The Bully Bug

by David Lubar

  “Ms. Edderly told us she was going to give extra credit to anyone who did an act in the show.”

  Oh man. If I could get extra credit from her, I could pass English. Then I wouldn’t have to go to summer school. I could sleep late and go fishing and do all the things a kid is supposed to do during the summer.

  “Come on,” Bud said. “You’d be great. You’d be the best act in the talent show. I wasn’t sure how to spell comedian, so when I signed you up, I just wrote that you tell jokes.”

  “Talent show?” I heard a mocking voice say from behind me. “You’re going to be in the talent show?”

  I spun around toward the voice. I knew who it was before I even looked. That show-off wise guy, Sebastian. He thinks he’s so cool, just because he’s got friends and stuff. Now he was grinning at me.

  “You think that’s funny?” I asked, taking a step toward him. I felt my right hand curl into a fist. “Do you?”

  “No.” He shook his head, and I could see a bit of fear in his eyes. That was more like it.

  “Good.” I moved a step closer to him. “Because I just might be in that stupid show.”

  “Sure. Hey—you’d be great. What kind of act would it be? Weight lifting?”

  Oh man, I really wanted to smash him in the face. He thought he was so funny. But the last time I hit someone, I’d gotten kicked out of school for a whole week. That wasn’t so bad, except Dad had been pretty angry and didn’t let me watch any television at all that whole time. Besides, I can’t get kicked out of school. Bud needs me around to help keep him out of trouble.

  So I just said, “Yeah. I’ll be in the show,” and turned away from him.

  Behind my back, I could hear him calling to someone, “Hey, you’ll never believe this.”

  Now the whole place would know about it. And I’d have to do the show. If I backed out, I’d look like a fool. But if I did the show, I’d probably end up an even bigger fool.

  “This is going to be great,” Bud said.

  Well, there was one thing I could do without getting into trouble. Thwack! I smacked Bud on the back of the head.

  “Hey!” he shouted, but he didn’t make too much of a fuss, since I knew he didn’t want either of us to get into trouble. “What was that for?”

  “For signing me up,” I told him.

  “Last time I do you a favor,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  I let it go and went on to my next class. I didn’t come up with any surprise answers in that one. Which was fine with me. I’d never want to be some kind of show-off anyhow. Some people think they’re so smart just because they know the answers.

  Then I had science. Kids were giving their reports. I hadn’t done mine yet. That nerd was up front. I just couldn’t seem to get away from him today. He was doing this big report on insects. Dad would have gone crazy. He’d have stomped on the jars the nerd had brought—they were filled with all kinds of bugs—and then whipped out the spray. I didn’t pay too much attention. I really didn’t care about bugs.

  He was telling all these gross things about how bugs eat each other. And how bugs can change their shape. And how some insects stick their eggs inside other insects. It was really disgusting. He kept using these big words that nobody could possibly understand. What’s the point of talking if nobody knows what you mean?

  The only part I liked was watching Sebastian. I think he was scared of bugs. Every time the nerd waved around one of his jars, Sebastian looked like he was going to fly out of his seat. Hey—fly away from bugs. That’s funny.

  After that, it was time for lunch. I couldn’t wait. I ran out of science and headed for the cafeteria. Mom packs great lunches. I like bologna and cheese on a roll with mustard. Mom makes the rolls from scratch, just like the waffles. Bud eats peanut butter every day. He has no imagination.

  I was all set for a nice, quiet meal. But a minute or two after Bud and I sat down, he started gagging and pointing at me. He looked like he was going to throw up.

  Seven

  COMMON SCENTS

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Yuck. You’re drooling all over the place,” he said. “That’s really gross.”

  I looked down. Oh man. Bud was right. I’d drooled all over the table in front of me. Totally disgusting. And over my food. I wiped my chin. It was soaked.

  “Sorry,” I said to Bud.

  “That’s okay.” He went back to eating his sandwich.

  And I went back to eating mine. It was a little soggy, but that was okay.

  Nothing else strange happened in the rest of my classes. Finally, school was over for the day. I was walking home with Bud when the greatest thing hit me.

  “Wow, smell that?” I asked Bud.

  “Smell what?” he asked.

  I sniffed and looked around the street. The smell was fabulous. It seemed like fresh baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate, cotton candy, orange soda, cherry pie, and a thousand other great things, all together. I kept sniffing as I walked. The smell was so nice, it pulled me along.

  “Where you going?” Bud asked.

  I didn’t bother to answer. I had to find the smell. It grew stronger as I moved down the street. It was so wonderful, I closed my eyes. I didn’t want anything to distract me. It had to be near. The smell was so thick, it almost felt like I could slice it with a knife.

  “Lud, hold on,” Bud called from behind me.

  I barely heard him. I stood for a moment, letting the aroma wash over me. Then I took another step. It grew stronger. Another step. I was surrounded by the glorious smell.

  Wow. I bent over and sucked in a deep breath. This was fabulous.

  “Hey!”

  Someone was shouting at me.

  “Get out of there, kid. Are you crazy?”

  I opened my eyes. And saw where I was. I’d stepped off the curb and was leaning over with my head stuck in the back of a truck. A garbage truck.

  I stared down at a mushed-up pile of crushed stuff. Rotting food. Paper towels. Tin cans. It looked disgusting.

  But it smelled like a dream.

  The guy kept shouting at me.

  I backed away from the truck. I hated to leave it. I hated to move away from that wonderful smell.

  Thwack!

  Bud hit me on the back of the head.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here. That thing stinks.” He grabbed my arm and started dragging me. At the same time, the guy got in the truck and drove it down the street. I stood where I was and enjoyed the aroma that was left in the air until it faded.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Bud asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” And that was the truth. I didn’t know. But something was wrong. That’s a fact. Something was wrong with me big-time. And I had no idea what it was. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Nah, let’s do something,” Bud said.

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “We could go to the mall.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not in the mood for that.”

  “What about the playground?”

  “No. We’ll just get in a fight if we go there.”

  Bud nodded. “Yeah. How about we go into town?”

  “Sure.” I figured that would be okay.

  “We can go to the old clothes place,” Bud said.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Find you something to wear at the talent show. You know, a fancy suit or something. Maybe a plaid jacket. Something flashy.”

  Thwack!

  I smacked him on the back of the head. “I’m not wearing any suit,” I said. “Besides, I don’t even know if I’m going to do the show.”

  “You have to do it,” Bud said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I signed you up. I gave my word. You know what Dad says, right?”

  I nodded. “When a Mellon gives you his word, you’ve got his word on it.” I’d heard Dad say that
often enough. “I didn’t give my word,” I said.

  “But I did,” Bud said. “So you have to.”

  This was getting worse and worse. If he gave his word and I backed out, then I’d be making him a liar. But if I did the show, I’d make a fool of myself. I couldn’t win, no matter what.

  There had to be some other way out. I tried to think of a plan, but my mind didn’t work that way.

  As we walked into town, I thought about the things that had happened to me since yesterday. Thinking about serious stuff isn’t my best thing. But it was pretty obvious, even to me, that my life had started getting strange after I was bitten by those bugs.

  By then, we’d reached town. And I realized where I wanted to go. It would be tough getting Bud to agree, but I knew I had to go there, with him or without.

  Eight

  THE ROOM IS BUGGED

  “Are you kidding?” Bud asked when I told him where I was going. “That would almost be like sneaking back into school.”

  “Come on,” I said. “It’ll be fun. They’ve got that mummy. And the fake dinosaur.”

  Bud shrugged. “I guess.…”

  “Great.” I headed toward the Lewington Natural History Museum. I wasn’t interested in the mummy or the dinosaur right now—though they really were the coolest things in the place. I wanted to look at the bugs. And they sure had lots of those—a whole room, from what I remembered. I hadn’t paid much attention the last time I was there. It was on a school trip, and our teacher kept talking the whole time, telling us all about what we were looking at.

  But right now, I needed to know about bugs. I kept thinking about what that nerd had said in his report. Some bugs stick eggs in other bugs. I sure hoped those things that bit me hadn’t done something like that. Or filled me with poison. I knew there were some kids who can get real sick from one bee sting. I had to find out what kind of bug had bitten me.

  “The mummy’s this way,” Bud said when we walked into the museum. He turned toward the left.

  “Go ahead,” I called after him. “I want to check out something over here.” I went down the hall to the right. At the end of the hallway, there was a room with a sign over the top: OUR INSECT FRIENDS.

  Speaking of insects who aren’t friends, the first thing I saw when I stepped inside was the nerd himself.

  He looked at me and gasped, then glanced all around like he was trying to find a way to escape. What did he think? I was going to beat him up for no reason? That made me so angry, I thought about hitting him.

  “You got a problem?” I asked.

  He shook his head and swallowed so hard, I could hear the sound from all the way across the room.

  I decided to ignore him. I started looking at the bugs. The room had glass tanks in the walls with live bugs, and they had a couple big tables in the middle of the room with tons of different dead bugs under sheets of glass. Each bug had a label. And there were some displays with pictures. One showed how a flea could jump real far. Another explained how an ant was real strong. One photo showed how a fly would eat its food by drooling on it first. Yuck. That was gross.

  There must have been a couple thousand bugs altogether. But I didn’t see a single one like the ones that had been chomping on me yesterday. I checked the whole place twice, just to make sure. As I was finishing up, I saw that the nerd was still in the room, studying this tank full of ants and writing stuff in a notebook.

  Maybe he knew what kind of bug it was that bit me. Heck, he knew something about everything. I hated to talk to him. I wasn’t even sure I could describe the bug all that well. Not with words. But maybe it was worth a try. Before I could make up my mind, Bud came into the room. “Hey, there you are,” he said, running up to me.

  The sight of the two of us in one place must have been too much for the nerd. He dashed out the door. Bud ignored him and told me, “I got tired of looking at the mummy. Let’s go.”

  “Sure. Might as well.” I followed Bud toward the exit from the bug room.

  As we were walking out, he glanced over at one of the tables, then said, “Hey, check this out. It looks just like the bug that bit you.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d found it just like that. I could have slugged him. Or hugged him. “Let me see.” I ran over to the display and looked where he was pointing. Yup. It was just like the ones in the cereal box, except it wasn’t green. I read the label. MIMIC BEETLE.

  “What’s a mimic?” I asked Bud.

  He shrugged. “Isn’t that one of those clown guys? You know, they do stuff without talking. That’s it, I think.”

  I was pretty sure Bud was wrong. He wasn’t the greatest when it came to knowing what a word meant. I mean, I wasn’t the greatest at that, either, but I was better than Bud. I figured it really didn’t matter.

  Under the name, the card just said, “A harmless ephemeral insect common to temperate regions of the northern hemisphere.” The harmless part was good. I didn’t care about the rest.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We left the museum. I was happy to be in the sun again. The light felt wonderful. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, and neither could Bud, so we headed toward home.

  I’d had so many strange things happen so far that I almost didn’t notice the strangest. We were just a couple blocks away from home when I finally figured out what was wrong.

  Nine

  SEEING RED

  “Look,” I told Bud, pointing to a car in the driveway to my right. “Mr. Jenkins painted his Mustang.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bud asked.

  “He painted it,” I said again. The car used to be bright red. Now it was gray. That was a strange color for a fast car.

  Bud just shook his head. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. I looked away from the car. Across the street, in Mrs. Pitchell’s front yard, a whole bunch of flowers were blooming. Yellow ones, and blue ones, and tons of gray ones.

  Gray?

  I shook my head hard and looked away. The sky was blue. That was fine. The trees were green. But there wasn’t any red. No matter where I looked.

  Thwack!

  “Stop standing there, and let’s get home,” Bud said.

  I followed him, trying to figure out what was going on. What if the rest of the colors went away? I didn’t want to end up in a gray world. Then what if the gray went away, too?

  “Hi, Lud. Hi, Bud,” Mom said when we walked into the kitchen. “I made your favorite again.”

  “Thanks.” I looked at the steaming roast, fresh out of the oven, and felt sick. But something in the kitchen smelled wonderful. I walked across the floor to the garbage can. It was filled with rotten fruit. Yellow and gray peaches. A couple gray strawberries. A hunk of watermelon, green on the outside, light gray inside. Small flies buzzed around the top of the can.

  “Oh, would you take that outside for me?” Mom asked. “I cleaned out the fridge today.”

  “Sure.” I pulled the bag out of the can and headed to the side of the house where we keep the big cans. I couldn’t believe how great the fruit smelled. But it looked awful.

  Fighting the urge to take a bite of one of the peaches, I tossed out the bag and went back inside. Everyone else was already at the table.

  “I don’t feel hungry,” I said.

  “Are you sick?” Mom asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I had a big lunch. I think I’ll skip dinner.”

  “You know, dinner is the most important meal of the evening,” Dad said.

  “I know,” I told him. “But I’m just not hungry.”

  Mom looked at me with that Are you getting sick? look. I tried to look back at her with that I’m fine look.

  “Maybe you’ll be hungry later,” she said.

  “Maybe.” I went up to the room. I might be slow to think up stuff in school, but even I knew that something strange was happening to me. I stared at my face in the mirror. My eyes looked different. Hey—that was kind of a joke. But they really did look d
ifferent. They were darker. And the colored part was bigger. I picked up my toothbrush. It wasn’t red anymore. It was gray. I took off my shirt and checked out the bug bites. They were fine. Not puffy or anything. There sure were a bunch of them, though. All over my chest.

  But they seemed to be healing.

  I went back to my room.

  Pit came running in a minute later, waving an action figure in my face. “Captain Spazmodic saves the universe!” he shouted.

  “That’s great,” I told him.

  “Want to play?” he asked.

  I almost said no. I wasn’t feeling real good. But playing wouldn’t make me feel any worse. And I hated to let Pit down. “Sure. Let’s play.”

  So we sat and played for a while, saving the universe. Pit was lucky. Life was simple for him. At least, right now it was. He just had kindergarten to deal with.

  “Lud,” Pit said when he was getting up to leave.

  “What?”

  “Danny Milliken called me stupid today.”

  “Don’t you listen to him,” I said. I took his arm and pulled him onto my lap. “That’s going to happen. People who call names. They’re the stupid ones. You remember that. Okay?”

  Pit nodded. “Okay.”

  “And remember something else. What do I always tell you?”

  “Mellons stick together,” he said.

  “That’s right. No matter what. No matter who calls you names, or who makes fun of you, you’ve got Mom and Dad and me and everyone else in the family.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled.

  “Now, go to bed before May starts shouting.”

  He nodded and climbed off my lap. Then he laughed and pointed at my shirt.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re drooling,” he said. He threw his head back and laughed even louder.

  “Thanks for letting me know.” I wiped my chin. It was soaked.

  “Piiiiiittttt!” May hollered from downstairs. “Bed tiiiimmme!”

  I watched him race out of the room. Maybe it wasn’t any easier in kindergarten. Maybe it’s never easy.