Max, the narrator, introduces himself and his friend Freak. Max isn’t much of a student, but he’s big, and Freak is really smart, and they become friends. Max says this story is, as Freak would put it, the “unvanquished truth.”

As a boy in daycare, Max has a temper and kicks at anyone who tries to touch him “because I knew what a rotten lie that hug stuff was” (2). At daycare he first meets Freak, who wears on his legs steel braces that Max admires. Freak walks around making “rrr” noises like he’s a robot on mechanical legs. Max never kicks at Freak.

By third grade, people call him “Mad Max” or “Max Factor.” His grandparents, Grim and Gram, with whom he lives, call him Maxwell. Max’s mom was Grim’s daughter; Grim only refers to Max’s dad as “Him,” as if he were a monster. Grim worries because, as Max gets older, he more and more resembles “Him” and might someday become like his father.

The summer before eighth grade, Max has a growth spurt, and Freak, “the weirdo robot boy with his white-yellow hair and his weird fierce eyes” moves with his mom, “the Fair

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