Max! Box Set Read online

  Vic Connor

  Illustrated by

  Anne Zimanski

  Helvetic House

  Contents

  Book 1: Max!

  1. Monday, 5 September 1983

  2. Monday, 5 September 1983

  3. Thursday, 8 September 1983

  4. Saturday, 10 September 1983

  5. Sunday, 18 September 1983

  6. Monday, 19 September 1983

  7. Monday, 19 September 1983

  8. Wednesday, 21 September 1983

  9. Thursday, 22 September 1983

  10. Friday, 23 September 1983

  11. Saturday, 24 September 1983

  12. Monday, 26 September 1983

  13. Saturday, 1 October 1983

  14. Sunday, 2 October 1983

  15. Monday, 3 October 1983

  16. Tuesday, 4 October 1983

  17. Friday, 7 October 1983

  18. Saturday, 8 October 1983

  19. Sunday, 9 October 1983

  Book 2: Stressed

  Fair Warning

  1. Monday, 10 October 1983

  2. Monday, 10 October 1983, later that night

  3. Friday, 14 October 1983

  4. Saturday, 15 October 1983

  5. Sunday Evening, 16 October 1983

  6. Tuesday, 18 October 1983

  7. Wednesday, 19 October 1983

  8. Saturday, 22 October 1983

  9. Saturday, 22 October 1983, later

  10. Tuesday, 25 October 1983

  11. Wednesday, 26 October 1983

  12. Thursday, 27 October 1983

  13. Friday, 28 October 1983

  14. Saturday, 29 October 1983, 7:00 a.m.

  15. Saturday, 29 October 1983, 1:00 pm

  16. Saturday night, 29 October 1983

  17. Sunday Morning, 30 October 1983

  18. Tuesday, 1 November 1983

  19. Wednesday, 2 November 1983. Before school, while I’m still alive

  20. Wednesday, 2 November 1983. Still alive (shocker!), after school

  21. Wednesday, 2 November. Before bed (still alive)

  22. Thursday, 3 November 1983

  23. Thursday, 3 November, 8:00 p.m.

  24. Friday, 4 November 1983

  25. Saturday, 5 November 1983

  26. Monday, 7 November 1983

  27. Tuesday, 8 November 1983

  28. Wednesday, 9 November 1983

  29. Friday, 11 November 1983

  30. Sunday morning, 13 November 1983

  31. Sunday Night, 13 November 1983

  32. Monday, 14 November 1983

  33. Tuesday, 15 November 1983

  34. Wednesday, 16 November 1983, 7:00 a.m.

  35. Wednesday, 16 November 1983, after dinner

  36. Thursday, 17 November 1983

  Book 3: In the Snow

  Fair Warning

  BELSK

  ALASKA

  THE RIVER and the STORM

  True Facts in This Book

  If You Enjoyed this Book…

  Also by Vic Connor

  About the Author

  One Last Thing

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters, and events are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead, businesses, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Click here to subscribe — so you can learn about Vic Connor’s new book releases and discounts.

  Book 1: Max!

  1

  Monday, 5 September 1983

  Today started as the best day of my life and ended as the worst.

  How do things go so wrong? That’s what I want to know. That’s what I hope you can help me with, Diary. I realize that you can’t talk back or give me answers, but I have so many thoughts swirling inside my head, I feel like there’s a blizzard going on in there. Maybe writing those down will help me sort out my problems.

  Problem number one: How do I get Tanya Nosova to notice me?

  It doesn’t help that she’s ten centimeters taller than every boy in the class, including me. I guess it’s easy for her to ignore me when she stares right over my head. Mom says that will change soon. She says that by next year, the boys will start catching up with the girls in height. It can’t come soon enough. Otherwise, I’ll have to wear elevator shoes just to look a girl in the eye.

  We have a homeroom teacher, Pal Palych. His real name is Pavel Pavlovich, but no one calls him that because the shorter name fits him better. So anyway, he still thinks of us as babies even though we’re in the seventh grade. When we go on field trips, we still use the buddy system. I shouldn’t complain because Tanya and I were paired together as buddies today. See? Best day ever! Or so I thought.

  Things started to go wrong as soon as we got on the bus and headed for the zoo. The zoo was in Yasnaya, the main town in our area. It was new to all of us — it had just opened a couple of years ago — and I didn’t feel very confident because I hadn’t been to a large town before. It felt like going to another country.

  “I wonder if we’ll see a Mongolian Death Worm there,” Tanya said. She had her nose stuck in a book about animals, and it took me a moment to realize that she was actually speaking to me. I looked around. Bogdan and Vadim were playing rock-paper-scissors in the seats behind us. Alina and Dina were making faces at them from the seats across the aisle. Tanya could only have been talking to me. This was my big chance to impress her!

  So I plunged in.

  “There’s no such thing as a Mongolian Death Worm,” I said, feeling brave and grown-up. I wouldn’t let Tanya worry about some silly creature that exists only in campfire tales.

  Tanya slammed her book shut. “What do you know, Maxim Lapin?” she snapped. Uh-oh. Whenever someone calls me by my full name, I know I’m in trouble. “Just because you’ve never seen one, doesn’t mean they aren’t real.” She turned her back on me and started to talk to Dina, whose round face broke into a happy smile.

  Maybe I said the wrong thing.

  “Hop to it, boys and girls,” Pal Palych said as we herded off the bus. “Line up with your buddy. Two neat rows, people!”

  Pal Palych is a good teacher, but he’s a little too enthusiastic at times. He’s tall and skinny, with hair so blond it’s almost white. Usually, his cheeks are red, and when he gets angry or excited, white splotches stand out among all that red. Weird. We’re his first class ever. He just graduated from teaching school. Sometimes I think he should have found a job as a kindergarten teacher. We’re twelve years old! Buddies and lines are for little kids. I would never say that to him, of course. I’ve been detention-free so far this year, and I plan to keep it that way.

  I guess the buddy system isn’t so bad when I get paired with Tanya. She won’t look at me though. In fact, she hasn’t spoken a word since the Mongolian Death Worm thing. She’s always going on about weird stuff like that. She knows more useless facts than anyone I know, even my dad — and he’s a history professor. I mean, I like to read. I even have favorite novels like The Little Prince. But Tanya reads encyclopedias for fun. Who does that?

  Today, she carried a huge book, flipping the pages randomly while we waited in front of the zoo gates for Pal Palych to get organized. With her nose stuck in that book, I could watch her without her knowing.

  Okay, I’ll be honest. She isn’t a whole ten centimeters taller than me. Maybe only one or two. It just feels that way. When she turns her big, brown eyes on me, I feel small. And on the rare occasion that she smiles my way, I feel tall enough to touch the sky.

  I guess you could say, Diary, I’ve got a bit of a crush on Tanya. I’ve never told anyone that, not even my best friend Alex. And it’s going to stay that way because to Tanya, I’m a lower form of life. I probably rank somewhere below her precious Mongolian
Death Worm. Maybe just above a slug, if that.

  Pal Palych came around with a bunch of red strings, which he tied to our wrists. This was our ticket to get into the zoo. Another one of Pal Palych’s favorite tricks is the “deputy.” Every time we have a special event, he nominates a deputy-teacher from the Pioneer leaders, his usual go-to girls and boys.

  Today, the deputy was Alex, and he took the job seriously. He stood beside Pal Palych with a clipboard and checked off names as we stood in our two lines beside the bus. Really? How could we be missing people already? We hadn’t been anywhere yet except the bus stop.

  If he weren’t my best friend, I’d say Alex Toporov was a brown-nose. He even had a whistle on a string around his neck, hanging above his crisply pressed Pioneer tie. The whistle was as red as the tie. In his snow-white shirt and stark black pants, he looked like one of those perfect Soviet kids they put on school corridor posters.

  “Okay, people,” Pal Palych said. “We’ve got two hours to see the whole zoo.”

  “Pal Palych, do you know if we’ll see the tortoise?” Tanya asked. “I read that he’s turning a hundred and fifteen this week. We should stop and wish him a happy birthday.”

  Pal Palych raised one eyebrow at her. It was a good look for him. I figured after another twenty years of teaching, he’d have it perfected.

  “Two hours, Tanya Nosova. Two hours to see fifty-nine species; two hundred and forty-six animals altogether.” Deputy Alex nudged him, held up a pamphlet, and whispered something. “My mistake. Make that two hundred and fifty-eight animals. It seems the naked mole rats have had babies. But if we see the tortoise, Tanya Nosova, we’ll be sure to wish him a happy birthday. Now let’s move out, people!”

  I grabbed Alex’s whistle just as he put it to his mouth.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “You’re only deputy for the day. Try to have some friends left by the end of it.”

  Alex laughed. “Deputy today; world leader tomorrow, Max. You wait and see.”

  It’s hard to stay mad at Alex, and I don’t doubt that one day, he will be leading some world organization that distills drinking water from sewage for kids in Africa. He’s that kind of guy.

  Tanya and I ended up last in the line of buddies marching towards the zoo entrance, partly because I wanted to stay far away from Deputy Alex and his whistle and partly because Tanya read as she walked.

  Apparently, the zoo pamphlet with a guided walking tour wasn’t enough. Tanya also had to read that massive book about rare animals that she had brought from the library. I thought she’d leave it in the bus, but she didn’t. I hoped she wouldn’t get tired lugging it around all day because then I’d have to do the polite thing and offer to carry it.

  I worried that she’d trip since she wasn’t paying attention to where she was walking. That would be kind of cool — not that I wanted her to fall, mind you. But if she tripped, it would be my duty as her buddy to save her. I’d swoop in, like the mambo dancer I’d seen on TV, and catch her in my arms just before she hit the ground. Then we’d snap upright and twirl to applause from the crowd. I could almost hear the music.

  “It says here that naked mole rats are native to East Africa.” Tanya read as she walked. “They live in underground clusters in a social hierarchy like bees. They have a queen and workers.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, and quickly held a branch out of the way before Tanya walked into it. It was a smooth move, if I say so myself. Too bad Tanya was too engrossed in her book to notice. At least she was talking to me again.

  Tanya narrated the rest of our trip with tidbits of information from her book: Giraffes have only seven neck bones, just like humans. Wolves mate for life. Kangaroos can jump three times their height. Even the common deer merited a fact from Tanya’s book: The difference between antlers and horns is that antlers are shed every year and grow back.

  Now you might think that Tanya Nosova is an annoying know-it-all, but actually, I liked hearing about the animals. And, after a while, she forgot I was even there. She just blurted out facts that interested her. Until we reached the fox pen. The single grey fox paced his cage in agitation. And he smelled terrible, like rotten food and pee mixed together. He seemed very unhappy. His sharp eyes darted back and forth. Long, grey ears were perked up, listening, listening, listening. For what? I couldn’t tell. Maybe for a sound only the fox could hear.

  Tanya lowered her book for the first time. “What do you think is wrong with him?”

  “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a quote from my favorite book, The Little Prince.”

  We read it in class last year. Most of my friends hated it. “Too much nonsense talk,” Alex had said. I loved it, though. I read it again over the summer, twice. I wished I could visit the stars like the little prince. Actually, I wished I could visit anywhere but boring old Belsk, the dead town where we lived. Nothing ever happened here. But with the little prince, I could dream of roses growing on stars or the land of tears. And the little prince always had important things to say, even about foxes.

  “I like it.” Tanya smiled. “Do you know any other lines?”

  I think I’m in love.

  The last stop of the trip was supposed to be the Siberian tiger lair, but Tanya and I never got there. As we passed the bat exhibit, she grabbed my arm and held us back until the rest of the group had disappeared around the corner.

  “Look!” She pointed at the entrance to the bat exhibit. A big sign said, CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. “We should go take a look,” said Tanya. “We’ll have the bats all to ourselves.”

  She headed for the door, but I didn’t follow.

  Up ahead, I could hear the faint call of Pal Palych — “Come on, people!” — and Deputy Alex’s strident whistle. We were already too far behind. I didn’t want to get into trouble. But I also didn’t want Tanya to think I was a wimp. I could be wild and crazy sometimes, right? I could go into a bat exhibit that was off limits. What’s the worst that could happen?

  I’m sure the little prince would have had words of wisdom for me at that moment, but I couldn’t think of any, so I followed Tanya into the closed exhibit. As soon as we had stepped inside, my eyes quit working. I passed my hand in front of my face. Nope. Couldn’t see a thing. But as my eyes adjusted, I noticed a faint blue glow at one end of the room. The light disappeared for a moment and then reappeared. Tanya had walked in front of the only light coming from inside the bat pen. She was already exploring the place. Completely fearless! Pretty cool for a girl.

  “One day, I want to go spelunking,” she said.

  “Spe-whating?” I asked.

  “It’s like this, only in a real cave. You explore it looking for animals like bats and glowworms. If you’re lucky, you discover a whole new species and get to name it yourself.”

  “That sounds cool. If I found a new species of bat, I’d call it the Maximator.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Tanya. “You can’t just name it any old thing. It’s got to sound right. Species are named in Latin or Greek, and they have a genus name first. That’s the bigger group that they belong to. Bats are Pteropus. So your bat could be a Pteropus maximus.”

  “Pteropus maximus? I like that. Now I just have to find a new bat.”

  My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see the hint of a smile on Tanya’s face. Score one for me.

  Now that I could see a bit, I looked around the room. Building materials — drywall, metal bars, tiles and buckets, brooms — were piled in one corner. Part of the floor was torn away, exposing the bare wood underneath. I thought the zoo was supposed to be new, yet they were already repairing it?

  Tanya stood beside this mess, peering through a large window at the bat cave. Slowly, I walked over to her, with my hands held in front of me so I wouldn’t bump into anything. My footsteps echoed loudly in the silent room. Tanya’s forehead and hands were pressed against the window. The di
m light from inside lit her face in an eerie blue glow. The bat cave was a long, narrow room, lit only with that weak blue light. Dead branches and vines were strung around the ceiling to give the bats places to roost.

  “Listen,” she said. I paused. Faint squeaking noises sent shivers up my arms. I peered through the glass. Dozens of dark forms hung from the branches. At first, I thought they were leaves — but they were moving! The bats were sleeping, but they weren’t still. They quivered and jostled as they hung. Along with the squeaking, I could now hear shuffling wings and scraping claws.

  “I don’t think we should be in here,” I said.

  “It’s fine.” Tanya pointed at the scattered building materials. “They’re doing maintenance on the building and closed it just for convenience. It’s not like the bats can escape or anything.”

  Escape? I hadn’t even thought about them escaping, but I did now! I backed up. My foot caught on a bucket, sending it crashing across the floor. The noise woke the bats. They screamed and launched from their perches, flittering around the cave, zooming past the window like little omens of death.

  I screamed. I couldn’t help it; there were so many of them. In the dim light, the huge window was invisible; it seemed as if the bats were flying right at me. I stumbled backwards and fell over the buckets and tiles. Pain shot up my legs. A drywall board toppled onto my head with a crash.

  I don’t remember exactly what happened next. I might have blacked out for a minute. That drywall hurt.

  “Oh, my God! Are you in pain?” Tanya leaned down and helped me to my feet. In a daze, I looked up at her. Even in the dim light, she was very pretty. I knew I should be worried about the mess I’d made, about being hurt, about getting caught. But at that moment, I could only think that I was alone in the dark with Tanya Nosova and she was holding my arm.