Runt (6 page)

He was angry.

“Then I'll take the picture,” Stewart said, and he grabbed the camera out of my hand. “How about your face in a headlock? That's a funny one, right, Poindexter?”

It turns out Dexter did outweigh me by quite a bit. He stepped behind me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder and across my neck, causing me to bend over, but forcing my head upright and directly into the lens. Of my own camera.

“Sweet.” Stewart held the camera to his face and pushed the shutter release.

I could still feel the pressure from Stewart's arm around my neck when I found Elizabeth Moon and snapped her photo. I didn't know what Maggie wanted with the photo, but right at that moment I didn't care anymore.

My mother told Sadie's owners
they couldn't bring her to us anymore. She told them when they came to the door to pick her up. The man and the woman, all suntanned. That's usually how their faces look when they come to get their dogs, all tan. Sometimes red and peeling in papery sheets of skin, and they pay big bucks for that look.

“But why?” the woman asked. The man was writing out a check so maybe he didn't hear at first.

“Because she's a bully,” my mother said. “She's big. Bigger than the other dogs and she knows it.”

I watched the look on the woman's face. Her eyes got all watery. I didn't know that happened to grown-ups.

“Sadie?” The woman couldn't believe it. She kept blinking, hard. “But she's so sweet.”

“Well, sure.” My mother wasn't one to pull any punches. “She's sweet to you, but in a group she's a bully. A first-rate bully.”

“But I—”

“Don't take it personal. I just can't take her in here anymore.”

Thank God my mother had taken down the crate and put it away before Sadie's owners showed up. I think that would have put this woman right over the edge—literally, maybe.

“What did she do, exactly?” The man handed my mother his check and then leaned down to clip the leash onto Sadie's collar. He stood and waited for an answer.

“Intimidation. She let the others know who was boss. It got to where the other dogs wouldn't eat from their own bowls unless I put Sadie away.”

“Put her away?” It was the woman again.

“Outside,” I answered. “She had to wait outside until the other dogs had eaten.”

Everyone got quiet.

“I don't believe it,” the man said finally. “You just
didn't let her know you were the boss. She didn't feel safe here. Someone needs to be the alpha dog.”

“Well, then it's best for everyone, isn't it?” My mother opened the front door. All our other boarders were in the living room, gated off, but we could hear them barking every now and then.

Sadie's father was right.

At school, Maggie was the alpha dog and I haven't eaten a real lunch in four months, not since starting middle school. Maggie eats first, of course. One of her pack, Zoe or Larissa or Patrice, always saves her a place in line. She used to be friends with Freida but not anymore.

And it's an unspoken law that they get the long table by the window, close to the salad bar, farthest from the bathroom. The closer you sit to the bathroom the lower you are on the food chain. It would be better if I brought lunch from home, but my mom wants me to buy, so by the time I get my tray of food there is someone at every table.

There is a direct correlation between the amount of time I stand holding my tray looking for a place to sit and how bad my day will be.

“Why don't you sit with us?”

It's the alpha dog.

I'm not stupid. I know this will be a bad idea, but I'd already been standing for thirty, maybe forty seconds, which translates into a very bad day. The feeling will stay with me until I walk in my front door. So I sit down.

“Thanks, Maggie,” I say. I plunk my tray down on the table. It's not like we didn't used to be friends back when everyone was friends. When we all got invited to the same birthday parties, like Gabby Fisher-Rees's with the big pool. I bet she'd be at this table if she hadn't moved away. You can just tell.

“Nice poem,” Maggie says. “I can see why your mom liked yours better than everyone else's.”

Zoe, Larissa, and Patrice all giggle so I figure Maggie had filled them in on what happened in class already. Good news travels faster on a cell phone. Especially with a smartphone and a Twitter account.

Well, so what? When they take their SATs they'll know how stupid they are anyway. But even as I think this, I know it's not true. Besides, Maggie isn't stupid at all. Zoe might be a little on the slow side, but the truth is, I feel really bad for what I said in class.

I'm the stupid one.

“So let us know when you have your first poetry signing,” Maggie continues. “We'll make sure to be there.”

More giggling, and I wonder what is stopping me from getting up right now. Hunger? Table space? Or the frozen hot feeling in my feet, my legs and my arms and my face, that prevents me from moving at all?

“Oh, sure, we'll be there.” Patrice feels the need to add something witty, which she is unable to come up with. “Unless the book smells as bad as you do.”

“I can help you with the smelly problem, you know. A little deodorant would go a long way,” Zoe says.

Nobody laughs at that one, but nobody tells her to shut up, either.

“Really, Elizabeth. For someone who looks like you do, you really shouldn't be calling attention to yourself. I'm not being mean. I'm just being helpful,” Zoe adds.

And yes, a hot feeling can be freezing as in
paralyzing
. I am stuck. I feel like everyone in the cafeteria is watching and listening but I can't even turn my head to see. I squeeze my eyes shut. I try to turn into a chair at the table.

“C'mon, Patrice. I need some chips,” Maggie announces, because she can't leave the table without at least one of her entourage. Zoe stands up.

“Me too,” she says, even though I know for a fact Zoe wouldn't eat a potato chip or anything that counted as more than five units of fat if her life depended on it.

“Me too.” And Larissa follows them because she couldn't bear the experience of possibly being seen sitting at the table alone with me.

Now they are gone and I am no longer a chair. I keep my eyes shut but I can move.

I lean over to Maggie's lunch tray, where an innocent turkey sloppy joe sits, awaiting her return. I gather a satisfactory amount of saliva in my mouth, then carefully and quickly lift the top of her sandwich, spit, and replace the bun, before any of them return to the table.

But when I open my eyes, Maggie throws her back in laughter at something Patrice has said. Zoe laughs even though she hasn't heard what it was. Larissa bites into an apple. None of them has gotten up for chips. No one would be stupid enough to leave their food unattended in the middle school cafeteria.

Nothing has changed.

Nothing ever will.

Ethan's father had this saying
. Well, Ethan's father had a lot of sayings, like: Where there's a will there's a way. Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? Trust, don't test.

In a very simple way they made sense, and Ethan would nod his head and listen, but all the while he knew his father didn't have a clue about what life was like in middle school.

There is your story and there's my story and then there's the truth, his father would say. This was just another version of the famous, There are two sides to every story.

But he was wrong.

Ethan's father was a banker and he worked with loans, and factors, and numbers, and numbers always added up the same way. People didn't.

Yes, Matthew Berry slugged Stewart Gunderson square in the face, but that wasn't the truth. Not all of it, anyway.

Yes, Stewart Gunderson had it coming. He deserved it. But that wasn't the whole truth either.

And yes, the whole student population was alerted to the incident within a matter of wireless nanoseconds, and that was getting a little closer to the truth.

Matthew was sitting somewhere in the school, waiting for his parents to show up, so they could listen to the guidance counselor relate her version of the truth, which would have been formed with no empirical evidence, but rather, preconceived notions and hearsay.

Or maybe it was just the opposite.

Maybe Mrs. Meadhall was suspending Matthew based solely on empirical evidence, without any consideration of the situation or the backstory of the people involved. After all, Stewart did have a bloody nose and no one could even see the urine that had dried on Matthew's shoes anymore.

Ethan had no idea, but he knew it was unfair.

Life's not fair, his father would say.

Really, Dad? I didn't know that
.

Have you been to middle school lately?

WMS GUIDANCE DEPARTMENT MEMO

TO: All Student Classes

FROM: Jennifer Sansone, Director of Guidance

SUBJECT: Anti-bullying agenda

Our newly implemented “Bully Box” will sit in the outer area of the main office, next to the sign-in book on the left end of the counter. It will be completely anonymous, unless, of course, you choose, as we strongly advise, to put your name on your entry. The forms to fill out will be in a tray to the right of the box itself. Pencils will be available as well. All valid complaints will be carefully attended to, but remember, there is a distinction between telling and tattling.

To clarify: Tattling is about wanting to get
someone in trouble, whereas telling is about doing the right thing.

We trust our middle-schoolers to know and respect the difference.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Sansone

Freida was a strange name
to begin with, so maybe it was natural that it belonged to a strange girl. But “strange” was a strong word, wasn't it?
Surprising or unusual in a way that is hard to understand?
No, Freida wasn't really hard to understand. She was different because she wanted it that way, and
that's
what was surprising.

“Why do you have to dress like that? It's like you're just asking for it.” The words flew out of Nadine's mouth.

Now, Nadine might have seemed like an unusual or strange name as well, but Freida's sister could have been the poster child for fitting in. If there was a National Month of the Normal Child, Nadine would be
the spokesperson. Even her own mother would have a hard time picking out Nadine in her seventh-grade class photo. Nadine blended in like a leaf bug on a leaf, like a flounder on the sandy sea floor.

“Why do you care?” Freida answered her sister. She pushed the door to her bedroom closed with her foot.

“Because you look like a freak and everyone thinks so.” Nadine's voice trailed off down the hall and into the bathroom where she would spend anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour putting on makeup.

Freida pulled a black sweatshirt that read
JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE WEARING BLACK DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE ONE OF US
over her head. She knew no one would get the irony, the double entendre of wearing black herself and not belonging, but she liked the sweatshirt. It was comfortable. It hid her body, hanging nearly to her mid-thighs. It hid her thighs, which had somehow overnight softened and widened and seemed not to fit with the rest of her body.