NO MORE
BULLIES
OTHER BOOKS BY FRANK PERETTI
Mr. Henry’s Wild & Wacky World #5:
Don’t Be A Bully! (Children’s Video)
No More Victims
The Oath
The Veritas Project: Hangman’s Curse
The Veritas Project #2: Nightmare Academy
The Visitation
NO MORE
BULLIES
Frank Peretti
NASHVILLE DALLAS MEXICO CITY RIO DE JANEIRO BEIJING
© 2000 Thomas Nelson.
Previously published as The Wounded Spirit. © 2000 W Publishing Group.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
The names of some individuals have been changed to protect their privacy. Some stories represent composites.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations used in this book are from the New King James Version,© 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.
Scriptures marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peretti, Frank E.
No more bullies / by Frank Peretti.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-8499-4336-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8499-4336-2
1. Bullying. 2. Conduct of life. I. Title.
BF637.B85 P47 2000 302.3'4—dc21
00-049975
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 12 QW 12 11 10 9 8
To Mom and Dad, whose love and
encouragement never wavered, and to John,
who stood on the wall.
Contents
1. Boy’s Hell
2. January 12–13, 1951
3. Complications
4. Monsters on the Loose
5. Finding a Voice
6. The Playground Parable
7. Help for the Wounded
8. For Those Who Wound
9. Things Could Be Different
10. A Fresh Start
Endnotes
Resources
BOY'S
HELL
Chapter One
Aseparate room had been prepared for the boys. It was cold and impersonal, like a prison; the echoing, concrete walls had been painted dirty beige, then marred and chipped over the years, then painted again. The walls were bare except for posted rules, warnings, and advisories, and the only windows were high against the ceiling, caged behind iron grillwork thickly wrapped in paint, rust, and more paint. The air was dank, tainted with the odors of steam, sweat, and skin. Years of rust and sediment from the dripping showerheads and armies of bare, wet feet had marbled the floor with streaks and patches of reddish brown.
The authorities, clad in uniforms and carrying clipboards and whistles, marched the boys in, at least forty of them, all roughly the same age but many different sizes, strengths, and physical maturities. The dates of their births, the locations of their homes, and the simple luck of the draw had brought them here, and much like cattle earmarked for shipment, they had no voice in the matter. The paperwork was in. This room would be a part of their lives for the next four years.
He had never been in this place, or anywhere like this place, before. He had never imagined such a place could even exist. In here, kindness meant weakness, human warmth was a complication, and encouragement was unmanly. In here, harshness was the guiding virtue— harshness, cruelty, and the blunt, relentless confirmation of every doubt he’d ever carried about himself.
Mr. M, a fearsome authority figure with a permanent scowl and a voice that yelled—only yelled—ordered them to strip down. His assistants, clones of his cruelty, repeated the order, striding up and down the narrow aisles between the lockers.
The boy hesitated, looking furtively about. He’d never been naked in front of strangers before, but even worse, he’d never been naked in front of enemies. It took only one class hour for the others to select him, to label him, and to put him in his place. He was now officially the smallest one, the scared one, the weakling, the one without friends. That made him fair game.
And now he would be naked in front of them. Naked. His stomach wrung; his hands trembled. Dear God, please get me out of here. Please don’t let them do this to me.
But every authority figure in his life said he had to be here. He had to go to school, do his chores, finish his homework, keep his shoes tied, go to bed and get up at certain hours, eat his vegetables, and be here. End of discussion.
He removed his clothes.
Mr. M continued his yelling. “Come on, move it, move it, move it!”
The herd—pink, black, brown, and bronze—moved one direction, and all he could do was move with it, a frail, naked body among the forty, longing for a towel, anything to cover himself. Instinctively, he placed his hand over his private parts. Every other body was bigger and much stronger, and every other body had hair where the boy had none. He knew they would notice.
The showers were a long, high-ceilinged echo chamber, murky with steam, rattling with lewd, raucous joking and laughter. He didn’t want to hear it.
After a big Hispanic kid finished his shower, the boy carefully took his place under the showerhead, afraid of slipping and even more afraid of grazing against anyone. Touching was dangerous; it could easily become a prelude to being hurt.
He let the water spray over him. He hurriedly lathered his body with some soap.
To his left, the talk started—about him. Then some laughing. The talk spread, the call went out—“Hey, get a load of this!”—and an audience gathered, a semicircle of naked, dripping bodies. The talk about him shifted to jeering at him. He tried to act as if he didn’t hear them, but he could feel his face flushing. Get through, get through, get out of here!
He rinsed as well as he could, never turning away from the wall, then headed for the towel-off area, not meeting their eyes, trying to ignore their comments about his face, his body, his groin. But the arrows were landing with painful accuracy: Ugly. Wimp. Gross. Little girl.
He grabbed a towel off the cart and draped it around himself before he even started drying with it. Even that action brought lewd comments and another lesson: Once it begins, no action, no words, no change in behavior will turn it back. Once you’re the target, anything you do will bring another arrow.
And so the arrows flew: two, then three, then more. Obscenities, insults, put-downs.
Along with his hurt, he felt a pitiful, helpless anger. He wanted to lash out, to tell them to stop, to defend himself, but he was all too aware of his body, just as they were. He could never match the strength of any one of them, much less the whole gang, and they were waiting, even wanting him to try.
Snap! Stinging, searing pain shot up from his groin like a jolt from an electric cattle prod.
“Oh,” hollered a jock, “good one!”
Snap! He heard the sound again as a towel whipped past his backside, missing by a millimeter. A big lug with a hideous grin pulled his towel back for another try, then he jerked it toward the boy’s body again, snapping it back hard, turning the moist end of
the towel into a virtual whip. The edge of the towel struck between the boy’s legs, stinging like a cat-o’-nine-tails.
He cried out in pain while they laughed. He raised a knee to protect his groin but lost his footing on the wet tile and tumbled to the floor, his hands skidding on the slimy, soapy residue. He struggled to his feet. A wet foot thumped into his back, and he careened toward a locker-room bench loaded with laughing naked bodies.
“Get off me, you fag!” Rough hands pushed him and he crunched into another body. “Get away, twerp!” They were angry with him. He was the Ping-Pong ball being batted about, and they were angry with him!
“Hey, squirt, you lookin’ for trouble?”
“I think this kid wants a fight!”
He fled to the only square foot of floor that might be his own, the space in front of his locker. His body was throbbing, his bruises a combined chorus of pain.
And his soul . . . oh, his soul. He was choking back his tears, hurrying, fumbling to get his clothes from his locker, resolving to remain silent, desperately hoping no one would see him crying—but deep inside, his soul wailed in anguish, and there were no words or thoughts to heal it. Parental advice came to his mind, but it carried as much weight as a cookie fortune: “Just ignore them.” Ignoring was only acting. It didn’t stop the arrows from cutting through his heart. He even believed the taunts and stinging words. Dear God, am I that ugly? Am I that weak and worthless?
“Hey, nude boy! Hey, nature boy!” Now the teacher’s assistant, just a few grades ahead of him, was getting in a few jabs. “Get the lead out. The bell’s gonna ring in five minutes.”
He got the lead out. Still wet, he threw on his clothes, missing one buttonhole in his shirt so that the shirt hung cockeyed on his back, but he didn’t care. He grabbed his books out of the locker—
A hand slammed him against the locker, and his head bounced off the steel door. His books fell to the floor, the pages crinkling, his assignments spilling everywhere. He’d only begun the thought of picking them up when one of the jocks grabbed him around the neck, lifted him off the floor so his feet dangled, then dropped him on his books. He crumpled to the floor, gasping.
A whistle shrieked. It was Mr. M, angry as always. “Line up, line up!”
The T.A. yanked the boy to his feet. “C’mon, get in line!”
He gathered up his books, some of the pages wet, wrinkled, and grimy, and plugged an empty spot in the line.
One minute to go. He’d never felt such longing to be somewhere else. Somewhere in his memory—right now, a dim memory—was a kinder world than this, a place where he could find some measure of his lost dignity, the last broken tatters of his self-respect.
The bell rang. Could it be over? Could it finally be over?
Mr. M swung the door open. The lines started moving, a few boys at the front of the line darting off as though they were in a race for their lives.
“No running. WALK!” Mr. M growled.
The stream of bodies poured into the narrow hall, and in a moment he was hurrying away from that place, taking several last looks over his shoulder, checking for danger, thankful he could still turn his neck.
In the main hall, he passed the trophy case, where the glories of his high school were on display. Here were the school colors, pictures of the school mascot, the trophies, the ribbons, the news clippings, the victories—everything a kid should be proud of. His eyes flooded with tears. When he first came to this school, he looked in that trophy case, and, yes, he was proud. He was filled with an exhilarating joy and a sense of belonging. School spirit, that’s what it was. He couldn’t wait to buy a pennant to hang on the wall of his room.
But now, all he could do was shed tears and wonder, How could a school like this, my school, have a place like that? Does anyone care? Does anyone even know?
In his next class, he sat at his desk, his clothes still damp, his body still aching, unable to keep his mind on the teacher’s lecture or his eyes on the text. The mocking faces and the derisive, searing comments kept playing and replaying in his mind, overpowering anything and everything else.
And from the blood pooling on the floor of his soul, in the loneliness of his hurt and anger, in the escape of a neutral location, little thoughts were firing off in his mind like forbidden firecrackers: Oh, right, Mr. T.A., sir, Mr. Big Tough Guy, Mr. M in miniature. You wouldn’t be so tough if Mr. M weren’t around. And as for you, Superjock and Dumb Thug and Towel Turkey, if I were bigger, if I were stronger, if I could . . . if I could . . . oh, man, if only I could . . .
But he was a Christian. He wasn’t supposed to think such things, so he tried not to.
And he said nothing, and he did nothing, and when the day for gym class came around again . . . he went back. After all, the authorities in his life had made clear certain axioms: He had to be there. There was no choice.
JANUARY
12-13,1951
Chapter Two
Snow, and more snow. Howling wind that shrieked through the cracks. Darkness beyond the headlights of the old car, and in the headlights, white on white on white: frost and ice on the windshield, the snowstorm swirling in the lights like a universe of frantic white flies; and somewhere out there, only sometimes visible, the road, hidden under packed snow, fallen snow, blowing snow.
The windshield wipers were pushing aside ragged arcs of visibility, gathering and stacking the loose flakes but chattering ineffectively over the ice droplets encrusted on the glass. The windshield had the clarity of a shower door.
“Gene, we have to hurry,” his pregnant wife urged, grasping her rotund belly as if holding it would lessen the pain. “They’re getting close together.” She stifled a whimper as another labor pain flashed through her body then said just audibly, “We’re not going to make it.”
“We’re gonna make it, Joyce. We’re gonna make it. Just hold on.” With his sleeve he rubbed the condensation from the windshield of their eleven-year-old 1940 Ford. What was water came off. What was ice remained. What was breath became water that became ice just behind each sweep of his arm. Grreshshunk. Grreshshunk. Grreshshunk—the wipers kept working, but the blades were beating themselves to death on the ice. They wouldn’t last the night. Gene’s eyes on the road formed a direct link with his right foot on the accelerator, nursing as many miles per hour as the darkness, the snow, and the road would allow.
Gene was thankful they’d rehearsed this trip, due to a false alarm earlier in the week. Joyce had been sure she was going into labor, and they’d raced the thirty-five miles to Galt Hospital, in the town of Lethbridge, in Alberta, Canada. The contractions eased by the time they got there, and the doctor sent them home again. “It’s not time yet,” he’d said. “Soon, but not yet. We’ll be waiting for you when the time comes.”
The time came less than an hour ago. They’d gone to bed early, partially to get warm under the blankets since the outside temperature had plummeted to minus thirty degrees. Gene fell right to sleep, but Joyce could only fidget in the dark until, right around 11:00 P.M., familiar pains wrung her body, then subsided, then seized her again within the next ten minutes. She lay flat on her back on the bed, trying to relax, breathing deeply. Was it time? Should she wait to be sure?
She waited, wide awake, listening to Gene snore as the winter wind rattled the windows. The contractions didn’t subside as an hour passed. Over the next hour they became more regular, the pain more pronounced. By 1:00 A.M., Joyce was sure. She reached over in the darkness and nudged Gene awake.
“Gene, it’s time.”
“Huh, wha . . . time for what? Time! You mean it’s that time?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
They didn’t have a telephone, so they couldn’t call ahead to let the doctor know they were coming. All they could do was go and hope someone at the hospital could contact the doctor once they arrived. Huddling together, they made a dash for the car, the vicious north winds pelting their faces with snow until they could climb in and slam the doors shut
.
“Brrrr, turn the heater up high,” Joyce begged as Gene turned the key, hoping the freezing winds hadn’t caused the car’s battery to go dead.
The engine groaned reluctantly. Gene turned the key again. Errrrhhhrrrrr. Errr . . . Ummunnnhhh! The car’s engine roared to life.
He eased the car away from the parsonage of the quaint country church he pastored and headed across the rugged Canadian prairie, the snow-packed gravel roads vibrating Joyce’s stomach as they traveled.
“Gene,” she cried, “slow down or I’m going to have this baby right here in the car!”
“I thought you wanted to get there in a hurry.”
“I do, but the pain is—OH! Hurry, hurry!”
Gene shook his head. Slow down, hurry up—what was he to do? He laid a hand on Joyce’s stomach as he pressed the accelerator. “Lord, help us, please,” he prayed quietly. Time was so precious, and there was so far to go. So far.
Their first stop was to drop off their little boy, a toddler, at the home of a minister friend. Then it was back into the car and back into the blizzard. Now the minutes seemed like hours, the arduous cadence of the windshield wipers incessantly reminding them of the ticking away of precious seconds, precious seconds, precious seconds. No other vehicles approached or followed them. They saw no lights from houses, stores, grain elevators, anything. A black, roiling nether world lay just beyond the window glass, and they dared not think about it. They dared not imagine how truly lonely, vast, and vicious the Canadian winter could be.
The road was full of potholes, and the car kept finding them, bouncing and bumping. Then came a jolt downward— Gene thought it was another pothole—but the front end of the car didn’t bounce back up. Instead, the car lurched sideways and skidded. They could hear the shriek of metal grating against metal. Joyce screamed, bracing herself against the dashboard. Their bodies heaved forward and then violently backward as the Ford ground to a halt, the front end drooping.
No More Bullies Page 1