"Hey girl, how do you get that huge butt through doorways?"
     With a blush flaming in her face, Stacy Tilssen whirled to face the boys on the sidewalk.  There were four of them.
     "Yeah," laughed Roger Marsh, agreeing with whomever had just insulted her, "What size pants do you wear, extra large?  Or extra extra large?"
     She knew Roger from her shop class, and Nick Petersen from Sunday school when they were kids; the other two she had seen in study hall but she didn't know their names for sure.  They were town boys though.  She didn't think farmboys would act like that.
     "Why are you bothering me?" she demanded, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt.   She knew exactly why they were bothering her.  It was the lunch money.  She had encouraged two weaker boys, friends of hers from band practice, to refuse to pay protection.  They stuck together between classes, and her friends always got rides home from school, so apparently these bullies had decided their best target would be Stacy when she was walking home alone.  She had assured her friends that she could take care of herself.  Now she thought she might have been foolish.  She used to smack Nick Petersen in the head when he picked on littler kids.  He didn't look so tough; she thought she could still do it.  But not all four of them, if it actually came to a fight.
     "Oh, are we bothering you?" asked Nick with an innocent look.  "You mean you're really sensitive about your gigantic butt?"
     "No," she retorted, "just curious how you lost so many IQ points since the third grade."
     It was a lame insult and she wasn't surprised when they all laughed.  They knew she was flustered and that was like blood in the water.  Of course, their insults were just as lame, but they still had the upper hand.  It was that four-to-one thing.  With a shrug, she turned away from them and continued towards home.  She was pretty sure she would hear them if they started closing the distance behind her.  If they did, she would run.  She thought she could outrun them.  She was on the girls' track team; 100 meter hurdles and the long jump were her events but she wasn't bad at the 400 meter dash either.
     "You'd better not tell anybody about our Lunch Club," said one of the two boys whose name she didn't know.
     Stacy stopped and turned to face them again.  "Lunch Club?  Is that what you call it?"
     The biggest of the four, a sandy-haired boy who looked like he ought to be on the football team if in fact he wasn't, said, "That's what it is, a club, and our loyal dues-paying members will back us up if you try to tell lies about us."
     "Don't worry.  I never lie."
     "And I can't control them," he added, "they might just beat up somebody who said bad things about us.  Or they might beat up your scrawny little friends, Eddie and Georgie."
     Stacy wanted to say something brave that would frighten them, but she couldn't think of anything.  She turned away and continued home.  Had she encouraged Ed and George into a course of action that would get them beaten up, with other innocent victims taking the blame for it?  She didn't want that on her head.
     Roger and his friends kept their distance — about eight yards — but they still followed her.  She walked at a steady pace with a creepy feeling in the small of her back, until one of the boys said, "I have never seen anybody swing their butt that way when they walk.  It's like a freak show."  After that, she tried to walk without swinging her hips at all.  But the laughter increased.  Then they started making noises — pig noises, farting noises, and one of them started clapping his hands in time with her steps.  "Hear that?" he said.  "That's your big butt cheeks slapping together."
     It was a two and a half mile walk from Arrowhead High School to the Tilssen farm.  The boys eventually lost interest and turned back.  When they did, Stacy breathed a sigh of relief and ran the rest of the way home even though it was mostly uphill.

Continue to Part Two
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