Kid vs. Squid by Greg van Eekhout Read Free Book Online Page A

without me having to go vampire. But that’s not what Shoal had in mind. She handed the bottle to Trudy, and Trudy pricked her finger with a deft jab of another pin and bled into the water.
    It was my turn. I swabbed my finger and the pin, and then before giving myself too much time to think about it, stuck myself.
    It hurt worse than I expected, and I thought Shoal and Trudy should know that, so as I bled into the water bottle, I described to them in precise detail how much it hurt. I have a good vocabulary, and at one point Trudy actually took down a few notes.
    In truth, it wasn’t the pain that kept my lips flapping. I was trying to cover up something else, a strange feeling that, by mingling my blood with theirs, I had bound myself even more to these two girls whom I hardly knew.
    When I had a Band-Aid over my throbbing fingertip, Shoal took the bottle and shook it around, mixing the rose-colored water.
    â€œSea and blood,” she said, “the soup of life.” And then she whispered some other things that weren’t in English. It sounded nothing like “hocus pocus” or “abracadabra,” but it did sound like magic, and as she continued to speak, the water lost its pink color. Within moments, it just looked like plain sea-water again. Shoal dumped the water out.
    â€œThere,” she said, giving the empty bottle back to Trudy. “It is done.”
    And I did feel a little different, a little more like myself. The need to stand around hollering, “Everyone gets a prize!” was still there, but not as urgent.
    â€œHow about you, Trudy? Still obsessed with taffy?”
    But Trudy didn’t respond.
    I looked over toward her. Or, rather, toward where she’d been standing.
    She wasn’t there anymore.
    There was just her hand, desperately clutching, as she disappeared down the storm drain.

    The steel bars that should have prevented anything larger than a milk carton from falling into the drain were bent back like pipe cleaners. Looking down into the concrete-lined channel, I spotted one of Trudy’s sneakers lying in the muck like a dead animal. I scooted through the gap in the curb and dropped with a splash into muddy water. Shoal followed.
    I picked up her shoe and we took off at a run through the stinky darkness. Twigs and leaves and fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts and pulpy rotted I-don’t-know-what washed over our feet and ankles. The channel ended several blocks away at the beach, where the filthy water flowed past more bent steel bars and down a trough into the ocean.
    I leaped through the remains of the grate with Shoal beside me and charged down the beach. At the surf line, Trudy was locked in combat with a fish. Or a fish-thing. Hunched over, it must have been at least fifteen feet tall, marching into the water on muscular green legs. A long dorsal fin ran down its spine, all the way to the end of its dragging tail. It held Trudy’s backpack in one arm. In the other, it held Trudy. She kicked and beat at it with her fists, but the fish didn’t even seem to notice.
    Sprinting toward the water, I launched myself at the monster fish and caught it by the tail in a running tackle. The fish didn’t care. Sharp spines on its tail scratched my flesh. Breakers crashed over my head. I wouldn’t let go. But with a flick of its tail, I went tumbling, landing on my back in the shallower water. The fish turned to look at me. Its eyes were black and mindless. A mustache of tentacles as thick as baseball bats trailed in the water. It opened its gigantic mouth in a great gawp, then turned away and continued on, unperturbed.
    â€œHold on, Trudy!” I screamed, coughing saltwater.
    Shoal darted by me in a flash. She took off like a cannonball and landed on the fish-thing’s back, then proceeded to smack its head with a length of driftwood.
    I had never seen anybody fight so viciously. Not even in the movies. Not even in a video game.