Bully-Be-Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

sense she had at her beck and call. But she didn’t. Miss Ogelvie cut a scary silhouette. Instead, Millicent walked on. “Thank you,” she called to Miss Ogelvie, who looked at her in bewilderment.
    Millicent dodged into the first aisle of the fiction section. She peered around the end cap. No bullies. She snucktwo more aisles over and positioned herself between the bookcases, her flip chart knocking a book off a shelf in the process. Oops, she thought, carefully replacing the book. The sound of the book falling didn’t attract any attention, so she moved forward to the nonfiction section.
    Behind the last nonfiction bookshelf, she paused. She heard voices.
    â€œGive that back,” a girl’s voice said in a stern tone.
    Tonisha, thought Millicent.
    â€œAnd what are you gonna do if I don’t give it back?” Nina’s deep and ugly voice replied. “Rhyme me till I choke? Yeah, right. Death by poetry.”
    Fletch and Pollywog laughed uproariously.
    Millicent parted some biographies and peeked between them. Tonisha and the bullies stood a few yards from the children’s book room. The secret meeting room entrance was just a little farther away.
    Nina stood nose to nose with Tonisha, while Fletch and Pollywog looked on. Nina held Tonisha’s precious notebook—the one in which Tonisha wrote all her poetry—at arm’s length behind her. Given Nina’s unnaturally long limb, the notebook hovered well out of Tonisha’s reach.
    â€œI wanna see what’s in it,” said Pollywog, hopping up and down, trying to snatch the book from Nina’s grasp.
    â€œYou wouldn’t get it,” Tonisha said under her breath. “It’s not a picture book.” A bead of perspiration trickled down her forehead.
    â€œI’ve always wondered why you and your weirdo friendsalways go to the library,” Nina said to Tonisha. “I think we’ll wait here until they all show up.”
    Tonisha gritted her teeth.
    â€œWhile we’re waiting, I’ll read us all a dumb poem. Let me see, here,” said Nina, pushing Tonisha away with her right hand while flicking the notebook open with her left.
    â€œAw, c’mon,” said Fletch. “Don’t we got better things to do?”
    Have, thought Millicent. Don’t we have better things to do?
    â€œShut up,” said Nina.
    I’ve got to help Tonisha, thought Millicent. But how?
    Laid out in a horseshoe arrangement of seven bookshelves, the nonfiction section opened up to the French doors that separated the children’s room from the rest of the library. With a little care, Millicent could skirt the nonfiction area’s perimeter and wind up at the tip of the horseshoe. What she’d do when she got there was a mystery, but she hoped to devise a scheme on the way.
    She got down on all fours and started crawling so as not to be seen.
    Meanwhile, Nina located a poem and started reading it. “‘My Prince Charming,’” she read, “in his castle bright, will one day set my wrong heart right.”
    â€œThat’s personal. Give it,” said Tonisha, trying to grab the book.
    â€œThis is lame,” said Nina, blocking Tonisha with her right arm. “Who is it about?”
    â€œNo one,” said Tonisha, looking down.
    â€œA personal poem about a fake prince?” asked Nina. Tonisha looked away. Nina made a crusty expression, dropping her jaw into an ugly gape. “How pathetic,” she added in her grating voice.
    â€œI think it’s kinda nice,” said Fletch.
    â€œWhat?” asked Nina, glaring over her shoulder at Fletch.
    â€œIn a geeky kinda way,” Fletch mumbled in return.
    Millicent reached the last bookcase and stopped. She had an idea. She unstrapped the easel and the flip chart and took off her backpack and unzipped it.
    Though it was still in development, she’d been toying with an invention she thought could get Tonisha