Dexter the Tough (8 page)

Robin peeled three more blades of grass down to their veins.

Dexter picked up one of the grass pieces Robin dropped.

“I bet nobody could ever glue this back together,” he said. “Not even with superglue.”

“I guess not,” Robin said. But he stopped tearing up blades of grass and started watching Dexter.

Dexter lined up the ripped pieces of grass on a bare patch of ground. He made a pattern: short, long, short, long. He curved the line of grass into a curlicue.

“Ever done something you wanted to take back?” he asked Robin.

“Sure,” Robin said.

“Like what?” Dexter asked, still moving grass strips around.

“Well . . . one time I fed my dog a Hershey's bar,” Robin said. “Mom told me a million times that Petunia can't have people food, but I just thought, everybody loves chocolate. It's mean not to give Petunia some. So I did.”

“What happened?” Dexter asked.

“Petunia got really, really sick,” Robin said.

“And you wanted to take back the chocolate, but you couldn't, because it was too late?” Dexter said.

Robin frowned at him.

“Sort of. But Petunia got so sick that she threw everything up, so it was kind of like she did give the candy back.”

Dexter made a disgusted face.

“Yuck,” he said.

“Yeah, it was really gross,” Robin said. But he sounded happy about it.

Dexter had run out of grass pieces. He hadn't put any grass blades back together, but he'd made a cool design.

“I want to take something back, too,” Dexter said. “Something I can't change at all.”

“What?” Robin said.

“I'm sorry I beat you up,” Dexter said, the words coming out in a rush.

Robin squinted at him, puzzled.

“What do you mean?” he said. “You never beat me up.”

“Huh?” Dexter said, letting out such a great huff of air that he scattered all the loose pieces of grass. “What are you talking about? Of course I beat you up! Remember? In the bathroom? When you were crying? My first day at school?”

“That? That wasn't beating me up,” Robin said.

“Yes it was!” Dexter had never expected to have to fight about whether or not they'd had a fight. “I hit you all those times, you didn't hit back—I won!”

Robin stared at him, his jaw dropped.

“Dexter, you only hit me once,” he said.

“That's crazy!” Dexter said. “I hit you with my fist, and then—”

He tried to remember. He could see his fist crashing into Robin's jaw. He'd played that scene in his mind so many times. But what had happened next?

“You yelled at me,” Robin said. “You screamed, ‘Stop crying! Don't ever cry! Don't let anyone see you cry!' ”

Dexter remembered that. He remembered how much he'd wanted to cry, how close he'd come to letting the tears out, even as he yelled at Robin. He remembered why he was so mad at Robin: Because Robin was crying, and Dexter couldn't.

“And then,” Robin said, “you just stared at me for a few minutes, like you were waiting for me to stop crying. And then you ran out of the bathroom again.”

Dexter blinked. Robin was right. That was what had happened. Dexter remembered
skidding out of the bathroom, and seeing the secretary again. She'd still looked pale, with sweat beads on her lip. And then she'd taken him on to Ms. Abbott's class. That was how everything had happened. But the way Robin told the story, so calmly—that wasn't how it had felt. Dexter had felt crazy, like someone turning into a monster in a comic book. Dexter felt like he'd hit Robin a million times. He
felt
like he'd beat him up.

“Well, anyway,” Dexter said, a little sheepishly. “I did hit you. Why didn't you tell on me? Why didn't you tattle? Right then—that morning? Why didn't you run down to the office and say, ‘Hey! The new kid just punched me! Look! I have bruises!'?”

“I don't know,” Robin said, shrugging. He picked up a handful of grass pieces, and let them sift back down to the ground. “I guess because . . . all the other kids were trying to get me to cry, you know? When they called me crybaby—they were happy when that made me cry harder. It gave them more to
laugh at. But you . . . you didn't want me to cry. It kind of seemed like you were trying to help.”

“That's crazy,” Dexter said. “I hit you.”

It was sad that so many kids had been mean to Robin, that he thought someone who hit him was actually being nice.

Then Dexter remembered something else.

“But you told your mom,” he said.

“No, I didn't,” Robin said.

“Yes, you
did,”
Dexter said. “I heard you, at the park, just as Grandma was driving me away. You said, ‘See, Mom, that's the boy I was telling you about, the one who beat me up.' Or, ‘hit me.' Or something like that.”

Robin shook his head.

“You're wrong,” he said. “What I said was, ‘See, Mom, that's the boy I was telling you about. The one who said “Bryce” was a good last name. The one who . . . ” ' Robin looked down at the grass, avoiding Dexter's eyes. ‘ “The one who's going to be my friend.' ”

Dexter didn't say anything.

Robin looked back up, a little wild-eyed.

“It's true!” he said. “Don't you know what my mom would have done if I said you hit me? She would have talked to the principal. She would have called your parents. She would have taken me out of school. She would have been really, really mad!”

Dexter believed him.

“I am sorry,” Dexter said.

Robin nodded.

“I know.”

The two of them sat in the grass for a long time. Dexter thought about what a strange kid Robin was. Dexter never would have talked like this with any of his friends back home. Of course, he also hadn't been able to talk to his friends back home about his dad being sick. And they
knew
about Dexter's dad—their moms must have told them. Dexter knew they knew because they gave him strange looks sometimes, and Jaydell and Dillon wouldn't play at Dexter's house anymore. “No, sorry, I've got to go home and do . . . chores,”
Jaydell had said once when Dexter asked. And one time when Dad had come with Mom to pick Dexter up at school, Dexter's friends had all kind of backed away, scared.

Somehow, Dexter didn't think Robin would do that.

But Dexter didn't know how to say all that to Robin; he didn't know how to say that he really didn't mind Robin being strange.

And then he did.

“Hey, Robin?” he said. “Want to shoot some hoops?”

Robin looked up, startled. And then, watching Robin's face was like watching the sun rise. Robin knew Dexter wasn't just asking about basketball.

“Yeah,” Robin said, his face glowing. “I sure do.”

Sometimes true stories have more than one story in them. I was really mad when I hit Robin that first day at school. I was mad at everybody. I was even mad at my dad, and all he did was get sick. (But he's going to get better now.)

So I was mad at everybody, but the person I hit was Robin. Because he was there. And he was crying, and that's what I wanted to do too, only I'm not a crybaby. (And he isn't either, now.)

And after I hit Robin, and I wasn't so mad anymore, I felt really bad about it. It was all I could think about, which made me feel
worse, because I should have been thinking about my dad and not being any trouble for Grandma.

But the other stories in my story are other people's stories. I thought the secreterry and the prinsipel and the janiter were trying to be mean to me, but they weren't. And even though I was being mean to Robin, he thought I was trying to be his friend. And now I am, so I guess Robin was right after all.

Dexter sat back in his chair at Grandma's table. It was late—he could hear Grandma snoring in the living room. Mixed with the sound of the man on TV, her snores actually sounded like harmony.

Dexter read his story one more time. It had taken him so long to write—it was probably the longest thing he'd ever written in his whole life. Probably Ms. Abbott would find lots of things she'd still want him to change. But Dexter was happy with it.

He was happy, too, because he was going to go home from school with Robin tomorrow. Robin had said they could play with Petunia and ride bikes in the park. Robin's parents had even fixed up Dexter's bike, so it would work better now.

And Mom and Dad had called last night to say that Dad should be out of the hospital by the end of December. He'd still have to stay in Seattle for a few more months after that, but they were hoping that Dexter and Grandma could come out and visit during Dexter's Christmas break.

Maybe they'd even get to go up in the Space Needle—all of them. All together.

Dexter looked down at his story and thought of one more sentence. Even though his hand ached from writing so much, he gripped his pencil and added, very carefully:

I don't feel like hitting anyone anymore.

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2007 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Mark Elliott

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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IMON
& S
CHUSTER
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OOKS FOR
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OUNG
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EADERS
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Book design by Einav Aviram

The text for this book is set in Hadriano.

The illustrations for this book are rendered in pencil.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haddix, Margaret Peterson.

Dexter the tough / Margaret Peterson Haddix. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: A sympathetic teacher and her writing assignment help fourth-grader Dexter deal with being the new kid in school after he punches a kid on the first day.

ISBN: 978-1-4169-1159-3

ISBN: 978-1-4424-9763-4 (ebook)

[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H1164Dex 2007

[Fic]—dc22

2006009403