Beauty and the Bully by Andy Behrens

Author:Andy Behrens
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

13

Having Carly Garfield remove flecks of food from his hair, as if she were a gorilla grooming her mate, was unequivocally the greatest moment in Duncan’s life. He couldn’t imagine what might’ve been the second greatest moment, either. Because watching Carly scrape tiny bits of fishwich from him with her nails was, like, orders of magnitude better than anything he’d ever experienced.

Did the fact that he’d elaborately deceived her lessen the thrill? Hell no.

At least not in any detectable way. All love rested on a shifting bedrock of deception, he told himself. His dad had said something like that once—maybe after dropping $3,200 on a TV without consulting Duncan’s mom.

But whatever. The important thing was this: Carly was dotingly picking hardened cafeteria gruel from Duncan’s hair. It was magical. As she did this, she talked almost dreamily about the upcoming TARTS rally. The substance of the conversation was really lost on Duncan, though. He merely enjoyed watching Carly’s eyes move over his face. He responded to nearly everything she said with either “uh-huh” or an inquisitive “really?”

When all the obvious food particles had been extracted from Duncan’s head and clothes, Carly began to involve Duncan in conversation with her friends, the small pod of girls—who turned out to be named Marissa, Chloe, Zoe, Sophie, Kylie, and Hayley—that he had thought of as handmaids. They all seemed fairly standard-issue to Duncan, gossipy, flaky, and vapid. They clearly weren’t so zealous about TARTS—or any other socially responsible cause—as Carly was. In fact, the whole TARTS clique was something of a Carly Garfield cult of personality, a thing that existed because people wanted to get close to her.

Duncan, for example, wanted to get close to her. Thus began his assimilation into the Elm Forest Township High School chapter of Teens Against Rodent Test Studies.

“You’d better see about getting a less gooey shirt or something, ” Carly said to him, smiling. “Before the bell rings.”

“Oh, right,” he said, grinning back at her. “Less gooey is good. I’ll shoot for that.” He stood. “Hey, thanks again for intervening with that big dude. Dunno why he’s got it in for me.”

“Bullies are all the same, Duncan,” she said. “They just care about preserving the feeling of power. The way they do it is to make everyone else feel weak.” She rubbed his arm. “But you’re not weak, Duncan.”

Okay, that was kinda freaky/flaky, he thought.

But still cool in an oh-my-God-this-cute-flaky-girl-is-rubbing -my-arm! way.

“Thanks,” he said, then walked away. Then he glanced back. Then walked. Then glanced again. He was deeply smitten. He strode toward Stew and Jess, then sat down.

“Wow,” he said, his eyes wide.

“Dude!” chirped Jessie. “That actually worked. The incredibly convoluted, bordering-on-nonsensical plan worked.”

“Tip of the cap to Freddie,” said Stew. “Dude has some impressive dramatic skills.”

“Yup, no doubt,” said Jessie. “He clearly has many gifts: acting, bullying . . . um . . . Okay, he has exactly two gifts. But he really excels at those two things.”

“Wow,” Duncan repeated. He shook his head.

“Carly was touching your face there, buddy,” said Stew.

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