My Impossible Secret: Trollmageddon, #1, page 1
TROLLMAGEDDON:
BOOK ONE
My Impossible
Secret
BY
DARCY CALLAN
Copyright Page
Copyright © 2022 by Darcy Callan
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
Published by: Somerwynd Services
ISBN: 9798818158297
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by: Kaitlyn Wright
Image by: Shutterstock
Image by: Lorraine Lander
Dedication
To anyone who feels out of place or like you don’t belong: I hear you. To anyone who feels like you’re alone in the world: I see you. To anyone who feels like no one understands: I get you. The world needs your light. There will always be those who try to suppress your radiance, but please shine on. And when you feel like the world has buried you— you’re not dead; you’ve been planted. Strengthen your roots and grow.
Blossom bright, and let the world see your radiance.
There are worse things in life than being the new kid in high school: Like having a weird name. Or having a major secret that you can’t share with your BFF because she’s totally human and would freak if she saw your true form. Or having a date with the hottest guy in school, but your parents will ground you for life because he’s a dragon shapeshifter, and historically your two races are at war. Or being hunted to extinction by a radical group of humans who have almost destroyed your entire gene pool.
Or you could be a troll.
Ozelle Bandercock happens to be all of these.
Let the school year begin.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
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
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Excerpt
Reviews
About the Author
Chapter 1
When I finally find the girls’ locker room in this confusing new school, I walk in to see four girls sharing conspiring glances before one ponders, “Ever wonder what it looks like when a ballerina trips?”
They exchange evil grins, and one of them shoves a tiny, graceful girl so hard that her textbooks skitter across the scummy concrete floor as her arms pinwheel to stay upright.
They all laugh.
A blast of outrage fills me at the sight. I tuck my gym clothes under one arm as I race in between them, keeping the tiny girl behind me as I face her tormentors. With one hand out to stop them, I ask, “What the halite is wrong with you?” My eyes shoot daggers at them.
Every single girl in the room stops what they’re doing to stare at me. Peripherally, I see the tiny girl’s mouth pop open.
The four bullies advance as one and slam me into the gym lockers hard enough that, had I been human, they would’ve knocked the wind out of me. I stare at the quartet penning me in and think, maybe, just maybe, I should have kept my mouth shut.
But then I look at the tears gathering in the tiny girl’s eyes and think, Nuh-uh.
One of the bullies comes nose to nose with me and shoves my shoulder back into the vented metal door again. “No one asked your opinion, freak.”
My nostrils flare, taking in all the assorted scents in the room. The tiny girl, I think, is a doe-shifter.
The bullies up in my grill?
One hundred percent dwarf.
Oh, it’s on.
I should have known the second I started my career at this new high school that someone was going to attempt to knock the stuffing out of me. Not because of my weirdly fading black/brown/blonde hair (which looks like it went through a hurricane backwards) or my freaky blue eyes (that unnerve people, as they’ve told me to my face), or even the fact that I’m a troll (which they likely don’t even realize, despite my slip of using a rock instead of swearing at them). No. It turns out, what sets these Demis off is someone standing up to them.
Well, I’m game.
“What, you don’t like being called out on your bullying?” It’s hard enough in general for trolls to make friends, let alone on Day Two at a new school. And even though Sylvania, Georgia has a significant Demi population hiding their true faces in plain sight, it doesn’t mean we all want to be pals.
Doesn’t mean I’m not willing to make a few enemies, though, either. Especially not if it means correcting an injustice.
I see the doe crawling around the scummy floor to my right as she gathers up her textbooks and let my mouth take over. “Look at that; it only took four of you to reduce this girl to tears. What valor you’ve shown! Such courage! Your families must be so proud.” Okay, the snark totally clobbered that last sentence.
And that earns me more of their attitude adjustment technique.
One girl notices my gym clothes and snatches them from under my elbow. “What’s this? Blue and white?”
“Blue and white?” another echoes.
I smirk. “Wow! You know your colors!” But I see everyone in the room is wearing a green and yellow gym uniform. Oops.
“You come here to mock us with your lame Lewis cheer, Brillo-head?” the leader says as she shakes out my clothes to show everyone.
“Didn’t they, like, lose every game last year?” one asks.
“Yeah, to us,” a third dwarf boasts.
The fourth presses against my arm, totally up in my grill. “Loser,” she growls.
Despite our bravado, this is the natural pecking order in my world: dwarves hate trolls, elves hate dwarves, shifters torment their natural prey. The only Demis that seem to ever get along are elves and dragons, but only because they naturally disdain everyone else.
Me? I just hate bullies. Otherwise, I get along with almost everyone. I love learning about different cultures and abilities, and I’m always so intrigued by the vastness of the world and the beings around me. Bottom line, I’m not like my war-ravaged parents; the differences between us simply don’t bother me the way they do them. I like humans. I like Demis. And, mostly, everyone seems to like me right back.
Except these four idiots.
“These are the only gym clothes I own,” I tell them as I snatch them back, which is totally true. Regardless of how hot it is, I only ever wear long sleeves and pants. No t-shirts, tanks, or shorts for me. Bottom line, the less skin I show, the less chance of the Shift sneaking up on me and revealing me as the freaky, shaggy, rat-tailed, dog-shaped troll that I am. This method has worked out perfectly....
Unless it’s gym day.
“Why? Your parents too poor to buy new clothes?” The four of them lock eyes and burst out laughing, assuming the worst.
I see one girl on the other end of the locker room, clearly one of the “in crowd” by her stylish clothes, perfect makeup, and amazing hair, and we make eye contact. She smirks at my antagonist and says, “Has your father found a job yet, Belinda?”
Belinda must be the gang leader, she of the red hair and manly jaw, because her face darkens and her eyes shoot daggers at the other girl instead of me. “Shut up, Rachel.”
I see through that female’s façade to her native roots and determine she and her equally-leggy friend are elves. I don’t need their help, though; I’m strong enough to take on all fifteen people in this room, so these mere four would never stand a chance. Even in my pathetic human form, I’m really strong. Shifting, I could take down a superhero. And if I ever morph into rock? Unbeatable... provided I can morph back. Oh yeah— and breathe while in solid rock form.
Details, details.
Just because my pear-shaped body seems best suited to hand-me-downs and donation center castoffs doesn’t mean my parents can’t afford to buy me stylish clothes. “Hardly,” I answer. “It just never dawned on me that the girls in my gym class would get s
The leader of the gang gasps. Just then, the gym teacher pokes her head in the room. “What’s taking you girls so long?”
“Mom, this creature just told us to get bent!”
Now I gasp, but mine is indignant as I push the quad out of my personal space. “I did not!” Somehow, I doubt the mom is going to take my word over her daughter’s.
But the teacher’s eyes lock on me as she mutters, “Hmm.” I watch her scan me up and down as the bullies amble away and act like nothing was just going down. If the teacher were older, like say, my late grandparents’ age, she might recognize me for what I am. But since most of my race is extinct, I’m hoping she won’t make the connection. Last thing I need is for a dwarf teacher to continue the agelong battle against my kind and give me a failing grade. “Belinda, everyone, go join the guys for your warmups. I want to talk to our new student.”
Something settles in my stomach. I’d say dread, but trolls typically have no fear, so maybe it’s that last chunk of my morning bagel? Anyway, anyone stupid enough to mess with a troll can be folded in half and stuffed into a wastebasket.
A dwarf teacher, though? Hm. I’d have to ask.
Nah. My parents wouldn’t approve of such shenanigans.
I watch the horde pass by me as they file slowly out of the locker room, the leggy elf holding my eyes before addressing the teacher. “She didn’t tell any of us to get bent, Mrs. Small.”
“Not asking you, Rachel. Now go.”
I heave a sigh at the tentative new friend support and smile at her retreating back.
“So, you are...?”
I inhale a fortifying breath. “Ozelle Bandercock.” Because being a teenage troll isn’t bad enough, my folks thought it would be awesome to saddle their only child with such a horrific name.
“You’re one of the kids from that school that blew up, right?”
My last high school’s gas line burst into flames two weeks before school started, making it structurally unstable. “Yes, ma’am. I’m from Lewis High.”
She homes in on the clothes in my hands. “Why don’t you have our uniform?”
“My folks were out of town this weekend, and the letter just arrived Saturday. I don’t have a driver’s license, so I couldn’t get to the one store that sells what I need.” Plus, they’ll look awful on me, but I keep my mouth shut about that part.
The resting face she gives me says she’s not buying it.
“Well, get changed. Flouting the school’s gym uniform is a day of detention.”
My mouth drops open as I realize she just sentenced me. “That’s not fair!”
She shrugs. “You’ve got two minutes.” She heads out.
I whip off my shirt and pants as I bemoan my fate in the cavernous room. I stuff my clothes into a locker and yank on my erroneous gym clothes, then I quash down my heel as I thump-run into the gymnasium. Mrs. Small blows her whistle, and I take a deep breath before starting my circuit around the gym floor, hoping not to get tripped by one of the she-dwarves from the locker room. I have no friends yet in this class and I really don’t want to side with either the dwarves or elves, so I can’t even run in a pack for protection- somewhat for mine, but mostly for theirs.
The short wall is for jumping jacks, and when I reach that I join in for twenty, then jog to the next wall to do sit-ups.
“Move it, Brillo-head.”
One down, thirty-nine minutes of torture left to go.
Once our tormentor feels we’re sufficiently winded, she rolls out a bin filled with balls and has us line up against one wall. We’re to count out one through four, and then she sends the ones and fours to the opposite wall, while we twos and threes stay where we are. In the middle, she lines up six balls.
Today’s torture? Dodgeball.
I see Belinda Small on the opposite wall from me, so I move between the doe-shifter and a jock human from my old school so that I’m across from her. I might not be able to fight the proverbial City Hall, but Teacher’s daughter right now is fair game.
Teach blows her whistle, and all the guys on my side race for the balls, hurling them at the slower ones as they try to retreat. Within seconds, the balls start flying. I try to act girly as instructed by my powerful folks and squeal and turn away when they blast close. I tug the doe out of the way a few times, but ultimately, she gets smacked.
I pick up the ball that hit her and throw it like a weakling so that it bounces and rolls across the court.
Belinda snatches it.
I square up to her.
She sneers, winds up, and hurls the ball in a redline blur at my chest.
I catch it in a bearhug.
So hard it pops.
Belinda’s face whitens.
I point at her head, then the ball as I crunch it down. Then I whirl to the teacher in an award-worthy performance of pure innocence and say, “Mrs. Small? This one is defective.”
I guess teaching in a school with a 40% Demi population leads one to expect bursting dodgeballs, because she doesn’t even blink an eye as she tosses me a replacement. I abandon my weak pretenses and take out two male human opponents with not-too-damaging overhand shots before one of the elves tosses a graceful line drive that grazes my shoulder. I could pretend it didn’t hit me, but Rachel’s quirked smile tells me she knows her aim is true, so I sit down.
Elves always win in sports, and today is no different.
Finally, our torture is over, and we escape to the locker room to change.
“You think you’re tough, don’t you?”
I’m assuming Belinda is trying to antagonize me, but I’m determined to ignore her. I do, however, feel compelled to cover myself and change out of my t-shirt at the same time, which is quite a feat. The fact is: it’s not always easy for me to control my trollness; ever since I turned thirteen, it doesn’t take much to reveal my inner self. My parents warned me that with adolescence comes the Shift, so I had been taking lessons from my older cousin, Bodo, before he returned home overseas. Now, though, in a new school, where I know hardly anyone, I have to be super careful. This makes it even more difficult to make friends, and sometimes impossible to live up to my parents’ mantra of Never Reveal Yourself.
“Hey, Brillo-head, I’m talking to you.”
I can feel the heat rise in me, but I squelch it down. Must. Not. Squish. Her.
“What are you, anyway?”
I’m assuming she’s not asking about my species, since Demis hide their true faces from humans— and I sense the remaining seven here are pure human— so I take the next best guess. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked about my nationality. After all, trolls don’t look like any race on the planet. I’m too dark to be Caucasian, too grayish to be Black, and I’m definitely not Asian or Latinx, not with these freckles and freaky blue eyes. I yank my head through the opening and stretch my arms into the long sleeves.
“Yoo-hoo! Brillo-head.”
I turn and face the rude girl. “Are you talking to me?”
“Anyone else here look like a scrub pad?”
A bunch of girls now stare at me, and I’m glad I put on my clothes already. I decide I don’t want to antagonize her— Mom always said we’d win hands-down in any fight anyway, even in human form— so I answer, “Middle Eastern, mostly.” At least, that’s where my grandparents came from.
“You don’t look Indian.”
“Didn’t say I was.”
She storms close to me, and I square up to her, feeling my eyes start to turn black, but I fight down the Shift.
She catches the change in my eyes and stops, hopefully remembering what I did to the ball, but then still acts tough. “You said Middle Eastern. That means India.”
“More like Qatar, or Bahrain, though I could also be from Jordan, Yemen, or Oman. Geez, don’t you know your geography? Middle East is a region, not a country. And India is considered South Asia, not Middle East. What do they teach in this school, anyway? How to bully?”
Oh, that makes her mad. “Where are you from?” she demands, punctuating each word, and I can tell by her hubris it’s only because she has her gang nearby that she’s acting so brave.
Well, that, and she’s trying to save face.
Since my race is nomadic by nature, I shrug and say, “My family is from all of those countries, plus Australia, Ireland, Canada, and America, but originally, Scandinavia. Would you like my genealogy records?”
