Chapter 2-Bullies or How Life Is Quite Unfair

“Tuney!” Lily, a short six-year-old with cascading locks of crimson hair, wailed as hot tears pooled in her distinctive bright emerald eyes. “Pet! Tommy and Nate pulled my hair and called me carrot-top and pushed me and stole my snack and ruined my drawing and didn’t get in trouble and I did! My drawing was of you and me and Mummy and Daddy and it was really, really good but they drew black squiggles all over it and ruined it! Then they laughed when Mrs. Daniels told me I was a bad girl and that I should draw like Tommy and Nate when all they had were a few bad drawings of dinosaurs! I hate school! I hate it! I don’t wanna go tomorrow or ever again! I rather go live in America with those Yanks!”

“Lily,” Petunia engulfed her sister in a hug, “they’re just stupid meanie heads. I’m here. It’s okay sweetie. I’m here. Just let it out.” Lily cried her heart out on her sister’s shoulder. “What about that girl you were talking to as Mummy and I left your classroom this morning? Could she be your friend?”

“Jessica? She’s kinda shy Tuney,” Lily whimpered. Her face was red and blotchy from sobbing. “I dunno. Do you think she would be my friend?” Glancing up, hope sparkled from behind long moist lashes.

“Of course! Lilette, she probably doesn’t have any sisters to talk to,” Petunia guessed, going out on a limb.

Lily gasped, “Wouldn’t she be terribly lonely?” Silently, Petunia nodded. Resolutely the young girl proclaimed, “Tommy and Nate were picking on her also. We will be friends!”

x-x-x-x

The little four-year-old boy had just been shoved to the hard pavement. A crowd of large boys was jeering around him. Tears welled up in his huge, wide eyes. A large beach ball of a boy waddled away with his friends, immense shoulders heaving with laughter. The small boy looked back at the woman behind the glass window. She looked him in the eyes. Brown met green. She quickly turned away as if she was afraid of the crying boy’s gaze. He scrunched his eyes up, wiped them, and then dejectedly shuffled away.

The other children who were watching from behind trees, beneath bushes, and from inside houses turned away, trying to pretend that they were doing something else. Piteously the boy asked the world, “I wanna have a friend! I’m nice, I’ll share my candy, and be a great friend! Won’t someone be my friend?” But nobody approached him; they had fled the scene.