Excerpt from Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

LIDDY, FIRST TO FLY

Liddy showed us her ankles during first recess. She lifted the cuffs of her blue corduroys, first one and then the other, as we sat by the broken picnic table in the patch of grass between the parking lot and the basketball court. Chloe and Liddy sat on the table, their feet on what remained of the bench. Mags and I sat in the grass, avoiding the jagged wood. Raised white bumps protruded from Liddy's skin, one on the outside of each ankle, each a few inches above the rounded knob of bone—perfectly symmetrical.

"Blisters from your boots?" I said.

"I don't think so."

Chloe tapped on her phone. "Ringworm," she said, holding out her screen.

Mags recoiled. "Oh, gross. Oh my God."

Liddy stopped poking at the bumps just long enough to glance over. "It doesn't look like that."

"Maybe you should go to the doctor," I said.

"They just look like zits to me," Mags said. "Big ones."

"My mom won't take me to the doctor for some zits on my legs."

"Can you stop being gross and showing them to us, then?" Chloe said, still fiddling with her phone. "We've wasted almost the whole recess."

Simon L. ran by, chasing an escaped basketball. "Dogs pee there!" he shouted at me and Mags. "You're sitting in dog pee!"

Liddy showed us her ankles again the next day. Only Chloe sat on the table, the remaining three of us in the grass. Liddy laid her legs across my lap, and I lifted her sneaker close to my face. The bumps had grown, the skin noticeably thinning as it stretched, becoming translucent. "There's something in there," she said.

Something did appear to be pushing up through Liddy's skin, the size and shape of the tip of a pen, only white. "Maybe Chloe was right, and you do have worms," I said.

"Ringworm is caused by a fungus," Chloe corrected.

I couldn't resist poking at it. "It's hard, though. Would a worm be hard?"

Mags was looking over my shoulder, transfixed. "Ew. Ew, ew, ew."

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"It's more ... uncomfortable. Like I can feel how tight the skin is. Like wearing clothes that are too small."

"It looks like bone," Chloe declared, from above.

"It's weird that they're in the exact same place," I said. "It's almost like someone ran something straight through both of your ankles. Like the bolts on the neck of the monster in Frankenstein. Or Mags's dog when he broke his leg and got that plate put on it."

"Did you break your ankles and not remember?" Mags said. We let this pass, as a Mags thing to say. "Anyway, you should go to the doctor," I concluded.

"I don't want to bug my mom with this," Liddy said, pulling her pant legs back down. "She's got a lot going on right now."

Mags let out a horrified squeal.

"Wow," I said.

"Shit," Chloe said.

Liddy stood in front of us, holding up the cuffs of her jeans.

The bumps were now bubbles of clear fluid, about the diameter of a quarter, the skin almost completely transparent. Within each one was a coil of something dark and unrecognizable, bringing to mind matted hair, a clog pulled up from a drain.

"You should go to the hospital," I said. Mags nodded. Chloe typed swiftly on her phone. "Maybe Mags was right, and they're just blackheads. Sometimes people get huge ones that look kind of like that. See?"

Liddy looked at Chloe's phone. "So should I pop them?" "Is it weird that I want you to pop them?" Mags said. "Like, I really, really want you to."

"Me too," I said. Looking at them was almost painful, like watching an oblong, overfilled water balloon bounce across the scraped concrete of a pool deck.

"This website says you should sterilize a needle to do it, to prevent infection."

"Can we watch?" Mags asked.

Excerpted from Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu. Published with permission from Tin House. Copyright (c) 2022 by Kim Fu.