The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

MEANWHILE, AT RICHARD GERE MIDDLE SCHOOL7

The golem stared at the phone. The message from Mack was very clear.

* * *

You have got to handle these things yourself. You have got to be a big boy now.

* * *

Yes. As usual, Mack had the right answer.

It was amazing, really, how right Mack was about, well, everything.

Clearly if the golem was a “big boy” then he could survive the shower. How much bigger? That was the question.

The golem began to text this question to Mack, but then stopped himself. You have got to handle these things yourself.

Yes, that was true, he supposed: responsibility. He would have to work it out himself.

Morning at school was always a confusing time for the golem. There were so many kids rushing this way and that, many saying, “Hi,” or, “Hey, weirdo,” or, “Get out of my way, you freak.” He tried to be pleasant to each and smile or say, “How are you today?” But it was hectic. Especially on days when Matthew Morgan would chain him to the bike rack or Camaro Angianelli would throw him into the bushes.

The golem didn’t quite understand what was going on—he was passing as Mack but he didn’t quite have Mack’s brains—but it seemed there was a sort of bully war going on at Richard Gere Middle School.8 Since Mack had left and taken Stefan Marr with him, the carefully negotiated bully peace had broken down.

Stefan had enforced peace among bullies by working out a complex system of assigned victims. Thus, under Stefan’s regime, there had been a bully for nerds, a bully for geeks, a bully for stoners, a bully for emo kids, a goths’ bully, a skaters’ bully, a rich kids’ bully—each bully with his or her own population of victims.

And of course one bully to rule them all, one bully to bind them, one bully to bring them all and in the darkness pound them. Which would be Stefan.

That system had worked surprisingly well. It kept kids from being “overbullied.” It wasn’t like just any bully could push a nerd around—only the designated bully of nerds could do that. And Stefan had established some limits. He had even conducted a bullying seminar, laying out what was and what was not acceptable bully behavior.

Yep. Those were the good old days.

Now, with the King of the Bullies off saving the world with Mack, everything was chaos. Suddenly bullies were trying to expand beyond their usual victim group. The emo bully had tried to claim that anyone who went to Hot Topic was, by definition, one of his rightful victims. This was opposed strongly by Ed Lafrontiere—the current Twilight fans’ bully—and this had set off a power struggle as various bullies tried to take over the title of King of the Bullies (or in the case of Camaro Angianelli, Queen).

Somehow the intrabully war had resulted in a sort of competition to see who could be the biggest bully to Mack. Or in fact: the golem.

His mom usually drove him to school in the morning. If by his mom, you meant Mack’s mom. The golem didn’t really have a mother, or a father. This was the first time in his brief life he’d had any sort of family, and they weren’t really his.

The golem had been formed and given life by Grimluk. He had sudd

enly opened his eyes in a tiny stone house on a distant hillside in … well, now that he thought about it, the golem wasn’t really sure where it was. Not around here, anyway.

He had begun to achieve consciousness when his head was formed. He had opened his eyes to see Grimluk’s ancient, grizzled, wrinkled, rheumy-eyed face staring down at him. Grimluk’s gnarled fingers had literally smoothed the mud that made the golem’s forehead.

The golem had blinked and looked around, confused. He was in some ways no different from a newborn baby.

He had looked down to see that his body was nothing but some tree branches—bark still on for better mud adherence9—tied together with rattan to form a sort of bare scarecrow form.

There was a massive wooden tub full of mud. And a smaller crockery pot with more sticks and loops of rattan.

“I’m getting too old for this,” Grimluk had muttered.

“Mama?” the golem had asked, gazing up hopefully.

“No, fool. You’re a golem. You have neither father nor mother. You have a maker. That’s me.”

“I … I feel like … like we should hug,” the golem had said.

Grimluk had been somewhat taken aback by this. But after he’d harrumphed a bit and chewed on his lip and forgotten what he was doing a few times and made some grunting noises and scratched and hitched up his robe, he’d finally said, “Eh? Let’s shake hands.”