This Sunday, I wanted to share an extended excerpt of the middle grade novel I’ve been working on, Ninjas versus Squids!

It is about a twelve year old boy who, along with his best friend, PJ, learns the monsters populating his favorite video game are very, very real…and that he’s destined to stop them.

Here’s the excerpt:

***

It was pitch black by the time we stopped walking. Behind me, I could hear the cheerleaders whispering amongst themselves, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. In front of me, Molly was quiet, so quiet I would have forgotten she was there, had she not held my hand in a death grip.

She turned to the other cheerleaders. “Rowan and I want to be alone. You guys keep watch.”

My heart kicked up a notch. Brook ruffled her pom-poms in my face one last time, and I watched as the dark outline of the other five girls disappeared against the backdrop of nothingness.

“Now then.” Molly put her hand on my shoulder and guided me backwards until I was flush against the brick building. Her other hand was still wrapped around my wrist, and I noticed it was colder and clammier than it had been before. But then, I reasoned, probably so was mine.

She leaned in closer, and closer still, and what happened next was a blur. One minute I was trying to remember what Chuck Finley, a second-year eighth grader with whom I’d spent most of my thirty-eight days of in-school suspension last year, had said to do if I ever got a girl alone, and the next Molly had wrapped something cold and clammy around my neck and suspended me a foot in the air.

“Where is it?” she yelled, only it didn’t sound like Molly’s voice anymore. It sounded deeper, rougher, like she’d been smoking two packs a day since before she was born.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I managed, clawing at the clammy something wrapped tightly around my neck.

“Don’t lie to me!” She slammed me back against the building. “He stole it and gave it to you! Where is it?”

“I already told you. I don’t know”–she slammed me against the building again–“what you’re talking about.”

“Lies! All lies!”

Molly flung me across the alley, and I sailed through the air and landed flat on my back, on top of a flattened cardboard box smeared with something I sure hoped wasn’t dog crap.

It was still completely dark, but I could hear the rustle of pom-poms and the slither of something snake-like behind me. I hurried to my feet and felt around in the darkness for something–anything–I could defend myself with. Finally, I came across something long and thin, and unmistakably metal. I closed my fists around it as though it were a baseball bat, and swung hard.

Strike one.

The rustling was beside me now. I swung again.
Strike two.

“I’m over here, silly,” Molly taunted from somewhere behind me.

I swung again, extra hard this time, and came into contact with the brick wall. The metal stick snapped in half and I swore loudly.

Molly, Brook, and the rest of the cheerleaders laughed.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Molly said. She was still behind me, but closer now. “Is that any way to talk to a girl?”

“Probably not,” I said, whipping around, jabbing in all directions, hoping I’d get lucky. “But you’re not a girl, you’re a–“

“Squidmonster!” I heard PJ yell. “Get away from him! Hiyah! Hiyah!“

What happened next was a blur of scuffling and rustling and the clang of metal on metal. One of Molly’s somethings grabbed me around the waist and flung me into the air again, only this time I landed on my feet.

“Peej!” I yelled, still darting and jabbing, in case Molly should be around. “Where are you?”

“Over here,” PJ yelled. “Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”

The scuffling intensified. I couldn’t tell who was winning. For that matter, I couldn’t tell who was fighting. I just stood there, armed with a broken metal stick, my senses on high alert, waiting for something to happen.

The movement was getting closer. PJ let out a loud “unnngh” to my left. There was a squish and then a splat. And then I was covered head to toe in goo.

I don’t know how to adequately describe what the goo smelled like. It was like vomit, rotten eggs, rancid fish stock, and gym funk all at the same time. I wanted to open my mouth to scream, or at least to barf, but I was afraid if I did, I might get some of the goo in my mouth.

Instead, I shrugged out of my windbreaker, turned it clean-side out, and wiped as much goo off my face as I could.

“Uggh,” I said to PJ. “What is that stuff?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” PJ said. “First, you need to eat this.”

I turned my nose up at PJ. “Eat what?”

“This,” PJ said. And he shoved something into my mouth. It was small and sour, kind of like the pickled plums my dad used to eat. Only it tasted way worse. Worse, even, than the goo had smelled.

I tried to spit out the whatever-it-was, but PJ held my mouth closed until I’d swallowed.

“Gerroff me,” I mumbled from behind his hand.

“Not until you swallow the ink sac!”

I wrestled with PJ, sending the two of us rolling around in the foul-smelling goo.

“You have to swallow it,” PJ said. “One of them must have inked you when you got here. The ink sac has the antidote.”

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. It was like the time my mom and I had gone on a road trip to French Lick, only the radio had stopped working halfway, and we spent the rest of the trip listening to NPR on one of the only AM stations we had left. I knew what he was saying. I recognized the words. But I couldn’t get them to make sense.

“Do it,” PJ urged.

I held my breath and shot it down in one gulp. After a few seconds my body started feeling warm again. I opened my eyes and saw PJ staring down at me, his blond hair covered in dark green goo.

“You OK?” he asked me.

I nodded.

He took his hand off my mouth and helped me up. I looked around the alley. The lighting still wasn’t the greatest, but at least I could see everything. I looked at the cardboard box where I’d landed a few minutes before and confirmed my suspicions about the dog crap. Then I looked down at my feet. I was standing in six inches of the sticky, dark green goo.

“Yuck,” I said to PJ. “What is this stuff?”

“Squid guts,” said PJ matter-of-factly.

“Squid guts? You drenched me in squid guts?“

“It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, using one of the nearby walls to scrape the gunk off my shoes. That’s when I noticed the little red welts, each one about the size of a dime, wrapping around my wrist like a bracelet. “So, uh, Ninjas versus Squids. That’s just a game, right?”

PJ made a face. “I thought so,” he said. He walked over to the far corner of the alley and picked up a couple of mega-size Slimeades. He wiped the goo off of one and passed it to me. I took a swig and instantly felt better.

“And now?”

PJ shrugged. “I dunno.”

Neither of us said anything for a long time. We just stood there, drinking our slimeades, looking around at the green goo covering everything. I was just thinking about how we were going to explain the five giant squid-like carcasses to the rent-a-cops policing the water park when it hit me:

There may have been five carcasses, but there had been six girls.