The Bully Bug (3 page)

I jerked hard and felt my hands and feet pull off the ceiling like it was covered with glue.

I dropped straight down and hit the bed. I didn't make much noise when I smacked the mattress. But I made a huge crash when the mattress broke through the bed frame and hit the floor.

The whole house shook.

“Hey!” Bud shouted from his bed. “Quit making all that noise.”

“Sorry.” I was too flustered—that's one of Mom's favorite words—to argue with him. I pressed my hand against the wall, wondering whether it would stick.

Nope.

Just to make sure, I smacked my palm flat against the wall. It still didn't stick. I smacked it harder.

“Will you stop that banging!” Bud shouted.

“Sorry.” I got back under the sheet and tried to figure out what had just happened. It had to be a dream. Yeah. That made sense. I'll bet the bed broke, and I just dreamed the rest. It's like that old joke about the kid who dreams he ate the world's biggest marshmallow. Then he wakes up and his pillow is missing.

Must have been a dream.

I went back to sleep.

“Time for school! Get up, Lud!”

I hate it when May wakes me. I jumped out of bed. That turned out to be a mistake, since my mattress was flat on the floor. I tripped over the bed frame.

Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed. But things got better right away. Mom made waffles for breakfast. We all like waffles, especially Mom's. She doesn't even use a mix. She makes them from scratch.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the morning.
That's what Dad always says.

After we ate, I headed off to school with Bud, Clem, Clyde, and Pit. We had to walk, since we'd gotten thrown off the bus too many times and the school sent a letter saying we couldn't ride anymore. That hardly seemed fair.

Clem and Clyde split off after a while, since they go to the middle school. Bud and Pit and I went on through town to Washington Irving Elementary. We walked Pit to the side door for his kindergarten class, then went around to the front.

“I hate this place,” Bud said when we walked up the steps into school.

“Yeah.” I didn't like it, either. Everyone always stared at us, because they thought we weren't as smart as them. And because we're big. I'm taller than some of my teachers. And I guess they also stared because our dad doesn't make a lot of money and because his car is old and all beat up, with one door that's a different color. But there's better things in life than being smart. And there's better things than having money or a fancy car. That's a fact.

“See you at lunch,” Bud said.

“See ya.” We had to split up. They'd put us in different classes. Bud had English first. I had math. I think they split us up on purpose because they don't like us. None of my teachers do. Except maybe for Ms. Clevis. She's nice. But mostly, teachers don't like me. Especially Ms. Edderly. I had her for English, and she was flunking me. That wasn't fair. I'd been speaking English all my life. It was like someone saying I'd flunked breathing or eating. It didn't make sense. But that didn't seem to make a difference to her. As I said, almost all my teachers didn't like me.

Not that anyone else in the school does, either. I'm not complaining. I've got my brothers. That's all I need. I had a girlfriend for a little while, but it didn't work out. Dawn wanted to go for bike rides and picnics. No thanks.

Well, as Dad always says,
It don't do no good crying about the past when there'll be plenty to cry about in the future.
Especially since I was about to go to my first class of the day and I didn't have my homework done.

I shoved my books into my locker and slammed the door. As I walked away, I bumped into something.

“Oooff.”

Oh no. It was that brainy little squirt. Nerdy Norman. I'd just knocked him flat. It wasn't my fault he was standing there. He looked up at me with those terrified little eyes of his, like I'd done it on purpose. He reminded me so much of a beaver with glasses, I couldn't help laughing.

I guess I should have told him I was sorry for knocking him down, but then he might start talking to me. Besides, he wasn't hurt, so there really wasn't anything to be sorry about. But I figured I'd better say something. “Watch where you're walking next time,” I told him. I hadn't meant to sound so mean, but that's what came out.

He nodded. I turned away before he had a chance to say something I didn't understand. I hate those brainy kids. They're always showing off, using words like
thermodynamics
and
metaphors,
whatever that means. And they make fun of me more than anyone else. They love to say stuff I don't get. I could show him a thing or two. I could say some real clever stuff. But what's the use? I turned away from him and went down the hall.

“Another stupid day,” I muttered as I walked to my desk at the back of the classroom.

I'd just gotten comfortable—at least as comfortable as I could get in one of those small chairs—when they started the morning announcements. It was the same stupid stuff they always have, about teams winning games, and kids getting special awards. I didn't pay any attention. Until the end.

 

Five

PLANE PROBLEMS WITH NUMBERS

 

“We won't be having a play this spring,” Principal Wardener said over the loudspeaker. “Instead, we're going to try something different. We're going to have a talent show. I'd like to encourage everyone to try out.”

I closed my eyes for a minute when I heard that. I could see myself onstage, doing my jokes. Making everyone laugh. Telling my best jokes, just like the comedians on TV. But as soon as I had that picture in my mind, all the faces in the crowd turned mean. They laughed at me.

I slammed my fist against the desk.

“Lud, what are you doing?” Mr. Phermat, my math teacher, asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Well, stop pounding the furniture,” he told me, smiling like that was some kind of great joke. He wasn't funny. He should have said something like
Snap out of it,
since if I hit the desk hard enough, I'd snap it. Now, that would be funny. At least, I thought it would be. Or he could have said something about how I'd gained a few pounds, since I was pounding the desk. Or he could have told me to take a break.

He went up front and started the lesson, but I couldn't keep my mind on math. I kept thinking about the talent show. If I got up onstage and showed them how funny I was, people would treat me better. They'd be nice to me. But I couldn't. There was no way I could get onstage in front of everyone. No way.

“Well, Lud, can you answer the problem?”

Oh no. I looked up at Mr. Phermat. He'd been talking to me. And there was a problem written on the chalkboard. It was one of those stupid distance things, where a couple planes are flying in different directions at different times. I hated those. I just didn't get how to do them. Heck. Almost nobody could figure them out, anyhow. Except for the real smart kids.

Mr. Phermat stared at me for a moment. I knew that he knew I didn't have a clue. So it was pretty mean of him to even ask me. I opened my mouth to say,
I don't know.
If I had a nickel for every time I'd said those three words, I'd be rich.

But this time, I didn't say it. There was something about the problem.… I stared at the board. I'd always figured stuff like that was about numbers and math. But I realized that it was really about flying. Everything got real clear. If the first plane took off at eight, like they said, and the second one was flying twice as fast and took off two hours later, then …

“They cross at two fifty-eight,” I said.

Mr. Phermat started to turn away from me. Then he spun back and dropped the chalk. For a minute, he stared at me. When he was done staring, he glared around at the rest of the kids. “All right, who whispered the answer to him? Did you, Norman?”

“What?” Norman the Nerd shouted, like he'd been accused of murdering the class guinea pig. “I'd never do that. Honest. You know I'm psychologically incapable of such egregious and subversive behavior under any circumstances, especially in a pedagogical environment—”

“Okay.” Mr. Phermat turned away from Norman and started writing another problem on the board. Go figure. All year, he's been angry because I didn't understand anything he was teaching. When I finally gave an answer, he got even angrier. As Dad always said,
The only way you can please some people is to make them unhappy.
You got that right.

On top of all that, I didn't have a clue where the answer came from. I looked around the room. Maybe someone had whispered it to me. No. Most of the seats near me were empty, except for the one Toby Meyers sat in over to my left. He pretty much slept through class, so he didn't care who he was next to.

“All right, smart boy, try this one,” Mr. Phermat said. He pointed to another problem on the board.

Airplanes again. Flying all over the place. “Two hundred miles an hour,” I said, not giving it much thought.

Mr. Phermat glared around the room again. He wrote another problem on the board. This time it was just division. But a long one. With decimals, too.

“Do it,” he said, tossing me the chalk.

“I can't…,” I said.

“Do it!”

I walked up to the board and stood there, looking at the numbers, trying to remember how to figure out division.

Behind me, they were all starting to laugh. When I heard the giggles, my brain shut down completely. I wanted to put my fist right through the board.

“What's the answer?” Mr. Phermat shouted.

“I don't know!” I shouted back.

“That's enough,” Mr. Phermat said. “Take your seat. Whatever kind of trick you were pulling, I think we just put a stop to it with some simple math.”

Yeah—it was enough. I tossed the chalk away and walked to my seat.
Go ahead,
I thought as I stomped past the nerd.
Laugh, you stupid smart kid.
I really wished he'd laugh. Then I'd give him something to cry about.

He turned away from me and start flipping through his math book, like he had something important to look up. I could tell he was scared. Good.

I glared at the board. I had no idea how I'd answered those stupid problems. It had to be a lucky guess. Not that it mattered. I wasn't good with numbers. That's a fact.

At least the bell rang soon after that. I gave Toby a push and said, “Wake up.”

Then I headed for my next class.

“Hey, Lud,” Bud called, running down the hall toward me.

I waited for him.

“Guess what?” he asked when he reached me.

“What?”

He grinned. “This is great. Wait till you hear what I did. It's probably the biggest favor anyone's ever done for you. But that's what brothers are for.”

“What?” I asked again. I knew it would take a while to find out.

He told me how great the surprise was a couple more times, then how wonderful he was, and then just when I was about ready to scream, said, “I signed you up.”

“For what?”

“The talent show,” he said, grinning an even bigger grin so his mouth looked like a piano. “You're all signed up. Better start practicing.”

 

Six

A BAD SIGN

 

“Are you crazy?” I asked Bud. “No way I'd do that stupid show.”

“You have to,” Bud said.

“Why?” I couldn't see any reason to get up on a stage in front of a whole bunch of people who didn't like me and try to make them laugh.

“Ms. Edderly told us she was going to give extra credit to anyone who did an act in the show.”

Oh man. If I could get extra credit from her, I could pass English. Then I wouldn't have to go to summer school. I could sleep late and go fishing and do all the things a kid is supposed to do during the summer.

“Come on,” Bud said. “You'd be great. You'd be the best act in the talent show. I wasn't sure how to spell
comedian,
so when I signed you up, I just wrote that you tell jokes.”

“Talent show?” I heard a mocking voice say from behind me. “You're going to be in the talent show?”

I spun around toward the voice. I knew who it was before I even looked. That show-off wise guy, Sebastian. He thinks he's so cool, just because he's got friends and stuff. Now he was grinning at me.

“You think that's funny?” I asked, taking a step toward him. I felt my right hand curl into a fist. “Do you?”

“No.” He shook his head, and I could see a bit of fear in his eyes. That was more like it.

“Good.” I moved a step closer to him. “Because I just might be in that stupid show.”

“Sure. Hey—you'd be great. What kind of act would it be? Weight lifting?”

Oh man, I really wanted to smash him in the face. He thought he was so funny. But the last time I hit someone, I'd gotten kicked out of school for a whole week. That wasn't so bad, except Dad had been pretty angry and didn't let me watch any television at all that whole time. Besides, I can't get kicked out of school. Bud needs me around to help keep him out of trouble.

So I just said, “Yeah. I'll be in the show,” and turned away from him.

Behind my back, I could hear him calling to someone, “Hey, you'll never believe this.”

Now the whole place would know about it. And I'd have to do the show. If I backed out, I'd look like a fool. But if I did the show, I'd probably end up an even bigger fool.

“This is going to be great,” Bud said.

Well, there was one thing I could do without getting into trouble.
Thwack!
I smacked Bud on the back of the head.

“Hey!” he shouted, but he didn't make too much of a fuss, since I knew he didn't want either of us to get into trouble. “What was that for?”