The Bully Book (8 page)

No Matt Galvin there, so I continued on. Past the girls practicing cheers and chasing each other in tag, and the angry kids who sat on swings without swinging, just twisting around and drawing lines in the dirt with their shoes. The sidewalk-chalk drawers, the fake-karate fighters, and the squirrel torturers all went by in a blur.

Just as I was congratulating myself for blending in, I smashed full on into a bony object. I thought I might have walked into a small tree, but when I got up, I saw a kid about my height picking himself off the ground.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn't see you there.”

“Maybe that has to do with the direction your eyes were pointed,” he said back. “Front way's usually the best.”

He talked at me through a massive overbite but didn't make eye contact.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Oh, it happens,” he said to himself, walking off. “Happens. Happens. Happens all the time.”

It was then that I saw him. A blood-red ball ricocheted off the brick school building and arced in the air. Down it fell and was slammed by the fists of a blond boy giant. Matt Galvin.

He was playing wallyball by the big double doors at the back of the school. A long line of kids waited behind him and his opponent. Matt bounced a ball off the wall and it crashed into the other kid's face.

“You're out!” Matt Galvin screamed, laughing. The next in line replaced him and the game went on. I walked to the blacktop and stood behind the group. Matt's opponent tried to return a ball, but jammed his fingers and yelped in pain. The ball bounced away from the blacktop and toward the double doors.

“You idiot!” Matt Galvin yelled. “Somebody get that.”

Two kids rushed to get Matt Galvin's ball. I'd seen him before, talking about Math Buddies, but he didn't look ready to teach me math just now. His blond spiky hair was like a buzz saw. His braces made him look metallic and dangerous. He was a predator—ready for the kill.

“Demolish this kid, Matt! Knock him out!” his friends called to him, and he launched the ball. His skinny opponent shivered as Matt and friends surrounded him, shouting, “Come on! Do something, you wimp! Hit it!” The way they got in his face and yelled reminded me of Jason Crazypants.

These weren't Boy Scouts. They were barbarians.

And Matt Galvin was a Bully Booker. I was sure of it.

“Hey kid, you're up!” someone shouted.

I looked around. Who was up?

“I'm talking to you, kid. You gonna play or not?”

Terror. Matt Galvin was standing five feet away from me. Piercing me with his stare. He held the wallyball in his hands.

I was next in the line. I guess I'd been standing in line to play the whole time, and moving up without noticing it. Matt Galvin stared at me with his mouth hanging open, his braces blinding me.

“Ready?” he said.

I meant to tell him no thank you. I meant to say I got in line by mistake, that the next kid should go, my leg hurt, a sprained wrist, I had homework to do, a doctor's appointment. Excuses rushed through my mind. Time slowed down. But I had to act. My brain shouted, Say something!

“Yes.”

SLAM! The ball launched off the wall and a red, round flash of light targeted my face.

I think I said the wrong thing.

The ball trounced my forehead and exploded fireworks in my eyes. I went dark and could hear the ball bouncing away.

“Dang,” someone said. “Where'd it go?”

A confusion of voices, sounds. I couldn't see straight. Everything was blurry shadows. I stumbled over the blacktop.

“There it is!” someone shouted. They laughed. “It's by the Grunt.”

I froze. I'd been found out. Matt Galvin had recognized me, or somebody had. Who knows how organized these people are. Maybe there's a list, or a pamphlet, a website, I don't know! But I was in dangerous territory.

“Hey, Grunt,” I heard someone yell, and recognized the voice as Matt Galvin's. “Give us that ball!”

“Okay, okay,” I mumbled under my breath. My vision was coming back and I grasped around my feet for the ball. I couldn't find it on the ground nearby, so I dropped to the grass and crawled. I swiped my hands around, but didn't catch anything.

“Hey, Grunt! It's right there, just pick it up and throw it back to us.”

Okay, I thought. These guys are going to kill me. I had to get this ball and get out of there. But then my eyes cleared up. I could see the blood-red circle, not anywhere near me, but 50 feet off, closer to the big school doors.

I looked at Matt Galvin and his friends. None of them seemed to notice me. They all looked in the general direction of the doors, the ball, and the angry kid with the big overbite who was now picking up the wallyball. He held it in two hands, like you would a basketball, and gave one of the worst tosses I've ever seen in my life.

It didn't fly more than 10 feet before dropping to the ground. Matt and his friends laughed and one of them ran to pick it up. The bony kid walked away, mumbling to himself.

The 8th-grade Grunt. They'd been yelling at him. Matt Galvin was the 8th-grade Bully Booker, and this weirdo the 8th-grade Grunt. I'd lost Richard, but I'd found him.

Just as I was making my way over to tell him we were the same, Grunts of different generations, the alarm buzzed on my watch. I was late. If the preschool bus back to Arborland El wasn't at the middle school already, it would be soon, and the stop was a football field away. I had to run.

With a quick glance back, I memorized this Grunt's face before racing to the stop.

I arrived back in school just in time to have a perfectly miserable day.

The bus didn't get me back from the middle school in time for class, so I had to come up with an excuse for where I was. I went with an old standby: bathroom problems.

When I told Whitner this, he gave me a serious look and then talked for 8 minutes about his personal history with “bathroom problems” and strategies to deal with them. I now know more than I ever wanted about Mr. Whitner's intestines.

I don't know if I can get away with sneaking into the middle school again.

That's why I went to the library and searched their School History section—basically a foot and a half of shelf space that holds old yearbooks and stuff. I pulled out the 2010 edition.

It was weird seeing all the kids that used to go here. I saw middle schoolers I recognized from the playground, but younger, wearing sweaters and goofy haircuts. Even Matt Galvin and his friends were in there, and they all looked so normal. Just regular kids dressed up for their yearbook photos. You would never guess that these 6th graders were making some kid's life miserable.

This kid—Daniel Friedman. The one with the overbite, the 8th-grade Grunt. Calling him my ancestor is one way of looking at it.

I was half expecting a name like Dillmount Finster, or Tristan Fjord, something Gruntlike. But I guess Eric Haskins is pretty normal too.

You're given your name for no reason; your mom and dad just make it up. But you don't become the Grunt for no reason. There's a formula. It's something you do, or something you are. If I could figure out what it is about me, I could change it. And maybe then I wouldn't be the Grunt anymore.

'Cause it lasts past 6th grade. You can see it in guys like Richard, and this Daniel kid. You don't stop going to school with your bullies. They only get bigger.

Something I've been thinking about is, if I get to know this Daniel Friedman kid, maybe I could do some sort of comparison, like a checklist between him, Richard, and myself, and see what we all have in common. I could isolate the Grunt trait, get rid of it, and then the position will shift to somebody else. At least that's how I hope it would work. I don't know what else I can do at this point.

Donovan said it's not personal. He said he didn't want to choose me, but there's a formula. It's something about me. He said it wasn't up to them to decide. I know because I wrote it down right after I heard him say it.

I'm glad I did, 'cause otherwise I might not have remembered something that important. I've been carrying my notebook around with me everywhere lately. I'm using it as a sort of a case journal, a place to write down events and conversations, anything that I could use as a clue.

I just picked up the district directory from the librarian at the front desk. It has the phone numbers and addresses of every student in the Arborland School Ditrict. Now that I've got Daniel Friedman's name, I've got his number and his address.

I think it's about time I pay him a visit.

My Grunt hates me. But I'm actually making his life easier.

I put an incredible amount of thought into every social decision I make. The same goes for most of the kids in my class.

Who do I sit with at lunch? Is this person mad at me? Think I'm cool enough? What should I say to her? How do I avoid him?

Life is not easy in sixth grade.

Every choice you make might be a wrong one and you can never go back. But my Grunt never has to make any hard choices at all.

I'm constantly on top of my game, playing kids off each other, working things to my advantage, all so I can get what I want. It's exhausting.

But my Grunt never gets what he wants, so he can just relax.

He doesn't need to worry about what he'll say or do in class, because he'll get made fun of no matter what. He doesn't need to worry about making friends, because I've made sure that's not possible.

In the beginning, he tried to fight it, but he got the picture after a month or two. The best advice I could give to any Grunt would be:

Relax. Enjoy the lack of choices.

Don't fight it.

Daniel's house isn't far from my school and the middle-school kids get out later than us, so I had time to set up shop.

See, I didn't want to go into this lightly. After what happened to Richard, I'm only going to bring this Bully Book stuff up with the right guy. I was 99 percent positive Daniel was the Grunt, but I had to make sure. I waited in the bushes by his house until I heard someone coming down the road—talking to himself. I saw him in a lime-green sweatshirt, just a few feet away from me. I sucked in air till my spine curved and launched my attack.

“HEY, GRUNT!”

For one kid every year, that word is like a dog whistle. Daniel passed my test. He froze, his shoulders tensed, his neck shot up like a periscope, sucking in the sights for Bully Bookers. He was a Grunt all right, and he bolted before I could explain myself.

I was plowing after him, my sneakers slapping the pavement. “Wait!”

He slipped into the forested area behind the houses and I saw him tripping down the woody hill to the ravine. We were in thick jungle now, tree branches everywhere, ready to poke your eyes out. I could see a green flash between the leaves and I followed it fast. I raced through the tree trunks, right on the edge of falling over if I didn't keep my speed. I felt something hit my toe and then I was tumbling down the hill. My face tasted a gnarly root and my hair soaked up mud. The earth was spinning around—punching at me from all angles.

I landed in something wet. I was at the bottom of the hill and had trouble standing up. “Daniel,” I called out weakly. “Daniel!”

I waited for the spinning to end.

A flash of green.

There! Under a branch, some ways off in the distance.

He was holding something with both hands. There was a pop. It was a gun.

The bullet hit my chest at the bottom of my ribs. I grabbed at it and felt wetness. My chest and hand were dripping red.

The second bullet hit my back, right in the spine. Paralyzed, I thought. I reached around to the wound and my hand came back to me … blue.

Paintballs.

I spun to my feet, but Daniel was gone. The sting was killer.

I knew Daniel wouldn't like me calling him Grunt, but I guess I'd underestimated him. It took all my energy just to get out of the woods and back to the neighborhood.