Bully-Be-Gone (4 page)

“On a stack of your poems?”

“On a stack of my poems.”

“I'm launching a new invention today,” Millicent whispered.

“Oh, no,” Tonisha grumbled. She plopped herself down on a stone step and started mumbling to herself. “Girl, I can't believe you got yourself into this. You should have seen this coming, like it had flashing lights on it and a siren going wheee-ah-wheee-ah-wheee….” She waved her hands imitating a siren's lights.

“Tonisha, that's not nice,” Millicent said, sitting next to her.

“Let me tell you about not nice. Not nice is that thing you made to do my wraps. What was it called? The Twist-O-Luxe Headwrap Wrapper?” Tonisha hissed. “Nearly strangled me senseless.”

Millicent clicked her tongue. “I already apologized for that. Besides, this is different. I think I've hit on something that'll change our lives.”

“My life does not need changing, Millicent,” Tonisha said. “It's fine the way it is.”

“Oh, is it?”

“It is.”

“And you enjoy having moments like that in your life,” Millicent said, pointing her thumb up the stairs. “The daily taunting and teasing. You like those moments.”

“No,” Tonisha said reluctantly.

“So your life does need changing,” Millicent said, feeling victorious. “What would you say if I told you my invention will get those bullies to stop tormenting us? What would you say if I told you that it will render them harmless?” She stood. “What would you say if I told you that, with my newest invention, the worst you'll ever see from them is a dopey grin?”

A spark lit in Tonisha's eyes. “It'll do that?”

Millicent discreetly crossed her fingers. “It will.”

“I did promise to stick up for you.”

“You did.”

Tonisha clutched her poetry notebook to her chest, deep in thought. “Girl,” she finally said, rising, “we've got a product to launch.”

T
he Wunderkind Club was already in session when Millicent and Tonisha finally tumbled into the secret chamber.

A long, antique wooden table sat in the center of the windowless room. On the table squatted a tarnished silver candelabrum supporting thirty burning candles. Millicent's great-great-great-great grandmother had left it there, along with the acres of well-preserved books lining the walls.

Roderick sat at his usual place, the head of the table, twisting his red bow tie. Pollock Wong, the Wunderkind artist, sat to Roderick's right, his glossy black hair reflecting
the candlelight, except in those areas where it was splattered with paint. Next to Pollock, Leon Finklebaum snored quietly, his head cast over the back of his chair. Juanita Romero Alonso, the Wunderkind musician, was talking.

Millicent slipped into a chair off to the side, setting her presentation materials down with a thud. Everyone except Leon turned to look at Millicent and Tonisha.

Tonisha pulled up a chair and sat at the table. Since she was club secretary, her place at the table was reserved.

“Look what twosome decided to join us,” said Roderick.

Tonisha smirked at him.

“We've already started, but we can backtrack,” Roderick stated flatly. “Juanita, please repeat what you just told those of us who were on time to this meeting.” He nodded to Juanita, who sat to his left.

“Um, okay,” Juanita said, petting her violin case. “As you all know, Masonville's annual Young Talent Extravaganza is less than a week away. I'm proud to say that I've perfected the Prokofiev piece I've been practicing in time for the competition. I'm giving a preview of it at the student assembly at school.” She stood and curtsied.

“Very good,” Roderick approved. “Tonisha, you should have notes on Juanita's rehearsal in your minutes from the last meeting. Could you read those? Provided you're ready.”

“I am, I am,” Tonisha said, fumbling with her notebook. She flipped some pages, stood, and smacked her lips in preparation.

Whenever Tonisha read, she'd sway from side to side,
which made whoever was listening sway from side to side, too. As she leaned, it looked as if the headwrap she was wearing that day would come toppling down. The Wunderkinder couldn't help but hope it would stay intact.

Tonisha read from her notepad, swaying, candlelight and shadows writing sonnets across her face:

“Fiddle,” interrupted Juanita, “is such a rustic term.” She caressed her violin case. “This is a VI-O-LIN.”

“Too many syllables,” Tonisha said.

“And it wasn't Rachmaninoff. That was the meeting before,” Juanita said.

“Right,” Tonisha said. “And ‘fiddled her little socks off in a tribute to Prokofiev' sounds so much better.”

Juanita grimaced.

Millicent squirmed in her seat. Tonisha's minutes never sounded like real minutes. Millicent preferred it when Leon was secretary. At least his minutes were shorter since he slept most of the time.

Tonisha went on:

She finished the poem dramatically with a sigh loud enough to wake Leon and a bow so low everyone shouted, “Whoa,” as her headwrap came dangerously close to falling off and into the candelabrum. She snapped her body upright, and the headwrap boinged back into place.

“In other words,” said Roderick, blinking, “last month Juanita worked on a new violin piece.”

“Plainly put,” said Tonisha as she sat.

“Mmm,” mumbled Leon, reclining in his chair and closing his eyes.

“Who would like to go next?” Roderick asked. Millicent raised her hand. “Everett, you have the floor,” Roderick said.

“It's not Everett anymore. I've told you that. I go by Pollock now,” Pollock huffed. “I've renamed myself after Jackson Pollock the—”

“Abstract expressionist painter, I know,” Roderick said.

Pollock folded his arms over his paint-splattered shirt. “I'm also entered in Masonville's Young Talent Extravaganza. I'll be exhibiting a few paintings at the opening day student assembly, too.”

“Well done, Ever—Pollock,” Roderick said. Millicent raised her hand, but Roderick leaned forward to address Leon, the math-whiz Wunderkind. “Leon? We haven't heard from you yet.”

Leon snored louder.

“Leon?” Roderick asked. “LEON!”

“Four thousand three hundred and ninety-six!” Leon blurted, suddenly awake.

“Dreaming about numbers again,” Pollock mumbled. “Go back to sleep, Leon.”

“All righty,” Leon said, then put his head down on the table.

“Tonisha, weren't you working on a little poem for the extravaganza?” Roderick asked.

Tonisha arched an eyebrow in his direction. “I'm still working on my epic poem.”

“Is that it for old business?” Roderick asked Tonisha, his eyes rolling.

“Verily,” she replied.

“Good,” Roderick said, “now, who wants to be first to share their most recent accomplishments?” Millicent raised her hand, but Roderick's own arm shot up as if he had no control over it. “Looks like I'm first.”

The Wunderkinder groaned and everyone leaned back in their chairs, readying themselves to listen to Roderick.

“You all know,” he began, “but it bears repeating that my parents are both highly successful in their chosen fields. My father as senior partner in Biggleton, Wigglebum, and Higglebee, attorneys-at-law and my mother as—”

“President and CEO of Beauty Goo Cosmetics,” the Wunderkinder said in unison, as if they were singing a hymn.

“Yes,” said Roderick, sneering at them. “Despite your impolite interruption—which I take as anticipation—I will begin at the beginning and leave no stone unturned as I recount the fascinating month I had. It will undoubtedly inspire you to lift your dreary lives to a higher level of aspiration. You, too, can be like me.”

The Wunderkinder balked, whispering to each other things like “The nerve.”

A year ago, they'd asked Roderick to join the Wunderkind Club because he'd been teased at school for being smart, but also because he seemed to have a knack for running things efficiently. Little did they know then that his organizational skills relied on a heavy dose of bossiness.

Roderick went on for nearly fifteen minutes, talking about how he helped his father prepare a legal case for which he couldn't share the details—attorney-client privilege, you know—and about how he went with his mother to a cosmetics convention in Pinnimuk City where he, personally, met the president of So Much Stuff, So Little Time department stores.

He was nearing the end of his speech. Leon was snoring. Pollock was doodling on a scrap of paper. Juanita was humming to herself, her hand inching toward her violin. Tonisha was writing and Millicent was feeling antsy. She wanted so badly to give her presentation, her sluggishness of that morning now a memory.

“And that, my fellow Wunderkinder,” said Roderick, “was what I did last month.” The Wunderkinder applauded
halfheartedly. “Is there other new business?” Millicent raised her hand.

“Millicent, you have the floor,” Roderick said.

Millicent bounded to the head of the table, her presentation materials in hand. She wrestled with the three-legged easel until it was properly set up, slapped her flip chart onto it, then turned back the first sheet of paper. She whipped out a felt-tip pen from her waistband and spun around to face the group. Her foot snagged on the easel. It leaned and she frantically grappled with it, but it crashed to the floor.

“Eighty-seven thousand five hundred and six!” Leon yelled, his eyes wide open.

“Buzzing Millicent,” said Tonisha, scribbling in her tablet. “Caught in the web of her spider easel, a fly bearing products with which to…tease-l.” She scratched out the last part.

“Wow,” said Pollock Wong, putting his hands behind his head and his feet on the table. “Somebody's anxious.”

Roderick nodded.

Millicent repositioned her easel and took a deep breath. Whatever pitch she had rehearsed escaped her. She felt daring. She felt hyped. She decided to wing it.

She wasn't as good an artist as Pollock but she drew on the flip chart anyway. She started by sketching a pudgy figure in a striped shirt with a baseball cap on its round head; next, a tall figure as thin as a tetherball pole; and, finally, an apelike creature with long hair, wearing a halter
top, whose overlarge knuckles scraped the horizon line of the picture. Her memory still fresh from her encounter with them, Millicent thought she did a decent job of capturing the bullies' likenesses.

“Wunderkinder,” she said, stepping away from the flip chart. “Do you know who these people are?”

They leaned forward, quiet. She had their attention.

“Well, the quality of your drawing is rather primitive,” said Pollock Wong, “and the proportions are a bit questionable, but I'd say the chubby one looks like Pollywog Jones, the thin one looks like Fletch Farnsworth, and the chimp bears an uncanny resemblance to Nina ‘The Knuckle' Kwaikowski.”

“Exactly, on all accounts,” said Millicent, wagging her felt-tip pen at him.

“Not bad,” Leon said to Pollock. “I thought the chimp was Mrs. Bleeker.”

“Mrs. Bleeker does kind of look like a chimp, doesn't she?” asked Juanita.

“A chimp,” said Tonisha, her face buried in her notepad, “or a rhesus monkey.”

“Need I remind you all—especially you, Leon—that regardless of what primate she resembles, Mrs. Bleeker doesn't wear halter tops?” Pollock asked.

“Oh. I thought it was a lobster bib,” said Leon. Everyone smirked at him. “Hey,” he whined, “I saw her at Captain Dandy's Seafood Shanty on my birthday. She was wearing one then.”

“Go back to sleep, Leon,” said Pollock. “The caricature is clearly of Nina Kwaikowski.”

“Nina Kwaikowski,” said Tonisha, still writing in her notepad. “Now there's a rhesus monkey if I've ever seen one.”

“You're all getting off track,” Millicent said, huffing. She was losing their attention. Uncle Phineas said losing an audience's attention spelled trouble.

“Continue,” Roderick advised.

“School starts on Monday,” she said, collecting herself, “and these animals will be roaming the halls again.” She pointed at the flip chart with her pen. “They will be waiting for us with kick-me signs.” She began pacing, slowly, deliberately, making eye contact with each Wunderkind. They'd all been picked on by bullies, she reminded them. “They will pick their noses and, with their boogery fingers poised, flick nasal nuggets at us.”

Tonisha stopped writing and looked up from her notepad. “Vividly disgusting,” she said.

Millicent ignored her. Instead, she strolled behind Roderick, bent down, and hissed in his ear, “Why, just this morning, on my way to this very meeting—I was confronted by Fletch, Pollywog, and Nina.” She straightened up and added, “So was Tonisha.”

The Wunderkinder turned to look at Tonisha, who'd stopped writing.

Suddenly, the air was pierced with a screechy, horror-movie tune—
eeek, eeek, eeek, eeek.

“Juanita—” Millicent growled. Juanita put her bow and violin down.

Millicent went into grim detail as she recounted her run-in with the bullies. Her vivid description of Nina's foot on her car had them spellbound. Then she went into the incident with Tonisha, lingering on every aspect for dramatic effect. When she finished, the brick room was as silent as a tomb.

Juanita petted her violin. Pollywog Jones had kidnapped it once and had placed a ransom note in her locker demanding she do his homework for a whole week in exchange for it. Pollock scowled. Nina “the Knuckle” Kwaikowski had once punched a clay sculpture he'd prepared for a city-wide youth art show.

“So?” asked Roderick, his voice echoing. “What's so new about that?” Millicent could tell by his shaky tone that Roderick was trying to appear cool and unmoved. He, of all the Wunderkinder, was most acquainted with the bullies' ways, having once been pushed into the Winifred T. Langley Memorial Fountain by all three of them.

Millicent squinted at Roderick, inhaled deeply, then turned her attention to the other Wunderkinder. “I have invented a new product to keep bullies away: Bully-Be-Gone.”

At this point it was hard for Millicent to know who to listen to because they all began jabbering at the same time.

“Oh, no.”

“I can't believe this—”

“Not me—”

“You try it.”

“No way.”

“Never again.”

Millicent raised her voice above the others'. “Excuse me,” she said.

They chattered on. Except Tonisha, who watched quietly.

“Excuse me,” she yelled, then lowered her voice because they were, after all, in a library. “Need I remind you that—despite the excess saliva it produced—you thrilled at my Ever-Juicy Gum Enhancer pellet? You were awestruck at the effectiveness of the I've-Got-Rhythm Boogie Belt—which reminds me, Leon, I still owe you a refund for that unfortunate punch table incident at the spring dance. And, though I've yet to work out the kinks in the flavored ink and paper, you were all duly impressed with Fax-A-Snack.” She stopped and stared them down. “This invention is my most potent of all.”

Tonisha forced a smile. The remaining Wunderkinder were quiet, their eyes ablaze with distrust—an ominous effect further enhanced by the dancing candlelight.