There’s A Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom (6 page)

Melinda and Colleen stopped walking and turned around too.

“Grow up, Bradley,” said Melinda.

“Make me,” he replied.

“Hello, Jeff,” Colleen said very quietly.

“Hello,” said Jeff.

“Quit saying hello to him!” said Bradley.

“It’s a free country,” said Lori. “We can say hello.”

“Not to us!” said Bradley.

“We didn’t say hello to
you!”
said Lori. “Just him! Hello, Jeff.”

“Hello,” said Jeff.

Lori laughed.

“Why don’t you just leave us alone, Bradley,” said Melinda.

“No. You leave us alone first!” Bradley said, and he pushed Melinda.

She pushed him back. He pushed her again. She shoved him off the sidewalk.

He slipped on the wet grass and fell to the ground. Lori laughed hysterically.

Bradley scrambled angrily to his feet. “You got my clothes dirty!”

“Bradley wet his pants!” teased Lori, hiding behind Melinda.

“Shut up!” he yelled.

“You started it,” said Melinda.

“I’ll punch your face in,” said Bradley. He shook his fist at her.

Melinda raised her fists in the air.

He charged toward her, then kicked her in the leg.

She slugged him in the face with all her might.

Bradley stumbled backward and almost fell again, but caught his balance.

He glared at Melinda as his eyes swelled with tears.

“No fair! Four against one!” he shouted, then ran home crying.

“My poor baby,” said Bradley’s mother as she wrapped her massive arms around him.

He had stopped crying shortly after he ran away from Melinda, but started again when he saw his mother. “They beat me up and threw me in the mud,” he sobbed.

His mother wiped his face with a tissue she kept rolled up in her shirt sleeve. “Come on,” she said, and led him by the hand, down the hall to the bathroom. “You’ll take a nice warm bath, put on clean clothes, and feel good as new.”

Claudia was in the bathroom, combing her hair. “What happened to him?”

“Some bullies picked on him after school.”

“There were four of them,” said Bradley. “And they ripped up my homework too!”

“You’ve been crying!” Claudia accused.

“That’s the rain,” said Bradley.

Claudia started to say something but her mother told her to leave the bathroom. She laid out clean clothes on the bathroom counter, then started the water.

After his bath, Bradley went into his bedroom.

He was just in the nick of time!

Ronnie the Rabbit was romping across the bed,
singing “doo de-doo de-doo,” when suddenly she was lost! “Where am I?” she asked.

Suddenly, three bad guys were chasing her. They were the Two of Spades, the Nine of Hearts, and the King of Diamonds. The King of Diamonds was the leader of the bad guys. “After her!” he yelled.

“Help!” called Ronnie. She ran to the edge of the bed—
the cliff!
She was trapped. The floor was a thousand feet below. The bad guys moved in for the kill. “Let me go!” she shouted, then fell off the bed onto the floor, but that was an accident. Bradley picked her up and put her back on the edge of the bed. It never happened. There was time out.

“What are you going to do to me?” asked Ronnie, trembling on the edge of the cliff.

“We are going to kill you,” said the King of Diamonds.

“Oh no you’re not!” said a voice from behind. It was Bartholomew.

“Get him, boys,” ordered the King of Diamonds.

The cards attacked.

Bartholomew punched the Two of Spades in the stomach, then flipped him over his head and over the cliff. “Aaaaaaaah …” the Two of Spades yelled as he fell a thousand feet to his death. Next, Bartholomew beat up the Nine of Hearts. “Go join your friend,” he said as he threw him over the cliff too. “Aaaaaaaah,” cried the Nine.

Now only the King of Diamonds was left. He came
at Bartholomew, swinging an axe. “I’ll chop off your head!” he sneered.

Bartholomew ducked, then kicked the axe out of the King’s hand and punched his face in. He threw the King over the cliff too.

Ronnie ran to Bartholomew. “You saved my life,” she said.

“I know,” said Bartholomew.

They kissed.

Claudia walked into the room. “Mom’s making cookies because you got beat up,” she said. “Ooh, you’re going to have a black eye.”

“I didn’t get beat up,” Bradley declared. “I beat them up. I gave one kid two black eyes, and another boy three.”

“You can’t give somebody three black eyes,” said Claudia.

“Shut up!” said Bradley. “Or I’ll give you four black eyes.”

Claudia shrugged and left his room. Bradley got up from his bed and went into the kitchen, where his mother was making chocolate chip cookies. She let him lick the spoon.

“I want to know the names of the boys who did this to you,” she said. “I’m going to call your school principal.”

Bradley thought for a moment. “I don’t know all their names,” he said.

“Don’t be afraid to tell me,” said his mother. “They won’t hurt you anymore.”

Bradley thought a moment. “Jeff Fishkin!” he declared. “He was the leader of the gang.”

“I’ll call the school first thing in the morning,” said his mother.

“Good!” said Bradley. “I hope he gets in trouble. I hate him.”

Bradley walked slowly, holding his hand over his eye so nobody would see it. His mother would have let him stay home from school, but his father said he had to go.

“He’s scared,” his mother had said. “Some bullies have been terrorizing him.”

“Babying him will not solve the problem,” said his father. “He has to learn to stand up for himself and fight back. The only reason the bullies pick on him is because they know he’s afraid.”

Bradley was afraid, but not of bullies. He wasn’t scared of Melinda, either. It was little Lori Westin who scared him. He could picture her standing in the middle of the playground with her big mouth shouting for the whole school to hear:
“Melinda Birch beat up Bradley Chalkers and made him cry!”

Cautiously, he walked across the schoolyard, hand over eye, and entered Mrs. Ebbel’s class. He sat down in the last seat of the last row.

Jeff’s chair was empty.

Good
, he thought, still covering his eye.
He probably got kicked out of school
.

Out of his uncovered eye, he looked at the chart full of gold stars on the wall next to him. He was glad he didn’t have any. He thought gold stars were ugly.

Mrs. Ebbel was in the middle of teaching the difference
between adjectives and adverbs when she suddenly stopped and asked, “Bradley, is there something the matter with your eye?”

“No.”

“Then please take your hand away from it.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Why can’t you?”

He quickly tried to think of a reason why he had to keep his eye covered. His mind raced through a hundred ideas. “My hand’s stuck,” he said.

“It’s stuck?” asked Mrs. Ebbel.

“I was gluing something and got glue on my hand, and then I accidentally touched my face with my hand and it got stuck.”

“Bradley, take your hand away from your eye.”

He grabbed his wrist with his free hand and pretended to try to pull it away. “I can’t. It’s stuck.”

“Do you want to go to the principal’s office?” she asked. “He’s good at unsticking things.”

“Wait, I think it’s starting to loosen now,” he said. He pried his hand away.

There was a bluish-black circle around his eye.

For a few seconds nobody said anything, then everybody started talking at once.

“What happened?” asked Mrs. Ebbel, but then quickly said, “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” She told the class to turn around, and started again on adverbs and adjectives.

Jeff walked in late. He said something to Mrs. Ebbel, then sat down next to Bradley.

Bradley looked the other way, at the chart full of
gold stars. Of all the stars, Jeff’s were the ugliest.

For once, he wished he sat in the front of the room. Then only Mrs. Ebbel would have been able to see his face. Where he was, everyone could turn around and stare at him. All morning, Mrs. Ebbel had to keep telling kids to turn around and face front.

When the bell rang for recess, he put his hand over his eye and hurried outside. He went to the far end of the playground where nobody would bother him. But the word quickly spread that Bradley Chalkers had a black eye and kids kept wandering past him trying to get a peek.

“Melinda fights dirty,” said Jeff, coming up behind him. “She hit you when you weren’t looking. And you couldn’t hit her back because it’s impolite to hit a girl.”

“Right!” said Bradley, turning around. “I would have punched her face in, except it’s impolite. Melinda probably told the whole school that she beat me up, she’s so stupid.”

“No, I don’t think she told anybody. After you left, she asked me not to tell anyone what happened. She made Lori and Colleen promise not to tell too.”

“She’s probably afraid I’ll punch her face in,” said Bradley.

“Probably,” said Jeff. “Then, this morning I was called into the principal’s office. He thought
I
was the one who hit you.”

“Wha’d you tell him?” Bradley asked.

Jeff shrugged. “I told him you’re my best friend.”

“The principal’s stupid,” Bradley agreed.

Jeff and Bradley ate lunch together around the side of the building, where nobody would bother them.

Jeff stood up. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Which one?” Bradley asked.

“Boys’,” said Jeff.

“Oh,” said Bradley. “I’ll wait for you here.”

It was a very long wait.

“Hey, Jeff!” Robbie called as Jeff stepped out of the bathroom.

“Me?” asked Jeff. It surprised him because Robbie had always called him Fishnose or Fishbrain.

“Come over here,” said Robbie. A group of boys was with him. Jeff recognized some from his class, but didn’t know them all. One of the boys had a basketball.

“Hi, Jeff,” said Brian, a boy from his class.

“Hi, Brian,” he replied.

“How’s it goin’, Jeff?” asked Russell.

“Okay.”

“This is Jeff Fishkin,” Robbie told the boys who weren’t in his class. “He’s the guy who gave Chalkers the black eye.”

“Way to go, Jeff!” said one of the boys he didn’t know.

“All right, Jeff!” said another.

“Oh, man, would I have liked to have seen that.”

“Man, when I saw Chalkers’ eye today,” said Robbie, “I just
smiled
. And then when I found out you got called to the principal’s office, I thought, ‘Way to go, Jeff.’ ”

“You didn’t get in trouble, did you, Jeff?” asked Dan.

Jeff shook his head.

“They probably gave him a medal,” said Russell, laughing.

The others laughed too.

“You like to play basketball, Jeff?” asked Andy, the boy with the basketball.

“Sure!” said Jeff.

They chose teams. Robbie and Andy were captains. Robbie had first pick. “I got Jeff,” he said.

Jeff beamed.

They played basketball for the remainder of the lunch period. Jeff’s team won, but it was also the team with five players. The other team had only four.

Everyone told him he played a great game.

“I always wondered why a guy like you was hanging around with Chalkers,” said Robbie. “I guess it just took you a while to find out who your real friends were.”

Jeff smiled. These were the kind of friends he had had back in his old school in Washington, D.C.

Of course, it meant he couldn’t be friends with Bradley anymore, but … He shrugged.

From around the corner of the brick building, Bradley watched the end of Jeff’s basketball game. Every time Jeff took a shot, Bradley prayed he’d miss. When the bell rang, he hurried back to class ahead of Jeff and the other boys.

He sat at his desk—last seat, last row—and took out one of his books; it didn’t matter which one. He stared at it very intently as Jeff sat down next to him.

Well, maybe it was okay for Jeff to have other friends, he decided as he turned a page.
I’m still his best friend. That’s what he told the principal. Jeff wouldn’t lie to the principal! Maybe I’ll get to play basketball with his new friends, too, like Carla said
.

“Jeff,” he whispered.

He wanted to tell Jeff that everything was still okay, that they could still be friends.

“Hey, Jeff!”

Jeff didn’t look up from his work.

Jeff works hard
, Bradley realized.
That’s how he gets all the gold stars
.

He had to wait until after school.

“Hey, Jeff,” he said as soon as the bell rang.

Jeff picked up his books and started out the door.

Bradley hurried after him. “Jeff!” he called. “Wait up.”

Jeff stopped and slowly turned around.

Bradley suddenly felt very nervous. “Do you want to do our homework together?” he asked. “I can come over to your house if you want, or you can come over to mine. We can use my book. See.” He showed Jeff his book.

“Hey, out of our way, Chalkers,” said Robbie as he and Brian pushed past him.

“Chicken Chalkers,” said Brian.

“Yeah, Chalkers,” said Jeff.

Bradley walked away. He heard Jeff and his new friends laughing behind him.

But when he got home, his own friends were very glad to see him.

“We’re so glad you’re home,” said Ronnie. “We missed you. We’re glad you didn’t go over to Jeff’s house.”

“You’re our best friend,” said Bartholomew.

“Hooray for Bradley!” shouted the wooden hippopotamus. “Hip … hip …”

“Hooray!” yelled all the other animals.

“Hip … hip …”

“Hooray!”

“Hip … hip …” said the hippo one last time.

“Hooray!”

“Let’s play a game,” said the donkey.