Free Noah Barleywater Runs Away by John Boyne Page A

children in the class, and this was mostly on account of the fact that I had not known them as long as they had known each other.
    ‘We don’t care for new boys here,’ said Toby Lovely one afternoon, walking towards me and sitting down on the corner of my desk before picking up a wooden pencil box that Poppa had designed for me. ‘Can’t you go to school somewhere else? The class is against you as a whole.’
    ‘But there isn’t anywhere else,’ I told him, shrugging my shoulders. ‘This is the only school in the village. Unless you want me to go to school with the donkeys.’
    ‘Well, it’s an option, surely,’ said Toby Lovely.
    ‘I’ve promised Poppa that I’ll come here every day from now on,’ I insisted.
    ‘Answer me back, will you?’ he snapped, turning to all his friends, who immediately agreed that this was a tremendous insult, and waited until the lunch break to jump on top of me and bend my arms back and pull my hair on account of it. When I emerged from the pile I was covered in bruises and scrapes, a pitiful sight to anyone who caught sight of me on the road home. Even Jasper Bennett, who was no longer being bullied since the other boys had found a new fellow to kick around, had jumped on me, which just went to prove that you could trust no one in this world, or that one.
    ‘This would never have happened if you’d stayed as you were,’ Poppa told me later that evening when he was putting plasters on my wounds and a dab of disinfectant on my scabs to keep the infection out. ‘You have to take more care now. You have to try to make friends with the other boys, not get into fights with them.’

    The next day he went in to talk to Mrs Shields about the problem, and she told him that she would try to make sure that no one picked on me but that boys would be boys and there was really very little she could do about it. She said that if I wanted to have a happier time in school then I would have to stand up for myself, because in the end, nobody could help me but myself.
    To be honest, Noah Barleywater (said the old man), it wasn’t very helpful advice.

Chapter Eight

Noah and the Old Man
    ‘So why did your father carve a puppet of Mrs Shields?’ asked Noah, holding up the toy and pulling the string so a piece of chalk flew out from her hand a great distance before reeling itself back into the grip of her gnarly old claws.
    ‘It was a gift, I think,’ said the old man. ‘He thought that if he was kind to her, then she might help me. But I think she thought it meant something more, which in turn led to a series of romantic misunderstandings – which are, I think, stories for another time. Anyway, she didn’t help me much, that was the crux of it. But as it turned out, she was right. I did have to look out for myself. You probably have to do the same thing.’
    ‘Me?’ asked Noah, looking up in surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Well, aren’t you running away from home because you’re being bullied? It seemed like the most obvious explanation to me.’
    ‘Oh no,’ said Noah, shaking his head. ‘No, Ihave a lot of friends at school, although I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t. There’s a boy in our class called Gregory Fish, and he gets bullied all the time on account of the fact that he says all his Rs as if they were Ws.’
    ‘Well, that’s not very nice, is it?’ asked the old man. ‘You’re not mean to him, I hope?’
    Noah shrugged his shoulders and looked away. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, his face reddening a little. ‘I don’t mean to be.’
    ‘Hmm,’ said the old man, shaking his head as he chipped away at the piece of wood he held in his hands and then lifted it to the light to examine it carefully. ‘And do you think you’ll miss those friends of yours?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t miss them yet,’ said Noah, thinking about the games they played together and the adventures they had. ‘But I expect I will in time. They are very good friends, after