“Do you know who they’re sending after you?” I asked.
“The Collector, of course,” he said. “And he’s bad news, Mac. He already collected my friend Evan. The Collector hurt Evan’s hand pretty bad, and stole his bike and made him tell his parents that he lost it! How do you convince your parents that you lost a bike?”
I shook my head.
That settled it. Barnaby Willis would be the first to go. Evan had been on my baseball team the previous summer. He was a good kid and a really great shortstop. Anybody who would do something like that to Evan deserved to be taken out. If the assault on me yesterday morning and the beating he laid on Joe after school weren’t enough, this certainly was. Plus, taking out Willis seemed to be the natural first step to bringing down Staples. Hopefully kids would be willing to talk once he was out of the picture.
“Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to buy you a little time. I’m not saying how I’ll do this, but just know you’ll be safe for a little longer. So you’d better start saving up some cash. Come back to me in a week or so and show me what you have and I’ll try to loan you the rest, okay?”
“Okay, Mac, thanks,” Matt said, looking relieved. He left the office as the bell rang.
So that was that. I needed to take out the Collector, a.k.a. Barnaby Willis. And I knew just where to go for help.
At lunchtime we closed up the office. And then we made the East Wing boys’ bathroom the most dangerous place in the school. The playground probably threw a party that day.
Nine visitors stood near the sinks. They watched me warily, but also with a hunger that I found pretty unpleasant. We were normally enemies, most of these nine and I. But not today.
I stood in front of nine of the school’s meanest, most dangerous and vile bullies, jerks, punks, and tough kids. Never before had our school witnessed such a large gathering of bullies as it did on this particular Wednesday. Usually it would have been hard to get these sort of kids to meet me here, but we managed to convince them by offering ten bucks each. Even the most vicious of bullies can be tamed with money. It was an expensive meeting—ninety bucks to be exact—so I hoped that it would pay off in the end.
Vince especially had been annoyed at the cost. I wasn’t sure what was with him. He was always a little concerned over our expenditures, but lately he’s been freaking out over every penny. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out on the streets selling his school lunches to homeless guys for an extra buck. But I guess it probably has something to do with the Cubs being closer to the World Series than ever in our lifetimes.
I normally liked to stay out of the bullies’ business unless a customer made it my business. Bullies are part of the social order of school and it wasn’t my place to mess with that. I may not have liked it, but in the end I never could have stopped all of the bullies all of the time anyways. To be honest, our business depended on the bullies a little, like an exterminator depends on rats and bugs. But now I was meddling in the bullies’ business because I needed their help. I needed mercenaries. I needed muscle.
I looked at the group of kids in front of me; each of them could beat me senseless in one way or another in less than a second. Which is why I also had Brady join us that day, for some extra security. There were seven boys and just two girls, each more dangerous than the last. Maybe I should stop here for a moment to tell you a little more about the bullies, so you can get an idea of what I was dealing with.
1. Nubby—Nubby kind of sticks out because he is by far the biggest of the bunch. He is a seventh grader and the kind of bully who picks on other kids to avoid being bullied himself. I guess he really buys into that whole “best defense is a good offense” sort of thing that coaches are always talking about. Nubby is kind of fat and has a lot of freckles and his left hand has only stubs of fingers, due to some unknown accident. That’s why people call him Nubby, because of his stubby fingers. Rumor is he lost the fingers in a horrible petting zoo mishap, but nobody seems to know for sure if that is actually true.
Nubby is definitely an easy target for teasing, but he happens to be bigger than the other kids. So instead of being nice and getting picked on, he’s mean and quick to club kids over the head with his fingerless mallet of a hand anytime they even look at him funny. Nubby really isn’t too bad of a guy, though. Whenever kids come to me for help because Nubby is bullying them, it’s usually pretty easy to get Nubby to lay off. A bag of chips, some candy, that sort of thing.
2. Little Paul—Little Paul, or LP as some kids like to call him, is actually pretty little. I know in lame movies the huge guy is always nicknamed Tiny and the little guy is always nicknamed Jumbo. But this is real life and not one of those stupid movies. In real life kids usually just call it how it is.
Not that Little Paul can really help being little—he is only a second grader, after all. But that doesn’t mean the kid still doesn’t have a real mean streak. He’s confident and talks a big game, and he never backs down from a fight, no matter how outmatched he is. But the truth is that no second grader can take Little Paul by himself. He is the master of the first strike. The kid always strikes first and strikes hard. At least seven independent eyewitnesses once reported that with a single blow he dropped a hundred-and-fifty-pound sixth grader like a sack of potatoes.
The general rule with LP is: If you get on his bad side, you’d better have your head on a swivel, because he can come out of nowhere and take you down before you even know he’s there.
3. Snapper—Snapper looks pretty harmless, if you’re one of those people who consider little third-grade girls harmless. But everybody at my school knows better. Snapper is one of those girls who is used to getting her way; she is a brat through and through. Which in itself isn’t all that bad. But it is triply terrifying considering that her signature move is a bite so hard it would snap a man clean in half if her mouth were big enough. And it isn’t too far off. Sometimes if you look at her right before she’s about to strike, her face is all mouth and nothing else.
Lots of little girls are biters. That’s not really all that new. But the difference with Snapper is that she is an especially talented biter. If she isn’t getting her way, she strikes fast and hard. Once her iron jaws are clamped around whatever appendage you’re unlucky enough to have too close, you can pretty much kiss it good-bye until either several teachers are able to pry open her jaws or she simply gets tired of making you beg for mercy.
The worst part about Snapper’s bite and perhaps what makes it especially deadly is that struggling only makes her bite harder. One kid even was poking her in the eyes and pulling her hair so hard we all thought she would soon be bald, but all that did was make her bite so hard that she broke the skin and the kid ended up with an infected arm for three months.
4. The Hutt—The Hutt got his name because he kind of looks and sounds like Jabba the Hutt from the Star Wars movies. He has thick lips and a slimy, sluglike appearance. He also slurs his speech, and when he does talk, it is with a raspy, gurgling voice. And I bet he would choose to ride around on a concrete slab with Princess Leia chained to him if that was possible. He is kind of a slobby, gross kid, and normally that would make him ripe to get bullied himself, but the fact is that the Hutt is a jerk, flat-out. He is an eighth-grade bruiser and often likes to trip kids in the halls for no reason other than to show everybody else just how cool he thinks he is. The sad truth is that Jar Jar Binks is more likely to ever end up with a girlfriend than this kid, and that makes me feel a little bad for him, despite the fact that he’s usually nothing more than a mean blob of slime.
5. Kevin—Kevin is your typical, run-of-the-mill, good old seventh-grade bully. He’s tall, big, has a lot of freckles, and likes to make kids miserable. His standard move is also pretty classic: He’s a lunch-money guy. He thrives on lunch money the way zombies thrive on brains. It got so bad at one point that the school had to lower the prices on their à la carte items, such as cookies, pizza, and Little Debbie snacks, because so few kids could a
fford to buy that stuff anymore. Oddly enough, that was the one year that our school actually passed the Presidential Physical Fitness standards in gym class.
A lot of kids come to me for help with Kevin and I do what I can. But sometimes it seems like there are at least twenty Kevins running around the school feasting on kids’ lunch money. One day, a day that everybody now calls the Day the Lunch Money Died, Kevin had thirty-three confirmed attacks spanning six different grade levels. It had been the largest-scale lunch money massacre in history. There’s no question that Kevin has a hunger for lunch money that goes far beyond basic greed. I was eventually able to get Kevin to lay off the younger kids for the most part, which is better than nothing. Plus, he’s gotten so good at taking lunch money that he rarely has to beat anybody up anymore. Kids basically just throw their quarters at his feet as he walks by them in the halls.
6. iBully—iBully is a tall fifth grader who weighs about sixty pounds, pure skin and bone. He’s pale and his hair is oily and there have been only seven or eight confirmed sightings of him outside in the fresh air in school history. But that doesn’t mean he can’t still inflict a serious amount of damage.
iBully is a computer bully. He is the master when it comes to hacking kids’ email and Facebook accounts and wreaking havoc on their personal lives. He logs in and sends nasty emails to your best friends. He writes inappropriate messages on teachers’ blogs and Facebook walls and Twitter accounts. He even once sent a horrible message to the President of the United States from this one kid’s email account, and these dudes in black suits showed up in dark SUVs with tinted windows and escorted the kid out of the school. The kid came back three days later and he hasn’t spoken a word since. Not one.
iBully is part of the reason that I never made a Facebook or Twitter account for myself. It’s just too dangerous, with him constantly lurking in the neon-glowing depths of the computer lab. Well, that, and I also think Facebook and Twitter are pretty lame. I always preferred, you know, talking to people face-to-face in real life instead of stalking them online like a creeper.
7. Great White—Great White is a shark, just like his name might make you think. But really people call him Great White because he has super pale skin, white hair, and freaky whitish blue eyes. He’s a tall and lanky seventh grader, and he’s British, too. Normally, most kids would probably laugh at the weird way he sometimes talks, using phrases like “give it a go” and calling the TV a “telly” and saying “maths” instead of “math.” But laughing at his weird British accent would pretty much be the last mistake any kid made.
According to Ears, Great White moved to America because he was kicked out of darn near all the schools in England. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it definitely seems possible. I don’t know how things work in Britain, but Great White is a real scrapper. He is probably the best fighter at our school. Some kids say they’ve seen him take out four eighth graders at one time. He also isn’t easy to buy off. When kids need help with Great White, one of the only ways to stop him is to send this bully named Kitten after him. I’ll get to Kitten in a bit.
8. PrepSchool—PrepSchool isn’t your ordinary bully. In fact, I don’t think she ever punched, hit, slapped, or physically harmed another person in her life. Her bullying is more of the mental variety. She has an ear for gossip and a knack for filling in the pieces that she doesn’t hear for herself. And she isn’t afraid to talk either.
Some nerdy kid in my gym class did a study once, and he calculated that something like 93.9 percent of rumors started within the past two years originated with PrepSchool. His study was pretty scientific, too—he even had charts and graphs and stuff called probability differentials and mean ranges that made this one kid get a nosebleed during the presentation because it was all so technical.
PrepSchool seemingly picks on any kid she wants. She’s only a sixth grader like me, but that still doesn’t stop her from targeting anybody and everybody. PrepSchool turned the most popular eighth grader in the whole school into a weirdo loner who now wears a painted burlap sack to school—by starting one simple rumor that the girl’s dad is a birthday clown for hire. We later found out this is true, but still.
PrepSchool got her name because she’s always going on and on about how she is going to go to this private girls’ preparatory school in Connecticut instead of the public high school up the street and that she was going to get so much smarter than all of us and go to Yale University and become some big-shot Corporate Suit with three pink sports cars and a dog named Snuggles. A lot of girls are pretty jealous of her and I guess that’s probably why everybody believes what she says about the other kids all the time.
9. Kitten—Kitten is by far the king of the bullies at our school. Actually, he is the king of everybody. No one messes with Kitten, not even me. But he doesn’t cause a lot of problems either. I have to hire Kitten a lot to keep total control over the other bullies. If one of them ever gets too tough or mean, then I just send out Kitten. I actually wanted Kitten to be my permanent strongman, but he wasn’t really into being constantly ordered around in public and who was I to argue? In the end I’m glad Joe ended up getting the job, but sometimes I wonder what could have been. Either way, the point is that Kitten and I are usually on the same side. Thankfully.
Kitten got his nickname because he looks like a kitten. Not really, like with fur and stuff, but you know, metaphorically or whatever. He has a real nice look to him, with neat, short, and perfectly parted hair. And he always wears sweaters and collared shirts and he has big kind eyes. Plus, he’s really little and meek, one of the smallest sixth graders in the school. His voice is real high and soft, like he might start crying at any moment. He looks and acts like the biggest mama’s boy in the whole state.
How can he be the top bully?
Kitten is a psychopath, pure and simple. He looks like an angel, but if you get on his bad side, he’ll go nuts. He uses weapons and teeth and fingernails. One time in math class he did something with a compass that would get most people arrested. Another time he wrote all over some guy’s brand-new white basketball shoes with a black Magic Marker. He’s crazy and everybody knows it, so they leave him alone and listen to what he says. The thing about Kitten, and part of the reason I like him so much, is that he only bullies if someone else starts it. He never picks on innocent kids for no reason. He isn’t a mean guy. Just insane.
All of the bullies grouped around me in the East Wing bathroom were pretty dangerous. I had a good mix, and presently they all looked a little cranky. They wanted to know why I had dragged them from their lunches to be here. Apparently, ten dollars only got me so far. I decided I’d better start talking.
“I bet you’re all wondering why you’re here,” I said.
A few of them nodded and Great White scoffed.
“You’re all here because I need your help,” I continued. “It seems that someone has invaded my territory. No, our territory. His name is Staples.”
I paused for the reaction.
The younger ones gasped. I think a few of the older bullies didn’t believe me. They thought, like I once had, that Staples didn’t exist. But a couple bullies looked calm or almost embarrassed. It was possible that they owed Staples money already.
“It’s true,” I continued. “I didn’t believe it myself, but he is here and I need your help to get him out of our school.”
“Why? Why should we help you?” Great White said. His British accent made him sound tough and cool.
“First, he’s cheating you guys. He’s fixing all the local sports. Some of you may have debts already and you’re probably going to end up paying for them with a broken arm or maybe your iPod or bike. If you help me, your debt will be gone. Second, if Staples keeps recruiting kids here and takes over the school, there aren’t going to be bullies anymore. At least not independent ones like you guys. The only bullies will be his cronies and bookies and the Collector. Would you like that? To lose control?” I asked. “Third, I will pay you.”
> “How much money are we talking?” Great White asked above the murmur of the other bullies.
“Twenty dollars for each task completed,” I said.
I saw Vince flinch and clench his fists. I knew he would hate that; it would set us back at least another few days in saving up for the upcoming Cubs game, which was possibly just a few weeks away. And paying the bullies that much would basically drain our entire savings and force us to dip into the Emergency Fund. But the future of our whole operation was on the line. Why didn’t he see that?
A hush came over the bullies. That was pretty good money, considering they bullied for simple lunch money as it was now.
“What sort of tasks?” Kevin asked.
“Fun ones,” I said, and smiled. “The kind that will allow you to be yourselves.”
Great White let a sharky grin spread over his gaunt face. I saw some of the other bullies perk up, too, except for Kitten. His face looked blank, which wasn’t surprising. Kitten always looked composed and rarely talked.
“Let’s get one thing straight now,” Great White said. “I’m doing this for the money, not to help out you blokes. I’d just as soon hoover my baby sister’s spilled shreddies every morning or skip holiday this year.”
I tried not to laugh. I saw some of the bullies biting their cheeks, doing the same thing. It was always hard not to laugh at the way Great White talked. Apparently British people called vacuuming “hoovering,” cereal “shreddies,” and vacations “holidays.” England must be one weird place.
“That’s just fine,” I said. “Tell yourself whatever you need to, just remember that if we don’t take down Staples now, then you run the risk of going from the bullies to the bullied.”
“You think some kid is just going to come in here and start pushing us around because of some stupid gambling thing? Pfft, whatever,” the Hutt slurred. He wasn’t the only one who seemed unconvinced.
The Fourth Stall Page 6