Max and the Millions Read online

  ALSO BY ROSS MONTGOMERY

  Alex, the Dog and the Unopenable Door

  The Tornado Chasers

  Perijee & Me

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

  Text copyright © 2018 by Ross Montgomery

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by David Litchfield

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Simultaneously published by Faber & Faber Limited, London, in 2018.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Montgomery, Ross (Fiction writer), author.

  Title: Max and the millions / Ross Montgomery.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, 2018. | Summary: Max discovers an entire, living world on the floor of the bedroom of the eccentric janitor who disappeared from his boarding school, and must protect it from the evil headmaster.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017006909 (print) | LCCN 2017033753 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1886-2 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1884-8 (trade) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1885-5 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1887-9 (pbk.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Models and modelmaking—Fiction. | Size—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | Hearing impaired—Fiction. | People with disabilities—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M76847 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.M76847 Max 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524718862

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Ross Montgomery

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  8 Weeks Later

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To Fred:

  One small thing can save the world—

  no pressure.

  Mr. Darrow was building a world.

  He was building it in his bedroom, which was the biggest in the boardinghouse. The room was as cold and bare as a basement, with high ceilings and uncarpeted floors. Mr. Darrow had asked to be moved somewhere better, but the headmaster had always refused. After all, the headmaster would say, you’re just a janitor.

  Mr. Darrow wasn’t just anything. He was a genius. Unfortunately nobody knew it but him.

  After tonight, that was all going to change.

  Mr. Darrow gazed at the miniature world on his desk. It was a little tray of sand, no bigger than a book. Inside were hundreds of tiny palm trees, each one made by hand and the size of a matchstick. They’d been planted in a ring around a green lagoon. It glimmered in the lamplight like an emerald dropped on the sand.

  There was no doubt about it—this was Mr. Darrow’s masterpiece. The greatest model he had ever made.

  Other models filled the shelves above his desk. There were hundreds of them, piled on top of each other from floor to ceiling. Model boats, model planes, model palaces, monuments, dinosaurs, skyscrapers…each one smaller and more perfect than the last.

  But they were nothing compared to his latest creation. It was paradise…and it was almost complete.

  There was just one thing left to do.

  Mr. Darrow opened a drawer beside him and took out a pair of metal goggles. They had two thick lenses and were covered in switches and wires. He pulled them on and pressed a button on the side. The lenses shot out like telescopes.

  Mr. Darrow was proud of his microscope goggles—after all, he had built them himself. They were priceless.

  Just like the serum.

  Mr. Darrow picked up the tiny bottle beside him and held it up to the light. Less than a thimbleful of liquid lay inside, but the colors shifted and clouded in a pattern of millions. Mr. Darrow carefully swirled the bottle, merging red, then green, then blue, before the colors separated again.

  It had taken him twenty years to find the serum. He never expected to get his hands on so much, and of such perfect quality…but even so, he had only one chance to use it.

  He tilted the lamp over the sandbox. The lagoon shimmered.

  “Light and water,” he whispered. “That’s all it needs.”

  Mr. Darrow swallowed. Five years of construction, twenty years of planning—it had all come down to this one moment. He tried not to think about what would happen if he used too much serum, or too little, or—and it didn’t even bear thinking about—he dropped the bottle.

  Mr. Darrow unscrewed the lid, took a deep breath, and leaned over his greatest work.

  “Oh well,” he said. “Here goes nothing.”

  The headmaster cleared his throat.

  “Good morning, children.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” replied five hundred voices.

  Mr. Pitt smiled. The whole school was completely in his hands. He could tell them to start jumping up and down if he wanted to, and they’d do it. It was his favorite part of being a headmaster. That, and the speeches.

  “Today,” he announced, “is the last day of school. It is also the end of my first year as your new headmaster! While I’ve only been running St. Goliath’s Boarding School for a short time, I feel like I’ve already gotten to know each one of you personally.”

  This was a lie. Mr. Pitt had spent the whole year in his office and still knew hardly any of the children’s names, unless by coincidence they were all called Oi You.

  “In an hour’s time, the summer holidays will begin. While you will all return home, I will be staying behind to oversee the next exciting stage in St. Goliath’s history: the Pitt Building!”

  He swept a hand toward what
used to be the football pitch. It was now a building site, cordoned off with red tape. Five hundred children watched mournfully as a gang of builders tore out the goalposts.

  “We will all miss the football pitch,” said Mr. Pitt. “But as your headmaster it is my duty to bring this school into the future.”

  Some children asked if that meant there’d be cyborg teachers. Mr. Pitt gave them detention.

  “It doesn’t mean cyborg teachers,” he said. “It means cutting-edge technology. State-of-the-art facilities. A brand-new school building to replace the old one.”

  He pointed to the school behind him and grimaced. St. Goliath’s had been falling apart when he first arrived, and now it looked even worse. It was just one of the many things Mr. Pitt had assured the school governors he would change—along with abolishing free lunches, dismantling the library…

  And, of course, getting rid of Mr. Darrow.

  Mr. Pitt smiled. That was one thing off his list already—and he hadn’t had to lift a finger.

  “Which brings me to a sad piece of news.” He gave a carefully rehearsed sigh. “I’m sorry to announce that yesterday our much-beloved school janitor, Mr. Darrow, has…”

  Mr. Pitt trailed off. His eyes had been scanning the front row to measure the effect of his dramatic sigh, but now they stopped on a single chair. This one was different from the others. It said SPECIAL SEAT on the back in big red letters—so everyone could see—and it was empty.

  Mr. Pitt looked up.

  “Where’s Max?”

  Max was hiding in a cupboard.

  He usually hid in the bathroom, but they’d all exploded that morning—again—and Mr. Darrow still hadn’t fixed them. St. Goliath’s Boarding School was filled with things Mr. Darrow hadn’t fixed.

  Max was hiding for two reasons. First, because he didn’t want to be at Mr. Pitt’s speech. They’d make him sit in the SPECIAL SEAT again, like they did every assembly. Max didn’t want to be the center of attention—he just wanted to be left alone so he could work on his models.

  Which was the second reason he was hiding.

  His castle was almost complete. It was small—no bigger than a jam jar—but there were more than a hundred rooms inside. It had towers with turrets and lockable doors and spiral staircases. Max had built them all himself.

  “Here’s where King Max will address his loyal subjects each morning,” he muttered, carving the final flourishes on the tallest tower. “And here’s where he’ll gather his knights each evening to share tales of battles past….”

  He took another scalpel from the kit in his lap and carved three tiny letters into the tower’s base.

  He smiled—the castle had taken him all term, but it was worth it. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Mr. Darrow’s face when he showed it to him and…

  The cupboard opened.

  “Max?”

  Max looked up. There was a boy standing in front of him. He was the same age as Max, and wearing the same uniform, but that was where the similarities ended. This boy was taller, and cooler, and had a better haircut. Max hid the castle.

  “Sasha! What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you!” said Sasha. “I thought the dorm was empty, but then I heard you in here talking to yourself. Oh—and I saw your headlamp.”

  Sasha pointed to Max’s headlamp, which was a flashlight tucked into a pair of underpants worn over his head. Max switched off the light.

  “It was dark,” he mumbled.

  Max clambered out of the cupboard and into the dorm he shared with Sasha. It was split perfectly down the middle. On Max’s side were shelves of sci-fi and fantasy books, neatly arranged in alphabetical order. On Sasha’s side were posters of a baseball team Max had never heard of, and hundreds of photos of Sasha with all his friends back in America.

  “So why are you still here?” asked Sasha. “Everyone’s listening to Mr. Pitt’s speech! Didn’t you hear the announcement?”

  Max fumbled. “Oh! The speech! Er…”

  “Wait!” said Sasha. “I get it…your ears, right?”

  Max blinked. “My ears?”

  “Your hearing aids.”

  Sasha pointed to the plastic tubes round Max’s ears. Max bristled.

  “No, actually, my hearing aids didn’t have anything to do with…”

  Max stopped. He hated being the only deaf child at St. Goliath’s. He hated the way he was made to sit in the SPECIAL SEAT at the front of assemblies, and he hated the way everyone spoke to him IN A BIG LOUD VOICE even though that made it harder for him to follow what they were saying…but he realized that this was one of the times when being severely deaf could be severely useful.

  “I mean…yes, you’re right,” said Max. “I didn’t hear the announcement. My hearing aids must have…stopped working.”

  Sasha beamed. “Hey! That reminds me!”

  He held out his index fingers and crossed them over each other, like they were hugging.

  “I looked it up on the Internet! Cool, huh?”

  Max was confused. “What is it?”

  “It’s sign language!” said Sasha. “It means ‘friend’—right? Am I doing it wrong?” He paused. “Wait—I must have looked up American Sign Language! You use British Sign Language over here, right?”

  Max blushed. “Er…I don’t know. I don’t use sign language.”

  Sasha’s face fell. “You don’t?”

  “I never learned.”

  Sasha let his fingers fall apart. There was an awkward pause.

  “Well…better get going!” he said. “Don’t want to miss the end of the speech!”

  The two boys made their way through the boardinghouse in silence. All their conversations ended like this. They might have shared a dorm—all students at St. Goliath’s had to—but as far as Max was concerned, that was the only thing he and Sasha had in common.

  Sasha had arrived from America at the beginning of the year, and in less than a week everyone knew who he was. The reasons were obvious: he was friendly and outgoing, with expensive clothes and a slick accent. You’d always see him walking around school in the middle of a big group, chatting away confidently. He did everything with confidence—he could probably juggle pineapples in a nightgown, and he’d still look cool while doing it.

  Max, on the other hand, was not cool. He knew he wasn’t, and he didn’t need any reminding about it, thank you very much. He could never be like Sasha, chatting away to five people at once—Max had to lip-read to make out what people were saying, and no one at St. Goliath’s understood how hard that was. They’d talk quickly, or turn away midsentence, or cover their mouth while they were speaking. Loud classrooms and playgrounds made his hearing aids squeal with feedback, too—after a few minutes, Max would be so exhausted that he had to retreat to his quiet room with a good book to recover.

  Max didn’t mind spending time on his own. When he was alone, he could focus on what he was good at: reading voraciously, losing himself in his imagination, designing beautiful models. At school, he always felt like an outsider—like no matter how much everyone tried to include him, he’d never fit in. But on his own, with his latest creation in front of him…Max felt like a king.

  Then the school had paired him up with Sasha, and Max lost the one place he could escape. It wasn’t that Sasha was mean or unpleasant—quite the opposite, in fact. Sasha was super friendly, always asking Max questions and trying to chat—but that was the exact problem. No matter how nice he was, Sasha still didn’t understand that Max found talking to people difficult. Being around Sasha was a constant reminder of everything Max struggled to do.

  So Max tried to avoid his new roommate as much as possible, ducking out of sight whenever he saw him in the corridors and making sure they were rarely alone. He kept his model-making a secret, too—he suspected that if Sasha found out abou
t it, he’d tell all his friends, and then the whole school would have another reason to treat Max like a complete weirdo.

  Sure, it was a bit of a nightmare…but it wasn’t all bad. Max still had one friend at St. Goliath’s—Mr. Darrow, the school janitor. If it weren’t for their chats and model-making lessons, Max had no idea how he would cope at St. Goliath’s. Speaking of which, where was…

  Max stopped. Sasha was leaning in front of his face, waving. Max had explained to Sasha several times that he could just tap him on the shoulder when he wanted Max’s attention, but Sasha usually forgot and waved at him like he was flagging down a bus instead.

  “Hey! Did you hear me? I said, are you doing anything for the holidays?”

  Max cringed—he had been hoping no one would ask him that. He was going to spend eight weeks with his great-aunt Meredith in a retirement community on the other side of the country. She was the only member of his family who was still alive. She was ten times Max’s age and could barely remember who he was. She spent most of their time together shouting questions at him until she fell asleep.

  “Er…nothing much,” said Max. “You?”

  Sasha grinned. “I’m flying back to the States tonight with my little sister, Joy. First-class all the way! Then Mom and Dad are taking us on a road trip around the country: New York, Texas, San Francisco…They said we might even fly to Hawaii for Joy’s birthday! Cool, huh?”

  Max sighed. Of course Sasha had a nice family, too.

  They stepped out into the summer sun. The rest of the students were in the distance, watching the headmaster finish his speech. Sasha tapped Max on the shoulder.