The Bully Read Free Page A

two neighbors were already standing near the body. My father explained to them what had happened, how I had been fighting with the boy and accidentally pushed him off the porch. The way I was crying the story probably seemed very realistic.
     
    I looked at Billy Owens’ dead body. He was lying on his back with his eyes wide open, a small pool of blood around his head.
     
    The ambulance arrived about the same time as a police car. A larger group of neighbors was forming in the driveway. Everyone ignored me except Mrs. Dembeck, who lived across the street. She used to be very nice to me, sometimes inviting me into her house for cookies and hot chocolate on cold, snowy days. But now she was glaring at me, like I was a killer.
     
    While the policemen were examining Billy’s body, one of the EMS workers examined my nose. The bleeding had stopped, but he said my nose was probably broken. He gave me an icepack to hold against it and said that I needed to go to the emergency room for X-rays.
     
    Meanwhile, one of the policemen was talking to my father. The policeman was nodding, writing in a pad, while my father gave his version of what had happened. After a few minutes, the policeman came over to me.
     
    “Hi, Jonathan,” the policeman said. “My name is Officer Pinelli. “I know this is very difficult for you right now and we’ll make sure you get taken care of. But can you tell me what happened here before?”
     
    My father stood close by, listening, as I told the officer how Billy had come to my house, how he punched me, and then how I pushed him and he fell through the railing. The officer asked me a lot of questions about Billy—How did I know him? Why did he come over the house today? What was our fight about? I had never been a very good liar and I kept fumbling and stuttering as I spoke, but the officer seemed to believe me anyway.
     
    Billy’s body was covered in a white sheet and taken away in the ambulance. Another police car came and then Detective Harrison arrived on the scene. The detective asked me the same questions that the officer had asked me and I gave the same answers.
     
    Officer Pinelli offered to drive my father and me to the hospital to take care of my nose. My father offered to take me himself, but the detective said that it would probably be a good idea if the officer drove us because my father and I would need to answer some more questions at the precinct later on and that the officer could drive us there from the hospital.
     
    In the back of he police car, my father and I didn’t speak. The ice pack had numbed most of the pain in my nose and I just sat there, staring blankly out the window.
     
    My nose was only fractured and the emergency-room doctor said I’d be fine in a few weeks. He also that the blackness around my eyes would eventually fade. After a nurse bandaged my nose, a police officer took my father and me to the police precinct where the detective who’d been at the house was waiting for us. The detective asked my father and me all sorts of questions about what had happened, then he asked my father to leave the room. On the way out, my father glared at me and I was afraid he’d hit me again later if I didn’t say the right things to the detective.
     
    “I know this has been a very long, difficult day for you,” the detective said, “but if you could just tell me what happened one more time I’d appreciate it.”
     
    I was sitting across from him, looking down at my lap.
     
    “We had a fight,” I said.
     
    “In the schoolyard, right?”
     
    I nodded.
     
    “Who started this fight?” he asked.
     
    “Me,” I said.
     
    “Why did you start the fight?”
     
    “Because.”
     
    “Because why?”
     
    I was remembering how my father had told me to take Billy by surprise.
     
    “Because I just wanted to,” I said. “At school, he makes fun of me all the time, and he said he was gonna beat me up. So I wanted to fight him before he could beat me