The Bullies

"Its time to wake up sweetheart, time for school," my mother gently shakes me from my dreamland to the reality that is known as school. I dreaded going to school everyday because I would get picked on. A lot. I try to stay out of everyone's way, not draw attention to myself, but the bullies always find me.

As I drug myself out of bed and dressed myself, the smell of waffles wafted into my room. Ah delicious waffles, the only part of the morning I like. I rushed down the stairs and took my seat at the table and started shoveling them in. Mom would just look at me and shake her head laughing. "If I didn't know any better, I would say you were starving. Hurry up though the bus will be here any min." As she said this, my dad came in as well. He said his usual hi and bye routine as he walks out the door for work.

The bus arrived at the same time as always, 7 am to pick me up and take me to my "prison". As I was walking out the door I hear my mom shout in pain.

"Ouch!! Daniel! You left your legos out again didn't you? You will clean them up when you get home."

My mom is not one to ignore. When she asks for dad and I to do something we do it. If we don't then mom has a special punishment for both of us.

I hopped on the bus and found a seat as we pulled away from the drive. I found my friend sitting in our seat and made my way over to him. We started talking about his new lego design he is wanting to try out and how he thought it might compliment my design as well.

I had been wanting to build a mobile dinosaur T-Rex that can walk. It is a lot of work and for now all I have is a drawing but its a start. Brandon's idea included a winged creature called a Pterodactyl. I learned a little about those but not enough to say I like them. Brandon gave me his drawing with a big grin on his face and said, "I drew it last night. What do you think?"

The Pterodactyl was orange with black spots, and protruding black eyes. You could tell this was drawn by a 10 year old with no skill.

"What is this?" I asked.

"That is the beak. Razor sharp teeth the catch fish and eat meat off the bone. Its supposed to be a triangle beak but I messed up a little. The dog bumped into me." He said with a slight frown.

"This will require a lot of orange bricks to make. And what if we were to have green eyes instead of black?" I stated.

Brandon's eye lit up and he says, "Yeah and maybe instead of black spots, brown! Like he's blending in on the ground!"

The school bus pulled up in front of the elementary school and we all filed off one by one. I instantly spotted the middle school bullies and went the other way purposefully trying to avoid them. It was no good. They found me and pulled me into the study hall room. Hardly anyone ever went in that ro I m so it wasn't surprising to see anyone around.

They grabbed my bag and dumped the contents out scattering my drawings everywhere. I hadn't had time to run to my lock to keep them safe, so I watched helplessly as the rifled through the pages laughing and chortling. They sound like pigs but I wasn't about to tell them that. I kept my head down and wasn't listening to them when I heard paper being torn. I immediately snapped up staring at the drawing of the Pterodactyl get ripped in half and then in half again, over and over until it was confetti. I stared at the shreds. The bullies have never done this before.

I barely heard one of them say as they were walking out, "Looks like a kindergarten drew it. It was so ugly it became something fun."

The door closed and I was left with my friends drawing scattered around the room as if confetti and almost cried. I didnt, but almost. I started to really hate those bullies. They had gone to far this time and wanted to do something about it.

For a 5th grader I was a little smarter than everyone else. I didnt brag about it or anything and sometimes I botched an answer or two on a quiz just to keep from getting the highest grade.

The school day came and went. Nothing eventful happened, nothing pressing needed to be addressed, so when I got home I went straight to my room. When I am upset I put in my ear buds and listen to music. That evening I threw all my focus into building my T-Rex.