Jacqueline West

THE STORY

THE TROLL TRUTH

The troll thing began when Sean moved to town.

Asha and Sean were in different classes—she was in Miss Ferry’s, and he was in Mr. Griffin’s—but the school was small enough that everyone knew the new kid’s name.

Asha also knew that, after her, Sean was the slowest eater in the whole fifth grade. After four lunchtimes in a row when the two of them had been the last kids in the cafeteria, Asha picked up the remains of her sandwich and sidled cautiously toward the boy’s table.

The new kid had light blond hair that seemed to stick up with permanent static electricity. Up close, Asha could see a splash of pale freckles across the bridge of his nose. He was nibbling a strip of string cheese. In front of him, other bits of food were lined up in a row: one apple slice, a single cracker, a lone gummy bear.

“Why do you leave a tiny bit of everything?” asked Asha, who always chewed her sandwich into strange shapes, and who appreciated other forms of creative eating.

Sean glanced around. Then he leaned toward Asha, his eyes intent. “For the trolls,” he whispered.

A telltale spark of excitement ran up the back of Asha’s neck. It was the spark that meant an imagining game—her favorite kind of game—was about to begin.

“The school trolls,” she said. “Of course.”

“Want to help leave it for them?” Sean asked.

“Sure.” Asha stuffed the last bite of Florida-shape sandwich into her mouth and hurried after Sean onto the playground.

They found a spot close to the school wall, sheltered by a low, thick hedge. “This is good,” said Asha. “It’s out of sight—”

“—but not far away,” Sean finished. “Trolls don’t like to be outdoors for long. At least, not when they’re aboveground.”

“Right,” said Asha. “That’s why they live in big old buildings, like schools.”

Of course, Asha didn’t know that trolls lived in big old buildings. But her imagination bubbled with ideas so clear they seemed like facts—and as soon as something seemed like a fact, Asha had no trouble believing it. In her imagination, the fireflies blinking above her misty backyard were teeny fairies that only transformed into insects when a human got too close. (Fact: Fairies had a keen sense of smell for humans.) Her imagination was sure that the neighbors’ German shepherd turned into a werewolf during the full moon, so Asha gave it treats and belly rubs to keep on its good side. (Another fact: Even werewolves loved belly rubs.) She’d had plenty of practice imagining things on her own, but it was thrilling to combine her imaginings with someone else’s. It made everything twice as real.

“I’ll get some stones,” Sean offered.

“Ones that aren’t too big,” said Asha. “It’s a fact that most trolls are pretty small.”

They arranged several handfuls of small, flat stones against the school’s brick wall. Sean made a little stone table, and Asha covered it with a layer of pretty yellow leaves. (Fact: Trolls loved the color yellow.) Finally, and precisely, they placed the food on top.

“I think the trolls will like it,” said Asha.

Sean gave a satisfied nod. “The important thing is that now they won’t play any of their tricks on us.”

Asha and Sean also happened to take the same bus home. They spent that afternoon’s ride huddled in a green vinyl seat, discussing what kinds of tricks trolls might play.

They agreed that trolls were to blame whenever your favorite pencil disappeared. Trolls also stole erasers, library books, and Legos, and they used these things to build their villages inside the school’s heating vents. If they were angry, trolls would mess up your desk or even take your finished homework. Trolls hated troll dolls—they found their puffy hairstyles insulting—and they played tricks on teachers by switching their regular coffee for decaf, which was why teachers were sometimes so inexplicably crabby.

It all made perfect sense to Asha.

The next afternoon, when Asha and Sean hurried out to the playground, the food they’d left for the trolls was gone. The little stone table was gone, too, so they rebuilt it. They covered it with a baby carrot, a piece of sandwich chewed into the shape of a squirrel, and one Oreo cookie.

Just before the bell rang, Sean reached out and broke the cookie in half.

Asha gasped.

“I’m just taking half,” Sean argued preemptively, through a mouthful of chocolate crumbs.

A prickle of excited fear raced up Asha’s neck. “They’re going to be mad,” she warned.

When Sean rushed toward her on the bus a few hours later, whispering that his best sparkly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pencil had just disappeared from his desk, Asha wasn’t surprised. Deep down, she knew that Sean had probably lost the pencil in some perfectly ordinary way. But imagining that Oreo-hungry trolls had stolen it was much more fun.

• • •

It was also fun to spend the dull parts of each school day doodling troll portraits in order to compare them on the bus ride home. Sean and Asha concluded that trolls—even girl trolls—had no hair, but Sean thought they usually dressed in overalls, while Asha believed they wore something more like long underwear. They both began keeping special troll notebooks, diagramming troll villages built of pencils and lost homework, and making lists of collected troll facts. It was the most exciting school project Asha had ever done.

One afternoon, while Asha and Sean were arguing over whether trolls wore boots or went barefoot, Curt Reiss flopped over the green vinyl bus seat right in front of them.

“What are you two talking about?” he demanded.

Curt had the loudest voice of any kid in the fifth grade. When he recited the Pledge of Allegiance, you could hear him from one end of the school to the other. Plus, he was big; he could swing across the playground monkey bars with his toes still touching the ground. He was used to being listened to.

Sean’s mouth clamped shut.

Asha tried to keep hers shut, too. But Curt loomed over her like an inflating hot-air balloon, seeming to grow larger with each passing second. Finally, Asha couldn’t take it anymore.

“Trolls,” she blurted.

Sean’s elbow jabbed her in the side. He pointed to a line in Asha’s open notebook: Fact: Trolls don’t like being talked about to anyone who doesn’t believe in them.

“Trolls?” Curt repeated, in his gigantic voice. “Like those little frizzy-haired dolls?”

“No,” muttered Asha. “Not like that.”

Curt yanked the notebook out of her hands. He studied her portrait of a bald, bootless, long-underweared troll. “Huh,” he said. Then he dropped the notebook into her lap and turned away.

Asha felt a rush of relief. Curt could have drawn the whole bus’s attention. He could have stolen her notebook. This hadn’t been so bad, really.

She turned toward Sean.

He was staring at her, his eyes wide and his lips tight. “You really shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered.

• • •

Asha woke up for school the next morning feeling as though she’d spent the night being bitten by imaginary mosquitoes: itchy and irritated and underrested. As usual, her curly brown hair was a mess of morning tangles, but when she stumbled into the bathroom, Asha saw that they weren’t just tangles. They were knots. Hundreds of tiny knots, as though someone with very small, precise fingers had tied each one. It took her ages to comb half of them out, and by the time she got downstairs, she could only grab an un-toasted Pop-Tart before finding her backpack and rushing out the door.

She was standing at the bus stop, her hands in her coat pockets, when her fingers brushed a scrap of paper.

Asha pulled the paper out.

It was a tiny folded note. A message in shaky pencil-drawn letters was scrawled across one side: STOP TAAKING ABOWT US.

Invisible frost covered Asha’s skin.

The trolls had heard her speak to Curt. They had followed her home, into her bedroom. They had tied knots in her hair and left this note in her pocket.

Wait, Asha told herself. As fun as it was to believe in them, she knew that trolls were imaginary. It had to have been someone else.

“For creatures that live in a school, they aren’t very good spellers,” said Sean, when Asha sat down beside him on the bus, holding out the note with shaky fingers.

“But it was really you, wasn’t it?” Asha whispered. “You were sitting beside me. You heard me talk to Curt. You could have slipped the note into my pocket.”

Sean looked genuinely confused. “It wasn’t me,” he insisted. “I swear.”

Asha swallowed. She turned away, staring out the bus windows into the dim fall morning.

Maybe Sean had written the note, and he was just a good pretender. Or maybe he believed that Asha had written the note herself, adding to the game. She tried to run her fingers through her still-tangly hair. But who had sneaked into her bedroom in the middle of the night?

Just to be safe, Asha decided to leave the trolls an extra large portion of her lunch that day.

• • •

Asha and Sean were crouched beside the wall in their usual spot that afternoon, rebuilding the stone table, when a shadow rippled over them.

“Hey!” said a voice.

Asha and Sean whipped around. Mr. Browney, the school custodian, stood right behind them.

“So you two are the ones leaving food here,” he said, pointing his leaf rake toward the telltale table, where a slice of cheese, a strawberry, and a sandwich chewed into the shape of a tuba were waiting. “You can’t keep doing this, kids. It draws rodents and insects, and it could rot. It’s not sanitary.”

Sean and Asha exchanged an anxious look.

“Why are you doing it?” Mr. Browney asked. “Are you feeding wild animals?”

“No,” said Asha.

“Are you playing house?”

“No,” said Sean, sounding offended.

“Then—what?” Mr. Browney waited, looking back and forth between them.

Asha couldn’t meet Mr. Browney’s eyes, but she could feel the weight of them on her, making her face flush and her stomach squirm.

Sean must have been feeling the same thing, because he suddenly muttered—

“Trolls.”

“What?” said Mr. Browney.

Asha glanced at Sean, who was staring down at the toes of his blue Converse sneakers. Under his freckles, his face was bright red.

“Trolls live in the school,” Asha said, turning back to Mr. Browney. “In the walls.”

“Hmm.” Mr. Browney’s mouth twitched. “Well . . . I need you not to leave any more troll food out here, or anywhere except the cafeteria. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Sean and Asha whispered.

When the bell rang, they both shuffled indoors, unable to look at each other.

Asha had gym class that afternoon. Everyone had to change clothes for the mile run, and afterward, they all trooped sweatily back to the basement locker room.

Asha was not only the slowest eater in her grade but the slowest dresser. It took her several minutes to find both socks and then to tie her shoes, and by the time she stood up and looked around, the rest of the class had already made it out the door. As she started to follow them, there was a soft click.

The lights snapped out.

Total blackness surrounded her.

“I’m still in here!” Asha called. “Hello!”

There was no answer.

Asha groped toward the door, pawing desperately at the darkness until her hands had closed around the metal door handle. She wrenched it to one side.

The door didn’t budge.

Asha tried again, pulling the handle as hard as she could, but the door clearly wasn’t just stuck. It was locked.

An icy, awful feeling poured through Asha’s body. She pounded on the door with both fists, screaming, “Help! Help!” until both hands ached and she could barely breathe.

And while she stood there, gasping, from somewhere in the deep and quiet darkness came a sound.

Asha whirled around, pressing her back to the door.

It was a rustling sound. A scurrying sound.

It was the sound of dozens of small bodies crawling out through the vents in the walls, swarming through the darkness . . .

. . . marching straight toward her.

Asha had just opened her mouth to scream when the door behind her flew open. She staggered backward, right into Mr. Browney’s arms.

“The trolls!” Asha panted, trying to peer back into the locker room’s darkness. “They were there. They—”

“Right. The trolls again,” Mr. Browney interrupted. “Come with me.” Keeping one hand on Asha’s shoulder, he led her upstairs to the counselor’s office.

There, seated in the counselor’s waiting room, with his hair looking exceptionally staticky and his face very pale under its freckles, was Sean.

Asha grabbed the arms of Sean’s chair. “Did you just lock me in the locker room and turn out the lights because I told Mr. Browney about the trolls?” she demanded.

“What? No!” Sean looked shocked. “Did you just destroy everything in my entire desk because I told Mr. Browney about the trolls?”

“How could I have?” Asha exploded. “I was stuck in the basement locker room!”

At that moment, the door swung open. Mr. Alph, the guidance counselor, stood on the threshold, looking down at them with his kind brown eyes.

“Sean. Asha.” Mr. Alph nodded at them both. “I think we need to have a talk.”

• • •

The bus ride home was quieter than usual.

Asha and Sean left their troll notebooks in their bags. They sat side by side for a while, not looking at each other.

At last, Sean said, “What are you going to do with your notebook?”

Asha sighed. “I think I’ll stick it in the back of my closet. Under the stack of itchy sweaters. What about you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll hide mine in the basement, so it will be easier to forget about it.”

“Mr. Alph was probably right,” said Asha. “We mixed up pretending with lying. And we let our imaginations run away with us.”

Sean gave her a look. “Is that what you really think?”

“That’s what I really think. Probably.”

“But if you believe something is true, then you’re not lying.”

“Yeah. I guess so.” Asha paused. “Maybe something can be true even if it isn’t real.”

They both gazed out the window for a minute.

“Well . . . ,” said Sean softly, “I think Mr. Alph might be covering things up, for reasons of his own.” He met Asha’s eyes. “Haven’t you noticed his name? Mr. Alph? It sounds almost like—”

“Shh,” whispered Asha. Excitement began to buzz in her stomach. She glanced around, making sure nobody else was listening. Then she pulled out her notebook and flipped to a fresh page. “. . . And did you notice how pointy his ears are?”