The Good War

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2021 by Todd Strasser

Cover art copyright © 2021 by Phil Pascuzzo

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 9780593173657 (trade) — ISBN 9780593307809 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9780593173664

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Week One

Part Two

Week Four

Week Five

Week Six

Week Seven

The Weekend

Week Eight

Week Nine

Week Ten

Acknowledgments

About the Author

FOR BARB, LIA, GEOFF, JULIA, AND BEN

The morning bell rang. Goofy Foot, aka Zach Cook, dodged through the mob funneling into Ironville Middle School. Wearing a backpack and carrying a skateboard, he weaved and sidestepped through the crowd. When he accidentally bumped into a girl with long black hair, she snapped, “Watch where you’re going.” Other kids gave him dirty looks as he squeezed past them. But they were the bad guys. In Goofy Foot’s mind, he was in the video game called The Good War, and the entire school was enemy territory.

After stashing his skateboard in his locker, Goofy Foot enters the pissorium and is greeted by the harsh odor of bodily waste. He ducks into a stall for shelter before the next bell. Goofy Foot does not want to risk being ambushed at a urinal by the bad guys.

The boys’ room door opened with a creak, accompanied by the voices of Gavin Morgenstern and Ratface Fugard. In the stall, Zach held his breath. Ratface, whose real name was Crosby, picked on Zach every chance he got. Zach knew that if Ratface caught him in the pissorium, he’d be dead meat.

Goofy Foot hunkers down inside the stall. Through the sliver between the stall door and doorstop, he spies on the enemy’s activities.