Free Mitch and Amy by Beverly Cleary

unfair, that the whole situation was unfair. “Sure, I’ve felt a couple of eucalyptus buds, but who cares about a couple of eucalyptus buds?”
    â€œYou do.” Suddenly Alan bent over his handlebars and began to pump his bicycle. In only a fraction of a second Mitchell grasped what was happening—Alan was forcing himto play chicken, whether he wanted to or not. Mitchell knew he did not have a chance unless he got moving in a hurry. He got that other foot on the pedal and stood up and pumped as hard and as fast as he could with Alan bending over his handlebars heading straight for him.
    Mitchell had another fraction of a second to make a big decision, and that fraction was all he needed. Let Alan call him chicken. He was not going to risk wrecking his three-speed bicycle for an old bully like Alan or anyone else. An instant before their bicycles would have clashed, Mitchell swerved.
    â€œChicken!” yelled Alan in triumph, as the front wheel of his bicycle struck a patch of gravel and he and his bicycle went sprawling on the street with a thump and the sound of metal grating against asphalt.
    Mitchell stopped to see what had happened. Alan was picking himself up slowlyand stiffly. A bleeding knee showed through a tear in his jeans, and there was a scraped and muddy place on his face. The fall must have hurt and hurt a lot. Painfully Alan leaned over and lifted his bicycle upright.
    Mitchell was tempted to laugh and yell, Don’t you wish you were chicken? But he decided not to. Why rub it in? “Tough luck,” was all he said, as he turned and started pedaling toward home. They both knew he had won, and nothing else mattered. This should put an end to the eucalyptus buds.
    â€œI’ll get you for this!” shouted Alan. “I won’t let you get away with it!”
    Mitchell did not look back. He did not want to see Alan standing there bleeding and shaking his fist. Boy, thought Mitchell bitterly, as he wove his way around the patches of gravel, how unfair can a fellow get? He takes a spill that was his own fault, and now he says he’s going to get me for it.Well, Mitchell had learned one thing even if he had to learn it the hard way. His father and all the people who said that ignoring a bully would make him go away were wrong. At least they were wrong if the bully was Alan Hibbler.

    Mitchell wondered if the other people were wrong, too, the people who said that if you fight a bully he will back down. As Mitchell pumped hard to get a run at his steep driveway, he knew that sooner or later he was going to have to find out.

6
Rainy Saturday
    A my decided being a twin was much harder on a rainy Saturday than at any other time. Mitchell could be so exasperating. By the time lunch was over, she and Mitchell were in the midst of an argument over which television program they should watch. The argument was their second that day, not counting the one over which had received the shinier twenty-five cent piece for his allowance. Amy could not resist giving Mitchell a shove when he reached overto switch the set from the program she was watching to an old Western movie.
    â€œEvery action has a reaction,” Mitchell informed his sister as he shoved back. “It’s just like the scientist told us at school. If you shove me, I have to react and shove back.” Once a week a scientist talked to the fourth grades about all sorts of interesting things—molecules, air pressure, and how a satellite moved through space without a motor.
    Amy was a little surprised at this application of the scientist’s talk about action and reaction, which had been illustrated by a movie of a cannon reacting to firing by recoiling, but she lost no time in getting into the spirit of this new scientific development. She shoved back at Mitchell and said, “And when you shove me back, I have to react and shove you back again.”
    At this point Mr. Huff smiled a bit grimly, walked across