The Bully

• Izaiah Sidhom, Grade 5, Oran Park Anglican College
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

One cloudy day there was a boy named Zach who was starting Year 5 in a brand new school. He was petrified to start his first day at school because not only was he the new kid, but he was also short for a Year 5 student.
He dashed into the school gate nervously and met his teacher, Mr Armstrong who greeted him at the front office and took Zach to his new classroom. As soon as Zach entered the classroom everyone was staring with bulging eyes at him, particularly a boy named Liam.
The play bell rang so Zach hid in the toilet because he was so scared of being bullied by Liam. It was time for class and Mr Armstrong was teaching long division. Zach was so good at it and Liam was extremely jealous.
The next day was the swimming carnival. Zach did 100m butterfly. Liam started to drown Zach in the water, but the lifeguard saved him. The whole carnival was cancelled, all because of Liam and everyone ended up back at school. At lunchtime, Zach was walking alone with no one to play with. Liam noticed Zach and walked towards him and pushed him on the concrete floor and started swearing at him for no reason. Zach had now broken teeth, so his mum took him to the dentist to get him fixed up. At dinner that night, Zach told his mum and dad about Liam and all the mean things that happened while at school.
Zach's parents were mad about what had happened to their son and organised a meeting with Mr Gibson. Mr Gibson promised Zach's parents that he will work with Mr Armstrong to buddy Zach with a friend.
Mr Armstrong planned a game of get to know you to help Zach make friends. Once that was finished, it was recess and Zach made a new friend, Cooper. He was cool, and he was very smart. Zach told Cooper about Liam. Cooper said, "He was bullying me too.”
Recess was over and everyone went back to class. Liam threw a paper plane at Zach. He opened it and it said ‘Loser’ which made Zach explode with anger. Zach couldn't control his anger and started a fight with Liam. Cooper ran to help and used his amazing karate skills and kicked Liam in the face. The Principal was told about what happened and expelled the boys from the school.
Mysteriously after being expelled, the boys all ended up in the same new school, so the same thing happened all over again. It was the worst school ever!!
Zach and Cooper wanted to fix things, so they decided to make posters to stop the bulling that was going on at school. Things started to get better and Liam decided to join in and apologised for all the bad things he did. The boys became the best friends ever.