The Bully Book (3 page)

“It's one of the New Rules,” he said.

Clark got promoted from assistant principal this year, and he's trying to change everything at school. He held a big assembly where he laid out all of these New Rules.

He says they're to make the school better, but it really just means there's a lot of new ways to get in trouble.

The principal's office is at the end of the New Side of the school. So I had to walk through the Old Side corridor in pee-smelling pants.

When we got inside his office, Clark was filling out some paperwork. He looked up at us, looked down, and then swept his arm across the entire desk, knocking all his papers to the floor.

“I'm dropping everything … literally!” he howled. “What's going on?”

Principal Clark's office is like an altar to himself. It's a time capsule of his life on earth. If an apocalypse happened and the only thing left was this office, at least aliens would know that Principal Tony Clark was once 11th-grade MVP of the basketball team.

Mr. Whitner faked a laugh and I looked at all the crap Clark had just knocked onto the carpet. I guessed his secretary would be the one to clean it up.

“Hello, Mr. Clark,” Whitner mumbled. “You know Eric Haskins.”

“I never forget a face. Like an elephant that way.” Clark shook my hand and winked at me. “Except the only trunk I've got is in the back of my car.”

I was secretly glad I hadn't washed.

Mr. Whitner explained to Clark that I'd had an accident in the bathroom.

“Well, it's better to have aimed and missed than never to have aimed at all,” Clark interrupted.

Whitner forced a smile and I felt my face heat up. I'm not some idiot who can't use the bathroom. Though I doubt a guy like Clark could understand my predicament.

He only got serious when Whitner said they should let me go home for the day.

He put his fingers to his lips and frowned at me. I thought he'd tell me I had cancer.

“No change of clothes?”

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

“This should be one of the New Rules: Be Prepared for Anything,” Clark said. “Hard to enforce, though …”

I looked at Whitner for help.

“Sometimes the best thing is to just try it again tomorrow,” he said. “Why not let Eric phone his mother? I need to get back to class.”

How this chimp got to be principal while a stand-up guy like Whitner's stuck wrangling 6th graders is a mystery to me. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Clark has better hair. It's more principal-y. We're not living in a fair world.

Clark was silent for a minute, and I thought it was because Whitner's logic had shut him up. But it was actually because Clark was thinking. Which I've learned can be a very dangerous thing.

“Eric.” Clark smiled. “What about your gym class?”

Oh no, I thought.

“This is one of my favorite New Rules: All 6th graders must keep gym clothes at school. Now that probably seemed like a hassle when you first heard about it. But now it's covering your butt, literally.” Clark burst out laughing and buzzed his secretary to clean the mess from the floor.

I didn't need to wonder what Jason Crazypants had told all the kids in class. I didn't need to wonder what they were saying about me.

When I came back wearing bright yellow running shorts, I heard all about it.

If you follow the plan in this book carefully, everyone will be your friend, but you need to start somewhere.

You need to pick lieutenants, loyal friends who can help you carry out my instructions. You should have at least two. Your right and left arm.

You'll be spending a lot of time with these kids, so pick them out carefully.

See, people don't think about it much, but the friends you choose can make you miserable.

Friends usually do the same stuff, so you end up in competition with them. The closer you are to your friends, the more it hurts when you fight. If they want to, your friends can really ruin your life.

So find people who can help you but won't be a threat. Avoid kids who might get jealous and want to be on top themselves.

Pick kids who are dumber than you so they'll listen to you.

Pick kids who are stronger than you so they'll protect you.

Pick kids who are followers so that you can lead them to greatness.

Tell them the secrets you learn in this book, but only what they need to know. You are its keeper.

I was like a wounded animal. Laying low. Hiding myself in the long grasses of the savannah.

The Bathroom Disaster was not behind me. I wanted answers. Donovan sat in the back of the bus this afternoon, all by himself. I don't know where Jason and Adrian were.

I sat in the front, staying as far away from him as I could. I skipped my stop. I didn't plan on getting home on time. We rode the bus for another two miles, until it creaked to a stop at the long dirt driveway to Donovan's house. I slunk back in my seat as he walked up the aisle. He didn't see me.

I tailed him for a good quarter of a mile. His walk was noisy, awkward.

We hit the tree line in the foresty part of the neighborhood. Donovan's house is guarded by two enormous trees, and that's where I called him out.

“You're a real traitor, you know,” I said, my voice shaking. Donovan froze midstep. His shoulders tensed and finally he turned to face me.

“Why'd you follow me?” he said.

“'Cause you've been following me!” I yelled back. “With your new friends, torturing me.”

“Listen,” he said, “it's not how I wanted—”

“We were friends, Donovan,” I said. “Now you won't even talk to me.”

“I am talking to you.”

“Out here you are, when no one's watching. Why are you doing this to me?”

“It's not me, Eric,” he said. “I swear. It's The Book.”

“It is you, Donovan. You're the one doing it.”

“It's The Book!” His face reddened. “It's the one that chose you, not me. We've got no choice who's the Grunt!”

“I don't understand what you're saying.”

“You're the only one that fit the description. I told them not to choose you, but you're the only one that fits the Grunt. It's in The Book!”

“Wait,” I said. “Just shut up for a minute.”

Donovan was looking at me wildly. He gripped the straps of his backpack.

“What book?” I said to him. “Why do you guys keep calling me Grunt?”

Donovan leaned against one of the two mammoth trees. His skin was red and blotchy. He buried his face in his hand and yelled into his palm.

“Get out of here!” His words bounced around the trees. “You can't talk to me now. You'll ruin it. Go!”

His whole body quaked as he shouted. I could see there was still a little man boob left.

Knowing when I'm not wanted, I took the long way home.

This book isn't something you can just read alone in your room. You're going to talk to your lieutenants about it. You're going to have meetings about it. But you're not going to be stupid about it.

Don't meet where people can hear you.

Don't brag about it to your cousin.

And don't leave this book around where anybody can find it.

Information like this is worth more when fewer people know about it.

It's like the lottery. If you knew what the winning lottery numbers were going to be, that information would be worth a million dollars. But if ten million people knew what the winning lottery numbers were going to be, they'd all buy tickets and split up the prize. That information would be worth ten cents.

So keep your mouth shut.

Keep other people's mouths shut.

Mr. Whitner gave us a take-home assignment with partners, which can be pretty miserable if you pair up with the wrong kid. I was planning on asking Melody, but Jason Crazypants got to her first.

She hates him just as much as I do, but still said she'd be his partner. That doesn't make any sense to me, unless she's gonna try and sabotage his grade.

Regardless, I can't find another partner. Everyone paired up too quick. Or maybe it's that nobody wants to have anything to do with me. The only other guy without a partner is Colin Greene.

So, it's come to this.

Colin's house is a little like Colin himself. It's small, messy, and a teensy bit sweaty. Colin wore a blue sweatpant/shirt combination like usual and he led me through the house. Colin's hair is a wild mess and his lips shine with spit that leaps out at you with every consonant he speaks, even l's and m's.

“Before we start on the assignment,” Colin sputtered, “we can play video games.”

Colin led me down a winding hall to his room. I stepped around stains in the carpet and experienced that paranoid feeling I get in summer when mosquitoes are all over me. Stuff kept touching me, or at least that's what it felt like. I was jumpy.

Black painted silhouettes were framed and hanging up on the walls. Two paper shadows shaped like boys. I ended up in front of a doorway and I realized I'd stopped moving. Another shadow crowded in a corner, not like the pictures on the wall. It was a dark shape, messy hair and an enormous figure. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I could see it looking at me. It smiled. I ran down the hall toward Colin.

In his room sat an outdated television, worse than the one in my basement. Colin had an old Wii, the same system as me.

“We can play Wii wallyball,” said Colin. “I just need to start the timer.”

“What timer?” I said. Colin grabbed a white clock from behind the television.

“I need to start the TV timer,” he said. “I only get one hour of screen time a day, so I've gotta use this timer to clock myself.”

I picked up my jaw from the floor. “That's not okay,” I said. “How can they do that to you?”

“My parents say TV is bad for the eyes,” Colin said. He adjusted his thick, eyeball-magnifying glasses. My vision is 20/20 and I watch TV constantly.

“I watched a cartoon show during breakfast”—Colin's shiny lips puckered and stretched as he spoke—“that took up half my hour today, and I was on the computer for 16 minutes—that counts, too. So that means …”

“We have 14 minutes to play a game,” I answered.

The afternoon was more eventful than I'd expected.

After our extreme gaming session, I still didn't feel like doing the assignment, so Colin and I sat reading his comics collection. I watched the way he slobbered on his fingers before turning each page, so I used a tissue from the bathroom to flip through a detective comic.

When the door swung open, Colin's face broke into panic.

“Ever learn to knock?” he shouted. A monster lumbered into the room. His glossy red lips curled up in a sneer. His greasy brown hair dangled in front of dark little eyes. An oversize T-shirt, its days of clean whiteness long gone, was sweaty and stuck to his skin. This was the shadow monster I had passed by in the hallway. This was Colin's 7th-grade brother. This was Richard.