Bullyville by Francine Prose

Author:Francine Prose
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061883460
Publisher: HarperCollins

I loved the feeling of walking into Gran’s house on Thanksgiving. It was always warm, too warm, and it always smelled awesome. It smelled like turkey, of course, but mixed with the other dishes: pasta and meatballs, eggplant parmesan, fried calamari—all sorts of delicious food that Gran could never get through her head weren’t part of your typical basic American Thanksgiving.

We were a little late. Mom was bringing her special Brussels sprouts and chestnut casserole and a green salad, and we were halfway to Gran’s when she remembered she’d forgotten the vinaigrette, and we had to go all the way home and get it. So most of the family was already there, and everyone swarmed all over us, hugging and kissing us, telling me how much I’d grown, telling Mom how pretty she looked. In other words, the usual.

But this year I couldn’t help thinking that they were hugging and kissing me twice as much, or maybe the hugs were just lasting twice as long, because I was the poor pitiful orphan whose dad had been killed, and also the Miracle Boy who had saved their beloved daughter and sister and sister-in-law and aunt—that is, Mom—from the same terrible fate.

It was positively weird how everyone was on their best behavior, trying to avoid the usual arguments. And how everyone was treating Mom and me as if we were as fragile as Gran’s shepherd and shepherdess figurines, delicate china statues that, we were always told, would break if we looked at them too hard. Every so often, tears would pop into Gran’s eyes, or one of the aunts would reach in her purse for a Kleenex, and I’d know that they were thinking about Dad, maybe thinking that this was the first Thanksgiving, the first holiday, without him. I half wanted to tell them that Dad might not have been here even if he were still alive. He might have been celebrating with Caroline. But I couldn’t see how that would help. It would only make everything more confusing, and worse for Mom and me.

Even so, it was all good. In fact, I was sort of happy, because after all those days of feeling despised and excluded at Bullywell, it was great to be around people who knew me, who’d known me since I was born. And who liked me—well, actually, they loved me. I concentrated really hard, as if my brain were a video camera that could somehow record everything that my family was saying and doing. Then I could play the tape back to myself during the next bad time at Bullywell, which, I was pretty sure, would begin the minute school started again. I tried not to think about Bullywell, and just to enjoy the moment. And it would have been one hundred percent perfect if I hadn’t noticed that Mom kept glancing nervously toward the door.

Great, I thought. She’s waiting for Bern to arrive.

Every time Mom looked toward the door, everyone else did, too. I could tell

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