have time to listen to your lame excuses," Chad said.
Across the street, Jake and his best friend Charlie hid behind a row of bushes watching Arthur pay Chad.
"See? I told you!" Charlie whispered to Jake.
Arthur left Chad and a few minutes later two fourth-graders showed up. The boys watched Chad take a dollar bill from each of them.
"Hey!" Charlie hissed, "That’s my cousin. I’m gonna bust him in the nose."
"No, you’ll get in trouble," Jake said trying to hold Charlie back, but Charlie broke free, crossing the street to confront Chad.
"Hey, give them their money back!" Charlie yelled leaving the bushes.
"Oh yeah!" Chad said. "Says who and what army?"
"Says me! That is my cousin, Jerk!!" Charlie walked across the street and plucked the dollar bills the girls had given Chad away from him. "Here's your money back, Emily. Let me know if this guy gives you any more trouble."
"Thanks," Emily said and grabbed her friend's arm, they ran down the street towards the school.
"That's what cousins are for," Charlie said turning back to Chad. "Emily's my cousin. If I hear that, you have taken any more money from her, or her friends, you won’t like it."
"I can do whatever I want," Chad said arrogantly. "Like it or lump it."
"I'll lump you!" Charlie said raising a fist.
Chad defiantly raised his fists but looked a little scared. "Give me what you got!"
"Is there a problem here?" Jake asked joining them on the street.
"I see you brought your back-up," Chad said.
"You need to stop picking on people," Jake said. "You are bullying kids, and that is not right."
"Mind your own business," Chad said.
"Maybe you are my business," Jake countered as the start-of-school warning bell rang.
"We’ll continue this later," Chad said.
"There is nothing we need to talk about later. You and your buddies need to stop terrorizing other kids," Jake said.
"Think you can make me?" Chad snarled at Jake and Charlie, but they didn’t answer because they were already crossing the street to make it to class before the final bell rang.
Chapter Eight
"Are you going to fight Chad?" Lisa asked Jake during homeroom.
"Of course not, where did you hear that?" Jake asked.
"Alexia told me that Nancy said that you and Charlie were going to fight Chad and Wyatt."
"Well, Nancy is totally wrong. I can’t fight Chad; I have a black belt in Karate. I could seriously hurt him. Besides that, fighting is wrong."
"He’s going to call you a chicken," Lisa said.
"So what, it’s only a name, and it's not true. I can defend myself if necessary, and I don't need to hit Chad to prove I'm not a chicken. Chad likes to call people names. He's called people much worse than chicken. Look what he's called Arthur for instance, or for that matter, what he's called you, Alexia, and Betsy. If he’s picking on me, maybe he’ll leave the rest of you alone."
"Fat chance that will happen," Lisa said.
"We’ll see," Jake said, "besides, I have an idea on how to handle Chad and some of the other bullies around here."
"What are you going to do?" Lisa asked.
"I want to start an anti-bullying club," Jake said.
"I'll join," Lisa said.
"I'm counting on that," Jake answered.
Sure enough, at the end of homeroom, Jake and Mrs. Stanley passed out fliers that announced that the student council was having a meeting at four o’clock in the school auditorium.
"What is this about?" Betsy asked Jane.
"I don’t know, but I know that Jake and Charlie got into an argument with Chad this morning. I think it has something to do with him taking money from Emily. She's Charlie's cousin."
"What happened?" Betsy asked.
“Chad wanted me and Emily to pay him a dollar every day. I’ve heard he’s doing that to some other kids too. Charlie saw him trying to take my money this morning and he stopped it."
"Well that’s good," Betsy said.
"For today at least; I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow when Charlie is not there," Jane said.
"We’ll think of something," Betsy reassured her.
When four o’clock rolled around, there were quite a few kids seated in the auditorium. Jake, Alexia, and the four other student council members were sitting in chairs on the stage.
Jake as the student council president brought the meeting to order. He looked a little nervous and cleared his throat several times. "Um, I’m glad so many of you came to our meeting. I’m here to announce a new club that we are organizing to deal with a serious problem that has cropped up at our school."
"What problem? More pizza in the school cafeteria," someone called out.
"More pizza in the cafeteria would be great, but no, it's not pizza," Jake continued, "As your class president I made a promise to each of you to make this school a better place. Lately, there have been a few students who are making life miserable for some of our other students." Some of the students, mostly the popular ones, looked at each other and shrugged. The students clearly had no idea what Jake was talking about.
Alexia stood up, "I know some of you don’t know what has been happening. These bullies pick on the fourth graders or kids that look a little different than the rest of us. It’s not right and we at Morristown Middle School Student Council are not going to allow it to continue. Our new club will try to prevent and address the bullying that has been going on lately. We are going to organize small groups to watch out for the kids that we know are getting picked on. We will be a safe place where kids getting picked on can come for help if they don't want to tell a teacher." There was a hush in the room as the kids looked at each other trying to determine who exactly Alexia and Jake were talking about.
"Chad and Wyatt," Betsy said in a loud whisper that almost everyone heard.
"Besides, it will be fun to getting to know some of the kids that we don't know well and we will be doing a service to our school community. We are even going to have t-shirts," Jake finished.
"Now I know that dealing with bullies may not be your problem, but these bullies are tormenting these kids every day. They are shy and may look different, or they may not wear cool clothes. These kids stand out as easy pickings for a bully. We want to put a stop to the harassment and to do that I need your help. We need to stop the bullying going on at our school."
Out
