Bullyville by Francine Prose Page B

relief.
    â€œWhat a nice young man,” said Gran.
    â€œWhat a tragedy,” said Aunt Faye, “to lose your wife like that and not have kids or anyone to spend the holidays with.” And then everyone fell silent, and I knew they were all thinking of what had happened to Mom and me, though of course theydidn’t know the true story, and they probably never would.
    Meanwhile, I was realizing that all the time Bern had been there, I—and everyone else—had been afraid that he was going to break down and burst into tears and weep into his white-meat turkey. The minute he was gone, we became the Octopus Family again, everyone reaching and gabbing and touching one another. The same arguments broke out, someone turned on the television, and the football game started.
    My cousin Brian sidled up to me and asked in a whisper if I wanted to step outside and smoke some weed, but I said, No, thank you, I’m fine. The storm cloud of Bern had gathered and passed. Things were cool. And for the moment, I was fine.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    S CHOOL STARTED AGAIN, and now we were in that narrow window of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas through which you can see a faint ray of light at the end of the tunnel. It made me think of those winter afternoons when it suddenly gets dark and you’re walking home alone and you’re scared and you first see your house, and maybe your mom at the window. All I had to do was survive for a couple of weeks, and then school would let out for the long vacation.
    Bullywell Christmas break was about twice aslong as the public school’s, I guess so all the Bullywell families could jet off to their magnificent ski lodges in Switzerland and Aspen. When I was still in public school, kids used to say that the insanely long winter break was the only reason why anyone might ever want to go to Bullywell. But now, knowing what I knew, I wouldn’t have gone there if vacation had lasted the rest of the year. Anyway, Mom and I weren’t planning to go anywhere for Christmas.
    By the time we all got back to school after Thanksgiving, Dr. Bratwurst had hired a couple of hall monitors to keep on eye on the bullying and “harassment” incidents, to keep things under control. But something about the guys he’d found wasn’t exactly reassuring. They looked like secret-service men who’d been fired for letting the important official they were protecting get assassinated, and they didn’t seem any too overjoyed about their demotion. They still dressed like spies or CIA ops, they wore dark glasses even indoors and those creepy short haircuts. In their dark blueblazers they looked like guys who might have graduated at the bottom of their class at Bullywell, and wound up back at their old school. They’d probably failed everything and still gotten an A plus in Bullying 101, the subject Bullywell taught best. They’d be more likely to join the bully than to stick up for the kid getting beaten up.
    But even that was okay, because I seemed to have lucked into another one of those temporary reprieves. Tyro hardly even gave me a second glance when we passed in the hall. He seemed not to recognize me. Likewise, his friends acted like they’d never met me before. Maybe they’d taken Dr. Bratwurst’s warning seriously, and they were worried about being caught and maybe (with the exception of Tyro, of course) expelled. But I was pretty sure I hadn’t gotten that lucky. It was more likely that they’d retreated once again to regroup and come up with some plan to torture me in a way that was worse than anything they’d done before, to do something really horrible for which they couldn’t get caught. Nothing happened.Nothing happened. And then more nothing happened. Everything felt suspended, underwater, waiting.
    One morning, between English class and social studies, I was walking down the hall, and I got a text message. I never got calls in