The Bully Book (6 page)

All year, I stressed about my Grunt finding out why I picked him. If he did, maybe he could change himself. It would ruin everything.

The system is almost perfect. But that is the one flaw.

Don't let the Grunt find out.

I spent the entire weekend watching television. 32 total hours. That's right, Greene, you near Amish, I accomplished in two days what you couldn't do in a month. I've made a fool of you.

This kid is holding out on me. Colin Greene is holding out on me!

I went up to him in school last Friday. I said, “Colin.”

I said, “Colin … What did you do—you dumb turd?”

Maybe this is a mistake I made. A miscalculation in my approach, but I was extremely upset at this point. I'm extremely upset at all points. See, I'm victim of a conspiracy that should be targeted at Colin.

Jason, Donovan, and Adrian have made me their Grunt and I have no idea why.

Donovan says I was picked as the Grunt for a reason. If I can find that reason, I can change myself. Then maybe the Grunt will shift to somebody else. I hope that's how it works. That needs to be the way it works.

But Colin opened his big mouth and word got around that Richard was talking Bully Book, so somebody shut him up for good. Now I've got nothing and I needed Colin to come clean.

“Tell Eric whatcha did wrong. Who did you talk to, Colin?”

“Uh …” Colin stared blankly at me. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Don't gimme that crap, Colin!” I yelled. “Who did you tell about The Bully Book?”

“I don't know. Nobody. I mean … I mean, uh …”

Spittle was flying at me left and right. I'm dodging it, I'm putting up my sleeves for the block. But nothing was gonna stop me from getting the answer out of Colin. I could see he was lying. He was oozing guilt.

“Really, I uh …” He searched for an escape but I had him cornered. “I didn't … I didn't … I didn't ask anybody about it—I swear!”

“Ask anybody about it?” I said. “Who'd you ask about it?”

“No one!”

A picture formed in my mind. Colin got scared. All that talk of how he was bound to be the next Grunt. He was worried about it, who wouldn't be? But who did he turn to? There's not a person alive Colin's not afraid of.

Not that he's got good reason to be scared. The Grunt is me.

“Listen, Colin,” I said, trying to calm down, “I'm not mad at you. No one's mad at you. I just want to know who you talked to. Whoever it was, it got back to Richard.”

“Richard knows?” Colin asked.

“Yes, Richard knows. Whoever's in charge of all this stuff, they got to him. That's why I need to know who you talked to. I think they might be part of it.”

“No, no that's not true.” Colin said, looking over my shoulder.

“It is true, Colin. Now tell me who you talked to.”

I leaned in close and whispered. “Who?”

“No one!” he screamed, and a bubbly wad of spit arced out of his mouth and onto my cheek.

A couple of things then happened very quickly. I'm not sure in what order.

I howl in disgust

Colin pushes past me

I lose my balance

I try to wipe my cheek with my sleeve

My fist makes contact with Colin's nose

Something about the color of blood freaks people out so much that talking to them is impossible.

Even if you and another kid are just standing in the hallway saying sorry to each other, because one of you is covered in blood, everything looks insane.

So when Ms. Julie, the hall monitor who always wears a pair of yellow earphones, saw us in the hallway, the blood and whatever Stephen King audiobook she was listening to made her scream so loud the whole school heard it.

Teachers and kids came out of classrooms, janitors dropped their mops, even the hamsters in the science room, I imagine, stopped spinning in their wheels for a minute. All eyes were on Colin and me.

Colin with a bloody nose dripping onto his cruddy shirt, and me with his blood on my knuckles. Caught red-handed.

So that's how I got to learn about another one of Clark's New Rules: No Roughhousing. Requires 3-hour detention and a note from your parents.

So, thank you, Colin. You wrecked my only connection to info on The Bully Book. You got me into more trouble than I've ever had in my life. And you still haven't told me who you spilled your guts to.

You're a great study partner.

If you use this book, you might get into trouble. But you'll know how to get out of it.

The first rule: Never get physical with your Grunt. Don't hit, trip, or touch your Grunt. Marks on the body are impossible to explain away. Use only words.

If words are what got you into trouble, then words can get you out of it.

The second rule: Always tell your own side of the story.

If the Grunt says you were making fun of him, don't call the Grunt a liar. Say he misunderstood.

Tell the teacher you and your friends were hanging out, and the Grunt started talking to you. Say that it was hard to understand the Grunt so you said, “Kid, we don't know what you're talking about.” Then say the Grunt got upset about it and told a teacher you were being mean.

Say you should have been more sensitive, that you know the Grunt is kind of thin-skinned. Get your friends to back up this story.

The teacher, the principal, whoever, they're going to like this approach better than just calling the Grunt a liar. People can see right through that. Tell them you're sorry the Grunt got upset and that you'll try to be nicer in the future.

Adults want to think that everybody's nice to each other and all the bad stuff happens by mistake. None of them can remember what it's really like, and none of them can do anything about it, either.

“Now, I know you say it was an accident,” Clark lectured me from behind his desk, “but we put ourselves into situations that allow accidents to happen.”

“He spit his phlegm on me,” I said back. “That's not a situation I can control!”

“Sometimes, if we're in an agitated state of mind, we do things we don't mean to. Like you bloodying Colin's nose.”

“It was just an accident.”

“I know,” Clark said, “but it's the second time you've been in my office for ‘an accident' this year.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” I said, looking away from him. A picture of Young Tony on vacation with his family waved at me.

“Maybe it does,” he said. “A lot can change in 6th grade. It can be hard to adjust.”

For a minute, I considered telling him the truth. The Evil Three, The Bully Book, all of it. But I didn't know how to say it.

The reason I peed myself is that these guys scared me. I accidentally hit Colin because he talked to somebody about The Bully Book. In English class, everyone except Melody uses their vocab words to make fun of me. Not just a couple jerks, nearly the entire class.

It's too much to put into words, and thinking about it made my throat close up.

“And your detention form isn't signed, so I'm going to have to call your mother.”

“But I came to detention,” I said, coming out of it. “What does it matter if she knows or not?”

“Sorry, bud.” Clark said. “That's the New Rules. This is for your well-being.”

“Wait!” I pleaded. “Can't you just call my dad? He's my parent too.” Mom would not understand this. I knew she would freak out. I tried to email the form to Dad's office, but he didn't write me back.

“I'm sorry, Eric. Your mother is listed as the primary guardian.” Clark tried to give me a meaningful look.

“I know your parents' divorce was pretty recent. It must have been difficult when your father moved out of the country. If you ever want to talk about it … that's what I'm here for.”

I think Principal Clark saw some TV movie called World's Most Wonderful Principal and based his entire life around it, because I get the feeling that everything he says and does is a giant act.

His facts aren't even right. My parents divorced 3 years ago, and my dad never left the country. He moved to Virginia because he lost his job here and that's the only place he could find work. It's not like he moved to France.

Clark held the phone to his ear and we both sat listening to the ringing over the line. When Mom picked it up, a big smile smeared all the way across Clark's face.

“Mrs. Haskins, it's Principal Clark. Very well. I'm calling about the cookies you made for the Booster Bake Sale. I'd like to order 2 dozen more!” Clark laughed. “Actually, I'm calling about Eric. He's gotten into some trouble at school …”

I could imagine the temperature rising in my mother's forehead over the phone. It was like a faint whistle. I imagined her eyes bulging and her face getting red.

Clark finished and hung up the phone, still smiling. “That wasn't so hard. Your mother's quite a woman.”

Would he say that if she could ground him with no TV?

Clark got up to leave.

“Now just hang tight here and enjoy the ambience. Mrs. Bellemont will let you know when it's all right to leave. Good talk today.”

Clark went out of the office and left me staring at a framed photograph of people jumping from an airplane with the word TRUST written underneath. If someone you TRUST has convinced you to jump out of an airplane, I suggest you rethink your relationship with them.

I just might hate this guy.

These days, when I look at my parents, I sometimes think: Who Are These People?

'Cause when I was little, I thought Mom and Dad were like superheroes. They were smart and safe, and there wasn't a problem they couldn't solve.

Then I got to school.

It was there that I realized the world is a lot bigger than me and my family. There were teachers, hall monitors, principals, librarians, janitors, bus drivers, and kids. There were a lot of kids.

Kids that were mean to each other, and mean to me—you never knew what they were thinking. You never knew what they wanted. I couldn't figure it out and when I went to my parents for help, they couldn't either.

“Just be yourself.” “Be nice to others.” “Share.” My parents had lots of advice for me, but no real facts about the way life worked.

That's when I realized something. They didn't understand kids any better than I did. They just pretended to.

So I learned to depend on myself. For years, I watched how the world worked and formed the ideas in this book.

I like my parents. But I don't tell them everything, because they can't control everything.

So much in my life is up to me.

Whitner is gone again. Another vocab Monday in misery. I tried to zone out, so all I can remember is that Adrian Noble wishes I would cease to exist.