The Nose from Jupiter Read Free Page B

different language. Sanskrit, maybe. I tried to smile at Miranda, but by then she had turned away.
    Victor was right; it was a lovely afternoon. Late September – the sun was shining hard and hot. It was like summer, only somehow more precious than summer because you knew it wouldn’t last. More precious and sadder. We tied our jackets around our waists.
    The bullies from class 7L were hanging around the south end of the school, so we left by the north gate. The Cougars, they call themselves – kids my age who happened to be bigger and tougher than I was. Actually, Prudence wasn’t bigger. She was smaller.
    There are two gates into our school yard. Every afternoon the Cougars hang out at one of them. Sometimes north, sometimes south. And everyone else goes out the other one. That day we all left by the north gate because the Cougars were at the south one. It meant a longer walk home, along Elgin, but I didn’t mind.
    Actually, that’s not true. I did mind. I minded a lot.
    I minded not having the choice to go home the way I wanted. I minded having to do what the bullies wanted. I minded not mattering. The bullies weren’t doing this to terrorize
me
, Alan Dingwall, or my friend, Victor Grunewald. Or any of the other kids who walked home. It wasn’t personal … it was all of us. None of us mattered.
    I minded not being able to do anything about it too. What could I tell my teacher, Miss Scathely? Or the principal? The bullies don’t threaten us; they don’t beat us up or take our lunch money. They don’t hurt any of us. But they could. They’re mean enough.
    Once last year Gary, one of the Cougars, tripped over a kid named Cecil and fell in the mud – an accident. Cecil apologized and everything, but Gary’s pants got all dirty. The next week Cecil came to school in short pants. When asked how come, he started to cry. Turned out
all
his pants were dirty. The bullies had waited until wash day, and then taken every pair of pants he had off the clothes line, and dipped them in black paint. And then hung them back up.
    To me the scariest part of that episode was the bullies following Cecil to his home. A guy’s backyard is his castle; I’d hate the idea of them hanging around where I lived. Cecil and his family moved during the summer. I don’t think the paint episode had anything to do with it, but you never know.
    Last week a new kid walked past the bullies. It was her first day, and she didn’t know what she was doing. We watched her, all of us standing there in the middle of theplayground watching this kid from out of town – a Grade Sixer, not big and not small, just a regular girl – walk out the gate past the Cougars. They let her go. They didn’t even look at her. They looked at
us.
She walked down the street, all by herself.
And none of us followed her.
We all turned and walked out the other gate. She probably thought we were being snooty, but we weren’t. We were just terrorized.
    The next day the kid knew better. Somebody in her class told her. From then on, she has gone out the same gate as the rest of us.
    It isn’t right – all of us acting like sheep, checking to see where the Cougars were hanging out, and turning in a flock to go out the other exit. Another reason I hated going home.
    Miranda doesn’t act afraid of the Cougars. Mind you, she goes home on the bus.
    I stared across the sunny school yard at the Cougars: Larry and Barry, Gary and Big Mary. And Prudence. The rest of us wheeled away from them, heading slowly but inevitably toward the other side of the school yard.
    Larry and Barry aren’t typical bullies. They’re big and dumb, and laugh when someone belches. In a regular class they’d probably get called Moose. But in a class with real bullies – in the same class as Gary, say, or Mary, who laugh when someone gets hurt – they act like bullies too. And, of course, everyone in the class defers to Prudence, who never laughs at all.
    Mary is crude; a playground supertanker,