Beast Ballerz, page 1
ALSO BY WESLEY KING
Feast Fallerz
Least Lollerz
Creased Crawlers
Yeast Y’allers
Text copyright © 2026 by Wesley Thomas King
Illustrations copyright © 2026 by Steve Wolfhard
Tundra Books, an imprint of Tundra Book Group,
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Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Beast ballerz / written by Wesley King ; with illustrations by Steve Wolfhard.
Names: King, Wesley, author. | Wolfhard, Steve, illustrator.
Description: Series statement: Beast ballerz
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20250227746 | Canadiana (ebook) 20250227754 |
ISBN 9781774886458 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781774886465 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCGFT: Monster fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS8621.I5653 B43 2026 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781774886465
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025941249
Edited by Peter Phillips
Cover and interior design by John Martz, adapter for ebook
a_prh_7.4_155936076_c0_r1
CONTENTS
Chapter One: Attack of the Knuckle Sweaters
Chapter Two: I am Literally a Monster
Chapter Three: My Roommate Is a Troll
Chapter Four: I Get Monster Mashed
Chapter Five: The World’s Longest Losing Streak
Chapter Six: I Become a Mushy-Faced Dog
Chapter Seven: What Goes EIP! in the Night
Chapter Eight: Pre-Game Garlic
Chapter Nine: A Lyona Shell-acking
Chapter Ten: I Get a Pep Talk from a Dog
Chapter Eleven: Practice Makes Pug-fect
Chapter Twelve: The Phantom Finds Us First
Chapter Thirteen: The First Duffel Goes Down
Chapter Fourteen: Warlocks are the Worst
Chapter Fifteen: The Pug Playbook
Chapter Sixteen: Into the Were-Snare
Chapter Seventeen: Get Your Pom-Poms Ready
Chapter Eighteen: Gobsmacked
Chapter Nineteen: Pops Drops Some Wisdom
Chapter Twenty: EIP Beet Boogie
Chapter Twenty-One: The Return of the Hair Bear
Epilogue: The Beard Will Be Back
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Attack of the Knuckle Sweaters
I knew something was up when I grew a beard in the fifth grade. Overnight.
Yep…one day I was plain old beardless Bax, and the next day I was storing pencils in my face case.
To be honest, I was pretty scared when I woke up that morning. I scratched my chin and thought a possum was sleeping on my neck or something. I nearly whizzed the bed.
And when I ran to the bathroom mirror and found a full-on chin shrub growing there instead, I was stumped. I called my parents in a panic—they both leave for work before I wake up—but neither one of them picked up their cell phone. It was a serious dilemma.
I’d just got hit with, like, all of puberty at once. I’m eleven, bro!
I stared at my suddenly hairy face for, like, twenty minutes, trying to decide what to do. Hide under my blanket? Go buy my first lotto ticket? Put on my dad’s suit and apply for a job?
Ultimately, I decided to just go to school. Solid decision.
The beard was an instant hit.
My math teacher, Ms. Melvin, thought the beard was a prop and tried to yank it off during morning attendance. You should have seen her face when my whole head snapped forward and bonked off the desk. It was classic.
Then, at lunchtime, my best friend, Rolando, threw a paper airplane at me from across the classroom…and it got stuck in my cheek mittens. It was the greatest moment of our lives.
Even Sara Cogswell called my beard “Weird, because you’re eleven, but kind of cool.”
It was the closest thing to a compliment I’d ever gotten.
By the time I left school that day, I’d decided to keep my new chin rug forever.
And then Dad got home.
First, he almost fainted. Then he marched me upstairs and made me shave on the spot, because “Beards aren’t proper for eleven-year-olds…and why is it so much better than mine?!” The old man made it look easy, but trust me, shaving is tricky. I kept cutting myself and had to stick pieces of toilet paper all over my chin.
I’d never felt more like a butt face in my entire life.
Things returned to normal for a while after that. The Bax Beard didn’t come back—which probably should have been another clue this wasn’t just insta-puberty—and I decided the entire incident was a fluke. Mom had a working theory that the factory had put Rogaine in my shampoo bottle by accident, though I rubbed my face with it every night for three days to check and…nothing.
I was back to storing pencils in a pencil case like a normal kid. I was devastated.
And then, two weeks later, I woke up with knuckle sweaters.
Yep. Hair mittens. Furry finger gloves. It was like my thumbs were wearing toupees. Still, the knuckle sweaters were way less cool and ruggedly handsome than my beard, so I shaved those bad boys off ASAP.
But the hair wasn’t done there.
A few days after that, I grew stubble socks while watching NBA highlights in my bedroom. Shaving your feet is mad hard, too…I basically had to learn yoga to get at those things.
And when I started sprouting curly brown chest hair a week later, Mom and Dad dragged me to the clinic. Our seriously ancient family physician, Dr. Potts, looked me over for a very long time, tapping a wrinkly finger on the desk like the world’s worst drummer.
“This is a new one,” he finally wheezed. “It’s a truly astounding amount of chest hair.”
I was staring down at my chest, totally bummed that I looked like a cocker spaniel. Would I have to start going to a dog groomer? My barber was going to be super disappointed.
“Should we be worried?” Mom asked, exchanging a very worried look with Dad.
Dr. Potts shrugged. “It’s curious, but I don’t think it’s anything overly concerning.”
“My son can grow a better beard than I can!” Dad shouted. We all gave him a strange look, and he cleared his throat. “And I’m very concerned for him. He’s only eleven, after all.”
“We’ll run some tests,” Dr. Potts promised. “Meanwhile, remember to use aftershave. And if you nick a nipple with your razor, just use a little piece of toilet paper to stop the blood.”
Bro…now my nipples were in danger? This was getting less cool by the day.
I was terrified I was going to sprout nose hair like my grandpa—don’t even get me started on his ears—but there was no more hair for three weeks, and the blood tests didn’t turn up anything either. As far as anyone could tell, I was just an occasionally hairy eleven-year-old.
Dr. Potts told me the worst was probably over, but to call him if anything else happened.
Yeah. Something else happened.
Just to clarify, I don’t do a lot of acting. I’m a basketball dude. I watch almost every NBA game, study highlights on YouTube before bed, and play point guard for the Anderson Eagles JV team.
Well, I’m the backup. Third string, sometimes. We’ll get back to that.
Anyway, Rolando was the star of the school play, and the director wanted some extras to dress up as creepy human tree children in the background and sway like it was windy. I get mega stage fright, but my only job was to wear green spandex, so I signed up as a favor to my boy.
At first, the show went pretty well.
I was chilling in my skintight leotard and enjoying a front-row seat. Rolando was doing a sweet tap number—the guy is a natural star—and I was just starting to think I could make a living as a human stage prop. I even cut loose at one point and made some soothing whooshing noises as I swayed. I was stepping the game up for all future tree children.
And then Rolando started to tap dance his way toward the back of the stage. The spotlight shifted to follow him…and overshot the mark, landing right on my pimply, wide-eyed mug.
And I started to get…itchy.
I know what you’re thinking. Hives. Maybe “backne.” Maybe he’s having a reaction to the dollar store spandex his mom bought for him because “When will you ever wear it again?”
But no. It was the hair.
I saw it sprouting on the back of my hands first…the accursed knuckle sweaters were back. My spandex shirt began to bulge. My socks puffed out like hair balloons.
In a panic, I felt my chin…yep.
The Bax Beard was back. Awesome, but it was not the time.
People in the audience started to shout. Rolando stopped mid-pirouette and almost fell over when he saw me. I could hear my poor dad shouting, “It’s just a little facial hair, people …”
But it was too late for that, Pops.
The other tree-children fled in horror, paper leaves flying everywhere. My gums began to itch, and I felt my teeth…oh no. I’d grown fangs.
Dazed, my eyes drifted to the spotlight. The bright, white light…
I took off and sprinted all the way home, dodging honking cars and a cat that probably had a heart attack. Racing inside, I stopped in front of the mirror in the foyer, horrified at what I was seeing. And no, I don’t just mean the leotard.
This wasn’t just random spots anymore. The hair was everywhere.
Like I said…something was definitely up.
* * *
I didn’t go to school for the rest of that week. Or the next.
I wasn’t technically suspended, but I guess the principal called my parents and said something like “Maybe Baxter should let things cool down a bit.”
It was a nice way of saying “We don’t allow hair-bears in our middle school.”
I tried to stay positive. I played, like, forty-seven and a half hours of video games over the first two days, ate six bags of ketchup chips—my pajama pants were a total write-off—and generally tried very hard to pretend I hadn’t just grown a butt carpet in front of my peers.
But three days into my informal house arrest, I started to feel crummy. I missed school. I missed Rolando.
And I missed basketball.
I may have slightly undersold how much of a “basketball guy” I am. My bedroom is pretty much a shrine: posters, shiny collectible sneakers on display, NBA League Pass playing all day on my TV. I even studied coaching textbooks and created my own plays for the team. I didn’t share them with my JV coach anymore, though. He told me he “didn’t need advice from an eleven-year-old beanpole” and to “stick to improving my game.” Beanpole? Coach was so not a bro sometimes.
Anyway, my team was 0–2, which wasn’t that shocking since we’d gone 3–11 last year. But I was still itching to get back. At the very least, I wanted to go cheer my teammates on.
So, a week after my suspension, I decided to go undercover.
I bought some oversized sunglasses and a fake beard—the beard was probably a bad call, in hindsight—and snuck into the gym after school to watch our third game from the bleachers.
It was the best twenty-three and a half minutes I’d had all week.
But when I saw Lyle lose his man on defense, I suddenly forgot I was incognito and screamed a warning. Everyone turned to look at me, frowning. No unusually small, bearded adult would ever be so passionate about a JV defensive zone. The jig was up.
The principal showed up soon after and made me take off the sunglasses—I think he presumed the beard was au naturel—then he sighed and told me I had to leave the premises.
“But the team needs me!” I protested. “I’m not even hairy today! Look at my knuckles!”
Alas, not even hairless knuckles could save me.
I was escorted out of my own school. It was super embarrassing, bro.
“I’m sorry, Baxter,” the principal said as I did my walk of shame out the front doors. “People just need time to get over the…incident. It’s alarming when a student grows fangs.”
“How much time?” I asked. “Can I come back for the next game? Monday practice?”
“I don’t think you’ll be playing basketball this season,” he said as he locked the doors.
And as I stood there staring at those locked doors, it felt like my stomach had turned into a lead ball. I was strangely…heavy. The feeling didn’t go away, either. I went into a straight-up mental spiral, bro. I was beginning to wonder if I could ever rejoin my team.
My entire life revolved around basketball…the thought of losing it was terrifying.
And what about the hair? What if it never stopped growing? Would I have to start waxing soon?! I’d watched a YouTube video, and it looked super painful.
Dr. Potts conducted a bunch more tests, but he couldn’t figure out the problem. I had an ultrasound, an X-ray, and a CT scan. He even hit my knee with a little hammer, but I just accidentally kicked him in the crotch.
We were getting nowhere.
Mom and Dad tried to stay upbeat, but they didn’t have a plan either. Even Rolando’s parents wouldn’t let him hang out with me anymore. In fairness, he was super allergic to dog hair, but it was still a bummer.
I showed up to his house one night…and he had to talk to me from his bedroom window.
“I’m sorry, bro,” Rolando called down. “My parents are weirdly afraid of fangs.”
I pointed at my teeth. “But I’m fangless now. See? Come down.”
“I told them you’d never bite me!” he said. “That’s when they brought up the allergies.”
I hate to admit it, but my eyes got a little watery. It was probably just, like, pollen. But I was standing on a lawn shouting up at my lifelong best friend…and he wouldn’t even come down. Maybe it was a dog allergy. Or maybe he was weirdly afraid of fangs too…afraid of me.
And that just…hurt.
“I’m only occasionally hairy,” I murmured, trying to hold back the tears.
“I’m sorry, bro. This is going to blow over. But they made me swear on my tap shoes.”
I gasped and turned away. He loved those tap shoes. He’d made an unbreakable vow.
“How long?”
Rolando paused. “Until they’re sure you’re not, like, contagious, I think.”
“Bro!” I said.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Contagious?
“I’m sorry, Baxter,” he said miserably. “We’re best bros. Just…from a safe distance.”
Yeah. Ouch.
He closed the window, and I just stood there like a sad dog left out in the rain. I noticed Rolando’s parents watching through the living room window, and then they blanched and shut the curtains. They’d had me over there a hundred times. We’d eaten goulash the night of the show.
Now I was getting the curtain treatment?!
If I was sad before, it was next level after visiting Rolando. I became a total recluse.
The hair came and went in patches, but it never went full-on Bax-squatch like it did on stage. Weirder still, sometimes the hair went away on its own. I’d get the old razor and shaving cream out of the cabinet and mutter something about being “over the hill,” and then the hair would just be…gone. That confusing game of whack-a-hair went on for three and a half weeks.
And then he showed up.
It was almost ten o’clock on a Friday night. Mom, Dad, and I were sitting in the living room when there was a knock at the front door. I went to answer it because Dad was wearing his TV pants—only his TV pants—and Mom was playing Sudoku. No one disturbs Mom’s Sudoku.
I hurried to the front door, then hesitated, peering through the glass. We have a motion sensor porch light—my dad is inexplicably terrified of raccoons—but it wasn’t turning on for some reason.
I opened the door anyway and found a short, shadowy figure standing on the porch.
“Greetings, Baxter Brooks,” a super deep voice said. “May I enter?”
“Aunt Beryl?” I asked, squinting into the darkness.
“I am the Dean of Prodigium Academy.” He cleared his throat. “May I enter?”
I couldn’t make out his face in the darkness, but I guess I’d be a subpar security guard because I just shrugged and let him inside.
