The Bully Bug (2 page)

I looked at Bud so I could tell him the joke. Whoa! For an instant, I saw a billion Buds. It was like the world was made of Bud Mellon wallpaper. Now, there's a scary thought. But then I blinked real hard and everything was fine. I checked my shirt again, to make sure there weren't any more bugs on me. As far as I could tell, they were all gone.

“What do you want to do now?” Bud asked. He stared down at the box, too.

I knew what he was thinking. And I sort of felt bad for him. “Sorry you didn't find a prize,” I told him. Bud expects the world to give him stuff. It doesn't work that way. Nobody gives you much, if anything. But Bud is a hopeful person.

“Thanks,” he said. “Want to go climb the ovens?”

“Sure.” We had a mountain of ovens out near the back fence. Dad was always warning us to stay off them, but they were pretty solid. A friend of his brought in a crane he'd borrowed from work and helped stack them up real nicely, just like a pyramid. We climbed them a lot. It was like having a jungle gym in the backyard. But this was better, because there were tons of knobs to turn, and doors to open. We used to play hide-and-seek there all the time when we were little. Since I got my last growth spurt, I can't hide in an oven anymore.

“Sorry about the cereal,” Bud said when we reached the top. “I didn't mean to get you all covered with bugs.”

“That's okay.” I stopped to pull at the neck of my T-shirt and look down at the bites on my chest. It wasn't bad. Didn't look any worse than the time I'd accidentally knocked down a beehive in the old shed behind the house.

“You mad?” he asked.

“Nope.” I sat back and enjoyed the view at the top of the mountain of ovens. I could see Dad on a ladder at the side of the house, doing something with a saw. I think he was trying to put in some air vents, because the attic gets so hot. Hey, speaking about hot things, I thought of another joke. It's a good one. They call the top of the stove a range. And that's what they call a bunch of mountains, too. We were on the range range. That was funny. I told Bud. He didn't get it at first. But I explained it to him and then he laughed.

I feel good when Bud laughs at a joke, though sometimes I think he doesn't get it and just laughs 'cause he knows he's supposed to. But it still feels good. As long as it's Bud laughing. As I said, I don't feel good if other people laugh at me. Of course, that doesn't happen much. At least, not if I can hear them. People in this town know better than to laugh at any Mellon. We stick together. That's what family is all about. Mess with one Mellon, you mess with us all. Of course, they talk about us, too. I hear stuff all the time. People whisper, but I've got pretty good hearing. That's how come I know so many different words for
stupid
.

But I hadn't climbed the mountain to think about other people. I'd climbed up to relax. I stretched out across two oven tops and enjoyed the sunlight. I didn't have a care or a problem in the world. Life was just fine. Just perfect.

Of course, things can change. That's a fact.

 

Three

FED UP

 

The hot sun felt so good, I guess I fell asleep and napped for a while. That's when I was hit by the most awful sound in the world.

“Dinnnnnnnnnnerrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

It was my sister, May. She's real pretty, and she dresses great—very colorful—but she's got a voice that could peel paint off the side of a car. And she's always yelling.

“Dinnnnnerrrrrrrr!” she screeched again.

“We heard you, May!” I shouted back as I stood up.

“Race you down,” Bud said. I tried to stand up, but he gave me a push, so I toppled back on my butt. Then he started climbing down real fast, like one of those monkeys you see in the zoo.

Shoot. I wasn't going to let him beat me, even if he started out cheating. I jumped to my feet. At least, that's what I'd planned to do. Guess I jumped too hard. And not really up. More like out. Next thing I know, I realize I've leaped off the mountain of ovens and I'm shooting toward the ground.

I looked back over my shoulder as I whooshed past Bud. I stared at him. He stared at me, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Then I stared at the ground, which was zooming toward me real fast. I think they said in school that when something falls, it keeps going faster and faster. Back then, I couldn't understand it. Didn't make any sense. But right now, that sure seemed pretty much true.

Stupid,
I said to myself.

This was going to hurt. The top of the mountain must have been a good twenty feet off the ground. Or a bad twenty feet. Up to now, the only bones I'd ever broken belonged to other people. I wondered what it would be like to have to go around with both ankles snapped. I wondered if maybe they'd just get sprained or something. And I wondered if I'd have to sit in a wheelchair or if I could use crutches. I guess you could say I was having a wonderful trip.

Turned out I wasted a lot of wondering. My feet hit the ground with a pretty solid smack. Then my knees bent just a bit. And that was it. Nothing snapped or broke. Not even a sprain.

“Cheater,” Bud said when he scrambled down next to me.

“No way. I won fair and square.”

“Cheater,” he said again. “You're supposed to climb down.”

“And you're not supposed to push,” I told him.

“Dinner!”
May screeched from the back door of the house. I think she likes to hear herself. No one else does. That's a fact.

I followed Bud inside. I figured I'd let him go first since he must be feeling like a real loser right now, what with not getting a prize in the cereal and then losing the race down the mountain, even after he pushed me. Besides, it's not like there was any rush. Mom always made plenty of food.

She was setting out the roast when I got to the table. “Look, Lud. I made your favorite,” she said. She took the end slice—the best part, as far as I was concerned—and plopped it on my plate. Then she pointed to the fried chicken. “Made your favorite, too, Bud.”

Pit—he's my little brother—also liked roast beef. He's always trying to be like me. I guess I'm a model for him or something. “Prepare to attack,” he said, waving his Captain Spazmodic action figures over his plate like a superhero about to dive at a monster. Pit never goes anywhere without a couple of plastic buddies. He switched his voice, trying to make it real deep, and said, “Meet your doom.”

I laughed, because I realized it could also be
Meat, you're doomed.
But I didn't say anything, since it would be too hard to explain the joke, and it was pretty noisy at the table.

Beside the roast, there was a stack of cheeseburgers—Clem and Clyde's favorite. And stew—Dad's favorite. Spaghetti for May. Rolls, of course. And potatoes. A couple vegetables.

Mom liked to cook.

I sat down and watched Clem and Clyde fight over who would get the best burger—which didn't make much sense, since they all looked about the same to me. Clem reached the stack first, but Clyde grabbed his wrist and squeezed hard enough to make him drop the burger. Then Clem threw a headlock on Clyde and they went rolling off their chairs and onto the floor. As long as I can remember, they've had this battle over seeing who can be first. It gets tiring sometimes.

“Ludlow Axelrod Mellon,” Mom said, calling me by my full name, which she only did when there was trouble, “where are your manners?”

“What, Mom?” I asked. It wasn't me fighting at the table or wrestling across the floor.

“Use your fork, boy,” Dad said. “Always use the right tool for the job.”

I looked down at my hands. I'd been so busy watching Clem and Clyde fight that I guess I really hadn't paid any attention to how I was eating. I'd grabbed a piece of meat with my hands. I guess I'd been biting at it. Yeah—there was a big chunk out of it, and I had the taste of meat in my mouth. Funny—I hadn't even realized I was eating. We hadn't even said grace yet.

“Cool,” Pit said. He dropped his action figure, grabbed a slab of beef with two hands, like he was playing a harmonica, and started chomping at it.

“Pitney,” Mom warned, hitting Pit with a full first name. That's not as bad as getting a whole name—first, middle, and last—but it's not good, either.

“Lud was doing it,” Pit said.

“If he jumped off a bridge, would you jump off, too?” Mom asked.

“Yup,” Pit said, nodding. “We Mellons stick together.”

Mom sighed and didn't say anything more about manners.

After a while, Clem and Clyde came back to the table and joined us. I guess they'd gotten all tired out from fighting. They both grabbed the top burger again and it broke in half, which is the only way they ever settle anything. Funny how a squished-up half of a burger made each of them happier than a nice unsquished whole one.

Things quieted down for a little bit. We were too busy eating to talk or argue much. Then Dad hollered, leaped from the table, and dashed across the kitchen. He stomped his foot down hard enough to shake the walls and make Mom's
Wizard of Oz
collector plates rattle where they were hanging, on the wall above the window. “Gotcha!” he shouted.

Dad hates bugs. He can spot an ant a mile away. He keeps a flyswatter in every single room in the house. He turned toward me. “Lud, get the spray.”

Why did it always have to be me? “How about Bud?” I asked.

“I'm eating,” Bud said through a mouthful of chicken and potatoes. I wasn't going to argue. Not while Bud had his face stuffed. I didn't want to get into a shouting match with him when his mouth was full—which it always was during dinner. I got up, climbed the steps to the second floor, then pulled down the ladder that led to the attic. Dad kept the spray in the attic because it was real dangerous stuff.

I hated it up there. It was dark and hot. And you had to be careful with the door. It was a trapdoor. And that was too true, because the handle on the inside had broken off. So if you let it close, you got trapped. Then you had to bang and wait for someone to come along and let you out. But at least the spray can was right next to the opening, so I could grab it without going inside. I could see where Dad had cut the first vent hole, at the edge of the floor where it meets the roof. But until he put in a fan, it would stay real hot, since the air didn't move much.

Dad would probably let Bud help him put in the fan. Bud's good with tools. Heck. Everyone in the family is good at something useful. Except me. Clem and Clyde are good at sports—especially wrestling. I guess because they get so much practice on each other. Mom can cook. Dad and Bud can fix things. May can sew. Pit draws like a real artist, even though he's just five. Well, no use thinking about all the things I'm not good at. That would take way too long.

I brought the can to Dad. It was a big plastic tank with a pump on top and a long hose that had a nozzle on the end. Dad buys bug spray by the gallon. He pumped the handle a couple times, then sprayed along the floor near the window. “Getting low,” he said as he shook the can.

I finished eating, then helped clean up. Tomorrow was Thursday. I still had some homework to do. Actually, I had all my homework. It tends to pile up that way. I would have stayed in the kitchen for a while, but the smell of the spray was making me dizzy. It usually doesn't do that. Until now, I'd kind of liked it.

Anyway, I went upstairs and got out my backpack. But I had a hard time that night. I mean, I always have a hard time, because a lot of the stuff they want us to do doesn't make any sense. But tonight was hard in a different way. I was supposed to read all these pages in my history book, but my eyes kept getting funny, like I was looking through one of Mom's fancy glasses—the bumpy ones we use on holidays.

“Forget it,” I said, tossing the book down on my bed. “I can't do this.”

I looked across the room. Bud had already gone to sleep. We have to share a room. That's pretty much okay, except Bud makes a ton of noise when he sleeps. He says I do, too. But I don't believe him. Sometimes it sounds like he's drowning in a bucket of maple syrup. Other times, it sounds like he's trying to chew a mouthful of gravel. There's no way I'd make that much noise. Hey—that's an idea for a joke. When Bud's asleep, he makes so much noise, you could say he's sound asleep.
Sound
asleep. That's a good one.

I slipped into bed. It wasn't cold, but I pulled up the sheet and wrapped it tight around my body. It felt good, being all wrapped up.

I fell asleep just fine. Usually, I don't wake up until May starts shouting. But it was still dark when I opened my eyes. “What's going on?” I said out loud when I realized that I wasn't in bed. No mattress under my body. No pillow under my head. No sheets. It didn't make any sense.

Something was very wrong.

 

Four

HANG ON

 

“What's going on?” I asked, talking quietly so I wouldn't wake up Bud. I couldn't even figure it out for a minute. There wasn't a lot of light, just a quarter moon shining through the window. I had my hands pressed against something smooth and cool. It wasn't the floor, because all the floors in the house were made of wood boards, and whatever I had my hands on didn't feel like wood. But that wasn't the strangest part.

Something was pulling at me.

Something was trying to lift me up from the floor. No, that wasn't right, either. I wasn't being pulled up. I was being pulled down.

Down?

I let my head flop back. I looked at my bed. It was under me. No way. That meant I was holding on to the ceiling.