The Bully Book (17 page)

Good luck to you, Keepers of The Book.

Whitner walked into the classroom still chewing on a tuna sandwich. I know because I could smell it.

He's a messy eater and not skilled at walking and chewing at the same time. It took all his concentration to keep his chin clean with a napkin and lick all the tuna spread off his fingers. He got to his desk without seeing the whiteboard.

I crunched into a ball. The Reading Board isn't that big. What if Whitner came around behind it and saw me? I should not have placed myself so close to the scene of the crime.

He looked up at the whiteboard and stopped eating his sandwich. I heard an audible smack as his lips separated and the tuna hung lifelessly in his cheeks. It was a long, hard minute before he swallowed.

The sandwich dropped into the trash can. And his open hand curled into a fist. He kicked the trash can so hard it ricocheted against the wall and left his half-eaten sandwich embedded in the bricks. Tuna stink filled the room.

He turned around too quickly for me to see his expression and stomped out the door. Crap, I thought, he's mad. I crawled my way along the wall and peeked around the doorframe. He was huffing down the hallway to the New Side.

To Clark's office.

I needed to get out of there. My mind flashed back to Clark's behavior assembly. According to the New Rules, harassing a teacher and defacing a classroom are both grounds for a 60-day suspension.

There are just a few weeks of school left. I wouldn't even be eligible for summer school. I'd have to do 6th grade over again. I'd be the Grunt to a whole new group of kids.

I had to know what Whitner was going to do. I took off my shoes and followed him, silently, down the hallway.

He turned the corner down to the administrative offices. I saw him fling open Clark's door. It closed behind him with a swish and then I heard shouting.

Whitner's shouting. It was muffled so I couldn't make anything out but the tone. He was madder than I'd ever heard.

I could see the two of them through the foggy window. Mr. Whitner standing over Clark, his finger in Clark's face. Clark sitting at his desk, dumbfounded. I put my ear to the glass.

“You childish, ridiculous …” shouted Mr. Whitner. Clark said something too soft to hear. “All these years,” cried Whitner, “you're the same Tony Clark. My father's dying and you're calling me names! Like we're still in grade school!”

I spun away from the door.

Like we're still in grade school?

I needed to get out of there. Any minute, Whitner was going to open that door and find the vandal hunched over his shoes. I ran back to the cafeteria.

Everyone was eating just like it was a normal day. The world went on for them. They'd go on eating if a meteor was heading toward Earth, just as long as they didn't know about it.

I touched my shirt and it was heavy with sweat. Adrian noticed me first. He tapped Jason on the shoulder and they both started walking toward me. I looked around for somewhere to go. My brain wasn't registering colors and shapes correctly. Everything looked foreign and strange.

The bell rang. Jason and Adrian disappeared.

But I didn't go to class. How could I while the burning thought was on my mind? Music was next. Sometimes Music Lady was bad about attendance.

Forget the consequences. I had to run. I just kept thinking it:

He wasn't in the yearbook. He wasn't there.

On my bike, I checked my watch. 10 minutes into class, and I was halfway to City Hall. It was 12:50 p.m. They'd be opening in 10 minutes. Right on time.

Past the steps of the police station, through the heavy double doors, around the sitting-room chairs and plants, I raced on to the tiny archive room in the back. My steps rang out loudly against the tile floor and even the laziest of the solitaire champions peeked from behind their computers just to see who was this intense young man?

I slammed open the archive-room door with hurricane force and the barefoot silver-haired lady screamed her scream and took the whole desk to the floor level with her.

“I'm sorry,” I said, looking down at the heap, “but I need to see the Arborland Elementary yearbook again. 1987.”

She was stuck in her fallen chair, so she shot up her hand, the black iron key in her open palm.

I took it and unlocked the correct cabinet from memory. The book was in my lap in seconds and, with a few careful flips, I came to the 6th-grade photo page. Just as I remembered, not a single one of the 50 portraits was a kid-size Principal Clark.

But—I sighed—the portraits ran all the way down the page with no white space underneath.

The pictures did not end on this page.

I lifted the corner of the paper with the index finger of my right hand. I turned the page like someone might turn over a rock concealing a den of hideous cockroaches.

There, in the top left corner of the next page, was the spillover from the 6th-grade photo section. 10 smiling faces that I hadn't seen before.

Especially the photo of a blue-eyed blond boy, his hair perfectly parted, wearing a smile that could conquer the world.

Tony Clark.

Author of The Bully Book.

Clarence is still not picking up the phone. It's been more than 10 days. This is his case, too. But it's like I'm on my own again and it feels awful.

I want him to tell me what to do. No clear road on this.

I have to talk to Principal Clark. That much is obvious. But he's out of my reach. I can't get a handle on him.

I need a way to get him alone. I need to make him talk to me about The Bully Book. He has to tell me how they select the Grunt.

It's the First Grunt who's given me my chance.

Mr. Whitner's been quiet this last week—subdued. Some might say it's because his dad's still sick. He told us his dad has cancer and that's why he's been out of school every Monday. But that's been the situation all year. If you ask me, Whitner's traveled back in time. He thought he'd escaped the Grunt, but you can't get away. It lives in you. All it took was a word on a whiteboard to remind him that he's worthless.

Because classes are over soon, Whitner isn't going to give us worksheets anymore. We have one final assignment: Interview the Person we Admire Most.

Imagine the pained look in his eyes when I told him who my interview subject would be. Imagine the rage he must have felt when I said I admired the demon of his childhood.

But it's not what you think, Mr. Whitner.

I'm not doing it to make that smiling monster feel special. I'm doing it for people like you and me. I'm doing it for our redemption.

Principal Clark took something from us both.

I'm going to take it back.

“What were you like at my age, Mr. Clark?”

We'd been talking awhile in his office. He said what a surprise it'd been that I chose him for my interview. I told him he'd had an enormous effect on the student population, maybe more than he knew.

“Well,” Clark said, straining a little, “I think I was a fairly average kid. Certainly a bigger reader than most. A happy childhood.”

“Were you a writer, also?” I said, jotting down some notes.

“A writer? Well …” Clark touched the back of his head, as if accessing decades-old memories. “I suppose a little. I hear you're quite the writer, Eric. Mr. Whitner says so.”

“Yes, let's talk about you and Mr. Whitner,” I said. “I understand the two of you went to school here together.”

“That's true. How'd you know that, Eric?”

“Were you friends?”

Clark looked out the foggy office window to the hallway, maybe remembering Mr. Whitner's tirade. “We didn't really run in the same circles.”

“Would you say you were … enemies?”

“No, Eric. No.” Clark adjusted himself in his seat. “And honestly, I don't even know why you'd ask me something like that.”

I suppose Bully Bookers don't see Grunts as their enemies, not the way we see them.

“So you never made fun of him, tortured him, humiliated him in class?”

“Eric!” Clark twisted his face in embarrassment. “I don't know where you're … Mr. Whitner hasn't been …” He looked at me, worried.

“He hasn't said anything to me, Principal Clark.” I jotted down more notes. “I'm just asking generally. I'm trying to get a sense of what school was like when you were a kid because, see, at school nowadays, that kind of stuff is fairly common.”

Clark picked up a gold pen and rolled it hard between his thumb and forefinger.

“Are you having trouble at school, Eric? Because you know we've got mechanisms to deal with that sort of thing.”

“Yes, I'm sure you do. But it's nothing compared to what they have, Principal Clark.”

“They? Who is they?”

“You know,” I said. My lips were dry, and I wet them. “The ones who have it.”

“Have what?” Principal Clark said, leaning closer to me. I could hear the slight grinding of teeth.

I closed my notebook and looked him hard in the eyes.

Who is this man? I thought. The 12-year-old boy who authored The Bully Book? The one who wrecked the lives of my fellow Grunts? Or is he something different now? Grown up and grown out of it.

Mr. Whitner is what happens when Grunts grow up. You never stop being haunted by it. But people like Tony Clark, they change through the years and aren't weighed down by the past. They barely remember it, and the little they do remember—they try to forget.

“There's a legend at our school, Principal Clark.” I rose and paced the room. “About a book that will teach you how to rule the class. It's said to be passed down from grade to grade.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Clark's hands covering the front of his mouth.

“The Book,” I went on, “instructs its Keeper to pick one kid, of specific description, to be the lowest of the low. It calls this one the Grunt.” I sat down across from him at his desk. “In your time at our school, Mr. Clark, did such a legend exist? Have you heard about a Book? Have you heard of the Grunt?”

Clark laid his arms across the desk and stared at a mole on his hand. He glanced up at me, his lips pursed in a way I hadn't seen before. I think I found a secret place in him, something he'd never shown the outside world. A private room where he kept his dark secrets. And I was knocking on the door.

“You know, Mr. Whitner's had trouble lately in his classroom.” Clark glanced at me sharply. “Heard about it?”

I felt a rising fear in my throat and sat back in my chair.

“No,” I said.

Clark nodded, knowingly.

“Because this ‘legend' you're talking about, it sounds a lot like some abusive graffiti that was written on his whiteboard.”

Like an Olympic wrestler pulling a perfect reversal, Clark had escaped from my chokehold and had me on the mat.

“You know the New Rules. Zero Tolerance. Any student defacing school property receives a 60-day suspension. Plus the 60 days for harassing a teacher.”

His tone of voice was completely different. The author of The Bully Book was showing his face.

“You couldn't even make it up in summer school,” he told me.

“But The Book …”

“What about it?” He stared at me blankly.

“You covered it up, didn't you?” I felt myself sinking. “How could you not know? How could you forget?”

Clark leaned back in his chair. He considered me, silently.

I might be able to get him fired, but if he nailed me on defacing Whitner's classroom, I was guaranteed to repeat 6th grade. And I wouldn't even get The Book.

I had the most to lose.

“Mrs. Bellemont.” Clark buzzed his secretary. “Would you come in and escort Mr. Haskins back to class?”

“Thanks for the interview, Mr. Clark,” I said, packing up my stuff. “There sure is a lot about you to admire.”

He stood up and grasped my shoulder.

“I try to be good at what I do, Eric.” He squeezed my collarbone. “I can't explain it. You know. It's hard … when you're a kid.”

“Yes, Mr. Clark. It is.”

I broke from his grip.

“And you're not making it any easier.”

Clarence finally called me.

“Hey, Eric.”

“Clarence! Where have you been—I've been calling you all week! I even came to your house!” I said. “Clarence, listen to me, Clarence. I found the author of The Bully Book.”

“Yeah …” He sighed.

“Yes! It's Tony Clark, Clarence! Principal Tony Clark!”