School gets out for the summer. It’s been nearly a year that Max has carried Freak around on his shoulders. Lately they’ve cut back on dangerous adventures so Gwen won’t get mad. Freak enjoys the Spring day and asks Max if he remembers the Ice Age. Max says he wasn’t born then. Freak responds that “Remembering is just an invention of the mind” (142), and that anyone can “remember” the deep past by using imagination.

Freak has been reading a book on the Ice Age, which explains why lately he regards stray cats as saber-toothed tigers, and why he imagines himself back in the past, trying to invent modern devices using primitive tools. He thinks he’d be able to fashion a compass at least.

A few days after school gets out, Freak celebrates his 13th birthday. He also wants to celebrate a year of friendship with Max as Freak the Mighty. For his birthday, he’d like a ride on the Space Shuttle, or his own cyclotron, or maybe a real helicopter instead of the ornithopter he got last year. His mom suggests a jet plane.