The Runner by Cynthia Voigt

people like us who really get trampled. If I were you I’d have an asthma attack.”
    They looked like they were having heart attacks right then, pale and rabbitty. Bullet just ate his sandwiches, biting, chewing, swallowing. Part of the tension in the room was fear. You could taste it—dank and metallic—colored fear and white fear. Bullet slowly emptied the two pints of milk he’d gotten, slowly got up, slowly left the room.
    *   *   *
    The next day the lunchroom jingled with heightened tension as Bullet moved unremarked to the wimps’ table. Only a couple of ninth grade girls there, he noticed, and a half-dozen little eighth graders. He was early, to watch the room fill up, the long line by the service counter moving along smoothly, the people carrying their trays over to tables. Voices rang louder than usual. Ted Bayson had a gap in his mouth where a couple of teeth used to be and was chewing cautiously; there were a couple of limping guys, a couple of black eyes. They’d gotten a little trouble, then.
    A big colored guy stood, looking around the noisy room—that was Tamer, Bullet recognized him, he’d remember him now. The guy had really heavy eyebrows. His face looked swollen and he was moving as if it hurt, but his glance all over the room was cool enough. The room was quiet, too quiet. Then it got noisy, but too noisy. Bullet shifted his feet under the table: as if school wasn’t bad enough the way it ordinarily was; he didn’t need to spend his days in a war zone. But everybody was ready to panic. The whole room was ready to blow up around him.
    Tamer moved down the center of the room, heading for the back where some friends waved to him. He was nodding his head in greeting and going between two tables, when he tripped and fell. The plate and silverware and metal tray rang on the cement floor. The milk carton fell under him and squooshed milk out, over his shirt. The room was so silent you could hear the bowl that held Jell-O ringing round and round and round until finally it rang around belly up and was quiet.
    Bullet watched, his hands relaxed on the table. Nobody spoke. The silence rang around the room. Most people hunched over their lunches like nothing had happened and nobody had noticed, except nobody was eating anything.
    Tamer got up slowly. His face had a gray-green undertone. Ketchup from the hamburgers was on his shirt front, mixed with milk. Jell-O hung off his cheek.
    Laughter—low, muffled—started on Bullet’s side of the room. Bullet didn’t move his eyes to see who it was.
    â€œD’jew see that?”
    â€œWho got him?”
    Bullet shifted his legs out from under the confining table.
    For a minute, nobody moved. But there was a kind of growling noise, somewhere.
    Then a bunch of blacks flashed into action, and from a nearby table whites stood up to match them. Wooden benches scraped back on the floor. Voices cursed, called. People headed for the door, crowding and pushing. People closed in around the fight, pushing.
    Bullet caught a glimpse of silver and moved—the whites were vocational track and he knew how they liked to fight, he knew who their leader would be. He brought the leader down with a tackle that put the guy’s wrist under Bullet’s hand: he wrapped his fingers around the wrist while his shoulders pinned the guy to the floor; he closed his finger around the wrist until he felt the bones in there rubbing up against one another. The knife fell onto the floor, a black-handled switchblade. Bullet got up and dragged the guy after him, whipping his arm up behind his back and pushing, hard.
    â€œWhat’re you doing?” the guy asked. “Leggo of me.”
    Bullet didn’t answer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a hand reach down for the blade on the floor. He slammed his foot down on the fingers, then covered the knife with his shoe. He spoke into his man’s ear, loud so