Peeves
PEEVES: They’ve come to annoy you!Imagine if your worries and annoyances turned into real living creatures… That’s what happens to 12-year-old Steve Pickings in this hilarious adventure.Steve is a highly strung kid and many, many things annoy him. Following an accident, Steve’s worries and annoyances take the form of actual living creatures – aka Peeves. This starts with Noisy Peeve who follows Steve around making the Beep, Beep, Beep, of his alarm clock, then there’s Asking Peeve, ‘What are you doing?’, ‘Why are your arms so skinny?’ ‘Are you really going to wear THAT to school?’ Soon there is a small army of Peeves making Steve’s days more challenging than usual. THEN it turns out that Peeves are contagious. Everyone is catching them. They are everywhere. AND they are evolving into something much, much worse…
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First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. in 2018
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
Published in this ebook edition in 2018
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Text copyright © Mike Van Waes 2018
Cover and inside illustrations © Jamie Littler
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Mike Van Waes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008249120
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008249137
Version: 2018-04-17
To Madison, Jack and Evie – it’s a big life; try not to let the little things bug you.
Contents
Chapter 10: The Treatment Plan
Chapter 15: The Burning Sensation
Chapter 16: The Sound and Fury
I’m not going to start at the beginning because that would be my birth and it’s probably gross and boring and I don’t actually remember it. And I’ll also save you the full “origin story” of my superhuman ability to be freaked out. The “previously on” version is that I woke up one night two years ago and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I started dry-heaving and sweating and crying and shaking. I was so convinced I was dying that my parents rushed me to the ER. When the doctor saw me, she literally laughed in my face. “It was just a panic attack.” As if that made it feel any less like a near-death experience. With the scribble of a pen and a rip off a prescription pad, she assured me it would most likely be a one-time thing. But those sounds are something I’ve been very used to hearing ever since.
And I still wake up in a panic some nights. Except now I’m in a different home. Or homes, really, because the divorce ended with two of them. And even though that went down a few months ago, it’s just one more trigger for the panic to pull. Once I start to worry, it’s only a matter of time. And so many things make me worry. It can start with a comment or an irritation or even a noise or a smell, and then I’m off. I can’t stop it. “You’re too young to be so stressed out,” is what my parents would say. But any twelve-year-old can tell you that grown-ups don’t have a monopoly on grown-up feelings. That is, if any twelve-year-old were willing to talk about it. That was one of my problems. Maybe my biggest problem.
But that was before the “incident” in Old Wayford. Before the end of life as I knew it.
And that ending actually begins with my name.
“Are you Steve?” came a surprisingly pleasant voice.
It was the first day at my new school, I was sitting in the principal’s office, waiting to be shown around, and I was trying to decide which seat I should get used to just in case I wound up being sent to the office as much as I did at my last school. It’s bad enough being new, but I was also transferring mid-semester, which is kind of like walking into the middle of a movie and not knowing any of the setup. My leg was bouncing uncontrollably, a clear sign that I was anxious about being dragged around by some random kid who would have to pretend to be nice to me all day.
I was predicting that I’d be completely abandoned by third period.
But then I heard my name called.
I looked up to see a smile.
A real smile. Not a “grown-ups are making me do this” smile.
“I’m Suzie. Suzie Minkle. Welcome to New Old Wayford Middle School!”
My face flushed and my throat closed up before I could even croak out a mumbled, “Slim Pickings.”
She cocked her head curiously, which made her dark, natural curls bounce like they were alive and excited to be there. Then she laughed, but not at my expense. “I guess you have a point. It’s not like there are a lot of schools to go to in town.”
I blinked at her as if trying to clear floaters from my eyes. Suzie was one of only a handful of black kids I’d seen walking into this school, but if she felt the slightest bit like an outsider, I couldn’t tell. She was wearing a Twenty One Pilots T-shirt under a blue mesh cover-up with yoga trousers and red Doc Martens. The whole look gave her a cool, relaxed vibe that made her seem at ease in ways I didn’t know existed. And man did she smell nice. I had no idea what it was, but whatever soap or perfume or shampoo she used, it was literally a breath of fresh air. “No. It’s my name. S-S-Slim,” I stuttered as I followed her into the hall.
