The Bully Book (14 page)

“That's a ten-year-old report,” Clarence said, smiling. “I've been trying to contact Kevin Bushwald since I got it, but all I know is that he moved out of the state.”

“Ten years old?” I said. “He and his Bully Bookers are in college by now. I didn't know how far back this goes.”

“No one knows. Can't believe you thought I started it.”

“You freaked Daniel out pretty bad.”

“I know,” Clarence said seriously. “But it was for his own good.”

Clarence had discovered that Daniel's Bully Bookers were using a particular tree house to conduct their meetings. Brilliantly, he snuck in one night and hid a baby monitor in the corner so he could listen in. Like me, he wanted to know why he'd been picked to be the Grunt, and what he could do about it.

On the day Daniel tore out the page of The Bully Book, Matt Galvin called an emergency meeting of his own Evil Three. Clarence heard the Bully Bookers' plan to ambush Daniel the next morning and retake the page.

Out of concern for a fellow Grunt, but also drooling at the possibility of having a page of The Bully Book, he surprised Daniel as he came home that night, and intimidated him into giving up the page.

Thinking ahead, Clarence photocopied and laminated the page for himself. He then took the original to Matt Galvin's house and slid it through the crack of his bedroom window. He had placed it in an envelope with a note:

I've picked up your slack. No one else is to find out about this.

Signed, a disappointed Keeper of The Book.

Clarence's message probably saved Daniel from getting the beating of his life. The Bully Bookers must have gotten suspicious of being spied on by older Bully Bookers, because the baby monitor no longer picked up a signal and they moved their meetings to another location Clarence couldn't find. He still had the page, though like me, Clarence couldn't make any sense of it. Nothing explaining why he was chosen for the Grunt. All it did was confirm and remind him of his fate.

“I'd like you to join with me, Eric,” Clarence said, his long story over. “You've gotten this far. I think we could help each other.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I'm saying we should combine forces, share information. I promise you, The Bully Book keeps its claws on you well past 6th grade. I still have a stake in this. You can help me, and I, you.” He gestured to his enormous filing cabinet. “I want you to read the archives. I've been through them a hundred times already. I need fresh eyes. Maybe you'll find something I've missed. Maybe together we can finally take this home.”

“Take it home. You mean find The Bully Book?”

“What else is there?” he said. Clarence offered his hand to me. “Shake on it?”

“Shake on it.”

I slid open a drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, and got to work.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Of course it makes a sound, but the point of this old saying is: If no one can hear it, what does it matter?

I don't really like this saying, because besides trees falling down, there's other stuff happening in the world that you can't see or hear. Stuff you probably care about.

Maybe somewhere right now your parents are talking about how you're doing bad in school and they're going to ban you from watching TV. Maybe right now one of your lieutenants is off somewhere making fun of you. He's laughing at the way you walk or talk or eat your Jell-O, and from now on, every time you do one of those things, he and God-knows-who-else are going to be smirking inside.

Laughing at you, and you won't even know it.

I think this is happening all the time. People are talking about you behind your back, you're doing weird things in their dreams, you're in the background of strangers' vacation photos and hanging up on the walls of their house.

That's why I make all my lieutenants report to me whenever they hear my name mentioned. It's why I make sure I'm friends with the most gossipy kids in class. I need to know what people think about me in my kingdom.

The scariest thing about the world is knowing it goes on when you're not there.

If a tree falls in the woods, I want to hear it come down.

The variety of stuff you can find in Clarence's archive is extraordinary. I've been working my way through several categories of papers at once, just to keep things interesting.

I found a letter from an old principal detailing all the improvements that have been made to the school since the 60s. It turns out we didn't get hand driers in the bathrooms until 2004.

There are personal papers too. Piles and piles of love letters, notes, after-school plans, IOUs, and cheat sheets. These have been my favorite to read, and Clarence says they're the most likely to contain clues. We know the Bully Bookers write notes to each other discussing their meetings, because we have one.

Or Clarence has one. Sometimes I feel like it's my collection too.

I work alone lately. Clarence says he's read everything in here and has a good memory for it. He says I've got fresh eyes, maybe I can find something he missed. He'll come down and check on me every once in awhile. Maybe bring something to eat.

I've been over here every day for a couple of weeks now, so it's turned into a ritual. Clarence spends the early afternoons over at the elementary school fishing through the trash cans. He gets home around 4 and comes downstairs to read what he found and drop it in the archives.

He'll heat up a frozen dinner and say, “Anything, Eric?”

If I've got something to show him, I'll hand it over. But it's rare that I have anything really good. So I say, “Nothing, Clarence.”

Nothing.

But today I found something … strange.

Melody M—

What's up girl! This is so boring! Why do we need to learn about stuff that happened a million years ago? Ahh!

Here is a quiz that I have created especially for you.

FILL IT OUT AND GIVE IT BACK TO ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE OR I WILL DIE OF BOREDOM!!!

1. What do you want to be when you grow up?
   A veterinarian because then I can spend time with dogs all day and make them feel better when they're sick.
   
2. What will your husband look like?
   Oh my God, I have no idea! I don't even know if I'll get married. You need to go to school for a long time to be a veterinarian.
   
3. What is your dream house?
   My dream house is a place on Lake Michigan where I can have a sailboat and a canoe.
   
4. Who is your best friend?
   Duh! You!
   
5. Who is your worst enemy?
   I don't have a worst enemy, but there is someone who gets on my nerves. You know who I'm talking about.
   
6. Who do you like? (sworn to secrecy)
   You always ask me this! I don't know if I “like” anybody. But Eric Haskins is really nice. He's super funny and we always talk to each other at recess and our moms are friends.
   
7. How am I supposed to survive this class?
   By writing me another quiz
   

My hands were sweating. Clarence took a plate of lasagna out of the microwave. He put it down in front of me. “Anything, Eric?”

I looked up at him. Did he see the quiver in my lip? Could he hear the thumping in my chest?

“Nothing, Clarence.”

He sighed and sat down at his desk. He started reading that day's haul. My eyes went back to the note.

Is Melody M who I think she is? This must be her. My name is spelled out in black and white. Melody Miller is the only Melody I know.

It's not like she comes right out and says she likes me. But under the question “Who do you like?” she wrote my name. Reading this you could interpret it as: If I had to say I liked someone, it'd be Eric Haskins.

Maybe that's going too far. But maybe not. It is my name there. In curly, girly handwriting.

“Clarence,” I said, trying to act casual. “When were these notes found? In this section here.” I gestured to the part of the drawer I took Melody M's note from.

“Um, those …” Clarence put a finger to his lip. “Last year. Yeah, that whole section is from late last year. Why?”

“No reason,” I said. Clarence went back to his reading and I went back to mine.

Eric Haskins is really nice. Nice. Like a nice car. Or a nice shot in a basketball game.

He's super funny. Funny. Like a lovable guy you just always want to be around.

We always talk to each other at recess. Always. She can't get enough of me.

Our moms are friends. Moms. We both have moms and they know each other.

Oh my God. Melody likes me. And she likes me enough to tell her best friend about it, even though I'm not sure who that refers to. Melody had about 5 best friends last year.

But she likes me.

Maybe she was okay mentioning it to a friend in a private note, but when that whole Facebook thing happened it was just too public for her. Dating can be a scary idea. You shouldn't just drop it on someone where everybody can see. I should have talked to her about it afterward. I should have told her it was a prank, and that she was still my friend. Instead I avoided her, and that made it look like the Relationship Request was real and I was just embarrassed by it.

I hate to say this, but I think Jason did it the right way. He talked to her about going out in private, over a weekend. They figured it out by themselves before they went public.

I still have trouble believing it's real, though. It always seemed like she hated Jason, and she obviously knows how mean he is. I feel like she's just dating him because he's popular.

She didn't write Jason Crazypants's name, did she? No. She wrote Eric Haskins. She wrote me.

I need to figure this out.

I asked Melody to be my math partner. Just on a little worksheet, no big deal, but still, I stepped right in front of Jason Crazypants, blew right by him, and said, “Melody, do you want to be my partner?”

Jason was standing right there, but Melody didn't pay him any attention. She smiled, big and white. “Sounds great!”

We worked though the story problems together, and, at first, I tried not to joke around or act like everything was okay. But there were these kids in the story problems, Joe and David and Karen, and they were endlessly trying to divide up jars of jellybeans and mow lawns at different angles and measure the heights of flagpoles. Melody turned to me and said, “If Eric and Melody have 15 story problems left between them, and they each take 2½ minutes to solve, but Melody can only take another half hour of this before going insane, how many problems will Eric and Melody solve before her brain explodes?”

I laughed, and she laughed, and then we were like that for the rest of the day, making jokes, not talking about anything serious. After school, we were waiting for her mom to come get us. That's when she brought it all up again.

“Eric, we're okay now, right?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like …” She hesitated. “Are you still mad at me?”

I looked away from her.