girls. As he walked, they leisurely drew together in his path, all of them moving in the most casual manner. Lisa planted herself in his way, a head taller and golden-haired in the sun. She was smiling in wait.
Henry tried ducking past her, and she slammed against him, hissing, “Don’t touch me!”
As if by this signal, the other girls started furtively hitting and shoving and trying to trip him up. The attack was much more covert and organized than before, a pummeling gauntlet of secret blows, but Henry kept moving as calmly as he could, refusing to show pain. And all the time they kept smiling like angels.
He almost went down once or twice, barely managing to recover before finally making it to the picnic table, bruised and shaky. The assault ceased like turning off a faucet as Miss Graves turned her attention to the group.
“Well hello,” she said. “Join the party. We were just talking a little bit about the Mad Hatter’s tea party—have any of you read Alice in Wonderland?”
There was a space on the bench right next to her, the only seat left, and Henry grabbed it. He was acutely aware of the girls pressing into him from behind.
With a sunny expression, Lisa said, “Why don’t you tell us about it, Miss Graves?”
As the teacher started to describe the story, Henry felt knees ramming him in the kidneys and feet stomping him under the table. Fingers were tweaking his ears and yanking the back of his hair. He blocked as best he could, but it was impossible to fend them all off, from all sides at once. He couldn’t believe what was happening.
The worst thing about it was that it must be so obvious that something was going on. How could Miss Graves not see it? But she was totally oblivious, rambling about the March Hare and talking cakes and a lot of other nonsense that had nothing to do with the fact that someone was being beaten to a pulp right next to her.
Still, Henry couldn’t bring himself to speak—after the way she had treated him, he had to let this situation play out, put her to the test. Find out once and for all if anyone here could be trusted. Because if they couldn’t, then all the rules went out the window. Henry would have no choice but to do something of last resort.
They were creaming him, Lisa worst of all. She played dirty, and knew exactly how to hurt him, gouging the same sore spot again and again and again. The others were learning from her as they went, refining their methods to elicit maximum agony without showing outward effects. It was like a secret torture class.
Henry writhed in place, feeling himself start to cry. Still Miss Graves did nothing. Henry was becoming impatient with her, deeply resentful. He hated her more than he hated the girls, because they were just stupid bullies, but she had a responsibility! And if she didn’t have to live up to her responsibilities, then how could anyone expect him to? It was the law of the jungle.
Henry snapped.
He abruptly stood up from the bench and turned to face Lisa. She was smirking, face to face, blithely confident of her unassailable beauty and power.
Henry slugged her.
It was not the hardest punch he could have thrown—he pulled it at the last second, losing his nerve at the thought of hitting a girl—but she was caught totally unprepared, taking the blow dead-center to her perfect Bambi nose. She reeled back, clutching her face.
Shocked silence fell over the table with the force of a thunderclap.
Henry did not wait to see what would happen next, but used the stunned moment to bolt into the clear.
“You better run,” someone said.
They didn’t have to tell him. Henry ran as fast as he could, exiting the gate to the street and still continuing to run, only casting a quick backward glance to see if anyone was following. No, no one had left the vicinity of the picnic table—they weren’t even looking his way.
It was a frieze Henry would vividly remember for the rest of his life: Miss Graves standing up and tenderly examining Lisa’s nose as the other kids watched with deep concern. The whole scene exuded an air of tragedy and saintly forbearance. Lisa’s Martyrdom. It was exactly what Henry would have expected.
He kept running all the way home.
Chapter Fifteen
PIG
Henry’s mother listened with baffled sympathy as everything came out of him in a torrent; the