Dexter the Tough

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Back home, Dexter’s friends sometimes made jokes about Dexter’s name—“Where’s your laboratory, Dexter?”—because of the TV show. Sometimes the jokes were even funny. But Dexter always thought his name was cool, because it was the same as his dad’s middle name. It’d be awful to be named something like “Robin.” He wasn’t going to make fun of it.

  Dexter shrugged and started to turn away. Then he thought of something else.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked.

  The way his teacher acted about writing, she’d probably insist on full names in Dexter’s story.

  “Bryce,” Robin said.

  “That’s a good name,” Dexter said, because he was starting to feel a little bit sorry that he’d beaten up Robin, if Robin already had people making fun of him all the time. And Robin was still half up and half down, looking at Dexter like he still thought Dexter was going to hit him again, right in front of the playground monitor and everyone.

  “If I was you,” Dexter offered, “I think I’d just have people call me by my last name. Just say, ‘Hi, I’m Bryce.’ And then nobody would even know that your real name was Robin.”

  “Everybody already knows me,” Robin said sulkily. But he sat back down a little, not so ready to run.

  “I didn’t,” Dexter said. “I’m new. You could have just told me to call you Bryce and I never would have known any different.”

  Robin squinted up at Dexter.

  “My middle name’s William,” he finally said. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Dexter said. “You could be ‘Bill’ or ‘Billy’ or something like that.”

  Robin stared off into the distance.

  “No,” he said after a while. “I really like being Robin. I just don’t like other kids making fun of it. Maybe . . . ” He looked sideways at Dexter. “Maybe I could tell them you’ll beat them up if they keep doing that?”

  Dexter’s stomach started feeling funny again.

  “Beat them up yourself,” Dexter said.

  “I’m not very good at fighting,” Robin said, shrugging helplessly. “You saw me this morning.”

  Dexter had a flash of remembering his fist hitting Robin’s jaw. He felt like he was going to throw up that weird tuna fish sandwich Grandma had packed for his lunch.

  “Look,” Dexter said. “You’re a lot bigger than me. Stand up.”

  Obediently, Robin scrambled all the way up. Dexter’s nose barely came up to the middle of Robin’s chest.

  “Let me see your muscles.”

  Robin lifted his arm, and bent it at the elbow. Maybe he had more flab than muscle, but his arm was at least twice as thick as Dexter’s.

  “See, if you’d really tried, you could have beaten me up,” Dexter said encouragingly. “If you’d gotten one good hit in, you would have knocked me out. You probably would have put me in the hospital.”

  “Yeah?” Robin said excitedly.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dexter said, nodding. “I’m sure of it. So just tell the other kids that.”

  Robin let his arm fall to his side.

  “My mom would kill me if she heard I was telling people stuff like that,” he said hopelessly. “Even if I said you would beat them up. She doesn’t approve of fighting. She’s really picky like that.”

  Dexter felt his fists clench together. And if the playground monitor hadn’t blown her whistle just then, ending recess, he might have beaten Robin up all over again.

  No matter what he’d promised.

  Chapter 4

  Grandma was waiting at the curb when Dexter got off the bus that afternoon. She had curly white old-lady hair, and sturdy brown old-lady shoes, and a stretchy red old-lady pantsuit. Dexter hoped nobody on the bus thought she was his mom.

  “You don’t have to come and get me,” he said, first thing, as soon as he stepped off the bus.

  Grandma gave him a tired smile.

  “I know,” she said. “I know you’re a big boy. But I thought it might feel a little strange to you, coming home to a different house.” She pushed open the gate that separated her yard from the sidewalk. “How was your first day of school?”

  Dexter thought about how much he hated the principal, and the secretary, and the janitor, and his teacher, and the kids who had laughed at him. He thought about how he’d gotten in a fight—how he’d beaten up Robin Bryce.

  Then he thought about how Mom and Dad had said he wasn’t supposed to make any trouble for Grandma, how he wasn’t supposed to worry her.

  “It was okay,” he said. “The teacher sent home a list of supplies I need.” He pulled the sheet of paper out of his backpack and handed it to Grandma.

  Grandma frowned.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Back when your mother and Uncle Ted were in school, kids just needed paper and something to write with. What’s this—colored pencils? Fat markers and skinny ones, too?” She sighed. “Guess we’ll have to run out to the store after dinner.”

  “I have markers at home,” Dexter said. “I just forgot to bring them.”

  Why hadn’t Mom or Dad reminded him? Dexter felt mad again. He kicked at the step as he climbed toward Grandma’s porch. But his kick missed and he lost his balance and fell over backward. He landed flat on the sidewalk. He thought he heard kids laughing as the bus pulled away.

  Grandma squinted down at him.

  Mom would have said, “Child, just what do you think you’re doing?” And Dad would have said, “A swing—and a miss! Strike one! Can we see the instant replay? Bet you couldn’t do that again if you tried!” But Grandma said in a scared voice, “Are you all right?” And somehow that made Dexter feel worse, like maybe there was something really, really wrong with him. Had Dad’s problems started with him falling down?

  “I’m fine,” Dexter told Grandma fiercely, as he jumped back up. His ankle hurt now, and he’d banged his elbow hard. He tried not to limp across the porch.

  Grandma still looked worried.

  “I made you a snack,” she said, pushing open the front door. “I remember how your mom and Uncle Ted were always so hungry, getting home from school. Just come on into the kitchen.”

  The snack was graham crackers and canned pears. Dexter looked down at the pears in their slimy syrup and felt his throat starting to close over again.

  “Do you have any homework?” Grandma said, sliding into the chair across from him. “Anything you need help with?”

  “Uh, no,” Dexter said. “I mean, yes, I have some homework. But I don’t need help.”

  Grandma just sat there.

  “I can do it by myself,” Dexter repeated. He really, really, really didn’t want Grandma to see the story he’d written, the one he had to rewrite.

  “Okay,” Grandma said, inching her chair back. She clutched the table, and pulled herself up. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be in the living room watching TV if you need me.” She began to hobble away.

  Dexter waited until she was gone. He heard her heaving herself onto the living room couch. He listened for the TV to come on before he pulled his story out of his backpack. He smoothed it out on the table. He drew a big X through everything he’d written before. Then he put the point of his pencil down directly beneath his teacher’s questions:

  I’m the new kid, he wrote. He started to write, I am tuf again, but it wasn’t worth it if he had to spell the word “t-o-u-g-h.”

  This morning I beat up Robin Bryce. In the bathroom. The one between the office and your classroom. With the blue tile on the wall.

  He looked at the teacher’s questions again. He’d answered everything except “Why did you get in a fight?” He took a break and spooned one of the slimy pear slices up to his mouth. It slithered down his throat like some tiny animal, a fish or a toad or a lizard. It seemed to be fighting to come back up. Dexter swallowed hard. He chewed a graham cracker that tasted soggy and nasty and old. Maybe it came out of a box that Grandma had kept from when Mom and Uncle Ted were little. Maybe one of them had cried on
it. It tasted like tears.

  He pressed his pencil down hard against his paper.

  I was mad, he wrote.

  Chapter 5

  Dexter put his story back in his backpack. He put the rest of the canned pears in the garbage. He put the box of graham crackers on the counter. He stood in the middle of the kitchen floor wondering what he was supposed to do next.

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  Someone on Grandma’s TV show was laughing.

  Dexter tiptoed into the living room. On the TV screen a little girl was standing in front of a whole classroom of other kids, and they were all laughing at her because her mother had used the wrong laundry detergent. Dexter had seen this commercial before. He used to laugh at it himself. Now he looked over at the couch to see if Grandma was laughing too.

  Grandma had her head tilted back and her eyes closed. Her glasses were practically falling off the tip of her nose. Her mouth hung open, her chin sagging down toward her chest. She wasn’t moving. It didn’t even look like she was breathing.

  Oh, no. What if Grandma was dead?

  “Grandma?” Dexter whispered.

  No answer. On the TV screen, the embarrassed girl was replaced by a huge airplane zooming closer and closer. . . .

  “Grandma!” Dexter screamed.

  Grandma bolted upright.

  “Wha . . . Huh?” She swung her head frantically side to side, as if she expected to see the room bursting into flames, or a burglar crawling in the window, or a tiger leaping through the doorway. “Dexter, what on earth—?”

  Dexter couldn’t exactly tell her he’d thought she was dead.

  “I, um, finished my homework,” he said.

  “Well, goodness, that’s no reason to yell,” Grandma said.

  “Were you asleep?” Dexter asked.

  “Nonsense. I was just resting my eyes,” Grandma said, blinking drowsily. She shoved her glasses back into place, shook her head a little, then patted the couch cushion beside her. “Want to come sit and watch with me?”

  Dexter looked doubtfully at the TV. The regular program was back on—an old man warbling some old-fashioned-sounding song.

  “I guess not,” Grandma said. “Want to go play outside until dinner?”

  Dexter thought about Grandma’s yard, a little rectangle in the front and an even smaller rectangle in the back.

  “Play what?” he asked.

  “Um . . . ” she began. Then her expression brightened suddenly. “I know! I still have your uncle Ted’s bike in the garage. He used to ride it around the neighborhood all the time after school. Him and Charlie Lincoln and Franklin Jones and Anthony Teeters—what fun those boys had! I can still see the four of them, riding down the street. . . . ”

  Grandma had a faraway look on her face now, like she really was back in the past, watching Uncle Ted, a little kid again.

  “Land sakes, that must have been thirty years ago,” Grandma said, laughing a little. “Here they are, all grown men now, and three of the four of them bald as posts!”

  Dexter tried to imagine his uncle Ted riding a bike. Uncle Ted was not just grown-up and bald. He was also so tall that he had to duck his head to walk through doors. On a little-kid bike, his knees would hit his chin and his long arms would dangle over the handlebars, like a clown act in the circus.

  Grandma stopped laughing.

  “Oops, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, ‘bald as posts,’ ” Grandma said. “I just didn’t think.”

  Dexter remembered who else was bald now: Daddy. The medicine had made him lose his hair. But what had always looked normal and natural and right on Uncle Ted looked strange and scary and sad on Dexter’s dad.

  “The key to the garage is in the kitchen drawer, right by the sink,” Grandma was saying now, quickly. “If you need to put air in any of the tires, the bike pump’s beside your grandfather’s old tool table.”

  “Okay,” Dexter said. He didn’t feel like riding a bike anymore—he hadn’t felt like it to begin with. But he couldn’t stay here with Grandma right now.

  Chapter 6

  Dexter got the key from the kitchen drawer and unlocked the garage. He fought his way past Grandma’s car, and an old lawn mower, and a bunch of old clay pots. The bike was behind a stack of wood posts. Dexter kicked at the tires—they were pretty flat. But he’d never operated a bike pump before, so he decided he didn’t care. By jerking and pulling and yanking, he got the bike out to the driveway.

  Mom and Dad never would have made me do that by myself, he thought. They would have unlocked the garage for me and held on to the key so I wouldn’t lose it. They would have pumped up the tires, to make sure they were safe. They would have made me wear a helmet.

  Angrily, Dexter straddled the bike and kicked one pedal toward the ground. The bike lurched forward. But Dexter had forgotten about the kickstand, so the tires skidded to a halt as soon as the other pedal slammed against it. Dexter would have gone flying over the handlebars if he hadn’t been holding on so tightly. As it was, he had to stretch his toe to the ground to keep from falling. The pedal scraped against his leg.

  Don’t look, Dexter told himself. Don’t look and you can forget you got hurt. See? No pain at all. None.

  Without even glancing down, he used the toe of his shoe to shove the kickstand up and out of the way. Then he began pedaling furiously down the block.

  He passed one old house after another. They blurred together, even though Dexter wasn’t going very fast.

  Mom and Dad never would have let me do this, he thought. Back home, he wasn’t allowed to cross the street by himself. When he rode his bike, he had to stay on the sidewalk in front of his own house. He couldn’t go beyond that without a grown-up.

  Grandma doesn’t care, he told himself.

  He came to the corner and let his tire bump down into the street. He rode up the wheelchair ramp on the other side, onto the next sidewalk. He’d done it—he’d crossed the street all by himself and nothing had happened.

  So there, he thought.

  But it didn’t really feel exciting to be out riding a bike all by himself. It felt lonely and scary and sad.

  Dexter crossed more streets, and turned a couple corners. He kept telling himself he needed to keep track of where he was going. But he had trouble remembering, especially when he had to work so hard just to push down on the pedals and keep the bike going.

  And he was getting a funny idea in his head that made it hard for him to think about anything else. Maybe, just maybe, it would turn out that Uncle Ted’s bike was magic, and Dexter would end up back in Cincinnati if he kept pedaling. And Mom and Dad would be there, and everything would be okay again: Daddy wouldn’t be sick and Mommy would have all the time in the world to be a mom. And Dexter never would have had to move in with Grandma or go to a new school or hate everyone or beat up anyone. . . .

  “Hey!”

  Dexter looked up, half expecting to see his own familiar street in front of him, his own familiar house. But he was in front of a huge park now. The bike hadn’t carried Dexter home. Of course it hadn’t.

  Dexter looked at the little-kid swings and slides in the park. Wait a minute—he remembered this place. Dexter’s dad used to bring him here, years ago, those times when they were all visiting Grandma and Dexter would get squirmy sitting on her stiff furniture and trying to be polite.

  “We boys just need some run-around time, don’t we, Dex?” Dad would say. And then he’d race Dexter across the park, and they’d fall on the ground in a heap, laughing and squealing.

  Daddy wouldn’t even be able to walk to the park now, Dexter thought, kicking harder than ever at the pedals.

  “Hey!” someone said again.

  Dexter had already forgotten the first yell, because he’d been too busy thinking about how the bike wasn’t magic and how Daddy maybe wouldn’t be able to run with him ever again. But this time he looked around, past the swings and slides. Someone was waving at him.

  Robin Bryce.

  Rob
in came running toward him. A woman carrying a little brown dog was behind him, trying to keep up.

  “You’ve got blood all over your leg!” Robin shouted as soon as he was close enough that Dexter could hear him well.

  “Do I?” Dexter asked.

  He looked down, and there was a stream of blood starting where he’d scraped his leg on the pedal. It ran all the way down to his shoe. The blood was bright red, a shocking color soaking into his white sock. He felt dizzy just looking at it.

  “Oh, dear,” the woman behind Robin said. “I’m Robin’s mom. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Dexter shrugged.

  “I just hit my leg against the pedal by mistake,” he said. “I’m okay.”

  Robin stared, his eyes almost popping out of his head.

  “Wow,” he said. “You’re really brave.”

  Dexter felt his face get hot.

  “I better go now,” he said. “You know—before I bleed any more.”

  He wasn’t sure he could make it back to Grandma’s, now that he’d seen what his leg looked like. Anyhow, the muscles in both his legs ached just from pedaling to the park. And he couldn’t quite remember the directions. Had he turned right or left by that house with the yellow awnings?

  Still, he was scared that if he stayed here, Robin would say, “See, Mom, this is the boy I was telling you about, the one who beat me up this morning. Aren’t you going to call the principal now? Aren’t you going to call the police?”

  Dexter put his right foot back up on the pedal and started to push off, but Robin’s mom dropped the dog and grabbed Dexter’s handlebars.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You can’t ride home with a wound like that. And look—both your tires have gone completely flat.”

  Dexter looked. The tires didn’t look any flatter than they had when he’d started out.

  “We live right over there,” Robin’s mom said, pointing at a small white house at the edge of the park. “Why don’t you let me clean up your wound and give you a Band-Aid? And then I could drive you home.”