Trollhunters by Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus
Authors: Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus
Ads: Link
into a sink with a drain the perfect size for an extending tentacle.
Because
Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line
was an outdoor production, the auditions were held on a knoll just to the side of Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field, where the
football team was packing in an extra weekend practice beneath the jumbotron installers. Two doomed lines of would-be headliners, girls and boys, paired off to read for
RoJu
’s title
roles while Mrs. Leach, the drama coach of the exhausted hair, frowsy hairbands, and floppy sweaters, took notes.
Opposite of where the team was scrimmaging, at the north end of the field, Dad rode his industrial lawn mower around the end zone. The thing had cost a bundle when he’d bought it five
years before, but I had to hand it to him—it had already paid for itself. The monstrosity was twice as big as a regular mower and painted a garish gold. The back wheels had been lifted from a
defunct monster truck called the Destruckshunator and the huge, eight-wheeled mowing deck stuck out like the wings of a 747. The sixteen-inch discharge chute shot out grass with machine-gun force.
Seriously: I’d stood too close before and been
bruised
by the flying grass.
Thankfully, Dad hadn’t noticed me when I’d arrived for the auditions. In his goggles, work gloves, steel-toed safety boots, allergy mask, and hair net, he looked like a frantic alien
nerd piloting a gigantic moon rover, hell-bent on destroying our grassy planet one blade at a time.
I’d been last in line, but now it was one o’clock and I was just one actor away. Studying the pages in my sweaty hands was difficult; Tub had yet to show and I kept visualizing him
arriving with Sergeant Gulager, who would haul me off to the nuthouse for my own safety. Just as distracting was the current Romeo’s butchering of the Bard.
“It is my soul that calls upon my name?” Shakespeare’s unfamiliar rhythms had the kid doubting the most fundamental precepts of English. “How silver-sweet sound?
Lovers’ tongues by night? Like softest music? To attending ears?”
“Romeo!” his Juliet responded. An easy line, for sure.
“My…niece? Nice? Nessie?”
“Niesse,” Mrs. Leach said for the thirtieth time that day. “It means young hawk.”
A conflagration of footballs converging on the same target drew my attention to a rotund figure slumping through the end zone. It was Tub, on foot, as his previous nine bicycles had been stolen
from school bicycle racks over the past nine years. He was carrying a duffel bag and grimacing against the half-dozen balls thumping down around him from shoulder-padded bullies. Only the last one
struck him, on the shoulder.
“Enough monkey business, men!” Coach Lawrence hollered. “Though that
was
a real bull’s-eye, Jorgensen-Warner!”
Tub threw his duffel bag down beside a table. On it were the tattered scraps of the free donuts promised by the flyers. Tub lifted a thin sheet of deli paper spotted with powdered sugar with the
same delicacy one might handle a war-torn American flag. He set it down, wobbled backward a few steps, and plopped down on the grass, grinding his jaw like he always did after a tightening. He
looked to the grassy stage and gave me a morose nod.
“Sleep well upon thine eyes?” the boy continued. “Peace in thy…breast? Breast? Can I say that?”
Mrs. Leach rubbed at her eyes and the kid skulked away in surrender. She consulted her sign-up sheet while Dad’s mower droned on in the distance.
“Jim Sturges Jr.” She peered through her glasses at the makeshift stage. “We’re out of Juliets. Claire, can you read with Jim?”
My heart sunk. Of course Claire Fontaine was to get front-row seats to my degradation. I took a deep breath while she set aside her pink backpack, uncrossed her legs from the grass, and brushed
off. It was no secret that Claire had Juliet locked. Sure, she read with impressive poise, and her swings between melancholy and ecstasy were convincing enough
Because
Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line
was an outdoor production, the auditions were held on a knoll just to the side of Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field, where the
football team was packing in an extra weekend practice beneath the jumbotron installers. Two doomed lines of would-be headliners, girls and boys, paired off to read for
RoJu
’s title
roles while Mrs. Leach, the drama coach of the exhausted hair, frowsy hairbands, and floppy sweaters, took notes.
Opposite of where the team was scrimmaging, at the north end of the field, Dad rode his industrial lawn mower around the end zone. The thing had cost a bundle when he’d bought it five
years before, but I had to hand it to him—it had already paid for itself. The monstrosity was twice as big as a regular mower and painted a garish gold. The back wheels had been lifted from a
defunct monster truck called the Destruckshunator and the huge, eight-wheeled mowing deck stuck out like the wings of a 747. The sixteen-inch discharge chute shot out grass with machine-gun force.
Seriously: I’d stood too close before and been
bruised
by the flying grass.
Thankfully, Dad hadn’t noticed me when I’d arrived for the auditions. In his goggles, work gloves, steel-toed safety boots, allergy mask, and hair net, he looked like a frantic alien
nerd piloting a gigantic moon rover, hell-bent on destroying our grassy planet one blade at a time.
I’d been last in line, but now it was one o’clock and I was just one actor away. Studying the pages in my sweaty hands was difficult; Tub had yet to show and I kept visualizing him
arriving with Sergeant Gulager, who would haul me off to the nuthouse for my own safety. Just as distracting was the current Romeo’s butchering of the Bard.
“It is my soul that calls upon my name?” Shakespeare’s unfamiliar rhythms had the kid doubting the most fundamental precepts of English. “How silver-sweet sound?
Lovers’ tongues by night? Like softest music? To attending ears?”
“Romeo!” his Juliet responded. An easy line, for sure.
“My…niece? Nice? Nessie?”
“Niesse,” Mrs. Leach said for the thirtieth time that day. “It means young hawk.”
A conflagration of footballs converging on the same target drew my attention to a rotund figure slumping through the end zone. It was Tub, on foot, as his previous nine bicycles had been stolen
from school bicycle racks over the past nine years. He was carrying a duffel bag and grimacing against the half-dozen balls thumping down around him from shoulder-padded bullies. Only the last one
struck him, on the shoulder.
“Enough monkey business, men!” Coach Lawrence hollered. “Though that
was
a real bull’s-eye, Jorgensen-Warner!”
Tub threw his duffel bag down beside a table. On it were the tattered scraps of the free donuts promised by the flyers. Tub lifted a thin sheet of deli paper spotted with powdered sugar with the
same delicacy one might handle a war-torn American flag. He set it down, wobbled backward a few steps, and plopped down on the grass, grinding his jaw like he always did after a tightening. He
looked to the grassy stage and gave me a morose nod.
“Sleep well upon thine eyes?” the boy continued. “Peace in thy…breast? Breast? Can I say that?”
Mrs. Leach rubbed at her eyes and the kid skulked away in surrender. She consulted her sign-up sheet while Dad’s mower droned on in the distance.
“Jim Sturges Jr.” She peered through her glasses at the makeshift stage. “We’re out of Juliets. Claire, can you read with Jim?”
My heart sunk. Of course Claire Fontaine was to get front-row seats to my degradation. I took a deep breath while she set aside her pink backpack, uncrossed her legs from the grass, and brushed
off. It was no secret that Claire had Juliet locked. Sure, she read with impressive poise, and her swings between melancholy and ecstasy were convincing enough
Similar Books
