Dexter the Tough

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “I think this fight really happened,” Ms. Abbott said. “And what you’ve written”—she ruffled through the papers in Dexter’s file—“I think it’s all true. Except for the part where you said the fight didn’t matter.”

  That did it. Now the pit of Dexter’s stomach felt like it had sunk all the way down to his tennis shoes.

  “But I said it wasn’t true!” Dexter protested. “Robin told you it never happened!”

  She gave him a strange look. Oops. Now she’d know he eavesdropped.

  “I admit, I’m a little confused,” she said. “Why would both of you lie? And if you beat Robin up, why would Robin’s teacher say that he seems to be adjusting so much better—and seems so much happier—since the two of you started playing together?”

  Great. Now Robin’s teacher knew about the fight, too.

  “We don’t play,” Dexter said. “See, I just had a lot of bad things happen to me that first day. And—”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ms. Abbott said.

  Dexter shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “But Robin wants to hunt down everyone who was mean to me. He thinks everybody’s really nice, and they’re going to apologize, or something.”

  Ms. Abbott smiled.

  “He sounds like a good friend,” she said.

  “He’s not my friend!” Dexter protested. “I beat him up, okay?”

  Ms. Abbott just looked at him. Now she had both eyebrows raised.

  Dexter realized what he’d done.

  “You tricked me!” he complained. “You made me confess!”

  Ms. Abbott smoothed out his paper.

  “You confessed in writing a long time ago,” she said. “And nobody made you do that.”

  Dexter slumped in his chair. He remembered how he’d felt that first day, pressing his pencil down on the paper, spelling out I am tuf. It was like he’d been some entirely other person.

  “It felt like I had to,” Dexter said. “Like I’d explode if I didn’t get the words out.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t explode,” Ms. Abbott said gently. “And I’m glad you didn’t turn out to be the kind of kid who gets into lots of fights, all the time. That first day, I didn’t know that your dad was sick, or that your mother was away with him. I didn’t know why you were staying with your grandmother . . . you’ve certainly had a lot to deal with, haven’t you?”

  Ms. Abbott didn’t even know about the principal being mean, and the secretary abandoning him, and the kids laughing about him. She didn’t know all the reasons he’d been so mad he had to hit Robin.

  Except—it turned out that none of those things were as bad as he’d thought.

  And, anyhow, none of them were Robin’s fault.

  Dexter stared down at his paper. His face felt like it was burning up again.

  “I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t want to write about your family’s situation,” Ms. Abbott said. “Sometimes writing like that can be very therapeutic.”

  Dexter’s face got hotter. She didn’t understand. Some things he would never write about. Some words and feelings were stuck deep, deep inside him.

  “Dexter?” Ms. Abbott said. “Do you think there’s a connection between what was going on in your family, and the fight you had with Robin?”

  Dexter thought about his father lying in his hospital bed, not moving. He thought about his hand hitting Robin’s face. He shook his head.

  “Sometimes bad things happen to good people,” he said. This was something his mom had told him, when his dad first got sick. “Sometimes lots of bad things happen.” He thought about how he’d felt that first day, with his father sick, his mother gone, his grandmother unable to get off work to bring him to school. When the secretary left him and the big kids laughed at him, he felt like he was caught in an avalanche of bad things.

  He swallowed hard and kept talking.

  “The bad things that happened to me—they just happened,” he said. “They weren’t my fault. But me hitting Robin—I did that. I was the bad one.”

  The words on his paper swam before his eyes. He waited for Ms. Abbott to tell him what his punishment was. Maybe he’d have to go to the principal’s office. Maybe he’d be kicked out of school. Probably she’d have to call Grandma and Mom and Dad. That would be the worst thing of all.

  But then he felt Ms. Abbott patting his back.

  “Maybe I’m missing something,” Ms. Abbott said. “But it seems like Robin’s forgiven you.”

  She really didn’t understand. That just made it worse, the fact that Robin was nice to him.

  “The question is,” Ms. Abbott added, “what do you have to do to forgive yourself?”

  Dexter kept his head down. But he dared to peek over sideways at Ms. Abbott.

  “Aren’t you going to punish me?” he asked.

  “No,” Ms. Abbott said. “But—” She gathered up Dexter’s papers and slipped them into his hands. “Keep writing about the fight.”

  Chapter 19

  Robin was back in the grass at recess. Once again, he was tearing up blades of grass and dropping them on the ground. Dexter paced around the playground, watching. He told himself there were plenty of other things he could do—maybe he should join the kickball game, after all. But he kept circling back toward Robin. His third time around, he finally walked right over to him.

  Robin barely glanced up.

  “Hey,” Dexter said.

  “Hey,” Robin said. He tore another blade of grass in half.

  Dexter sat down.

  “I thought you were helping the janitor,” he said.

  Robin shrugged.

  “It’s no fun alone,” he said.

  Dexter thought about pointing out that if Robin was helping the janitor, he wouldn’t be alone. He’d be with the janitor. But Dexter knew what Robin meant. Robin wouldn’t have fun helping the janitor without Dexter helping, too.

  Robin peeled three more blades of grass down to their veins.

  Dexter picked up one of the grass pieces Robin dropped.

  “I bet nobody could ever glue this back together,” he said. “Not even with superglue.”

  “I guess not,” Robin said. But he stopped tearing up blades of grass and started watching Dexter.

  Dexter lined up the ripped pieces of grass on a bare patch of ground. He made a pattern: short, long, short, long. He curved the line of grass into a curlicue.

  “Ever done something you wanted to take back?” he asked Robin.

  “Sure,” Robin said.

  “Like what?” Dexter asked, still moving grass strips around.

  “Well . . . one time I fed my dog a Hershey’s bar,” Robin said. “Mom told me a million times that Petunia can’t have people food, but I just thought, everybody loves chocolate. It’s mean not to give Petunia some. So I did.”

  “What happened?” Dexter asked.

  “Petunia got really, really sick,” Robin said.

  “And you wanted to take back the chocolate, but you couldn’t, because it was too late?” Dexter said.

  Robin frowned at him.

  “Sort of. But Petunia got so sick that she threw everything up, so it was kind of like she did give the candy back.”

  Dexter made a disgusted face.

  “Yuck,” he said.

  “Yeah, it was really gross,” Robin said. But he sounded happy about it.

  Dexter had run out of grass pieces. He hadn’t put any grass blades back together, but he’d made a cool design.

  “I want to take something back, too,” Dexter said. “Something I can’t change at all.”

  “What?” Robin said.

  “I’m sorry I beat you up,” Dexter said, the words coming out in a rush.

  Robin squinted at him, puzzled.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “You never beat me up.”

  “Huh?” Dexter said, letting out such a great huff of air that he scattered all the loose pieces of grass. “What are you talking about? Of co
urse I beat you up! Remember? In the bathroom? When you were crying? My first day at school?”

  “That? That wasn’t beating me up,” Robin said.

  “Yes it was!” Dexter had never expected to have to fight about whether or not they’d had a fight. “I hit you all those times, you didn’t hit back—I won!”

  Robin stared at him, his jaw dropped.

  “Dexter, you only hit me once,” he said.

  “That’s crazy!” Dexter said. “I hit you with my fist, and then—”

  He tried to remember. He could see his fist crashing into Robin’s jaw. He’d played that scene in his mind so many times. But what had happened next?

  “You yelled at me,” Robin said. “You screamed, ‘Stop crying! Don’t ever cry! Don’t let anyone see you cry!’ ”

  Dexter remembered that. He remembered how much he’d wanted to cry, how close he’d come to letting the tears out, even as he yelled at Robin. He remembered why he was so mad at Robin: Because Robin was crying, and Dexter couldn’t.

  “And then,” Robin said, “you just stared at me for a few minutes, like you were waiting for me to stop crying. And then you ran out of the bathroom again.”

  Dexter blinked. Robin was right. That was what had happened. Dexter remembered skidding out of the bathroom, and seeing the secretary again. She’d still looked pale, with sweat beads on her lip. And then she’d taken him on to Ms. Abbott’s class. That was how everything had happened. But the way Robin told the story, so calmly—that wasn’t how it had felt. Dexter had felt crazy, like someone turning into a monster in a comic book. Dexter felt like he’d hit Robin a million times. He felt like he’d beat him up.

  “Well, anyway,” Dexter said, a little sheepishly. “I did hit you. Why didn’t you tell on me? Why didn’t you tattle? Right then—that morning? Why didn’t you run down to the office and say, ‘Hey! The new kid just punched me! Look! I have bruises!’?”

  “I don’t know,” Robin said, shrugging. He picked up a handful of grass pieces, and let them sift back down to the ground. “I guess because . . . all the other kids were trying to get me to cry, you know? When they called me crybaby—they were happy when that made me cry harder. It gave them more to laugh at. But you . . . you didn’t want me to cry. It kind of seemed like you were trying to help.”

  “That’s crazy,” Dexter said. “I hit you.”

  It was sad that so many kids had been mean to Robin, that he thought someone who hit him was actually being nice.

  Then Dexter remembered something else.

  “But you told your mom,” he said.

  “No, I didn’t,” Robin said.

  “Yes, you did,” Dexter said. “I heard you, at the park, just as Grandma was driving me away. You said, ‘See, Mom, that’s the boy I was telling you about, the one who beat me up.’ Or, ‘hit me.’ Or something like that.”

  Robin shook his head.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “What I said was, ‘See, Mom, that’s the boy I was telling you about. The one who said “Bryce” was a good last name. The one who . . . ” ’ Robin looked down at the grass, avoiding Dexter’s eyes. ‘ “The one who’s going to be my friend.’ ”

  Dexter didn’t say anything.

  Robin looked back up, a little wild-eyed.

  “It’s true!” he said. “Don’t you know what my mom would have done if I said you hit me? She would have talked to the principal. She would have called your parents. She would have taken me out of school. She would have been really, really mad!”

  Dexter believed him.

  “I am sorry,” Dexter said.

  Robin nodded.

  “I know.”

  The two of them sat in the grass for a long time. Dexter thought about what a strange kid Robin was. Dexter never would have talked like this with any of his friends back home. Of course, he also hadn’t been able to talk to his friends back home about his dad being sick. And they knew about Dexter’s dad—their moms must have told them. Dexter knew they knew because they gave him strange looks sometimes, and Jaydell and Dillon wouldn’t play at Dexter’s house anymore. “No, sorry, I’ve got to go home and do . . . chores,” Jaydell had said once when Dexter asked. And one time when Dad had come with Mom to pick Dexter up at school, Dexter’s friends had all kind of backed away, scared.

  Somehow, Dexter didn’t think Robin would do that.

  But Dexter didn’t know how to say all that to Robin; he didn’t know how to say that he really didn’t mind Robin being strange.

  And then he did.

  “Hey, Robin?” he said. “Want to shoot some hoops?”

  Robin looked up, startled. And then, watching Robin’s face was like watching the sun rise. Robin knew Dexter wasn’t just asking about basketball.

  “Yeah,” Robin said, his face glowing. “I sure do.”

  Chapter 20

  Sometimes true stories have more than one story in them. I was really mad when I hit Robin that first day at school. I was mad at everybody. I was even mad at my dad, and all he did was get sick. (But he’s going to get better now.)

  So I was mad at everybody, but the person I hit was Robin. Because he was there. And he was crying, and that’s what I wanted to do too, only I’m not a crybaby. (And he isn’t either, now.)

  And after I hit Robin, and I wasn’t so mad anymore, I felt really bad about it. It was all I could think about, which made me feel worse, because I should have been thinking about my dad and not being any trouble for Grandma.

  But the other stories in my story are other people’s stories. I thought the secreterry and the prinsipel and the janiter were trying to be mean to me, but they weren’t. And even though I was being mean to Robin, he thought I was trying to be his friend. And now I am, so I guess Robin was right after all.

  Dexter sat back in his chair at Grandma’s table. It was late—he could hear Grandma snoring in the living room. Mixed with the sound of the man on TV, her snores actually sounded like harmony.

  Dexter read his story one more time. It had taken him so long to write—it was probably the longest thing he’d ever written in his whole life. Probably Ms. Abbott would find lots of things she’d still want him to change. But Dexter was happy with it.

  He was happy, too, because he was going to go home from school with Robin tomorrow. Robin had said they could play with Petunia and ride bikes in the park. Robin’s parents had even fixed up Dexter’s bike, so it would work better now.

  And Mom and Dad had called last night to say that Dad should be out of the hospital by the end of December. He’d still have to stay in Seattle for a few more months after that, but they were hoping that Dexter and Grandma could come out and visit during Dexter’s Christmas break.

  Maybe they’d even get to go up in the Space Needle—all of them. All together.

  Dexter looked down at his story and thought of one more sentence. Even though his hand ached from writing so much, he gripped his pencil and added, very carefully:

  I don’t feel like hitting anyone anymore.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2007 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Mark Elliott

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Book design by Einav Aviram

  The text for this book is set in Hadriano.

  The illustrations for this book are rend
ered in pencil.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Haddix, Margaret Peterson.

  Dexter the tough / Margaret Peterson Haddix. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A sympathetic teacher and her writing assignment help fourth-grader Dexter deal with being the new kid in school after he punches a kid on the first day.

  ISBN: 978-1-4169-1159-3

  ISBN: 978-1-4424-9763-4 (ebook)

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H1164Dex 2007

  [Fic]—dc22

  2006009403