Beauty and the Bully

by Andy Behrens

  A hairnetted cafeteria worker slammed a serving spoon down on his plate, dislodging a thick mass of au gratin potatoes. Duncan then accepted a fishwich, peas, a Jell-O cup, and a half-pint of milk. He stepped into the main lunchroom and paused, standing beside a Coke machine, and scanned the area for the relevant parties.

  Freddie, being the largest, was easy to spot. He was standing next to the circular table that used to belong to the Goth-and-German contingent, arms folded across his thick chest. He returned Duncan’s glance with an almost imperceptible nod. Duncan continued to survey the room, looking for Carly. His eyes swept over an excessively giddy Stew and Jess. They sat in the usual spot, waving excitedly. Duncan searched for some sign of Carly amid the cafeteria clamor. Looking, looking . . .

  There she was, walking just a half step ahead of a cluster of handmaids. And she was radiant. On most occasions, Duncan would have been content to simply stand and watch her walk, sit, eat, and converse in that perfectly graceful way of hers. But not that Tuesday. He made eye contact with Freddie, then stepped forward, moving with haste along a line that would intersect with Carly’s path at the center of the cafeteria. Freddie was moving, too.

  “Wait for it,” Duncan said softly to himself. “Wait for it. Wait, wait . . .”

  He drew close to Carly. It all felt so fantastically clandestine, so fictional, so Matt-Damon-hanging-from-a-helicopter. Just a few more steps and . . .

  “Hi, Duncan!” called his mother.

  Her voice hit him like a blow-dart from the brush.

  “Mom? Errr . . . hey.”

  He spun around to see her walking alongside another guidance counselor, Evelyn Whitman, and carrying a pile of papers and folders in her arms. She didn’t stop to chat—which was nice, what with Freddie approaching and ready to maul him. Duncan shook his head and glanced at Freddie, who stopped in his tracks, evidently confused. Or perturbed. Carly took a seat at a table with her TART friends.

  This is no problem, Duncan thought. Just wait for Mom to leave. She can’t witness the beating. Wait . . . wait . . .

  He watched her.

  And watched.

  C’mon. Step lively, Mom.

  But she stopped to have a word with Jeremy Voskil, a whip-smart future valedictorian.

  Ack! Come on, Mom. Wait . . . wait . . .

  Duncan stood looking dazed and lost. A few students looked up at him quizzically. He drifted closer to Carly’s table. She still hadn’t noticed him. Freddie followed. Duncan drifted a little more, waiting.

  Soon she was back on the move, nearing the doors that led to the guidance area. When she opened them and left the lunchroom, Duncan’s right arm shot out low at his side and he flashed the peace sign. Then he braced himself in preparation for a feeling that had grown a little too familiar: air travel on school property.

  Freddie’s large paw again seized Duncan’s collar. Another hand grabbed his belt. Hmm, new method, thought Duncan. Freddie spun him around once—sending bits of potato flying in all directions—then lofted him onto a sparsely populated table. Beverages spilled, trays and plates crashed against the floor, students scattered. Duncan slid down the length of the table on his back, managing to catch hold of the edge with his left hand to prevent sliding off.

  “Hey!” he managed in mock indignation, scrambling to his feet. He could distinctly hear clapping and laughing from the section of the cafeteria occupied by sporty morons. He heard shocked gasps from almost everyone else. No security, faculty, or cafeteria monitors in sight.

  Freddie approached Duncan with a smirk on his wide face. He towered over him. “Whoops,” Freddie said.

  He gave Duncan’s shoulder a shove.

  “Watch where you’re going, dweeb.” He shoved Duncan again, then took a dollop of orange Jell-O and smeared it across Duncan’s forehead. Freddie smiled. “You should apologize, ” he said. Another shove followed.

  Oh, Freddie’s good, thought Duncan. Very good. Or else he’s completely forgotten it was a setup.

  “Fight, fight!” chanted a small but inspired group of jocks. This seemed to stir the lunch police to action. School staff began to home in on the confrontation.

  So did Carly.

  A poppy-seed bagel struck Freddie in the head, startling him. He turned around just in time to take a carrot stick to the face.

  “Hey!” Freddie said, shielding his eyes with his hands.

  Carly brushed past him and grabbed Duncan by the hand. Then she zipped another carrot at Freddie’s back.

  “Aaaah!” he said, spinning around.

  Carly spoke to Freddie slowly, as if to a dog. “Leave . . . him . . . alone.” She stared.

  Freddie sneered.

  “No one’s impressed,” she said.

  “Not even a little?” said Freddie smart-assedly.

  “Walk away, dude,” called the plaintive voice of Perry Hurley. “She’s not playing.”

  “If you really need to pick on someone,” Carly said, still glaring at Freddie, “I’m right here.”

  Duncan looked down at his T-shirt—a personal favorite, the Zeppelin at the Fillmore West concert shirt. It was covered in various sticky liquids. He looked at Carly, her adorable face flashing anger at Freddie. The shirt is an acceptable casualty, he thought.

  “Cripes’ sake, what’s going on here?” said a shaky Harry Drago, an ancient shop teacher.

  Carly gestured at Freddie. “This idio—”

  “An accident!” blurted Duncan. “My bad. All my fault. I’m just totally clumsy. It’s all on me.” Duncan felt that the least he could do in the wake of Freddie’s masterful debut as his personal bully was to protect him from official discipline.

  Carly gave Duncan a puzzled glance, then spoke up again. “But this big creep just toss—”

  “All my fault!” repeated Duncan. “Really. All me.”

  The teacher looked around at the carnage: broken plates, milk slicks, utensils, mounds of food.

  “I’m really very sorry,” said Duncan.

  “You oughta be,” said Mr. Drago. He began to shuffle away, beckoning a member of the janitorial staff to the scene.

  Carly held Duncan’s hand. “Why would you cover for that guy, Duncan?” she asked. “Is that the bully who mashed your face up?”

  “Yeah, well . . . I think so,” he said.

  “And you’re afraid that if you get him in trouble, he’ll only treat you worse?”

  “Well, something like tha—”

  Carly pulled him close and squeezed. “Oh, that’s awful,” she said.

  Duncan sprouted an involuntary grin. With his head resting momentarily on Carly’s shoulder, he saw Jess and Stew in the distance laughing, high-fiving, and making obnoxious kissy faces.

  “Here,” said Carly, “sit with us, Duncan.”

  She led him by the hand to the TARTS table. They stepped around the debris that remained from the confrontation with Freddie—a confrontation that had been executed flawlessly.

  “You guys remember Duncan, right?” Carly asked her friends. They nodded, smiled politely, and greeted him. He sat down next to Carly. She gathered up napkins and began to peel chunks of food off him.

  13

  Having Carly Garfield remove flecks of food from his hair, as if she were a gorilla grooming her mate, was unequivocally the greatest moment in Duncan’s life. He couldn’t imagine what might’ve been the second greatest moment, either. Because watching Carly scrape tiny bits of fishwich from him with her nails was, like, orders of magnitude better than anything he’d ever experienced.

  Did the fact that he’d elaborately deceived her lessen the thrill? Hell no.

  At least not in any detectable way. All love rested on a shifting bedrock of deception, he told himself. His dad had said something like that once—maybe after dropping $3,200 on a TV without consulting Duncan’s mom.

  But whatever. The important thing was this: Carly was dotingly picking hardened cafeteria gruel from Duncan’s hair. It was magical. As she did this, she
talked almost dreamily about the upcoming TARTS rally. The substance of the conversation was really lost on Duncan, though. He merely enjoyed watching Carly’s eyes move over his face. He responded to nearly everything she said with either “uh-huh” or an inquisitive “really?”

  When all the obvious food particles had been extracted from Duncan’s head and clothes, Carly began to involve Duncan in conversation with her friends, the small pod of girls—who turned out to be named Marissa, Chloe, Zoe, Sophie, Kylie, and Hayley—that he had thought of as handmaids. They all seemed fairly standard-issue to Duncan, gossipy, flaky, and vapid. They clearly weren’t so zealous about TARTS—or any other socially responsible cause—as Carly was. In fact, the whole TARTS clique was something of a Carly Garfield cult of personality, a thing that existed because people wanted to get close to her.

  Duncan, for example, wanted to get close to her. Thus began his assimilation into the Elm Forest Township High School chapter of Teens Against Rodent Test Studies.

  “You’d better see about getting a less gooey shirt or something, ” Carly said to him, smiling. “Before the bell rings.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, grinning back at her. “Less gooey is good. I’ll shoot for that.” He stood. “Hey, thanks again for intervening with that big dude. Dunno why he’s got it in for me.”

  “Bullies are all the same, Duncan,” she said. “They just care about preserving the feeling of power. The way they do it is to make everyone else feel weak.” She rubbed his arm. “But you’re not weak, Duncan.”

  Okay, that was kinda freaky/flaky, he thought.

  But still cool in an oh-my-God-this-cute-flaky-girl-is-rubbing -my-arm! way.

  “Thanks,” he said, then walked away. Then he glanced back. Then walked. Then glanced again. He was deeply smitten. He strode toward Stew and Jess, then sat down.

  “Wow,” he said, his eyes wide.

  “Dude!” chirped Jessie. “That actually worked. The incredibly convoluted, bordering-on-nonsensical plan worked.”

  “Tip of the cap to Freddie,” said Stew. “Dude has some impressive dramatic skills.”

  “Yup, no doubt,” said Jessie. “He clearly has many gifts: acting, bullying . . . um . . . Okay, he has exactly two gifts. But he really excels at those two things.”

  “Wow,” Duncan repeated. He shook his head.

  “Carly was touching your face there, buddy,” said Stew.

  “I know,” said Duncan. “Wow. I know.”

  “I thought Freddie was gonna beat you down in front of your mom, dude,” said Jess. “And then I thought she’d go all Miyagi and start karate-choppin’ Freddie. Because that woman will defend her baby.”

  “Wow,” said Duncan, still dazed by the thoroughness of his success. “I need to change my shirt. Carly said to.”

  “And if she told you to try to drink a gallon of milk in an hour, would you do it?” asked Stew.

  “Yes, no question,” he said. “Yes, I would. Even though I’ve already tried it, and it made me throw up, like, seventeen times, yes. Yes, I would drink a gallon of anything for Carly Garfield.”

  “Syrup?” asked Jess.

  “Sure.”

  “Paco’s secret Muy Caliente sauce?”

  “I’d try, yes.”

  “Mayonnaise?”

  “That’s pretty viscous. Not sure it qualifies as a drink.”

  “It comes in gallon jars, though.”

  “But I’d have to eat it with a spoon. And when you have a spoon in your hand, you’re not really drinking.”

  “Fine,” said Jessie. “How ’bout spit?”

  “My own, sure.”

  “How ’bout spit of unknown ori—?”

  “Enough!” exclaimed Stew.

  “Okay,” said Duncan. “It might be an overstatement to say I’d drink anything. The point is, I would do some crazy stuff for Carly Garfield.” He sighed contentedly.

  “Like ruin your favorite shirt and embarrass yourself before a few hundred of your peers,” said Jessie. “Just for example.”

  “Right. Like that. Speaking of which, I need to go change.”

  “Because Carly said.”

  “That’s exactly right, Stew. I think I’ve got an extra gym shirt in my locker. If not, I still have those borrowed band costumes in the car—meant to return ’em.”

  “So you might have to wear a musty tuxedo shirt?” asked Jess.

  “It was supposed to be an Edwardian shirt, not tuxedo. Like Jimmy Page wore. But yeah, I might go that route.”

  “Better to have a cool shirt with caked-on food than a shirt that’s unsoiled but Edwardian,” said Jess. “Not to mention stolen.”

  Duncan laughed happily.

  “Fat Barbie is practicing tonight, yeah?” asked Stew.

  “Yup,” said Duncan.

  There was still the pesky name-change issue to address, he thought. Oh, well. Later.

  “Remember,” said Jess, “I’m on double-secret parental probation. Detention after school, then home by six. I now live under strict rules. It sucks. So let’s everyone be ready to play.”

  “Right,” said Duncan. “Absolutely. Ready.”

  Oh, yeah. There was also the issue of Freddie’s sister what’s-her -name joining the band. That needed to be discussed. But later, he thought. This moment is too good to spoil.

  Duncan got up from the table and began to walk toward an exit, careful to avoid Freddie’s side of the cafeteria. After seeing the condition of his clothes, a sympathetic lunchroom monitor allowed him to leave. He walked through the empty halls grinning. He grew wistful passing classrooms that he’d sat in as a freshman and sophomore, places where he’d either gazed at Carly or daydreamed about her. All the long years of seemingly hopeless obsession had led, ultimately, to something spectacular. And Jess and Stew always thought I was being pathetic and silly, he thought. Hah. Goal-oriented and determined is more like it.

  Upon reaching his locker, Duncan dug through a mound of scholastic miscellany until he found the spare gym shirt— relatively clean, if heavily wrinkled. He removed the Zeppelin shirt slowly; it clung to his skin in places where cafeteria goo had hardened. Then he slipped the gym shirt on and stretched it a bit, hoping to make it slightly more roomy. He had little success. He looked at a hallway clock. Approximately four minutes until the bell would ring. He ripped a page from a spiral binder and snatched a pen from his backpack. Duncan rested the paper against his locker and began to scribble:

  F—Excellent show today. Well done. Really perfect. Couldn’t have gone better. Thumbs-up. Hope your sister can meet us at 4:30. Address is 402 Wheatland St., two blocks north of the Citgo. Meet in the garage. Thanks! D

  Was that too girly? he wondered. Eh. No time to edit. Duncan folded the note into a neat triangle, then rushed to Freddie’s locker. The bell rang just as he was stuffing the note through a ventilation slot. Duncan hurried off—he certainly couldn’t be seen conspiring with the thug who’d just harassed him. Plus Duncan wanted to get back to his own locker to chat with Carly.

  A tangled web, he thought. But it’s catching me the perfect bug.

  Carly seemed tickled to see him after lunch. She touched his gym shirt, running her hand lightly down the shoulder.

  “Better,” she said, smiling.

  Duncan was thrilled. Amazed. Agog.

  Each short break between classes that afternoon was more delightful than the last. Carly, having actually witnessed Duncan being victimized, was treating him as if he were an adorable mouse she’d rescued from a laboratory—and not a fat one. That is to say, she was fawning over him: petting, smiling, giggling. She asked if he wouldn’t like to attend a brief TARTS recruitment presentation after school in the auditorium. She’d been posting brightly colored notices about it all day, but was afraid no one would show.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said enthusiastically. “I’d be delighted.”

  “Great!” she said cheerily.

  Duncan sighed another happy sigh. The TARTS thing would be short, Ca
rly had said. Twenty minutes, tops. Plenty of time for him to get to get to Fat Bar—um, the Flaming Tarts’ practice. Besides, Jessie had detention to serve.

  As it turned out, the TARTS thing certainly could have lasted twenty minutes or less. After an appalling slideshow, featuring obese rodents dragging themselves slowly through a maze, and few short statements by Carly and Dr. Wiggins, they were ready to distribute pamphlets and adjourn. But then they asked if anyone had questions. Duncan, wishing to appear completely engaged, raised his hand.

  “So which local labs and institutions, other than Elm Forest College, of course, have the worst track record with respect to rodent experimentation?”

  Carly beamed, then quickly became serious, answering the question by rattling off a list of Midwestern universities and corporations.

  Duncan raised his hand again. “What are the cage conditions like for most lab rodents?”

  Again, Carly answered thoughtfully and thoroughly.

  By the end of her answer, Duncan’s hand had shot up again. And then again. And again. And again. He peppered Carly with questions, and she seemed to appreciate it. Eventually, Dr. Wiggins as well as all the other TARTS members and recruits left the auditorium. But Duncan and Carly remained, he in a plush front-row seat and she at a podium. Their Q and A lasted an hour; then they walked together to their cars, which, of course, were parked side by side. Duncan pretended to be fearful of another Freddie attack.

  “You’re not alone,” said Carly. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  Duncan blushed. “Thanks.”

  They conversed awhile longer in the parking lot; then Carly hugged him good-bye. Hugged him! Like with both arms squeezing. It was breathtaking.