It would not be long before I would discover what their nefarious plan was.
The recess bell rang just as we were finishing our English exercises for the day. I didn't like to have exercises hanging over my head, so I finished the last few sentences before packing my books in the cubby hole directly under my seat. Standing, I saw that most of the kids had followed Mrs. Pollet out the door and into the grass next to the trailer. I tried to follow, but was unceremoniously restrained by one of the more untoward boys in the class.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked Chris, who stood right behind the larger, more ponderous Gary.
Pushing my way past them, I turned and looked back at the boys. "I'm going out to recess." I was quaking like an aspen, but tried not to let it show.
"No, you're not," said a voice behind me, and I instantly recognized Bobby's squeaky rasp. He'd been out sick for some time and his voice still had not recovered. "You're not going anywhere."
Realizing too late that he was blocking the door, I tried forcing my way past him. The rest of the boys grabbed me by the back of the shirt and pulled me back inside.
Shoving me down into the "sit-in-the-corner" chair, Chris started tying me up tightly with some cotton rope. One of the boys had brought a long strand from home and another had kiped some out of the janitor's closet in the main school building.
"Leave me alone!" I protested. I was not going to beg for mercy. Propitiation was never my strongest suit. But I did fight like a tiger, though eventually I was bound hand and foot like last year's Thanksgiving turkey. They'd also shoved a cloth in my mouth and then wrapped a handkerchief around my head, tying it tightly in the back, some of my hair caught in the knot.
Having finished their dastardly deed, they picked me up, chair and all, and threw me into a broom closet in the back of the trailer and shut the door. I was so thoroughly gagged that I could not utter a sound for fear the cloth would wedge itself deeper into my throat.
I started by trying to free my hands. It was not going to be easy, but they'd looped the rope in such a way as to make it easy to loosen, and soon I'd loosed it just a tad. It was only a bit, but it was progress.
The knot they'd tied behind me was directly over my hands, so I could reach it with the tips of my fingers. Pulling it down into my palms, I fiddled with it until the two ends fell in opposite directions. A few minutes later, when everyone returned from recess, I almost had my hands completely untied.
When the class was all seated and calmed down to a dull roar, I could hear Mrs. Pollet ask where I was. I was only just getting the rope they'd used to wrap around my body pulled over my head to free my arms. After that I untied the handkerchief and spit out the cloth from inside of my mouth. From there it was just a matter of untying my legs and stepping out into the open, fingering the culprits and watching them get marched to the principal's office for their just desserts.
Only, it didn't happen that way.
Bright light burst into my eyes when Mrs. Pollet opened the closet door. I was just getting the knot untied from my legs. "Stefan!" she gushed. "Are you all right?" She knelt to help free my legs from their serpentine prison, but I'd already completed the task.
"Yes, m'am," I replied with a smile, as I stood and walked unencumbered from the closet. "I'm fine."
"Who did this to you?" she asked, putting her hand on my shoulder and looking me over for cuts and bruises.
"We were just playing, m'am," I said, gritting my teeth so the truth would not escape. The way I figured it, it was much better to lie to the teacher than to face more courtyard bullying because I was a narc.
Mrs. Pollet looked at me incredulously, looking down at the pile of rope that had fallen at my feet. "Are you sure, Stefan?" she asked. "You're sure you were just playing. This is very serious, you know. Whoever did this could get in a lot of trouble."
I looked around the classroom at each boy who had taken part. Most of them were looking at their own desks, no doubt pondering the significance of their own "Becky loves Johnny".
"Yes, m'am. I'm sure. It was all just playing around."
Mrs. Pollet put her hand on my back and gently pushed me toward the front of the class. "All right, then, Houdini. Please have a seat."
She called me Houdini for the rest of the year, but honestly, my "miraculous" escape hadn't changed any other attitudes very much. Those boys still didn't seem to like me, but they didn't pick on me anymore, either. It wasn't until David French himself became my friend that the other icebergs began to thaw. Eventually, all of them became good friends with whom I'd get in trouble a hundred times.
I was flipping through my Senior high school yearbook not long ago and was reading all of the innocuous things high schoolers tend to write to each other. Among the dopey Have-a-great-summer's and It's-been-great-knowing-you's there was an entry tucked neatly toward the bottom of the last page. The writing was somewhat crisp and easy to read, and though it wasn't very long, what it said brought pleasant memories flooding back of a day 40 years earlier.
"To Houdini," it started. "I hope we'll always be friends. And I hope the rope wasn't too tight. Thanks for not giving us up."
It was signed by Chris.
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