Bullyville by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online

once in a while, I’d made the mistake of looking through the back window of an ambulance and seen the face of some terrified relative they’dallowed to ride along with the patient.
    â€œHi, guys!” I said.
    No one replied. No one smiled or nodded or turned as I walked past them and found an empty seat near the back of the bus.
    I was careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I looked out the window. I was careful not to make eye contact with anyone’s reflection .
    The road that wound up to the castle—that is, the school—looked nothing like the one I’d taken just a few days before with Mom. That day had been sunny, but now the sky was the color of the stuffing of a ripped-apart old mattress that someone had left out in the weather. Between then and now, the wind must have blown all the bright autumn leaves off the trees, leaving bare branches that pointed at me like fingers promising some cruel punishment I must have done something to deserve. And as we traveled in the groaning bus, Bailey Mountain seemed higher and craggier than I remembered, and the climb took much longer than it had when Mom and I were in thecar making nervous conversation.
    We passed the main entrance and pulled up to a side door, as if the bus had come to deliver office supplies or cafeteria food instead of to be welcomed by the friendly, inclusive student community Dr. Bratton had described. Well, sure, the bus had come to deliver us , packages of something that no one actually seemed to want. And the packages didn’t seem to want to be delivered.
    As the day students trudged off the bus, they really did look like criminals, filing out of their transport to do some especially nasty roadwork detail. The bus emptied, but still I remained in my seat until the driver—who, I would later learn, everyone called Fat Freddie—yelled, “Last stop, pal. Everybody out. How much farther do you think we’re going?”
    I laughed as if that was the funniest thing anyone ever said. And then, when my face was still twisted in the clownish fake laugh, and at the exact moment when I felt a bubble of saliva popping at the corner of my mouth, I looked out thebus window and spotted the kid who’d helped Dr. Bratton show me around the school. My Mentor and Big Brother.
    I was so glad to see a familiar face that I said “Hi!” as if we were long-lost best friends. Brothers separated at birth. But he was looking at me— through me—as if he’d never seen me before.
    â€œWho are you ?” he said.
    â€œI’m Bart Rangely.” How could he not remember?
    â€œOh, that’s right,” he said. Now I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with my memory, if he could have been a different person from the one I’d met on the tour. Could he possibly have a twin brother at the school?
    He said, “I’m Tyro Bergen.” It seemed less likely that there were two identical guys at the school with the same name. I was still trying to figure out why he didn’t recognize me when he said, “I’m supposed to be your…Big Brother. Till you get used to this toilet.”
    I laughed again, as hard as I had when FatFreddie had ordered me off the bus, even though Tyro had said “Big Brother” in a way that hadn’t sounded like he meant a helpful, loving older sibling, but rather the evil dictator in the George Orwell novel we’d read in seventh grade.
    â€œBig Brother like Big Brother in 1984 ?” I said, regretting it instantly.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Tyro said. He turned his back and motioned for me to follow him into the school.
    Walking into the main hallway was like diving into the deep end of the pool and not knowing how to swim, like merging with the stream of traffic on a busy highway and having no idea how to drive. The glum nerds who’d ridden the bus with me had disappeared, swallowed up by boys who wore