Bullyville by Francine Prose Page B

dreams in which you try to run or yell and you can’t move, or maybe you can move your mouth, but no sound comes out, and no one hears you.
    Finally I heard voices outside the locker. I prayed that it wasn’t Tyro and his friends coming back to see if I’d suffocated yet, or gone crazy. To see if their attempted murder or whatever had succeeded.
    Someone called out, “What’s your combination number?” And amazingly, I remembered. I could tell that someone was fiddling with the lock, and after a while the lock clicked open.
    Light and air flooded in. It took several minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dazzle. Then I saw the school security guard, and behind him a group of teachers, and then Dr. Bratwurst’s big face, looking way more frightened even than I probably looked, as he asked, “Are you all right? Are you all right?”
    â€œSure,” I said. “I’m fine. I don’t know what happened.”
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    That’s what I kept saying. I didn’t know what happened. Someone grabbed me from behind and hit me and stuffed me into the locker before I could see who it was. I didn’t mention the warning that Tyro had whispered through the slots. No one asked if anyone had said anything to me once I was locked inside. Anyway, there had been something in his voice that made me half—well, a quarter—believe him when he said they’d kill me if I told.
    First they had the nurse check me over and write up a detailed report, just in case I decided to sue the school or something. But there was nothing much for her to write. No bones were broken, no teeth lost. I did get a few ugly bruises, but they didn’t come out until the next day, and by then I certainly wasn’t about to go back to the nurse and tell her to add that to the report.
    After the nurse got through with me, Dr. Bratwurst called me into his office. He asked if anything like that had happened to me before. Isaid no, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. Some things had happened, but nothing quite like that . It was a strange conversation, because everything was punctuated by long silences, during which I looked over at his computer, at the screen saver of tropical fish gliding back and forth in the turquoise ocean.
    By this time, I’d calmed down enough to wonder why Dr. Bratwurst was making such a big deal about this. After all, Bullyville was famous for this sort of thing. Compared to some kid nearly jumping off the tower, my being stuffed in a locker didn’t seem so bad. But then I began to wonder if his concern had something to do with the way it would look if it got out—let’s say, if me or my mom happened to tell a reporter—that Miracle Boy was being tortured by his new friends at Baileywell Prep.
    After a lot of throat-clearing and hesitation, Dr. Bratwurst suggested that my mom might want to come in for a conference, so he could personally assure her that this wouldn’t happen again.
    I said, “Well, actually, no, she probably doesn’t.”
    I asked him if we could please not bother her with this, because she’d been through so much lately. I was basically playing the Dad card, and it worked. When Dr. Bratwurst looked at me, he seemed to be on the edge of tears. He also seemed relieved when he said, “Fine, then, let’s spare your mother the pain of dealing with this little…incident. I’m sure it’s a one-time occurrence and that it won’t be repeated.”
    I said, “I certainly hope so.”
    Dr. Bratwurst said, “My sense is that all this will probably end right here.”
    I said, “I hope that, too.”
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    But of course it didn’t.
    A few days before Thanksgiving, Dr. Bratwurst announced that the traditional holiday assembly was canceled, so we could forget about the Thanksgiving hymns we’d been practicing in music class for weeks. No “All Things Bright andBeautiful.” No “A Mighty