The Christmasaurus

by Tom Fletcher

  And so you can see the problem. Not one child on planet Earth knew that there was a dinosaur living in the North Pole. Not one child believed that a dinosaur could fly. So it was hopeless. No matter how fast the Christmasaurus ran, no matter how high the Christmasaurus jumped, without the belief of a child, he just couldn’t fly.

  * * *

  —

  On the first of December, the Christmasaurus was walking alone around the outskirts of the elf city with his head hanging low. The North Pole was getting into the full swing of Christmas, and the Christmasaurus saw a great snowman snowball fight in the distant snowfields—but he was terrible at throwing snowballs with his tiny little dinosaur arms. The elves had erected the most enormous Christmas tree in the center of the ranch, but he was terrible at decorating Christmas trees; the tinsel always got caught in his claws and tail. He couldn’t swim like the narwhals or wrap presents like the fairies. In fact, when he thought about it, the Christmasaurus realized just how different he was. He really didn’t fit in at all!

  The Christmasaurus let out a very low, very sad roar, leaving long, lonely clawprints behind him and dragging his scaly tail in the snow. He stared out into the distance over the great North Pole mountains, and as the Northern Lights splashed their greens and blues across the sky, he wondered if there was anybody else in the whole wide world who was like him. Was there anybody out there who knew what it was like to be different?

  What the Christmasaurus didn’t know was that there was someone, a long way away, who was looking up at the sky just like him, wondering the exact same thing. Someone who knew just what it was like to be different.

  You’ve already met him, of course.

  That someone was a small boy called William Trundle.

  Three Christmases had passed since we first met William—and this ten-year-old version of him wasn’t quite the chirpy fella he used to be.

  But before we get into that, there’s something else you should know about him. You see, the thing about William was that William couldn’t walk. William has a wheelchair.

  Did I forget to mention that? Sorry!

  William had been in a nasty, horrible accident when he was a little boy, and that was the sad day he had lost his mother and gained a wheelchair. It had been awful and difficult, but it was a long time ago.

  Other than his shiny, dino-decorated red wheelchair, he was just like every other kid now. He went to school like every other kid, liked watching TV like every other kid, forgot his homework like every other kid, and occasionally picked his nose and ate it like every other kid. (We’ve all done it!)

  All the other kids at Holly Heath Primary School had got so used to William having a wheelchair that they didn’t even notice it anymore.

  That was, until she started.

  The new girl who had moved into a house across the street from William and had joined William’s class last year.

  She changed everything.

  Her name was Brenda Payne.

  Brenda was the meanest girl in the whole school—possibly the world. She was a greedy, loud, bossy bully who always had to be the center of attention. She had annoyingly perfect twirly blond hair (twirls are like curls that are showing off) and horribly straight, blindingly white teeth, and even though she was far too young, she would wear makeup to school (which she’d steal from the older girls), and it made her look freakishly, deceptively pretty for such a nasty piece of work.

  Brenda’s first day at school had started out just fine. She gave William that awkward, sad look that most people gave him when they first saw his wheelchair, but William was used to that look. He’d had years of experience of that look, so he just did what he always did: he smiled. William had such a brilliant, confident smile that it shone out, just like that really strong flashlight you have lying in your closet at home that you never use. His smile instantly made that look vanish from Brenda’s face.

  It was at lunchtime that it all went horribly wrong.

  The whole school was waiting impatiently in line for lunch, which usually comprised something that sort of looked like chicken, coated in something that sort of looked like bread crumbs, accompanied by soggy strips of potato that they called French fries, and a compulsory scoop of some sort of green mush.

  The school cafeteria was a large, open space with a serving station along one wall and dozens of tables and chairs lined up across the permanently sticky floor. Although lunchtime was monitored by Old Man Wrinkleface—the school custodian—he could usually be found snoozing in the corner with his feet on an upturned bucket, his hand clasping a cup of lukewarm tea, and his hearing aid switched off.

  Lunchtime belonged to the kids!

  This was every new kid’s nightmare.

  The stares.

  The glares.

  The flares. (Old Man Wrinkleface always wore flared pants.)

  The air was thick with judgment, so the last person you would want to be on that day was Brenda Payne. She was first in line to get served, followed closely by William, who watched as Brenda nervously handed over her tray for the lunch ladies to slop the sludge onto her plastic plate. William followed suit and got his lunch, but as he spun his wheelchair around toward the silverware counter, he felt a bump under one of his wheels and heard an awful sound.

  “OUCH! THAT’S MY FOOT!” screamed Brenda at the top of her squeakily perfect voice. She jumped backward in pain, sending her tray of barely edible sludge flying up into the air.

  For a second everything seemed to float over Brenda’s head: the chicken, the green slop, the soggy French fries. It all hung there, just long enough for Brenda to look deep into William’s eyes, and it was at that very moment that he knew he’d just made an enemy.

  Brenda, the new girl, was standing in the middle of the cafeteria, covered in her school lunch, surrounded by the entire school.

  The sound of laughter erupted like a volcano. Children pointed and howled with glee. The cafeteria lit up with the flashes of hundreds of phone cameras. #NewGirl­GetsSplatt­ered was trending worldwide within seconds. Even Gregory Guff, the little kid who peed his pants every lunchtime, was peeing his pants laughing at Brenda!

  But what Brenda did next took everyone by surprise.

  She didn’t cry.

  She didn’t make a dash for the exit.

  Brenda stood very still, very silent, and didn’t take her eyes off William.

  “I’m so, so sorry! It was an accident. I didn’t see you behind me,” William apologized, but it was hard to make his voice heard over the laughter.

  Brenda still said nothing. She just waited. Then, as the laughter started to quiet down, she slowly raised her left hand and removed the plastic plate that was sitting upside down on her head. Then she scooped up a huge handful of the compulsory green slop from her face and piled it high on the plate.

  She raised her hand in the air like she was conducting an orchestra, and the strangest silence fell over the cafeteria. It was the quietest William had ever heard it.

  “My name is Brenda Payne,” she announced to the school as some wobbly chicken slipped from her shoulder onto the floor.

  Nobody laughed.

  “I am the new girl.”

  And with those words, she pulled back her hand and launched the plate of green slop into William’s face at point-blank range!

  It hit him with such a wallop that it sent his wheelchair whizzing backward across the cafeteria, through the emergency exit, and out into the parking lot. He came to a stop in a parking space reserved for teachers. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a traffic officer then appeared out of nowhere and gave him a ticket for not parking his wheelchair in a space for drivers with disabilities.

  “Anyone have any questions?” Brenda asked the other students, but by this point everyone was too scared to even make eye contact with her. She picked up her tray, marched over to the serving st
ation and scooped herself some fresh sludge, and then sat down at the head of the central table and began to eat her lunch.

  From that moment on, Brenda Payne ran the school.

  Life for William changed after that day.

  It happened slowly at first, just little things. He noticed that some of his friends stopped offering to wheel him up the ramp into school in the mornings, and no one would help him pick up his pencil when it dropped on the floor and rolled out of reach. Then, as the weeks went by, no one would sit with him at lunchtime. Whatever table he’d wheel himself to would quickly empty, and he’d have to eat his sloppy school lunch alone. And so he found that he had become what is commonly known as a loner. The weirdo with the wheels. And it was all because of Brenda.

  As I’m sure you can imagine, this made William very sad. He used to be so popular, but now all the other normal kids in his school, with normal legs, would call him names like “Wheely William” or “Wheeliam.” One particularly nasty person—Brenda Payne, of course—went one step further and made up a little song that went like this:

  Wheely William can’t walk around!

  Wheely William just rolls along the ground!

  He can’t kick a ball!

  He can’t run fast!

  He can’t play with us,

  Just rolls on past.

  Wheely William goes whizzing down the street!

  Wheely William has rocks for feet!

  He can’t climb trees!

  He doesn’t walk!

  Wheel away, William—

  We don’t want to talk!

  Wheely William sitting in a chair;

  Wheely William rolls everywhere!

  He can’t do jumps!

  He can’t even stand!

  To go upstairs

  He uses a ramp!

  It wasn’t long before Brenda’s nastiness had infected the whole school, like a disease that turned everyone into William-hating zombies! She’d bullied herself an army of William-haters. The children who used to be his friends now treated him like he wasn’t one of them anymore. Like he didn’t belong there. Like he was smelly or something.

  The thing about Brenda was that she wasn’t like most bullies. Most bullies are stupid, jealous jellybrains, but not Brenda Payne. Brenda was as smart as she was pretty, and she used both of those things to get whatever she wanted. She wasn’t the strongest kid on the playground—in fact, there were plenty of children who could have easily knocked her perfect teeth out if they’d wanted to—but Brenda had a way of making those kids not want to! She didn’t need to punch kids or steal things (although she did both of those things regularly) because, if she wanted, she could bully you with just a look. She only needed to glance at William and it sent shivers running right through him, which made him feel completely and utterly pathetic.

  Since the day William had accidentally rolled over her foot, it was as if making his life horrible had become Brenda’s only purpose in life.

  She would sneak up behind him during class and stick pins in his wheelchair tires so that they went flat.

  As winter settled in, she started coming to school an hour early to pour water onto the wheelchair ramp, so that by the time William arrived, it was covered in solid ice. He couldn’t get up it at all, and the teachers had to lift him up the stairs.

  Completely humiliating!

  But Brenda Payne’s speciality was her throw.

  Of course, William had known exactly how face-smashingly accurate Brenda’s throw was since her first day at school, when she’d launched the handful of horrible slop at his head. She had an expert aim and could hit her target from an impressive distance. She’d use her skill to hurl sticks like javelins from the far side of the playground straight into the spokes of William’s wheels. They’d jam the wheels so suddenly that his wheelchair would stop…but William wouldn’t. He’d keep going, bouncing along the ground on his bottom to the sound of laughter from Brenda Payne’s Army of Pain—that’s the name William gave them: his old friends!

  After that happened five times, William had a seat belt fitted to his wheelchair so at least he wouldn’t fall out.

  Before, William used to happily slip out of bed into his wheelchair and whiz off to school, but those days were gone. Now he would wake up, look at his chair, sigh a deeply miserable sigh, and think to himself, What rotten thing is she going to do today?

  But of all the rotten things Brenda did to William, the worst of all was about to come one snowy Friday afternoon at the beginning of December—the very day the Christmasaurus was feeling glum far away in the North Pole, in fact.

  She didn’t use sticks or pins. She used the most powerful weapon of all.

  Words.

  Their teacher, Mrs. Dribblepot, had just popped out to the restroom. Brenda never missed an opportunity to make William’s life miserable, so as soon as the door clicked shut, a shiny black stapler flew across the classroom, straight at William’s head! William tried to block it with his notebook, but the force of the throw was so strong that the book smacked him straight in the face, and the stapler stapled it to his forehead!

  The noise that followed sounded like a laughter bomb exploding in the classroom.

  That’s when William felt it happening.

  He couldn’t stop it.

  The worst thing possible.

  He began to cry!

  “Are you crying?” asked Brenda with a huge, evil smile expanding across her pretty face.

  “No!” lied William, quickly wiping the tears from his cheeks and plucking the staple out of his forehead.

  “You are, aren’t you! Wheely’s crying, everyone! Look!” Brenda called out, and the laughter level doubled. It wasn’t that anyone actually found it funny. It was because they were scared not to laugh!

  “Crybaby, crybaby!” Brenda chanted. “Why don’t you go crying to your mommy?”

  The whole room suddenly fell silent.

  Whispers of “Brenda doesn’t know!” quickly circled the classroom.

  “Know what?” Brenda demanded.

  “He doesn’t have a mom,” called out Freddie, the tallest kid in the class, from the back of the room.

  “You don’t have a mom?” asked Brenda.

  “He lives with his dad,” yelled Lola, one of William’s pre-Brenda friends.

  Brenda paused for a moment, then that smile grew back.

  “Well, it’s your dad I feel sorry for,” she said, casually twiddling a pencil around in her perfectly twirly hair. “I mean, can you imagine having to live with Wheely William? It’s hard enough going to school with him! It must be so difficult for your poor old daddy, pushing you around everywhere on his own. You must feel like such a lump of uselessness. I know I would if I were like you….Thank goodness I’m not!”

  William bit his lip hard, trying to stop himself from shouting something horrible back at her. He knew only tears would come out if he tried.

  “And I’m not surprised your dad looks so lonely all the time. He’s the strange one who wears those awful Christmas sweaters all year round, right? I bet he still believes in Santa, like a little baby! I mean, who on earth would ever marry him? Christmas sweaters AND Wheely William. Who would ever want to be your mom!”

  With those final, awful words, she stretched her legs out and gave a pretend yawn.

  The stunned silence was only broken by Mrs. Dribblepot returning from the restroom.

  * * *

  —

  That afternoon, when the school bell rang and it was time to go home, William couldn’t help hearing Brenda’s words over and over again and again in his head. He looked out through the front gates of the school and saw moms and dads waiting happily as their children skipped across the playground toward them.

  Then he saw his dad.

  His tired-looking dad
.

  Mr. Trundle was standing alone to one side of the school gates, wearing his favorite Christmas sweater (he’d knitted it himself) while all the other parents were chattering away in a big group. As William wheeled closer, he heard them say things like:

  “Great pot roast the other night, Jacqui!”

  “Looking forward to the Christmas party, Pete.”

  “I’ll see you for that run tomorrow morning, Jenny.”

  William looked from one happy family to another, and a strange feeling swirled around in his stomach, like water going down a drain. The feeling was emptiness. He’d never noticed it before, but now that he felt it, he was almost certain it had always been there.

  “Hello, son!” Mr. Trundle said with a smile.

  But William was so full of this newfound emptiness that he just wheeled past Mr. Trundle and didn’t say a word.

  Was Brenda right? Was Mr. Trundle really lonely?

  Why wasn’t he friends with any of the other parents? William couldn’t remember the last time Mr. Trundle had gone to a party or out for a walk or had even had a cup of coffee with anyone.

  Why had he never married again after William’s mother died? Lots of kids in William’s class had stepmothers and stepfathers.

  Was it all because William was the way he was? Would anyone ever want to be a mother to a boy like him?

  William had never felt so different. So lonely. So guilty.

  Brenda had planted those awful words like rotten seeds in William’s brain, and they were beginning to grow into rotten thoughts…thoughts that Brenda was about to spectacularly interrupt.

  On the way home that same snowy Friday afternoon, Mr. Trundle had to pop into the supermarket. William wheeled himself straight to his favorite aisle: the breakfast cereal aisle. He could spend hours there, choosing which box to take home. Chocolate-covered frosty ones or frosty-covered chocolate ones were his favorites, although his dad usually made him get something with less frosty chocolate stuff and more fruity-grain stuff. William thought those ones tasted like bird food!