Free Bullyville by Francine Prose

right, as if Baileywell was teaching me to see things from the little guy’s point of view—maybe not the little guy, but more important, my own mother.
    I looked at Mom, and I actually smiled. “It was fine,” I said. “I liked it. The kids are really nice. I learned a lot.”
    For a heartbeat, I worried that maybe I’d laid it on a little too thick. Maybe I shouldn’t have added that part about the kids being nice. But Mom didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she didn’t want to. She hugged me, then pulled back to look at me again, and there were tears in her eyes.
    â€œI’m so happy,” she said. “I’m so relieved. Are you hungry? I’m making pot roast.”
    â€œI could eat,” I said.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A ND SO BEGAN MY SAD career as one of the bully-ees at Bullywell. Because that was how it broke down: the bullies and the bullied. And though it always took place in secret, totally undercover, you knew that it was happening, because it was happening to you .
    At first I thought I was the only unfortunate victim, but then, from time to time, I’d catch a certain look in someone’s eyes, and I’d understand that it was happening to that person, too. After a while, I began to see that there was a system: Everybully had his own personal bully-ee as well as groups of fellow bullies to help with the bullying process. It was as if the school population was divided into little cults or cliques or clubs, each of them based on who was doing the pushing around and who was getting pushed.
    Tyro Bergen, my so-called Big Brother, had appointed himself and his friends to be my chief tormentors. At first the incidents were so subtle, I wasn’t even sure if they were really happening or if they were just my paranoid fantasies. Did someone purposely dip my tie in the open-faced-turkey-sandwich gravy on the lunch line, or had I done it myself, by mistake? The first time I tripped over someone’s foot in the hall and nearly landed on my face and the kid said, “Hey, man, I’m sorry,” I sort of believed him. But by the fourth time it happened, I’d stopped believing that it was an innocent mistake. I’d had a silver ballpoint pen I liked that had belonged to my dad. When it disappeared, I honestly didn’t know if I’d lost it or if someone had swiped it. I was really sad about that,sadder than I would have imagined. I kept telling myself that I’d lost a pen, not a person. But I had lost a person—the person who’d given me the pen. Whenever I thought about that, I’d feel awful all over again. So I tried not to dwell on it.
    I suppose I should have been honored, because Tyro was such a star. I should have been flattered that this school celebrity had chosen to torment little me. But of course I wasn’t flattered. I was nervous and unhappy and a little—well, more than a little—scared. Because I didn’t know how far things would go, how far Tyro would take it, how crazy he was, and what he had in store for me until I gave up and left school or threatened to jump off the tower.
    It was almost like we had a relationship. Practically like we were dating, or conducting some insane romance. When I was in the seventh grade I’d had what I guess you could call a crush on a girl named Anna Simonson. I’d find myself thinking about her when I didn’t think I was thinking about anything at all. I’d wonder if shewas thinking about me. At school I was always superconscious of where she was, superaware when I passed her in the hall or on the stairs. In a strange way, it was like that with me and Tyro. I thought about him semiconstantly, and I wondered if he was thinking about new ways to torment me. Thinking about Tyro occupied as much of my spare time as thinking about Anna Simonson had taken up.
    Little by little, the bullying escalated. I knew I should been taking some action. I should have told