The surprise invasion of Zeke’s knee started after he’d gone to bed. His mom had made it to the kitchen, but the black dog followed her and stayed by her side all night. Zeke microwaved corn dogs and fries and served them. His mother only drank some coffee, but she did say thank you for the food, which quieted down the black dog’s growling for a bit.

  After Zeke had brushed his teeth and made sure all the doors and windows were locked and that his clothes and bag were ready for school the next day, he lay down on his bed to read the latest in the Dr. Rex, Dinosaur Hunter series. He liked it because the hero, Dr. Rex, was a dinosaur who hunted bad guys. It was cheerful and funny and incredibly violent and he thought it was the best set of books ever written in the history of anything.

  He finished three chapters and was about to turn off the light when he heard incoming planes. It wasn’t the scheduled time for one of the twice daily regular flights for people who lived in France or were tourists, so he assumed the planes were just normal ones outside in the sky.

  Then a whole squadron of jets, each not more than a centimeter across, flew up his bedspread toward his knee. They were so fast, he didn’t even have time to move France out of the way before they started dropping little bombs on it.

  “Hey!” Zeke shouted. Then he shouted “Ow!” because it hurt.

  “Zut alors!” cried a bunch of tiny, startled French voices.

  The planes came back for another run. Zeke hopped off his bed to avoid it—

  Just as Pelicarnassus came crashing through his bedroom window! Glass went everywhere, covering Zeke’s bed where he’d been lying down.

  “What are you doing?!” Zeke yelled.

  “I’m taking my revenge!” Pelicarnassus yelled back. “What do you think I’m doing?” Then he shook off some glass from his wings and said, “Actually, I’m sorry about the window. I thought you’d have it open in warm weather.”

  “Lizards don’t like breezes.”

  “Even when they sleep? I thought it would like, you know, cool you down or something.”

  “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

  Pelicarnassus seemed to remember why he was there. “I told you you’d be sorry!”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I certainly implied it, and now . . .” He paused as if he was trying to remember what he’d already said. “Yes! And now I take my revenge!”

  “You already said that,” Zeke said, then said “Ow!” again. While he’d been arguing with Pelicarnassus, the tiny fighter planes had come for a second run.

  “I’m going to leave a permanent force on your knee,” Pelicarnassus taunted. “You’ll never be able to escape me. I can do whatever I want to you at any hour of the day.”

  “Does your mom know you’re invading France?”

  “You leave her out of this!”

  “You leave France out of this!”

  “Why should I?”

  “They haven’t done anything to you!”

  “They haven’t done anything for me either. And I’ve heard they surrender to pretty much anyone.”

  “Yeah?” Zeke asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what you heard?”

  Zeke stood up taller, as tall as his bulk would make him, which turned out to be a little bit taller than Pelicarnassus, which surprised Zeke. And possibly Pelicarnassus, too.

  “You heard wrong,” Zeke said.

  A squadron of French fighter jets came screaming from Zeke’s kneecap. They immediately drove off a wave of Pelicarnassus’s mini-jets, which sped back toward the vent they must have flown in through.

  “Hey!” Pelicarnassus shouted.

  The French jets swooped and fired rockets at the remaining hostile planes, which all fled. The rockets all intentionally missed. The French weren’t barbarians—there was no need to kill anyone—but they were ridiculously brave.

  “And stay out!” said a tiny little French voice from Zeke’s leg. Then there was the sound of chanson music and accordions and lots of clinking wineglasses as they celebrated.

  “Huh,” Pelicarnassus said, trying to figure out what had just happened.

  “Get out of my house,” Zeke said, “or I’ll call the police.”

  “You think the police in this town can handle a supervillain?”

  “You’re not a supervillain, Pelicarnassus, you’re just a bully. And I definitely think they can handle calling your mom.”

  The pelican frowned at this. “There’s no need for escalation.”

  “Get out,” Zeke repeated more forcefully.

  Pelicarnassus started backing away toward the window he’d crashed through. He looked confused. “You’re not supposed to be like this, lizard.”

  “I have a name. And I’m the one who decides how I’m supposed to be.”

  “That’s all very brave-sounding,” the pelican sneered. “I wonder if you mean it.”

  Zeke, who wondered if he meant it, too, said nothing.

  “We’ll meet again,” Pelicarnassus said grandly.

  “Yeah, I know,” Zeke said. “We go to the same school.”

  “You know exactly what I mean.” With that, Pelicarnassus swooped his giant wings, knocking over nearly everything that was still standing in Zeke’s room, and flew back out the broken window. Zeke went to watch him fly away in the moonlight.

  There was a soft knock at his bedroom door. “Everything okay, Zekey?” his mother asked, not opening it.

  “Yeah, Mom, go back to sleep.”

  “If you’re sure, hon,” she said slowly, drowsily. He heard her walk back to her bedroom. He heard the claws of the black dog tip-tapping along the floor, following her.

  Zeke kept looking out the window for a minute. Then he picked up his walkie-talkie.

  “What happened?” Daniel whispered, helping Zeke climb up into Daniel’s bedroom from outside.

  “Pelicarnassus,” Zeke whispered back. Daniel’s mother loved Zeke to distraction, but this was way after bedtime. “He tried to invade France.”

  Daniel was agog. “He’s going to get in so much trouble with his mom.”

  “I think he thinks he’s working his way up to supervillain now. He thought France was an easy target.”

  Daniel laughed. “Bet he learned that mistake fast.”

  “Yeah, but he learned it in my bedroom.”

  Daniel’s lizard face dropped. “Aw, man, that’s harsh. Why does that guy hate us anyway? He used to just ignore us, and that was fine for everyone.”

  Zeke was wondering this, too. He had known—or at least known of—Pelicarnassus for all the years they’d been bused to their school. The pelican had always just stuck with the birds and their hats, and when he bullied other kids, the lizards usually kept their heads down and tried to stay out of the way. So what was this all about?

  “Do you know how to replace a window?” Zeke asked, more hope in his voice than he really wanted. Lizard houses, as previously noted, were as much like terrariums as they could be without compromising privacy; they were one of the few animals who kept spare sheets of glass everywhere.

  “Yeah, easy,” Daniel said, “I break mine all the time.”

  And there was Daniel, in a lizard-shaped nutshell. He was chaos in a teeny-tiny package, full of laughter and good cheer, but also really, really good at being a friend if you gave him the chance.

  Zeke sometimes felt like a giant statue next to him, he moved so much. Daniel had always been that way, from the incubator forward. All baby lizards were lightning-fast scuttlers—it’s how they stayed alive in a world of hawks and loudmouth seagulls who might forget no one ate anyone anymore—but Daniel was so fast, he never actually seemed to move. He was just in one place, and in the blink of an eye, he was in another.

  Zeke remembered a birthday party Alicia had at the beach (lizards liked the sun) and when they were all hyped up from too many snow cones and way too much candy, Daniel had seen some teenage basilisks doing their walk-on-water thing. They could run so fast that when they hit the water’s surface, the fan around their heads would open (Zeke didn’t know exactly how it helped, it just always opened) and they could run on top of the ocean for a long way before sinking. They were competing to see if any of them could get all the way out to a red buoy bobbing far off past the waves. It was foolish and no one seriously expected any of them to make it, as far as Zeke could tell; they were just using it as an excuse to run really fast into the water. Which seemed like fun.

  Until Daniel said, “I think I could do it.”

  “Do what?” asked Alicia, who never paid much attention to the stupid things boys did.

  “Get to the thingy out there.”

  “The buoy,” Zeke said.

  “The what?” Daniel asked.

  “The buoy.”

  “The what?”

  “The buoy.”

  “Yeah, I’m totally not hearing what word you’re saying,” Daniel said, “but I’ll bet I can.”

  “Daniel, don’t—” Zeke started, but anyone who knew Daniel—and no one knew him better than Zeke—knew it was already way too late by then.

  Daniel scuttled off in a blur, so fast even Zeke couldn’t see him move between the split-second little stops he did across the sand. Zeke heard Daniel’s little voice call out, “Eat my dust, suckers!”

  And then there was just a series of light splashes as Daniel zipped across the water. It shouldn’t have worked. It was impossible. Daniel wasn’t a basilisk, didn’t have the right kind of webbed feet, definitely didn’t have a neck ruffle thing.

  But three seconds later, he was on the buoy.

  (Which, okay, maybe now that Zeke thought about it, wasn’t as far out as he might be remembering, but still.)

  “Ha ha!” Daniel shouted triumphantly, but that was when one of Daniel’s moms saw what he’d done and the triumph ended right there.

  “You get back here this instant!” she yelled.

  The only problem was, Daniel couldn’t. It had taken all his energy to get out there. He scuttled off the buoy and sank like a stone.

  The water was suddenly filled with every mom available (both of Daniel’s, plus Alicia’s, plus one more chaperone mom—Zeke’s mom wasn’t there), plus a whole bunch of teenage basilisks—who weren’t bad guys at all, it turned out—and the octopus lifeguard, who leapt out of his tank straight into the ocean. The lifeguard was the one who saved him, curling three tentacles around Daniel to draw him away from a bad-tempered eel who had started shouting about “crazy kids” on his lawn.

  When all the ruckus died down and Daniel had coughed up way more than one baby lizard’s worth of seawater, Daniel looked Zeke in the eye with his little grin and said, “Did you see me, though?”

  “I saw you, Daniel.”

  “That was awesome.”

  And it was awesome. Daniel was awesome.

  “I’ll come back with you tonight and fix the window,” Daniel said now. “Your mom doesn’t even need to know it happened.”

  “Thanks, Daniel,” Zeke said.

  “Hall monitoring isn’t the same without you, Zeke,” Daniel said, with what sounded like his whole heart.

  “You’ve only done one day with me and one day without me.”

  “Yeah, and I’m telling you, it’s not the same without you. Alicia thinks so, too. You gotta find a way to get back to it.” Daniel gasped in surprise and pulled himself up to his full height—which still only barely reached Zeke’s shoulder. “Maybe that’s what Principal Wombat is doing! Maybe this is your redemption arc! Like in movies!”

  “Redemption arcs are for heroes,” Zeke said, “not Hall Monitors.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “Maybe she needs you to be both.”

  School the next day was pretty miserable. Daniel and Alicia were still monitoring halls with their red sashes that Zeke kept telling himself he didn’t even want. But when he tried to hang out with them, Principal Wombat forced him outside to have fun at recess whether he wanted to or not.

  “When you show me you can handle the responsibility, Ezekiel,” she said, “then you can come back in the hall.”

  And so recess it was. Without his two best friends. And with his enemy staring down at him from atop the jungle gym. Even all those levels up, Zeke could see Pelicarnassus’s eyes shooting rays of hatred at him. Then Zeke worried that Pelicarnassus would invent a hate ray and actually do it.

  He moved around to the big wooden slides (one of those big constructions with a lot of little slides and one single giant metal slide and log bridges across wooden pylons) where the pandas mostly hung out. They stuck to the quiet, shadowy bit underneath the slide, where they talked about their favorite metal bands. Pandas were crazy for metal.

  But like most metal fans, they were actually really nice and didn’t make Zeke leave when he crawled up a wooden pillar to bask at the top.

  “HELLO!” shouted a voice behind him. “IS THAT ZEKE?”

  Zeke nearly fell off the pillar, but monitor lizards never really fall from things. “Miel?”

  It was the hawk, on the pillar across the bridge. “NO!” he shouted. “I AM MIEL! IT MEANS HONEY! I’M ASKING IF YOU ARE ZEKE!”

  “Yes, I’m Zeke. How did you know my name?”

  “YOUR FRIEND ALICIA TOLD ME ON THE BUS! SHE SAID YOU WERE SHY AND WOULD NOT SAY IT YOURSELF!”

  Lizards are cold-blooded. They also don’t have any of the blood vessels in the right place to blush. But Zeke had a peach-colored throat (as a peach-throated monitor lizard) and unfortunately could blush as easily as a piglet.

  Zeke blushed. “I’m not shy,” he said. “I’m quiet.”

  “THERE IS A DIFFERENCE?”

  A panda leaned out from under the pillars and blinked up into the sun at Miel. “Hey, buddy,” she asked, “could you chill a little with the shouting?”

  “IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR A HAWK NOT TO SCREAM!” Miel shouted, not unkindly. “BUT I WILL TRY!”

  “Thanks, dude,” said the panda, and went back to her friends.

  Miel turned to Zeke. “I WILL NOT BE SUCCESSFUL! REALLY, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD IT IS FOR A HAWK TO LOWER HIS VOICE!”

  “Same with monitor lizards and skin shedding,” Zeke said. “The teachers yell at us for it all the time, but we’re like, if it’s gotta come off, it’s gotta come off. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “I UNDERSTAND!” Miel shouted.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Zeke asked.

  “IS IT ABOUT HOW I FLY WHEN I AM BLIND?”

  “Yeah, is that rude?”

  “NO, I BELIEVE YOU ASK OUT OF CURIOSITY RATHER THAN SCORN! I DO NOT HAVE A PERFECT SYSTEM, BUT I USE MY EARS AND I USE MY CLAWS AND I USE THE WAY THE AIR FEELS WHEN I FLAP MY WINGS AGAINST THINGS LIKE THIS PILLAR!”

  “Wow,” Zeke said, genuinely impressed.

  “LIKE I SAY, IT IS NOT A PERFECT SYSTEM,” Miel said, sounding as embarrassed as a hawk can, which frankly, wasn’t much. “I HAD A FALL WHEN I FIRST CAME UP HERE THIS RECESS AND BROKE MY SUNGLASSES!”

  He took his sunglasses off with the tip of one wing and showed Zeke a crack running through one of the lenses. “HOW IT LOOKS WILL NOT BOTHER ME, OF COURSE, BUT THEY SIT FUNNY ON MY FACE NOW, SO . . .”

  Zeke nodded. Realized, like an idiot, that he was nodding, and said, “That kind of stinks.”

  “IT KIND OF DOES.”

  “Yesterday,” Zeke said, “I saw you all the way up on the jungle gym. You got up there without any accidents.”

  “THE JUNGLE GYM IS FULL OF BIRDS,” Miel said, as if this answered the question.

  “All kinds of birds,” Zeke said. “Including pelicans.”

  Miel frowned, but not, Zeke thought, at Zeke. “YES, I DID MEET A PELICAN.”

  “Hawk dude,” the panda said, having returned just below them. “I don’t mean to be harsh but . . .”

  “WE WILL MOVE!” Miel shouted at her. “ZEKE AND I! SORRY, SHARON!”

  “It’s okay,” Sharon said. “Everybody’s got something.”

  Miel turned to Zeke. “I SPOKE FOR YOU JUST THEN! I APOLOGIZE! YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MOVE IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO!”

  “No,” Zeke said, standing up. “I’ll move. Got nowhere else to be or anyone else to talk to.”

  “THIS DOES NOT MAKE YOU SEEM VERY POPULAR OR NORMAL!” Miel shouted, but somehow, it didn’t seem mean.

  “I guess not,” Zeke said. He skittered down and waited for Miel to get his stuff together.

  But when Miel hopped off the pillar to join Zeke on the ground, he couldn’t see a bolt that was sticking out the side. Zeke saw it too late to say anything, and he watched, helplessly, as Miel’s left foot caught it. The hawk let out an “OH!” as he suddenly spun in the air. His wings were already out for the hop down, and he stretched them further to try to catch himself. The pillar was too short to give him enough time, though, and he hit the gravel at the bottom beak-first.

  “Miel!” Zeke shouted and zipped over.

  “Is he okay?” Sharon the panda said, and Zeke looked over to a small huddle of worried panda faces. No one can look worried quite like a panda.

  Zeke reached to help Miel up, but he was a flurry of feathers and twisting wings. Before Zeke could do anything useful, the hawk was already back on his feet.

  “I FELL!” he said, not sounding happy at all.

  “There was a bolt on the pillar,” Zeke said apologetically, even though he didn’t have anything to apologize for.

  “I COULD NOT SEE IT!” Yep, definitely angry.

  “Are you hurt?” Zeke asked. “I can get the nurse.” The nurse was a sloth, though, so it would take half a day for her to get out there with even a Band-Aid.

  “I AM ANGRY!” Miel said with surprising frankness. “IT IS EMBARRASSING AND NOT WHAT I WANT OTHERS TO SEE!”

  “It was an accident—” Zeke tried to say.

  “OUR CONVERSATION IS FINISHED!” And with that, Miel took off on a low flight away from the slides, clearly a path he knew, because he stopped perfectly at the edge of the concrete. Then he opened his wings as if to sense the wind or whatever it was he’d said before, and walked to the jungle gym, finding its farthest corner. He flew straight up, using his claws as a guide, before alighting on the very, very top, away from even the other birds, who included Pelicarnassus. The pelican looked from the hawk to the lizard. Zeke couldn’t tell what he might be thinking.