“Does everybody know?” Zeke asked.

  “I think a bird saw the ambulance,” Daniel said.

  “Don’t worry,” Alicia said. “Most people are going to be nice about it.”

  Most isn’t everyone, Zeke thought.

  “Fat lizard!” yelled a voice that certainly wasn’t most people as they exited the bus.

  “Don’t call him that,” Alicia said, immediately getting between Zeke and Pelicarnassus, who was waiting for them. “The last person who called him that really regretted it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Zeke knows very much about regret,” said the pelican. “Not yet anyway.”

  “Is that some kind of threat?” Alicia said.

  “Yes,” Pelicarnassus said. “Kind of obviously so. Should I have been clearer?”

  “What do you want, pelican?!” Daniel demanded, also stepping in front of Zeke.

  “Thank you, guys,” Zeke said. “But I can fight my own battles.”

  “That’s not true, is it?” Pelicarnassus said. “You’ve got France to fight your battles for you.”

  “France fights their own battles. You invaded them. They fought back. Nothing at all surprising in that story.”

  “And Zeke is the one who punched you in the face!” Daniel added unhelpfully.

  “That’s not helpful, Daniel,” Zeke said. “I’m sorry for that, remember?”

  “Not sorry enough,” said Pelicarnassus.

  “Why are you after me?” Zeke asked, exasperated. “We’ve barely ever spoken, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you’re trying to bully me, invade my knee—”

  “IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE OUTGROWING HIM!” Miel said. Zeke hadn’t even realized he was still there. “THE TYRANT CANNOT BEAR A BIG-GER TYRANT, SO HE MUST KEEP HIM SMALL!”

  Everyone stared at Miel, mouths and beaks agape. Which he couldn’t see, of course, but the silence no doubt had a particular edge that he was expert at interpreting. “THERE IS NO REASON TO BE SO SHOCKED! IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS TO ANYONE WITH EYES!”

  Zeke and Pelicarnassus looked back at each other. It was true. Zeke was taller than the pelican now, and though birds are incredibly powerful, Zeke was big for a small lizard. In fact, he was pretty decent for a medium lizard, too.

  He was bigger than Pelicarnassus. Not just slightly taller, like he’d noticed before, but fully bigger, in all ways. When had that happened?

  “THE QUESTION,” yelled Miel, “IS WHETHER YOU WILL BECOME A TYRANT, TOO, ZEKE! IN HIS PLACE! THAT IS ALWAYS THE DANGER!”

  “I never would,” Zeke protested.

  “THAT’S WHAT ALL TYRANTS SAY!”

  Zeke turned to him. “I can’t tell if you’re my friend or not.”

  “I WOULD HOPE BY NOW YOU WOULD HAVE REALIZED—”

  “Can we get back to me threatening the fat lizard, please?” Pelicarnassus interrupted, even more irritated now.

  Zeke took a step toward the pelican. “Go ahead. Call me that word again.”

  “No,” Alicia said, changing her mind so clearly Zeke could see it on her face. “No, I don’t think that’s the way, Zeke.”

  “You’re the one who told me to—”

  “I’ll fight him!” Daniel interjected.

  “And you would lose,” Pelicarnassus said.

  “And get expelled,” Principal Wombat said, who had zoomed in unseen. “There will be no more fighting at this school. Not one more fight or I will call your mothers, you hear me?”

  “Oh, I hear you,” Pelicarnassus said with a terrible, terrible smile. “I hear you loud and clear.”

  “Everyone get to class!” Principal Wombat ordered. “Nothing more to see here. No fights are going to be happening. Just warm fellowship among all students. Isn’t that right?”

  Everyone started to move toward the school doors as the first bell rang.

  Not the lizards or Pelicarnassus, though.

  “I heard your mother was away,” Pelicarnassus said.

  “You do not talk about her—”

  “I only meant there must be something going around.” Pelicarnassus smirked. “Because my mother’s away, too.”

  “So Principal Wombat won’t be able to call her!” Daniel said.

  “What are you?” Pelicarnassus said to him. “The narrator?”

  No. He was not the narrator.

  “Let’s all look at France,” Mr. MacPherson said.

  Mr. MacPherson had asked Zeke to sit on the edge of his—Mr. MacPherson’s—desk, knee up so it was at his classmates’ eye level. There was probably no way around it short of cutting school, which Zeke had actually planned to do before he forgot all about it in the whole thing with Pelicarnassus this morning.

  “How did it get there?” asked a mouse.

  “I heard it was because Zeke’s uncle got drunk and puked on France,” said one of the Normans. Not—Zeke thought—the one who had warned him. Warned him, and Zeke came to school anyway. Gosh, Zeke thought, why can’t I remember to skip things that will hurt me?

  “I’ll have none of that talk,” Mr. MacPherson said. “The story of how it got on a monitor lizard’s knee has been embellished and spun for so many generations, who really knows what the truth is anymore?”

  “No,” Zeke said, “he definitely got drunk and puked. But he was my great-great-great-something-grandfather, not my uncle.”

  “Anyway,” Mr. MacPherson sighed, “everyone gather round.”

  The class shuffled up to the desk and tried to look over one another at Zeke’s knee.

  “You can see the border clearly, of course,” Mr. MacPherson said, using a long metal stick as a pointer. “Over here is where Belgium is on a traditional map, and Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, and of course, what is now the island of Spain.” He looked up to Zeke. “I forget, do you have Monaco as well?”

  Zeke shook his head.

  “So Monaco stays a little dot in the Mediterranean when you actually go to where France used to be,” Mr. MacPherson continued. “Not that any of you will get there soon, I suspect.”

  “I went there last summer with my mother,” Pelicarnassus said.

  “How nice for you,” Mr. MacPherson said. “Now, can anyone tell me what France is famous for?”

  Many voices spoke up at once. “Wine and cheese?” “Cheese and wine?” “Cheese with wine?” “Wine first, cheese second.”

  A little accented voice rose from Zeke’s knee with a chortle. “It is a stereotype, but they are not wrong. We do love our wine and cheese.”

  “It’s nice cheese,” Zeke said.

  “Merci,” said his knee.

  “So, yes, wine and cheese,” Mr. MacPherson said. “What else?”

  There was a silence. That grew longer. Until Daniel put up his hand and said, “Being on Zeke’s knee?”

  “Yes,” Mr. MacPherson said, sounding a little defeated. “I suppose so.”

  “Are we going to make salt-relief maps of Zeke’s knee?” a zebra asked.

  “It’s not fair to have France on a test if Zeke can just ask his knee,” said a gopher who Zeke didn’t even know.

  “Can I get down now?” Zeke asked.

  “I was hoping we could do a whole unit on your knee—I mean, France,” Mr. MacPherson said. “What other classroom in the world has an actual whole country in it?”

  “I HAVE A QUESTION!” Miel said from the back.

  “Yeeeessss?” Mr. MacPherson said, looking over his gnu glasses and wincing at the sheer volume.

  “WHAT HAPPENS IF ZEKE VISITS FRANCE?”

  The class fell silent again. They looked at one another. They looked at Zeke. Who, to be honest, was suddenly curious about the answer, too.

  “Zeke will never visit France,” said a sneering, smirking, nasty voice from the back.

  Zeke watched as Pelicarnassus got to his feet.

  “I could go to France,” Zeke said, though still not sure whether it was technically possible.

  “No,” said Pelicarnassus. “You’ll never go. You’re too poor.”

  There was an actual audible gasp in the classroom at this, even from Mr. MacPherson, who seemed too shocked to speak.

  “They bus all you lizards in from the poor side of town,” Pelicarnassus continued, now walking toward Zeke, who still sat on the desk with his knee up. “Hoping you’ll mix in with the richer, better kids—”

  “That is quite enough, Pelicarnassus,” Mr. MacPherson tried.

  Pelicarnassus ignored him. “But you’ll never fit in. Why do you think Principal Wombat gives you jobs? No cool kid ever gets a job at school.”

  “Hey!” Daniel said, sounding wounded.

  Pelicarnassus stopped in front of Zeke. “You’re just a fat, poor lizard with a mom who can’t even get out of bed.”

  The classroom hushed in horror at how far over the line this was.

  Now, you may have wondered what Zeke was doing during all of this, and later, after everything went crazy and he had a chance to look back on it all, he wondered, too.

  Because he just sat there on the desk, not answering back. It wasn’t even out of shock. It was as if, for that moment, he thought, well . . .

  He thought he deserved it.

  Because where were the lies in what Pelicarnassus was saying? Zeke was poor, though mostly everyone was too polite to mention it. He was . . . hefty. His mom. Well, yeah, that one hurt, but for a moment there, for a terrible, terrible moment there—

  It all felt true.

  It felt like what the Norman had warned him about. All of Zeke’s truths being told in front of the whole class was “really, really bad.” He thought, just for a second, just for the shortest amount of time, especially in that moment of silence, that he might not survive.

  But before he could act, before he could react, something unexpected happened.

  “That’s really harsh, Pelicarnassus,” said the gopher, the one who had accused Zeke of cheating on a test they hadn’t even taken yet.

  Pelicarnassus looked astonished. “What was that?”

  Then “Way too harsh,” said the zebra, who Zeke didn’t really know either.

  They spoke before even Daniel and Alicia could.

  “You’re just mean,” said Briony the seal, and by now everyone was nodding and murmuring in agreement.

  “Yeah, and where does a pelican get off being so horrible about someone’s looks?” said a lion, which was probably the wrong sentiment, but Zeke could still feel a little grateful.

  “You judge me?” Pelicarnassus said, standing up tall. He looked quite scary, actually. Pelicans are strong birds—muscular, angular, powerful. They can do a lot of harm. “You all think to sit there and judge me?” He pointed a wing at Zeke. “You should be judging him!”

  “You’re going to the Principal’s office,” said Mr. MacPherson. “Right now, Pelicarnassus. I’m not asking. And I’m not telling you twice.”

  Pelicarnassus spread his wings and gave a mocking smile to Mr. MacPherson, to Zeke, to the whole class, and said one word.

  “No.”

  Before anyone could say anything else, fighter jets started flying out of Zeke’s knee.

  They were not French fighter jets.

  “Is that supposed to be happening?” asked the zebra.

  “No,” Zeke said, alarmed. The planes were flying around the classroom now, with more and more coming from Zeke’s knee.

  “They need to go back, Zeke!” Mr. MacPherson said, as if scolding would work. “I have a class to teach!”

  “I’m not doing this, Mr. MacPherson.”

  The first planes were forming a squadron, and they flew out over the rows of desks.

  Then they started dropping bombs.

  They weren’t big bombs—they weren’t big planes—but they were still bombs. The first round blew up one corner of Briony’s desk.

  “Hey!” yelled Briony.

  “Make it stop!” Mr. MacPherson was shouting at Zeke now.

  “France!” Zeke yelled at his knee. “What’s happening?”

  “It ees not us!” a French voice yelled back. “We do not know how they were hiding!”

  Zeke looked up into the eyes of Pelicarnassus, who was smirking right back. “Oh,” said the pelican, “did I not mention that the first invasion in your room was only cover so I could secretly plant spies who would form their own air force from mercenaries and unfriendly foreign governments?”

  “You did not,” Zeke said. “But France drove you off.”

  “Did they?” The pelican sneered. “You know how good my mom is at her job?”

  “Is supervillain really a job?” Alicia asked.

  Pelicarnassus ignored this. “I’m going to be even better. The world won’t know what hit it. This school is only the start.” He giggled, actually giggled, then he took a box out of his pocket, a plastic one with a red button in the middle. He held it up in one wing.

  “What’s that do?” Daniel said.

  “It does this,” Pelicarnassus said, and pressed the red button.

  Nothing happened.

  “It didn’t do anything,” Alicia said.

  Pelicarnassus frowned. “Give it a second.”

  The small planes had stopped flying out of Zeke’s knee and were now on formation-bombing runs up and down the desks. Little explosions—very little, you could hold one in your hand and it probably wouldn’t hurt—were erupting from everyone’s textbooks and a few of the leftover Antarctica salt-relief maps that Daniel hadn’t eaten.

  “Pelicarnassus,” Mr. MacPherson said, “I demand that you—”

  And the roof was suddenly ripped off the classroom.

  “There it is,” Pelicarnassus said, smiling.

  “It’s a giant robot pelican!” Alicia shouted, pointing at the thing that had torn the entire ceiling off Mr. MacPherson’s classroom. And indeed, it was a giant robot pelican, three stories high, made of steel and girders, currently swallowing the white panels of the ceiling in its massive steel and girder beak.

  “Wrong!” Pelicarnassus yelled. “It’s a giant robot pelican suit! And I am the one who wears it!”

  He leapt up, flying, the Normans flying after him—one Norman looking back at Zeke and just shaking his head—and flew into the giant robot pelican suit’s left eye. The giant robot pelican suit was pelican-shaped, obviously, but you could see a lot of its insides. It was more like a pelican-shaped cage that could tear roofs off things. The class watched as Pelicarnassus sat down in what seemed to be a pilot’s chair. Then they watched as he paused, took out his phone, seemed to fuss with an app for a second, said “Oh for Pete’s sake,” then it seemed to work, and he put it in a slot in front of him.

  “I shall destroy you all!” he called down.

  “Yeah!” shouted the Normans.

  “I think we should run,” Alicia said.

  “I think that might be wise,” Mr. MacPherson agreed. “Class! Run!”

  They ran, all except Zeke, because he saw Miel had hopped off the back of his seat and seemed to be weighing his options. Zeke jumped from Mr. MacPherson’s desk and ran over to him.

  “Can I help you?” Zeke asked. “Not in any way that’s meant to embarrass you or make you feel helpless.”

  “NO!” Miel replied, but not to Zeke’s question. “HELP WOULD BE WELCOME!”

  “Get down!” Zeke said. “Those little planes are coming right for us!”

  “WHICH DIRECTION?” Miel yelled.

  “Just behind your head!”

  Miel didn’t duck—which was a word no one really used to mean “hide” because it was somewhat offensive to actual ducks—he just turned his head around in that way that birds can. He seemed to be sniffing, listening, and . . . Zeke didn’t know, maybe sensing the air, how it changed—

  Because right as the small planes reached the hawk, he lashed out fast with his beak, his sharp and terrible and powerful beak, and snatched the lead plane right out of the air, crushing it in a little puff of flames and smoke. The other planes in the formation veered sharply away from him to avoid another chomping.

  “Hey!” Pelicarnassus yelled down, shocked and furious.

  “AND NOW PLEASE LEAD US BOTH SWIFTLY AWAY, ZEKE THE LIZARD!” Miel shouted.

  So Zeke did.

  Zeke ran out of the classroom, Miel close behind, a wing on Zeke’s shoulder to guide him. They heard Pelicarnassus cry out in anger, and two massive thuds as the giant robot pelican suit stepped into the classroom, smashing desks everywhere.

  “Why didn’t we hear it walk up?” Zeke asked as they ran.

  “PERHAPS THE BOMBING WAS MEANT AS A DISTRACTION!” Miel answered. “OR WE WERE ALL TOO INTERESTED IN YOUR KNEE TO NOTICE!”

  “My knee isn’t interesting! It’s embarrassing!”

  “GOOD GRIEF, ZEKE THE LIZARD! DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT?”

  Zeke stopped so suddenly, Miel ran right into him, knocking them both over. “Sorry,” Zeke said, helping him up. “But no, it’s always been an embarrassment.”

  “I WOULD HAVE SAID MORE AMAZING THAN EMBARRASSING! INTERESTING AT THE VERY LEAST, BUT NO, I WOULD ACTUALLY STICK WITH AMAZING!”

  Zeke blinked. And sometimes maybe that’s all it takes for the world to change, a single blink. That, and a classroom of animals who clearly didn’t think you were the “truth” Pelicarnassus told them.

  “Thank you,” Zeke said.

  “WE SHOULD PROBABLY STILL BE RUNNING!” the hawk yelled as the roof of the hallway was torn off above them.

  “You’re probably right,” Zeke said, taking Miel’s wing and running down the hall. Because they’d hesitated while Miel did that incredible thing with his beak and the fighter jets, the halls were deserted.

  Which was good, because the giant robot pelican suit was right behind them.

  “You can’t run, fat lizard!” Pelicarnassus yelled from up on high in the pilot’s seat. “This thing can fly if it has to!”

  “POSSIBLY ALSO AN ANSWER TO OUR EARLIER QUESTION!” Miel said as they ran.

  They turned down first one hallway, then another. The roofs of those hallways were torn off behind them as they went.