The Bully Bug

by David Lubar

  “Thanks.”

  As we reached the street behind the school yard, he dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a pen. “What color is this?” he asked, pushing it toward my face.

  “Gray,” I told him.

  “Outstanding,” he said. “I suspected as much. Insect vision is spectrally shifted. You can’t discern the low frequencies, but you have great acuity for the ultraviolet.”

  My hand shot out and grabbed him by the shirtsleeve. It was so fast, I didn’t even see my arm move.

  “Superior reflexes,” he said.

  I didn’t mean to grab him, but I had to get one thing straightened out. “Talk so I can understand you.”

  He opened his mouth. I think he was about to say some kind of put-down. That would have been a big mistake. He was my only hope, but I wasn’t going to let him make fun of me. Finally, he said, “I’ll endeavor—sorry, I’ll try to limit my vocab—I mean, my choice of words.”

  I let my hand drop. “Thanks, nerd.”

  “My name’s Norman,” he said.

  “Thanks, Norman. You were talking about seeing red stuff, right?”

  “Right. Insects can’t see some colors that we can. But they can see some that we can’t.” He looked at me like he was waiting to see if I understood.

  I nodded.

  For most of the rest of the walk, I didn’t say anything. But there was one thing I had to know. As we reached his house, I asked him, “Why are you helping me?”

  He shrugged. “How often do I get a chance to help anyone? I can’t hit a baseball. I can’t sink a basket or kick a goal. I fall off my bike so often, the sides of my seat are scuffed. But there’s one thing I’m good at. And that’s science. If anyone can help you, I can. There’s no way I can walk away from a challenge like that. Even if you did beat me up seventeen times since kindergarten.”

  “Seventeen?” I asked. I couldn’t even remember beating him up before. “Are you sure?”

  He pointed to the side of his glasses, where the frame was taped together. “Last December.”

  “Sorry.”

  Then he bent over and pulled up his left pants leg. “First grade,” he said, pointing to a scar on his shin. He mentioned a couple other times when I’d done something to him, including the other day when I’d knocked him down by the lockers.

  Now I felt bad. I guess it made sense that he’d remember getting hurt more than I’d remember hurting him. But I couldn’t believe I’d been that rotten to him. I couldn’t believe he was being this nice, either. “And you’re still going to help me?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He waved at the door ahead of us. “Let’s get started.”

  I followed him inside and up to his room. Man. The place was just like the museum, only smaller. There were jars and bottles all over the room, and rocks and posters and hundreds of books. “This place reminds me of school,” I said.

  “Thanks. Now, lift your shirt,” he said.

  I pulled up my shirt and stood there while he stared at me and made the kind of sounds someone makes when he’s thinking real hard. “Unfortunately, it seems to be progressing,” he said. Then he jumped back from me and said, “I mean, it’s spreading.”

  I looked down. I did seem to have more of the hairs poking through my skin. And the hard patches looked wider. “Can you stop it?”

  “Tell me everything that’s happened.”

  I told him about the cereal box and the bugs and the barrel of green goo. I told him about the museum. When I mentioned the mimic beetle, his face got a funny expression for a second, but he didn’t say anything.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Mimic beetles copy other insects. So, maybe that’s what you’re doing. And if you looked at all the insects in the museum, maybe you’re copying all of them. I suspect the green liquid had an effect on the beetles that bit you, also. First, we have to figure out what’s going on. There had to be some kind of mutation involved. But it’s too soon to really make any guesses.” He grabbed a camera from a shelf over his desk. “We can keep track of the spread this way.” He clicked a picture.

  “How?”

  “In an hour, I’ll take another picture. We can compare them to see how much you’ve changed. Hey, I have a better idea. We can use a computer program to compare the pictures.”

  “You have a program to do that?” The only programs I knew about were the writing ones we used in school, and games.

  “I don’t have one, but it should be easy enough to write.” He sat down at his computer and started typing. I didn’t say anything. It looked like he was real busy. And happy. So I just sat and waited. After a while, he got up and said, “Okay. Let’s get another shot.”

  I stood and lifted my shirt for the camera. He took the picture, then sent it to the computer. As he was doing that, I thought of a joke. I guess I was so worried about what he was doing that I didn’t even realize I was talking out loud until I heard my own voice. “Aren’t you worried your program will have bugs in it?”

  He glanced at me with a puzzled look, then turned back to the screen. “It’s definitely spreading,” he said. “Okay. We’ve established a baseline. Now we have to determine what factors might slow the transformation and perhaps even enable us to reverse the process.” He looked up at me with a grin. Then his face got a worried look and he said, “I mean, let’s see if we can stop this and then make you better. Okay?”

  “Great.” I still couldn’t believe he was helping me. Especially after he’d mentioned how often I’d hurt him.

  “Follow me.” He grabbed a flashlight from his desk drawer and a stack of comic books from the floor and headed down the stairs.

  I followed him into a kitchen. If his room looked like it belonged in a museum, his kitchen looked like it should be in a restaurant. I saw a couple of ovens and two refrigerators. He headed for a huge metal door that was built into one wall. He pulled the handle, and the door swung open. A blast of cold air hit me in the face. “Man. That’s a big freezer,” I said.

  He nodded, then handed me the flashlight and the books. “Get in,” he said.

  Fourteen

  COLD FACTS

  “What?”

  “Get in,” he said again. “We need to see if temperature is a factor. Hurry up. Get in. You’ll skew the results if you stay at room temperature.”

  “Can I breathe in there?” I looked inside. There were long shelves on both sides and in the back. But unfortunately, there was plenty of room in the middle for me to stand.

  “No problem. The volume of air is adequate for the time span we need. Besides, there’s a handle on the inside. You won’t be trapped.”

  I took a step inside. It felt like winter. Hey—I thought of a joke. I guess my bites would become cold cuts.

  “Wait. It would be better if you removed your shirt,” he said.

  I just stared at him.

  “Really,” he said.

  I pulled it off.

  “You’ll be fine,” he told me. “Promise.” He closed the door.

  It got as dark as it could get. The dark hit me so fast, I didn’t even notice the cold right away. For a second, I felt myself getting real worried. Then I had trouble turning on the flashlight because my fingers were stiff.

  I had to be crazy, trusting the nerd. Well, at least I had comic books. I stood there and started reading. It seemed like I was in there forever. Finally, he opened the door back up.

  “You got a big family?” I asked as I followed him back up the stairs.

  “No. Just me, Mom, and Dad,” he said.

  “Why the giant freezer?”

  “Oh. Mom’s a caterer. She makes food for all kinds of parties and banquets and stuff. She’s always cooking.”

  “Sounds like my mom,” I said. “She cooks tons of stuff every day, but just for the family.”

  Back in his room, he took another picture. Then he put it in the
computer.

  “Okay,” he said after he’d hit a couple of keys and slid the mouse around. “Good news. As I’d expected, a cold environment slows the rate of change. Now we have to see about heat.”

  “You aren’t going to chuck me in the oven, are you?” I thought about the big ovens in the kitchen.

  He shook his head. “No. This will be localized. I suspect heat accelerates the process. So we’ll minimize the area.”

  He ran off. I didn’t bother asking him what he meant. He came back a minute later with a hair dryer. He switched it on and pointed it at my chest. The warm air felt great to me after I’d been in that freezer. But as we watched, the shiny black tips of more hairs popped through my skin where the hair dryer was blowing on it.

  “Heat is bad,” he said, switching off the dryer. “I better take some skin samples.” He reached into his desk and pulled out a wooden box. Inside, he had a bunch of glass slides, like the kind you use with a microscope, and a couple small knives.

  He took out a knife and moved it toward my chest.

  Next thing I knew, my hand was clamped on his wrist.

  “Ow! Come on. I’m just going to scrape a small sample. It won’t hurt. Honest.”

  I let go and he yanked his hand back. Then he reached forward again.

  “Ouch. You’re breaking my wrist.”

  I looked down. I’d grabbed him again. I’d done it without thinking. I mean, my teachers were always yelling about how I never thought about what I did, but this was different. I really didn’t think about grabbing his hand. It was the same as when I’d been eating the leaves. My hand acted like it had a brain of its own, and it didn’t bother telling my brain what it was planning to do. I let go.

  “Look, just close your eyes for a second. Okay?” He stepped away from me. “You’ve got insect reflexes. You’ll defend yourself against any attack you can see coming.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” I closed my eyes and waited, wondering how much it would hurt.

  “Ouccchhhh! Let go!”

  I opened my eyes. I’d locked my fingers around his wrist. “How’d I do that?”

  “Other sense organs,” he said. “Those hairs can probably detect motion. Look, we don’t have time to investigate all of this.” He handed me the knife. “Here. You do it. Just scrape off a little bit.”

  I wiped away the hair goo on a small spot, then took the knife and scraped it over the hard stuff on my chest. It didn’t hurt. I got a little on the tip of the knife and handed it to him.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “I need a little time to think about this and do some research,” he told me.

  “Can you help me?”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Thanks.” I looked down at my chest. My body didn’t seem all that human anymore. I tried to look into my mind, to see if it was human. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t changed. But I’d never really spent any time trying to look at my own mind.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said. He reached out his hand toward me.

  My own hand shot out.

  “Ouch! My wrist. I just wanted to shake hands.”

  “Sorry.” I let go. Man, these reflexes were fast. I thanked him again, put my shirt on, then headed downstairs and out of the house.

  Bud was standing on the sidewalk.

  Fifteen

  TROUBLE BY THE YARD

  “What were you doing in there?” he asked, looking hurt.

  “The nerd—I mean Norman—was helping me with something,” I told him.

  “I shouldn’t even talk to you,” he said. “Running off without me. I shouldn’t have bothered following you. I’ve been waiting out here for hours.”

  “Sorry. But I really needed his help.”

  “What with?” he asked.

  “I’m turning into a bug,” I told him. “Those bugs that bit me—you know, in the cereal box. They’re mimic beetles. That means they copy other things. So, with them biting me, that must mean I’m copying them. Or maybe I’m copying all kinds of bugs. I didn’t really understand that part. But the green goo made them change.”

  “So you think you’re a bug,” Bud said.

  “Yeah. I mean, I know I am.” It felt good to share my problem with him.

  Bud laughed. “Is this part of your act for the talent show? It’s pretty good. Bugs are funny. Tell me some more.”

  “No. I’m serious. I’m a bug.” I pulled up the front of my shirt. “Look. Bug hairs.”

  Bud grinned. “Man. That is a good one. You’ll be a real hit at the show.” He slapped me on the back and laughed some more.

  I gave up trying to convince him. But I had a funny feeling that sooner or later, he’d believe me. Unless Norman could figure out how to help me change back.

  We walked a bit more—then Bud said, “Just don’t go running off somewhere without me again. Okay? It doesn’t feel good to get ditched like that.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “No problem.”

  Thwack! He smacked me on the back of the head. I wondered why I didn’t grab his arm like I’d done with Norman. Maybe because he was my brother. That made sense. Like how an ant won’t attack another ant from the same hill. I’d seen that on TV.

  “Let’s cut over this way,” Bud said, pointing to Mr. Terranova’s house. We were a couple blocks away from home, but we could get right there by going across Mr. Terranova’s yard and then up the hill behind our house.

  “Sure.” That wasn’t a problem. He was a friend of my dad’s and he didn’t care if we walked on his property. I just didn’t want to run into him, because he liked to talk. I mean, he liked to talk a whole lot, and he never talked about anything interesting. So I checked the porch to make sure he wasn’t there. Then I followed Bud.

  The first couple of steps, I didn’t notice anything wrong. But about halfway along the front yard, I started to feel wobbly. Then I stopped right where I was.

  “Oh no,” I said when I noticed what was at the edge of the lawn.

  “What’s wrong?” Bud asked.

  I stared at the little paper flag on the stick. I knew what it was. That’s what they put on a yard after it’s been sprayed. There was stuff on the lawn to kill the weeds. And to kill bugs.

  Wow. I felt really dizzy. I took a step backwards. I knew I had to get off the grass fast.

  “Hey, look who’s here,” Mr. Terranova said, pushing open his screen door and stepping onto the porch. “I thought I heard voices.”

  “Hi,” Bud said.

  I waved at him and backed up another step. “Hi.”

  “Don’t run off, youngster,” he said. “You know I like to chat.”

  “Uh, yeah.” I took another step backwards. But the lawn spray was getting to me. I couldn’t stand up. All of a sudden, I fell to my knees.

  “Yup,” Mr. Terranova said. “Sure is nice to have a lawn like this. Takes a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Go ahead. Roll around if you want. Enjoy it.”

  “Thanks,” I said weakly. I started to put my hand down so I could push myself back to my feet. But I realized if I touched the grass with my bare skin, I’d be in even bigger trouble. If just the smell was making me this dizzy, I was afraid to think what would happen if I got the stuff on my skin. So I tried to rock myself up to my feet.

  That turned out to be a real bad idea. I lost my balance and fell on my back.

  “How about you, Bud?” Mr. Terranova asked. “Don’t you want to join your brother? When I was a lad, I loved to roll in the grass. That was before we had all these fancy lawn mowers and riding tractors. Had to push the mowers when I was a boy. Yessiree, push ’em by hand. Let me tell you, that was hard work. Go ahead, boy. Roll around.”

  “No thanks.” Bud stared at me like I was crazy, lying there in the grass on my back.

  “Help me,” I whispered, hoping that for once in his life, Bud would use his brain.

  “What?” Bud asked. “I can’t hear you when you whisper.”

  “Wha
t’s that?” Mr. Terranova asked. He turned his left ear toward Bud. “Speak up. I can’t hear either of you.”

  I reached out and grabbed the cuff of Bud’s pants. I barely had enough strength to close my fingers.

  “Stop that, Lud,” he said, yanking his leg from my grip.

  I tried to say something else, but everything got real fuzzy. Then everything faded away.

  Next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face with a hard stream of water. “Cut it out!”

  “You okay now?” Bud asked. He was standing there with a hose.

  I looked around. We were on the side of our house, next to the driveway. “How’d I get here?”

  “I carried you,” Bud said. “It was like that time when you ran headfirst into the side of the house. Knocked you right out. I figured I’d better bring you home.” He looked over his shoulder. “Oh gross—you drooled all over my shirt, too.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I’m drier than you.” He laughed and sprayed me with the hose again.

  “Stop that.”

  Bud turned off the nozzle. “Hey, you better wipe yourself off before we go inside. If you get the floor wet, Mom will be real steamed.”

  He was right. So I dried off. But when we got inside, I found out that someone was real angry anyhow. And it wasn’t Mom.

  Sixteen

  WHAT WOOD YOU CHEW?

  The minute I stepped inside, I could hear Dad shouting from upstairs. “Those darn termites! That does it. Lud, get up here. I need you.”

  “Sounds like work,” Bud said. “Think I’ll go back outside.” He dashed out the door.

  That was okay. I didn’t mind helping Dad. “What’s wrong?” I asked when I got to the top of the stairs.

  “Look at this.” He pointed at the door to my room. He was so angry, his hand was shaking.

  “Oh no.” I looked at the bottom. The wood was all chewed up, like something was eating at it. Man—I knew what had chewed the wood. Me.

  “Termites!” Dad said. “I’m gonna get them once and for all. Go grab the sprayer.”

  I went up to the attic and got Dad’s spray can. I figured I’d have to slip out of the house before he started spraying, or I’d be in big trouble. “Maybe you should hold off,” I told him.