Dexter the Tough

“I’m not supposed to go with strangers,” Dexter said.

  Robin looked like he thought Dexter was being too picky, for someone who was practically bleeding to death. But Robin’s mother nodded and said, “That’s a smart boy—you don’t know me at all. Here, let’s use my cell phone and call to have someone pick you up. What’s the number?”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone. She flipped open the top and held her finger over the buttons, waiting.

  “Um,” Dexter said. “It’s five-five-five, uh—” What if he forgot the rest of the number? What if he said it wrong? “Six-three-eight-one,” he finished in a rush, praying it was right.

  Robin’s mom began speaking into the phone.

  “Hello, this is Myrna Bryce. I’m here in the park with, uh—”

  “Dexter,” Dexter told her.

  “With Dexter,” she said. “And he’s hurt his leg and it’s bleeding quite a bit, and . . . ”

  Mrs. Bryce seemed to be listening now.

  “Oh, no, it’s not that bad,” she said. “He doesn’t need to go to the hospital. It’s just, I don’t think he could ride his bike with such a bad scrape, and it does need to be cleaned, and I just thought you might want to come and get him. . . . ”

  She started nodding, like she approved of whatever Dexter’s grandmother was saying.

  “All right,” she said finally. “My son and I will stay here with Dexter until you arrive.”

  She shut off the phone and put it back into her pocket. Dexter was glad that the dog she’d been carrying began barking just then, because Robin and his mother started looking at the dog instead of him.

  “No, Petunia,” Robin said. “Be quiet.”

  The dog kept barking.

  “Petunia!” Mrs. Bryce said in a stern voice.

  The dog whimpered a little and lay down on its paws.

  “He never listens to me,” Robin complained. “I bet he’d listen to Dexter.”

  “Do you have a dog, Dexter?” Mrs. Bryce asked.

  Dexter thought about how his parents always used to say that he could get a dog when he was eight. But by the time he turned eight, Daddy was sick. And the one time Dexter had just kind of slightly hinted that maybe, just maybe he should have a dog to make up for Mom and Dad leaving him at Grandma’s, Mom had snapped, “Dexter, really! Think about it! With everything else that’s going on, do you honestly think that anyone has the time or energy for a dog?”

  Dexter had wanted to say, “I do.” But Mom had already left the room, gone to pack to leave.

  “I don’t have a dog,” he told Mrs. Bryce now in a flat, hopeless voice.

  “Well, if it’s okay with your parents, you’re welcome to come over and play with Petunia sometime. Robin would like that, wouldn’t you, Robin?” Mrs. Bryce said.

  Dexter knew he should tell her that he lived with his grandmother, not his parents. But he just shrugged and stared at the ground. He felt so tired all of a sudden—so tired he didn’t even bother listening to how Robin answered his mother.

  Grandma got there quickly, with a hot washcloth in a plastic bag and a whole first-aid kit ready on the front seat of her car. She had Dexter’s cut washed, disinfected and bandaged before he knew it.

  “You’re . . . good at this,” Dexter mumbled, leaning his head back against the seat of the car while Grandma knelt at the curb beside him.

  Grandma laughed.

  “Well, you know, Dexter, I was a mother for many, many years before I became a grandmother.”

  Grandma went around to the back of the car with Mrs. Bryce. They had the trunk open and were turning Uncle Ted’s bike this way and that, trying to figure out the best way to put it in. Dexter could hear them talking, but he couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Robin stayed right by Dexter’s side.

  “I would have fainted, bleeding like that,” he said. “Didn’t it hurt? Didn’t you want to cry?”

  Dexter shrugged.

  “I didn’t notice,” he said.

  He could have said, “My dad’s really, really sick, and my mom left me with my grandma, and I can’t have a dog, and I had to go to a horrible new school today, and I hated everyone there, and I’m just lucky the police didn’t arrest me for fighting, and maybe they still will. . . . And you think I should cry over a stupid little scrape?”

  Except, saying that probably would make him cry.

  “I wish I was like you,” Robin said, biting his lip.

  Grandma and Mrs. Bryce came back around to the front of the car.

  “It’d take someone with an engineering degree to fit that bike in the trunk,” Grandma said. “Mrs. Bryce says they can keep the bike in their garage until your leg’s healed enough that you can ride it home. Myrna, thanks so much, I really appreciate all you’ve done. If you hadn’t been here to help—”

  “Oh, Dexter would have managed,” Mrs. Bryce said, waving away the thanks. “He seems like a very self-sufficient little boy.”

  Grandma slipped into the driver’s seat, and pulled the car away from the curb. Dexter still had his window rolled down—that was the only reason he heard what Robin was saying to Mrs. Bryce.

  “See, Mom, that’s the boy I was telling you about. . . . ”

  The wind caught the rest of Robin’s words, so Dexter couldn’t hear anything else. But he didn’t need to. He slumped against the seat.

  Now Mrs. Bryce knows I beat up Robin, he thought. I won’t ever be able to get that bike back. I won’t ever be able to play with Robin’s dog. I won’t ever be able to come to the park again, because they might see me. Oh, why did Robin have to be the kid I beat up?

  Chapter 7

  I’m the new kid. This morning I beat up Robin Bryce. In the bathroom. The one between the office and your classroom. With the blue tile on the wall. I was mad.

  The teacher, Ms. Abbott, sat reading Dexter’s story. She wasn’t twinkling, the way she had during math, and spelling, and health, and everything else they’d talked about the entire day. Her eyebrows squinted together.

  “This is better,” she said finally. “You’re definitely going in the right direction.”

  “Then I’m done?” Dexter asked.

  That made Ms. Abbott laugh and almost—but just almost—sparkle.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Remember, we’re acting like professional writers, and professional writers do lots and lots and lots of drafts. And you know what? You should save every draft, so you can see the progress you’re making.” She pointed at the X Dexter had drawn through his original story. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of old drafts, just because they’re not perfect. Writing is a process.”

  She studied Dexter’s words again.

  “What do you think of this version of your story?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dexter said. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Let’s pretend you weren’t the one who wrote it,” Ms. Abbott said. “Pretend you just found this story somewhere and you read it. What would you think the writer thought was the most important part of the whole story?”

  Dexter shrugged. He looked longingly at his own desk, where he’d been working on a punctuation work sheet before Ms. Abbott called him up to talk about his story. He wasn’t a big fan of punctuation work sheets, but they were much, much better than this.

  “What does the writer of this story spend the most time describing?” Ms. Abbott asked, still acting like Dexter wasn’t the writer.

  Dexter frowned down at his story. He wished it did belong to someone else.

  “The bathroom?” he asked.

  “Bingo!” Ms. Abbott said. “Good job! You win the prize! Now for the really hard question, I need Dexter the author back. Dexter, for the all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii and the side-by-side washer-dryer, tell me the most important thing about this fight. Was it the fact that it took place in the bathroom?”

  “No,” Dexter muttered.

  Dexter hoped that Ms. Abbott would get even sillier, pretending to be a game-show host a
warding the grand prize. He hoped that she would forget that they were talking about his story. But she just nodded and said, “Then what was it?”

  Dexter looked down at his lap. He had his hands clenched together—his left hand was holding down the hand that had hit Robin.

  “Dexter?” Ms. Abbott said softly. “This is a question only you know the answer to. I can only guess about why this fight was important. Does it have something to do with the reason you were mad? Was it what Robin said or did before you beat him up? Was it how you felt after you hit him? I think that’s the question you need to think about for your next revision. It’s a big question, so I’ll only give you one.”

  She wrote one sentence in her perfect cursive at the bottom of the page. Then she handed the paper back to Dexter.

  “And if I forget, will you remind me that we need to talk about sentence fragments as a whole class?” she said, smiling again.

  Dexter went back to his desk. He looked at his story again. He knew what sentence fragments were. He’d learned about them at his old school. They were little parts of a sentence that got cut off from the rest of the sentence, that weren’t supposed to stand alone. They were things like, “In the bathroom.” And “The one between the office and your classroom.” Practically his whole story was sentence fragments, all those little phrases that couldn’t survive on their own.

  Dexter’s eyes blurred. There was something really, really wrong with him. Now he was feeling sorry for sentence fragments.

  Chapter 8

  Dexter hid out around the corner of the school during recess. There, he could kick pebbles without the playground monitor watching him. But he peeked out a couple times, just to make sure no one was coming for him.

  It was a good thing he did that. The third or fourth time he looked out, he saw Ms. Abbott walk out of the school building and make a beeline for the playground monitor. They talked together for a few minutes, then the playground monitor pointed far, far past the tetherball courts and the kick-ball field, almost to the edge of the school yard. She was pointing to a boy huddled in the grass back by a bunch of bushes.

  She was pointing at Robin Bryce.

  Ms. Abbott nodded and began hurrying toward Robin.

  Dexter gasped. His heart began pounding, like it wanted to burst completely out of his chest and explode right there all over the pebbles. He took off running—blindly at first, but then with a purpose. He darted into the bushes that surrounded the school grounds.

  Good place to hide . . . have to get there first . . . can’t let them see me . . .

  He had to slow down when he turned the corner. Staying in the bushes, he crept closer and closer to where Robin was sitting. He peeked out and was sure he was too late.

  Ms. Abbott was already there.

  She was crouched down beside Robin.

  “No,” Robin was saying. “Me and Dexter are friends. Sort of. We were at the park together last night.”

  “Then he didn’t hurt you yesterday morning? In the bathroom, before school?” Ms. Abbott asked.

  See, Ms. Abbott really does think it matters where the fight happened, Dexter thought. And she knows now that I was lying . . .

  He couldn’t hear Robin’s answer. Desperate, Dexter shoved leaves out of the way, trying to see Robin’s face.

  Robin was turned the other way. But Dexter could tell from behind: Robin was shaking his head.

  He was shaking his head no.

  “Okay, then,” Ms. Abbott said, standing up. “Sorry to bother you. I’m very glad to hear that there wasn’t a fight. I just had to make sure.”

  “You don’t know where Dexter is now, do you?” Robin asked, looking up at her. “I was kind of hoping . . . ”

  Ms. Abbott gazed across the playground, squinting into the sun. She lifted her hand to shield her eyes.

  “Sorry” she said. “I don’t know where he is. He’s got to be around here somewhere.”

  And then Dexter knew he was about to snort with laughter and relief. He pulled back deeper into the bushes, and stuffed his hand over his mouth to keep from making any noise.

  Long after Robin and Ms. Abbott moved away, Dexter stayed in the bushes, shaking. He couldn’t have said anymore what he was holding in, with his hand over his mouth.

  Robin lied for me, Dexter thought. He told his mother what I did, but he lied to Ms. Abbott. Why?

  And why would he say we were friends?

  Chapter 9

  I’m the new kid. On my first day here at King Elementary School I beat up Robin Bryce. We were in the bathroom, but that doesn’t matter. I was mad, but that doesn’t matter either. The whole fight doesn’t matter. It was no big deal.

  “Hmm . . . ,” Ms. Abbott said.

  Dexter waited, trying not to squirm in the chair beside Ms. Abbott’s desk. It had been three days since the last time he’d work-shopped with Ms. Abbott. She’d said that morning that she was getting a little behind.

  “But that’s okay—don’t worry,” she’d told the class with a little laugh. “Lots of professional writers will take time off between drafts, to think more deeply about their work.”

  Dexter felt kind of proud of this version of his story. It didn’t contain a single sentence fragment. He thought Ms. Abbott would be impressed that he’d put in “King Elementary School”—giving an exact name. And this draft told Ms. Abbott, and anyone else who might read it, that the fight didn’t matter. It wasn’t worth worrying about.

  This was a safe story now.

  Dexter was feeling safer all around. He’d gotten really good at hiding out at recess. Thanks to the bushes, Robin would never be able to find him. When Mrs. Bryce called to see when Dexter was going to come over to get his bike, Dexter told Grandma to say his leg still hurt too much. He planned to let his leg keep hurting for a very, very long time. As far as he was concerned, the Bryces could just keep Uncle Ted’s bike.

  Because of his hurt leg, Dexter was spending a lot of time in the house, watching TV with Grandma. Even when Mom or Dad called, Dexter just said, “Uh-huh,” and “Unh-unhh,” and “Sure. Fine.” He didn’t ask any questions. He kept his eyes on the commercials for toilet paper and Pepto-Bismol and aspirin the whole time he was on the phone.

  “Hmm . . . ,” Ms. Abbott said again. “I think it’s time to try something different.”

  “What do you mean?” Dexter asked.

  “Sometimes professional writers experiment a little with their work,” Ms. Abbott said. “Sometimes they’ll write a scene from a different perspective, to see if things sound different. To help them understand all their characters’ viewpoints. Sometimes they’ll even pretend to be, like, a fly on the wall, watching the action.”

  “There weren’t any flies in the bathroom,” Dexter said. He didn’t know why, but he could feel panic rising in his stomach.

  Ms. Abbott gave him a strange look.

  “You could always pretend,” she said. “This is an imaginary fight you’re writing about anyhow, right?”

  “Uh, right,” Dexter said. This wasn’t helping his panic.

  “Maybe you mean that flies just wouldn’t fit with the spirit of the story,” Ms. Abbott said. “They’d change the mood too much.”

  “Yeah,” Dexter said. “That.”

  Ms. Abbott looked down at his story.

  “I agree with you,” she said. “That wasn’t what I had in mind, anyhow. I was thinking that you should try writing the whole story from Robin’s point of view. Pretend you’re him. Tell about the whole incident as he experienced it.”

  That did it. Now Dexter’s panic was on the verge of boiling over. Any minute now he might start throwing up, or screaming, or crying, or running out of the room.

  “I’m not Robin,” Dexter said. “Really, I don’t even know him.”

  Ms. Abbott tapped her finger against Dexter’s forehead.

  “That’s what your imagination’s for,” she said.

  She sat back, her eyes boring into Dexter’s. Dexter had to wor
k very hard to hold his panic down, to keep from letting her see how upset he was.

  “Or,” she said slowly, “you could ask him to help.”

  Chapter 10

  Dexter wasn’t asking anyone for help. He sat hunched over his paper at Grandma’s kitchen table.

  If I was Robin Bryce . . .

  No. Erase, try again.

  You said I had to pretend to be Robin Bryce, so . . .

  Erase again.

  Finally, after his eraser made holes in the paper and he had to skip down to the next line, he wrote simply:

  I am being Robin Bryce.

  He sat back, trying to think what that would be like. He squinted down at his hand holding the pencil. He wanted to trick his eyes into seeing his hands and arms as bigger and flabbier and paler, covered with Robin’s pasty white skin.

  I am big but I am not strong. I have comb tracks in my hair when I get to school in the morning.

  That was describing Robin, not telling about the fight. But Dexter didn’t erase any of it. He pressed his pencil down harder and added:

  Last Monday I was in the bathroom before school started. This skinny little kid came in and beat me up. I found out later his name was Dexter.

  Dexter sat back in his chair, thinking. Something was missing. He heard the phone ring in the living room. Quickly, before he had time to get distracted, he wrote:

  Robin was crying before Dexter hit him.

  “Dexter!” Grandma yelled from the living room. “Telephone!”

  Dexter flipped his paper over upside down, as if he thought whoever was on the phone might be able to see it.

  “I can’t talk right now,” he hollered back to Grandma. “I’m doing homework!”

  Grandma appeared in the doorway.

  “It’s your dad,” she said.

  Usually Dad didn’t call. Usually it was just his mom, calling from the hospital hallway or waiting room. Usually Dad was in too much pain to talk.

  Dexter took the phone.

  “Hello?” he whispered, like he thought talking loud might hurt Dad’s ears.

  “Hey, Dex,” Dad said weakly. “You know, I’m starting the experimental treatment tomorrow. And it’s going to make me really, really sick for a while.”