Under Great Pressure

The field on the edge of Callowbrow was filled and students

of all shapes and sizes milling around, trying

not to look as self-conscious as so many students often

did. Callowbrow itself had been torn apart by the dragons,

but now many of the repairs were well underway or completed.

The school was beginning to look like itself again—the dark

bricks jutted out of the green fields and pushed up into the

misty sky like scaly beasts. Low clouds crowned the roofs and

the high-climbing roses that peppered many of the walls and

towers.

I walked quickly through the milling students, holding one

end of a very heavy duffel bag. The other end was being carried

by Kate. She had reluctantly agreed to help me with what I was

calling an “experiment.” I had invited Wyatt to join us, but he

had to stay in the library and do some make-up work.

Kate and I pushed through the students and up to a freestanding

shop shed. The door was unlocked, and we slipped

in unnoticed. I closed and bolted the door behind us. I could

still hear students doing student-like things outside. I set the

weighty bag on the ground and unzipped the long zipper.

“What is it, Beck?” Kate asked.

“I think it’s some sort of huge ball.”

“Someone gave it to you?”

“Kind of,” I answered.

We pulled it out of the bag and unfolded part of it.

“We need to lift it up and spread it open,” I said, tugging at

the thick material.

“It’s huge,” Kate said with awe. “Not to mention incredibly

heavy.”

“Baby,” I replied, slightly out of breath. “Listen, if you

wanna leave, have at it. The door’s right there.”

I flipped my head back, pointing to the door.

“No way,” Kate whispered. “Someone needs to keep an eye

on what you’re doing.”

I smiled, unfolding the thick material further.

“Wyatt should be here,” she added.

“I know. I feel bad for him, missing all this fun.”

“You’re crazy, Beck, you know that,” Kate added. “Absolutely

crazy.”

I looked down at my hands and thought about what Kate

had just said. My hands didn’t look crazy. They looked like normal

sixteen-year-old-boy hands. And I didn’t feel crazy. I mean I

should have known better, but that was usually the case.

It’s sad, really. You’d think that a sixteen-year-old boy with

brown eyes, dark hair, and a mischievous smile, who had lost

his mother, been shipped across country to live with his crazy

uncle (only to learn he could make things grow and bring dragons

to life), and practically ruined an entire town, would know

better than to go messing around with things that could cause

further amounts of trouble.

“What’s the matter?” Kate asked.

“Nothing,” I said, looking up. “Here, give me that air hose.

There’s a nozzle here.”

Kate handed me the thick black hose with the large metal

tip. I shoved it into the dusty plastic hole on the bottom of the

material. The air hose slowly slipped into the opening, chirping

like a sick dolphin. Once in, the two plastic parts seemed to

bond, making it impossible for me to pull it back out. I tugged

as hard as I could.

“Cool,” I said, smiling. “It fits perfectly.”

Kate continued to unfold the large cloth ball. “You’re going

to blow it up in here?”

“There’s plenty of room,” I assured her.

We were in the small shop shed that our school used

to teach shop. It was old and sat at the far end of the neatly

groomed soccer field. It was one of the few buildings that had

not been damaged by the dragons as they had picked apart

the town of Kingsplot and, more specifically, the campus of

Callowbrow. The shed was relatively empty, with tools lining

the walls and a welding tank in the far corner. Near the door

was a large air compressor with two silver tanks.

It was the air compressor I had come for.

Two days ago, while searching through a dusty room in

the manor I live in, I found an old wooden trunk. After accidentally

breaking the lock on the trunk, I stumbled upon

what I thought was a massive folded blanket. I was wrong. It

wasn’t a blanket. It was a huge folded ball. It was made of red

velvet with orange stripes running down it and a valve at the

bottom. I thought it was a pretty interesting discovery, but I

felt like it would be an even more interesting find once it was

blown up. I figured I would blow it up, roll it out of the large

doors of the shed, and then all of us at Callowbrow could

mess around with it. It seemed like it would make for a funfilled

afternoon. So, I had smuggled the ball to school in a

huge black duffel bag. At that point, I recruited Kate to help

me fill it with air.

“This is dumb,” Kate said. “This is another one of your

dumb ideas.”

I smiled at Kate—she didn’t smile back. I was okay with

that. She still looked just fine, what with her long, red hair and

deep blue eyes. Her skin was pale—like two-percent milk—and

she was wearing her school uniform, which consisted of a plaid

skirt, white shirt, and white knee socks.

She was pretty, but I was in no mood to tell her that.

“I’m not doing this,” she insisted, but still making no move

to leave.

I smiled. “I think you are. Besides, it will be cool. The school

will talk about this for years.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“It’s going to be fun,” I said with my most convincing voice.

I flipped the switch and the compressor began to whirl and

moan. It was loud and pulsating, the thump of it bouncing off

the shed walls and pounding my ears.

“It’s loud!” Kate yelled.

“I know,” I hollered back.

The thick fabric of the ball began to puff up. A large fold

pushed out, doubling the size of the material. Like a fat wad of

velvety dough, the velvet ball began to swell.

“It’s really big,” Kate said needlessly.

She was right, but that was becoming a rather obvious detail.

My heart started to race as the ball swelled. My life had

been way too calm the past eight months. I could barely remember

my life before Kingsplot. My mother, who had really been

my aunt, was a memory I had to work on to bring into focus.

Her death still hurt, but the sting wasn’t as sharp or as clear

as it had once been. And I was thrilled to have discovered my

father, but, to be honest, the relationship had a lot of growing

to do. He still lived on the top floor of the mansion and came

down only when I pestered him. He claimed he knew nothing

about raising a son. I agreed with him, but I was willing to help

him learn. Two nights ago we had argued over bringing a TV

into the huge manor.

“Just one,” I had argued.

“Noise,” was his clipped reply.

Truthfully, the gigantic manor I lived in could use a little

more noise. It was still a huge, dark home with hundreds of

locked rooms and winding halls with no one to walk its halls

but me, Millie, Thomas, and Wane. But, as most adults do, my

father had put up a wall and insisted the discussion was over

without ever hearing me out. It was later that night that I discovered

the ball. I think that’s why I wasn’t too worried about

what was happening now, seeing how I could always argue that I

never would have even found the ball if I had been safely watching

TV.

The material of the ball pushed out again, a long fold popping

open like six sleeping bags. My excitement began to feel

like fear.

“I don’t think it’s just a ball!” Kate hollered.

The expanding ball was as wide as the shed and rapidly

growing taller. I could only see Kate from the neck up now. I

watched her scoot back to provide more room for the ball.

“Open the doors!” I yelled.

“I can’t reach them,” she yelled back. “Just turn it off!”

I reached down and hit the switch. The compressor began

to scream even louder.

“Off,” Kate yelled, as if I had misunderstood her the first

time.

“I can’t!”

The ball sprang open three more folds making it as large as

the room. I couldn’t see Kate. Actually, I couldn’t see anything

besides the material of the ball pushing into my face as it expanded

even faster. I could hear Kate’s muffled scream and the

sound of someone violently rattling the doors to the shed trying

to get in. I reached down to hit the switch again, but I could

no longer reach it.

The ball pushed me up against the wall, lifting me off my

feet and scraping me up the wall. It expanded tightly against

my chest and face. My head was forced to the side and crammed

flat against the wall. I wanted to yell, “I’m sorry,” to Kate, but

the moment didn’t seem right, and my lungs were completely

compressed.

The ball expanded even further, stealing any room for my

lungs to expand. I was stuck to the wall, my feet inches from the

floor. Velvet was pushing into my nose and the ball was smothering

me.

I tried to kick and hit, but my arms and legs were pinned

against the wall. My vision was nothing but a fading smudge, as

bits of my life drifted across my mind like the fluid on the back

of my eyelids. I could see my father, Aeron, and Millie. I could

see two Kates, the happy one and one that was going to wring

my neck if and when we survived.

“I thought this would be fun,” I yelled, unable to fully move

my mouth. “I’m going to die.”

There was no air, and the pressure was so painful I could

feel my blood being squeezed from the top half of my body

and down into my toes. The air compressor was squealing

and hissing so loudly that if a genie had appeared and granted

me three wishes, at least one of them would be that I could

close my ears.

I should have at least closed my eyes.

Just when I thought I was going to die from suffocation, a

noise unlike any I had heard before—and I had heard dragons

fighting and towns being torn apart—ripped through my head.

Wind raced over me and I could feel a tremendous pain in my

head as I flew backward and into a misty, blinding darkness.

In Choke, a stranger has discovered that Beck Phillips is the key to finding and hatching a lost dragon’s egg – a task that will bring the riches and fortune that Beck’s family was destined to have. Beck learns that outward appearances can be deceiving and that grown-ups really do have valuable lessons to offer. Readers will laugh out loud at Beck’s antics and sit on the edge of their seats while Beck and his friends confront Liz, the largest, most ferocious dragon Beck has ever seen!