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

hair.”
    There were sniggers from some boys in the back of the room. Giggles from the girls. Sammy wasn’t sure which was worse.
    Word gets around quickly. These weren’t even the boys who’d dunked him. Dunked him because he’d gotten in their way. Because he stood up for someone who couldn’t stand up for himself.
    Nah,
Sammy thought, having one of those revelations that comes after a near-death experience.
They dunked me because I’m different. Because I’m not one of them. And because . . . they can.
    In fact, it had taken James Lee less than a week to decide that Sammy was different. Sammy’s name was one indicator. And he didn’t go to church, either. Not James Lee’s Baptist church, or the smaller Catholic church at the end of town.
    â€œYou must be one of them furrin immigrants,” James Lee had said to Sammy the first week of school.
    Not realizing that James Lee was someone you didn’t want to butt heads with, someone who had absolutely no grasp of irony, had never spoken anything with the sarcasm font, Sammy had replied, “Yeah, I immigrated all the way from Hartford.”
    â€œWhere’s that at?”
    â€œConnecticut.” And then Sammy added—which was another big mistake, since he was not only dissing James Lee, but where he lived—“It’s one of the earliest states in the USA, in case they don’t teach that here. One of the original colonies. More American than the Midwest. Those thirteen stars on the first American flag? Connecticut was one. I was born there. And my parents. Both of them. And my grandparents. We’re not the foreigners.” He pronounced it properly and with particular care and compounded the mistake by pointing at James Lee. “You are.”
    He didn’t add that since his birth, they’d moved six times, each time farther and farther away from Hartford so his potter father could find a big enough and cheap enough place to build his pottery. Though his dad sold pots to major stores all across America, room for an outsize studio and a stand-alone wood-fire kiln was hard to find in their budget which, as far as Sammy could tell, was one step above the poverty line. One small step.
    That time, James Lee had pushed Sammy down, stepped over him, and at the same time had laughed. “Furriner. Can’t fool me. Catch that name? Greenburg. BURG! Leave out the r and what do you have?”
    When his friends looked blank, he added, “BUG, that’s what. He’s a green bug. And you know what we do to them?”
    If anything, the blank stares got blanker.
    â€œWe squash ’em!” And James Lee had laughed.
    Only then did his friends laugh with him. “BUG!” they shouted. And from then on, that was what they called Sammy. They’d been shouting it when they’d sent him swimming in the porcelain pool.
    â€œSammy!” Ms. Holsten snapped, and Sammy realized he’d missed whatever she’d said next.
    â€œOh, sorry, Ms. Holsten. What did you say?”
    â€œI said, since it’s you, no detention.” There were mutters from the back of the room. Sammy could just make out the words “teacher’s pet.”
    This day just keeps getting better.
    He sighed. “Thank you, Ms. Holsten.”
    She gave him a thin smile. “Don’t let it happen again.”
    At least, he thought, there would have been some dignity in detention. The cool kids seemed to get detention as a matter of course; they did whatever they wanted and their school day was just a half hour longer. Sammy could have sat in detention and hung out with them. Explained that he had nothing against them, and shown that he got in trouble, too.
    But he knew instinctively things would never happen that way. He just couldn’t resist talking back to the bullies. Cutting them down with his tongue. If he could only learn to suffer in silence, they’d probably get bored