Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody: Chapters 1–5

“I’m making you both Hall Monitors,” Principal Wombat said, though she
quickly added, “This isn’t because you’re monitor lizards.”
Zeke couldn’t help himself. “But all the other Hall Monitors have been.”
“Coincidence,” Principal Wombat interrupted.

Principal Wombat shook her head. “...If we’re under threat, we go headfirst into a hole in the ground, and our backside protects us from predators.”

The other pupils mostly ignored them, as they had ever since the lizards started being bused in from — if Zeke was being honest or someone else wasn’t being polite — the poorer area of town as part of a program in the school district to get different types of students mixing together....At this school, that included the three monitors, plus a group of geckos who played in the school marching band, and a Komodo dragon with terrible breath who everyone — mammal, bird, and lizard alike — avoided.

Clouded monitors (who weren’t actually clouded but covered in little yellow spots) were supposed to be bigger than peach-throated monitors, but here Zeke was, hulking over the other two like a resentful big brother who had to babysit.

...they did stick out a little here. Was it because they were a little less well-off than their classmates? Or was it the cold-blooded thing?

“When do we get to yell at people, though?” Daniel asked Zeke and Alicia, a little crestfallen, as everyone just kept walking by.

“Why were you picked?”
Zeke, Daniel, and Alicia turned toward the voice, each of them rising slightly on their back feet without really noticing, giving the monitor lizard signal for threat.
Because coming down the hallway, a sneer on his stupid face, flanked by his stupid lackeys, was Pelicarnassus.

Do not worry, reader. We will get to the story of France and Zeke’s knee. It’s what scientists call “a doozy.”

Birds held themselves above most of the rest of the school. And yes, that was literal. They could fly, and they never let anyone else forget it.

They could fly, and they never let anyone else forget it. Well, except for the emus and the ostriches, but they seemed more like bears anyway, if you asked Zeke.

“HALL PASS!” Daniel yelled.
Pelicarnassus patted his sides as if he were searching for one, then looked under his little hat — Pelicarnassus always wore a little hat, it was infuriating — and even in his voluminous jaw, which warped in and out like a balloon that might stab you.

But Pelicarnassus didn’t seem too bothered. He walked toward them down the hallway, his two little lackeys by his side — both egrets, both named Norman somehow, also in hats (birds had a thing for hats shared by no other kind of animal) — sneering with every word he said. “I’d like to see the lizard that could force me to go to the Principal if I didn’t want to.”

Pelicarnassus fell backward in a cloud of feathers...
“What did you do?” Alicia asked Zeke in wonder.
“You’re the ones who wanted to destroy him!”
“Well, yeah,” Daniel said, also agog, “but it’s all talk, isn’t it?”

“You’re expelled,” Principal Wombat said, looking very unhappy.

“We don’t tolerate violence at this school.”