Chapter 1 Flaming Lady Beards, Man-Eating Monsters, and Head-Exploding Rock Allergies It should come as no surprise that the day I almost got my face clawed off by a vicious monster was a Thursday. Since pretty much the beginning of time (according to my dad and his dad and his dad''s dad and his dad''s dad''s dad, etc.), bad things have happened to my family on Thursdays. A few examples: * Great-Aunt Millie''s legendary beard caught fire on a Thursday. Once the flawless envy of every Belmont (man or woman), it sadly never quite grew back the same again. * Second Midwestern Bank repossessed the old Belmont family farm on a Thursday way back in 1929, dooming the family henceforth to dreary city life. Ever since, all my aunts and uncles call it a slimy Pointer bank. Nobody will tell me what that means, but it''s almost certainly a curse word since it''s precisely what Aunt Millie screamed the moment she realized her beard was on fire.

* My cousin Phin lost his brand-new car on a Thursday. To this day we have no idea where it went. He parked it on a street in the city, but then simply forgot where. After looking for over an hour, he gave up and took the bus home. If you say it''s impossible to just lose a midsize sedan, I''ll show you a Belmont on a Thursday. There are so many more, but the point is: I shouldn''t have been surprised to nearly get torn limb from limb on a Thursday. I certainly expected something bad to happen, since it nearly always did. Just not something so drastic.

I thought maybe I''d get gum stuck in my hair. Or perhaps Perry would try to stuff me into the toilet in the fourth stall of the boys'' locker room again--which was actually almost as bad as getting attacked by a monster since this particular toilet was so notorious it even had its own name: the Souper Bowl. The Souper Bowl hadn''t been flushed since 1954 due to some superstitious school tradition that ran so deep even the city''s top health inspector (a former student) overlooked it. I can''t even describe to you the horrible sights I''ve seen inside that stall--and the smell shall never be mentioned again. But I''m certainly not complaining about Thursdays. They''re just part of being a Belmont. Some kids are born rich, some are born po∨ some are born with eight toes, some are born with blond hair; and others just happen to have been born with a Thursday curse. Luckily, my whole family was pretty good at coping with it.

We even had a saying: Thursdays are why every other day seems so great! Okay, so maybe it''s not very catchy, but it worked. The other days of the week truly felt like a holiday compared to Thursdays. That particular Thursday started out simply enough: with a supposedly harmless school field trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo. The Isaacson Preparatory Empowerment Establishment (I dare you to try saying you go to a school called I-PEE with a straight face) is one of the fanciest and most prestigious private schools in the country. They had enough money to buy their own zoo if they wanted. But instead they sent us on "cultural enrichment" trips once a month to places like the Shedd Aquarium, or a local apple orchard, or another, much poorer school on the west side so my classmates could see firsthand just how much better their lives were than other kids''. That Thursday, a convoy of luxury charter buses drove the entire school up Lake Shore Drive toward the zoo. Lake Michigan flanked us on the right, looking like an ocean with a sparkling blue surface that stretched on forever.

My first goal, after stepping off the bus at the entrance to the Lincoln Park Zoo, was to find Edwin. That was the good part about Field Trip Thursdays: getting to hang out with my best friend all day. Edwin was easily the most popular kid at the PEE, and perhaps also the richest. And maybe that''s not a coincidence? Not that being wealthy was rare for the PEE''s students (I was one of the few exceptions). Of the school''s 440 students, only 45 of us paid reduced tuition. The rest came from families wealthy enough to afford $43,000 a year for something they could have gotten for free. But Edwin''s family was like a whole other level (or two, or forty) of being completely loaded. I spent my summers working at my dad''s organic health goods store, whereas Edwin spent his summers jetting all across the world on his parents'' fleet of private luxury planes.

Yeah, that''s plane s --as in they owned more than one private jet. I didn''t even know what exactly Edwin''s parents did for a living. They worked downtown doing something vague and financey--like CEO of a Money Management Investment Firm, or Executive Commodities Director, or Market Analyst Portfolio Broker Financial President Administrator. But the point is: despite us coming from two different worlds, Edwin and I had been best friends from the moment we met three years ago. I found him in the crowd that Thursday surrounded by a flock of pretty eighth-grade girls. They collectively made a face as I joined the group. I assumed it was partly because I smelled like a mixture of salted pork shank and Icelandic bog (yeah, so my dad made his own organic soaps and forced me to use them). Either way, I ignored the girls'' annoyed stares as they dispersed--like they always did when I showed up.

"Hey, Greg," Edwin said with a huge grin. "Did your dad find anything cool on his trip? Any extinct Norwegian tree saps? Or a new strain of peat moss? Maybe he finally tracked down the rare and elusive Arconian button mushroom?" Part of my dad''s job as an artisanal craftsman (his words, not mine) involved traveling all over the world in search of new ingredients to use in his soaps and teas and other natural health products. He''d been in Norway all week on the hunt. "I don''t know, he gets back tomorrow," I said. "Why? Are you really that anxious to try his newest tea?" Edwin looked at me like I had asked him to put his finger in my left nostril. "Uh, not after last time," he said with a laugh. "His last batch of tea almost caused my face to explode, remember?" "To be fair, he had no idea you were allergic to shale," I reminded him. "That''s because shale is rock," Edwin said, grinning.

"I never ate it before, because, generally speaking, people don''t eat rocks ." "Hey, you''re the one who asked him for a sample. My dad never makes you try anything. I''m usually the guinea pig." "I know, but I can''t help it, I really like your dad," Edwin said. "He makes me laugh. Guy is hilarious." "I''m glad one of us finds him funny," I muttered.

Deep down I also loved my dad''s quirks, but I hated to show it. "Anyway," Edwin said with a cheesy smile, "are you ready for the breathtaking world of the Lincoln Park Zoo?" I rolled my eyes. That was the thing about being as rich as Edwin: when you could afford to do literally anything you wanted, most normal things became boring. Just last winter his parents flew him in a helicopter over a Siberian nature reserve in eastern Russia-- there was no way a trip to the zoo could live up to that. That was probably why he loved my dad so much: one of the few things money couldn''t buy you was a kooky, eccentric, and (debatably) hilarious father. "Hey, you never know," I said. "Maybe watching depressed animals lay around in a cage is more exciting than it sounds?" Edwin laughed. He got a kick out of my bizarrely gloomy optimism.

I blamed my dad for that trait. "Don''t be such a gwint," he said. Edwin called me a gwint when he thought I was being too pessimistic . I had no idea what gwint meant, but it''d always seemed oddly fitting. Edwin had a knack for making up strangely appropriate nicknames. Like Hot Sauce, for example. He was one of the PEE''s English teachers and field trip chaperones. His real name was Mr.

Worchestenshire, and of course we all knew that Worcestershire sauce wasn''t technically hot sauce, but when Edwin coined the nickname, he didn''t know exactly what kind of sauce Worcestershire was. Plus, Hot Sauce was just a way better nickname than Miscellaneous Food Condiment. So it stuck. "Whatever," I said. "It''s your move, by the way. Or are you stalling, hoping that I will forget what my Master Plan is?" Edwin scoffed and took out his phone. One of the things we realized we had in common right away was chess. Not many kids played chess.

In fact, I''d only met one other kid who played chess: Danny Ipsento. He used to live down the street from me. Turned out, in addition to playing chess, his other hobbies included starting fires and throwing shoes at pigeons. So we never really became friends--I was too unlucky to have a friend with such dangerous hobbies--it''d be hazardous to my health. But the point was: the rarity of chess players made it seem almost too perfect the first time I saw Edwin open the Chess With Friends app on his phone. I only started playing because my dad was obsessed with the game and taught me when I was three. My dad never stopped talking about chess''s perfections : how ancient it was, how it was the only game in existence where luck played absolutely no factor, and how you completely controlled your own destiny. Every move, every win, every loss was entirely in your own hands, something that life never offered (especially to Belmonts).

Which was also why I grew to love it, despite the fact that I rar.