The Bully Book (16 page)

Clarence's mouth dropped open. I knew he already got it. But I handed him the Bully Book page anyway. “Read the 7th paragraph,” I said. Clarence had read it about a million times. He knew it by heart. But he cleared his throat and read out loud:

“This year, I survived the school district merger, outsmarted kids ten times my size, and completely conquered sixth grade. I've got a ton of friends, everybody does what I say, and teachers don't mess with me. This has been the best year of my life and I made it all by myself.”

His mouth just hung open and even the eyeliner couldn't conceal his surprise.

“I don't believe it …,” he mumbled.

“You better,” I said. “This is the break we needed. I went to the school library after lunch today. The '87 yearbook's not there, so I asked the librarian about it.”

“She want to know why?” Clarence said sharply. I could tell he was scared. The trail's been cold so long he got comfortable with his routine. Every day: find papers, file them, go to bed. Now there was detective work to do and real results to be had.

“I told her I was doing a project on the history of the Arborland School District. She said the school doesn't have any yearbooks or student lists before 1998. That's the year they sent everything to the city to be digitized. There's an archive room at City Hall that keeps all the old stuff, but they can't afford a full-time librarian, so the hours are awful.”

“When are they open?” Clarence asked me.

“1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.”

“So this week's out,” Clarence said. “We'll be in school.”

“Right.” I thought Clarence would suggest we skip school.

“All right, Saturday then,” Clarence said, rubbing his hands together. He had a look of unease that I didn't understand. After four years of dedicating his life to this, I'd thought he'd be jumping for joy.

“Do you wanna go get something to eat?” I said. “You know, celebrate or something?”

Clarence looked dazed. “Actually, I've got a lot of work to do today. Homework, you know? So, I can't really …”

“Okay,” I said, taking a hint. “I guess I'll see you Saturday?”

“Yeah,” he said. “For sure.” He didn't come up the stairs with me or anything. Just waved good-bye and watched me leave.

I biked home and … I guess I've got to sit on this.

I was waiting outside Clarence's house for almost an hour.

I got there at 11:40. Figured we could bike over to City Hall right when it opened. But no one answered the bell. The back door that Clarence was keeping unlocked for me wouldn't open. And there was no response when I knocked on the basement windows.

The lights were all off. No car pulled up in the driveway, no call to my cell phone. Clarence doesn't have a phone of his own, so I just kept calling his house line.

“This is the Corbinder residence. We're not home right now, so please leave a message.” Ms. Corbinder's voice on the answering machine.

I didn't leave a message. It was approaching 1 o'clock and I didn't know how much time I'd need.

The bike ride was okay, but I didn't have anyone to talk to. It made me nervous. I kept running scenarios in my head. How the place would be laid out, what I was gonna say.

Inside City Hall, nobody looked at me funny. I guess I'd imagined buff security guards with walkie-talkies guarding the city's center of power. Instead it's a small building filled with bored-looking office workers. Nobody asked me what I was doing there in case I'd make them actually do their jobs. I saw a lot of computer solitaire happening.

I followed the surprisingly informative signs (CITY ARCHIVE ROOM
all the way to the back of the building. A brown door was barely visible in the brown brick wall, but it said CITY ARCHIVE ROOM. I pushed the door open.

Screaming, a silver-haired woman with her bare feet up on a counter nearly kicked herself out of her chair.

I jumped back and closed the door. It was like I'd just walked into the ladies' room or something. I checked the sign on the door again. CITY ARCHIVE ROOM.

“Young man! Young man!” I heard a muffled yell through the door and I opened it a crack. The silver-haired lady had righted herself on the chair and was breathing heavily. She gestured for me to come in. “I'm sorry, young man. I didn't mean to frighten you.”

I stepped in a little and looked around the book-lined room.

“You just startled me,” she said. “No one usually comes in here. But we are open.”

She struggled to put a lacy, gray pair of socks back on as she spoke to me. From the uneven length of her toenails, I could guess she'd been trimming them when I knocked. The clipper on the counter was another clue.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm looking for a yearbook. Arborland Elementary School 1987.”

“Right,” she said, sweeping toenail shards into the wastebasket. “We can get that found for you.” All the books were up on shelves protected by locked glass cases. She jangled some old iron keys and put the appropriate one in the lock. The cabinet opened and, with incredible accuracy for someone who hadn't pulled a book from these shelves in a while, she yanked out the 1987 yearbook and handed it down to me.

The cover was a faded picture of the school with
ARBORLAND ELEMENTARY '87
printed in red. The binding was cracked and several pages must have come loose because the whole thing was wrapped around with a rubber band.

“Now, be careful with that, if you please.” She gestured to a small desk by the window. “You can read over there, but I'm afraid you can't leave the room with it.”

In my hand was the book that could unravel everything and it was barely 30 pages long. Carefully, I removed the rubber band. Page after page, I saw poorly printed photos of the New Side's construction and opening. Dark and grainy photos of kids in their English classes, math, homeroom, music, all the same things we do every day, except everyone in these photos was now grown up.

But one of them left something behind. I got to the page with the 6th graders and realized that somewhere mixed in with these 50 kids was the author of The Bully Book.

Photos took up most of the page, straight on down to the bottom. I searched their names and faces, looking for clues.

They were arranged by order of birthday, and no one struck me as being especially evil.

I figured the only proper way to investigate would be to take down their names and search them on the internet.

I looked at the photos again, hoping something would pop for me, some clue that could make this case easier.

And then I saw it.

Deep in the bottom row, all the way to the right, was a face so pathetic I mistook it for my own. It had the sad-sack look of someone destroyed. The look of Richard, and Daniel, and, come to think of it, Clarence. A Grunt's look.

The name under it was Ronny Whitner. I could not imagine such a sad-looking kid growing up. Much less to be a man who'd come back to the place of his curse, where he'd become a teacher with the sense to spot a fellow Grunt in crisis.

Mr. Whitner, my English teacher.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday rolls around. Still no word from Clarence. I call him, I go to his house. Nothing.

Screw it, I think. I can't sit on this. I'm going solo.

In fact, I'm in Whitner's room right now. Behind the big Reading Board. It's lunchtime and he's in the teacher's lounge. Somewhere, I don't know.

HEY GRUNT is written on the whiteboard in enormous block letters. I put it there. If he isn't the First Grunt, he won't know what it means and he'll just erase it. If he is, I'll see some sort of reaction from him. Recognition. Nothing as extreme as Daniel's, but I'll see it and I'll know.

Then I can move in and get some answers.

There'll be—

My mom always says, “Set your house in order, that comes first.” I think it's from a self-help book, but I never knew what it meant before this year.

When the school districts merged, a lot of new kids came into our sixth-grade class.

And they brought trouble.

Everyone got freaked out about it. Kids that had been friends for years fought over letting new kids into their clique. People got jealous and angry at each other. Sometimes two groups, one from each school, were so similar they had to either combine or fight.

The whole Social Order was turned upside down. The athletic, good-looking kids are at the top. Then you've got the kids who cluster up because they like skateboarding or fashion magazines or volleyball or dance. You've got the weirdos who aren't too popular but float from group to group, keeping the few friends they made in kindergarten. Already this Social Order is unstable, but then double it, with all new people, all new groups, and all new kids trying to prove they're the coolest.

It was a nightmare.

I developed my system out of this craziness to put my house in order, like my mom would say. It took a lot of observation and thought and trial and error, but eventually, I molded my classroom into a nice, well-ordered place, where I was on top and everybody knew it.

It really has been a great year and I couldn't have done it without my Grunt.