Bully Bait Read online

  Text and illustrations copyright © 2013 by Michael Fry

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney

  Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

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  any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the

  publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, New York 10011-5690.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-7889-7

  Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

  For Kim

  It had to be you

  Chapter 1

  I was stuffed in my locker.

  Again.

  It wasn’t so bad. Lockers are a lot

  roomier than you’d think.

  Especially when you’re as short as

  I am. I might be the shortest twelve-

  year-old on the planet. Which would be

  cool if they kept world records for that

  sort of thing. But they don’t. I checked.

  Mom says to me all the time,

  “Nicholas, you’ll grow eventually.”

  Eventually is a Mom word that means

  between now and never.

  Mom’s just trying to cheer me up. Which

  is fine. What’s not fine is when she calls me

  Nicholas. My name is Nick. Nicholas sounds like

  some kid with head lice on Memaw’s favorite

  show, Dr. Holmes.

  Memaw doesn’t think I’m short. She says,

  “You’re just stuck that way ’cause when you were

  four you were so cute we stacked bricks on your

  head so you’d never grow up. You’ll get unstuck.

  Eventually.”

  Memaw makes up a lot of stuff that almost

  makes sense but not quite.

  The fact is, I’m short. Which is exactly why

  Roy stuffed me in my locker in the first place.

  I fit.

  Roy has issues. At least that’s what Dr.

  Daniels, the school counselor, says. The only

  issue I see is: Roy is a mutant troll.

  Unlike me, Dr. Daniels

  doesn’t have troll-vision. She

  says Roy is just a regular

  kid who feels powerless and

  gets control by controlling

  me. She’s full of beans. Roy

  is just mean. Some kids are,

  you know.

  Even though I felt safe in

  my locker, it wasn’t exactly

  comfortable. My butt had

  fallen asleep. Living-dead

  asleep. It’s called zombie butt. And as everyone

  knows, zombie butt leads to log legs. You can

  sort of move with log legs.

  But not really.

  I knew if I didn’t get out of that locker soon, I

  wasn’t getting out at all. And I really didn’t want

  to have to wait for a certain someone to come

  along to help me out.

  Chapter 2

  It was the janitor, Mr. Dupree,

  staring into my locker. He was the

  someone I didn’t want to find me.

  Mostly because he’s weird, but also

  because he would make me go see

  Dr. Daniels in the office.

  Mr. Dupree isn’t weird like all

  grown-ups are weird. He’s way weirder. I think

  he’s a hippie. Like Memaw when she was young.

  Hippies are dinosaur versions of skaters.

  After he opened the locker, Mr. Dupree stood

  there for a few seconds. Then he said, “You seem

  to like it in there.”

  I shrugged. The shrug is my go-to move when

  anything I say may be used against me later.

  “Because I find you in there a lot,” he said.

  I shrugged again.

  “You want to tell me how you got in there?”

  I shrugged a third time.

  “Shrug, you’re not going to tell me? Or shrug,

  you don’t know how you got in there?”

  I shrugged a fourth time. A new world record!

  Woo-hoo!

  Mr. Dupree wasn’t impressed. “Then I guess

  it must have been Emily.”

  I guess I must have looked surprised because

  he added, “Nick, I’ve been at Emily Dickinson

  Middle School a long time.”

  Emily isn’t real. At least, I don’t think she’s

  real. And she’s definitely not the ghost of Emily

  Dickinson, the poet. Kids invented her years ago

  to explain all the weird stuff that happens at

  school.

  Like, why do the last five minutes of class

  always seem to take forever? It’s Emily (she

  holds back the minute hand). Why does the

  cafeteria serve beets (which no kid has ever

  eaten in the history of the universe)? Emily

  again (she’s a beet freak). Who sets up the toilet

  paper dispensers so that only one teeny-tiny

  sheet comes out at a time? That’s right—Emily

  (sometimes she’s just mean).

  Emily gets around. But she didn’t shove

  me into my locker. And I was not about to tell

  anyone who did.

  Mr. Dupree shook his head, then reached in and

  pulled me out of the locker. That’s when we both

  noticed the huge rip down the side of my shirt.

  “Emily again?” Mr. Dupree asked.

  No shrug this time. You can’t do five shrugs.

  Five shrugs, and adults go from thinking

  you’re messing with them to knowing you’re

  messing with them.

  I shook my head no.

  The shirt must have ripped

  when Roy stuffed me into the

  locker. Mom’s going to notice.

  Shrugs and head-shakes don’t work

  on Mom. I’ll have to come up with

  some excuse. It can’t be something

  lame like the dog did it or shirt-

  ripping aliens tried to abduct me

  at recess. And I can’t blame it on

  Emily. It’s not her style.

  I tucked in my shirt to hide

  the rip as we started toward the office. Luckily,

  homeroom had already started, so the halls were

  empty. You never want to do the Wimp Walk to

  the office in front of an audience.

  I like to keep my mouth shut during these

  walks. Anything I say is always used against me.

  Unfortunately, that day Mr. Dupree wanted

  to chat. Out of the blue, he asked me if I’d ever

  been to Borneo.

  I shook my head no.

  Mr. Dupree told me

  Borneo is an island in the

  Pacific Ocean. It’s mostly

  rain forests and snakes.

  Big snakes. Thirty-foot-

  long snakes. Lots of big,

  thirty-foot-long, kid-eating snakes.

  Mr. Dupree said he was once in Borneo under

  deep cover—like he was some sort of spy or some-

  thing. Mr. Dupree doesn’t look like any spy I’ve

  ever seen. Spies are cool. Mr. Dupree is not cool.

  Mr. Dupree was helping stop some tribe from

  being bullied by another tribe that was stealing

  their pigs. He said the other tribe wanted the

  pigs to feed to the
snakes so the snakes wouldn’t

  eat them, because . . .

  . . . they were tiny little hobbit people.

  Mr. Dupree said the hobbit people were fierce

  warriors. They hunted in packs and took down

  elephants.

  To feed to the snakes.

  I did a report on elephants once. They

  only live in Africa and India. I turned to Mr.

  Dupree and said, “There aren’t any elephants in

  Borneo.”

  “There aren’t.” He smiled. “Anymore.”

  He continued with his story. He explained

  that every day, a couple of hobbit people would

  come to steal the pigs, and he would beat them

  back. But one night all the hobbit people came.

  “I could ninja maybe three or four of them,

  but after that it was gonna be Dupree-on-a-

  Stick,” he said.

  Even though I didn’t believe a word he was

  saying, I had to give Mr. Dupree props for telling

  a good story.

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “What does every bully fear?”

  “I dunno,” I said.

  “They fear losing control.”

  I was confused.

  Mr. Dupree said, “If they lose control, they get

  afraid. If they get afraid, they run away.”

  “How do you make them lose control?” I asked.

  “You take it from them.”

  “How?”

  Mr. Dupree smiled as he leaned down and got

  right in my face. He said, “You bring the crazy.”

  And then—right there in the middle of the

  hallway—Mr. Dupree brought the crazy.

  I’d never seen a grown-up freak out like that.

  You’d think I would be scared, but it was really

  sort of awesome.

  And it did the trick. “Bringing the crazy

  scared the hobbit people away. The tribe kept

  their pigs,” explained Mr. Dupree.

  I guess the hobbit people kept getting eaten

  by snakes. Mr. Dupree didn’t say.

  “Wait,” I said. “Acting like an insane person

  will somehow keep me from getting stuffed in my

  locker?”

  Mr. Dupree said, “If you scare yourself, you’ll

  probably scare them. You can do anything crazy

  or scary. The scarier the better. But never pee

  your pants. That’s just gross.”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t believe

  “bringing the crazy” would work on a bully. An

  arm fart concert wouldn’t stop Roy.

  I said, “None of that stuff really happened,

  did it?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You’re a janitor, not a spy.”

  “‘ There are more things in heaven and earth,

  Horatio , than are dreamt of in your philosophy . ’ ”

  “Um . . . my name is Nick.”

  “Nick, maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. But

  just because I might be lying, doesn’t mean I’m

  not telling the truth.”

  Huh? How can a lie be the truth?

  We arrived at the office. Dr. Daniels wasn’t

  there. Mr. Dupree told me to sit and wait. He

  started to leave, then stopped and pulled a sock

  out of his pocket and put it on his hand.

  I told you he was weird.

  Chapter 3

  After Mr. Dupree

  left, I looked around

  and realized I was

  alone. Mrs. Korn, the

  office secretary who

  everyone says is an

  alien, must have been on her break.

  Which meant I was unsupervised. I had the

  whole office to myself, including the PA system.

  Just as I was about to get into

  even more trouble, she showed up.

  She is Becky Harrison, the prettiest

  girl in school. And my girlfriend.

  Sort of.

  A while back, Memaw and I

  watched this Science Channel

  thing about how there might be lots and lots

  of universes with lots and lots of versions of

  everyone walking around, so that across all the

  universes every possible thing happens at every

  possible moment.

  I figure in at least one of those multiple

  universes Becky Harrison is my girlfriend.

  I love science.

  Becky was delivering attendance sheets. She

  didn’t see me at first. Which was good. It gave

  me time to activate my cloaking device.

  When I decloaked, Becky was gone. Which

  was a relief. I’m pretty sure if the Becky in

  this universe knew I existed, the Becky in

  the alternate universe would stop being my

  girlfriend.

  Finally, Dr. Daniels

  showed up. She wasn’t

  alone. She had a

  freakishly tall girl,

  and a husky kid (that’s

  Memaw’s word for

  fat) dressed up like a

  pretend police boy.

  Before I could ask the husky kid if he got the

  belt and badge out of a cereal box, Dr. Daniels

  marched us all into her office.

  Dr. Daniels and I go way back. She used to be

  my counselor at Buzz Aldrin Elementary School.

  She moved up to Emily Dickinson the same year

  I did.

  I’m pretty sure she’s stalking me.

  Her office looks the same as the one back in

  grade school. Both of them were decorated by

  unicorns. It’s all bright and shiny and filled with

  role-play puppets and not-so-helpful brochures.

  After I was done throwing up a little in my

  mouth, Dr. Daniels walked in with our files.

  She dropped each one on

  her desk as she said our

  names. “Nick Ramsey.”

  THUNK! “Molly Wibble.”

  THUNK! “Karl Mooney.”

  TH-THUNK! Then she looked at us in turn and

  said, “I presume you know each other.”

  I’d seen Molly before. She’s kinda hard to

  miss.

  Whenever kids call her stuff like “The Molly

  Green Giant,” she unleashes her withering stare

  of pity. It’s

  like getting

  blasted with

  two laser

  beams of

  shame.

  She’s known all over school as The Stare

  Master.

  I’d seen Karl around, too. Karl’s one of those

  kids you avoid eye contact with because he’ll

  think you want to be friends. Then he’ll latch on

  to you with his superhuman loser grip.

  Karl is also kind of an OFFline hacker. He

  likes to mess around with old electronic toys and

  rewire them.

  Dr. Daniels sat on the edge of her desk and

  looked at me from the BFF Pose they taught her

  at counselor school. She said, “Nick, this is the

  eighth time this year you’ve been stuffed in a

  locker. Any idea how you got there?”

  I shrugged.

  She turned to Karl.

  “This is the ninth time

  you’ve been found hanging

  by your shorts from a coat

  hook. What happened?”

  Karl shrugged.

  She turned to Molly.

  “This is the seventh time you’ve been found

  sprawled in the hallway with your shoes tied

&nb
sp; together.”

  “Any clue as to who might have done it?”

  asked Dr. Daniels.

  Molly shrugged.

  Three out of three shrugs! Go, team!

  Dr. Daniels shook her head and sighed. Then

  she said, “I know you’re being bullied. I just don’t

  know who’s doing it. What I do know is that

  bullies go after isolated kids kids who are not

  part of a group. And you three are definitely not

  part of any group.”

  She nodded. “You all suffer from peer

  allergies.”

  That didn’t make

  any sense to me. I

  wasn’t allergic to other

  kids. I just didn’t like

  them very much.

  Karl raised his

  hand. “Does that mean we have to live in a

  bubble for the rest of our lives?”

  Dr. Daniels said no. Karl looked really

  disappointed.

  “You three need a place to belong,” said Dr.

  Daniels.

  Karl raised his hand again. “But I belong in

  Safety Patrol.”

  Dr. Daniels closed her eyes. “Karl, you’re the

  only member of Safety Patrol.”

  That’s when I realized where I’d seen that

  belt and badge before. I’d seen it on Karl during

  fire drills as he pointed at exits everyone could

  see for themselves.

  Dr. Daniels continued, “Other kids find places

  to belong. Like sports, student government,

  band, or chorus. But not you guys. I don’t

  understand. Why?”

  That’s easy, I thought: BECAUSE THEY’RE

  ALL LAME!