheet of paper and a pen from his bag.

  I flattened the paper and wrote the date at the top. “I’m thinking of dropping out.”

  He gave a thoughtful frown. Things had to be bad if Raj wasn’t making jokes. He draped his arm on the back of Gordie’s empty seat. “Gordie’s pretty shaken.”

  “More than usual.”

  “You know I like Gordie, and I feel bad because he’s the new kid, but he nearly got you killed out there. He’s a liability. We have to cut him loose before–”

  I shook my head. “Not happening.”

  The worry lines on Raj’s face deepened. He let out a breath. “We need to