Dear Bully by Megan Kelley Hall Page A

me. The sound made me jump.
    The house was damp and hot and had a sour smell. Kind of like spoiled milk. I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
    I took a deep breath. Yes, I was really afraid. Maybe there wasn’t a screaming ghost in here. But I didn’t like standing inside a dead man’s house in the dark.
    What should I do?
    What should I do about these three guys who were on my case every day?
    I glanced around the room, thinking hard. Too dark to see anything. It was all a brown-black blur.
    A few minutes went by. I felt a trickle of sweat roll down my cheek.
    Heart pounding, I moved to the front window. And then I let out a scream. A high, shrill scream that rang off the walls.
    I brought my face close to the glass. And screamed again. A frantic, frightened shriek.
    “ Help me! ” I wailed. “ Please—help me! ”
    I could see Pete, Ronnie, and McKay on the lawn. They froze and their eyes bulged when they heard my screams.
    “ Help! ” I shouted. “It’s got me! Ohhh, help me!”
    I saw them take a few steps back.
    “It hurts !” I wailed. “It hurts ! Help me! It really hurts! ”
    Squinting through the window, I saw them take off running. Gravel flew up from the driveway as the three of them thundered to the street. They turned and disappeared into the darkness.
    I took a moment to catch my breath. My throat felt sore from shrieking. But I had a wide grin on my face.
    No. I hadn’t seen a ghost. Nothing had grabbed me in the dark.
    My screams were just a joke. I was a funny guy, remember.
    And a good screamer. A talent I had just discovered.
    Sometimes a funny trick or a joke will help you a lot. The next afternoon, the three boys weren’t waiting for me at the bus stop. They never waited for me there again.
    I saw them in school. Sometimes they nodded at me or muttered “Hi.” But we never really talked. We definitely never talked about the haunted house.
    I’ve been a funny guy ever since. But I’m not sure I could still scream so well.
    I leave the screams for the stories I write.

A List
by Micol Ostow
    TWENTY-EIGHT THINGS I’VE BEEN MADE FUN OF FOR :
    Being half-Jewish
    Being half–Puerto Rican
    Not being Jewish enough
    Not being Latina enough
    Having less money than some of my classmates
    Having more money than some of my classmates
    Being taller than everyone else
    Being shorter than everyone else
    Being fat
    Being thin
    Being top-heavy
    Being bottom heavy
    Being “religious”
    Not being “religious”
    Getting good grades in English
    Getting bad grades in math
    Dating boys who weren’t Jewish
    Dating boys who were “too Jewish”
    Being a prude
    Being a slut
    Being a freak
    Being a conformist
    Loving my parents
    Hating my parents
    Loving my brother
    Hating my brother
    Hating myself
    Loving myself

There’s a Light
by Saundra Mitchell
    I don’t know why I was different. We were all poor. We all lived in public housing. We all walked to school; we all had white-labeled, black-lettered government peanut butter on our sandwiches.
    No, I guess I do. I had buck teeth and crossed eyes and a stutter. The eyes straightened out with glasses, the stutter straightened out with speech therapy. Not much to be done about the buck teeth, but the funny thing is, nobody tormented me over any of that.
    Saundra has lights.
    It started showing up on chalkboards before class. It was written in the bathrooms, on the desks. I heard people whisper it, and whispering is menacing, but mostly, it was baffling. What did it mean?
    Maybe I did have lights! If somebody would tell me what they were, I could get rid of them, right? Pinches in the water fountain line, not allowed to play four square at recess, sitting by myself at lunch because nobody would sit with me because
    Saundra has lights.
    Dodgeball again in gym, glasses broken again—three pairs in a row, until my mom wrote a note telling the gym teacher I couldn’t play dodgeball anymore because I was just too careless with my glasses,