Summary: The Unvanquished Truth

Ch.1
The Unvanquished Truth
We are introduced to our narrator Max, and boy is he a handful.
Back in the day, when he was in daycare, his nickname was "kicker." Why? Well, it turns out he had—and still has—"a way of saying things with my fists and my feet" (1.1).
Max currently lives with his grandparents, who he calls Gram and Grim. When he was younger, they tried to put him in daycare to "improve his temper" (1.3). But instead, he invented a bunch of new games, all of which involved kicking other kids and sometimes teachers. Oops.
It was in daycare where he first met Freak, a "fierce" boy who Max never got around to kicking. Sounds like the making of a beautiful friendship.
Max was seriously jealous of Freak 's crutches and the braces on his

Dun dun dun.

Ch.2
Up From the Down Under
This summer starts like every other summer Max has ever known: super boring.
He lives in the basement of his grandparents ' house, which he likes because it gives him some privacy.
He can tell his grandparents are really worried about him and think he is at a "dangerous age" (2.2), but mostly Max just hangs out in the basement reading comics.
One day, Max is hanging out in the dirt patch he calls a backyard when he sees a moving van down the street. Exciting!
He spots a really pretty woman who looks sort of familiar, and then… he sees Freak.
Freak is super small for his age: "he 's got a normal sized head, but the rest of him is shorter than a yard stick and kind of twisted in a way that means he can 't stand up" (2.10).
But this doesn 't stop Freak from strutting around on his crutches ordering all the moving guys around.
Freak is in the middle of shouting orders when he sees Max. He demands that Max identify himself or suffer the consequences.
Max thinks Freak (whose real name is Kevin, by the way) is being serious, so he sort of panics and does what any mature 13-year-old would do—he

He decides to go back upstairs and stop being a baby. From his backyard, he can see Freak waving his crutch at a tree.
Max watches as Freak throws his crutches down and crawls inside the house. Freak comes back with a wagon, climbs inside it, and tries whacking the tree again. Curious.
By now, Max has figured out that there must be something stuck in the tree. He tries to sneak over to the tree, but since he 's recently hit puberty, he 's still feeling really awkward in his body. Translation: he 's loud and clumsy.
Freak hears him, and it seems like he is going to hit Max with his crutch. But before he can, Max grabs the plastic bird that was stuck in the tree and gives it to Freak.
They spend the rest of the afternoon playing with the "ornithopter" as Freak calls it.
Max notices that Freak doesn 't talk in a way he 's used to. When the ornithopter finally breaks, Freak says: "All mechanical objects require periodic maintenance. We 'll schedule installation of a new propulsion unit as soon as Fair Gwen gets a replacement" (3.17).
Huh? Yeah, Max doesn 't really understand, but agrees anyway: "Cool" (3.18).
Freak wants to see where Max lives, so Max grabs the handle to his wagon and