Free Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel

picked as my guide was that we were in all the same classes. Math. English. History.
    All the guys seemed to be calling one another by their last names. “Hendricks!” “Thompson!” “Burns!” But I didn’t catch the girls doing this to each other. I guessed I would be Tomlin.
    All morning I kept looking around for David Godwin, but couldn’t see him anywhere. I passed his hairy brother, Cal, in the quad, and he just grunted at me without stopping.
    This was the first school I’d been to where you could get a hot lunch. The dining hall had a high-raftered ceiling (fake Tudor), and long wooden tables with benches on either side. The noise of people eating and talking swooped from table to table.
    I looked around and hoped Henry would lead me to the table where Jennifer Godwin was sitting. There were definitely girls’ tables and boys’ tables, and not a ton of mixing. Henry took me to the farthest corner of the dining hall wherea bunch of small, bespectacled kids sat near the end of a table. They looked like hobbits.
    There was obviously a system here. The oldest kids sat at the end nearest the kitchen, and everyone else sat farther away. I soon realized why. The grade twelves came back from the kitchen carrying big metal trays of food. They helped themselves first, then passed the trays on down the table until they were empty.
    “You kill it, you fill it,” chanted someone to the person who’d taken the last of the lasagna. Then that person took the tray back to the kitchen for a refill.
    Way down at the hobbit end of the table, I could see it would take a while to get some food.
    To my surprise, David Godwin and Hugh arrived at our table and, near the middle, kids made room for them. Clearly, they were higher-ranking males than the usual grade nines.
    “Hey, David! Hugh!” I said.
    David looked at me coolly. “Tomlin,” he said slowly, drawing out each syllable.
    “That the chimp kid?” the guy across from him asked.
    “He is indeed the chimp kid,” said David, helping himself to some lasagna.
    “Was he raised by chimps or something?”
    “He
looks
like he was raised by chimps,” Hugh said.
    “That’s me,” I said. “Chimp boy.”
    I nodded and tried to laugh along with everyone else, looking at David and trying to figure out if he was laughing with me or at me.
    At
me.
    Everyone at the table started jibbering and
eeking,
the way they thought chimpanzees sounded. I took a deep breath. A dominant male did not submit.
    “They don’t sound like that,” I said. “You guys sound like monkeys. Little teeny-weeny monkey boys.”
    “What’s the difference?” someone asked gruffly.
    “Chimps are bigger and much more powerful,” I said.
    “So how do they sound, Tomlin?” David asked.
    “More like this.” I started doing deep pant-hoots, faster and faster, until they were almost barks, rocking up and down in my seat. Everyone was looking at me like I was crazy, so I went a little further. I jumped off the bench onto the floor and, hunched over, moved on all fours towards David. I shoved my way onto the bench beside him and started grooming his hair.
    “Tomlin, you freakin’ weirdo!” he said, trying to push me away.
    I smacked his hands away and pretended to find something really exciting in his hair. I let loose with a shriek of excitement as I popped it into my mouth. I gave a few more contented pant-hoots, and then stopped.
    “Tomlin, you are seriously twisted,” said David, giving me a shove, but he was sort of smiling.
    “That’s
how chimps
really
sound,” I said, and started back to my seat. All across the dining hall, people were looking my way, including a male teacher, who was walking over with a frown.
    “Sit down,” he told me. “This is not a zoo.” “Sorry, sir,” I said. “But I
am
chimp boy.” I heard the other guys at the table laugh.
    The teacher didn’t think this was funny. “Detention on the first day is no way to start the school year,” he said. “No,