The Bully Book (18 page)

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh'? This is the biggest news we've ever got!”

“I'm moving, Eric. I didn't want to upset you. My mom and I are moving to Petoskey. High school ended 2 weeks ago, so we've been packing up the house and making trips in the van. Everything's moved now.”

I could hear my own breath through the phone.

“We've leaving tonight for good. Sorry I didn't have time to say good-bye. It was all really sudden.”

“So you're getting out,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You're getting out. What do you care? You get a new life.”

“Well …”

“You're done with it. Moving on. But I can't leave.”

I started yelling. “I'm stuck here! This is my world now, Clarence! Get out of it!”

I slammed the phone on the ground.

Clarence kept talking.

“Eric, calm down,” the muffled voice said. “You've got to listen to me.”

I picked up the cell phone.

“What do you have to say?”

“Listen,” he said. “What do you want me to do with the archives? I don't need them now. If you want, I can—”

“I don't want the archives, Clarence. What I want is to be free from this nightmare. Burn them for all I care.”

I ended the call.

He's been lying to me. This whole time, he knew. He knew he might escape. Something was wrong when I told him about the plaque. These last weeks while I've been consumed by this, Clarence was planning his escape.

I'm solving a case he started years ago. I get so close and he doesn't care. He's moving up north to Petoskey.

It's very nice up there. We used to go in the summers when I was a kid.

I'm at a dead end. I still know nothing about The Bully Book and nothing about the Grunt except what it feels like to be him. Next year I'll learn to be a middle-school Grunt.

We can't move, Mom says. She owes more money on the house than it's worth, so she can never sell it. That's what she always says.

I'm tired.

Got our yearbooks today. It was an ice-cream social.

Everybody was going around signing them for each other. I didn't ask anybody, afraid of what they'd write.

Colin wanted to sign my yearbook.

He wrote, “Good knowing you this year, let's still be friends in middle school.” It made me wish I'd been nicer to him.

My picture is in there with the other 6th graders'. My hair is slicked and I'm wearing the sweater Mom made me pick, and I've got a purple background. I don't look very happy.

I wondered if some younger kid will be staring at this someday. Some future Grunt looking for answers. I wanted to talk to this kid. I wanted to say to him, “Forget it.”

Melody asked to sign my yearbook too.

“Jason and I broke up,” she said, taking the book. “He says he wants to be single for middle school.”

“Oh.” I tried to think of something to say to that.

“It's okay,” Melody said. “He was a jerk anyway.”

“Sure.”

“Well, you knew that, I guess. I really don't know what I was thinking.”

I tried not to say something to that.

“What are you doing this summer?” Melody looked up at me. Her eyes were a lighter brown in the sunlight. I don't know when it got so warm.

“Eric?” she said. I looked back at her. “What are you doing this summer? We should hang out.”

I tried to write something in her yearbook, but I couldn't put words to this feeling. She was writing furiously in mine.

I handed the yearbook back to her. She gave mine to me.

I closed it without reading the message. She saw that I wrote nothing. Just my initials: E.H.

She frowned a little and stared down her nose.

“Do you think I'm bad?” she asked.

Her freckles are really starting to show. And her skin seems different. She looks older now.

The loudspeaker crackled and gave everyone a shock. Colin spilled ice cream all over his shirt.

“Eric Haskins to the office,” it said. “I repeat. Eric Haskins to the office.”

It was Clark's voice. Everybody looked at me. Melody asked: “Eric, are you in trouble?”

I picked up my backpack. Stuck the yearbook inside. And looked her straight in the eye.

“Always,” I said.

I came into his office and he looked exhausted. Like he hadn't slept in the last three days.

“Have a seat, Eric.” He smiled weakly.

“Okay.” I sat down.

“Our conversation the other day,” he said, his eyebrows bouncing nervously. “Do you remember it?”

“How could I forget?”

Clark frowned at me. “I've been thinking … for a very long time. You've reminded me of things.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah.” He looked stern. “Things I'd prefer to forget.”

Clark stood up, looked at the ceiling above his desk.

“I always thought I understood this school.” He was almost talking to himself. “Better than anyone. That's why I went into education, Eric. That's why I came back. You know I could've been anything? Could've been a doctor, a lawyer. I had the grades. Why do you think I made all the New Rules, Eric? Because I wanted this school to be great. I've wanted that since I was 11 years old.

“But sometimes you hurt people,” he went on, “when you're trying to do good. And when I do something wrong, I try to make up for it.”

“That why you gave Mr. Whitner a job?”

Clark frowned again. “I don't know what he's been telling you, Eric. But I'm trying to do right here. I'm trying to put at rest your fears.”

“I'm not afraid of you, Principal Clark. What have you got to say to me?”

“I'm sorry, Eric.” He sighed deeply, and sat back down in his chair. “When I was your age, I think I had some problems. At home, in school. I was confused.” He rolled his eyes up in his head, searching for the words. “And I did something strange. I made this …” He looked at me meaningfully. “I had these gym socks.”

“What?” I said.

“I had a pair of gym socks,” he said with emphasis. “Terrible ones. I got the idea that I could pass these things down. To the kids in the grade below me, and that they could pass them down, and that could go on for …”

“For 25 years,” I said.

“So I put the gym socks in my locker. With instructions to pass them down, and directions to keep them there. Locker 337, my favorite number.”

“Locker 337,” I repeated.

“But,” Clark shouted, “I went there this morning. I'd forgotten them years ago. Couldn't believe they'd still be there. I went to the locker, I've got a master list of all the combinations. I opened it up, Eric. This morning.”

Clark's eyes widened and he took me by the shoulders.

“It's empty, Eric!” he shouted. “Empty! The socks were lost years ago, there's no truth to that legend, Eric. There's nothing there!”

“Nothing?” I said. My knees weakened and my shoulders slipped out of Clark's grip. I landed in the chair.

“Nothing, Eric!” Clark laughed. He was ecstatic. Like a man freed from death row.

Off the hook in his own mind at least. But I was enraged.

The Book was toying with me. Letting me close and slipping away! My feet shot me up.

“What is the Grunt?” I shouted. “How. Do. You. Pick. The. GRUNT?”

Clark flattened in his chair, shocked.

“Listen to me, Principal Clark. I don't want this life forever!” My voice broke. “Tell me how not to be the Grunt!”

“Eric, I don't know what you're asking.”

“You do!” I shouted. “Why won't you tell me?”

Mrs. Bellemont, Clark's secretary, busted in and grabbed my arms. She dragged me across the office, my heels digging into the carpet.

“Bully Bookers forget, Mr. Clark! You grow up!” I shouted. “We live this life forever!”

Clark didn't say another word. He stared at me, like a frightened child. The door to his office swung shut.

Mrs. Bellemont said the only reason I didn't get suspended was that today's the last day and she didn't want to do the paperwork.

Hiding in the bathroom stall right now.

After the confrontation with Clark, I was upset. I went to the locker room to see for myself.

Came here to see the locker. Number 337. Clark left it unlocked. Empty. No Bully Book. Maybe once, but not now.

I was sad. I had gotten so close to solving the mystery. I'm so trapped in my own life. I remembered when Donovan first mentioned The Book, so long ago. Richard's warning. Finding Matt Galvin, meeting Daniel Friedman. The first stolen page. Being so close and so far at the same time. The plaque. Whitner and Clark. The archives. The letter about the construction projects.

I've been carrying my journal around like a casebook. I have every entry on me at all times. Even the one about the 1987 construction. Everything done on the school since the 60s. I'd only looked at one date: The New Side addition. I looked at the letter again, but this time, my eyes fell a quarter of an inch. I saw this:

1989: 28 lockers are added to the locker room to accommodate an expanded athletics program. Again, funding is provided by Ronald and Harriet Stullman.

I noticed that the number 337 on the locker was painted on. Not printed like some of the others. I pulled out a quarter and viciously scratched the number. The twenty-year-old paint cracked easily under my fingers, and revealed an older number below it. 309.

Lockers were added after Tony Clark graduated and some of the numbers had been reassigned. Principal Clark went to the wrong locker this morning!

If 309 became 337, then 337 must have become 365. I slid to 365 and ground the painted number to dust. The true number stared back at me.

In the dim light of the locker room I could peek through the vents of locker 337. I caught a faint whiff of musk, the smell of old papers in my grandfather's damp basement. I caught sight of a few sheets held loosely in a thick leather binder. So ordinary. So close.

I began to hyperventilate, and ducked into the stall to catch my breath.

I don't think I—

This will be my last entry in this journal. Perhaps I will have other journals in my life, but this one has come to an end. I will use what energy I have left to write it properly.

I heard noises when I was in the bathroom stall. And they were just what you'd expect if you had half a brain, but I don't, so I was surprised.

Jason Crazypants, Adrian Noble, and Donovan White came into the locker room together.

“Get The Book,” commanded Jason.

“I don't know why we're doing this before school clears out,” protested Donovan. “If we just waited an hour …”

“I don't want to have to come back here,” Jason snarled. “I'm done with this school. I'm never coming back.”

“But it's so early,” whined Donovan. “What are we gonna do with it until it gets dark?”

“We'll take it up to the old cabin and chill until it's time to start the ceremony,” Adrian replied in soothing tones. “Don't worry about it. The ceremony's fun. For us, anyway.”

Donovan tried to laugh. “Those 5th graders are in for it!”

“Yeah,” Jason laughed. “Bag it. Let's go.”

They were taking The Bully Book. It was in the same room with me. Theoretically, I could rush out there and grab it. I could rush out—and get karate chopped by Jason.

I heard them leaving. No time to make a plan. I just followed them … quietly.

I tailed them through the Old Side of the school. They were sneaking through the secret back way. I watched them jog off, a red leather binder in Adrian Noble's arms. Outside, I covertly unlocked my bike from the rack.

I kept on them for four blocks, always hanging back a good distance, the sound of their laughter led me on.

Then, there was silence.

I heard nothing. I saw nothing. They had disappeared into Adrian Noble's backyard. They'd said they were going to the old cabin, which is really just this abandoned shack near Lake-in-the-Woods Park. I heard a low buzz and laughter. High-pitched squeals of delight and the sound of a small engine revving up. Then crash! They came bursting out of the bushes in Adrian's backyard, trampling the flowers with a full-size, fully functional golf cart.

I followed the buzzing of the cart and the laughter of the Bully Bookers all the way up to Lake-in-the-Woods. Over the trail, through the hills. Pumping crazily on my bike. Always out of sight, but within earshot of the cart.