Read Online Bullyville by Francine Prose - Free Book Online Page A

the red soup on my plate, until the bell rang and it was time to leave the refectory and go back to class. I was starving.
    â€œShall we ‘do’ lunch tomorrow?” Tyro asked me on his way out.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Absolutely.”
    Â 
    Somehow I got through the afternoon. My stomach growled through math class, and a couple of kids snickered. But by then I was too exhausted and sick of it all to care. Instead of going to gym, I had a special getting-to-know-you conference withthe assistant gym teacher, Mr. Nevins, who listed all the different team sports and told me to think about which one I wanted to try out for.
    â€œSure,” I said. “I’ll think about it. Later.” In the back of my mind, I was hoping that the world would end so I wouldn’t have to come back to Bullywell ever again.
    Then we had after-school art club, led by a woman with long, flyaway blond hair who dressed in robes and beads and who acted like a demented kindergarten teacher. She told us to call her Kristin, and she made us do a “construction,” an “autumn piece” that involved pasting crumbs of crispy dead leaves to a sheet of soggy cardboard.
    The happiest moment of my entire day came when it was time to get on the loser-day-student bus and go home. In fact, I was so grateful I practically threw myself down on the bus floor in front of Fat Freddie. It took all my self-control not to thank him for saving me from dinner at the refectory and whatever hellish things went on here in the evening after the lights went out.
    On the bus, there was an empty seat beside Seth. He didn’t smile or do anything friendly, but then again he didn’t say I couldn’t sit there, so I did. You’d think he might have asked, “How did your afternoon go? How was your first day at school?” But he’d apparently missed the lessons Dr. Bratton had referred to, the lessons on how to be a feeling, compassionate leader of the future. Or maybe he already knew how my day had gone. Anyway, I was glad to skip the small talk and get straight to what I really wanted—needed—to know.
    I said, “Remember in homeroom you said I should watch out for Tyro Bergen?”
    Seth said, “That wasn’t me, man. You must be thinking of someone else. I never said any such thing.”
    â€œYou did,” I said. “You know you did.”
    â€œAll right,” he said. “Okay. Big deal. I was just stating the obvious. Like saying you should try not to get hit by a truck. Like saying you shouldn’t climb the fence at the zoo and sneak into the lion’s cage. Like saying—”
    â€œLike saying what ?” I asked. “What did you mean about Tyro?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œNothing like what?”
    â€œNothing like…Well, okay. Last year he was supposed to be this new kid’s Big Brother, and he tortured him so bad that the kid had a total nervous breakdown and dropped out of school before the end of the first term.”
    â€œWhat did he do?”
    â€œI wasn’t the guy’s psychiatrist, dude. How would I know?”
    And then, because in just one day I was already becoming the kind of compassionate underdog-lover that Bullywell aimed to produce, I grabbed Seth’s forearm with both hands and twisted his flesh as hard as I could until he said, “Okay! Okay! I think the kid threatened to knock down the bricks at the entrance to the tower and run up and throw himself off the top.”
    â€œMoron,” I said. “Who cares what he did! What I’m asking is, what did Tyro Bergen do?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. No one ever made a big announcement about it, exactly. I guess it because it was so vicious and sadistic.”
    â€œSo doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that, after that, they make him another new kid’s Big Brother? Another kid like…me?”
    Seth said, “I never thought of