B.u.g. Big Ugly Guy (9781101593523)

by Yolen, Jane; Stemple, Adam

  “No problemo,” Sammy said, meaning both.

  Either way, Sammy was glad he had a friend who cared.

  Both days he and Skink sat down together at an empty table that quickly filled up with seventh and eighth graders. Safety in numbers, Sammy thought gratefully, though he knew the others weren’t there to save him but to talk to Skink. But Skink often deferred to Sammy.

  “Hey, Skink, where’d you learn those karate moves?” Bobby Marstall asked, making a chopping motion with his right hand while his left pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

  Mouth full, Skink gestured to Sammy.

  “It’s not karate,” Sammy said quickly. “It’s a Korean martial arts. Over a thousand years old. He’s been studying it for some time.”

  “Though not a thousand years, I bet!” That was Marsha Hazelton. She looked around expecting a patter of laughter, and there was a little.

  Sammy nodded, adding, “Skink’s mom is Korean and she’s got great moves, too. A black belt. She’s known throughout Korea. In fact, she’s amazing.” Now Sammy was just making stuff up, but Skink seemed to enjoy it. “His mom was born in Seoul, which is the capital of Korea, which makes Skink a soul man in two ways.”

  For a moment there was a blank look around the table, and then Bobby brightened. “Oh, like soul food. And . . . er . . .” Now laughter pounded the table and Sammy glanced to the right where James Lee and his gang were at another table, not even eating, just watching. They were too far away to have heard any of the actual conversation, but their reaction to the laughter was one of scowls and rapid-fire glares, as if they assumed the laughter was at their expense.

  Sammy realized there was a battle brewing, but for the first time he felt he was holding his own. He had a champion in Skink, and a table full of friends.

  But James Lee suddenly began to stand up, unfolding in a loose, almost boneless way, like something out of a monster movie.

  “Attack of the skin men,” Sammy whispered, nodding in James Lee’s direction.

  Still chewing, Skink flexed his hands. It was clear from his expression that the right hand was still sore.

  Sammy imitated him, then looked around the table to see if anyone was noticing. All he saw was a sea of scared faces.

  As James Lee walked toward them, his crew followed in his wake. An armada of know-nothings, Sammy thought. They’d been studying the Spanish Armada in history class.

  James Lee planted himself at the head of Sammy’s table. He was smiling lazily, like Dirty Harry on a slow day.

  “Not laughing at us, I’m sure,” he drawled.

  “Why?” Skink said. “Are you funny?”

  “Or just funny looking?” Bobby Marstall said, from the safety of the far end of the table. His face was almost green with fear. He’d clearly spoken without thinking.

  Sammy swallowed visibly. He was the one closest to James Lee. He wondered if he’d be punished for what Bobby had said.

  Suddenly, the James Lee crew began to surround the table, and the boys and girls all started bailing out, like rats over the side of a soon-to-be-sinking ship, leaving Skink and Sammy to face the trouble alone. There was a clattering of trays as they went, and some stuff even spilled onto the floor, but no one stopped to pick anything up.

  “Now, James—” Sammy began, in what he often thought of as his apology voice, a bit whiny and higher than usual. But he never got a chance to finish because just then James Lee took a swing at Skink.

  It was a big looping punch that Sammy thought would have probably knocked Skink’s head clean off his shoulders if it had connected. But Skink had obviously not been as surprised as Sammy by James Lee’s assault. He leaned back so that the fist whistled past his chin, assisted by a left-handed slap to the forearm that Skink delivered with the swiftness of a cobra. Then Skink was on his feet, his right hand flashing forward—holding a milk carton that smacked James Lee in the face.

  Sammy was expecting the fight to be like the movies, where every blow was accompanied by a bass thump and crack, and the action was smoothly choreographed. Instead, Skink’s milk carton slap sounded like a piece of uncooked pizza dropped on a countertop. It made Sammy’s stomach flip over. Blood exploded from James Lee’s nose, mixing with the milk and making a crazy, starless American flag down his white T-shirt. And then Skink went down in a rush of bodies as the rest of the Boyz tackled him high and low.

  Sammy had no idea what he would do once he reached his feet—run, yell, scream, kick, jump in?

  What is that reflex called? Fight or flight? he thought wildly. But by then it didn’t matter anyway. James Lee knocked the breath out of him with a casual left-handed punch before leaping on top of the writhing pile that Skink lay under.

  The action got very hard to follow after that because Sammy was curled up and gasping for breath, trying desperately not to cry. Only he couldn’t convince his traitor eyes not to leak.

  The whole thing didn’t last very long. Only long enough for teachers to appear from everywhere and start dragging kids from the pile.

  At first, the Boyz threw them off and tried to get back to kicking Skink, but he was already on his feet in an instant and glaring at them, Ms. Holsten restraining him ineffectually. The Boyz probably would have tried the kicking anyway, but the wrestling coach had arrived by then and wrapped James Lee up in his massive arms. With their leader caught, the Boyz lost interest and let themselves be led quietly out of the cafeteria.

  Though James Lee’s nose was flattened to one side, and the wrestling coach had him in a hold that threatened to make his arms trade places with each other, he was grinning like he’d just found a hundred-dollar bill on the ground.

  Or, Sammy thought, like he’d just found somebody’s weak spot.

  “You okay, Sammy?” asked Mrs. Henke, one of the old lunch ladies who slopped food onto the kids’ trays five times a week.

  “Yes,” he croaked. “Wind . . . knocked . . . out.”

  “Well, dearie, let me help you up.” Mrs. Henke put her big arms around him and hauled him to his feet. Her arms smelled like baking bread.

  Great. Everyone else is physically restrained by wrestling coaches and burly gym teachers, and I get hugged by Hilde Henke. I’m sure that’ll do great things for what’s left of my reputation.

  Still, he let himself be bundled off to the nurse’s office for a humiliating checkup (“Were you hit in the stomach? Or someplace lower?”) before being taken to the principal’s office to hear the last part of Principal Kraft’s speech, where he informed everyone involved that if there was a repeat of this incident, suspensions would be handed down.

  “Now, I’m giving you all a week’s worth of detention,” said Principal Kraft—the Head Cheese, they all called him, even the teachers. “And it starts now. This instant. You’ll miss the rest of the school day. All of you. Ms. Snyder! Get them out of here. I can’t stand to look at them.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t stand to look at you either, Stinky Cheese Man,” said James Lee, not under his breath enough.

  “My, my,” Principal Kraft said, “I do believe James Lee you’ve made a book reference. Maybe school’s not entirely lost on you after all.”

  Sammy was more than a little astonished. And then he thought: Probably the teacher read the book to the class in elementary school.

  He was about to say that aloud when Skink elbowed him, causing him to cough.

  “Do you have something to add, Mr. Greenburg?” the principal asked.

  “Nothing, sir,” Sammy said quickly, and they all left the office.

  “The Bug speaks,” James Lee said out of the side of his mouth.

  “The Stink Bug speaks,” added one of his crew, a tall skinny boy with acne like pepperoni pizza.

  Ms. Snyder snapped, “I heard that, Jamison Lee. And you, too, Mel Gravel.”

  Jamison. Sammy felt
happy about James Lee for the first time in days. It was like all the fantasy books he’d ever read. If you know your enemy’s True Name, you have power over him. He wondered if Jamison had ever read a book about that!

  “Are you laughing, Stink Bug?” James—Jamison—Lee hissed.

  “Why, Jamison?” Sammy asked as Ms. Snyder separated the boys into two groups. He finished his sentence over his shoulder as James Lee and three of his boys were stashed in the first detention room, his voice consciously mimicking Skink’s. “Are you funny?”

  Then he, Skink, and the shortest member of James Lee’s crew, who wasn’t all that short really, were herded into the second room, across the hallway. Ms. Snyder was to be their detention teacher. She was tough but all right, with a funny way of finding humor in any situation. The wrestling coach was heading into the other room with James Lee and friends. And he had no sense of humor at all.

  7.

  Bar Mitzvah Boogie

  Detention did not pass quickly. Staying after school was bad enough when it was a half hour wasted. When it was all the classes after lunch and a half hour after school, detention was torture.

  Sammy tried to do his homework, but he was somehow reluctant to work on it. Still, homework was all they let you do in detention. He picked up his pen, opened his notebook, and . . . and started to write a song instead. He had a first line and nothing else. “The sword of boredom hangs over my head . . . ”

  He looked over at Skink who was deep into a math book. No help there. He glanced over at the James Lee crew member imprisoned with them. The boy stared at him through ice-blue eyes, all leather-clad menace.

  Shuddering, Sammy looked away.

  Why do they hate me? Why do they hate Skink? He bit his bottom lip and got a sudden inspiration. They hate everybody. They probably don’t even like themselves. That made him chuckle. Of course, what’s to like?

  “Something funny, Bug?” the boy hissed, probably hoping that only Sammy would hear. But Ms. Snyder could hear a leaf hit the ground from a tree three blocks away—probably why she was the best of the detention teachers.

  “Mr. Addison! No talking! You know the rules.” She peered sourly over her glasses at him. “Lord knows you’ve been in here with me often enough this year, Erik. That seat must be imprinted on your bottom.”

  Sammy worked hard not to grin and waited for Erik to say something snide back, but instead, he seemed to deflate before Ms. Snyder’s criticism and humor.

  “Sorry, Ms. Snyder,” he said.

  Rather meekly, Sammy thought.

  “I don’t know why you get yourself in so much trouble anyway,” Ms. Snyder said, though she was no longer looking at Erik. As the teacher, she got to bring a book to detention.

  Lucky her.

  Ms. Snyder turned a page and went on as if reading from a script. “You’re such a smart boy.” She paused, looked up. “Too smart for this kind of behavior.”

  Sammy almost choked. Smart? Erik? He’s a no-neck, lizard-brained, ignoram-a-saurus!

  “Yes, Ms. Snyder.”

  Yep, Sammy thought, a bit triumphantly, that is definitely meek.

  “And until you started hanging around Jamison and his crew—if you can remember that far back—you were a straight A student.”

  “Just luck, Ms. Snyder.”

  “Well, luck is what you make it, Erik. Luck and choices.” She was again looking at her book, and the conversation seemed to be over.

  Erik turned away from Ms. Snyder, from Sammy and Skink, and started staring out the window. His back was rigid. Sammy couldn’t tell if it was with embarrassment or anger. Or both.

  He didn’t want to join one of James Lee’s friends in any kind of activity, but after a moment, Sammy stared out the window, too. There was nothing else to do. And he had a lot to think about. About Erik Addison and his A’s and what made him choose the Jamison Lee crew. About bullying and bullies and whether it was worth fighting back.

  “Mr. Greenburg!” Ms. Snyder’s shout was Sammy’s first clue that he’d dozed off.

  Oh, no, I’ll probably get more detention for that.

  But Ms. Snyder was just alerting him to the fact that the intercom had buzzed and his father was there to pick him up.

  “But, why is he . . .” Sammy began, and then he remembered. Hebrew lessons. He wondered idly if it was his grandfather’s illness that made his parents decide he needed to be bar mitzvahed. Or if this happened to all almost-thirteen-year-old Jewish boys. One day not religious, the next day . . . in Hebrew class.

  He’d totally forgotten today was the day for his first Hebrew lesson, and only now recalled that both the temple and teacher were forty miles away.

  This day’s just gone from bad to worse. Sammy put his chin in his hands.

  “Mr. Greenburg,” Ms. Snyder said again. “Your father . . .”

  Sammy rose slowly, rolled his eyes at Skink, and headed toward the door. The temple was miles away and class started too soon after school for Dad to wait for the bus to bring Sammy home.

  But before Sammy got to the door, Ms. Snyder nodded at Skink as well. “You, too, Mr. Williams. You are evidently carpooling with Mr. Greenburg. So you can leave now, too.”

  “Carpooling . . .” Sammy stuttered, but Skink was quicker on the uptake.

  “Yeah, carpooling, doncha, like, remember?” Skink grabbed his books and made for the door. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Ms. Snyder.”

  “Yeah, um, tomorrow,” Sammy muttered, and exited after Skink as quickly as he could.

  Neither one of them bothered to look back at Erik, who was still staring out the window.

  Sammy’s dad drummed his thick potter’s fingers on the wheel as Sammy and Skink piled into the already-running car.

  “Let’s go, boys. I don’t want us to be late. Your mom says Rabbi Chaim is a stickler for promptness.” He checked his watch briefly before returning to his drumming. As soon as seat belts were fastened he gunned the car out of the school lot.

  “Thanks for, like, busting us out,” Skink said.

  Sammy’s dad looked at Skink in the rearview mirror, then back at the road. “Sammy and I have to get to Carston before four for his Hebrew lessons. I told your mother I’d pick you up, too, since I was going to be at the school anyway. And your house is kind of on the way.” Then he grinned as he signaled a left turn. “And besides, detention is a drag.” He turned and gave Sammy as long a look as he dared while driving. “Doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed, son. A week of detention? What did you do? Steal money from the principal?”

  Sammy looked down. “A fight,” he said. “Not my fault, though.”

  “It really wasn’t,” Skink said. “He was just trying to help me. Now, like, tell me about these Hebrew lessons. My mom and dad speak some Hebrew, from their time in Israel. They use it when they want to say something in front of me they don’t want me to understand. I’d love to go with you and learn some. Maybe surprise them when they’re spilling secrets!”

  “Hey—I’ve got an idea. Why not let him do my bar mitzvah?” Sammy said. “Make everybody happy.”

  His dad grinned, shook his head. “Nice try, Sammy. But it doesn’t work that way. For starters—Skink isn’t even Jewish.”

  “And for another,” Skink said, “I’m already fourteen.”

  “Nice try, too, Skinner,” Sammy’s dad said. “I have a sixty-year-old cousin-in-law who just converted to Judaism and had a bar mitzvah. It’s really a way of confirming one is now a man and Jewish.”

  Skink and Sammy slapped palms.

  “I’m the man!” Sammy said.

  “Not yet,” his dad said. “Not quite yet.” He pulled over and picked up his cell phone. “But I’ll call your parents, Skinner, and tell them you’re going to spend the afternoon with us in Hebrew school.”

  Skink’s mother picked up on the second ring
and actually loved the idea. “But tell him not to get his hopes up. If he learns enough Hebrew to understand us, we’ll just switch to Korean.”

  Mr. Greenburg related the conversation to the boys with a laugh.

  “Okay, on to Carston, then,” he told them. “This is the Bar Mitzvah Boogie Bus. I think you boys will like Chaim Handleman. He’s an Israeli, a music teacher, and—so I’m told—the best bar mitzvah coach this side of Chicago.” He turned back onto the street and from there to the interstate.

  Along the way to Carston, Sammy and Skink made up a song.

  “Maybe the first original the band will do,” Sammy said. They called it “Bar Mitzvah Boogie.”

  “A work in progress,” Skink said.

  “Not a lot of progress,” Sammy added.

  But in fact, they got the first two verses done. Sammy scribbled them in his English class notebook. Putting them down somehow made the band real.

  Going down the road

  In the bar mitzvah bus,

  Boogie and klezmer

  And fusion ’R’ Us.

  Making some music

  And making a fuss.

  Going down the road

  (Chorus)

  Going down the road,

  Going down the road.

  Rolling and rocking

  To get there on time,

  Learning some Hebrew

  And rhythm and rhyme.

  Trying some Hebrew

  And speaking with Chaim.

  Going down the road.

  (Chorus)

  “I bet that’s the first time the name Chaim was ever in a rock song,” said Skinner. “A klezmer jazz boogie pop fusion rock song!”

  “Maybe,” Mr. Greenburg said, banging out the rhythm on the steering wheel as the boys read the words off the page with an ever-increasing driving beat.

  “No maybes.” Sammy was adamant. “This band has no maybes in it.” But inside, he knew that it was full of maybes. The first being that maybe Julia Nathanson would join.