The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [22]
So that was that. I needed to take out the Collector, a.k.a. Barnaby Willis. And I knew just where to go for help.
At lunchtime we closed up the office. And then we made the East Wing boys’ bathroom the most dangerous place in the school. The playground probably threw a party that day.
Nine visitors stood near the sinks. They watched me warily, but also with a hunger that I found pretty unpleasant. We were normally enemies, most of these nine and I. But not today.
I stood in front of nine of the school’s meanest, most dangerous and vile bullies, jerks, punks, and tough kids. Never before had our school witnessed such a large gathering of bullies as it did on this particular Wednesday. Usually it would have been hard to get these sort of kids to meet me here, but we managed to convince them by offering ten bucks each. Even the most vicious of bullies can be tamed with money. It was an expensive meeting—ninety bucks to be exact—so I hoped that it would pay off in the end.
Vince especially had been annoyed at the cost. I wasn’t sure what was with him. He was always a little concerned over our expenditures, but lately he’s been freaking out over every penny. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out on the streets selling his school lunches to homeless guys for an extra buck. But I guess it probably has something to do with the Cubs being closer to the World Series than ever in our lifetimes.
I normally liked to stay out of the bullies’ business unless a customer made it my business. Bullies are part of the social order of school and it wasn’t my place to mess with that. I may not have liked it, but in the end I never could have stopped all of the bullies all of the time anyways. To be honest, our business depended on the bullies a little, like an exterminator depends on rats and bugs. But now I was meddling in the bullies’ business because I needed their help. I needed mercenaries. I needed muscle.
I looked at the group of kids in front of me; each of them could beat me senseless in one way or another in less than a second. Which is why I also had Brady join us that day, for some extra security. There were seven boys and just two girls, each more dangerous than the last. Maybe I should stop here for a moment to tell you a little more about the bullies, so you can get an idea of what I was dealing with.
1. Nubby—Nubby kind of sticks out because he is by far the biggest of the bunch. He is a seventh grader and the kind of bully who picks on other kids to avoid being bullied himself. I guess he really buys into that whole “best defense is a good offense” sort of thing that coaches are always talking about. Nubby is kind of fat and has a lot of freckles and his left hand has only stubs of fingers, due to some unknown accident. That’s why people call him Nubby, because of his stubby fingers. Rumor is he lost the fingers in a horrible petting zoo mishap, but nobody seems to know for sure if that is actually true.
Nubby is definitely an easy target for teasing, but he happens to be bigger than the other kids. So instead of being nice and getting picked on, he’s mean and quick to club kids over the head with his fingerless mallet of a hand anytime they even look at him funny. Nubby really isn’t too bad of a guy, though. Whenever kids come to me for help because Nubby is bullying them, it’s usually pretty easy to get Nubby to lay off. A bag of chips, some candy, that sort of thing.
2. Little Paul—Little Paul, or LP as some kids like to call him, is actually pretty little. I know in lame movies the huge guy is always nicknamed Tiny and the little guy is always nicknamed Jumbo. But this is real life and not one of those stupid movies. In real life kids usually just call it how it is.
Not that Little Paul can really help being little—he is only a second grader, after all. But that doesn’t mean the kid still doesn’t have a real mean streak. He’s confident and talks a big game, and he never backs down from a fight, no matter how outmatched he is. But the truth is that no second grader can take Little Paul