Free Bullyville by Francine Prose Page B

“Have you made any new friends at school?”
    And I would say, “Well, there’s this one kid, Seth. But he lives pretty far away.”
    Though Seth and I sat together sometimes on the bus, and we had neighboring seats in homeroom and English, our conversation had never gotten friendly or personal enough for us to exchange addresses. All I knew was that the bus dropped Seth off about fifteen minutes before me. Once my mother said, “What about that boy—what was it, Tycho or Tyrone—who came with us on the school tour? He seemed so friendly and nice. So good-looking, too.”
    I felt a kind of funny flutter, almost like an extra heartbeat, when I said, “Yeah, well, he is pretty nice. I guess. But we don’t hang out thatmuch with the older kids.”
    I could tell my mother was worried about my not having made new friends, so in a way it was almost helpful when the phone calls started coming. The first couple times I let my mom answer because I was sure the call wasn’t for me. She’d turned to me with a puzzled expression, saying it must have been a wrong number. The caller had hung up.
    After that I ran for the phone, saying, “It’s probably for me!” Because you could say it was for me, I knew it was for me, though not in the way people generally understand that phrase: for me . I’d answer and hear someone breathing and sometimes a few giggles or snorts in the background as I said “Hello? Hello?” And I’d hear my own voice coming back at me like a shout echoing down a well.
    Eventually I figured out how to make it work for me. Whenever the phone rang, I would answer and listen to the silence for a while, and then I’d press my finger down on the button and pretend to talk, loud enough for my mom to hear. I actedas if I was talking to whoever she imagined my new friends were. It was strange, having these conversations about school and homework and life in general with the dial tone, but it was worth it, because when I came back into the living room after talking to my pretend friends, I could see the worry lines smoothing out of my mother’s face.
    Every so often, I would catch myself thinking: As bad as this is, it’s the calm before the storm. I’ll look back on this as the good time. I understood that I was enjoying a temporary reprieve, waiting for the bullying to get worse. I could tell that Tyro and his friends were already getting bored with this low-level harassment, and I sensed that they were figuring out how to take it to the next level. What exactly would they do to me to re-create the success they’d had last year with the kid who threatened to throw himself screaming off the tower?
    Â 
    It was a Saturday, in early November. When I was really little, I used to watch cartoons on TV everySaturday morning with Mom, just the two of us waiting for Dad to wake up, because he liked to sleep in. Years had passed since then, but we’d kept up the habit. Now we watched Japanese anime, and Mom didn’t notice the difference, she didn’t seem to care that it was no longer Inspector Gadget. I think she just liked the ritual of spending that time with me.
    It was embarrassing to be thirteen and still watching cartoons with your mom, and I wondered if when I grew up and left home and had a house of my own, Mom would still expect me to come home every Saturday morning. At the same time, it felt good, it was comforting. Though I never would have told anyone, the truth was I really liked snuggling up next to Mom on the couch as the bright flashing images chased each other across the screen.
    Pokémon had just started when the phone rang.
    â€œIt’s probably for you,” Mom said. “I talked to Gran and Aunt Grace earlier this morning.”
    I was already out the living room door. I picked up the phone in the kitchen. Silence. Breathing. In the background, a TV was playing, and I listened, vaguely curious